This has not been true for a while. The bottom of the map in chunks generated in more recent versions are a rough layer of adminium that may or may not contain lava.
Any cavern that goes down past the lava layer will fill up. If you breach lava when below the lava layer, you have effectively discovered a cavern.
This is just an inconvenience, as one must continue the mining patterns through the lava, which must either be bucketed or walled off.
Mining below the lava layer is entirely possible, just make sure you're in an area with no caverns, or block off any lava breaches and start a new hallway.
This has not been true for a while. The bottom of the map in chunks generated in more recent versions are a rough layer of adminium that may or may not contain lava.
Any cavern that goes down past the lava layer will fill up. If you breach lava when below the lava layer, you have effectively discovered a cavern.
This is just an inconvenience, as one must continue the mining patterns through the lava, which must either be bucketed or walled off.
Mining below the lava layer is entirely possible, just make sure you're in an area with no caverns, or block off any lava breaches and start a new hallway.
expertly worded
personally my mines are exactly 6 tall directly above the lava layer, for optimum ore collection
i use a branch system, except my main hallway is 5 blocks wide and 6 tall, which helps net a little more cobble while I proceed, and makes room for minecarts, and has a nice look
the branch patter is a design you dont use here that looks like this:
Sitting at his desk, a writer looked upon his work. Ink splatters and crossed out mistakes ran rampant across the reed paper. With a air of delight, he held it up to the fading light. The freshly laid letters glistened under the sun's evening rays.
The writer had a lot on his mind. For the next day, he will not be a slave of the mine. He could... do whatever he wanted. He could write whatever he wanted. Anything.
Running out into the gentle noon breeze, he set the paper he prized into a post box. Maybe someone will reply?
He returned to his little shack, orange in the final glance of day, pondering: What a reply might it be?
---
Yes, I am now updating the topic ( I am going to add more deposit theory tonight). Any thoughts on what you want me to add next? I have all day tomorrow to make changes, so tell me what is most important!
I just have two questions. Since when is the entire bottom of the map submerged in lava? And how do you figure There are no caves at the bottom of the map. I've been to the bedrock myself, and seen it by breaking only a few blocks from the bottom of a cave I was exploring.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"BTW is made in the spirit that Minecraft, like bondage, gets better as you become more restrained."
I just have two questions. Since when is the entire bottom of the map submerged in lava? And how do you figure There are no caves at the bottom of the map. I've been to the bedrock myself, and seen it by breaking only a few blocks from the bottom of a cave I was exploring.
...What?
Could you please quote where I have said this? I have looked around, and I cannot find anything in the OP.
If you are talking about the lava layer, that is becuase that layer can contain lava. In the diamond layer, is everything made of diamond? No. Does gold not exist because it's in the diamond layer? No.
The layers work by taking everything that was in the last layer, and applying the next. The Admin layer, for example, still contains lava, diamonds, dirt and coal. I have just shown on the graph the newest item to be added to that layer.
And yes, because lava is only present inside a cave, and lava can exist in admin, we can defiantly say that there is a cave in the admin layer.
If you find any text where I have said what was in your quote, I'd like to correct it. Please let me know.
Your practice of not counting the block dug in your efficiency calculations is very confusing... and I am quite sure wrong.
1) What we care about at the end of the day is how much ore is in our pocket.
2) The blocks that were dug have the same chance of putting ore in our pocket as anything else.
3) Thus, digging a bigger hole gives you more ore than digging a smaller hole, for the blocks dug.
4) Thus, this (small and outweighed, but still extant) benefit needs to be factored into your equations. I.e., more cramped tunnels are better using either method, but you are overestimating how MUCH they are better by.
For example, if digging a 1x1 hole straight down gives you 5X ore identified on average, then digging a 2x1 hole straight down will give you 8X ore identified on average. That is an efficiency of 5 versus 4, not 4 versus 3!!! There is nothing "special" about seeing a block versus digging. If anything, the blocks you dig are worth MORE than a block merely seen, because you've already dug them, whereas one you see next to you you still have to go dig. Which makes bigger tunnels even slightly less bad than my above change suggests. (I can't calculate how much, because it depends how much ore there is per rock at different levels, which I don't know)
Several of the rest of your analyses and in a couple places I think your conclusions on what is optimal suffer because of this.
