Compacted Steel

[Stephen of Blois]

Is it possible to run out of compacted steel on a map? It looks like the only compacted steel I have left is part of an ancient danger structure - so I'm afraid to tap into it. Is it common to trade for steel? Just need to find more.

[Astasia]

No, you can mine out the surface deposits, but there are infinite deep deposits you can get with the deep drill. Steel is also common from traders, you can get a lot by smelting down weapons/armor and slag, can find a fair amount on mission maps in the form of walls, floors, or scattered furniture, and you can use the long range mineral scanner to find remote deposits to mine. Lastly, you can also just make a caravan and settle a nearby tile to mine the steel there and bring it back home, just need to set the max number of colonies in the game options to something above 1. So ya, steel shouldn't be an issue.

Also you don't have to worry about mining near ancient dangers. They are always fully enclosed by walls, and as long as you don't deconstruct/destroy a wall they aren't going to activate.

[Stephen of Blois]

Originally posted by Astasia:

No, you can mine out the surface deposits, but there are infinite deep deposits you can get with the deep drill. Steel is also common from traders, you can get a lot by smelting down weapons/armor and slag, can find a fair amount on mission maps in the form of walls, floors, or scattered furniture, and you can use the long range mineral scanner to find remote deposits to mine. Lastly, you can also just make a caravan and settle a nearby tile to mine the steel there and bring it back home, just need to set the max number of colonies in the game options to something above 1. So ya, steel shouldn't be an issue.

Also you don't have to worry about mining near ancient dangers. They are always fully enclosed by walls, and as long as you don't deconstruct/destroy a wall they aren't going to activate.

Thank you! Very helpful.

[NisseDood]

Also if you are lucky some mining camp to raid might spawn.

[MadArtillery]

I do want to note as well that not all deposits are visibile externally. Exploratory mining especially on maps with a some mountains is important to patch up steel supplies. Having a tuneller mech just mining out lines every third square through every mountain on the map can get you thousands more steel and hundreads of components you may never have known about on a mountain map. :||:||:||:||:||:

[Foedreyn]

I like to do a method I call strip mining, where I leave just enough space between rows to see if there are any missed materials I could mine, leaving no undetectable stones in the parts of a mountain I want to mine out. Here's an example in my current base.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2037368018137493742/FC2EB725520EB98A5ED32407E74A861B1A45AECE/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

[Foedreyn]

I usually have prisoners do the work in the mine shaft though, cause bugs can happen in there. But it also works as a good control point for where they spawn in. You know it won't be in your base.

[Stephen of Blois]

Thanks for all the help. I appreciate it.