Besides the mines on your planets you can harvest resources directly in space. Asteroid fields and nebulae hold large reserves that any commander can tap with mining ships. Mining is a good way to boost your economy without building more on your planets, see Economy.
Asteroid fields and nebulae
Deposits sit in the orbits of star systems, next to the planets. You find them in the system view, together with their current reserves.
- Asteroid fields yield ferrite and crystal. A field starts with 40,000 to 120,000 ferrite and 20,000 to 60,000 crystal.
- Nebulae yield helion, 30,000 to 90,000 per nebula. They only form in the outer orbits of a system and are rarer than asteroid fields.
- Deposits belong to no one. Mining is not a hostile mission, so it is allowed even under new player protection.
The Prospector
Only the Prospector can mine. It is unlocked by Shipyard 2 and the research Extraction Lasers and costs 3,000 ferrite and 1,500 crystal.
- A Prospector mines up to 1,000 resources per hour and has a hold of 7,500.
- It is slow, so deposits in your own system are the easiest start.
- A mining fleet may only contain ships that can mine. Escorts cannot fly along, and the hold must be empty at departure.
How a mining run works
Send your Prospectors to a deposit with the mission Mining.
- After arriving, the fleet stays at the deposit for 4 hours at base speed. The stay scales with the universe speed.
- When it leaves, the yield is limited by three things: the mining rate over the time spent at the deposit, the free hold and the reserves that are left.
- On a full stay one Prospector brings home up to about 4,000 resources.
- At an asteroid field the yield is split between ferrite and crystal in the same ratio as the remaining reserves.
- You receive a mining report, and the fleet flies home. The return flight takes as long as the outbound flight.
You can recall a fleet during its stay. It stops at once and brings home what it has mined until then. A mining fleet occupies one of your fleet slots for the whole trip.
Finite reserves
Reserves shrink with every run, but they recover slowly. A deposit regenerates 0.5 percent of its original size per hour, scaled with the universe speed, up to its starting amount. Even a fully depleted field comes back over time.
Several fleets on one deposit share what is there. The yield is taken at the moment a fleet leaves, so the fleet that leaves first gets the full share, and a later one may find the deposit nearly empty. There is no combat at deposits: attacks only target inhabited planets.
Tips
- Check the reserves in the system view before you send a fleet.
- Match the number of Prospectors to the reserves. Extra ships bring nothing more once a field is nearly empty.
- Research Extraction Lasers early if your home system has a deposit.
- Nebulae are the only deposits that yield helion - worth the flight when helion is your bottleneck.