Also, a mining type that you did not mention, which I think slightly beats anything else mentioned efficiency wise:
1) Dig down to the top of the diamond layer.
2) Dig a long horizontal hallway, until you are as far as you want to take it.
3) As you are going back, stop every 3 blocks and dig a hole straight down until just before lava.
I come up with 4.2 blocks identified here per one dug, versus 4 identified per one dug with a straight horizontal only. Questionable if that is worth it with the filling in time, etc., but there you have it.
I am not sure how safe this is, either. Depends how often lava has air pockets above it. If you have plenty of diamonds, though, it becomes more useful if you start higher up, so that you can stop a little shorter from the lava to avoid those air pockets too. Also, the efficiency gain would go higher than 4.2 if you are using this beyond just the diamond strata.
And finally, if somebody is just vertical mining in general, another useful pattern is this: (from top):
[] [] []
[] []
[] [] []
[] []
You miss 1/6 of rocks, but only in 1x1 columns, which are unlikely to contain many veins by themselves. And there is an advantage of your holes now being lined up vertically, which means although your horizontal tunnels at the top of the vertical shafts are now are still inefficiently sharing walls, it's twice as good as if you had to clear out everything to do a totally uneven pattern.
Depends again on how deep the verticals are / how much you care about diamond in particular.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
I am surprised by how suddenly everyone is willing to help. Thanks so much :smile.gif:
--
And on Efficiency:
I've been thinking this through. This would essentially add 1 to every efficiency, making the lowest effectiency 1.0, and the highest 7.0 .
I can see that it would let us calculate some important stats (i.e. the probability we will get ore.) And I can't seem to think of any benefits my original system proposed.
Yeah, I suppose it has to change. No point making another lie of science that I always despise.
--
I have a ton of information to shift through now, from ore numbers to deposit shapes. I did notice some errors when using NBT Forge. I noticed that ore deposits are different in multiplayer than they are in single player. Weather this is because my maps are out of date, I don't know, but it could pose a problem.
Just because everyone is helping me so much, an iron vein has minimum size of 4 ore per deposit and maximum of 8 ore per deposit. They can only be arranged within a 2x2x3 box.
Ill add more, but I have to stop gathering more data :X Ill update within the hour, no doubt about that.
This is most of the way down the OP in the section ~ 4.8 | Mining Style: Spelunking~
Quote from featherblade »
all of layers 10 and below are totally submerged in lava.
I did misinterpret the part about finding diamond in caves though, I apologize.
Did you miss this featherblade? If I'm not mistaken you said right there that the entire bottom of the map is submerged in lava. You may want to correct that in the OP to avoid confusion. Also earlier statements sound like they are saying that it is submerged.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"BTW is made in the spirit that Minecraft, like bondage, gets better as you become more restrained."
Each sub-branch corridor alternates between middle and top/bottom shafts, as so in the mining pattern above. The entire height of one level is 4 blocks. This can be stacked vertically.
This branching pattern make be less efficient than straight corridors, but the walking distance issue is a lot less of a problem, since we can destroy blocks up to 4 blocks away.
Given more sub-branches, the walking-mining ratio could be improved more, but then there will come the risk of getting lost, and having a generally more complex mine that will make you spend more time thinking about what direction to mine in.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Youtube channel.
Contains Pachebel's Canon made with noteblocks, a working Rubik's cube made with pistons, and the ultimate TNT cannon.
This is most of the way down the OP in the section ~ 4.8 | Mining Style: Spelunking~
Quote from featherblade »
all of layers 10 and below are totally submerged in lava.
I did misinterpret the part about finding diamond in caves though, I apologize.
Did you miss this featherblade? If I'm not mistaken you said right there that the entire bottom of the map is submerged in lava. You may want to correct that in the OP to avoid confusion. Also earlier statements sound like they are saying that it is submerged.
