Auto Extractor

[Mackenzie]

Can it be used to gather Organic or Soil?

Is there anything that can collect these autonomously if the AE doesn't?

If no to all, what are some of your favorite ways of gathering these 2 resources?

[DivineEvil]

No, Extractor cannot collect those.

At first you can just manage with one-two Small Cannisters to collect soil and use Soil Centrifuge to turn it into Organic as needed. Later on, when you get Tungsten, you can build yourself a Rover with a Drill T1, medium cannister (needs Plastic from a Chemistry Lab, which also needs Tungsten), a Generator (Tungsten again) and a Seat. Module on front (Drill head) can be toggled with V, and module at the back (Generator) can be turned on and off with C.

With this you can collect large amounts of soil at the time and let the Centrifuge turn it into Organic and that way get a constant flow of Carbon to power your Generators.

Large Rover makes it even easier with several Cannisters and places for Batteries, and it only requires Copper aside from common resources. Do note that using two Drills will not have an effect but just drain power faster.

You can also use soil gatherting as an opportunity to prospect some roads and tunnels in cardinal directions from your base for easier travel.

Using automation modules, you can make a Generator-based power plant that works purely on Soil, and it will make it easier to produce or process other resources as well.

[Mackenzie]

Yeah I've been cutting mountains by hand for the soil centrifuge basically this entire playthrough for the 3 cheapest resources using small canisters and it is getting a bit tedious. I tried a tractor with a medium soil canister very briefly on a very hilly moon and felt I got about 3 small canisters worth in the time I'd be able to 4-6 by hand due to travel time and turning around and all that. I also hadn't dabbled into Auto Arms yet then either so it felt very impractical. AAs are proving to be very useful now, however.

It just hurts my soul seeing so much of the planet evaporate just to become centrifuge fuel.. but I do eventually need to check out these obelisk thingies so maybe your idea of cardinal highways would be a solid excuse. How do you navigate them? Just with the foot compass or do you have some cleverly thought up beacon layout along your paths? I ask because beacons in this game are terribly implemented. You can't see them from any meaningful distance that you'd need to. Where's our simple Line Of Sight beacons devs.. come on!

Did not know about toggling the rear module, very handy for generators as having to get out every time to toggle it to micromanage the power was quite excessive - especially with the forced Save On Enter mechanic that freezes the game for a whole second.

So a lop-sided drill on a large rover tunnels wide enough for itself to fit through?

People actually do generator plants, huh? Oof.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

Yeah I've been cutting mountains by hand for the soil centrifuge basically this entire playthrough for the 3 cheapest resources using small canisters and it is getting a bit tedious. I tried a tractor with a medium soil canister very briefly on a very hilly moon and felt I got about 3 small canisters worth in the time I'd be able to 4-6 by hand due to travel time and turning around and all that. I also hadn't dabbled into Auto Arms yet then either so it felt very impractical. AAs are proving to be very useful now, however.

It just hurts my soul seeing so much of the planet evaporate just to become centrifuge fuel.. but I do eventually need to check out these obelisk thingies so maybe your idea of cardinal highways would be a solid excuse. How do you navigate them? Just with the foot compass or do you have some cleverly thought up beacon layout along your paths? I ask because beacons in this game are terribly implemented. You can't see them from any meaningful distance that you'd need to. Where's our simple Line Of Sight beacons devs.. come on!

I would recommend getting the soil from the core of the planet as this is the least visible destruction possible.

[Mackenzie]

And how would you recommend getting a rover sized highway down to the core? I seem to recall falling into several giant caverns on foot that the rovers would not be able to climb back out of.

[DivineEvil]

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

Yeah I've been cutting mountains by hand for the soil centrifuge basically this entire playthrough for the 3 cheapest resources using small canisters and it is getting a bit tedious. I tried a tractor with a medium soil canister very briefly on a very hilly moon and felt I got about 3 small canisters worth in the time I'd be able to 4-6 by hand due to travel time and turning around and all that. I also hadn't dabbled into Auto Arms yet then either so it felt very impractical. AAs are proving to be very useful now, however.

Yeah, Tractor isn't good for much other than pulling Trailers with collected items or research samples.

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

It just hurts my soul seeing so much of the planet evaporate just to become centrifuge fuel.

Eh, unless you first suceed to circum-navigate the planet, you won't actually know just how much of the planets there is. Even a moon, that is about half the size of a planet by radius will take weeks if not months of non-stop drilling to level-out, let alone digging it up. There's plenty of soil to go around.

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

but I do eventually need to check out these obelisk thingies so maybe your idea of cardinal highways would be a solid excuse. How do you navigate them? Just with the foot compass or do you have some cleverly thought up beacon layout along your paths? I ask because beacons in this game are terribly implemented. You can't see them from any meaningful distance that you'd need to. Where's our simple Line Of Sight beacons devs.. come on!

First of all, I took a habit of building my bases on poles (far left or right when orbiting in a shuttle), since when you build there, one or the other direction of your compass will always leads you towards home.

Second, when you're changing terrain, you may notice there's straight lines forming that coincide with the compass directions like this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2211899490
With these visible straights, you can flatten the area for your base and always know that each side of it corresponds to the cardinal direction, and of course these will be visible when you're drilling the road towards one of them, so you can just align the vehicle with that direction and keep an eye on the road's boundaries - if they become jagged, you probably off the correct facing.

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

So a lop-sided drill on a large rover tunnels wide enough for itself to fit through?

It doesn't matter how the drill is positioned as long as it is in front of the vehicle. But yes, the size of the vehicle defines the width of the drilled path (about 1,6x or so).

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

People actually do generator plants, huh? Oof.

