◉RED SOL is set on a living alien planet — not Mars. Your dropship and ten sleeper freighters were pulled through a wormhole; the crossing is one-way and the fleet is all you have. The planet was alive first: nine exotic biomes, wandering herds, giants in the sky and under the ground. You do not terraform it — you learn to live on it.
◉The founding dropship lands with your builders, stock and hangar aboard — it remains the colony's first store, crane and drone bay. The ten freighters stay in orbit, each carrying a sleeping cryo bay of colonists. Waking them is a deliberate act: a shuttle mission per freighter, and when the last bay is empty there are no more.
◉Every world is generated from a seed: 1000×1000 tiles of terrain, biomes, rivers, lakes, ice, flora and resources. The simulation runs on a flat 2D grid — terrain height is a rendering and movement-cost layer on top, never a third dimension. The renderer is full 3D with day/night lighting.
◉The world starts unknown. Ground near the colony is surveyed automatically; laying rail, pipe or roads surveys a corridor; survey probes launched from the dropship's silos open distant country, and a shuttle on a standing orbital-survey order banks research from high orbit. Nothing builds on unsurveyed ground, and wildlife only joins the field guide once sighted in surveyed country.
◉Each biome has its own flora, palette, resources and hazards — and some gate their own technology: vent fields, gas chains, river power, emberite seams and biome-border finds each unlock a unique extractor or power source. Some ground needs hardening research before it can be built on at all.
◉Rain, dust storms, snow, cyclones, radiation storms and meteor strikes roll across the world. Wind drives turbines in real time; storms ground the drone fleets; snow muffles the soundscape; animals treat a storm as night and bed down. Cyclones and radiation storms are events you plan around, not skip.
◉A sol is one full day/night cycle (about six real minutes at normal speed). Everything ticks on it: shifts, production, aging, research, weather. Time can be paused or run at higher speeds; the simulation is deterministic under the same seed.
◉Every colonist is an individual with a job, a shift (day, evening or night), a home, a routine — work, sleep, meals, leisure, commuting — and a happiness state. Nearby colonists are fully simulated and visible; the rest of the population runs in a cheap abstract tier so the colony can scale to thousands without slowing down.
◉Colonists age through life stages per sol and eventually retire: seniors keep the day-shift rhythm, and about two-thirds of adults pair up into couples and share households. Because every colonist enters as a workforce-ready young adult (grown at the Foundry or woken from the fleet), the Child and Teen stages defined in the sim never occur today — they are reserved for a future reproduction system. In the current game the population ages Adult → Senior only.
◉Colonists are artificial — grown, not born. New population comes from exactly two places: the Colonist Foundry, which grows new colonists from resources, and the shuttle's Colonist Run, which docks a sleeper freighter and wakes its cryo bay (~20 colonists per freighter, ten freighters, finite). There is no natural reproduction and no automatic immigration.
◉Each colonist has one of twelve personality archetypes (Homebody, Socialite, Thrill-seeker, Scholar, Aesthete, Athlete, Gourmand, Status-seeker, Naturalist, Free spirit, Seeker, Ascetic) giving a weighted profile across ten want categories — nourishment, fun, connection, culture, enrichment, nature, wellness, comfort, acquisition and faith — each in three tiers. Happiness is how well a colonist's specific wants are met by venues they can actually reach and afford.
◉Colonists sit in one of three wealth bands — Struggling, Comfortable, Affluent — driven by wages and savings. Wealth raises the TIER of experience a colonist aspires to: affluent colonists demand higher-tier, resource-hungrier products and venues. This aspiration ladder is the engine that pulls the economy upward.
◉Colonists carry a health state with per-sol sickness rolls; clinics and hospitals are treatment capacity, not magic. Hunger and malnutrition degrade health and productivity; outbreaks can move through a crowded colony. Sick colonists work worse, and the two-register death model separates preventable losses from old age.
◉Wages circulate inside the colony: colonists earn and spend at businesses, businesses pay staff, and money is only created or destroyed at the off-world boundary — exports, contracts and sponsor funding. The player's treasury is separate from the colonists' money: fed by a tax skim and off-world trade, spent on civic building, research and imports.
◉Commercial and industrial buildings run a real per-building profit & loss. They survive on resource availability first and profit second; an unprofitable or starved business closes and something else takes the spot. The player zones the ground — the colony decides what fills it, with competition and duplicates.
◉Local prices float on stock coverage — scarce goods drift expensive inside a clamped band, plentiful goods cheapen. Price movements cascade into colonist wealth and happiness, and supply shocks (a stalled chain, a storm, a war) are felt in the market before they are felt anywhere else.
◉You place civic buildings directly and paint zones for the rest. Construction is real work: builder bots and heavy constructor drones travel to the site, courier drones fly the materials in from stores, and the building rises visibly as it is built. Sites can be prioritised; unfinished work survives interruptions.
◉Placement defaults to the tile grid with 90° rotation. The [F] key unlocks freeform placement — any position and 15° rotation steps — for most buildings; anchored structures (the landing pad, maglev stations, extractors, the emberite bore, the armory) always stay grid-locked because they must meet sockets, beams or terrain features exactly. Foundations auto-level, neighbouring pads snap to shared terraces, and steep ground costs extra material to carve.
◉A district starts from a placed Resource Point that projects a serviced area. Give it one character and the colony fills it to demand — homes, venues and workshops appear, upgrade with resident happiness, and are displaced when the district evolves. Intra-district paths grow organically; the player lays the trunk routes.
◉Goods move over two drawable carrier networks laid like roads: enclosed PIPES for fluids and gases, enclosed CONVEYORS for solids. Buildings tap a passing line automatically by adjacency — the first touching tile becomes a sticky port. Each network has a shared throughput; laying costs steel per tile, so distance is capital. Carriers are always grid-locked and 90°.
◉Small hauler drones ferry loose stock between the dropship, warehouses and construction sites. They collect from the dropship's open hangar bay, are homed at storage facilities and courier platforms, migrate to better bases as the colony grows, and sit storms out on the nearest roof.
◉The long-distance line: a monorail beam laid tile by tile, riding a half-tile height ladder — level changes happen on dedicated ramp pieces and long climbs become one straight graded incline with eased ends. Curves come in three sizes with real speed limits; trains brake into the tighter classes. Stations own their beam and snap the line to their platform ends; a bought locomotive waits at the platform while you build its consist (passenger and cargo cars up to the platform's length), then Start Route sends it shuttling. Stations collect ticked goods from producers in their catchment, and the train carries commuters between stops it serves.
◉Distance is a cost everywhere: goods throughput falls with link length and commutes cost happiness and productivity. Roads and packed paths speed colonists and vehicles along them; travel times come from obstacle-aware path lengths computed once and cached. Transport infrastructure is the counterweight that makes building far away viable.
◉Power is a real-time flow, not a battery number: every building has an hourly load profile, generation follows sun and wind live, and batteries carry the night. Buildings must be connected — pole reach or a short building daisy-chain — or they sit dark. When demand outruns supply the grid sheds load by priority: life support last, discretionary first. Five unique semi-early sources (vent, gas, river, emberite, shear) are gated behind biome finds.
◉Five fields — Biotech, Habitation, Industry, Logistics, Frontier — with a primary spine of paced unlocks and a specialisation layer of sidegrades. Research points come from the sponsor baseline, staffed labs and orbital surveys. Everything new the colony can build or do arrives through this tree, and this guide keeps locked entries hidden until their research completes.
◉The planet pushes back: nests seed the wild and send waves — swarmers, lancers, bruisers and burrowers, each family with its own behaviour. Creatures hunt structures, chew through buildings, spit at drones, dig to escape fire and rout when their morale breaks. Waves grow with the colony's footprint.