Oh wow I totally just skimmed over that graph for some reason.
Okay, so in the sweet spot, there's 22 ores per 1000 blocks. So let's say you're digging straight horizontally in that sweet spot. You are digging two blocks for every 6 that you merely see, and every 8 that you identify total. If you dig it 1,000 blocks long, you will identify 176 ores directly. Getting all of those will require digging an extra 132 blocks (because you just saw them in the walls). Let's assume also that all ores exist in 2x2x3 boxes. That would mean that for a 1x2 tunnel, on average, you'd identify directly 7.333 / 12 possible spots in a vein. So let's say on average you discover an additional 40% of whatever you found in vein going off beyond your main tunnel. That means 176*0.4 = 70 more digs and ores.
Total blocks dug / Total ore WITH following of veins = 2,202 / 246 = 8.95 (inverse 0.1117)
With a 2x2 tunnel, you dig 4 blocks for every 8 that you see, and every 12 that you identify total. if you dig is 1,000 blocks long also, you will identify 264 ores, 2/3 of which are in the walls this time, requiring 176 more digs. The amount more that will be in veins out of sight changes now, due to the new shape of the tunnel. now it is only 34% more. 264 * 0.34 = 90 more ores.
total blocks dug / Total ore WITH following of veins = 4,266 / 354 = 12.05 (inverse 0.083)
This rather intensive approach shows the 2x1 tunnel being 34.6% more efficient.
My original method yields 4 versus 3, or 33% more efficient. Slight underestimate (the following veins thing messed up my hypothesis)
Just doing the OP's method yields 3 versus 2, or 50% more efficient. Overestimated
A 1x1 tunnel has 78% of veins unseen. 1000 digs + 88 to get immediately visible + 86 new unseen / 110 + 86 = 1,174 / 196 = 6.00 (inverse 0.167) 49% (!!) more efficient than a 2x1 tunnel.
101% more efficient than a 2x2 tunnel
bwuaaaaa? Did I do something wrong? or is that just awesome? This is a hypothetical horizontal 1x1 tunnel, though. In reality, you'd have to make compromises due to strata differences.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
May I reiterate that practical efficiency also lies with issues of transportation.
Not necessarily. If you just bring like 5 stacks of logs with you and ditch all the cobblestone and gravel you find/use it to fill in vertical holes, you can go almost indefinitely with only one return trip. Or worst case, store your full inventory of stuff in a chest up top at your current position, then come back later with just one trip with powered + treasure minecarts and send them all back (2 round trips ever).
Nobody is ever going to mine so much that 2 round trips is TOO MUCH! ...
**obviously you should always store things in intermediate chests for instance in the vicinity where you are sinking your vertical shafts from. In case of lava death, etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Przerwap, upon looking at some code I had just written: "...Gav... That's not how programming works."
Any cavern that goes down past the lava layer will fill up. If you breach lava when below the lava layer, you have effectively discovered a cavern.
This is just an inconvenience, as one must continue the mining patterns through the lava, which must either be bucketed or walled off.
Mining below the lava layer is entirely possible, just make sure you're in an area with no caverns, or block off any lava breaches and start a new hallway.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
expertly worded
personally my mines are exactly 6 tall directly above the lava layer, for optimum ore collection
i use a branch system, except my main hallway is 5 blocks wide and 6 tall, which helps net a little more cobble while I proceed, and makes room for minecarts, and has a nice look
the branch patter is a design you dont use here that looks like this:
Red = blocks missed
[] []
[] []
[]
[]
[] []
[] []
The writer had a lot on his mind. For the next day, he will not be a slave of the mine. He could... do whatever he wanted. He could write whatever he wanted. Anything.
Running out into the gentle noon breeze, he set the paper he prized into a post box. Maybe someone will reply?
He returned to his little shack, orange in the final glance of day, pondering: What a reply might it be?
---
Yes, I am now updating the topic ( I am going to add more deposit theory tonight). Any thoughts on what you want me to add next? I have all day tomorrow to make changes, so tell me what is most important!
