Advanced Mining Machine

The Advanced Mining Machine is the late-game upgrade to the regular Mining Machine, combining ore extraction with limited logistics-station behavior. It mines a vein directly beneath its footprint, stores the output internally, and can feed both conveyor belts and Logistics Drones without needing a nearby Planetary Logistics Station. It is unlocked in the late game and requires Grating Crystal to build, making it part of the transition into interstellar-scale mining and logistics.

Its main advantage is efficiency and coverage. The base mining speed is 60 items per minute per vein, which is twice the output of a basic Mining Machine, and its much larger field can usually cover an entire vein cluster in a single placement. Unlike regular Mining Machines, Advanced Mining Machines cannot overlap with each other, but their fields can overlap with regular Mining Machines. This makes mixed setups useful when a cluster is too large for one Advanced Mining Machine alone, or when extra throughput is needed.

The building has several built-in logistics features:

• 9 conveyor belt outputs, instead of 1
• Internal storage with a base capacity of 5000 items
• Storage capacity increased by Logistics Carrier Capacity
• Can be set to Supply or Storage
• Logistics Drones can collect from it directly when set to Supply
• Output cargo stacking is affected by Station Integrated Logistics

Because the building can act as a local pickup point, it reduces or removes the need to place a Planetary Logistics Station close to an ore field. In practice, this lets mining outposts run with simpler belt layouts while still supporting drone pickup and bulk export.

The gathering speed can be adjusted from 100% to 300% in 10% steps. Higher speed greatly increases power draw, and power consumption scales with the square of the speed multiplier. At the default 100%, it uses 2.94 MW; at 150%, 6.615 MW; at 200%, 11.76 MW; at 250%, 18.375 MW; and at 300%, 26.46 MW. The speed bonus from Vein Utilization stacks multiplicatively with this setting, so the machine benefits from that upgrade as well.

When belt output stacking is unlocked through Station Integrated Logistics, the Advanced Mining Machine can unload cargo in stacks instead of one item at a time. This raises belt throughput significantly, especially with higher-tier belts, and makes it much better suited to high-volume ore distribution than the basic miner. With the stack-output option enabled, it uses the maximum stack size allowed by the current tech level; otherwise, the stack count can be set manually.

A few practical points are worth keeping in mind:

• A single Advanced Mining Machine can often cover a full ore cluster, but large clusters may still need multiple machines or support from basic Mining Machines.
• Regular Mining Machines can be placed in the same cluster and can output directly into the Advanced Mining Machine’s storage.
• Setting the machine to Supply allows drone pickup, but also means it cannot be built near Logistics Stations.
• Because it mines faster, nearby veins will be depleted sooner, so long-term production often requires expanding to new planets or new ore fields.

Overall, the Advanced Mining Machine is the high-throughput, late-game mining solution: compact, flexible, and far more efficient than early mining setups, but balanced by higher power demand and the need for better infrastructure.