◉Fixed emplacements — Gatling, laser, missile and artillery towers — fire real projectiles with real ammunition fed by your logistics; a dry magazine is a supply problem. Most towers fold away and pop up when trouble comes. The armory fields a drone air force — Hornet gunships, Quillback battery platforms and the Condor bomber — that launches from its roof plate, patrols, rearms and repairs.
◉Herds and flocks live on the land: they graze, migrate, drink, flee stampedes, walk on real articulated legs, and bed down at night. Flyers beat real wing pairs, glide and bank. Some species are ranchable once tamed. Megafauna — sky whales, sunmaw worms, the leviathan, mantas, the shellmound tortoise and the glass shoals — are rare wonders with their own behaviours and dens.
◉Landing pads with support annexes host a fleet you build: the colonist shuttle, capture tugs and cargo rockets. Launches burn fuel piped to the pad and wear the airframe; a maintenance annex services it. Missions include the manual Colonist Run, a standing orbital-survey order that relaunches itself while fuelled, asteroid capture from passing rocks, prefab deliveries to orbital projects, and export runs that sell goods at the off-world market.
◉The late game climbs off-planet: captured asteroids become mining outposts, prefab factories feed launches that assemble the Orbital Mirror and the Space Elevator, and megastructures reshape what the colony can do. The wormhole that brought you here is still out there.
⌂R18: the ship's ONE prefab bio-foundry - Earth keeps the genome tech, so you can never build another. Grows colonists (babies) continuously, gated by housing + food. Upgrade via its card to raise the rate; upgrades cost VITRIOL (the Fen's exotic reagent) and upgraded tiers need a steady vitriol feed.
⌂R11: a 4x5 dock hosting one heavy Constructor Drone (2x3 body). The drone flies to build sites and constructs from a hover (faster than a builder bot); returning, it aligns over the pad centre and settles slowly onto the dock.
⌂SPACEFLIGHT slice 8: the board for EARTH/MILITARY CONTRACTS (post-wormhole). Earth pays BIG, on deadlines, for what only this world makes. Accept a timed SUPPLY contract (deliver N exotic/rare-metals/luminite); bank the goods before the deadline and it auto-delivers for a treasury + RP reward and CONTRACT REPUTATION (its own track - higher rep unlocks bigger, better-paying deals). Miss it and reputation takes a hit.
⌂Dispatches rigs to clean panels, domes and routes — holding back the constant dust tide before it dims solar and hydroponics.
⌂Dispatches crews to service transmission lines, power and facilities. You supply parts + coverage; the colony does the repairs.
⌂Houses an autonomous flying drone that repairs meteor-damaged buildings and services worn ones (below 60% condition) within a 30-tile square coverage. Researchable from the start.
⌂Lowers crime over its coverage area. Crime is mostly a symptom of unhappiness — fix the cause too.
⌂Provides compute capacity for autonomous vehicles and, later, robots. Heavy power draw — high-tier power is what lets automation scale.
⌂A compact munitions line - the same 8 units/sol as the Armory's trickle, from a quarter of the plot. Stores 40 units. Stamp them out along the tower line when one Armory's output stops being enough; the Ordnance Plant (research) is the true industrial answer.
⌂Drone hangar and starter munitions line. Combat drones are built here and exit through the sliding roof doors; the rooftop pads repair and rearm them. Its 120-unit ammo store keeps the defence supply SEPARATE from the warehouses - conveyor it to the tower line. The trickle feeds the guns until an Ordnance Plant exists.
⌂Rapid-fire emplacement. The line-holder: enormous rate of fire and accurate against fast movers, so it mows down swarms - but short-ranged and weak against armour, where rounds mostly ricochet. 1 ammo unit = 25 rounds; its 12-unit magazine (300 rounds) feeds by conveyor tap or courier - shots draw from the magazine, not thin air.
⌂Offset launcher rack firing volleys of small guided rockets. Long reach and hard single-target damage, but rounds are expensive, guidance has a real turn radius, and it cannot fire inside 5 tiles. 24-rocket magazine fed by conveyor/courier. Lowers into its 3x3 base to stow.
⌂Twin-barrel laser emplacement. Hitscan - it never misses - and the beam beats heavy armour, so it is the Dolerite answer. Single target and power-hungry; a swarm walks through it. Folds into its 2x2 base between fights.
⌂Long-range indirect gun on a 3x3 platform - lobs over hills and buildings, blind inside 10 tiles, slightly inaccurate, and refuses shots that would splash your own colony. Card switches HE / incendiary shells; a 60-round shell store feeds by conveyor/courier. Too big to fold away.
⌂Higher learning. Stronger job-tier mobility.
⌂Safe-haven capacity colonists evacuate to during storms, breaches or fallout. Built ahead of disasters.
⌂Redundant O2 and pressure reserves — a life-support failure buys time instead of being instant death.
⌂Bubbling protein vats growing algae — the feedstock crop for the Medical Fabricator, Pharma Lab and Food Processor. The district planner adds one when the medical chain runs hungry.
⌂Bulk-processes any crop into storable rations (the calorie/anti-hunger staple). Separate from the meal/dining layer.
⌂R20 audit: delicacies for Fine Dining - an Earth import before the stranding, made locally now.
⌂Turns water and power into rations. Seeded once at construction, a running bay slowly banks surplus seed toward the next one. One bay feeds roughly 40-50 colonists.
⌂Tiny green-space gap-filler for irregular district shapes.
⌂Treats minor illness with no consumables — a mid-tier medic is all it needs. District-built to demand, and satisfies colonists' expectation of health care.
⌂Treats Serious illness. Needs a tier 5-6 doctor. Spare slots can also cover Minor (capacity cascades down).
⌂Treats Critical (life-threatening) illness. Needs a rare tier-9 surgeon — the high-stakes demand that justifies that top job tier.
⌂Basic shelter for the Struggling band. Housing capacity is a population brake. Tier-1 Comfort.
⌂Comfortable homes for the Comfortable band. More beds, better materials.
⌂Single-occupancy habitat to fill gaps in painted districts; pairs with the 2x3 standard habitat for organic variety.
⌂Luxury living for the Affluent band. Fewer but high-end residences.
⌂Enclosed belt that carries solid goods between producers, processors and stores — the solids counterpart to the Pipe, which carries fluids and gases. Laid by dragging a line, costing steel per tile; it rides raised on legs so ground traffic passes underneath, and bridges straight across crevices.
⌂District Hub (the distribution centre; was 'Conduit Exit'): a 3x3 building. Run the District Conduit to it from a fed District Supply; every colony building within its painted boundary draws its power and goods from here - the district's whole inflow arrives through this hub. Paint the district extent around it once built.
⌂District Supply (the district intake; was 'Supply Terminal'): a 3x1 building, 2 high. Connect pipes, conveyors and power to it - everything it receives flows down the District Conduit to the colony's District Hubs, supplying the connected colonists with the resources they consume and the feedstock their businesses work with.
⌂Single-beam maglev track, laid per tile - steel per segment makes distance the capex. Drag to lay; the crew clears the corridor, ends snap to station beams, and corners auto-fit the widest curve that fits.
⌂Vehicle and colonist road (per segment). Surface, lighting and footpaths are customisable.
⌂Carries fluids (water, fuel, O2, reagents) between producers and storage (per segment).
⌂THE OXYGEN CONSUMER: draws oxygen + power to keep habitats breathable for ~50 colonists. Hard survival dependency — if unpowered or starved of oxygen, colonists suffocate (faster than starvation). Pair with an Oxygen Generator.
⌂Splits water into oxygen + hydrogen (electrolysis) — power-hungry. Oxygen feeds Life Support; hydrogen is a byproduct (vent early; rocket-fuel feedstock later). The air leg of the survival core.
