by Tanchist » Mon Dec 25, 2017 9:39 pm
It's basically a minesweeper game, with cave dust fallen from the ceiling being the numbers in minesweeper.
Just like in Minesweeper, the most dangerous part is when you start mining, because nothing can tell you if you have a "minesweeper bomb" first square that you dig in the cavern's wall. But from there you continue exactly like when playing minesweeper. Please, do not forget to mark by paving the squares that gave you cave dust when mined. Otherwise, after a while cave dust will despawn anyway and you are left blind.
The only significant difference between minesweeper and H&H mining is that after you already have metal bars to throw for nothing much (so you don't actually need to keep on mining for ores anymore, to be honest), then you can use a bar and 16 logs to make a mine support. The "minesweeper bombs"/"squares that provoke cave-ins when mined" (it's the same thing) will not detonate/cave-in when you click them if they are inside a mine support radius. But if you ever decide to destroy some ugly/badly placed mine support, you are guaranteed to get a cave-in no matter what the minesweeper game would say about it. So try to think before placing mine supports, place as few as possible and never remove one or more of them.
Just think your ore might produce like an average of 2 bars per 25 mined ores. (25 is a full smelter's capacity.) So if you need to place a mine support to mine out 10 ore squares, you might be actually wasting bars instead of getting bars if you place the mine support and mine the ore. If that is the case, save yourself the trouble and simply mine somewhere else, where you do not need supports to get the ores. If you need supports just to keep on prospecting the mineable area looking for the ores you need in the direction you want to go prospecting, then definitely the direction is wrong and what you need is to prospect somewhere else, not to waste bars on prospecting for ores.
Wastelands. Ruins everywhere from proud civilizations, with today's survivors scavenging whatever they can carry even if they can't even use it. Eating rats cooked alive is OK for everyone. Walking around naked is natural, since very few have time to waste in getting a rag to cover their deep wounds. And the game is only Alpha.