Resources are the lifeblood of any fleet. Without a constant influx of resources, you can't build new ships. Without new ships, you can't defend your Command Ship, let alone mount an attack of any kind. Without a Command Ship, you've lost.

Resource Sources
The traditional asteroids, dust clouds, and nebulas aren't the only places to get your fix of valuable resources. Now available for the first time, there's a newly discovered source of crystal resources. All you need to do is figure out how to use it.

The standard harvesting targets for your Workers are the floating asteroids and dust clouds that litter every corner of space. Workers are well trained to find these deposits on their own as long as they're within areas of explored space.

Nebula Ribbons are rare but rich resource veins winding through nebula clouds. A Worker who locates one will follow the ribbon until it ends, stopping only to dump its load of resources. Supervise Workers closely when they're following these clouds. You never know where they'll end up.

Crystals can't be harvested conventionally. First, your Processors, Carriers, and Command Ship must be set up to handle these new materials. Then, your Workers must be equipped to grapple with the crystal and drag it back for processing.

The first step in exploiting crystals is to research Crystal Processing in the Research Manager. Next, upgrade your Command Ship, Processors, and Carriers. Finally (if you haven't done it already), research Salvage Ability and upgrade your Workers.

A word of caution about crystals: they're very unstable. They tend to explode violently if damaged--so violently that the shock wave emitted by the blast can instantly vaporize fighters.

Finding Resources
Resources within space you've explored are shown in the Sensors Manager. When told to harvest, Workers will strip every rock in explored space before declaring the supply exhausted.

Workers won't seek resources outside explored space. Use your Recons to search far and wide to find new fields for the Workers to devour. Once a field has been scanned by one of your ships, the Workers can see it and will move to it if ordered again to harvest. Crystals have such a strong energy signature that they appear in the Sensors Manager even if they're outside of explored space.

Basic Harvesting Strategy
Keep your Workers constantly busy collecting rock. If they're not harvesting available resources they're not earning their keep.

Because Worker pilots focus intently on their jobs, it's quite common for one to blunder right into an enemy fleet that's sitting on a distant resource field. It's up to you to keep this from happening by checking in with your Workers frequently.

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