Are the Large Mines worth it?

[Anolaszun]

Looking at the Cost vs Footprint vs Output and honestly not liking/confused with what I’m seeing.
Early - Mid game the cost and footprint of the Large mines hugely outweighs the extra 1 resource per cycle.

• Sand mines cost 5 concrete, Large cost 48 that is an 860% cost increase but only a 100% yield increase, the math for cost increase for the rest is the same.
  Sulfur 380%, Iron 300%, Copper 263.6%, Aluminum 302.2%, Uranium 433.3% for concrete and 300% steel, and Iridium at 141% concrete and 303.4% Steel.

• Footprint is 2 tiles bigger which means now you have to completely change the layout of your mining area and roads .(I do think large mines need to be bigger than the normal ones)

• In the space of 6 large miners you can fit(depending on layout) up to 9 small ones.
  Total output is 12 sand every 12 seconds for the 6 large sand mines and 9 every 12 second for the small. That is only a +3 to resource/time. Scale that up and it may be worth it but ¯_(ツ)/¯ and would it scale before or after you run out of mineable space ¯_(ツ)/¯

I don’t see the benefit of changing to Large Mines for a majority of the provided mining spaces or until much later in the game when cost is no longer an issue.

I think a good fix would be to increase the output of the large mine’s to 1.5 per cycle so that the net benefit is 200% and better offsetting the other costs.

Please correct me if I’m wrong or missing something. I would like to hear opinions on this.

[Banglaboy]

I think having a good concrete production is really important even in early game, and the increased space efficiency (and energy efficiency I think?) is worth the increased initial cost for a long term increase in production. Switching out your current miners might not be worth it if you’re struggling for concrete atm but I would say it’s definitely beneficial to create new setups with the new miners, and once concrete isn’t an issue you can swap them all out.

[Jim359]

IMO…
By the time you can build Large Mines the build cost should be a non-issue as well as the space they take (medium skill level game). The #1 bonus from Lg Mines is resource per worker return rate.