Auto Extractors: Everything We Know, Questions

[Scrappy]

https://astroneer.gamepedia.com/Auto_Extractor

• Each extractor needs 8 units of power (e.g. 2 RTGs).
  
• You can put multiple extractors on a deposit.
  
• You can feed extracted nuggets into large canister(s) with auto arms. A storage sensor on the extractor can save some power. Pin its trigger to the arm.
  
• We cannot yet specify which resource to extract, and this can be a problem. You may need to prepare a deposit by manually mining out the stuff you don’t want the extractor to mine. This can be labor intensive, so a mixed deposit may not be worth it. The extractor can and usually will choose even one small patch of an undesired resource in a huge deposit. Annoying. Hopefully SE will add selectivity, similar to auto arms.
  
• Extractors don’t seem to deplete the deposit.
  
• When the green bar runs down, you can pick up the extractor and set it down right where it was. That resets the green bar. You need to do this like once an hour.
  
• Extractors only run while the game is running. They do continue running when you go to another planet.
  
• Extractors can’t mine scrap.
  
• Extractors can be packaged for transport on a tier-3 slot.

Questions:

If extractors overlap closely on the deposit, can they interfere with each other?

If you leave the extractor area, might they behave differently when you’re not there?

[Wolfgang]

Answer to your questions: No and no (at least didn't notice any different behaviour).

[Tevirik]

Auto extractor needs 8 Units power to run full speed. But it can run with minimal power (for instence 1 medium solar panel), but extraction will be slower.

[Scrappy]

引用自 Tevirik：

Auto extractor needs 8 Units power to run full speed. But it can run with minimal power (for instence 1 medium solar panel), but extraction will be slower.

True. In early game, electrical supply is a limitation. In my current game, I've got craptonnes of nanocarbon and lithium (acquired with the help of extractors and automation). I can easily and quickly craft way more RTGs than I could possibly use. Makes sense to operate extractors at full power.

I like to place a small battery on the main platform at each extraction site. That clearly shows when more power is needed. It takes only a few seconds to pop in another RTG. If the battery never goes full dark, you're operating at 100% power.

[plynox]

HERE COMES A TIP: if you manage to turn ON and OFF Extractor every 0.9 seconds (duo delay repeater) it will spend much less energy and will work almost twice faster. This doesn´t mean you can quit checkig them often, actually you need to check them twice often. They still stop working nobody kows why, while there is a bunch of resource around to be harvested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_QulTrmNAM&ab_channel=Jonathan%27sInfoDump

[Scrappy]

引用自 plynox：

HERE COMES A TIP: if you manage to turn ON and OFF Extractor every 0.9 seconds (duo delay repeater) it will spend much less energy and will work almost twice faster. This doesn´t mean you can quit checkig them often, actually you need to check them twice often. They still stop working nobody kows why, while there is a bunch of resource around to be harvested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_QulTrmNAM&ab_channel=Jonathan%27sInfoDump

Thanks! Interesting and useful. I implemented this on a 4-extractor site. Branched the delay repeaters to all 4 extractors. Now, they're operating at double the nominal rate, which should fill a large canister in 46 minutes. Can run the extractors at full power with only 4 RTGs. 9 ticks works fine on my Windows 10.

Once you've got a setup like this working, I think you need to be careful lifting/replacing the extractors. If they swing around too much, you can break connections, and then you have to re-attach.

The irony in this is that Project CHEER provided the button repeaters used for this hack.

[Scrappy]

Here are 3 extractors using overclock hack. Runs on a single RTG.
I think this configuration obviates storage sensors to save power.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2329162657

[Scrappy]

I've just started appreciating one more aspect of Auto Extractor. When its red bellows pulls ore out, animation shows which spot it's coming from. That helps you clean out impurities from the deposit with terrain tool such that extractor pulls out only the resource you want.

[vindicar]

I'm fairly sure they do drain the deposit, they just produce much more resources from it so it's not as noticeable. I was able to almost suck dry a single ammonia deposit on Sylva by filling a single medium resource can. Green bar on the extractor was already low when I started, but dropped almost to nothing by the end.

[Wolfgang]

引用自 vindicar：

I'm fairly sure they do drain the deposit, they just produce much more resources from it so it's not as noticeable. I was able to almost suck dry a single ammonia deposit on Sylva by filling a single medium resource can. Green bar on the extractor was already low when I started, but dropped almost to nothing by the end.

Pick it up and place it again at that spot. The green bar gets restored.

[Scrappy]

引用自 Wolfgang：

Pick it up and place it again at that spot. The green bar gets restored.

