Copper in Sector 2

For the copper deposits in Sector 2 (bottom centre on your map), a good spot to place your storehouse is between the two mines on the left, so that the front entrance of the storehouse is in line with the mines, as shown below.

In this layout, the walk time for a cycle is 12 seconds to the closest 2 mines, as short as it can possibly be for your miner.

If you get an Improved Storehouse from the Halloween event and place it in the same spot, the travel time will also be 12 seconds. The Improved Storehouse looks like the walk distance should be longer, but it turns out that the Settler enters the Improved Storehouse from the side, so ends up with the same walk time from the same position.

The production time for a regular copper mine is 3 minutes, but if you apply science books to the copper skills in your Geologist, maybe like this guy, you hopefully can have "Quality Copper Mineshafts", and have a production of 90 seconds.

If you've got Quality Copper Mineshafts, you will have "Natural Copper Vein", and these deposits will hold 816 Copper per vein.


 Here's a chart showing how long it will take your mine to deplete, for each level your mine is, and how far away from the Storehouse it is, shown in Hours:Minutes:Seconds

	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5
12 Seconds	23:07:12	11:33:36	7:42:24	5:46:48	4:38:48
16 Seconds	24:01:36	12:00:48	8:00:32	6:00:24	4:49:44
20 Seconds	24:56:00	12:28:00	8:18:40	6:14:00	5:00:40
24 Seconds	25:50:24	12:55:12	8:36:48	6:27:36	5:11:36
28 Seconds	26:44:48	13:22:24	8:54:56	6:41:12	5:22:32

If you only log on once a day at around the same time, you could get away with leaving the mines at level 1 if the travel time is 12 or 16 seconds, and more than that and you'll want to upgrade to level 2 (only 50 tools). If you're going to be online regularly, perhaps a weekend, going to level 3 can let you run them up in the morning (and maybe put a Irma's Gift Basket buff on), and then later in the afternoon repeat the process.
I usually wouldn't go over level 3, not really worth the tools expenditure considering the mine will collapse anyway.

As an extra future goal making the travel distance more important, some of you may be thinking of getting endless copper mines. 20,000 gems is a lot, but it's certainly a nice item, one I can imagine probably getting myself, and the shortened walking distance becomes more relevant there, as unlike the mines that are going to collapse on you, you'll definitely want it to run at level 5 (and on a double-speed mineshaft).

Over the course of 24 hours, unbuffed, your level 5 Endless copper mine will produce:

Walk Distance	Total per day
12 Seconds	4235
16 Seconds	4075
20 Seconds	3925
24 Seconds	3785
28 Seconds	3660

Over time it will add up, so it's important to try to have your Endless Copper mine quite close.

Editted 10/10/13: The Improved Storehouse can be positioned to only be a 12 second walk the same as the regular one, so editted to reflect this.