Resources
Strategic Materials
Strategic materials are manufactured and selectively extracted components used by advanced buildings, ships, and technologies. Their production depends on a working industrial chain.
Factories: 2 base per tick
Asteroid Mines: 2 base per tick
Factory inputs: common, rare, fuel, power
01
How it works
- Factories convert common minerals, rare minerals, fuel, local power, and labor into credits and strategic materials. Unlike mined resources, factory strategic output is not multiplied by planetary mineral abundance.
- Asteroid Mines provide another strategic source, but still need credits, fuel, power, and workers to run effectively.
- Ordnance Carriers reduce common-mineral and strategic-material ammunition spending for Bombers, Missile Cruisers, and Planet Destroyers during a fleet battle. Their cargo is combat support, not a persistent ammunition stockpile or a readiness refill.
- Underpowered or undersupplied factories operate below capacity. Building more factories without their inputs increases nominal capacity but not dependable output.
02
Command advice
- Build the chain in order: dependable power and mining first, then factories.
- Industrialize populous systems that can staff the factories; use mining systems to supply the empire-wide inputs.
- Treat strategic materials as a mobilization reserve before advanced fleet or megaproject construction.