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Note the astrix. I have said those numbers are theoretical.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Here, I made a better version of the ore cross-section for you.
You. Win. So badly.
Thanks for upgrading the MS. paint drawing :biggrin.gif:
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Bookmarked.
...What?
Could you please quote where I have said this? I have looked around, and I cannot find anything in the OP.
If you are talking about the lava layer, that is becuase that layer can contain lava. In the diamond layer, is everything made of diamond? No. Does gold not exist because it's in the diamond layer? No.
The layers work by taking everything that was in the last layer, and applying the next. The Admin layer, for example, still contains lava, diamonds, dirt and coal. I have just shown on the graph the newest item to be added to that layer.
And yes, because lava is only present inside a cave, and lava can exist in admin, we can defiantly say that there is a cave in the admin layer.
If you find any text where I have said what was in your quote, I'd like to correct it. Please let me know.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
I did misinterpret the part about finding diamond in caves though, I apologize.
1) What we care about at the end of the day is how much ore is in our pocket.
2) The blocks that were dug have the same chance of putting ore in our pocket as anything else.
3) Thus, digging a bigger hole gives you more ore than digging a smaller hole, for the blocks dug.
4) Thus, this (small and outweighed, but still extant) benefit needs to be factored into your equations. I.e., more cramped tunnels are better using either method, but you are overestimating how MUCH they are better by.
For example, if digging a 1x1 hole straight down gives you 5X ore identified on average, then digging a 2x1 hole straight down will give you 8X ore identified on average. That is an efficiency of 5 versus 4, not 4 versus 3!!! There is nothing "special" about seeing a block versus digging. If anything, the blocks you dig are worth MORE than a block merely seen, because you've already dug them, whereas one you see next to you you still have to go dig. Which makes bigger tunnels even slightly less bad than my above change suggests. (I can't calculate how much, because it depends how much ore there is per rock at different levels, which I don't know)
Several of the rest of your analyses and in a couple places I think your conclusions on what is optimal suffer because of this.
Also, a mining type that you did not mention, which I think slightly beats anything else mentioned efficiency wise:
1) Dig down to the top of the diamond layer.
2) Dig a long horizontal hallway, until you are as far as you want to take it.
3) As you are going back, stop every 3 blocks and dig a hole straight down until just before lava.
I come up with 4.2 blocks identified here per one dug, versus 4 identified per one dug with a straight horizontal only. Questionable if that is worth it with the filling in time, etc., but there you have it.
I am not sure how safe this is, either. Depends how often lava has air pockets above it. If you have plenty of diamonds, though, it becomes more useful if you start higher up, so that you can stop a little shorter from the lava to avoid those air pockets too. Also, the efficiency gain would go higher than 4.2 if you are using this beyond just the diamond strata.
Diagram from the side:
18
[] [] [] [] [] [] 17
[] [] [] [] [] [] 16
[] [] 15
[] [] 14
[] [] 13
[] [] 12
11
or something.
And finally, if somebody is just vertical mining in general, another useful pattern is this: (from top):
[] [] []
[] []
[] [] []
[] []
You miss 1/6 of rocks, but only in 1x1 columns, which are unlikely to contain many veins by themselves. And there is an advantage of your holes now being lined up vertically, which means although your horizontal tunnels at the top of the vertical shafts are now are still inefficiently sharing walls, it's twice as good as if you had to clear out everything to do a totally uneven pattern.
Depends again on how deep the verticals are / how much you care about diamond in particular.
I am surprised by how suddenly everyone is willing to help. Thanks so much :smile.gif:
--
And on Efficiency:
I've been thinking this through. This would essentially add 1 to every efficiency, making the lowest effectiency 1.0, and the highest 7.0 .
I can see that it would let us calculate some important stats (i.e. the probability we will get ore.) And I can't seem to think of any benefits my original system proposed.
Yeah, I suppose it has to change. No point making another lie of science that I always despise.
--
I have a ton of information to shift through now, from ore numbers to deposit shapes. I did notice some errors when using NBT Forge. I noticed that ore deposits are different in multiplayer than they are in single player. Weather this is because my maps are out of date, I don't know, but it could pose a problem.
