Fossil Quarry

Fossil Quarry is a late-game digging building used to extract Fossil from Diamond. It is built for harvesting bone-rich deposits and requires a Duplicant with Masterworks skill training to operate. The quarry is permanently lit, so it provides its own light for the operator and does not need any separate lighting setup to benefit from light bonuses.

The building consumes 1 kg of Diamond to produce 100 kg of Fossil. Its base operation time is 80 seconds, and that time is affected by light and the operator’s Creativity attribute. Because of the large 1:100 mass conversion and the difference in specific heat capacity between the input and output materials, the quarry can create a significant temperature change in the processed material.

A few practical points make it especially useful:

• The output Fossil has the same temperature as the Diamond used to produce it.
• Diamond has a melting point of 3927 °C and a specific heat capacity of 0.516.
• Fossil has a specific heat capacity of 0.91.
• Magma and Rock Gas have a specific heat capacity of 1, which is relevant when comparing thermal behavior around the quarry’s output.
• Since the building emits permanent light, it can help maintain work speed without additional light sources.

In practice, Fossil Quarry is both a resource converter and a thermally interesting machine. It turns a small amount of Diamond into a much larger mass of Fossil, making it a valuable way to process Diamond into a useful sedimentary resource while also preserving the source material’s temperature in the result.