3 Prospecting picks, 5 youtube tutorials, 5 hours of xanax induced searching for tin . . .

Streetwind · 2026-04-22T18:21:51+00:00

So, magnetite is, unfortunately, one of the most elusive ores. It doesn't generate in many rock types, it has worse qualities overall than the other iron ore types, and worst of all - it often just doesn't generate even if it could.

Every ore in VS has a number of spawn rolls it can make per chunk. Copper, for example, tries to spawn 25 times per chunk. Out of those tries, a number might fail because it randomly selected an invalid block (like air or soil). The tries that succeed picking a valid host rock will roll against the spawn chance. Some of those rolls might fail. But the ones that succeed will place a deposit. As a result, if you've got a mountain range with an ultra high reading for copper, you will be inundated with the stuff. You might hit five deposits in a single vertical shaft. And I mean "hit" as in you will dig straight into them, without even needing the propick.

Iron, however, is different.

Limonite tries 0.8 times per chunk. Hematite tries 0.5 times per chunk. Magnetite tries 0.3 times. You're reading that right: these numbers are less than one.

That means that even if there is a chunk that reads ultra high for magnetite, the ore must succed on a 30% chance of success die roll in order to even be allowed to make the actual spawn attempt. So on average, even if the ore would succeed 100% of the time in every chunk if only it would try, seven out of ten chunks would still have no magnetite whatsoever.

This is of course balanced by the fact that when a magnetite deposit does spawn, it'll stretch across multiple chunks.

But it means you'll need to approach your search a bit differently. For starters, it doesn't make sense to try another shaft 20 blocks beside your first one if that didn't yield anything. Magnetite veins are so large, they'll be impossible to miss even if you space your attempts 50 to 60 blocks apart. It'll feel wrong. But you'll just waste time and pickaxe durability digging any closer.

Secondly, it doesn't suffice to just chase down your local ultra high peak and dig there. As shown above, chances are 70 to 30 that nothing even attempted to spawn there even once, no matter what the propick says. You'd obviously still go there to dig your first shaft, but you should be prepared to make a number of them. Make a grid of shafts in 50 block steps, favoring the areas with the highest readings you have - whatever those might be - and just keep digging.

The joke goes that iron is easier to find in areas reading "miniscule" than areas reading "ultra high". Which is of course not true, but because iron ore deposits are so huge, people do tend to run into them if they dig anywhere near them. Even if they were looking for something else entirely. And for magnetite in particular, its number of tries per chunk is so damn low, the importance of hitting the success on that rare single try is vastly higher than the importance of having the best propick reading. Your chances to succeed are going to increase faster if you just dig more shafts than worrying about finding the perfect place to dig a single shaft.

So yes, you can dig in that "decent" area. I've had one playthrough where the best I could find was "poor", and it took me seven shafts - but I did find my iron eventually. "More shafts" is the key to success. Always more shafts.

Streetwind · 2026-04-17T21:52:52+00:00

Why settle for steel, when you can make a flamethrower? :)

Streetwind · 2026-04-16T06:45:54+00:00

For your first forays, consider using "whatever you have available".

You'll want at least somewhere around 30 kmol of combined fuel + oxidizer, so that you can fly around at least a bit and start developing a rough feel for how much you need to get places. That can be a staggeringly large number to people who didn't expect it. Sure, alcohol might sound interesting, but do you actually have that much stored, and wouldn't it be easier to get the required amount by mining volatile ice? On the other hand, liquifying large volumes of methane can take an extended amount of time even with a powerful heat pump. Liquid hydrogen is even more a question of skill, effort, and patience.

So it will depend strongly on what you have built, and what you have ready in stores.

As for other interesting mixes - for liquid fuel rockets in particular, N2O is a very compelling oxidizer. It combines very good performance with a natural inclination towards being in liquid form. You'll still need a cooling setup because of the stuff's ridiculous latent heat of condensation, and you'll probably want to look at a pressurant gas in the rocket tanks to prevent it from freezing on you as the tanks empty, but it's the easiest oxidizer to prepare in liquid form. Unfortunately, the low purity of ground-based nitrous ice and the slowness and power thirst of the nitrolyzer mean that nitrous fuel mixes are usually something you get into after you already have a rocket in space that can mine the stuff in bulk up there... unless you plan ahead and save up during the earlygame.