Just because everyone is helping me so much, an iron vein has minimum size of 4 ore per deposit and maximum of 8 ore per deposit. They can only be arranged within a 2x2x3 box.
Ill add more, but I have to stop gathering more data :X Ill update within the hour, no doubt about that.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Did you miss this featherblade? If I'm not mistaken you said right there that the entire bottom of the map is submerged in lava. You may want to correct that in the OP to avoid confusion. Also earlier statements sound like they are saying that it is submerged.
I also use this pattern, except I use a different branching pattern:
(top down view)
: Main corridor
[] : Branches
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
Each sub-branch corridor alternates between middle and top/bottom shafts, as so in the mining pattern above. The entire height of one level is 4 blocks. This can be stacked vertically.
This branching pattern make be less efficient than straight corridors, but the walking distance issue is a lot less of a problem, since we can destroy blocks up to 4 blocks away.
Given more sub-branches, the walking-mining ratio could be improved more, but then there will come the risk of getting lost, and having a generally more complex mine that will make you spend more time thinking about what direction to mine in.
Contains Pachebel's Canon made with noteblocks, a working Rubik's cube made with pistons, and the ultimate TNT cannon.
If have corrected this a while ago.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Okay, so in the sweet spot, there's 22 ores per 1000 blocks. So let's say you're digging straight horizontally in that sweet spot. You are digging two blocks for every 6 that you merely see, and every 8 that you identify total. If you dig it 1,000 blocks long, you will identify 176 ores directly. Getting all of those will require digging an extra 132 blocks (because you just saw them in the walls). Let's assume also that all ores exist in 2x2x3 boxes. That would mean that for a 1x2 tunnel, on average, you'd identify directly 7.333 / 12 possible spots in a vein. So let's say on average you discover an additional 40% of whatever you found in vein going off beyond your main tunnel. That means 176*0.4 = 70 more digs and ores.
Total blocks dug / Total ore WITH following of veins = 2,202 / 246 = 8.95 (inverse 0.1117)
With a 2x2 tunnel, you dig 4 blocks for every 8 that you see, and every 12 that you identify total. if you dig is 1,000 blocks long also, you will identify 264 ores, 2/3 of which are in the walls this time, requiring 176 more digs. The amount more that will be in veins out of sight changes now, due to the new shape of the tunnel. now it is only 34% more. 264 * 0.34 = 90 more ores.
total blocks dug / Total ore WITH following of veins = 4,266 / 354 = 12.05 (inverse 0.083)
This rather intensive approach shows the 2x1 tunnel being 34.6% more efficient.
My original method yields 4 versus 3, or 33% more efficient. Slight underestimate (the following veins thing messed up my hypothesis)
Just doing the OP's method yields 3 versus 2, or 50% more efficient. Overestimated
A 1x1 tunnel has 78% of veins unseen. 1000 digs + 88 to get immediately visible + 86 new unseen / 110 + 86 = 1,174 / 196 = 6.00 (inverse 0.167)
49% (!!) more efficient than a 2x1 tunnel.
101% more efficient than a 2x2 tunnel
bwuaaaaa? Did I do something wrong? or is that just awesome? This is a hypothetical horizontal 1x1 tunnel, though. In reality, you'd have to make compromises due to strata differences.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't read carefully ;_;
Contains Pachebel's Canon made with noteblocks, a working Rubik's cube made with pistons, and the ultimate TNT cannon.
Not necessarily. If you just bring like 5 stacks of logs with you and ditch all the cobblestone and gravel you find/use it to fill in vertical holes, you can go almost indefinitely with only one return trip. Or worst case, store your full inventory of stuff in a chest up top at your current position, then come back later with just one trip with powered + treasure minecarts and send them all back (2 round trips ever).
Nobody is ever going to mine so much that 2 round trips is TOO MUCH! ...
**obviously you should always store things in intermediate chests for instance in the vicinity where you are sinking your vertical shafts from. In case of lava death, etc.