Description of the issue:

I've setup an Excavator over an Iron vein but nothing was digged up. The only output was a grass and four dirt blocks. Took me a long time and this can be quite frustrating and, oddly, I found the solution looking at issue #2453 . I figured block beneath might be related si I started digging and there was an hollow area under the Excavator. I filled it with dirt and glass and Excavator immediately started working again.

I would like to suggest two possible enhancements:

1. remove the requirement of having solid blocks below the bucket wheel
2. if 1. is not possible or unwanted, possibly document it in the manual as this is a weird one to catch

Reason being the Excavator basically generates resources out of energy, it doesn't actually dig any block other than the one right below the bucker wheel as far as I understand. So it's counter intuitive that it actually needs some blocks below it. It could also be nice to actually be able to build without them to make it look like an open pit mining site with one of the side with the material already removed.

Bucket wheel view from cave (not working, completely hollow all around it):

After I filled it up (with a layer of glass to see what's happening inside):

Crashlog:

No crashlog as there is no crash.

Versions & Modlist

IE version: 0.12-86
Forge version: 1.12.2-14.23.5.2768
Other mods list: https://paste.fedoraproject.org/paste/XeyDiVd2h50O4jKu53EVZg

Oh wow, that was quick. Thank you very much!