Logistics game that focuses on real-world physics, a very interesting mix. The price point is golden frankly, making this more of a sandbox experiment with some interesting mechanics.
The general gist of Mine Mogul is that you’re in a mine, and you need to put stuff in a drop chute, which then automatically sells it granting you cash to buy more automation tools. More complicated items generate more profit, but are also more complicated to make. Straightforward enough, sure. Then you get to the actual implementation.
When I mention physics, I mean that in nearly all practical gaming senses. Collision & gravity most importantly. Things will bump into each other constantly, and most certainly when on a belt. When things fall off a belt, they hit the ground and you need to manually pick it up to get back to where you want it to be. Practical example now:
In nearly all factory games, you transport items through some sort of belt. Things are placed in an orderly fashion and move at a given rate of speed. If you send 15/minute you will receive 15/minute, not matter how many loops and turns you put on. Here, when you take a turn, the item will collide with any nearby item, and respond appropriately. Larger items may not make the turn and fall off. 15/minute in does not ever mean 15/minute out. In fact, most ‘mergers’ here are actually about dropping items onto a belt and hoping it stays there!
The next big deal here is that all mining activity generates multiple outputs, 3 to 5 items. I am sure you guessed that all processes take 1 item, so you need to filter this output. Filters can only process so many items at a time, and items back up and fall off the belt if so. The only way to combat this is to filter multiple times to multiple belts. Iron and Coal in particular are voluminous, so sub-sorting stations are key!
My typical factory has belts coming in, a sorting station (coal, iron, copper, gold, everything else) to some processing (which is vertically dropped), a smelter which produces ingots, whatever machines I need after that to meet progression requirements, a merged output belt for all types of material, a polisher (dramatically increased value) and then dumps in the chute. Simple in concept, but the practical application requires a lot of trial and error. Which is amazing!
Depending on the map you choose, you may have a lot of room to build, or very little. I prefer the big option to make large processing floors, but the small one effectively means you get wildly complicated mini-factories that ship out finished products on a very long and winding belt.
There are some QoL bits that I would personally love to see here, most of them relating to logic gates and improved throughput tools. But these changes would reduce the sandbox feel and then get it closer to the standard logistics games I’ve played a dozen times. As for ‘critically beneficial’ improvements, finding a way to get things to the processing chute from across a map would be my larger preference. As it stands, it can take a few minutes to get stuff all the way across the map, so those with some level of logistics experience are likely to find themselves simply waiting for stuff to happen rather than building stuff.
Still, what’s here is frankly a joy to fool around with. You will never ‘mega base’ here, but seeing tons of ore move around a factory with bits falling all over the place is like being in a kid’s playground. Super fun and relaxing!
