Where to get Silicate Powder w/o Terrain manipulator?

[Sai]

I know this may seem obvious - but I ask because I want to be able to get it without having to use the terrain manipulator, because I learned that there's a cap on how many edits you can do to terrain, and when you reach it, it starts to undo the terrain changes you made? Which seems to include settlements.

I have discovered that while farming for silicate powder (digging up the planet) after I finished, and came back to my settlement, EVERYTHING was gone - no buildings, no npcs, na-da. So I went to my freighter & teleported back down, this time it acted as if NOTHING was there, I was floating in space dying lol. (the only way i fixed this was by jumping to a new system, and coming back)

So my actual question is;
Is there an alternative method to obtaining silicate powder? Like can it be purchased anywhere?

[Kosevich]

Technically you can shoot ground with your star ship. Silicate powder will be added to your ship inventory.

[Sai]

Originally posted by Kosevich:

Technically you can shoot ground with your star ship. Silicate powder will be added to your ship inventory.

This doesn't appear to be giving me any at all.

[mister_lobos]

if you terrain shaped on your base... there is a pretty good chance it's going to screw up anyway,
if you travel away for a while the terrain resets, any plants and rocks definitely come back, and i've seen terrain come back as well, fairly certain it was reset because i left the system, not just because i was digging more. it might even do it if you just reload the game as well.

[Calico-Jack]

Originally posted by Sai:

I know this may seem obvious - but I ask because I want to be able to get it without having to use the terrain manipulator, because I learned that there's a cap on how many edits you can do to terrain, and when you reach it, it starts to undo the terrain changes you made? Which seems to include settlements.

I have discovered that while farming for silicate powder (digging up the planet) after I finished, and came back to my settlement, EVERYTHING was gone - no buildings, no npcs, na-da. So I went to my freighter & teleported back down, this time it acted as if NOTHING was there, I was floating in space dying lol. (the only way i fixed this was by jumping to a new system, and coming back)

So my actual question is;
Is there an alternative method to obtaining silicate powder? Like can it be purchased anywhere?

There is a cap on terrain manipulation inside your base area. Doing anything outside of that area shouldn't affect your base.

I'd need to check in-game for trade terminals but afaik using the terrain tool is the only way to get silicate powder which besides glassmaking, is used also in refining recipes.

You may have run into a loading error or a save file issue or some wierdness cause by the recent update - I'd started a fresh expedition and picked up a freighter, added some storage rooms and a refinery, as I always do - only to find them all walled off the next time I went to the freighter and no way to get to them except by building bulkhead doors and accessing them from the outside.

[wkitty42]

since we have no way to throw ourselves at the ground, we cannot melee silicate powder like we can pretty much everything else... interesting situation...

as far as digging silicate powder goes, i go find a spot over 1000u away from my base and dig out under mountains over there...

[MGazer]

I never collect silicate near a base. Mostly I teleport somewhere else and collect it there. I've thought about dropping a base computer and a teleporter somewhere just to have a quarry to collect the stuff in a place I don't care about. Not sure it's worth it. I'm still thinking it over.

[UncreativelyNamed]

As far as I know, you can only get it from digging. Can't say I've ever seen it for sale anywhere, though I suppose it's possible.

But here's a tip: You can undo any digging you do. The terrain manipulator has four different modes: Mine, create terrain, flatten, and restore. The latter is what you want to do after digging. You switch between the modes by pressing the middle mouse button when you have the TM as the active tool. Digging into the terrain gives you silicate powder, but restoring it doesn't take it back. So, dig hole, restore hole. Repeat as needed. Your net terrain edits is then zero. Make sure you have a good supply of ferrite (of any kind) on hand or at least easily available around you if you need to do a lot of digging.

