Deep drill

A deep drill extracts resources, such as Metals and Rock Chunks, from underground deposits. Metallic deposits are discovered by a colonist scan at a ground-penetrating scanner. The various types of Rock Chunks are extracted from every cell on the map not otherwise occupied by a metallic deposit. Selecting the ground-penetrating scanner reveals all currently detected deposits (cells highlighted green) on the map, and hovering your mouse over the deposit (cells highlighted green) reveals the resource contained within. Constructing or selecting any deep drill also displays all detected deposits, if a scanner is in place and powered. It is built with 100 Steel, 2 Components in 10,000 ticks (2.78 mins) after the research Deep Drilling has been completed. The deep drill can bring much needed resources for constructing the ship or for base expansion later in the game, when most ores have been mined out. The scanning time depends on the Intellectual skill of the colonist operating the scanner.

Placement

A deep drill occupies a 1x2 cell space - one cell for the drill and one cell for the interaction spot. The deep drill can extract resources from cells within a 5x5 cell square around the drill, excluding the four corner cells of the 5x5 square (total extraction area = 21 cells). Selecting a Deep Drill or placing a Deep Drill blueprint will show an outline of the possible extraction area. The extraction zone does not restrict drill placement in any way, so that drills may extract resources through walls, mountains, water, buildings, and even some of the map border's exclusion zone (but not the second tile away). Most deposits are in open space, but in tight spots, the drill can be rotated (keys: Q\E) to position the interaction spot. Once the drill has been built, it may be safely uninstalled requiring 1,800 ticks (30 secs) of work.

As the colonist will spend long times drilling in a place far away from the base, their Mood will suffer because of the lack of beauty and comfort. A room can be constructed around the drill to mitigate the debuffs, using Chairs and sculptures to increase Room Quality.

A drill only extracts resources within its extraction zone, so the extraction zone should cover as many cells of the deposit as possible. Resources are extracted randomly from possible cells, making Drilling a passive task. Drills can be safely Uninstalled and Reinstalled, allowing the drill to be reused on multiple deposits. If building a drill is blocked by terrain like mud or shallow water, the drill can be installed on a bridge. Resources detected in deep water or deep ocean water beyond the overlap zone cannot be extracted.

Only 2 tiles of this deposit are reachable
Minerals detected past the coastline cannot be extracted

Operation

A drill is operated by miners. Unlike crafting stations, the colonist cannot make use of a chair while operating the drill. The drill's inspection pane shows what resource is below (bioferrite, gold, plasteel, silver, steel, uranium, or jade). Cells will turn from green to yellow and then blank as they are depleted. Each cell contains a total of 300 resources, but the actual number obtained depends on the miner's mining yield, so the values may be slightly lower. Drill operation can be suspended by marking the drill as forbidden or turning off its power.

Drills will produce stone chunks if there are no other materials below them. To prevent pawns from continuing to drill stone undesirably, a drill that has exhausted all obtainable resources will automatically be marked "forbidden," sending a notification to the player.

Each extraction cycle takes a base of 14,000 ticks (3.89 mins) of work to finish, modified according to the colonist's Deep Drilling Speed stat. Although this time is the same for all materials, the amount per cycle varies. For example, plasteel yields 7 units per cycle, making it effectively 5 times slower to mine than steel, which yields 35. This means using deep drills is from over 700 (silver) to almost 3000 (gold/jade) times less efficient than normal mining. The drilling speed can also be increased using drill arms.

Note that resource fields may be adjacent to each other, sometimes with different types of resources. If a drill is placed such that it overlaps both zones, it will mine all of the resources from one type before switching to the other field. In which case, the infobox will display which resource the drill is currently extracting.

Placing down an stockpile, with all items disallowed, around the deep drill with cause haulers to prioritize hauling the extracted resources to their proper place .

Power

A deep drill requires power to operate. Besides connecting to the main power grid, relocating charged batteries can provide power for a while. This can eliminate running power lines to remote areas, however a roof is needed to protect the batteries from rain. Alternatively, a vanometric power cell works to power up to 3 nearby drills constantly. Although risky, an unstable power cell can also be used to power the drills, but beware of an explosion.

Once a drill has completely mined all resources in its zone, it will continue to draw power until it is turned off, 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:

Resource	Deposit Size	Deposit Mean	Commonality	Portion Size
Steel	20 - 40	~ 30	4	35
Silver	7 - 20	~ 14	0.5	40
16px Plasteel	2 - 10	~ 7	1	7
Jade Gold	1 - 5	~ 3	0.5	10
Uranium	4 - 10	~ 7	1	10

Alternative table:

Resource	1-5	6-10	11-15	16-20	21-30	31-40
Steel	-	-	-	-
Silver	-				-	-
Jade		-	-	-	-	-
Gold		-	-	-	-	-
Uranium			-	-	-	-
16px Plasteel			-	-	-	-

Infestations

Manned drills are capable of drilling into underground insect hives, activating the Too Deep: Infestation event and bringing several to the surface. There will be a short delay between the alert and their appearance, giving your miner time to get away.

Version history

Beta 19 - Chemfuel can no longer be acquired by drilling.
Beta 19/ 1.0 - Now costs more and mines slower.
1.0 - it is now possible to drill into insectoid hives.
1.1.2624 - the area of deep drills has been expanded to become 21 tiles large (5x5 square minus the corners), as opposed to 9 tiles (3x3 square). Its power consumption has also been reduced (300 -> 200W).

Architect

Production | Neolithic: Art bench • Brewery • Butcher spot • Butcher table • Campfire • Crafting spot • Fueled stove • Fermenting barrel • Simple research bench
Medieval: Fueled smithy • Hand tailor bench • Stonecutter's table
Industrial: Biofuel refinery • Deep drill • Drug lab • Electric crematorium • Electric smelter • Electric smithy • Electric stove • Electric tailor bench • Fabrication bench • Hi-tech research bench • Hydroponics basin • Machining table • Nutrient paste dispenser (Hopper)
Related: Bioferrite shaper • Serum lab