Hexi's Infinite Ores

Ore fields slowly generate infinite ore spots as regular ore is depleted, allowing for infinite mining of ore at the expense of a bit of Lubricant.

How it works

When ore depletes an ore chunk patch might replace it, provided no other spots are nearby.
Ore chunk patches offer a constant 1/s (no depletion) of the type of chunk the field is, which refines 1:1 into the actual ore plus a small chance (1-5%) of waste products (usually stone/coal).

Mining ore chunk patches is behind a new tech that has Uranium mining and Lubricant as prerequisites. The tech costs 500 packs of automation/logistics/chemical science.
Miners require 0.1 lube per chunk mined, regardless of type, but chunks require no additional ingredients (except for Uranium chunks which require acid) when processing in a chem plant.
Chunks only stack to 20, rather than the 50 ores stack to, to encourage on-site processing and waste product management rather than a central solution.
Miners and processing can both be boosted with speed modules, but not productivity modules.

Chunk processing (most chunks are 1:1 on returned ore and take 0.4s per chunk):
- Iron/Copper: 1% stone, 2% coal
- Coal: 2.5% stone
- Stone: No waste products
- Uranium: 5% stone, requires 0.5 acid (2 chunks + 1 acid + 0.8s = 2 ore + 10% stone)
With Space Age:
- Tungsten: 2.5% stone, 1% calcite
- Calcite: 1% stone
- Scrap: No waste products, chunks provide 10 scrap per
Modded ores:
- No waste products, fluid requirements are checked and apply to processing similar to Uranium ore, recipe is 20 chunks at once but will try to factor itself to smaller numbers

Credits

Original mining mod (chunk/patch artwork, and original concept of ore fields generating patches as they're mined): VortiK's Deep core mining mod
- https://mods.factorio.com/mod/vtk-deep-core-mining
- https://github.com/VortiK/vtk-deep-core-mining

Mining drill artwork: petrak@'s Fracking Tower mod
- https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pk-fracking-tower
- https://github.com/gamma-delta/fracking-towers