Static Harvesting

There are several methods of efficiently harvesting and collecting energy, each with advantages and disadvantages. These solutions work within an owned room to harvest the energy the room needs to thrive. For more advanced harvesting strategies that make use of unowned rooms, see Remote Harvesting.

Drop Mining

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Container Mining

Container Mining (sometimes referred to as "can" mining) is the process of using Containers to store mined resources while waiting for a hauler to gather them, rather than dropping the resource and allowing it to decay, such as in drop mining or storing the resource internally, such as in Static Mining.

Uses

Container mining can be seen as the combination of drop mining's high capacity and internal mining's high efficiency. Containers are cheap and have a low decay rate, and any resource that falls on the tile in question will fall into the container. For an energy source, this ends up reducing losses compared to drop mining by about 90%.

Variations

Some people choose to drop mine at earlier Room Control Levels, then container mine later when they decide they can afford to build the containers, instead of building the containers as early as possible.

Repairing the container due to its decay can be done by the mining creep, or other workers in the room. If the miner maintains it, it will need at least 1 CARRY part to hold the energy used in the repairs. Once the creep tries to harvest more than it's carryCapacity, it will continue to drop the energy into the container.

Remote Mining and Source Keeper mining also often takes the form of container mining to deal with the large amounts of energy mined or higher travel times the carriers require to return the energy to a claimed room. The benefit is less clear in non owned rooms though, because of the increased (*5) decay rate (see doc )

Mineral Mining often takes the form of can mining to minimize the loss of valuable minerals.

Potential Problems

The player must be able to maintain the container.

You will also need to identify a way to ensure a newly spawned miner stands on top of the assigned container before it starts mining, or it will turn into Drop Mining again, and the container maintenance costs are wasted.

The carriers/workers you develop for this type of Static Mining will have to be able to withdraw() from the containers for it to be effective. You will also have to check to see if the container has overflowed, and pickup() the energy like Drop Mining to save it from decay.

Link Mining

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Link mining is a static mining method for Sources. It takes advantage of StructureLinks to transfer the energy instead of Creep carriers.

Uses

Link mining is commonly used to mine out-of-the-way sources in your rooms without needing so many haulers. Since Links are limited in number, care needs to be used in deciding when a Source should be link mined or other methods should be used. Sending from one link to another incurs a 3% loss during the transfer, so care should also be used in determining savings versus other mining practices.

Variations

Links can also be used to help transfer energy from other rooms, especially remote mining and source keeper rooms. This way, haulers have less distance to travel to bring energy to the next room.

Since links have a cool down based on distance, some players will place a link between two other links to reduce cool down times. This would incur a loss of 5.91% loss instead of 3% for a single link transfer.

Some players combine this method with container mining to store surplus energy until it can be linked elsewhere in the room.

Potential Problems

Links are only available at RCL 5 and above. Also, rooms are capped at 6 links even at RCL 8, so players must budget their link usage wisely.

Links have a cool down equal to the distance they transfer energy. This may limit the amount of energy that can be transferred through a link.

The destination link needs to be constantly emptied, or the link may back up and energy harvesting would be degraded, failing over to an alternate method of harvesting, or simply stopping altogether.