⌂Perchlorate chemistry: reagents from regolith, and POLYMERS drawn from atmospheric carbon — the chemical base of the medical, consumer-goods and composites chains.
⌂Advanced composites for high-end structures (reactors, premium venues).
⌂Binds regolith into 'marscrete', the bulk structural material. First domestic material; bootstraps off imported steel.
⌂R20 audit: rare metals for the Electronics Fab + raw uranium for the Enrichment Plant, from deep bores. Heavy power draw, 24-h operation (3 shifts).
⌂Bulk source of the district construction materials (plasteel/board/composite) - the ONLY source of composite panel for tier-3 district buildings.
⌂Domestic electronics from silica + rare metals — ends electronics imports. Needs rare metals (Frontier find or import).
⌂SPACEFLIGHT slice 8b: mid-heavy manufacturing that turns steel + electronics + composites + polymer into EQUIPMENT - the good Earth EQUIPMENT CONTRACTS demand. Standing one up (and feeding its chain) is a whole extra industrial layer; the payoff is the biggest, best-paying contracts.
⌂Presses regolith minerals and grove fibres into animal feed. Its Harvester drives to the nearest trees at sunrise and home at dusk — the midnight batch scales with its day afield.
⌂Glass for habitat domes, windows and grow houses.
⌂Manufactures everyday consumer goods from polymers, glass and electronics. Feeds the stores.
⌂R20 audit: sifts trace helium-3 from bulk regolith - the fusion-fuel loop, fed by the Mobile Miner's spoil.
⌂Crafts luxury/status goods for boutiques.
⌂Domestic basic medical supplies from algae + polymers — cuts import reliance.
⌂Produces spare parts for maintenance (or import them).
⌂Synthesises medicines domestically, ending pharma imports.
⌂R20 audit: closes the polymer hole (Goods Factory, Medical Fabricator and Composites Plant all consume polymer with no producer). Bonds the Oxygen Generator's VENTED HYDROGEN with chem-plant reagents - the hydrogen loop finally closes.
⌂An open-air pen. Its drone — the one machine wildlife ignores — hovers over a wild herd and the pen slowly fills with tame stock; each animal yields provisions daily. Feed arrives by conveyor, water by pipe.
⌂Scrapes ubiquitous surface regolith — the base raw for all construction. No special deposit needed.
⌂Separates silica from regolith for glass and electronics.
⌂Extracts iron from iron-rich regolith.
⌂Refines iron into steel, the primary structural metal.
⌂Sterile surgical supplies for the Surgery.
⌂R150 MEGASTRUCTURE - the LAUNCH arcology: a tapering spire over a working launch complex - gantry, flame trench and its own tank farm on the east apron. 260 beds, and the farm REFINES 10 rocket fuel/sol for your Landing Pads. The spaceflight pick; keep the launch side clear of neighbours.
⌂R189 MEGASTRUCTURE (player): the 18x18 ground anchor the SPACE ELEVATOR connects to. Build it like any megaproject, then ship the elevator prefabs to orbit (assign a Cargo Rocket) - when the last part installs, the tether drops from space onto this station. Only one can exist. Model owed by the modelling session (height follows the model).
⌂R150 MEGASTRUCTURE - the FARM arcology: an octagonal terraced ziggurat, every deck a growing field. 220 beds, tier-3 Nourishment in-tower, and its terraces GROW 55 rations/sol - it feeds its residents and banks a real surplus. The food-security pick; thirstiest of the four.
⌂R149 MEGASTRUCTURE (player redesign): a 12x12 pressurised dome with a whole TOWN built inside - habitats, gardens and venues under meteor-hardened glass. 420 beds, the biggest single home in the game; tier-3 comfort with nature/connection/fun at tier 2 under the dome sky. Still needs the oxygen reserve banked to pressurise at completion. Builds progressively (megaproject); its Luminite shell is the Chasm's payoff.
⌂R150 MEGASTRUCTURE - the FLAGSHIP arcology: a faceted twelve-sided gem on canted legs, 300 beds of tier-3 comfort with fun/connection/wellness at tier 2 in-tower. The balanced pick of the four designs. NOT self-sufficient by design: tier-3 tastes still pull residents into the colony. Colossal power draw, meteor-hardened, counts as disaster shelter. Builds progressively (megaproject).
⌂R150 MEGASTRUCTURE - the FOREST arcology: a round banyan tower, planted collars ringing the trunk. 240 beds; tier-3 Nature inside. Its canopies PRESSURISE THE TOWER THEMSELVES - no oxygen draw at all - and bank a 20/sol oxygen SURPLUS into the colony. The life-support pick.
⌂Burns bored emberite slow and hot for 55 power — the strongest source before fission. Conveyor-fed from an Emberite Mine; glows at night.
⌂Reliable constant baseload. Burns reactor fuel. Tier-6 reactor engineers. The mid-game power backbone.
⌂Enriches mined uranium into reactor fuel — ends fuel imports. Needs a uranium find (Frontier).
⌂Endgame baseload, huge constant output. Needs exotic fusion fuel from asteroids.
⌂Burns the hydrogen the colony already makes — Oxygen Generator byproduct or Methane Tap — turning the vented waste stream into 50 power. Pipe-fed; only as good as your gas chain.
⌂SPACEFLIGHT slice 4: the ground half of the Orbital Mirror - a huge dish field that catches the orbital beam and turns it into CONSTANT power (day AND night). Produces NOTHING until the Orbital Mirror is fully assembled overhead; once it is, it never sleeps with the sun. 500 power - the answer to the late-game power wall, and a massive investment (research + a 30-prefab megastructure + the launch chain) earns it.
⌂A tall thermocouple column that only works on a biome border, milking the temperature shear where two climates meet for 35 power.
⌂Cheap early power, but daylight only and cut by dust storms. Pair with Battery Banks to cover the night.
⌂Sits on a Breather Vent — a geothermal mouth, of which each world has only a few — and turbines the planet's own exhalation. A steady 45 power, day and night, storm-proof.
⌂Low output (thin Mars air) but works at night and through dust — a resilience SIDEGRADE, not an upgrade. Horizontal variety.
⌂Stores surplus (e.g. daytime solar) for night and demand peaks. No generation of its own.
⌂R158 redesign: CAPS THE WHOLE CHASM - a ring collar sunk into the mouth (nominal chasm radius 10, scaled chasm_r/10 at spawn; NOT a grid-stamp footprint - placement snaps to the chasm centre; height = above-grade rise only, the skirt sinks 12 m). Energy-hungry. Produces Luminite for megastructures + Frontier buildings.
⌂District colony foundry - the district grows its own colonists here. Rate = 1 + the player Colonist Foundry's upgrade level (1/sol base, then 2, 3...). Housing + food/water gate growth like the ship foundry.
⌂R79: the crude early electronics bench - hand-built boards from silica, no rare metals needed. The zoned Electronics Fab (Deep Mining -> rare metals) outproduces it 2x per building once districts run.
⌂Bores an emberite seam — smouldering dark ground in the steppe, rust desert and dust basin. Three emberite per sol feeds three Kilns.
⌂F1 (player): grows SOY, the feedstock crop for quality meals. Haul/pipe its soy to a Soy Kitchen. This is the quality-food chain (a happiness upgrade), NOT survival calories (that stays Hydroponics rations).
⌂Mines an ice patch (placement on ice only). Sized so one mine + one water plant supply the survival core to ~40-50 colonists; beyond that, find/tap more patches. Cap raised by research.
⌂A shoreline dock that taps the water body behind it through an intake pipe. Pumps water directly, no ice needed — the water source when a colony settles by water instead of ice.
