If that’s the case, what’s the point of mining drills? Have you considered learning from a mod that pulls ore from space?
I forgot what it was called. When you can launch rockets, you can send out probes, and after a while a bunch of raw ore comes back. It seems that in 2.0 there’s a new version where you make a beacon, and then ore patches generate around the beacon.

Oh, there’s a Fulgora mod called “(Beta) Fulgorite Harvesting”—maybe you could consider that?

Thanks for the feedback! The point of the mod is exactly that: ore is grown, not mined. I wanted to grow ore the way Agricraft let you grow resources in Minecraft. After playing Lignumis, with its gold stromatolites, I got the idea of stromatolites that grow ore, originally for a SeaBlock-style game where there are no ore patches at all. From there it grew into a full overhaul.

Drills still have a job: they dig ore soil, which is roasted into a trickle of ore early on, pressed into new seeds, or fed back into restoration towers. But yes, most of your ore comes from fields, not drills. That's the trade-off the mod is built around.

Thanks for the suggestions about the space probe mod and Fulgorite Harvesting, I'll take a look. The mod is in beta, so ideas like this are very welcome.