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Ruins
Image by NASA/Uni. of Arizona
Ruins are the remains of ancient civilizations on your worlds.
Ruins can contain resources such as fuel, minerals, facilities, ship components, technology one level higher than your current level in that area or even advanced technology not research-able at all normally. Note that technology can only be found after recovering buildings, and the type of building determines what type of technology you will find when you find it.
There is a down side to digging up ruins however; you may activate hostile robotic guardians which will attack your engineers.
Important (v5.60): If you get attacked by robotic defenders, just defend and let them kill themselves attacking you. Otherwise your colony might surrender, causing loss of troops, ships and facilities. The bug only happens if you attack them. It's fixed in the next version.
Ruin Categories
Ruins appear to be classified according to two values, Condition and Size.
Possible Ruins categories [1]
- Destroyed Outpost
- Ruined Outpost
- Ruined Settlement
- Ruined Colony
- Ruined City
- Damaged Installation
- Abandoned Installation
- Partially Intact City
- Deserted Intact City
- Deserted Intact Cities
Both Size and Condition appear to modify how many installations are able to be recovered, with larger and more intact ruins having more potential installations.
How to Exploit Ruins
Planets with Ruins require a Xenology team to be transported to them, then have them take the long process (up to years) to discover all there is to know about the Ruins and the empire they belonged to. The higher the tech level (Tx[where x is the level of their tech]) the more advanced ship components you may find. However, the level of the ruins does not affect the level of technology you may find.
After your Xenology team is done deciphering the ruins, bring in Engineer brigades to dig up and find the useable materials, facilities, technologies, etc.
Ruins will still generate trade products for the civilian economy after discovery and extraction however.