I've reported on the official SESI feedback forum that the green bar has a bug. When you place down an extractor, the green bar includes ore that it has already (partially) extracted. The extractor does not extract ore that it has already (partially) extracted. What this means is that, until they fix the bug, you should not believe green bars on a deposit that has already been (partially) extracted.

Look at it this way...An extractor stops extracting because the ore under its location has been fully extracted. Its green bar reads zero. If you pick it up and put it down on exactly the same spot, the bar should read zero. But we know that often we get a full green bar that way. That green bar is erroneous. If you place the extractor back down in almost the same location, its bar should read very low, not full.

[Scrappy]

All I can say is, extraction is very productive only when I babysit it.

[DomDiaemus]

I cannot see the point of those "auto extractors" since to a player needs a considerable resources to get to that point... and once the "auto extractor" running it would eventually ran out of things to extract so again what is the point of having that end-game thing when the player will have tons of resources well before that point.... far easier to kit the large rover and make some tunnelling to get those resources, faster and easier. Like the pickup shelter, the auto-extractors have no (major) purpose in the game (the pickup shelter is only useful for point teathers, the auto-extractor will I personally cannot be bothered since there are tons of resources available everywhere)... the player will be too far advanced with tons of resources everywhere to bother with such trivialities.

[Scrappy]

DomDiaemus, auto extractors are crucial to my current endeavor. I'm about to set a landmark record for CHEER points. To make a long story short, I've needed many dozens of large canisters of astronium. I completely depleted Calidor of astronium, and now I'm close to depleting Vesania of astronium. If I wasn't getting extractor's 15x haul of nuggets out of deposits, I could not even come close to where I am.

Previously I used extractors to gather large amounts of graphite for packagers that I used to collect research items and accumulate over 12,000,000 bytes. You also need lots of bytes for a CHEER record.

On the other hand, I'll be the first to complain about the bugs and limitations of auto extractors, but I have learned to work around those.

At some point, you can reset resources by starting a new game. But I could not afford the time to build up again during the past month. I have a lot of infrastructure I've built up.

[vindicar]

引用自 DomDiaemus：

I cannot see the point of those "auto extractors" since to a player needs a considerable resources to get to that point... and once the "auto extractor" running it would eventually ran out of things to extract so again what is the point of having that end-game thing when the player will have tons of resources well before that point....

Used to be my point, but you can actually get extractors by the start of the mid game - the most expensive component is 2 Steel. Once you set up a base on Glacio and built/brought a ChemLab and a Compressor there, you can make one. And then use those extractors to mass produce iron, steel (as Glacio has Argon), titanium and ammonia. A relatively small setup with an extractor, a smelter and some autoarms will be filling your storage with ready to use metal. When you run out, just fly back, and swap the storage can for your empty one. It should be full long before you run out again.
This setup will allow you to produce a lot of extractors, and provides about half the materials for nanocarbon alloy fabrication. The rest of those can be found on Sylva, mostly just Nitogen and Hydrogen. The only issue then is powering all of this until you get enough RTGs.

[DomDiaemus]

引用自 vindicar：

Once you set up a base on Glacio and built/brought a ChemLab and a Compressor there, you can make one. And then use those extractors to mass produce iron, steel (as Glacio has Argon), titanium and ammonia. A relatively small setup with an extractor, a smelter and some autoarms will be filling your storage with ready to use metal.

Feel free to join my game to see my bases in those places. However I really don't see the point of such elaborated extended bases, I do understand the sandbox factor playing... but in terms of reaching the end-game (or sort of finishing it) basically just need one main base, couple of tiny bases to get the gases that otherwise you cannot be produced in Sylva for example, plus a large shuttle, 2 large rovers, 2x large store triangles (cant remember their name atm), one or more RTG in one of those large rovers and a bunch of small batteries on stored things placed on those 2 large store bits... then hit all the gates plus cores in all planets... so pack up that lot to transport to next planet and repeat... game finished... (obviously the sandbox part of the game continues after that)

But practically a player just need one 1 base, 1 large shuttle, 2 large rovers, bunch of small batteries... and have fun making straight roads N-S, E-W and by doing that the player do this you will gather all the resources needed and many more that are left beside the road coz are too much than required... (and on glacio) iron is everywhere.... so why bother with auto-extractors attending that until that point a player already have tons of resources available (and unwanted) scattered everywhere?

I would understand the auto-extractors if to build them only required some basic recipe and not end-game just to save the game grinding of gathering resources... but then if a player start building roads between those gates all of that become pointless since resources would reach a point that are too much.

@Imperial Crown, I get your point, I don't understand the "CHEER" bit but wondered about the existence of astronium in every planet... I'm going to look at that, cheers ;)