Deep drill

A deep drill extracts resources from underground deposits. These deposits are discovered by having a colonist scan at a ground-penetrating scanner. Clicking the scanner reveals all currently detected deposits (cells highlighted green) on the map and shows you the mineral when you hover over the deposit. Constructing or clicking 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 scanner.

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 outline does not restrict placement in any way. It only shows the drill's extraction zone and it can overlap walls, mountains, water, buildings, and even some of the maps 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, uninstalling it to move it requires 1,800 ticks (30 secs) of work.

As the driller will spend long times drilling in a place far away from the base, they will quickly become unhappy because of the lack of beauty and comfort. A deep drill room can be constructed to mitigate the debuff, and sculptures can be placed in the room to liven it up.

A drill only extracts resources within its extraction zone, so it should be placed to cover as much as possible. Drills can be moved, allowing the drill to be reused once resources are exhausted. 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.

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

Prior to version B19, Chemfuel could be acquired by drilling.

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