Difference between revisions of "Ores"

Revision as of 07:20, 14 November 2014

Ores are patches of valuable minerals embedded in stone. To be used at all they must be harvesting using a Hand Drill or ship-mounted Drill and then refined within a Refinery. Once refined, they yield one type or another of Raw Materials which can be used within an Assembler to construct Components.

Ores have a variety of appearances and rarities which are annotated below. Usually the best way to identify a particular ore is by the use of an Ore Detector (either one attached to a ship or the one built into the Hand Drill), which will put the name of the ore on-screen in approximately the center of the ore patch.

Stats

Ore	Abbreviation	Icon	Mass per Unit	Volume per Unit	Rarity [1]
Stone	Stone		2.7 Kg	1 L	31%
Iron Ore	Fe		2.7 Kg	1 L	50%
Nickel Ore	Ni		2.7 Kg	1 L	2%
Cobalt Ore	Co		2.7 Kg	1 L	2.2%
Magnesium Ore	Mg		2.7 Kg	1 L	2.4%
Silicon Ore	Si		2.7 Kg	1 L	2%
Silver Ore	Ag		2.7 Kg	1 L	2%
Gold Ore	Au		2.7 Kg	1 L	2%
Platinum Ore	Pt		2.7 Kg	1 L	2%
Uranium Ore	U		2.7 Kg	1 L	4.4%

Appearances

Identifying ores purely by sight can be frustrating, especially if you have two similar ores next to one another (such as Platinum and Silicon). It is for this reason that an Ore Detector is always highly recommended for the initial identification process. However, once you have identified the vein you wish to obtain, it can often be more effective to rely on sight to guide your mining, and so a Spotlight is almost always useful for this purpose, to more easily see where one vein ends and another begins.

A description and image of each ore is shown in the table below.

Ore	Appearance	Description
Stone		Color varies slightly. Typically a matte midtone grey, the appearance of stone can vary a bit between brown and black.
Iron		Red and Grey. Iron is fairly easy to identify due to being so common and in such contrast to the grey of the surrounding stone. Focus on looking for reddish, rust-colored areas if Iron is a priority.
Nickel		Brown. Nickel is a straight, flat, brown, which when it spawns next to Iron shows strikingly enough to be discernable.
Cobalt		Yellowish-Grey with Brown streaks. With a grey base, it can be difficult to discern from surrounding stone, so search for the distinct brownish-yellow bands.
Magnesium		Blue. Rather distinct, Magnesium is not very hard to identify, but is fairly rare, so always keep a look out for the bluish hue!
Silicon		Grey. One of three greyish ores, Silicon can be the most difficult to spot due to how close its color and texture are to base stone. Its color will often vary to a light grey, almost white sheen, so look for uncharacteristically light patches.
Silver		Bluish-Silver. Another grey ore, Silver can be differentiated between Platinum most by its contrast: dark areas are jet black, while highlights are bright white. "Shiny" is an apt description.
Gold		Gold. Very distinct. Can vary more to a grey-yellow in small patches or where it starts to mix with stone or iron.
Platinum		Grey. Can be hard to differentiate between this and stone or silicon. The most reliable distinction is the texture rather than color: stone and silicon have a rough look, while platinum is smooth.
Uranium		Black. Jet black, very shiny. Hard to miss, even in shadow (unless your server's Skybox has low light).

Refining

Each ore (including Stone) yields some sort of useable material once it has been refined within a Refinery. Each ore has exactly one type of material that it produces, at various rates of efficiency; e.g. 1000 kg of Uranium Ore will not produce 1000 kg of Uranium Ingots. Various data on the Raw Materials refining production are shown below.

References

1. ↑ http://www.spaceengineerswiki.com/File:Ore_Rarity_Test.xlsx