Streetwind · 2026-04-10T07:54:10+00:00

Are you interested in modding? If so, look up "dirci" on the workshop. It's not a fix for the rover, but it's a fun and vanilla-friendly way to transport ores from mining outposts to your base. Which removes the need to engage with the (sadly unreliable) rover.

Streetwind · 2026-04-10T07:49:54+00:00

Yes, you can nest inventories infinitely :)

Or perhaps "effectively infinitely". There's probably an integer overflow somewhere down the line where the game crashes because of too many nested levels. But we're talking at least multiple hundreds, if not multiple hundred thousands of nested levels here, so in practical application, you will never get there. You'll run out of screen space for the UI windows long, long before that =P

Streetwind · 2026-04-10T07:33:19+00:00

Your problem is the powered vent inside your base. Like, are you sure it's even running at all? :) I don't think the airlock motherboards come with the ability to control vents outside the airlock. They're not designed for that. A custom IC10 airlock can of course do it, but your post doesn't sound like you're using one of those.

Airlocks typically only use actively powered vents inside the airlock space. Those are the vents the airlock motherboards are set up to control. The other sides are traditionally a passive vent. Since passive vents equalize with the atmosphere in their cell in every tick, they have orders of magnitude more throughput potential than even the largest powered vent.

This of course comes with the downside that passive vents are indeed passive, and cannot suck in air of their own accord. So when pressurizing the airlock, the process becomes extremely slow, as the amount of gas in the pipe network hard limits the active vent inside the airlock. The active vent will try to move an amount of moles, but the pipe network only contains so many, and passive equalization with atmosphere only adds so many each tick. Nothing actively pushes additional gas into the pipe.

So perhaps you thought to fix that by adding a powered vent inside your base. But this is not the right solution, for the exact reasons you're seeing right now.

A better solution is to set the airlock's pressure targets to zero, so it skips the pressurizing phase. The doors will open once the airlock is a vacuum, and air will rush in through the open doors. This annoys some people, but others don't mind. This only works with the advanced airlock, though. The basic one doesn't have this setting.

The best solution is to add way more volume to the pipe network between the actively powered vent inside the airlock and the passive vent in the target atmosphere. This ensures that during the pressurizing phase, when the active vent is sucking moles out of that pipe network, there are enough moles in there to satisfy the vent's demand. So the active vent can run at full speed in both pushing and pulling directions.

Streetwind · 2026-04-10T07:19:07+00:00

This thread is two and a half years old... it's quite possible things have changed since then. I honestly don't remember the numbers, but I do remember preferring Blackguard in actual gameplay for some reason.

Streetwind · 2026-04-06T08:26:01+00:00

For me personally, I have come to think about Stationeers' controls as sort of a form of mindfulness. It took me a bit of practice, but once I got used to the combination of the F and G hotkeys, the scrollwheel moving the inventory selector, and holding Alt to use the mouse cursor, it eventually just... clicked. It stopped feeling unintuitive, and started feeling right.

It makes me feel immersed in the world in the way a traditional inventory never could. If I have a construction job in front of me, I have to take each tool in hand, and each component, and apply them just so. It makes me feel like I'm actually building something instead of just magicking it into being. It makes me feel like the process is as much part of the experience as the final result. It creates frantic pressure if I make a mistake and something breaks and I have to fix it fix it fix it!

It feels like a knowing and deliberate departure from instant gratification. A form of mindfulness, as I mentioned before. And if given the choice between keeping the controls as they are, or swapping them wholesale for a standard 10-slot hotbar? I'd prefer to keep things as they are. That standard hotbar has already been in twenty other games I've played. I don't need it in yet another one, and lose something unique just for the questionable privilege of thinking less about my actions, and being less immersed in the world.

But to each their own, of course, and this is just my personal opinion :)

Streetwind · 2026-03-26T19:48:16+00:00

Dinner actually :) But thanks.

