There are three resources
Everything is built on metal, crystal and gas. Mines produce all three every hour and keep going while you are offline. But they are not equally scarce.
| Resource | Base per hour | Mine factor | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metal | 30 | 30 × L × 1.1^L | The most common. The base of every building and ship. |
| Crystal | 15 | 20 × L × 1.1^L | Scarcer than metal. Electronics and higher hulls eat it. |
| Gas | 0 | 10 × L × 1.1^L × temp | The scarcest. No base income, and it is fleet fuel. |
Gas has a base income of zero. Until you build a Nebula Siphon, not a drop arrives. It is also the fuel your fleets burn, so it is short more often than anything else. It is the resource that bottlenecks this game.
Gas production is multiplied by 1.44 − 0.004 × temperature.
Colder planets produce more gas. That is why temperature matters when you
pick a colony. Metal and crystal are unaffected.
Short on power and your mines idle
Mines draw power. If the Photon Forge generates less than they consume, every mine is cut by the same proportion. Raise mines without raising power and you end up with high levels and flat output.
- Photon Forge output:
20 × L × 1.1^L - Metal and crystal mines each consume:
10 × L × 1.1^L - Nebula Siphon consumes:
20 × L × 1.1^L— the gas mine draws double - Habitat Dome consumes:
10 × L × 1.1^L
People routinely miss that the gas mine and the habitat draw power at all. Raise either one and raise the Photon Forge with it.
Anything past the storage cap is gone
Storage has a limit, and overflow is not kept — it is discarded. If you sleep and wake up to no gain, you were almost certainly sitting at the cap.
| Storage level | Cap |
|---|---|
| 0 (base) | 10,000 |
| 1 | 20,000 |
| 3 | 75,000 |
| 5 | 255,000 |
| 10 | 5,355,000 |
| 15 | 110,925,000 |
| 20 | 2,296,600,000 |
The formula is 5,000 × ⌊2.5 × e^(20L/33)⌋. Growth accelerates
sharply with level, so one upgrade early buys a long stretch of not worrying about it.
Cutting build and research time
Every building costs base × factor^(level−1). Time scales with the
metal + crystal cost, and these facilities cut it.
- Assembly Forge — build time is divided by
1 + level. Level 1 alone halves it. - Nanite Factory — halves build time per level
(
1 ÷ 2^level). This is the facility that changes the late game. - Academy Core — research time is divided by
1 + level.
The most common early mistake is raising only mines. One level of the Assembly Forge halves build time, so the time you would spend on two mine levels is better spent there first.
Newbie protection
A commander below 50,000 points cannot be attacked by anyone more than 5× their score. Scouting is exempt, and it does not apply to NPCs or unowned planets. If you have just started, you can grow without being farmed by a veteran.