Extractor Pods are deployable mining devices added to SpaceCraft in Major Update #1 on October 8, 2026. You craft them, deploy them on unclaimed deposits away from your base, and they ship what they gather back to an Extractor Bay, so you keep earning raw materials while you explore. The October 8 patch note also calls them Extraction Pods and the receiving building the Extraction Bay; later patches use Extractor Pods and Extractor Bay. See Mining and Resources and Automation and Logistics.
Unlocking and Crafting
The Remote Extraction permit unlocks Extractor Pods and grants additional deployment slots. An October 9, 2026 hotfix made the pods craftable in the Workshop and reduced their crafting cost. You also need an Extractor Bay, a new base building that is required to deploy pods and collect their loot. See Progression: Permits and Experience.
How They Work
Step | Detail |
|---|---|
Deploy | Place a pod on an unclaimed deposit outside your base. The developer's preview says pods run on an autonomous battery. |
Fill | The pod extracts resources until its storage is full. |
Deliver | All its resources are then shipped to the Extractor Bay you selected. The preview says delivery time depends on the distance between the deposit and your base. |
Slots | Each player has a limited number of pod slots. The preview says the slot count stays the same no matter how many bays you build. |
Durability | Each pod has limited durability and must be recrafted after several uses. |
Queue feedback | Since October 13, 2026 the Extractor Bay shows feedback when pods are queued, instead of only displaying zeros. |
Deposit Stability
Major Update #1 gave deposits a Stability statistic. Lower stability increases the risk of an accident, which leaves the pod dismantlable by anyone; the developer's preview describes this as leaving your loot behind for other players to grab. Stability does not affect the extractors in your base, and a deposit's stability gradually recovers over time. The preview advises exploring further to find more stable deposits.
Liquid Extractor Pods
A liquid variant exists. Patch Notes v0.5.25674 on October 13, 2026 doubled Liquid Extractor Pod storage from 1,000 to 2,000 and fixed Liquid Extractor Pods that had no durability. See Liquid Resources.
Pods in a Corporation
The same patch fixed players being unable to deploy Extractor Pods because other members of their Corporation already had pods deployed. See Corporations and Co-Op.
Why Use Them
The developer pitches Extractor Pods as a way to raise your raw material income and automate mining while you keep exploring planets, mixing active exploration with passive income. Its stated aim for upcoming updates is that manual mining keeps its purpose while automation lets you choose where to spend your time.
Not Yet Published
As of October 18, 2026 the developer has not published the number of pod slots, the scale of the Stability statistic, how many uses a pod lasts, or the cost of a pod or an Extractor Bay. Both the Extraction Pod and the Extraction Bay were listed with placeholder models at release, to be polished in the next update.