⌂R76: ONLY placeable in the Methane Marsh - taps bog methane for HYDROGEN, the Fuel Refinery's main feed (rocket fuel for the launchpad/asteroid arc).
⌂R76: sits ONLY on an ORE FIELD (dark ferric ground in metal-rich biomes - Ferric Canyon is ore country; Oxide Highlands carries pockets). Player-side iron for the Steel Mill chain.
⌂SPACEFLIGHT slice 2: the space-industrial anchor. Select it to open a +/- BUILD QUEUE of PREFAB units (Structural Frame, Mirror Panel, ...); each queued unit pulls its resource BOM from your stores and assembles into the colony's prefab stockpile. Prefabs are trucked to a Landing Pad and launched to assemble orbital structures. R158: 10x6, berths in the pad's EAST socket - shed door, drive-in ramp and marshalling yard on its -x end, tractor lane straight to the loader.
⌂R76: ONLY placeable on the Salt Flats - evaporation pans crack the crust into CHEMICAL REAGENTS (pharma feedstock; a biome alternative to the Chemical Plant's reagent line).
⌂F1 (player): cooks Greenhouse soy into Soy Meal - a tier-2 nourishment good that lifts colony food QUALITY (happiness via the nourishment want), parallel to ranch provisions. Feed it soy by pipe/haul. (Distinct from the bulk Food Processor, which makes tier-1 rations from algae.)
⌂Crude direct smelter - regolith in and steel out. The zoned Smelter + Steel Mill chain outproduces it once industrial districts run.
⌂W10.4: harvests corrosive vitriol - ONLY placeable in the Vitriol Fen (research Corrosion Hardening first; building there costs +10%). Pipe its vitriol home; labs burn it for bonus research.
⌂Melts/purifies ice to water at ~1 ice -> 3 water. One plant supplies drinking + hydroponics + oxygen for ~40-50 colonists with headroom.
⌂The survey crew's improvised research bench. Build and staff it to add research points beyond the sponsor baseline. Low output — the Research Lab is the advanced version.
⌂Generates research points, staffed by senior scientists — the colony's main research source. Also serves the Enrichment want.
⌂Big loop-closing industry: recovers fertiliser, greywater and scrap metal from waste — cuts imports and lowers colony costs.
⌂Processes colony waste. Without it, unprocessed waste is a happiness and disease drag.
⌂Hardened reserve of critical goods (food, medical, fuel). A supply shock eats the reserve first, buying time — counterpart to bunkers + backup life support. Shared capacity (one volume, any mix of goods); per-sol power+staff+upkeep_cr to run.
⌂Shielded containment for hazardous goods such as Luminite and Exotic Matter — the only store that accepts them, and it accepts nothing else. Conveyor-fed.
⌂Cryogenic hydrogen storage — and NOTHING else. Hydrogen is the rocket-fuel feedstock (electrolysis makes it, the Fuel Refinery drinks it), and a busy mid-game spaceport burns through a lot; bank it here by pipe. 200-unit capacity.
⌂Warehouse-sized tank farm banking fluids against the night, dust storms and outbreaks. Passive (no crew or power). Fluids only — feed it by pipe; one corner drone dock takes tanker parcels (e.g. the Mobile Miner's vitriol).
⌂General storage for solid goods. Deep storage is the colony's economic buffer — it steadies prices through gluts and shortages.
⌂A low landing deck the cargo-courier fleet calls home. Drones park here between deliveries, and new couriers are commissioned from its card. Without one, couriers adopt the store they last collected from.
⌂R158: the 8x10 spaceport anchor (launch tower, command tower, loader bay east, tank farm) for rockets up to 3x3. Taps pipes (fuel) + conveyors (future wares); refuels its shuttle slowly from piped rocket fuel. Support annexes berth in its side sockets (Maintenance west/north/south, the Prefab Factory EAST).
⌂Maglev load/unload point + aggregate stockpile. Build wider (more platforms) to run more or longer trains.
⌂The 10-tile maglev terminal: its platform takes the full double-ended consist (engine + 3 carriages + engine), and the freight yard works a travelling gantry crane. Chains with 6-tile stations on one line.
⌂R14 pad addon (build ADJACENT to a Landing Pad): shuttles wear per flight - this services them much faster, and its crews can BUILD additional shuttles.
⌂Pad socket addon (snaps to a Landing Pad side): R172 - the old standalone Fuel Refinery folded IN. Refines piped hydrogen + oxygen into rocket fuel on the spot, holding a 60-unit store the pad draws from first. The complex refuels twice as fast.
⌂Air freight over any distance and any terrain — no pipes, no rails. A Skyport collects the goods you tick from producers and stores in its catchment; LINK it to other Skyports and its freight drones fly round trips, loading only what the far end can actually take (consumers first, storage as overflow; never hazmat). Build drones on the card — each costs materials and 1 CPU. Low volume, total flexibility: the remote-outpost answer below rail.
⌂(player): worksite-side bus terminal - place it near remote plants; hourly buses link it with district Vehicle Bays so commuters arrive by road and walk the last stretch. Purely visual transit.
⌂(player): district-side bus terminal - placeable ONLY on zoned district ground. Colonists whose worksite is far ride an hourly bus from here to the Vehicle Bay nearest their work; a bus departs on the hour with everyone who arrived that hour. Purely visual transit (the sim's commute math is unchanged). R160: the 6x4 district hub - canopy hall, deck and twin roof fans.
⌂Arcades and active sports. Consumes electronics as a running input.
⌂Experimental, avant-garde culture.
⌂Nightlife. Consumes consumer goods (drinks, supplies).
⌂Curated gardens under glass. Water-hungry.
⌂Luxury/status goods for the affluent. Consumes luxury goods.
⌂Casual social hub. Consumes a little food and water to serve.
⌂Cinema and pop culture.
⌂Festivals, gatherings and events — Community/Events tier.
⌂Basic dining venue. The district planner builds it when nourishment demand goes unmet. Pulls rations from the colony pool, so keeping the pool stocked keeps the diner serving.
⌂Premium dining that grows in affluent districts with unmet tier-3 demand. Pulls delicacies and rations from the colony pool; the Gourmet Kitchen supplies the delicacies.
⌂Fine arts: galleries and theatre.
⌂Sells essentials. Consumes consumer goods — a steady sink that scales with colony size.
⌂Basic fitness venue. Regular training also lowers sickness slightly.
⌂Tools, fixings and spare parts over the counter — colonists fix their own kit. A district-side outlet for the Parts Workshop's output.
⌂Tinker benches, kit drones and model rigs — hands-on fun built from spare parts.
⌂SPACEFLIGHT slice 7: lodging for INBOUND tourists (post-wormhole). Its capacity = visitor beds; tourists arrive to see the fauna/vistas, fill the beds, and pay a tourism treasury income if the colony's HIGH-TIER venues (fun/culture/nature/nourishment/acquisition) satisfy them. Build more hotels to hold more visitors; build fancy venues to keep them happy.
⌂Small commercial gap-filler (essentials) for painted-district variety.
⌂Quiet reflection. Basic Faith/Meaning.
⌂Vistas and trails — Wilderness/Vistas Nature.
⌂Open green space. Basic Nature.
⌂Bowling and simple recreation. Basic Fun.
⌂Lifestyle goods. Larger consumer-goods sink.
⌂Pilgrimage and ritual — the highest Faith tier.
⌂Basic schooling for teens. Drives job-tier mobility (educated children enter the workforce higher). Basic Enrichment.
⌂Luxury medical-wellness. Strong preventative-health effect.
⌂Athletic training.
⌂Community worship and gathering.
⌂Low-G coasters and rocket rides. Power-hungry — a real grid load. Extreme Fun.
