SURVEYOR
Surveying is the act of finding material for production. The first step of making everything from a dice to a starship.
In order to survey, you will need the appropriate survey tool for the job.
These are in alphabetical order:
Ambient Solar Energy Surveying Tool
- Find where to put your Solar farms
Chemical Survey Device
- Find Fiberplast, polymers, liquid petrochem fuel and lubricating oil
Flora Survey Tool
- Find Cereals(Corn, rice, oats, wheat), Seeds (Vegetables and fruits), and lastly Wood.
Gas Pocket Survey Device
- Find Gases (Inert and Reactive)
Geothermal Energy Survey Device
- Find where to put your geothermal plants.
Mineral Survey Device
- Find Solid Petrochem Fuel, Radioactive isotopes, Metals (Steel, Iron, Aluminum, Copper), Low grade ores, Gemstones.
Water Survey Device
- Find where to put your Moisture Vaporators
Wind Current Surveying Device
- Find where to put your Wind farms.
Reminder: Not all planets carry all items. If you can't find for example Liquid Petrochem Fuel, then it's not on that planet.
Survey Skill:
Survey skill plays three roles. How long range your device is, how much you earn from survey missions, and how much you sample each tick. Starting at 0 survey skill you have 64m. This means you can see in a square around you that is 64 meters by 64 meters with a great resolution. Later you have the option of getting 120m, 192m, 256, 320m ranges with less resolution. Meaning if you want the most accurate, it is worth going down to the lower ranges to find the peak.
Using the Survey Device.
Once you have your surveying device and a product to find. Click on the survey icon in your device window or make a ' /survey' macro. Then follow the percentiles until you get to the highest percentile in your area. It's a good idea to rename the bookmark "Resource Survey", the device makes to something like "Product, Product type, percentile". This will make it easier to find again as the next time you survey anything, the "Resource Survey" bookmark will move.
When you've found a good percentile (50% or above.), you can start to sample by hand.
Note that products will move occasionally so bookmarks aren't valid forever.
Resource Concentrations
The resource concentrations can roughly be grouped into these categories:
- - High and Plentiful: JTL resources, Chemicals and Inert Gas (Up to 99% and can easily find spots in the 90s)
- Medium: Non-JTL Minerals except Ore, Non-JTL Reactive Gas and Flora. (Up to the 90s as well, but normally have to settle for the 80s or even the high 70s)
- Low and Rare: Non-JTL Ore, Water, Wind Energy and Solar Energy (Up to the 70s, but often have to settle for the 60s or even the 50s)
Survey Missions
Survey missions from the Artisan Terminal is one of the easiest and quickest way I've found to get credits early game. All you need is a survey device (the starting mineral one does great but having the gas pocket or chemical survey device also helps) and a speeder (Get the speeder from the legacy mission at the start).
Find an artisan terminal that is on the outskirts of town or in a player town so you have an easy time rushing away to your mission objective. Next, bookmark that terminal so you know how far away from terminal you are (hover over the arrow on your minimap will indicate how far away the waypoint is.). Travel 1024 meters away from the terminal in any direction. Search in that local area for all high percentages of multiple types. When you've found 3-6 types of products with 69% or above and bookmarked those locations. Then it's just a matter of going back and forth from the terminal and your surveyed area. Refreshing the terminal to find those types of products you've already found is worth it.
Beware of low grade ore missions. Most ores are capped at 65%.
Reminder: You can get accepts two missions. Getting higher survey skill will increase the payouts. At max skill, each trip can give 1800 cr for each mission. 3600 cr for just travelling 2 km.
HAND SAMPLING
Here are some tips for increasing sampling rates:
- Hand Sampling Droid Module Sampling Power: Cap is 60 (R3 Adv) and translates to 60% increase in sampling
- Hand Sampling Entertainer Buff Functions properly and yields +10% to resource sampling.
- Chandad Food Buff +18 Surveying for 18:00, yielded about +14% resource increase in my testing
- Resource Scavenger Pet Skill Requires Master CH and completing 20 ‘survey events’ while your pet is out to gain the skill. Adds +60% to resource sampling.
- Surveying SEAs Can get up to +51 Surveying and were fixed to function properly in the November 2022 update.
- Sorosuub Personnel Comlink Wrist-P3 (Right) Has +5 to Surveying and was fixed to function properly in the November 2022 update.
- Corellidyne Personal Insugency Wrist Implant -Black- (Right) Has Sampling Resource Increase +5 and was fixed to function properly in the November 2022 update.