What Is Resource Extraction?
This just refers to the process by which players extract raw resources from the environment. If you've read the economy page you know that raw resources are used to make everything else.
In Starmourn MUD, raw resources are obtained from one of two sources: asteroids or interstellar clouds of gas or very small particles.
Asteroids
Asteroids are where Diamene, Isotropic Duramine, Astrium, Stesium, Titanium, and Magnaril come from.
In order to acquire them, you'll blast off in your starship and locate an asteroid. They'll regularly spawn around Starmourn with different minerals in them.
If you're looking for a particular mineral, you'll then launch a probe to determine what's in the asteroid.
If what's in it is useful to you, you'll then fire a pair of tethers at the asteroid, which will embed themselves in it, attaching it to you.
Now, you'll need to fly that asteroid to a refinery. However, while towing around the asteroid, its mass is added to the effective mass of your ship, making acceleration, deceleration, and turning more sluggish. Not good if pirates are about!
Once you've towed it to a refinery, you'll then pay the refinery (more accurately, its owner) to refine the asteroid into resources for you.
Interstellar Clouds
Clouds are where the other resources come from: Helium-11, Elessium, Tritium, Dark Matter, Ultarine, Antimatter, and Iriil.
Similar to with asteroids, you'll take your ship out and locate a cloud, which will spawn regularly around Starmourn. You'll know what kind of cloud it is, because different clouds are colored differently and because your ship can tell you.
Unlike asteroids though, clouds are large, spanning potentially dozens of rooms. You'll deploy 'scoops' from your ship, which are basically a pair of giant (really large...much bigger than your ship) parachutes that can gather up the cloud material room by room as you fly through the cloud.
Once you have your scoops full, you'll head back to a refinery and pay the refinery to refine it into usable resource for you. Towing scoops isn't as damaging to your ship's performance as towing an asteroid, since they weigh far less, but they will still make turning slower than normal.
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