Switch it on and leave it: work and gathering
Published
In short: some jobs you don’t want to order again and again. Switch a unit’s work on and it does its job by itself, round after round. The first job is Gather: fly to an allowed ore patch or salvage field, dig it into the hold, bring it home, repeat. Numbers are placeholders.
At a glance
| Work on / off | Shift+W, or Work on the unit card |
| Work panel | F11 |
| Jobs | Gather (more later) |
| Who gathers | Prospectors |
| Sources | ore patches and salvage fields |
| Top-up | another allowed node within 1 km |
| Comes home | below half its hull |
How work works
- Work or orders. With work on, a unit gets on with its job. Any order you give turns its work off; turn it back on when you’re done.
- The work panel (F11) lists your ships with a switch for each job they can do.
- Back to work by itself. A unit that can gather turns its work back on whenever it leaves the hangar, and one that comes home hurt is repaired and goes back out.
Gather
- You choose where. Every ore patch and salvage field is a resource node. Select one and allow or bar it on its card. A small dot over each node shows its state: green allowed, red not. Click a dot to select its node; box-select or Shift+click picks several, and a double-click picks all of a kind in view.
- Nearest home first. A gatherer goes to the allowed node nearest its carrier that still has ore nobody has claimed.
- Sharing a node. Each gatherer claims the tonnes it will take, so several can work one big node without all chasing the same last few tonnes.
- A trip fills the hold. If a node runs dry first, the gatherer tops up at another allowed node within 1 km, or goes home with a part load.
- Digging takes time. Ore goes in a tonne at a time; watch the hold grow on the cargo screen (F2). Given an order mid-dig, it leaves with what it has.
- Unloading on the move. Beside the carrier, a tractor beam from an open hangar bay draws the load in. If the carrier is travelling, the gatherer follows and unloads on the way.
At the start there are ore patches 2.5 to 6 km round the carrier and a salvage field 1.5 to 2.5 km off, so the Prospector has work from the first minute.
The older harvesters on the ground still work their own way.