I notice that this uses one power pole and a pair of undergrounds for every two miners. Surely there's a better way.

It seems like this is just spamming a few different blueprints rather than actually planning anything.

I did see your response elsewhere dismissing the use of belts in place of undergrounds as people need to make a bunch anyway. This is a bit irrational as you need to mine the things before you have the resources to build all the plates and gears. Consider 9 iron to 18 for yellows, and 25 vs almost 100 for reds, to span just three spaces. This is to say nothing of how many extra resources are required to have so many superfluous power poles. Maybe this doesn't matter once you have Vulcanus kitted out, but that makes this tool of limited usefulness.

Do you have any plans to create an algorithm that is a bit more frugal?

I can't understand what's a problem with underground belts when you must make them a lot, but I'll add special mode "Only transport belts" that uses only transport belts and places poles/substances between drills. It won't be compatible with beacons.

Also if you care about efficiency - did you try Effective mode? It place drills that respect it's mining area. I designed it especially for having less wasteful machine use.

Also if you care about efficiency - did you try Effective mode? It place drills that respect it's mining area. I designed it especially for having less wasteful machine use.

I apologize if I was unclear, as we seem to disagree on what constitutes a "machine", as I consider both belts and undergrounds to be machines.

The wastage I'm referring to is not in the number of drills, but in their support structure. When tasked with using power poles, you would assign each drill pair their own power pole and set of underground belts. The only way to get any sort of power placement that acknowledges the amount of coverage is to use substations instead (at the moment, I find this to be your mining planner's unique draw over other, similar mods.)

To explain why people would want to use belts rather than undergrounds, consider the amount of materials required, vs the distance covered. Assuming undergrounds are stretched out as far as possible (to get the most use out of the materials consumed), it's only in the case of yellows that undergrounds are more material efficient (17.5 vs 18 iron plates), but that is only if you're spanning the entire 6 units of distance. Your current use is to have them at distances of 4, and then you're using 17.5 iron instead of 12.

The numbers for reds are worse. 97.5 vs 92 (or vs 46) iron for reds. Blues would be cheaper over long distances (257 vs 315 iron) but over that 4 unit distance, you only need 126 iron.

This is to say nothing of crafting time. The time for blues is 2 seconds for a distance of 4 belts while the undergrounds take 68 seconds (total) to make.

This is why people care about using belts instead of undergrounds.

(The argument for spacing out power poles instead of using one power pole for each pair of miners is similar.)

(I'd agree that once you have interplanetary logistics mastered, material costs become fairly negligible, and greens craft very quickly, but getting to this point in the game is nontrivial for many players, either because they don't have Space Age, or are just uninterested in going to Vulcanus.)

Yes, I understood you and agree with you and other people.
Actually it's a tricky problem to have a good algorithm but good news - I made it.
So it will be fixed in the next 1.2.0 version.

Ok the 1.2.0 version is ready and you can try it.