Harvesting a little Energy from a tile once and a while isn’t going to bring the Universe to a stand-still. But at what point does taking “a little” become taking “too much”? At what stage do you cross the line from “Intrepid Adventurer” to “Evil Stripminer”?

The generally accepted line is drawn somewhere between 300 and 350 depending on where you are in the Universe. A good rule to go with is that if you take a tile to less than 300 – you have stepped over the line. There are always going to be emergencies where you mined a fuel tile to allow you make a mission run in time – but in reality these are rare.

A tile that has been mined to 350 will take 7 days to replenish to 500 again. A tile that has been mined to 300 will take 10 days.

Intrepid Adventurers never mine a tile that has less than 350 resources.

Why have such a hard limit?

The Pardus Manual tells us:

Harvesting on fields with only few resources left (commonly referred to as “stripmining”) is not lucrative and often scorned upon, as the less there is left, the slower fields will regenerate.

How slow do tiles regenerate? The following table offers a general guide for how long it takes for a tile to regenerate based on how much of the resource is currently present:

Amount in the tile Time to regenerate
450  to  500  2 days
400  to  450  2 days
350  to  400  3 days
300  to  350  3 days
250  to  300  4 days
200  to  250  4 days
150  to  200  5 days
100  to  150  7 days
10  to  100  27 days

Table updated to reflect data observed first-hand

A tile that has only 10t of resources remaining will take around 57 days to fully replenished to 500t again.

The table above applies to all resource tiles except Exotic Matter (which regenerates at a fixed rate regardless of the amount present). For all other resources, the more of the resource that is present – the faster the tile will regenerate to maximum.

It’s all about sustainability. Don’t become the hated “Evil Stripminer” who is never welcome anywhere. Look after your resource tiles – they are the only ones you have!