New to mining? Let's dig into the topic!
Last updated
Last updated
Resource extraction is at the base of the entire economic system of Influence. Without raw materials, there is no manufacturing of finished goods. This guide will cover prospection and resource extraction. Those two activities have a strong affinity with the miner class, so if you want to focus on extracting resources I recommend you have a miners-heavy crew. Having more miners will grant your crew better core sampling results and increased extraction speed.
Not all lots are created equal in terms of resource abundance. Once you have decided which resource you would like to extract, it is important to find the high concentration areas. Switch to asteroid view, and make sure you have no lot selected. Then from the right-side menu, open the Resources tab, and choose the resource you are planning to extract. A heat map representing resource abundance will be displayed all over the asteroid.
More intense colors correspond to higher abundance spots. Choose your favorite location based on color intensity and proximity to your crew base, and build an extractor on the site. Building steps are not covered here, but you can refer to my How to build safely guide if you need support. You will also need a place to store your core drills and extracted resources, so you should probably build a warehouse if you do not have one already.
In order to extract resources, you need to first prospect the lot where your extractor is located in order to obtain a core sample (this can be done during the construction!). Purchase a core drill from the market and deliver it to your warehouse. Select your extractor lot, and click the Start Core Sample icon next to the lot preview to open the prospection window.
Select your resource and a source for the core drill. Keep in mind that if the core drill is further from the extraction site than your crew, its travel time will be considered rather than your crew's, and that will increase your busy time duration. Core drills are single-use tools and are consumed in the process. Click Prospect to start sampling.
Once the teal notification appears on the crew activity list, click on it to open the prospection window again, and complete the sampling by clicking Analyze. A new window will display the sampling result, and indicate the maximum mass of extractable materials with this core sample.
When analyzing the core sample, a value is drawn at random between the Discovery Minimum and Discovery Maxiumum values (these values being based on lot abundance and crew bonuses). If you were unlucky, or are unsatisfied with the result, there is a possibility to optimise that core sample. Select the lot that you previously sampled, and open the resources menu (the same as for the heatmaps). Select your core sample, and click the Improve Core Sample icon.
In the new window, select a new core drill and click Optimize to roll a better value within the new boundaries. Note that you will never be able to improve a core sample over the initial maximum value; this mechanically means that improving a sample has diminishing returns. Core sample optimisation needs to be completed the same way as the initial core sample (wait for the teal notification).
Once you reach a satisfying value on the core sample, it is time for the actual extraction. Select your extractor lot, and click on the Extract Resource icon.
In the resource extraction window, select the core sample you want to extract and the inventory where the extracted resources should be delivered. Then, choose the quantity of resources you would like to extract out of the core sample. There are a few things to know about that.
You can use the slider to roughly select the amount or duration of the extraction. By clicking on the amount, you can also enter precise numbers manually. ⚠️ This duration is only the duration of the extraction itself and does not account for the crew travel time beforehand, therefore is does not represent the time until the end of the action, use the timers in the header for that purpose.
The extraction rate is not constant over the entire duration, and decreases over time. Put simply, hours 0 to 10 will yield more resources than hours 10 to 20, which are themselves better than hours 20 to 30, and so on. This means that if you are looking to maximise the extraction rate, you should only focus on short cycles at the beginning of the core sample, and discard the rest.
Core samples that have not been completely extracted are not wasted. You can reuse then and the extraction restarts at the point where it stopped, with the lower available quantity and the decreased extraction rate. [At the time of writing, there is no way of discarding old and partially used core samples]
Once the extraction ends, click the teal notification to open the completion window, and click Complete. The extracted resources are now available in your target inventory.
