Mining

**Mining** is one of the four main ways to earn credits, with the others being Culture Revenue, revenue earned through facilities like the Spaceport, and revenue earned through the Space Elevator from the socket city.

Mining is not a very efficient way of earning credits. Spaceports and Culture Revenue should be the main sources of credits. A mine can be exhausted, but culture revenue streams last indefinitely, unless their host city is destroyed or deserted.

## Outpost

In order to mine for resources to gain space credits, you need to place an outpost, and then add a mine to that outpost. Just like cities, outposts should be placed on places with high elevation, because that will keep them from flooding as the world's water levels rise. Other than that, it does not matter where you place the outpost. Resources are generated randomly when the outpost is placed, so there is no *best* place to place an outpost.

The first outpost costs 1 million space credits, the second 2 million, the third 3 million, etc. New outposts cost 1 million more space credits. If you demolish one outpost, the price of new ones go down again by 1,000,000c.

While ore placement is tracked in the outpost, it is not tracked outside of it. As such, if an outpost runs dry, one can just demolish it and then rebuild it.

## Mine placement

Generally, when adding a mine, it's better to decrease the size of the scanner early on for better scanning results. Mines can only be placed with minimum focus (slider all the way down).

Mines can't be placed too close to each other, so always check an area for higher materials before placing a lower material mine there.

Place outposts in areas with high elevation. They will be destroyed when they go underwater. If a mine goes underwater, but not the outpost, the mine will still be destroyed. Unfortunately, unlike placement of cities and outposts, elevation statistics are not shown on the map when you place a mine. Underwater areas will not be shown on the Orbital Surveyor but you can switch between "satellite image" view and Surveyor view. Mines can't be placed underwater. The determination of this seems to be based on percentage of the smallest scanner's area that is underwater - it is possible to place a mine right on top of a small pond, as long as it is surrounded and outnumbered by land around it within the scanner area.

## Research

You need to research a resource before it can be mined. Carbon is unlocked already at the start. Researching mining materials is instant, though you can't be researching anything else when you want to research a material. Researching materials is equally expensive on any difficulty mode.

\*Despite the research for iron saying its 3 credits, its actually just rounding up from 2 ⅔. c/kg stands for credits per kilogram. Revenue is measured from a neutral culture.

## Different resources

Various resources can be mined, each more valuable than the one before it. Lower value material mines don't provide a lot of credits, so don't make too many of those. However, since more valuable resources are rarer, a slightly less valuable one can offer more revenue if the yield is much higher. It seems the point where it is worth mining is silver and above - an abundant silver mine can sometimes rival a mediocre mine of more valuable resources, but it is very unlikely an iron or carbon mine is ever competitive.

There are five resources in TerraGenesis that can be mined:

1. Carbon
2. Iron
3. Silver
4. Palladium
5. Rhodium

## Mine costs

Placing a mine has a base cost of 50,000 space credits, which is the value used for the first mine in an outpost, for a carbon mine. Iron, silver, palladium, and rhodium multiplies this by 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x respectively, and the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. mines also multiplies it by 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, etc. Therefore, for example, a palladium mine that is the fourth mine of any type in an outpost costs 800,000 credits (50000x4x4). Because of how multiplication works, you should always build mines of a higher resource first. On a new outpost, building a rhodium, palladium, and then a silver mine would cost 250000+400000+450000=1100000 while in the reverse order it costs 150000+400000+750000=1300000 credits.

Since the cost of placing mines keeps rising, it makes more economical sense to make a new outpost after a few mines, since there are usually only a few good mining spots anyway.

## Mining rate

How many kg of resources mined per minute depends on the concentration of it at the spot. The absolute maximum of a level I mine is 300 kg/min, but anything higher than carbon is increasingly unlikely to be anywhere near that. A rhodium mine is considered pretty good if it has around 150 kg/min. The Paydirt event would boost a mine's productivity to maximum **and** greatly increase its lifespan.

Leveling up a mine does not change the total amount of revenue, only increase the rate of mining (and proportionately shortening mine lifespan). The maximum rate is also increased. You can upgrade it to up to level V, and each level is a flat +50% to the rate (e.g. if level I is 300 kg/min, level II, III, IV, and V are 450, 600, 750, and 900 kg/min).

## Satellite

The Orbital Surveyor satellite allows you to see where materials are before placing mines, saving a lot of time as you won't need to painstakingly move the scanner around anymore. Though in order to see whether or not your mine will be placed underwater, you will have to toggle it off.

## Naming

Mines are automatically named after the Greek alphabet, as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc. with a Roman numeral behind it to denote its level, so the first mine you build is always labelled as "Alpha I". Same as for facilities, if you have a level 3 AtmoGen Suite, it will read as "AtmoGen Suite III".

While it makes no economical sense to build this many mines, if you insist, the 24th mine would be named "Omega" (the last letter in the alphabet), and the 25th "Alpha Alpha", 26th "Alpha Beta", (like the English alphabet, after Z becomes AA, AB and so on) and so on.

## End of a mine

Mines can be flooded by rising sea levels. Unlike cities, each mine in an outpost is calculated separately. Since an outpost is an area, it is possible for lower-lying mines in the same outpost to be drowned while those in higher ground are untouched.

A flooded mine is completely destroyed and removed from the outpost. The other mines are moved up in the alphabet, e.g. if an Alpha mine is drowned the Beta mine is renamed Alpha, etc.

A mine would eventually run out of resources. By default, this lasts for 200,000 seconds (2 days).

An exhausted mine however, remains listed, it just doesn't produce anything any more and can be demolished to remove them completely. Once a mine is removed, even if it is just built, that area will no longer have the amount of mineral it previously had.

All mines belonging to an outpost are destroyed if the outpost is destroyed, either by flooding/melting or the Industrial Accident Event.

## Difficulty changes

In Beginner mode, mines last 3 times as long (600,000 seconds by default), and each kg of ore is worth 3 times as much. E.g. everything else being the same, a Beginner mine is 9× as profitable overall compared to a Normal mode mine.

## Trivia

* In real life, palladium and rhodium are both rare metals used in catalytic converters in cars to reduce pollution from exhaust. They are also both prone to wild fluctuations in price, but palladium is often more expensive than rhodium.
* The game also does not reflect real-life abundances of the elements on different planets (except Earth).
* The developer accidentally put **Carbon** instead of silicon. However, since then it has stuck around, possibly due to nostalgia value. At first, he thought to put silicon because most rocks are made out of silicon and then this happened. Watch this what is behind that thing on https://youtu.be/LRqWFgwPld8.