Tell me more ×
Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 5 down vote favorite

When scanning planets for resources (uh, it is obnoxious work — not fun!) there are indicators that fill up as you acquire more resources. (Eezo, Iridium, Platinum, Palladium)

Do these indicators show the maximum spare resources your ship can store? If so, how many resources is 100% on the indicator for each material? Or can you go over these limits? Or if you try to go over is the material wasted? If you go over this limit by picking up materials when not planet scanning (when down on a planet or space station), do you get credit rewards instead, like if you go over your Medi-gel limit?

screenshot of scanning a planet in Mass Effect 2

share|improve this question
1  
Dear Bioware: Please take out the mining tasks in ME3. The ME1 and ME2 systems felt like work, not fun. – Mufasa Dec 19 '11 at 15:32

1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

The bars cap out at 25,000, but they don't represent a resource stockpile limit. You can continue to accrue rare materials long after the bar is filled.

I think I made it up to 70,000 units of Palladium, once.

share|improve this answer
I've stockpiled over 200,000 units on some of them my last play through, so the max limit must be extremely high. – Kotsu Nov 11 '11 at 0:33
The number's probably stored as an int, which, depending on the language (32-bit integers are common) could mean a limit of 4,294 967,296. (Or more!) – Raven Dreamer♦ Nov 11 '11 at 0:37
1  
@Mufasa why would it need to be signed, though? You can't have negative resources! – Raven Dreamer♦ Nov 11 '11 at 0:45
2  
As a coder, no, I will not take ten seconds to make my ints signed just so that you can accumulate 10000 times the useful amount of minerals instead of "only" 5000 times. – jprete Nov 11 '11 at 3:01
1  
Also...based on what I see there, no wonder Microsoft thought the *#$@ mining interface was acceptable. You PCers only had to move the mouse around a lot. Us consolers had to go up...and down...and up...and down...slowly, over and over again. Especially for those of us who were OCD. – jprete Nov 11 '11 at 3:03
show 3 more comments

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.