The current ore deposits are very hard for players to design mining infrastructure around. They are fairly small, and they also follow the surface of the terrain, which means there is no way to make large, flat, branching ore deposits.

If the OreMapping definition is extended to support two new values, StrataConstantFactor and StrataSurfaceFactor with defaults of 0 and 1 respectively, we can define the StrataHeight = StrataConstantFactor + (SurfaceHeight - StrataConstantFactor) * StrataSurfaceFactor. This allows for defining the "strata" the ore deposit is located relative relative to either as the surface (0, 1), at a constant elevation (y, 0), or at a constant elevation that is perturbed slightly by the surface, (y, -0.01).

An alternative might be to define a StrataBaseElevation, StrataElevationPerMeterNorth, and StrataElevationPerEast that could be together used to define an arbitrary plane the ore deposit lays in. However this is significantly harder to configure.