Extractor

"*These harvesting towers are the Electrum-mining tools of the Wardens, feeding power up the Legion chain and devastating their surrounding environment in the process. They are often protected by Legion troops and Nodes, which must be dealt with before the Extractor can be damaged.*"

- In-game codex description

An **Extractor** is a large tower-like boss that is planted by a Prime. It sends out raiding squads to attack outposts.

## General

Extractors emit a massive cloud of electronic radiation that can affect flight engines, making consistent flying very hard. While planted and active, they will lend their power into making the Prime more powerful. They won't create the cloud or make a Prime more powerful if deactivated. They are also the main target of Vigilantes.

## Combat

The Legion Extractor is a central extraction unit with an inner, protected core, either guarded by Extractor Squads of varying Cyclops and/or Giants, or, at minimum, four "nodes" with a varying degree of defense and offense systems to hold the player back.

Extractors come in two variants, and these guards must be defeated to drop the central extraction unit's armor to expose the inner core:

* **Active Guard**: Typically guarded by a mix of the planet's selection of Cyclops and Giants.
* **Siege Guard**: Guarded by multiple nodes with a spherical core that powers its combat systems. These cores may have rotating shields that may block player shots.

Siege Guards have these nodes planted in the local Electrum Veins surrounding the central unit. Stronger variations of the Extractor have slowly spinning shields to protect the nodes from pilot and ally fire as a defensive measure. Later planets have Node Covers that need to be plucked. On the offense, nodes have a wider selection of attacks:

* Long range beam attack, which aims towards a target and fires a long, persisting beam that breaks Active Shields on hit.
* Shockwave attack, which launches a long range, swiftly growing wave of damage that breaks the Active Shield on hit; this attacks causes massive damage, and can take down large groups of allies immediately if in coordinated succession with other nodes.
* Flamberge attack, which emits one, two or four long bars along the ground, spinning continuously; this attack breaks Active Shields on hit.
* Fissure attack, which sends a fissure through the earth towards its target, breaking Active Shields on hit. The least dangerous and easiest attack to evade, but completely silent, which can catch an unsuspecting ship off guard.

The central extraction unit themselves have very similar attacks.

* Shockwave and Flamberge attack when nodes- and thus armor ring- is down.
	+ Flamberge will instead always have four long, rotating bars along the ground that the player must jump over to avoid massive damage while shooting at its core.
* Launcher attack when its armor ring is up (Ancient Extractors / Tier 4). In the gap of the ring matrix, an orb of either two colors will appear. These orbs can be shot at to disable it.
	+ Red orbs will fire a volley of usually four or five projectiles into the air, before falling back down onto a highlighted area of where it will hit.
	+ Purple orbs fire a single shot that creates vortexes, similar to the Imploder.

Extractors can be left in a dormant state if the planet's Prime has been defeated. They and its possible Legion Squad will not attack until provoked, even if by grazing them with the ship.

## Extractor Variants

### Extractor

The basic Extractor variant. Standard Extractors do not have much defense.

### Advanced Extractor

An upgrade to a normal Extractor. It will appear if a base Extractor is not destroyed for a substantial amount of time. They have more defenses, and are arguably harder to defeat.

### Greater Extractor

Greater Extractors appear if an Advanced one stays undestroyed for a very long time. They have even more defenses, and send out more dangerous raiding parties. These are planted by default in Act 6 and 3 of them appear immediately after a Prime lands in the same act.

### Ancient Extractor

The highest tier of Extractors. It appears if a Greater is left alone for an extremely long amount of time, and they are arguably the hardest to destroy.

## Trivia

* Attacks that Nodes and the main Extractor share can friendly fire their own troops.
* When Vigilantes destroy Extractors, they will always leave the cores behind.
* It is possible to avoid the cloud of radiation by flying over it, as it does not go up all the way to the planet's atmosphere.