Have a look at the Drill concept made by alex_bo:
The Drill is the resource mining structure of the human team and collects some invisible resource floating around everywhere. Neutrinos, purple matter, space vibrations, something like that.
The model should be rotationally symmetric and doesn't need to have an animation (but it can have one if you figure something out). Style wise, it should be similiar to the reactor. However, it needs some different features to clarify that it doesn't distribute power but collect a resource:
The glowing core will use a different color and effect.
A potential animation of the Drill should not include stuff rotating around its core.
The drill will also be much smaller as the reactor, less than half the height/width/length (so less than one eighth volume wise).