What's the point of the Auto-Extractor?

[degasi]

Build my first Auto-Extractor today. Placed it on a ressource and placed a small station around it.
Already had some future plans in mind, with building a train, to bring ressources back to my main base and stuff.

Now I get back to my outpost, and the extractor wasn't working anymore. Because the top layer of ressources are gone...
I thought it wouldn't remove the ressources and run indefinitely... sadge

It just gathered 30 ressource nuggets. That makes the auto-extractor completely useless tbh. If I gathered them manually, It would take 5 minutes.
Also no point in building a train for it. No point in building automated outposts for all the different ressources with energy supply etc for just that.

[Material Defender]

The auto extractor pulls out up to 15 times what you would harvest by hand, but takes longer to do so, also, the extractor doesn't have the range for the full deposit, so you need to move it occasionally for it to keep working. The green bar on its 3 legs indicate how much it has in range. If you had harvested it by hand, you would not have gotten 30 nuggets worth of resources from the same area it harvested.

[CubicBerserker]

In my experience the auto extractor doesn't seem to actually remove any resources. The green bar does deplete, but the actual resources stay. If I pick the extractor up and place it down again, the green bar is reset and it starts working again.

[Robert]

Originally posted by CubicBerserker:

In my experience the auto extractor doesn't seem to actually remove any resources. The green bar does deplete, but the actual resources stay. If I pick the extractor up and place it down again, the green bar is reset and it starts working again.

I'm not too sure about that, I'm pretty sure that some (smaller) resource deposits on my world got removed/exhausted by auto extractors. In my case those were copper/malachite deposits in the mountains on Sylva. I've tried moving the extractor a bit because I've read about that alleged reset, but the green bar kept getting smaller until it was gone, and the resources were gone.

In some other cases however the reset seems to work. You move the extractor(s) around for a tiny bit and get a bigger green bar again, and can keep harvesting tons and tons of stuff. I've read claims that resources get reset when you travel back and forth between planets, maybe it's worth experimenting with that... Without knowing how exactly the game handles resource clusters internally it's hard to tell what happens. Maybe the "density" of clusters which are not fully depleted gets reset, for compression purposes?

As for OPs question, and the auto extractors in general... at first I was disappointed with them too. Expensive, limited resources (theoretically), only 1 nugget per minute, and they don't really shine before you automate loading/unloading/smelting/whatever with auto arms and maybe some train stations.

But: you can use more than 1 extractor, so you can easily scale the mining speed up beyond your manual capabilities. And the yield per deposit is much higher, dunno 10-15x more nuggets than you get with the terrain tool. So they are definitely worth using them, especially in combination with rail roads.

One thing I'd wish for is being able to automate sending resources around between planets, but that's another topic. An upgraded train station with an automated shuttle pod would be really cool.

[Pahbi]

By the time you get to extractors, you likely have more resources than you know what to do with anyways.

That said, it is kind of interesting to automate them, and I suspect that is their main purpose, to give players a reason to use automation.

You can use automation to, 'overclock' the extractor and get a small boost to its productivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjsPmkItcIk

[CubicBerserker]

Originally posted by Pahbi:

By the time you get to extractors, you likely have more resources than you know what to do with anyways.

That said, it is kind of interesting to automate them, and I suspect that is their main purpose, to give players a reason to use automation.

You can use automation to, 'overclock' the extractor and get a small boost to its productivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjsPmkItcIk

I can't say I've ever had that issue. Why would I dig up more resources than I need when I'm already running out of storage space and I'll soon have auto extractors to do it more cleanly?

They allow you to avoid the hassle of constantly finding new deposits of the resources you need. It also means making fewer holes in the terrain, especially around your base. They're good even if you don't automate them because you can just slap a medium resource canister on top and collect it when it's full.

[degasi]

Originally posted by Pahbi:

By the time you get to extractors, you likely have more resources than you know what to do with anyways.

That said, it is kind of interesting to automate them, and I suspect that is their main purpose, to give players a reason to use automation.

You can use automation to, 'overclock' the extractor and get a small boost to its productivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjsPmkItcIk

Hm, I made this thread and got the extractor by the time, when I still needed a bunch of ressources.
I tried around with it some time more, but still it made no sense to me without infinite ressources, so I mostly ignored it at the end.

I finished the game some days ago, and the whole automation stuff felt completely useless.
Left a bad aftertaste.
When I first played the game 3 years ago, I really enjoyed it. (Well I enjoyed it again, it's just the whole automation stuff)

With infinite ressources, I probably would have played the game a little longer. Build up huge automated production lines with trains and stuff just for fun.
Like in Satisfactory, Factorio etc.
(Yes, Astroneer is a different game/genre. But the automation things pushed it a little in the same direction when I first saw them)

Originally posted by CubicBerserker:

It also means making fewer holes in the terrain, especially around your base.

I unlocked the Extractor in mid-game. Thats way too late to prevent digging holes around the first base/main base or further away :D

[Doombringer]

In my experience, Auto-Extractors on Sylva depletes resources, but not on most other planets.
(certainly not on my Glacio mining base - it is just 7 auto-extractors on the same deposits.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936150196

[CubicBerserker]

Originally posted by degasi:

I unlocked the Extractor in mid-game. Thats way too late to prevent digging holes around the first base/main base or further away :D

I tend to make a base on every planet and relocate my Sylva base to a gateway chamber. Taking resources from further away and using the soil centrifuge also helps until I can use auto extractors.