Allright, I have this neat concept and (again) no way to realize it without some serious helping hands.
I'll outline what I want to do, you tell me if it's doable; I've done some searching with the wiki and forums (and existing mods) but have not found anything really relevant.

I'd like to choose an area, either a box or circle work, a circle would be better accuracy-wise.
In this area, I want to know how much of some terrain material there is, gold for example.

The goal is to be able to do scans of a section of terrain and then make a rough guess about what the gold is worth.


Alternatively, some way to collect gold without appearing to touch it with an actor (obliterating terrain is fine).

I hope I was clear, it's become morning unbidden, and I'm passing out.
Thanks for whatever you can aid with.

Kyred did a mining ai that scans a piece of terrain for gold.

There's no easy way to determine material density, though you could get a rough estimate with some strengthrays into the ground.

To collect it, just have a bunch of single-pixel Actors pop in, EraseFromTerrain, and then delete themselves.

Allright, awesome, those ought to work.

Bump for new information.

Ok, I've created a tiny actor based on code from the Distraction Device and I can emit them to use as one might use a digger. They each have a script that constantly (each update) that uses EraseFromTerrain. They're not collecting any gold, though their team is set to 0 and they're alive. Is there another step I've missed?

Actually, I believe I spoke too soon. Thinking about it more, gold to be collected has to be dislodged first, then hit by an actor.

Try having your single pixel actors have attached emitters emitting negative mass mopixels.

Allright, I've made an emitter emit actors, and the actors have attached emitters that emit negative-mass particles.
This is not working either, but if more eyes make this bug shallower, here's what I have for the actor and it's aura of emissions.
http://pastebin.com/q36TLqAH