Drones to the patch, ore to the hold: harvesting
Published
In short: ore grows in crystal patches on the ground. Send a harvester platoon or a mining tank to a patch: it mines, carries the ore back to your carrier or a bunker, unloads it into the hold, and goes again by itself. Numbers are placeholders, and for now ore is found only in the simulation.
At a glance
| A patch | 240 t of ore, glowing crystals about 40 m across |
| Harvester platoon | 48 drones, one unit, 10 m/s, carries 12 t |
| Mining tank | one hover tank, 20 m/s, carries 12 t |
| Mining | 20 s at the patch |
| Unloading | 5 s, within 200 m of the carrier or a bunker |
| Ore in the hold | 0.4 m³ a tonne |
| Weapons | none |
How it works
- Pick a patch: right-click an ore patch with harvesters selected, or press Shift+G for the nearest free one. One unit works a patch at a time; the others go to the next free one.
- The loop runs itself: mine for 20 s, fly to the nearest carrier or bunker of yours with room in its hold, unload, and back to the patch. When a patch runs dry they move on to the next.
- The carrier doesn’t need to land. It can fly overhead; they unload within 200 m of it.
- Shift+B brings the load back now, then goes back to work. Any other order stops harvesting, and the load stays aboard.
- A full hold stops them. With nowhere to unload they wait, loaded, and start again as soon as there’s room.
- You can see the load: each drone carries a small crystal while loaded, the mining tank a big one. Patches shrink as they’re mined and vanish when empty.
The two harvesters
- Harvester platoon: 48 small drones in your colours, ordered as one unit. Unarmed and unarmoured, with 720 hull at Mk1. It loses a drone for every drone’s worth of damage, and carries less as it shrinks.
- Mining tank: a single unarmed hover tank that carries a whole platoon’s load at twice the speed. It has a tank’s hull and armour: 360 hull and 60 armour at Mk1.
Where the ore goes
Ore lands in the hold as an “Ore” row in tonnes; see it in the inventory (F2). It shares the hold with everything else, so a hold full of ore leaves no room for buying. Ore isn’t on the town markets yet.
A mining bunker mines without harvesters, and harvesters can unload into it too.
More: bunkers, ground units, simulation.