One of the early and advantageous aspects of the new WAX game, Far from Home, involves the ability to add modifications to a player's ship. These come in different options, but the most immediate one that is accessible now involves augmenting mining abilities.

The Technical Options

The four components available come in, and a kudos to the design team keeping with the lore of the game, different corporation variations:

• Apex-MH9 Extraction Unit
• Nomad-T1 Extraction Unit
• Erebus-GT1 Extraction Unit
• Arborite-S1 Extraction Unit

These variations become apparent in the names of the components, representing the different equipment makers and models.

However, more importantly, the components like the ships also come in different grades of technology, from tech 1 to tech 3 levels and with the corresponding difference in power too.

Installation Strategy

Because the components are included with an install-it, you-burn-it restriction, a player should do a bit of planning before using a scanner. Once installed, the component can't be recycled nor can it be shifted to another ship. With planning comes strategies. Here are some that can help your approach to the game, especially given that the price of components in packs and the secondary market makes them painful if installed wrong:

• Scouting - Because Far From Home has different ship levels, smaller Tech 1 ships excel in speed but give up advantages in storage capacity. Using components, one strategy would be use them as a scouts, finding the rarest of minerals or ice and let the component for mining speed up the harvesting. Faster in, faster out, and repeat trips can make up for smaller storage deliveries.
• Harvesting - Alternatively, the Tech 3 ships are the tanks of the fleet, moving high capacity storage, but slowly. So, adding components to speed up harvesting or better search scanning helps speed up their cycle. Percentage changes of harvest rates can have an impact over time, especially with high grade mining.
• Middle-Balancing - Tech 2 ships are more affordable but a middle point between small scouts and hefty tankers. They bring hope notable harvests, and scanning components can boost their performance, adding an edge if Tech 3 are out of the budget for some players. 
• Save and Trade - It's clear that components are limited in number and are going to become more valuable over time stocking up on unused scanners, particularly the rarer ones is a long game strategy, but it could pay off on secondary market movement months from now. The one risk to this strategy involves blueprints. There are manufacturing blueprint NFTs for components as well as ships. A competitor could undercut a save and trade strategy by flooding the market with the same scanners mass-produced. Welcome to market risk.

Component Installation

The use of a component is a bit tricky, so it helps to know how that works before starting as well. First, you need to have your ship identified. Then, you go to the Hanger screen in-game and look in the bottom right corner for the "Customize Ship" button. It will be in orange-yellow font motif.

Once select, the player is then presented with the dependent menu for selecting the given component. Before this can happen, a component already has to be in-game. This is done in the Warehouse tab. You find the component NFT in your wallet, select it, and then transfer the NFT into the game. When complete, the component will then be available in the customization menu below. If not, you won't see the component in your available inventory:

Once you see the component after clicking "Component Inventory" and select it, then it's time to execute the commitment. this is done by selecting it to highlight the option and then clicking the button in the third sub-menu displayed below titled, "Equip Component":

And that's it; the component is installed and the modified ship is now ready to deploy again. Get out and get mining again!

Other Articles on WAX's New Intersteller Game, Far From Home, and How to Play

See here for valuable quick start guides and how to get into space smart instead of being confused:

• Getting Started (Far from what?)
• Ship Navigation (how do I steer this darn thing?!?)
• Space Fuel Management (don't run out of gas on the far side of an asteroid!)
• Secondary Market Economy (build a business in space)

Where to find ships on the Wax Network:

• How to get started with Wax
• Wax markets: AtomicHub, NeftyBlocks, NFTHive (buying ships and resources)