▣Hazardous material recovered from large-meteor impact sites by the Drill Miner. Stores only in Hazmat Containers. The wormhole gate consumes it.
▣Exotic fuel (e.g. helium-3) harvested from asteroids. Powers endgame fusion.
▣Electrolysis byproduct of oxygen generation. Vent it early; later it is rocket-fuel feedstock (with CO2) — see the rocket-reuse chain.
▣Prefab wall/floor panels for district construction - a Concrete Plant byproduct.
▣Lightweight structural alloy for district homes and venues - a Steelworks byproduct.
▣Generated by colonists and industry. Must be processed (sanitation); recycling recovers fertiliser, water and metals from it.
▣Rich fare from tame native stock — the quality tier above rations. Produced daily by a stocked Ranch; the Gourmand table's centrepiece.
▣Bulk staple food processed from crops. Keeps colonists fed — the calorie layer, not the experience layer.
▣A prepared meal from farmed soy — the crop route to quality food, a tier above rations. Cooked by a Soy Kitchen from Greenhouse soy. Feeds the nourishment want, not survival calories.
▣Bulk cased rounds for gatling and artillery emplacements. Made from steel and chemical propellant; consumed fast under fire.
▣From recycled organics & processed regolith. Feeds hardy crops (algae, potato).
▣Seals, membranes, composite feedstock — polymerised from atmospheric carbon at the Chemical Plant, alongside its reagent line.
▣Fissile fuel for reactors, enriched from mined uranium at the Fuel Enrichment plant.
▣Pelleted fodder pressed from regolith minerals and grove fibres. The Ranch's daily draw.
▣High-grade panels required by premium (tier-3) district buildings - from the District Fabricator.
▣Advanced lightweight structural material for reactors and premium builds.
▣Everyday retail goods (essentials, lifestyle). Made in goods factories from polymers, glass and electronics. Sold by stores — a demand sink that scales with colony size.
▣Premium ingredients crafted by Gourmet Kitchens. Used in tier-3 meals.
▣Advanced components. The Electronics Workshop covers early domestic demand; the Electronics Fab mass-produces them from silica + rare metals.
▣Mid-heavy manufactured military and industrial equipment, demanded by Earth's equipment contracts once the wormhole opens. High value; making it pulls the industrial chain deeper.
▣Domes, windows, grow houses. Melted from silica at the Glassworks.
▣Smelted from iron-rich regolith. Refined into steel.
▣High-status goods for affluent colonists. Crafted from consumer goods + composites. Sold by boutiques.
▣Regolith-based structural concrete. The bulk build material.
▣Bandages, basic meds — the clinic consumable. Produced from algae + polymers.
▣Advanced medicines for hospitals, synthesised by the Pharma Lab from algae + reagents.
▣Refined from electrolysis hydrogen and oxygen. Piped to Landing Pads to fuel the shuttles.
▣Generic seed/strain stock for crops. The founding stock rode in the rocket cargo; running Hydroponics Bays bank surplus seed, and crop research unlocks specific strains.
▣Separated from regolith. Feeds glass and electronics.
▣Components for maintaining infrastructure. Made from steel + electronics.
▣Primary structural metal, smelted from iron. The rocket's cargo stock bootstraps early construction.
▣Sterile high-end supplies for surgery, made by the Surgical Supplies Fab from pharmaceuticals + electronics.
▣Refined from ice. Feeds hydroponics, habitation and colonists.
▣Chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals, produced from regolith perchlorates (Chemical Plant).
▣A dark mineral that smoulders faintly where it breaks the surface — seams in the steppe, rust desert and dust basin. Bored out and burned in an Emberite Kiln for power.
▣Faintly glowing crystal drawn from the deep veins beneath a Chasm. Construction-grade — required by megastructures and Frontier buildings. Crystal blooms are surface traces of the same veins.
▣Woody fibre cropped from living groves by the Harvester. Most binds animal feed; the surplus becomes craft goods the districts prize.
▣Trace metals for electronics — from Deep Mines, metallic vein deposits and speculative Frontier finds.
▣Ubiquitous surface material. The base raw for nearly all construction.
▣A speculative find (Frontier). Enriched into reactor fuel for the fission baseload.
▣Corrosive reagent pooled only in the Vitriol Fen. Research labs burn it for bonus research — the fen's unique payoff.
▣Mined from subsurface deposits. Refined into water.
▣Processing capacity for autonomous vehicles and robots. A tracked flow like power — supplied by Data Centres, consumed per autonomous unit. Gates mass automation.
▣Breathable oxygen from water electrolysis. The Life Support Plant consumes it to keep habitats breathable; without powered life support colonists suffocate. A core survival resource alongside water and rations.
▣Electricity. Generated by power buildings, consumed by nearly everything else.
❋Hardy, fast, bland. High yield, lowest quality. Protein base. One of two starting crops.
❋Reliable staple. Slightly slower than algae, a touch more versatile. Second starting crop.
❋Versatile protein; feeds into many meals. Slower, mid quality.
❋Fresh, perishable. Low yield but lifts meal quality.
❋Slow, tiny yield, but a flavour multiplier that unlocks premium meals.
❦Low dry grass clump — the default steppe/basin ground cover.
❦Rust-red bristled stalk of the iron deserts.
❦Hardy grey-green dome shrub of the milder plains.
❦Squat pale barrel — grows in the shade of crags and canyons.
❦Tall pale crystal growth of the salt pans (mineral not plant).
❦Icy feathered fern of the cryo tundra.
❦Tall olive reed crowding the wet lowlands.
❦A rare orange bloom — a pop of colour on the drab plains.
❦Rounded faceted rock — the everywhere scatter of a rocky world.
❦Sharp standing splinter of rock — badlands and canyon country.
❦A wind-carved stone stack — sparse desert sentinels.
❦Faceted mineral wedge — glints across the salt pans.
❦Towering alien conifer — its groves overtop the rocket.
❦Violet bulb canopy on a tall trunk — the wild marsh forests.
❦Frost-sheathed spear tree rising off the tundra ice plains.
❦Acid-green polyp clusters of the corrosive fen.
❦Soft luminous moss-veil unique to the Chasm rim — nothing else grows here.
❦Surface luminite crystallising where the deep veins breach — the Chasm rim's signature growth.
❦Dark whip-grass with teal-lit tips ringing the Chasm mouth.
🐾Knee-high dust-coloured grazers of the open flats — the commonest animal on the planet, always in a loose chattering mob.
🐾Long-legged bounders of the hot pans; quick, skittish, and gone in a shimmer when a machine rolls near.
🐾Placid olive browsers wading the reed lines under the bulb-trees. Colonist-sized; slow; never far from the wet.
🐾Sure-footed climbers of the rocky uplands; small bands threading the spearwood groves and scree.
🐾Shaggy, frost-mantled beasts of the fog plains — small family groups, unbothered by the cold that grounds everything else.
🐾The planet's giant — near Mobile-Miner-sized, two to four to a herd, one or two herds to a world. Finding them is an event.
🐾Pale translucent-winged flockers — anywhere with trees; the default bird of the world.
🐾Fast tan darters that took to the colony as readily as the rocks — as happy on a warehouse roof as a pillar top.
🐾Violet marsh flockers that live in the bulb-tree canopy and rarely leave it.
🐾White gliders of the cold plains; ground-feeders more than perchers; vanish into the fog banks.
🐾The big canyon raptor-analogue — pairs and trios riding the ridge winds; rare, and worth stopping to watch.
🐋Dropship-sized sky grazers crossing the world in bonded pairs, sometimes trailing a calf. They cruise above everything, never land, and nothing on the ground troubles them.
