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Miner Planner

CBy CrazyFeSS

Miner Planner automates mining drill placement on ore patches. Drag-select an area, pick your drill, belts, poles, and beacons from an icon-based GUI, and ghost entities are placed in optimized paired-row layouts ready for construction bots. Works with all drill types, belt tiers, pole types, and resources across all planets.

Miner Planner

Description

Miner Planner automates mining drill placement on ore patches. Drag-select an area, pick drills, belts, poles, beacons, modules, and foundation from a compact icon-based GUI, then ghost entities are placed in optimized paired-row layouts ready for construction bots. Features smart pole/substation spacing, adaptive underground belts, quality support (Space Age), polite placement mode, and foundation tiles for any planet surface.


Layout

Drills are placed edge-to-edge in paired rows for maximum ore throughput.

Layout
Layout

Features

  • Drag-select placement — select any ore patch and ghost miners appear in an optimal grid
  • Full entity selection — choose drill type, transport belt tier, electric pole type, beacon type, and quality for each
  • Substation support — 2x2 electric poles (substations) have specialized placement logic with splitters and dual belt output lines for 5x5+ drills in productivity mode
  • Beacon support — beacons fill alongside drill rows with configurable max and preferred counts per drill; includes beacon module selection
  • Smart pole spacing — poles placed at optimal intervals based on supply area and wire distance; higher-tier or quality poles mean fewer poles needed
  • Adaptive belt optimization — underground belts only where poles or substations occupy the gap; transport belts everywhere else for cheaper, visible item flow
  • Underground belts — automatically placed for 3x3+ drills to keep belt runs clean
  • 4-direction belt flow — north, south, east, or west
  • Pipe placement — automatic pipes for fluid-requiring resources (e.g. uranium ore with sulfuric acid), with pipe type and quality selection
  • Foundation placement — select landfill, foundation or ice platform to place under entities on non-buildable terrain
  • Polite placement mode — only clears trees and rocks, preserving existing buildings; respects rail ramps and supports
  • Technology-based filtering — GUI selectors only show entities whose recipes have been researched
  • Drill modules and quality — select modules and quality level for drills independently from other entities (Space Age)
  • Ore-type filtering — drills skip positions where the mining area overlaps a different ore type
  • Obstacle clearing — trees, rocks, and cliffs in the placement zone are marked for deconstruction
  • Ghost cleanup — shift-drag to remove placed ghost miners, belts, poles, pipes, beacons, and foundation tiles
  • Auto-remember settings — GUI is skipped on repeat placements, reusing your last configuration automatically
  • Multi-planet support — works with any resource on any surface (Nauvis, Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba, Aquilo)
  • Mod compatibility — auto-discovers modded drills, belts, poles, beacons, pipes, and 2x2 substations

How to Use

  1. Click the Miner Planner shortcut button in the toolbar (or press ALT+M)
  2. Drag-select an ore patch
  3. In the compact GUI, choose your drill, belt, pole, beacon, modules, and foundation
  4. Click "Place Miners" — ghost entities are placed for bots to build
  5. Shift-drag over an area to remove previously placed ghosts

Mod Settings

All settings are per-player:

  • Always show configuration GUI — when disabled, uses remembered settings to skip the GUI
  • Max beacons per drill — upper limit on how many beacons can affect a single drill (1–12, default 4)
  • Preferred beacons per drill — target beacon count; placement stops once each drill reaches this number (0 = no limit, default 1)

Requirements

  • Factorio 2.0+
  • Optional: Space Age expansion (for multi-planet resources and quality)

Credits

Inspired by the P.U.M.P. mod. Built to make large-scale mining setups fast and painless.

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