Drillship

The **Drillship** is a mobile, worm-like structure with a large drill affixed to its front. It serves as the player's main base of operations, can dig underground to provide protection from volcano eruptions, and can be equipped with various modules used for research, defense, generating power, along with crafting and storing items.

Drillships are destroyed if all their hull slots, including those not fitted with modules, are destroyed. There are an equal number of hull pieces on the left, right, and top of the ship, although only a couple module types can be placed on top.

## Expansion

The drillship can be expanded up to four times its original size as the campaign progresses. Each additional drillship segment adds more hull pieces and space to the drillship, though each one after the second requires a more powerful engine. Keep in mind that more segments mean the ship will take longer to fully dig underground once given the order to submerge, so it must be given the order sooner as the eruption nears.

* **1 segment:** 9 hull pieces, ~10 seconds to submerge
* **2 segments:** 18 hull pieces
* **3 segments:** 45 hull pieces
* **4 segments:** 72 hull pieces, ~30 seconds to submerge

Expanding the drillship offers more hull slots on the walls and roof for placing Modules, and more floor and wall space for placing Devices. Segment interiors can be subdivided into two floors and multiple smaller rooms, using copper walls and floors. Segments are linked together by flexible gangways, which have a cluster of sockets, and a door frame at each end.

Drillships can also be improved through Upgrades, which increase the drillship's power supply, module capacity, movement abilities, and Schematics which unlock new technology for modules, devices, and weaponry.

## Travel

Drillships move by drilling down into the ground, tunneling through soil and rock underground, and surfacing in a new landing site. In addition to getting from point A to point B, going underground is also how drillships avoid being destroyed by eruptions or attackers. While tunneling the drillship can collect pockets of ore, as well as technology loot spawned by underground Drillship wreck.

Enemies can't find a drillship underground, but a traveling drillship still needs to navigate through underground rock masses and veins of magma. Rocks can be handled either by driving around them, or upgrading the drill to bore through them. Magma rapidly heats up the hull, and eventually starts burning through it and destroying slots on the hulls and the modules in them if the drillship doesn't get through the magma quickly enough. Magma can be handled by planning routes with care, and/or upgrading the tracks and hull to get through magma faster and handle heat better.

Landing sites are locations where the rock is weak enough, and the surface is level enough, for a drillship to emerge, and deploy its modules. Both COG and player drillships use these landing sites. Other flaws in the rock allow the drillship to pass between the shallow layer just below the surface and the deeper cave layers.

Your drillship can travel by itself, by remotely ordering it to submerge and then calling it to a different landing site. Remote travel control uses the G key. In self-driving mode, the drillship is fairly smart about planning its route, but doesn't collect resources.

## COG drillships

Drillships were invented by the COGs or their creator, and COG drillships can be found throughout the island. They can appear in spots available to the player as well as the surrounding area. They will often spawn COGs that will march on the player's ship; this occurs more frequently in later areas.

COG drillships can be destroyed the same as a player's, by destroying all hull pieces on the ship. Upon the last piece being destroyed, there will be an alarm followed by a small explosion killing anything inside (including the player) before it becomes a drillship wreck. This wreckage will be salvageable with the Pickaxe to yield upgrade components. Drillships caught on the surface during an eruption (say, if you break the drill of a COG drillship) will be wrecked the same way.

When attacking COG drillships, Grenades and Explosives are highly recommended, as the Shotgun and Pickaxe destroy modules very slowly, and shotgun shells are more expensive in terms of resources. A good strategy to invade COG drillships is to check if has any turrets, and try to find a way inside the ship that avoids their field of fire, otherwise attempt to find something to take cover behind, and throw grenades at turret. It takes 3 direct or close hits from a grenade to destroy most turret modules. Once inside, modules on all sides can be destroyed more efficiently by landing grenades in the center of the room, but keep in mind that if holes are made before turrets are destroyed, they may be able to shoot the player inside. Storage modules and chests can be looted, and it's even possible to place orders on manufacturing stations (if the relevant modules haven't been destroyed) but the ship cannot otherwise be interacted with. The ship will not submerge while the player is in it, but will attempt to do so as soon as they step outside, cancelling if they step back in.

Enemy drillships produce a steady trickle of COGs from Spawn tube devices. If all of these are destroyed, no more COGs will appear, and the ship can be destroyed (or defanged and looted) from within, more or less at your leisure. On the other hand, if you claim the drillship, any spawn tubes still present will continue producing COGs, which will then rampage through the ship.

## Notes

Damaging the drill on a ship below 26% will make the ship unable to submerge. However, drills have several times more health than any other component.

Taking out 60% of the hull pieces and replacing the Drillship Core (directly behind the drill at floor separation level) with the same level Drillship Core or higher will claim the drillship.

"G" sends your ship underground if it's on the surface, and calls it to you to the nearest landing site when it's already underground. Useful for when you are mining on the surface/caves and you don't want COGs to attack your drillship while you are away.

Being run over by a surfacing or diving drillship is fatal. This includes your own, so watch where you stand when remotely summoning it.

Only one drillship can be claimed by players at a time. Building an extra core and claiming a new drillship will cause the old drillship to turn hostile.

Surfaced drillships always park in a curved position, with the fore and aft pointed to starboard. A four-segment drillship forms almost a complete semicircle. This means that the starboard side is by far the most protected to attacks on the surface, though it tends to face the wall underground. Place turrets accordingly.

Drillships are completely safe underground, barring actually driving into lava. COGs can't reach them there, volcanic eruptions pass safely overhead, and even coal consumption stops. Of course, without deployed modules, no major crafting or research is possible. Even so, submersions provide a chance to repair damage, do minor manual crafting, set up complicated crafting queues, take stock of inventory, and rearrange the drillship's fittings in peace. Good time to research things for the wiki, too!