🐋A building-wide worm that rises from its den at dawn to sunbake with its mouth open. Machines nearby send it back under in a cloud of dirt; it re-emerges slowly once they leave. Burrows fully underground at night.
🐋A shadow under the biggest lake — ripples and patience, then a slow breach every few sols with spray and a bellow that carries. Shy: machines on or over its water keep it down.
🐋Kite-winged gliders that only fly when the big weather runs — surfing ahead of dust storms, rain fronts and cyclones, crackling with static. Gone when the sky clears.
🐋A hill that breathes. It watches whatever comes close with one slow eye, and every few sols it hauls itself somewhere new, leaving a crater where it slept.
🐋Bioluminescent floaters that rise out of the wetlands at dusk and drift glowing through the night, chiming softly. Sunk and invisible by day.
☠The tide. A knee-high crystallised ball that ROLLS at its target and stabs with flared crystal spears - individually trivial, ruinous in a mob. Breaks easily and scatters smooth-shelled; a receding tide is still a tide.
☠A floating crystal cluster ringed by loose orbiting shards - its ammunition. It crosses the colony in passes, LAUNCHING weighted shards at buildings and drones (a strafing drone can dodge them; misses lose momentum and shatter). Some strikes call LIGHTNING down on the mark - fires on buildings, double damage on drones.
☠A rock-bodied titan running on two massive back legs, claw-limbs for tearing structures, crystal outcrops down its back. Small-arms fire mostly RICOCHETS off the plating. Cannot reach anything airborne - the drones' favourite target. Mostly dies where it stands.
☠A longer, lower cousin of the Dolerite on four legs - the front pair built for DIGGING, its back crystals laid flat for the tunnel. Takes a real chunk of damage and goes under: only explosives reach it there, and it erupts somewhere INSIDE the colony. The reason to keep guns in the streets.
▲Maglev locomotive that whisks colonists between stations - the fastest thing in the game, for a real power draw. Two tiles long on its two beam trucks; add carriages for capacity.
▲Freight car for the maglev. Add several per engine; cargo type follows the producers it serves. Two tiles long; counts against the platform cap.
▲Carries colonists to jobs (transit), widening the labour pool without anyone relocating. Two tiles long; the platform rule caps the consist.
▲Automatic construction unit — one per site, auto-allocates to the next; housed in the drop ship. One arrives free at founding and a second can be requested from the build menu (maximum two). Need more construction capacity? Build Constructor Drones.
▲Autonomous flying drone housed in the Repair Station. Detects damaged/worn buildings in range, flies over to them and repairs. Faster than the builder bot.
▲Small courier drone housed at storage facilities. The moment a blueprint is placed, couriers fly its build materials to the site in five-unit parcels; construction waits for delivery.
▲Heavy flying construction drone based at a Drone Depot. Builds from a hover, banking lazily under its bulk; returning, it aligns over the pad and settles slowly to land.
▲The reusable pad shuttle - the ONLY way to wake the convoys sleepers. A 3-sol expedition docks one freighter in high orbit and brings its cryo bay (~20 colonists) down. Built at a socketed Pad Maintenance Facility.
▲A nimble pad ship for capturing passing asteroids — it tows a rig up and grapples the rock, with a chance of failure. Carries no prefab payload; build a Cargo Rocket to actually build and service the outpost.
▲The heavy-lift prefab hauler. Carries up to four prefabs up to an orbital project and brings mined resources back down on the return leg. Assign it to an outpost on its pad card; it cycles automatically while fuelled.
▲A heavy ground truck that carries one finished prefab from a Prefab Factory to whichever Landing Pad needs it. Routes around obstacles and dispatches automatically; one rolls out with each Prefab Factory.
▲One of the pair of heavy-lift dock drones riding the Mobile Miner's rear deck. They fly scraped regolith to storage around the clock — the miner sleeps at night, its drones don't.
▲Comes with the Feed Cultivator. Crops grove fibre all day without harming a tree, then trundles home at dusk — the visible proof the midnight batch is real.
▲Long-bodied survey drone bought from a Field Lab or Research Lab. Flies to revealed crystal blooms and circles slowly to harvest their research value, then returns to recharge and resumes. Fully automatic.
▲Tracked crew bus on a builder's footprint, riding taller (R159 fleet batch). Ferries colonists between Vehicle Bays, departing on the hour and driving the obstacle-aware route faster than a builder.
▲Nimble combat drone: twin lift fans, a chin autocannon on a swivelling turret, and two rocket pods. Strafes while firing, repositions after kills, and is the one thing fast enough to chase a Fulgurite. Built, repaired and rearmed at the Armory.
▲Four short wings, a fast small-calibre turret on each tip, each tracking its own target. Slower than a Fulgurite, faster than the ground tide; ignores armour it can't hurt. It arrives, sits in the fight, and grinds.
▲Heavy ordnance drone: a diamond lifting-body on twin centreline ducted fans, with a parting ventral bomb bay. Runs banking carpet passes - four bombs walked across the mark, two passes per load. Biggest creatures first; never on a line that splashes friendly buildings.
▲Skyport freight courier: flies sealed 10-unit pods between linked ports, loading only what the destination can take. Built on the Skyport card (1 CPU each).
▲R16: the colony's regolith source is a big tracked VEHICLE, not a building. It crawls 12-tile lanes scraping the surface dark, charging itself from a solar canopy (full sun: runs ~dawn to 1am; battery + solar research for 24/7; a wind rig covers windy dim biomes). Two dock drones on the rear deck fly the spoil to a storage facility around the clock. capacity = its cargo hold.
▲R67 Frontier L3: the Mobile Regolith Miner chassis with a large drill. Auto-targets revealed impact sites, parks at the crater rim, mines ~5 sols per site (Scenario drill_mining_sols); still carries the two dock drones. Listed below the Mobile Miner in the build menu.
✛Holds the line. Very high rate of fire - real TRACER rounds now, with travel time and spread - so it shreds swarms but chips a Dolerite for 1 a round, and one in four rounds RICOCHETS off that plating. CIWS-style rotary gun; folds into its base.
✛Never misses and its beam beats heavy armour — the Dolerite answer. Single target, slow cadence, and a real power draw. Twin barrels fire alternately; folds into its base between fights.
✛Volleys of small guided rockets - simulated flight, limited turn rate and finite fuel. A crossing flyer can defeat them; misses circle and are likely to hit terrain, trees or buildings (including yours) before they reconnect.
✛The horde answer at distance: enormous area damage, indirect (lobs over hills and buildings), slightly inaccurate, blind inside 10 tiles. Refuses to fire where the blast would touch your own buildings.
✛Airburst that lays a burning field on the ground for ~20 s: blast + fire under the burst, fire damage to anything that runs through. Creatures do not avoid fire - a weakening tool for the tide.
✛The gunship's chin turret. Tracer bullets with real travel and spread — they can miss. The turret tracks, but only 45 degrees either side of the nose; a target off the flank means repositioning. One ammo is 50 rounds; 150 aboard.
✛Two three-tube pods with the same guidance as the missile turret — rockets chase, and a miss circles until it hits something. Fired one at a time: a big cluster earns one on a cooldown, and a big armoured target draws them faster while the gun stays on the small stuff. One ammo is two rockets; six aboard.
✛One of four wingtip turrets, each tracking its own target — smaller calibre and faster-firing than the gunship's. Bullets bounce off armour, so the platform ignores Dolerites entirely. One ammo is 100 rounds; 600 aboard.
✛Eight bombs dropped as two runs of four — a carpet, twice. Biggest creatures first, then the thickest cluster; never on a line that would splash friendly buildings. One ammo is one bomb.
☁Low fog that burns off; mornings only. Still air.
☁Gentle rain; can build into a storm.
