Orbital Collector

Logistics

Used to collect the resources of Gas giant, it needs to consume the collected fuel materials to maintain the energy required to work in orbit.

Gathering Target		Gas Giant
Work Consumption		30.0 MW
Gathering Speed		8 * Mining speed * GG base - Cons.
Made In		Assembler
Hand-Make		Replicator
Stack Size		10

1

30 s

1

50

20

Summary

Generates Hydrogen and Deuterium when placed on the equator of a Gas Giant, or Hydrogen and Fire Ice on the equator of an Ice Giant.

The resource collection rate depends on the base yield of the Giant and the Gathering speed of the Orbital Collector. The default Gathering speed is x8. Gathering speed can be increased with the Veins Utilization upgrade. The raw collection rate is calculated as base Giant yield * Gathering speed.

However, some of the collected resources will be used to power the Orbital Collector, which lowers (sometimes drastically) the amount of resources that are actually produced. The resources are used proportionally to how much of each is collected per second (regardless of how much of each is stored), and to energy values of the resources (see below for more info).

Production Chain

Recipe	Building	Replicator?	Technology
1 30 s 1 50 20 20		✔

Player Tips & Tricks

It is possible to place more than one collector on a Gas Giant, although there is a minimum distance between collectors required. Placing them at the minimal possible distance will let you place a maximum of 40 collectors.

In order to export products from an orbital collector, set to the collector to "remote supply." Then on the planet where you wish to receive the collected products, set up an Interstellar Logistics Station with fire ice, hydrogen, and/or deuterium set to "remote demand."

Hydrogen and Deuterium have the same energy value (9 MJ), so for regular Gas Giants the energy consumption of Collector is equal to 10/3 units/s, i.e. 200 units per minute total (30 MW / 9 MJ = 10/3, 10/3 * 60 s = 200). That amount is split according to the ratio of extraction; e.g. with 0.9 H/s and 0.1 D/s (base or multiplied, it doesn't matter since the ratio stays), your production would be reduced by 180 H/min (0.9 / (0.9 + 0.1) * 200) [3 H/s] and 20 D/min (0.1 / (0.9 + 0.1) * 200) [1/3 D/s]. With 0 VU i.e. x8 multiplier, that would leave 0.9*8 - 3 = 4.2 H/s and 0.1*8 - 1/3 = ~0.47 D/s. In most cases, since production of H is usually much higher than that of D, most of the used fuel will be H, so you can approximate the actual reduction by just 200 H/min (use 190 H/min if you need a more accurate value). Consumption of D will be ~10/min, since it's usually about 4-5% of the H rate.

Since the consumption values are dependent only on fuel types and the ratio of their base production (since they scale equally with VU), for a given Giant the absolute loss of resources per Collector is constant. As a result, with low Mining speeds giants with low base production rate will lose most of the production as upkeep. In such cases, researching first couple of levels of Veins Utilization is crucial in making the Collectors profitable at all.

E.g.: Assume a giant with base yield of 0.5 Fire Ice/s and 0.25 Hydrogen/s and base Mining speed (100%) giving Gathering speed = x8, and later upgraded to VU Lvl 5, i.e. Mining speed 150% (giving Gathering speed = 8 * 1.5 = 12x). Increasing Mining speed from 100% to 150% (VU from 0 to 5) increases both FI and H production by about 3.5 times (about +250% instead of +50% effect it had on miners etc.). In this case, even two first levels of VU (giving only +20% to most mining machines) basically double the Collector's output. This effect gets much less pronounced on higher VUs or on Giants with high base rates, though. The raw (before consumption) and real (after consumption) resource yields can be calculated as follows: (the calculation for other VU/MS values is left as an exercise for the curious reader)

Gas Giant base	Power values of resources	Total of power values	Fraction of total power	Orbital Collector consumption	Raw prod. with MS 100%	Real prod. with MS 100%	Raw prod. with MS 150%	Real prod. with MS 150%
0.5 Fire Ice/s	4.8 MJ/FI * 0.5 FI/s = 2.4 MW	2.4 MW + 2.25 MW = 4.65 MW	2.4 MW / 4.65 MW = ~0.52	30 MW * 0.52 / 4.8 MJ/FI = 3.25 FI/s	0.5 FI/s * (8 * 1) = 4 FI/s	4 FI/s - 3.25 FI/s = 0.75 FI/s	0.5 FI/s * (8 * 1.5) = 6 FI/s	6 FI/s - 3.25 FI/s = 2.75 FI/s
0.25 Hydrogen/s	9 MJ/H * 0.25 H/s = 2.25 MW	2.4 MW + 2.25 MW = 4.65 MW	2.25 MW / 4.65 MW = ~0.48	30 MW * 0.48 / 9 MJ/H = 1.6 H/s	0.25 H/s * (8 * 1) = 2 H/s	2 H/s - 1.6 H/s = 0.4 H/s	0.25 H/s * (8 * 1.5) = 3 H/s	3 H/s - 1.6 H/s = 1.4 H/s