Metal Collector Useless

[Marek1412]

I think the metal collector is a bit useless. you have a chargeable extractor on your arm and you can shortly get the deck extractor. Not sure of the point of fishing for metal for maybe a couple of hours.

Perhaps change it so you can adjust the head to fish for all resources? I do like the idea of the collector just the usage is minimal

Does anyone else agree or am I alone. Maybe I'm using it wrong.

[MGRza]

Yeah but in the beginning it is a nice addition to quickly acquire metal for some expansion, but yeah it quickly loses its use.

[Alex]

They seem useful to me.
I build 4 of them, stuck them to a catwalk at the back of the ship and I let them do their stuff. I just check on them from time to time when I need metal and change the head if needed.

[Weaver]

They are super useful. Next to nothing to build, get right away, lures cost next to nothing, automatic, no batteries used.

In addition once you get the filtered deck extractor, you have 5 filers but only 4 slots. One of those slots, metals. So you can just run the metal collectors and have the filtered deck extractor collect the other 4 materials.

[Cosmicat]

I find it actually great. I'd rather do other things besides farm metals.

[Natjur]

In the past, Metal was a flying resource which was silly. At least this way, it better then flying metal

[mrsddixon66]

Is anyone else having an issue with the metal collector where when you try to access it
or move it you get an 'metal collector in use' warning on screen but the item is not doing anything? I added a couple catwalk sections to an existing row of catwalks and moved the collector there and once I did that the thing stopped doing anything. Now, I can't open it to change or add a head and I can only move it 'sometimes, lol. I can't 'empty' the head so it always says the device is not empty or something like that. Any ideas how to fix this?

[Midnight]

Originally posted by mrsddixon66:

Is anyone else having an issue with the metal collector where when you try to access it
or move it you get an 'metal collector in use' warning on screen but the item is not doing anything? I added a couple catwalk sections to an existing row of catwalks and moved the collector there and once I did that the thing stopped doing anything. Now, I can't open it to change or add a head and I can only move it 'sometimes, lol. I can't 'empty' the head so it always says the device is not empty or something like that. Any ideas how to fix this?

You need to either wait until the head is back at the resting point and spamming interact when it is close, or fly over something so that it can't reach into the dust

[mrsddixon66]

Originally posted by Midnight:

Originally posted by mrsddixon66:

Is anyone else having an issue with the metal collector where when you try to access it
or move it you get an 'metal collector in use' warning on screen but the item is not doing anything? I added a couple catwalk sections to an existing row of catwalks and moved the collector there and once I did that the thing stopped doing anything. Now, I can't open it to change or add a head and I can only move it 'sometimes, lol. I can't 'empty' the head so it always says the device is not empty or something like that. Any ideas how to fix this?

You need to either wait until the head is back at the resting point and spamming interact when it is close, or fly over something so that it can't reach into the dust

I should have said, the head is in the up position and not moving at all. there is no movement of any kind, no sounds of movement and completely empty. It is as if there is no head on the machine but there is one, for whatever reason it is stuck.

[Midnight]

Originally posted by mrsddixon66:

Originally posted by Midnight:

You need to either wait until the head is back at the resting point and spamming interact when it is close, or fly over something so that it can't reach into the dust

I should have said, the head is in the up position and not moving at all. there is no movement of any kind, no sounds of movement and completely empty. It is as if there is no head on the machine but there is one, for whatever reason it is stuck.

Might need a scrapwing to help you get rid of it if you can't remove it

[mrsddixon66]

Originally posted by Midnight:

Originally posted by mrsddixon66:

I should have said, the head is in the up position and not moving at all. there is no movement of any kind, no sounds of movement and completely empty. It is as if there is no head on the machine but there is one, for whatever reason it is stuck.

Might need a scrapwing to help you get rid of it if you can't remove it

Thats an option....

***EDIT*** Tried one more time to move the collector, accidentally hovered over the collection head once I re-placed it in a new place, and while I was hovered there it said 'take metal' so I did that and it started working again. Understand that the metal it was asking me to take was invisible, lol, so somehow the metal collector never deposited the metal piece in the bin and for whatever reason it froze. Maybe I saved and exited before it froze? I don't know but it is working now. Hope it stays that way. Cheers for the help and suggestions!

[Nyota Mwuaji]

metal extractor gives a constant steady supply of metal.

[varset]

Originally posted by Nyota Mwuaji:

metal extractor gives a constant steady supply of metal.

...until a flying fish bites it off along with the collected metal.

[teg]

They totally nerfed how much metal flies by in the air. It used to be relatively close to the plastic balls, now you might go minutes without seeing a metal chunk fly buy. At the very beginning I had to sit around waiting for metal to fly buy to finish up my ship.

I like the metal collector. I don't like how I can't also manually extract metal because they changed the ratio metal to plastic balls.

[FFH_Greg]

Originally posted by teg:

They totally nerfed how much metal flies by in the air. It used to be relatively close to the plastic balls, now you might go minutes without seeing a metal chunk fly buy. At the very beginning I had to sit around waiting for metal to fly buy to finish up my ship.

I like the metal collector. I don't like how I can't also manually extract metal because they changed the ratio metal to plastic balls.

Between the metal collector and metal scaffolding on ruins, floating metal isnt really needed anymore. Although its always worth zapping with your extractor if you do see it :)

[teg]

Between the metal collector and metal scaffolding on ruins, floating metal isnt really needed anymore. Although its always worth zapping with your extractor if you do see it :)

I have more than enough metal NOW but, at the beginning of the game, I didn't and couldn't find more. It's somewhat like the Epoxy situation. Now the only way to get enough epoxy is to farm for it using seeds whereas before you could find it laying around.

Why do you need to take away the old method, to promote a new way? It's not really better. I spent a couple play days wandering around looking for epoxy or epoxy pre-cursors and other elevators before someone pointed out the ONLY way to get enough Epoxy now is to plant seeds.

I'd like to be able to collect "air metal" and epoxy by exploration instead of the game forcing me to do it the one true way. It's makes exploration of most of the surface points kind of pointless. They almost never have anything of value anymore.