Astroneer – Automation

I started playing Astroneer again, after being away for a year or two. The automation update (June 24, 2020) is great! I love the “Medium Resource Canister” that holds 32 of the same type of resource. So far I have one for iron, aluminum, compound, zinc, ammonium, and titanium.

Setup Auto Extractor

I was out of ceramic, but I found a clay deposit (Sylva planet). I found out that the “Auto Extractor” produces more of the resource than using your tool. (You’ll need to unlock using 7500 bytes and construct it using the large printer with 2 Steel, 1 tungsten carbide, and 1 rubber). I created one and dragged it over to the deposit. It’s too big to put on my tractor or buggy. I also dragged over a medium platform, medium generator with some carbon, and a few small wind turbines. I placed a Medium Resource Canister on the top of Auto Extractor, connected it to power, and turned it on (don’t forget that). It took awhile, but of course I was doing other things while it was working. But it filled up the canister without depleting the deposit!
Tip: It seems that you need to put 1 resource in the Medium Resource Canister first, so it knows what type it will “accept”. Then the Auto Extractor will deposit the resource nuggets in it.

Simple setup of Auto Extractor on clay deposit

Automate

Now, I can automatically smelt a resource from the source canister to a destination canister, and it doesn’t need an “Auto Arm”! Just put the canisters on the same table as the Smelting Furnace. See the tip above – I had to put one Ceramic in the “output” canister first, and tweaked the “Enable Output” setting until the process started automating.

Simple automation of smelting from one canister (clay) to another (ceramic)

How is your automation going in Astroneer?