[Suggestion] Self-contained Mining "Outpost"

The idea is:

A miner combined with a personal chest, a generator, and a batbox. And then always equiped with a diamond drill, and an OV scanner, AND a stack of diamond mining pipe. In one block.

The purpose:
Have you ever mined out the chunks around your house, and needed to take a trip to farther lands to find fresh mineral fields? You pack your bag; some miners, some generators, some batboxes/MFEs, some chests, some pipes, some fuel, some scanners, and some diamond drills. You scan the ground and finally find a decent point to mine, you place down your miner on the spot, you connect the batbox, the generator and the chest, fuel up the generator, add the pipes. Then you go off to setup another station.

When you come back, you have to clean up the sprawl of blocks you had to set down, risking destruction of each as you break them down. So what this "Mining Outpost" does is combine all of these items, with the addition of the two upgrades to the miner (since miners now require a drill and a scanner anyway), as well as the required pipes into one handy station. IT IS a bit costly though.

OD Scanner Generator Advanced Circuit
Personal Safe Batbox Advanced Machine
Mining Pipe Miner Diamond Drill

OD Scanner = OV scanner
Mining Pipe = 64 diamond pipes in a stack, but as a single item (like how coins may be stacked). This would have to be a new transition item, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to make.

The internal workings of the device would be:
Top slot: would be a generator slot, add fuel to power the device.
Inventory slot: where all the mined ore would go.

The device would not require additional piping, nor a drill or scanner, since all of these had been added to it already.

(Note: the mining pipe this device lays would have to be not drop anything when harvested, to prevent abuse of pipe cloning)

Quote

Sorry, can't understand the purpose.

...I see...
To say you don't see its purpose is the same as saying you don't get why IC^2 adds 3 new furnaces.. The point of IC is to continually increase the technology you have. This is the next tier for the miner. It contains the best of the best things you can put in it, as well as everything you need. In one block.

... I don't have to prove you wrong because you apparently don't understand the role this item is supposed to fill. So allow me to enlighten you:

In response to "better technology means more complex technology."
First of all, this is not true all the time. Remember, you have to look at this from a couple of different views (the actual interal workings, and the end-user's experience, to name two).
If we're talking internal workings of a machine, then sure. A punchcard computer is LESS complex than, say, a laptop of today. HOWEVER a laptop is better technology, and is less complex to the end user than using a punchcard computer.
Better technology can be defined in numerous ways. I'm defining it in this case to be: a more efficient use of space, a quicker setup time, and a simpler setup. The "Mining Outpost" I suggest is the next tier, of the miner tree of tech at the current time. It combines the best of the miner customization. This would imply that there is NO better setup you can put together than the one this already has, in ONE BLOCK.

You're assuming this is an item one would be built as soon as someone had the resources to build a miner. (If you can only create 10 pipes, you shouldn't be building miners anyway. You should be investing your resources on something that gives you more immediate utility.) On the contrary, this device would only be worth building after have a large amount of resources (that is, iron, pipes, wires, ect). It is for those of us that have achieved a level of resource where we wish to make our lives more efficient. It is meant to make mining more convenient than a standard miner. To give an example: the induction furnace is a more convenient version of the elctro furnace. It is not necissary, but it makes smelting faster, and takes up less space.

In response to " lack of customization":
When you wish to create this "Mining Outpost" it is at a point when you'll exclusivly wanting to be using the most effective items within the Miner, that is the diamond drill, and the OV scanner, along with Diamond pipes. As i said above: the best of the tech you can use in a miner. Why would I want to customize to a lesser set of materials when the one I've chosen is best? This only makes sense as you get to this point of resource and technology. To give example: You would not create an field generator when you only have 2 solar panels, when those materials would be much more efficently used on a macerator; it is not an effective use of resource. A field generator is a luxary. Much like this, the "Mining outpost" is a luxary item; I no longer have to worry about bringing several different stacks of things. All I need is a Mining Outpost, and some fuel for its generator. That's it. That's all.

SO to close: I think you misunderstand the purpose of this item. It is meant as the next step of miners. It has the maximum tech that customization can provide, and combines it into one efficient unit.

(Note, the implication of this device is that it would function like a regular miner, and be able to have a pump addon. It also implies that it could dig deeper than the 64 pipes that were use to make it. Since you lose the utility of being able to move the pipes, you gain the ability to dig as far as the bedrock will allow)

Right! I had forgotten about the pipes.

OK. SO. The reason I said a regular generator, and not a geothermal (which I am partial to using when I use miners) is because it is expectd by this time that you're making Fuel, Bio Fuel, or Superfuel fairly regularly. But I DO like the idea of this taking in medium and high voltages to increase its speed, however, this would mean adding a generator/wires to give it that, which is exactly what I'm trying to get away from. All this is supposed to be is a single, self-contained miner; just add fuel. Make sense?
(I really do like the idea of adding the MV and HV, perhaps this could be a secondary method of powering it? Setup a field of these being powered by a nuclear generator. Yea. THAT.)

As for the pipes: I'm easy as to them. I'd PREFER that the miner had them internally. But I also understand that this would add another separate item (could we not make the stack of 64 (acting as a single piece) the indestructible/unminable piping from the miner, thus cutting down on the sprite count?