Topic: abandonned mines

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Crisis
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Joined: 2025-02-20, 17:39 UTC+1.0
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Pry about Widelands
 Posted at: 2025-07-25, 19:48 UTC+2.0

i would like to be able to set a mine on hold and then abandon the mine meaning the miners are set free to go to another mine while the mine stays empty. therefore i was thinking of a picture at first. are there images of half colapsed mines available?

and if a mine is set on "hold" can it be set in such a way that there are no jobs aka aplication open? else automaticly a NEW miner will be deployed to that mine

further, on extra large maps its difficult to remember what mountain side is empty already. making the mine "abandonned" will give every thing free, but the building remains until needed again... if so,

maybe even a geolist can double check for minerals and then give order to REBUILD the old mine to a new but different one, there it get much more complex the just "no jobs open"

Edited: 2025-07-25, 19:50 UTC+2.0
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kaputtnik
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Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48 UTC+1.0
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Posted at: 2025-07-25, 20:50 UTC+2.0

Not sure if this works but you can try to cut the mine from the roadnetwork and then eject the workers. Normally the workers will leave the mine and walk around until they find a road/flag and go to a warehouse. But it might happen that the workers just find the flag of the mine and go into the mine again. In general a production site recommends the needed workers and AFAIK there is no way to set a production site "abandoned" at the moment, except by cutting it from the road network (so no worker can get there).

The Problem with remembering the places of depleted mines can be solved by placing a single flag on that field. At least this is the solution i use sometimes.

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Crisis
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Joined: 2025-02-20, 17:39 UTC+1.0
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Pry about Widelands
 Posted at: 2025-07-25, 23:24 UTC+2.0

hi, thats what i do already aswell, but now you have to dismantle the whole building and order 10 geolist again, which might take 30 minutes if they where at the other side off the field/world. i think an image looking like an old empty mine/ruin would be nice

Edited: 2025-07-25, 23:25 UTC+2.0
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treehugger
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Joined: 2020-09-06, 20:25 UTC+2.0
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Pry about Widelands
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Posted at: 2026-02-17, 15:04 UTC+1.0

Crisis wrote

hi, thats what i do already aswell,

No, that is not what Kaputtnik wrote. He wrote to eject the worker from the mine. The mine itself stays intact, and as soon as the road is repaired, another worker will go into the mine.

I use this technique sometimes for my tree planters. I built a bunch of forester cabins at my own border to thwart my enemies, but when those are built, there are no workers for them yet. So I eject a bunch of workers from other forester cabins to fill the new ones so they start planting trees over there earlier.

But if you want to keep a mine unoccupied for a while, it's only a partial solution. The game knows there is one or more empty mines, and your blacksmith will make tools for all the people for those buildings, even if there is no road to the building. I think I would prefer it if no tools were made for buildings which do not have a road to them.

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2026-02-17, 16:19 UTC+1.0

treehugger wrote

The game knows there is one or more empty mines, and your blacksmith will make tools for all the people for those buildings, even if there is no road to the building.

No, afaik tools are only made for connected buildings. More precisely it is a bit more complex:

  • building was build and is connected to the road network
  • at this moment the building request a worker from a warehouse
  • at this moment the request for a worker is in the warehouse, not the building
  • disconnecting the building from the road network does not cancel the request for the worker in the warehouse
  • the warehouse (more precisely the economy) request a tool to create the worker
  • if no tool is available the tool smithy will produce the needed tool, although the tool might not be needed anymore (because of the disconnected building)

An economy in Widelands is everything which is connected with one transport network (by road/ship/ferry). A single building which is not connected with a road network has it's own, independent economy. In theory you can have two distinct economies which are completely independent from each other as long they are not connected with each other. E.g. you can settle on an island by building a port, a warehouse, some basic buildings and then cut the connection to the first economy by dismantling the port (or just disconnect it from the other road network on that island). Now you have two economies where each economy has it's own economy settings.

I think I would prefer it if no tools were made for buildings which do not have a road to them.

This was discussed a lot in the past. See e.g. here and here: https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/issues/3632

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