Hello .. I'm a big C&C fan, so I'm very happy about your mod. Unfortunately, as a single player, it's exhausting when I have to drive the harvesting machine myself.

Hence my idea ... to use the refinery itself as a harvesting machine with a large catchment area and to use the actual harvesting machine as a decoration around the refinery.

What do you do with the truck then no idea ... maybe use it as a rail vehicle ?!

greetings SpoonGER

my idea was to use the truck as a gathering vehicle, even when the player was not driving it, letting them go out, gather, then come back without the player being there. Just... a little stuck on having them find the resources first.

I watch your mod all the time. I just downloaded and tested it yesterday while waiting for automation.

I have no idea about modding, but it seems more complicated to get.

Therefore, as described above, my idea could first bring out a light version.

Refinery as a harvester and the rest as animation so that it looks good.

Wow, I properly nerded out when I saw this mod! Yes please! I can't wait to try it, thank you so much for coming up with this :-D

I know nothing about modding, so I'm throwing these ideas at you without regard for how possible or hard it is to pull off, but I hope you'll find these considerations of use:

1) Semi-automation in the sense that the harvester will go off and harvest any selected ores. So it doesn't have to find them, you just use some menu akin to the deconstruction planner and the harvester/s go get it. Preferably, you set a target for each harvester. Or, you can make new harvesters and link them to a refinery, and set the target from the refinery, which dictates what all linked harvesters do? In my head each refinery has a "train track" like platform, onto which you place a harvester from your inventory. This links the harvester to the refinery, but it then drives off freely. Or, you can place it loose on the ground, to be driven manually.

2) Like trains, a flip switch for automatic vs manual, so you can drive them if you want.

3) A filter for which ores to gather, in case you get overlapping patches and you just want certain types.

4) Compatibility for Bobs, Angels and Space mods, if it's not already? I'm playing Space with a friend right now, and this mod would be AMAZING for that, especially if semi-automated! I'm trying to clear a planet of all ores right now and this would make the logistical challenge so much more fun and convenient!

Have a look at Yarm(YARM - Resource Monitor) with how it designates resources, if you incorporate something along those lines where the player uses a "designate field to harvest" button and they just drag over the fields they want and it registers what field it is and keeps track of its location that way then you wont have to make it scan the game world for ore or anything like that.

YARM and AAI programmable vehicles should give you enough clue's on how to make automation work for the harvesters but in short
AAI vehicles use something akin to biter pathfinding to get around from point to point(Atleast last i looked into them it might have changed by now to something better)
A designation can be anything from a specific entity to an area.

If you want some more idea's look into transport drones the way they path around on road tiles allows for many many many drones to drive around(last count i had 3k driving before ups was taking a hit) this could be incorporated to a certain degree as well for designating a path a harvester should take through your base for example(Instead of having harvesters roaming left and right through a messy base for example)

Hey guys! I spent 5 hours to make a C&C reskin mod for Mining Drones 2 with automation you wanted, have a look 😊