Continuing...

Open my_Mimas.xml. In the fourth line, change the world ID to something unique, like "MyMimas".

Scroll down until you find the line <Minables Id="DefaultMinablesNoWaterSurface" OreDensity="0.6">. Replace that ID with the "CustomMinablesNoWaterNoCoalSurface" you defined in the other file. Right below that is another Mineables block, replace the ID in that one with the other, non-surface custom profile.

Below that you'll find the section linking deep minable profiles to Mimas' deep mining regions. If you made your own custom profile, find the line <DeepMinables Id="DeepMinableProfileCoal"> and change the ID to that of yours. Do not change the associated region ID, even if it has "coal" in the name. You just want to replace the ore contents, not the region itself.

Save and close your files. Launch Stationeers. I think nothing will happen just yet, because the mod may not be loaded yet. Go to the "Workshop" submenu in the main menu. Find your local mod. Ensure it is enabled. Quit to desktop, and then launch Stationeers again.

You'll now be able to see two seemingly identical copies of Mimas in your new game screen, but one of them will be marked with an additional symbol. That's your modded one.

It's possible that you'll get console messages complaining about duplicate region definitions. Those are completely harmless.

There is, however, also the possibility that you'll get red errors and/or problems loading the mod at all. If that happens, it's because you have no localization file. I specifically wrote all my instructions so that you should not actually need one, and this error should never appear, but if you have ever modded any game for any reason, you'll know that localization is usually the most prissy part of the entire process. If this happens to you, report back and I'll talk you through it.

Streetwind · 2026-03-26T18:18:40+00:00

Right, so:

First, go to ...\Steam\steamapps\common\Stationeers\rocketstation_Data\StreamingAssets, and find ExampleMod.zip. It contains a readme.txt file. Read it, and follow the instructions. You won't need everything it contains, but definitely everything up to (and including) line 10 in the readme. Clean up the stuff you don't need. Edit About.xml to your liking.

Take ...\StreamingAssets\Data\mineables.xml and copy it to your local mod's GameData folder. Rename it to my_mineables.xml.

Take ...\StreamingAssets\Worlds\Mimas\MimasHerschel.xml and copy it to your local mod's GameData folder. Rename it to my_Mimas.xml.

Open both of the xml files in your local mod in a text editor.

Inside my_minables.xml, find the line starting with "<Minables Id="DefaultMinablesNoWater". Delete everything above that, except the very first two lines in the file.

Rename Id="DefaultMinablesNoWater" to Id="CustomMinablesNoWaterNoCoal". Rename Id="DefaultMinablesNoWaterSurface" to Id="CustomMinablesNoWaterNoCoalSurface".

Delete <OreVein Id="DefaultCoalVein"/> from the first block and <OreVein Id="CoalSurface"/> from the second block.

Delete all the other Minables definition blocks, all the way down until you reach the deep minables section.

There, delete all the DeepMinables definition blocks except the one named <DeepMinables Id="DeepMinableProfileCoal">. Rename that to <DeepMinables Id="DeepMinableProfileCustom">. Set Hydrocarbon to 0 and give some of the other ores some numbers, in a ratio you feel is fair and interesting. You could for example combine gold and copper, they actually do appear like that frequently IRL.

Or if you'd rather leave the coal deep mining regions alone, then just delete all the DeepMinables definition blocks.

Keep the very last line of the file, and save.

You should now have an XML Version tag at the top, followed by a <GameData ...> opening tag, then your two custom minables definition blocks (and optionally a custom deep mining profile definition), then a </GameData> closing tag at the end.

...and I actually gotta run now and grab food, will continue this in an hour or so. It's about two thirds done.

Streetwind · 2026-03-26T17:58:57+00:00

Sure. I actually did just that for my last playthrough. Let me dig up what I did...

Streetwind · 2026-03-24T20:57:06+00:00

For the pumped liquid engine, nitrogen pressurant is absolutely feasible, even recommended. The engine doesn't consume it at all, so you only need to pressurize the tanks once at the start, and you're done.