☁Heavy driving rain and wind. Escalation bumped 0.18 -> 0.28 (player: cyclones almost never seen).
☁Violent storm with lightning and gale winds; reached only by escalation (weight 0).
☁Blowing dust; cuts solar hard, feeds the turbines.
☁A slow green irradiated haze — halves the wind, arcs EMP lightning into power and resource buildings (batteries, stores and districts ride it out), and injures colonists caught outdoors.
☁Cold snowfall that dusts the ground white, melting back slowly after. Rime ices the turbines, and it can escalate into a Blizzard.
☁The cold country's cyclone — a white-out reached only by escalation from Snowfall. The gale beats the rime off the blades so turbines roar, but vehicles crawl.
⚠A tremor damages structures and exposed colonists across an area (reuses the blast model). R155: camera shake + rumble + thrown dust at the epicentre.
⚠1-30 meteors fall across EXPLORED territory over the episode (severity = max strikes; duration 1h-12h) - the colony is a small target.
⚠An illness sweeps the colony — sickness rates spike (severity = outbreak multiplier); treatment capacity is tested.
⚠Ignites a building (severity = how many); the blaze then spreads to neighbours + burns HP until a Repair Station drone douses it or it burns out.
⚠A brutal cold front — exposure injures colonists caught outdoors (the radiation-exposure model, reflavoured). R155: own effect id so the sky goes icy blue-white + driving frost, not radiation red. ONLY strikes cryo-tundra colonies (home_biome).
⚠R155: corrosive rain over the WHOLE episode — every standing structure is etched severity HP/sol (repair drones respond) and colonists caught outdoors take 10% of that as injury/sol. Green driving rain while it runs. ONLY strikes Vitriol Fen colonies (home_biome).
⚠A massive meteor on its own slow clock rather than the usual disaster roll. A warning sounds moments before impact; the strike leaves a mushroom cloud, a crater, a quake, and an irradiated no-build zone.
◈Warm dry lowland flats — the easy first settle; ubiquitous regolith under frequent dust-storm weather. Clean flat ground; still air.
◈Iron-oxide badlands strewn with rock fields — good solar and metals; dusty and under a thin meteor lane.
◈Deep metal-rich ranges — the ore country; steep; canyon winds favour turbines; the ground itself is restless (QUAKES).
◈Cool orange uplands with scattered spearwood groves — balanced metals and some ice; rocky breezy and a little seismic.
◈Vast flat ice plains under a PERMANENT LIGHT FOG — weak solar but the windiest place on the planet; CRYO SNAPS strike colonies here.
◈Crystalline white pans studded with mineral growths — the flattest most buildable ground; bright open and EXPOSED (radiation).
◈Low olive wetlands under violet bulb-tree forests — the WILD biome; damp still air breeds OUTBREAKS and the methane feeds FIRES.
◈Grey-green mid plains under towering spearwood groves — the unremarkable (and safest) middle ground.
◈CORROSIVE acid wetlands — unbuildable until Corrosion Hardening (then +10% build cost) but the only source of VITRIOL; ACID SQUALLS etch structures here.
🔬Every colony lands armed: an Armory hangar and two combat drones. The planet is hostile from sol 0, and the opening kit says so.
🔬The first emplacements: the CIWS gun tower that shreds swarms and the laser that burns through armour. Something on this planet has started treating the colony as a food source.
🔬The big guns: guided missile batteries, long-range artillery (HE and incendiary shells), and the bomber drone for carpet runs on packed swarms.
🔬The bunker-buster: a silo and a multi-sol munition - the one weapon the player aims, for killing nests outright. (The silo itself lands with slice D7b.)
🔬Combines delicacies with the premium crops for tier-3 dining.
🔬Food Processor - crops into storable rations. Your Industry district builds it on its own when rations run short; you don't place it. It only appears once the colony actually needs the extra food.
🔬Your first food - Hydroponics Bays + Algae Vats turn water + power into rations. Zone an Industry district and your colonists build Hydroponics themselves when rations fall short of need (at most ~one bay over demand); you never place them. Later food tech raises quality, not quantity.
🔬Fresh produce from the seed bank's leafy cultivars — perishable, low yield, but it raises meal quality.
🔬Unlocks the SOY food chain: a Greenhouse (grows soy) and a Soy Kitchen (cooks Soy Meal) — the crop route to tier-2 quality food that lifts colonist happiness via the nourishment want.
🔬Domesticating the native herds: the feed chain first — a Feed Cultivator and its grove Harvester. The Ranch follows once a species is catalogued in the Encyclopedia.
🔬Slow, low-yield flavour crop. Unlocks desirable mid/high-tier meals.
🔬The DUST RIG GARAGE and its cleaning drones - dust builds constantly and chokes solar + production until drones sweep it. Research early; buy extra drones on the garage's card as the colony grows.
🔬Redundant life support + bunkers. Disaster readiness, built ahead of disasters.
🔬Colony survival basics: breathable air/pressure + waste processing. Available from sol one.
🔬Maintenance Depots + Parts Workshops. The district builds the Parts Workshop itself when spare-parts demand rises - you zone Industry, the colony manager sizes it to need. Depots you place; the workshop the colony grows.
🔬Recover fertiliser, water and metals from waste — closes loops and lowers costs.
🔬Security presence lowers crime over a coverage area.
🔬Start tech: split water into breathable oxygen (+ hydrogen byproduct) — the air leg of the survival core, available from landing. Later branches (atmospheric CO2 extraction, hydrogen->fuel, efficiency) deferred to the tree.
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🔬MEGASTRUCTURE: the sealed vertical cities - FOUR designs, each a deliberate pick, not a skin: the flagship Obsidian, the oxygen-surplus Verdant forest tower, the fuel-refining Ascent launch spire, the food-growing Granary ziggurat. Rare-metal superstructures - the Deep Mine chain.
🔬MEGASTRUCTURE: a pressurised city-dome — a whole town of habitats and gardens sealed under meteor-hardened glass. The biggest single home the colony can raise.
🔬A hand-assembly bench turning silica into simple boards — the early electronics trickle that keeps drones and labs buildable until the Deep Mining and Electronics Fab chain runs.
🔬Starting tech (water from ice). Available at game start.
🔬Composites Plant - steel + polymer into composites for reactors and high-end builds. District-built when composites demand appears; the colony manager also raises the steel + chemical plants that feed it.
🔬Unlocks the Regolith Harvester (scrapes regolith, the base raw for building). You DON'T place it - once you zone an Industry district, your colonists auto-build it when the colony runs short of regolith, sizing it to demand. Research just puts it on the colony manager's menu.
🔬Goods Factory - polymer + glass + electronics into consumer goods for shops. Purely DEMAND-DRIVEN: when a retail venue wants consumer goods, your Industry district builds the factory ITSELF, then the colony builds the plants that feed it. You research + zone; the colony chains the rest.
🔬Coated alloys that survive the fen's acid. Opens the corrosive biome (at a 10% materials premium) and its unique resource.
🔬Deep Mine - rare metals + uranium, the feed for electronics and nuclear. Your Industry district builds it automatically once something demands rare metals (electronics) or uranium (reactor fuel) - a late-chain building the colony GROWS toward as it matures, not one you place.
🔬Electronics Fab - silica + rare metals into electronics (drones, labs, data centres). DEMAND-DRIVEN and self-chaining: a venue like a Cinema/Arcade wanting electronics makes your Industry district build the Fab, which then pulls a Silica Refinery + Deep Mine to feed it (once those are researched). You don't place any of it.
🔬Silica Refinery + Glassworks - silica into glass, a core build material (labs, domes, solar). DISTRICT-BUILT: your zoned Industry raises these automatically when glass demand appears, and stops once it's met. You manage the district, not the individual factories.