[Calico-Jack]

Originally posted by MGazer:

I never collect silicate near a base. Mostly I teleport somewhere else and collect it there. I've thought about dropping a base computer and a teleporter somewhere just to have a quarry to collect the stuff in a place I don't care about. Not sure it's worth it. I'm still thinking it over.

without giving out spoilers silicate powder is one way of making glass

[Mandrake]

I usually go find a lifeless planet, or just any planet I'm not going to plop a base on. Find a nice open area, dig down a ways, the change my tool to flatten mode. Then hold down and start walking / moving it around. You'll open up a huge cavern / canyon and start gathering a crap-ton of silicone in no time flat. When you're done, you can either just go out through the top, or if you were too close to the top and made a canyon you don't like, just use the heal setting to close it all back up (and do it again if you still want more stacks.
I usually do this every so often to throw it all in refiners and make a ton of glass for building with.

[yaerav]

No way to get silicate powder that I know of. But like Mandrake does, I never gather the stuff on my home planet, because, I don't know, it would feel like descecration or something. It can still be a bit of a hassle though, I really like the stone building parts, and use a lot of glass too, so I never seem to have enough.

Last week when I was building on a well-visited Expedition planet, a random player showed up. stayed for a bit, left, then returned and gave me 6000 Si. Which was really nice, and well-timed too. I think I have even already used all of it. If it were possible to buy it at a terminal I would be all over it. But, alas.

[Potential Legend]

Originally posted by Mandrake:

I usually go find a lifeless planet, or just any planet I'm not going to plop a base on. Find a nice open area, dig down a ways, the change my tool to flatten mode. Then hold down and start walking / moving it around. You'll open up a huge cavern / canyon and start gathering a crap-ton of silicone in no time flat. When you're done, you can either just go out through the top, or if you were too close to the top and made a canyon you don't like, just use the heal setting to close it all back up (and do it again if you still want more stacks.
I usually do this every so often to throw it all in refiners and make a ton of glass for building with.

That's an interesting strat but how do you know if you're getting nearly as much as you would from using the mine setting instead of flatten?

[Mandrake]

Originally posted by Potential Legend:

Originally posted by Mandrake:

I usually go find a lifeless planet, or just any planet I'm not going to plop a base on. Find a nice open area, dig down a ways, the change my tool to flatten mode. Then hold down and start walking / moving it around. You'll open up a huge cavern / canyon and start gathering a crap-ton of silicone in no time flat. When you're done, you can either just go out through the top, or if you were too close to the top and made a canyon you don't like, just use the heal setting to close it all back up (and do it again if you still want more stacks.
I usually do this every so often to throw it all in refiners and make a ton of glass for building with.

That's an interesting strat but how do you know if you're getting nearly as much as you would from using the mine setting instead of flatten?

It seems so. Regardless, it is fast and fun - so I don't know what the ratio is compared to shrinking to the smallest size like you would to try and get the most out of a specific area for a deposit... but I know it's easy to walk around, destroying a huge area at a time and get stacks SEEMINGLY quicker than normal.
I would grant that it might just seem quicker because it is different and fun to do :)

[Azure Fang]

I made a mod that gives a route for crafting Silicate Powder out of the Dirt trade good, but I haven't updated it in a while. Beyond mods, the only way to get Silicate Powder is mining. If you hate the terrain edits, I have a guide for using a save editor to reset all terrain edits you've ever made so you can mine all you want then undo the damage: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878619931

[FPStewy]

All they have to do is add it to the autonomous miner if placed on the ground. Can't be that hard to do after all they've done.

[Daedrius]

Originally posted by Sai:

I know this may seem obvious - but I ask because I want to be able to get it without having to use the terrain manipulator, because I learned that there's a cap on how many edits you can do to terrain, and when you reach it, it starts to undo the terrain changes you made? Which seems to include settlements.

I have discovered that while farming for silicate powder (digging up the planet) after I finished, and came back to my settlement, EVERYTHING was gone - no buildings, no npcs, na-da. So I went to my freighter & teleported back down, this time it acted as if NOTHING was there, I was floating in space dying lol. (the only way i fixed this was by jumping to a new system, and coming back)

So my actual question is;
Is there an alternative method to obtaining silicate powder? Like can it be purchased anywhere?

You can use the terrain manipulator all you want outside your base. The cap is for base edits. So, feel free to pick an empty planet and dig the Grand Canyon.