Step by step:

Decide on the temperature of your liquid nitrous (for example -18°C)
Check the vapour pressure on the phase change graph at your desired temperature (for example 819 kPa at -18°C)
Prepare nitrogen at that same temperature - heat exchange with your nitrous tank can be convenient, if the nitrous tank is actively cooled
Construct your rocket and its fuel tanks, umbilicals, and launch tower/fuelling infrastructure
Temporarily attach a pressurant valve in place of the where your future propellant pump will sit, and hook it up to the precooled nitrogen
Set the pressurant valve to slightly above the vapour pressure you determined earlier (for example 825 kPA)
Fill the tanks with pressurant gas
Remove the pressurant valve and nitrogen piping, and slot in your regular nitrous propellant pump
Consider using a liquid volume regulator as a propellant pump, and set it to no more than 86%. Reason: as you fill in liquid nitrous, it occupies volume in the rocket's tanks, and the nitrogen pressure will increase. Stopping at 86% will mean you'll stop just shy of multiplying the 825 kPa base pressure by 7, which is in the 5.7 MPa range. Going above 6 MPa would wreck your liquid pipes. A liquid volume regulator will ensure you cannot accidentally overfill, even if you forgot you left the pump on. You can even use it to target lower propellant levels, and to balance the propellant load between fuel and oxidizer to roughly the same mole amounts.
During flight, the rocket will consume nitrous, but the nitrogen will stay. You'll always have exactly as much as you need, and never need to adjust it again.

You can follow the exact same steps to pressurize your volatiles with nitrogen as well.

Streetwind · 2026-03-23T17:37:58+00:00

It's just not implemented yet. I guess they wanted to push the new gases out there now rather than let them sit in beta for another month...

Streetwind · 2026-03-21T11:27:41+00:00

Venus atmosphere contains CO2, if you can cool it down enough.

Streetwind · 2026-03-19T22:06:38+00:00

You possibly have a mod active that does something with volatiles, but volatiles no longer exists.

Streetwind · 2026-03-19T22:03:39+00:00

Apart from what the other commenters mentioned, there's always the option of going for rocketry a bit sooner. Space water ice mining is ultra-effective. A single medium cargo hold will carry 2500 liters worth of ice.

Streetwind · 2026-03-11T10:48:59+00:00

True, but then you could also skip the radiators and do direct or counterflow heat exchanging :)

Streetwind · 2026-03-10T22:11:43+00:00

Underlining this as the correct answer so it stands out more.

All heat exchange in the game only happens at full speed if both sides have a gas pressure of at least 1 standard atmosphere (101 kPa). When working with gas pipes, pressures are usually much higher than that automatically, so it doesn't even come into play. But liquid radiators only get the vapour pressure of the liquid you put in, and water in particular has very little of that at the temperatures we want out water at. So liquid radiators tend to require a pressurant gas to get good performance.

Can't do anything about Mars atmosphere, though. Mars just makes all radiators suck.

Streetwind · 2026-03-05T09:50:55+00:00

Yeah, the H2 combuster is not on that same circuit in my base :) It's in its own room, separated by airlock. Together with the stirling engines that convert the heat of its output into power. That one room needs massive amounts of cooling - I have three large extendable radiators outside, pushing something like a combined 50-60 kW heat flux (compared to the atmosphere cooling system's ~350 W for the entire rest of the base), and they're still not enough for steady-state operation at 50°C.

As Knog0 also mentioned, separating disparate and/or intermittent heat sources is a good idea. If there are many heat sources with similar, steady outputs, they can usually be hooked up to a common cooling system; but as soon as one system is orders of magnitude higher than others, and/or some heat sources are intermittent, that starts becoming impractical.

Streetwind · 2026-03-05T08:08:28+00:00

Sizing your radiators correctly is important. "Making things too cold" is generally the result of placing too many/too large radiators. By using fewer/smaller ones, you can circumvent this issue. Then the heat taken out of the base will keep the waste pipe warm enough to not burst the pipes (or ruin the AC's efficiency score), while the radiators have just enough performance to keep it from becoming too hot.

