Deep drill
Deep drill
A deep-crust drilling rig for extracting minerals from deep under the surface. Use a ground-penetrating scanner to detect the resources.
Base Stats
- Type
- Production
- Beauty
- -25
- HP
- 140
- Flammability
- 100%
Building
- Size
- 1
- Placeable
- Y
- Power
- - 250 W
A deep drill extracts metallic resources or sometimes jade from undergrounds deposits.These deposits are discovered by constructing a ground-penetrating scanner and connecting it to power. Clicking the scanner reveals all deposits (cells highlighted yellow) on the map. Constructing or clicking any deep drill also displays all deposits, if a powered scanner is in place.
Placement
When placing a deep drill it can fit in as little as a 1x2 space - one cell for the drill, and one cell for the interaction spot. The 3x3 outline does not restrict placement in any way. It only shows the drill's 3x3 extraction zone and it can overlap walls, mountains, buildings, and even the maps border's exclusion zone. Most deposits are in open space, but in tight spots, the drill can be rotated (keys: Q\E) to position the interaction spot. A drill only extracts resources within its 3x3 extraction zone, so it should be placed to cover as much as possible. If building a drill is blocked by terrain like mud or shallow water, a moisture pump can be used to dry out the area, albeit very slowly.
Operation
A deep drill requires power to operate. Besides connecting to the main power grid, relocating two or three charged batteries should sufficiently power a drill before it finishes extraction. This can eliminate running power lines to remote areas. Batteries can be recharged, relocated, and reused.
A drill is operated by miners. The drill's inspection pane shows what resource is below (bioferrite, gold, plasteel, silver, steel, uranium, chemfuel or jade). Each cell can be mined twice, turning from yellow to red before depletion. Each extraction produces 75 resources. Each cell contains 150 resources. Drill operation can be suspended by marking the drill as forbidden. Once a drill has completely mined all resources in its 3x3 zone, it will continue to draw power until it is disconnected from the grid or deconstructed.
Resources
The resources contained in a deposit correlates with the size of the deposit. Below is an estimate of the different deposit sizes:
- Steel or Plasteel: 18 - 60 (mean: ~45)
- Silver: 7 - 20 (mean: ~14)
- Jade / Gold / Uranium: 2 - 10 (mean: ~7)
Note that it is also possible (but uncommon) for deposits to directly touch each other which can make identification harder.