Hehe, when you'll get into more advanced processing and production, Wind Turbines can get frustratingly unreliable. I think about 90% of all Soil I've put into Centrifuges was spent directly into feeding Generator arrays :)

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

And how would you recommend getting a rover sized highway down to the core? I seem to recall falling into several giant caverns on foot that the rovers would not be able to climb back out of.

I personally would not recommend taking rovers underground until you get to Paver modules - these work the opposite of (but in conjunction with) the Drill by consuming Soil available on the vehicle to pave the path in front of it if there's open space. When you get one, then you can basically chump your highway all the way to the core.

Just make sure to control the vehicle pitch by moving your mouse up and down. If the incline is too flat, it will take longer to make your way, and you won't be able to slide down on-foot. If the incline end up too steep, you may lose control of the vehicle when getting down through already made tunnel due to acceleration, and it will hard to climb back up. Moving mouse left and right doesnt influence drilling/paving, so you can just check how nudged your vehicle is relative to the camera.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

And how would you recommend getting a rover sized highway down to the core? I seem to recall falling into several giant caverns on foot that the rovers would not be able to climb back out of.

Big rover, drill 3 and the paver with 2 medium soil canisters and 2 RTGs for power supply.

[Mackenzie]

@DivineEvil

Yeah my friend was getting quite angry about being lost for an hour on his tractor train.

I figured there's more than enough soil to go around it just kills me seeing the giant ugly craters on the surface forming as I need more compound, resin and organic or something else in a pinch. Still good to know I can basically go to town in areas out of sight and not worry about the planet running out of.. planet anytime soon.

Building at the poles is smart. Though not sure how you'd migrate your starter shelter to a pole on Sylva when starting a new game.

Neat, so that's how the shuttle orbit works. I always felt it placed me randomly and I was often sitting there waiting to see my landing pad beacon light up for a good minute. So it orbits the equator.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the visible straights when changing the terrain. If I could figure out the terrain tool in more detail like that info is leading me to believe I'd definitely like to. Care to explain a little more about that?

So hang on. You're saying a large rover will fill a soil canister faster than my tractor attempt did?

I feel you on the wind turbines but I hate consuming resources when I don't need to. Just get much more wind and enough batteries and it'll be enough throughput to keep thing going even on low wind planets like Artox.

I've researched the paver module but never tried one... how would I drill and pave at the same time..? This idea confuses me greatly. I pictured putting the paver on the rear to magically put a highway under my front car as I drill.. as putting it on the front would mean no drilling.

Thanks for all these tips! You seem to know a great deal about this game. Mind answering an off-topic question? I'm struggling super hard to find any meaningful graphite deposits to tap with an AE. Only tiny negligible ones on the starter planet. Granted I haven't gone exploring all that much, when I do I can't seem to ever find this stuff. Had to resort to trading for it for now.

@Wolfgang

I'll be sure to give that a try when I go gateway hunting soon. Thank you!

[Wolfgang]

No, on the large rover you have space for both the drill 3 and the paver. While the drill drills you the hole the paver is to prevent you from falling down. (Or in an other way: The paver doesn't reach as far forward as the drill does. But it is not really visible.)
The 2 medium soil canisters are for collecting the soil the drill drills away so that the paver can use it. The 2 RTGs are for powering the whole thing as below the surface you have no wind and no sun.
I can post here a screenshot of my front rover (which has this) and my rover train.

[Wolfgang]

Here the screenshots (I'm playing in German so please don't be surprised about the language in the screenshots):
First the front of my rover train (with the first rover being what you should build and how):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2212035463
On the medium storage I have a floodlight, an oxygen filter, two units of laterite, (and on the back of the medium storage) three tether bundles and an extender.
The second rover contains a research chamber and a large shredder.

Back of my rover train:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2212035936
The third rover is taken up by the extra large shredder while the last rover is for the medium shredder, storage of common resources (organic, compound, resin and scrap) as well as a beacon, graphite (for building a packager), extra storage for other resources and four places for big research samples at the back.

Here the complete thing from the other side:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2212036247
The complete rover train is pretty much mid to late game. Just wanting to show one possibility of a big rover train.

You need only the first rover (with an additional rover if you want to collect all the resources) when you are going on your way down.

[Mackenzie]

That is quite a nice rover train you have there! The extra large shredder is a smart idea.

The paving rover is so nice after trying it. It collects soil so quickly! Just add a few empty canisters and you'll have plenty of organic too before even needing soil for it. I like using the silos since they hold a great deal of items. RTG is a must! Thanks for sharing :)

Also as for the graphite issue I was having - once paving the equator and poles of the planets you tend to pass by many visible large graphite deposits. Just had to get out there!

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Mackenzie:

That is quite a nice rover train you have there! The extra large shredder is a smart idea.

The paving rover is so nice after trying it. It collects soil so quickly! Just add a few empty canisters and you'll have plenty of organic too before even needing soil for it. I like using the silos since they hold a great deal of items. RTG is a must! Thanks for sharing :)

Also as for the graphite issue I was having - once paving the equator and poles of the planets you tend to pass by many visible large graphite deposits. Just had to get out there!

Thanks! It is still an example of what can be done with a rover train but is is most certainly not the only way on how to do it.

[Curious Fox]

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

Thanks! It is still an example of what can be done with a rover train but is is most certainly not the only way on how to do it.

Just genuinely curious. What's the point of the Medium and Large Shreadders on your rover? Extra large covers all of that.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Curious Fox:

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

Thanks! It is still an example of what can be done with a rover train but is is most certainly not the only way on how to do it.

Just genuinely curious. What's the point of the Medium and Large Shreadders on your rover? Extra large covers all of that.

Sure. But there are some debris that takes some time to get shredded. I have these shredders in order to shred as much as possible in as little time as possible.