Resources

The Three Resources

Metal

The most broadly used resource. Metal is required for every building upgrade, every ship, and most research. Your Metal Mine is the single most important structure on any planet — keep it upgraded.

• Produced by: Metal Mine
• Capped by: Metal Storage
• Used for: buildings, ships, research

Carbon

Required for most buildings and all ship hulls. Carbon production scales like Metal and is your second priority for early upgrades.

• Produced by: Carbon Mine
• Capped by: Carbon Storage
• Used for: buildings, ships, research

Hydrogen

A premium resource that becomes increasingly important as your empire matures. Its primary roles are:

• Fleet fuel — all ships burn hydrogen when traveling. Every mission dispatch deducts hydrogen from your origin planet's stockpile.
• Asteroid dock upkeep — Mining Ships stationed at an asteroid consume hydrogen continuously to maintain orbit.
• Advanced research — most mid- and late-game research nodes require hydrogen alongside metal and carbon.
• Some ship construction — certain civilian and utility ships (such as the Colonizer, Mining Ship, and Lynceus) still require hydrogen to build.

Early-game players can safely deprioritize hydrogen; it becomes increasingly important once you start dispatching fleets and pursuing advanced research.

• Produced by: Hydrogen Synthesizer
• Capped by: Hydrogen Tank

Production Formula

All three mines follow the same underlying formula. Output grows significantly with each level — the relationship is exponential, not linear. This means upgrading a mine from a low level to a high level yields much more than simply upgrading two separate mines to lower levels. Invest in depth on a single mine rather than spreading upgrades thinly.

Storage and the Production Cap

Every mine stops producing when its corresponding storage building is full. This is critical to understand:

If Carbon Storage is full, your Carbon Mine produces nothing.

The storage buildings set an absolute cap on how many units you can hold. When you are offline for hours, your mines will fill storage and then sit idle until you log in and spend some resources.

Practical implication: before a long offline period (overnight, workday), upgrade your storage buildings so they can absorb the expected production. A mine that sits idle at a full cap is wasted time.

Storage buildings also follow an exponential upgrade curve. Early levels are affordable and worth doing before long offline stretches.

Starter Resources

New players begin with a small stockpile of Metal and Carbon — no Hydrogen at the start, as the Hydrogen Synthesizer must run for a while before meaningful amounts accumulate. Your homeworld mines at level 1 are already running from the moment you register.