Spice Derricks are a special type of building constructed only in the Civilization Stage that allows the player to obtain sporebucks by tapping the material wealth of the player's Homeworld. The amount of sporebucks received from spice derricks gradually drops as the player and AI nations continue to use them throughout the civilization stage.
Civilization Stage[]
The Spice Derrick construction bar.
Spice derricks are constructed when the player selects a vehicle, and then right-click on a spice geyser. Once the vehicle gets close enough to the geyser, it will deploy a Spice Derrick Pack which, after a short time, sets up and begins to add money to the player's empire. Spice derricks come in two varieties, land-based, and sea-based, and both land and sea vehicles are capable of deploying spice derrick packs, air vehicles cannot claim geysers. Vehicles are also capable of capturing derricks from other nations, military vehicles destroy an opposing derrick, then deploy a new pack over the geyser, religious vehicles can convert the workers of the derrick to follow the player's nation, and economic vehicles are able to bribe the workers of an opposing nation's derrick to work for the player's nation.
The usefulness of spice derricks slowly declines. As they produce less and less as the stage carries on. There usefulness is very limited later on in the civilization stage, at the start, all geysers are capable of producing §1,000 per minute, but while they are being tapped, their production slowly declines until nothing is earned from them. At that point, the player needs to rely on factories for income.
Space Stage[]
In the Space Stage, spice derricks become nothing more than a decoration for your home planet, since all wealth in this stage is earned by the player trading spice or completing missions. Derricks disappear for some reason and your vehicles collect the spice using giant balloon-like bags. A glitch will allow a derrick to appear on a tribal village when all the civilizations are destroyed and the monolith is used on the planet, thus leaving the derricks there. Or the derrick will appear on your Space Stage planet because of a glitch or something. They are however, still used by alien sapients that are in their civiliziation stage and generate some value to them, but are still useless to the player.
Galactic Adventures[]
Spice derricks can be placed within a player's adventure for cosmetic effects. Being a static object however, it does not animate nor can it be designated a color. However, smoke can be used as the actual Geyser part.