Recycler ships are a special type of ship, the only ship in the game capable of picking up "Debris" from a Debris Field. These debris fields are the result of crashed ships, whether it is a spy mission gone wrong or an attack, repelled or otherwise, or fleet crash - there are a lot of resources just floating out there in space for you to grab! This tutorial will walk you through the basics of Recycler Ships, so you too can grab that floating space debris to grow your empire!
While climbing the mountain to Combustion Engine 6 Technology, the recycler often gets overlooked by the Large Cargo - an amazing upgrade in speed, durability and carrying capacity to the Small Cargo at this point in the game. But the Recycler is an essential ship moving forward - as it is the only one who can scoop up Debris that result from increasingly violent attacks players pose against each other.
And so, more and more you will be seeing debris floating around on the Galaxy tab. By hovering, you can see how many resources each patch of debris contains. And yes - these are FREE resources - the first one to send a Recycler ship to pick them up, gets them.
Beyond Combustion Engine 6 research, we will also need 2 levels of Shielding Tech to be able to operate in these near space environments. This requires a 6th level Research lab, as well as Energy Tech level 3 which the player probably might already have by now.
Remember, you cannot upgrade your Research Lab while you are researching, and you cannot research anything while you are upgrading your Research Lab.
Once these requirements are met, players can build recycler ships in their Shipyard; each one has a cargo capacity of 20,000 resources, so one full load of recycled debris can pay for the construction of the entire ship. Let's just say that recycling can be very profitable!
The downside is that Recycler Ships are quite slow, and stay that way throughout most of the game due to being based on Combustion Engine Technology.
With an available Recycler ship on your planet, all debris fields will include an additional hot button on the galaxy tab, like Spying, that will send out Recycler Ships to pick up the resources. The number of Recycler ships sent by clicking this hot button is the amount needed to pick up all the debris floating at the current time, or the max number available to send.
If you have some reason to believe there will be more debris there later, perhaps by the time your recyclers arrive, you can instead hot key into attack, select as many recyclers as you want, and then change the destination on the second fleet screen from "Planet" to "Debris Field". As always, this method also works without hot buttons, by manually entering the galactic coordinates of your fleets' destination.
Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to build a recycler ship and send it out into the galaxy to scoop up some free resources in the form of Debris. This will produce a "Transport Message" in the form of a Recycling Report like the following:
| Mission Parameters | Particulars |
|---|---|
| Type: | Tutorial Mode |
| Universe: | Any Universe |
| Duration: | Open, once per account per universe |