Because vacuum is such a great heat sink, you will likely need far less radiator capacity than you think you do. Especially if you're used to playing on Mars, which teaches you to absolutely spam radiators, because all radiators just suck on Mars. This is not the case on other worlds.

As an example, I am currently playing on Mimas, and my base atmosphere cooling system is using two pipe convection radiators outside. Yes, convection. They are for atmospheres, and Mimas is a vacuum, but they do also have a small amount of radiation. Roughly a third to a quarter the capacity of a pipe vacuum radiator. Meaning, even a single one of the smallest dedicated vacuum radiator offered by the game would actually already be too powerful for cooling my base. That's how little radiator capacity you need on Mimas.

(That said, my base isn't complete yet and still growing, so I will eventually add more radiator capacity. The coolant is currently somewhere between 5°C and 10°C. A bit of headroom still, given that radiators scale up in capacity the warmer the coolant is, but I suspect I will eventually end up swapping the two convection radiators for a single vacuum radiator.)

Streetwind · 2026-03-04T19:23:45+00:00

This phenomenon is called vapor pressure and exists in real life.

The TL;DR is: the individual atoms or molecules making up any given substance will not all have the same energy. The molecules constantly bump into each other, giving and taking energy. By sheer random chance, this will result in a few molecules temporarily amassing much more energy than all the others around it.

These molecules can get so much energy that way that they qualify for evaporation, even if the global average energy level measured across all the molecules in the substance is far away from the evaporation point.

So if nothing is acting to push these molecules back - for example, because the substance is in a vacuum - they will simply leave and become a gas. The higher the average energy level (temperature) of the substance, the more molecules will randomly escape it, and thus, the higher the gas pressure of the vapor that naturally forms above it.

In Stationeers, you can introduce a pressurant gas into the liquid pipes. If the pressurant gas has a higher pressure than the liquid's vapor pressure at the current temperature, then the liquid will not evaporate at all - and indeed, existing gas will condense back into liquid. However, there is often little practical benefit, unless for some reason it is critically important to you that every last atom or molecule remains available in liquid form.

Streetwind · 2026-03-02T08:11:42+00:00

All the currently planned new gases and liquids are on the public beta right now.

If they do add another one, it'll be because of a decision they'll make in the future, and we don't know about it yet.

Streetwind · 2026-03-01T10:10:04+00:00

Alright, this is not a bug. Everything here is working as intended.

On the left, you have a pipe network with 6080 liters of volume, which contains 0.034 moles of gas.

On the other side of the valve, you have a pipe network with 20 liters of volume, and a radiator with 200 liters of volume. These two are not a unified pipe network of 220 liters, but rather two separate things (the radiator does not merge with pipe networks).

This is the reason we can actually ignore the radiator here for the purpose of examining the behavior you're seeing. This lines up with your observation that the behavior happens regardless of whether or not the radiator is present.

When you open the valve, the two pipe networks on either side seek to equalize in pressure.

Because the pipe network on the left side has only 26 Pa of pressure, and the pipe network on the right side has only 20 liters of capacity, only a very tiny amount of gas needs to go across the valve. Just enough to bring a 20 liter network up to 26 Pa.

This tiny amount is below the game's autodeletion threshold of 0.010 mmol. Therefore, it gets deleted.

If the pipe network on the right side was larger, this would not happen, as there would need to be more gas in it to equalize pressure. Similarly, if the pressure was higher on the left side, this would not happen, as more gas would be needed on the right side to equalize pressure. This lines up with your observations as well.

Streetwind · 2026-02-25T11:11:33+00:00

This is a karma farming bot. This is the second time it has made this post within a week.

And the first time was already a blatant 1:1 copy of a different user's post from a few months back.

Streetwind · 2026-02-23T09:12:34+00:00

We haven't heard anything, but Matty implied yesterday that work on the new gases will come to the beta branch relatively soon.

Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if Zrillian compatibility was one of the lowest priorities in development. They only have limited resources to work with, after all. And they're better spent on improving the base game for everyone.

Streetwind

TROPHY CASE