Extractors are drones that collect Resources from a planet's surface, which allows for automatic gathering of resources without the need for player control.
Titan Extractor
The Titan Extractor drone is the most basic type of all Extractors that you can place on a planet on the star chart. The drone slowly collects some of the resources from that that planets nodes until it is full. It requires 4 hours to collect Resources.
The Titan Extractor drone can be forged using a reusable blueprint purchased in the marketplace.
Distilling Extractor
The Distilling Extractor has a greater chance of collecting Uncommon and Rare resources.
This type of extractor follows exactly the same mechanics as the Titan version. However, it takes 8 hours to collect resources instead of 4 hours. It requires a fair amount of Oxium and far more Credits to build.
The Distilling Extractor drone can be forged using a reusable blueprint purchased in the marketplace.
Deploying and Collecting Your Extractor
After forging your Drone in the Foundry, click on any Planet on the Solar System Map that you have unlocked all the nodes for and you will see a button with the text "Deploy Drone" in the middle left of your screen.
When you click on the Deploy Drone button you will see a list of your available drones to choose from to deploy to the planet and begin the resource extraction process. Only one Drone can be deployed at a time. The drone will select randomly among the available resources on the planet.
During the collection process, a bar will fill up slowly and the Drone will be ready for collection when the bar is full. It is important to manage your drones carefully as if they are left out in the field for too long, they may take damage and be destroyed. Destroyed drones resources are lost and you will need to forge a new drone if you have none remaining in your inventory.
To collect a drone at any time, navigate to the planet where the drone is deployed and click the "Retrieve Extractor" button. Players will receive whatever resources the drones collected in their inventory after retrieving them, but if the collection bar was not filled you will not receive any resources.
Number of deployable drones
The number of resource drones you can deploy is dependent on your Mastery Rank and whether or not you have a Founder/Prime Access status. For every five mastery ranks, you can deploy one additional drone. Having Founder/Prime access lets you deploy one more additional drone.
Mastery 0–4: 1 drone
Mastery 5-9: 2 drones
Mastery 10+: 3 drones
Founder: +1 drone
Prime Access: +1 drone
The maximum of deployable drones is 5 with rank/founder/prime access combination.