⚖️ Balance Change
- Good news for anyone running a planetary harvesting operation. We have taken a long look at how much your harvesters pull from a planet each hour, and we decided they were being far too modest about it. As the galaxy grows and the recipes you are chasing lean more and more on planetary resources, the humble harvester deserves to earn its keep. So every tier has been given a proper lift. A Basic harvester now draws twenty units an hour where it used to manage five. Superior models step up from ten to thirty, and the mighty Advanced harvester now hauls in forty units an hour rather than fifteen. Founder harvesters, ever loyal, keep pace with the Basic tier at twenty an hour, and remain as indestructible as ever. This is no small nudge. It is a fourfold jump at the entry level and a healthy boost right across the range, and it applies to every harvester already deployed out there, not just the ones you set down from today.
- Your existing machines simply start pulling the new amounts on their next collection cycle, with nothing for you to do. Now, a faster harvester is no use over a shallow deposit, so we have gone and deepened the planets to match. Every planetary resource pool across the galaxy has been enriched fourfold, so there is a great deal more waiting to be drawn out of each world. We also mended a long standing quirk where a depleted deposit would quietly regenerate smaller than before, thinning your favourite worlds over time.
- Deposits now recover to their full, generous size, so a good planet stays a good planet. We think this is a fair reward for the work harvesting actually asks of you. Slots have to be rented and renewed, machines wear down and need replacing, and even a rich deposit will eventually run dry and send you off to spread your operation across several worlds. A harvester that gathers properly, over ground worth gathering, makes all that tending worthwhile. Deploy a few, keep them fed, and watch your Commercial Storage fill a good deal faster than it used to. Happy harvesting, Captains.
- A word for the drone pilots among you. Fresh from giving the planetary harvesters a firm talking to about their work rate, we turned our attention to the asteroid mining drones, and they too have been told to pull their weight. Every mining drone now gathers three times as much ore from its field each hour. A Basic drone steps up from ten units an hour to thirty. Superior drones climb from fifteen to forty five. And the top of the range Advanced drone now brings in a mighty sixty units an hour where it once managed twenty.
- As ever, the change reaches every drone already deployed out in the fields, not only the ones you build from here on, so there is nothing for you to do but enjoy the fuller Commercial Storage. We also took the chance to set an old record straight. The Founder drone, that indestructible reward for our Alpha testers, had always claimed to mine at the same rate as a Basic drone, yet it had quietly been running faster than its own description promised. It now genuinely keeps pace with a Basic drone at thirty units an hour, still tireless, still unbreakable, and honest about it at last. Deploy your drones, keep them maintained, and let them fill your holds while you get on with the business of the galaxy. Happy mining, Captains.