Resources and Colonies

Five materials

There are five things to mine in this world, and the list is closed. Each material holds its own limit, so a shortage is always specific: "nothing to print hulls from" or "nothing to feed the reactor".

• metals — how much: hulls, stations, shipyards;
• volatiles — how long: life support and reaction mass;
• isotopes — how powerful: reactors and thrust;
• rare earths — how precise: sensors and engines;
• crystals — how many of you there are and how fast you think. They are hardly ever mined: a lab grows them.

Surveying raises the yield

A station starts digging at once, but from unsurveyed ground it takes only what lies on top. The more is known about the interior, the more tonnes. An orbital survey is one button, instant and free, but it sees a planet only skin-deep. The rest is surveyed by a probe you fly over the terrain yourself (see "Probe Flight").

What is surveyed is a fact of the world: whoever arrives next finds the site surveyed. What is mined is mined for everyone too.

A colony grows from one factory

A ship puts a mini factory into orbit, and that needs no research at all. From then on the factory places the orders: mining stations, an observatory, a crystal lab, a data centre, a comms station. The ship is free after that; the colony grows on its own.

A station hangs in orbit and sends its drones down: mining and processing are one building. When a site is worked out, the station crawls to a new one under its own power. Stations have levels, and each is opened by its own node of the tree.

The warehouse and its cap

All your stations in a system pay from one warehouse, so there is no ore to ferry between orbits. An ally from your Exodus branch standing in the same system may also print at your factory and top up from your warehouse once their own runs dry.

The warehouse has a cap, and the factory sets it. When the warehouse is full, mining stops and the deposit stays untouched: digging into a full warehouse would waste what cannot be replaced. The top bar will tell you plainly that mining has stopped.

A colony works without you

A finished colony stands on its own: the stations work, the warehouse fills, the observatory watches. There is nobody to take it away: the aliens do not move, and another player won't touch your stations. While you are away, the most they can do is breach the colony and use it for a while — see "Scripts and the Firewall".

A colony can be lost in two cases: if you built it yourself next to someone who was already there, or right up against a restless star. A stellar flare damages the stations nearby; a damaged station mines nothing until it recovers. Only a second flare in a row destroys it. The details are in "Threats and Losses".

Projects

Beyond stations, a colony sometimes takes on bigger work — a project. It opens on its own when the world has what it needs, it has a list of conditions, and it cannot be failed: a project has no timers. The player completes it, and the reward goes to every copy standing in the system at that moment. The biggest project of all opens the next era.