Designations
Mining
Using the mining designation tool, you can select an area that should be excavated. The designated area has to be within a Mine Control Tower operation area, although this area can be modified, and selected anywhere in your colony. One dug-out square of height one is 24 - 42 units of loose material, and an accurate value is shown in #Density of Dumped Materials.
Dumping
You can select a zone where the trucks will automatically dump materials. This way the player can build ramps to reach areas with different elevation without needing to dig out the ramp, and at the same time, the materials can be dumped into the ocean, thus increasing the building area, allowing building of ports on uneven coast, or digging out materials on the beach that are below the sea level.
Retaining Wall are quite helpful if you wish to keep the terrain stable.
Loose Storage is more space efficient than a single height dumping zone, however, this holds only true for dumping zones lower than height 3. Meaning if you dump around height 3 amounts of material, it will be on par with storing that material in Loose Storage. Loose Storage II is more space efficient until dumping height 6, and Loose Storage III is more space efficient until dumping height 9.
It should be noted though that ports need to be placed on ground at least +2 sea level and at +5 maximum.
It is also possible to dump specific materials to a specific area. For that you need to assign a vehicle to the storage that you want to empty, assign that storage to the Mine Control Tower, allow dumping of that resource in the Mine Control Tower, and order the storage to be emptied. You might also have to restrict the storage to be emptied only by the assigned trucks only, as otherwise, other trucks might start dumping that resource elsewhere.
Density of Dumped Materials
The density of each material is shown in the following table. Density means an amount of materials for filling up 1 grid x 1 grid x height 1. Note that every ore and some other materials depend on "Ore Yield" at difficulty settings on game start.
| Materials | Density | Effect of "Ore Yield" | |
|---|---|---|---|
| unit/grid3 | relative | ||
| Iron Ore Copper Ore Gold Ore Limestone |
2.17 | 10 | yes |
| Coal | 2.60 | 12 | yes |
| Rock Gravel |
2.17 | 10 | no |
| Sand | 2.17 | 10 | yes |
| Slag Slag Crushed |
2.17 | 10 | no |
Dirt Compost |
1.52 | 7 | no |
 Waste |
2.17 | 10 | no |
Tree Harvesting
You can define which trees can be harvested by the Tree Harvester using the left mouse button, and deselect them with the right mouse button. The harvester will start harvesting trees that are closest to it. You need to assign a transport to the harvester, like a Pickup, so that it can dump the cargo somewhere, the same way as with the diggers.
For automated and sustainable tree growing and harvesting, see Forestry Control Tower.
