Oil Extractor

The Oil Extractor is a terrain-dependent liquid-extracting building that produces Oil when placed on specific ground types. It cannot be built on arbitrary tiles; valid placement is limited to Salt, Sand Floor (including Light Sand Floor / Darksand variants), and Shale. Each extractor gains an efficiency bonus from the tile it occupies: Salt yields a low efficiency, Sand Floor yields moderate efficiency, Shale yields full efficiency, and Darksand provides the highest bonus. As a midgame resource source, Oil Extractors are commonly used to feed Plastanium Compressors and Coal Centrifuges and form a key part of oil-based production chains.

Placement and output scale strictly with tile coverage and the tile’s affinity. Across versions the per-tile efficiency values have changed: in recent builds a fully covered Oil Extractor on Shale produces 30 oil/sec (200% of the base value), while earlier versions produced less (Shale used to give 24/s at maximum coverage). Darksand provides the strongest yield (historically introduced as a special affinity), Sand Floor provides a middle ground, and Salt gives the poorest yield—salt tiles also interfere with Water Extractor efficiency if surface water is not available, making them a least-preferred choice for long-term oil farms.

Practical usage and production planning:

• Use Shale and Darksand tiles whenever possible to minimize the number of extractors needed. One extractor on full shale coverage now supplies enough oil for two Plastanium Compressors or for multiple Coal Centrifuges depending on current version numbers (e.g., after the v8.0 changes a single shale extractor can evenly support two Plastanium Compressors or five Coal Centrifuges).
• Avoid building on Salt unless no other option exists. Salt coverage produces low oil and complicates water support from Shallow Water Extractors when surface water is absent.
• On Darksand, two Oil Extractors produce enough oil for three Plastanium Compressors; on Light Sand Floor the ratio flips (three extractors for two compressors). These ratios help plan how many extractors to place for a given compressor farm.
• If surface sand is scarce, produce sand from scrap using Pulverizers (two Pulverizers can supply three Oil Extractors), or mine sand with boosted Pneumatic Drills (roughly two drills for three extractors at full coverage). Boosted Pneumatic Drills maintain the same mining ratio whether extracting natural sand or pulverizer-produced sand.
• For coal production on Darksand, four fully-covered Oil Extractors can sustain a large Coal Centrifuge array (historically cited as enough for 15 centrifuges producing about 30 coal/sec), making oil extraction an efficient alternative to large-scale drill networks for coal supply.

Historical notes:

• The Oil Extractor was originally placeable on any tile and received bonuses only on shale. Since version 6.0 placement has been restricted to Salt, Sand Floor, Shale, and Darksand, with affinities adjusted (Salt ~30%, Sand Floor ~70%, Shale ~100% base, Darksand greater bonus). Subsequent updates increased health and per-tile shale efficiency (notably in version 7.0 and again in 8.0), raising maximum oil output per extractor and changing how many downstream buildings a single extractor can support.

Design tip: cluster extractors on high-affinity tiles and route water from Shallow Water Extractors only when necessary; balance the number of extractors to match the exact Oil-per-second requirements of Plastanium Compressors and Coal Centrifuges to avoid wasted throughput or resource bottlenecks.