Dont understand geologist screen?

[Inthewasteland]

Does it take time for the geologist to see what minerals the rocks are, or do they only see after i start breaking them up? Also, what is the screen actually showing when it has the colored areas on it when you click on an ore at the top? I have flown to those areas and there is sometimes nothing there.

With the buttons at the top under each ore as well, what do those do, along with the price slider?

I sure wish there was some sort of help option to explain what im looking at on most of those screens, or what everything even means. Even some basic tooltips would help.

[Paranoia_Inc]

Yeah the actual chunks of valuable ore only show up after you break apart rocks into the smallest bits. Each ore is color coded, so when you look at a map you can eyeball what ore is floating around you or can more easily find fields that are denser in that particular ore, depending on which screen you're using.

As for the Geologist screen, the buttons indicate what you want your computer to keep track of by keeping it big boxed, I guess? And when you click on that ore, will show info like estimated value and distance to. Unclicking those will not have the computer keep tracking them and clicking them will not show those details. The slider is for price value. Because the values can range wildly, setting the value will help you ignore cheaper chunks. This is really only helpful early in the game when you don't have a Mineral Processing Unit (MPU) to break down the chunks into more refined units and make better use of your space. But you can still set the slider this way to be more efficient with your time.

Edit: Getting back to Geologist screen, as you get other equipment, you can set those independently, like the haul and tug drones.

[ImHelping]

I have played probably about 30 minutes of this game and still understand basically nothing.

But "Turn off Iron detection on the manipulator arm" on the geologist screen seems to be helping in making it try and snatch only the good metal out of exploding ice chunks before they fly away to easily shove into my hatch, instead of worth barely anything iron.

You know, when it isn't deciding to teasingly hold an ice chunk an inch to far for the side mounted mass driver to crack.