🔬Chemical Plant - regolith into reagents AND polymers (atmospheric carbon supplies the polymer feedstock). You don't place it: your Industry district builds one when something downstream (medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, composites) creates demand. It's a link the colony adds to a chain, on demand.
🔬Luxury Workshop - consumer goods + composites + electronics into luxury/status goods. Affluent colonists wanting status goods make your Industry district build it, cascading down to the plants it needs. Enable it with research; the colony does the building.
🔬Smelter (regolith into iron) + Steel Mill (iron into steel). Your Industry district builds these on demand - a steel consumer (composites, equipment) makes the colony raise a Steel Mill, which then pulls a Smelter to feed it. You never place either; you enable the chain and zone the ground.
🔬Tap the marsh gas for hydrogen — the fuel chain's feed.
🔬Open-cast shafts work the ore fields of metal-rich country — iron without waiting for smelter districts.
🔬Polymer Plant - hydrogen + reagents into polymer for goods, medical gear and composites. Your zoned Industry builds it automatically when polymer demand rises up the chain; you manage the district, not the plant.
🔬Autonomous systems research — the stepping stone toward asteroid capture and deep-space operations.
🔬Evaporation pans on the Salt Flats yield chemical reagents — ends the reagent import.
🔬Early player-placed Steel Foundry - smelts the Mobile Miner's regolith straight to steel. Crude next to the zoned Smelter + Steel Mill district chain (Metallurgy) that outproduces it later.
🔬Skyports: air freight between linked ports — over hills, chasms and distance no belt can pay for. Low volume, total flexibility; rail stays the bulk answer.
🔬Compute capacity for autonomous fleets and (later) robotics. Heavy power draw — high-tier power is what scales automation.
🔬Disaster-hardened reserves of critical goods. Cross-field with Habitation's emergency systems.
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🔬Rail: the transport backbone. Cheap bulk haulage + colonist transit.
🔬Paved marscrete roads — vehicles and builders move about twice as fast along them, and district growth fronts them. Laid like a path by dragging a line; costs marscrete per tile.
🔬Starting transport: paved roads (and free paths). Roads speed builders, buses and haulers and lighten commutes; Rail and Air Transport build on this.
🔬Basic storage: warehouses for solids, Hydrogen Silos for the rocket-fuel feedstock, Hazmat Containers for the dangerous stuff. Storage is the economic buffer.
🔬Starting health care: the CLINIC treats Minor illness with no consumables - your districts build clinics to demand (Commercial), you never place them.
🔬The HOSPITAL treats Serious illness; needs a tier 5-6 doctor plus medical supplies + pharmaceuticals each sol - both producible by the time this unlocks. District-built to demand (Commercial).
🔬Medical Fabricator - algae + polymers into medical supplies (the Hospital's consumable). Your Industry districts auto-build it once hospitals demand supplies, pulling a Chemical Plant for the polymers. First step of the supply chain - research it BEFORE Hospital Medicine.
🔬Pharma Lab - algae + reagents into medicines (the Hospital's second consumable). Industry districts raise one on demand - you don't place it. Supply tech comes before the Hospital that needs it.
🔬The SURGERY treats Critical illness. Needs a rare tier-9 surgeon; consumes surgical supplies + pharmaceuticals - both flowing before this unlocks. District-built to demand (Commercial).
🔬Surgical Supplies Fab - pharmaceuticals + electronics into sterile surgical supplies. Industry-district-built to need. Supply tech comes before the Surgery that needs it.
🔬The theory and rigging for grappling passing asteroids — the prerequisite for Deep-Space Mining's tugs and outposts.
🔬Launch a capture tug from a Landing Pad at a passing asteroid (with a chance of failure); success parks an orbital outpost that ships its class yield — volatiles, rare metals or exotic matter — down to the colony each sol, plus research points.
🔬Fulfil Earth military contracts for treasury income and unique unlocks. Opens after the wormhole.
🔬Concealed until the wormhole reopens. Re-established ties with Earth open the contract and tourism branches.
🔬Premium tourist venues and entertainment.
🔬Concealed until the wormhole reopens. With the fold restored, Earth is a market again — scaled exports and real trade.
🔬Concealed until the wormhole reopens. Tourists arrive through the fold and spend at your venues.
🔬Major ship works; prerequisite for the wormhole drive.
🔬Deep manufacturing for contract goods. Opens after the wormhole.
🔬Constant power. Assemble a huge Orbital Mirror from prefabs, launched piece by piece, that beams sunlight to a ground Receiver Array — power day and night, the answer to the late-game power wall.
🔬Entry to the Orbital line — coordinate with the orbiting ship. Includes the deep-scan array: passes yield bonus RP and seed richer anomalies (absorbed the old Deep Scan node).
🔬Sightseeing tours of the alien world.
🔬The crowning megastructure — massive tourism and cargo throughput.
🔬Ground infrastructure for a working spaceport — landing pads, pad maintenance and the refuelling facility (which refines its own rocket fuel from piped hydrogen + oxygen). The launch and asteroid arc starts here.
🔬Not the end — the fold. Reopening the wormhole unseals a whole concealed branch of the tree: interplanetary trade, tourism, and Earth contracts. You got here? Now the real economy begins.
🔬Enrich Deep Mine uranium into reactor fuel — the fission chain's fuel step, researched before the reactor itself.
🔬Bore the smouldering emberite seams of the ash steppe, rust desert and dust basin, and burn the mineral in a Kiln — 55 power, the strongest source before fission.
🔬Reliable constant baseload, burning domestically enriched reactor fuel — the import route is gone, so the colony is on its own.
🔬Fusion Reactor (you place) + Helium-3 Sifter (district-built on fusion-fuel demand). Endgame baseload. The Sifter your Industry district raises when a fusion reactor needs fuel. (Also needs a Frontier asteroid-capture prerequisite, added with the asteroid chain.)
🔬Burn the hydrogen your colony already vents — electrolysis byproduct or the Methane Marsh tap. A Gas Turbine turns 8 hydrogen per sol into 50 power.
🔬Starting power: solar arrays + battery storage. Daylight-dependent, so storage matters from sol one.
🔬A Shear Stack milks the temperature gradient on a biome border for 35 power. You landed near a seam between climates — build along it.
🔬Harness a Breather Vent — the geothermal mouths scattered across the world, marked by steam plumes and few in number. A Vent Turbine on one gives a steady 45 power.
🔬Discovery-triggered — appears in the Frontier row only once a Chasm has been revealed.
🔬Academies and libraries — tier-2 Enrichment, stronger job mobility.
🔬Discovery-triggered — appears once a large-meteor impact site has been revealed.
🔬Run TWO research projects at once. Your RP/sol is SPLIT between them (breadth, not extra speed - build labs and staff scientists to raise the total). Also unlocks the FIELD LAB: a small lab with a drone pad that can host a Prospector Drone for sampling crystal blooms.
🔬Research labs — tier-3 Enrichment and the main source of research points.
🔬Starting tier-1 market venues: recreation, social, culture, fitness and a general store.
🔬Starting tier-1 civic want-servers: a school, green space and a place for reflection.
🔬Sports complexes — tier-2 Wellness.
🔬Comfortable housing for the middle wealth band.
🔬Temples and halls — tier-2 Faith.
🔬Biodome gardens — tier-2 Nature.
🔬Galleries and theatre — tier-2 Culture.
🔬Bars and clubs — tier-2 Connection.
🔬Arcades and active sports — tier-2 Fun.
🔬Lifestyle retail — tier-2 Acquisition.
🔬Experimental culture — tier-3 Culture.
🔬Festivals and gatherings — tier-3 Connection.
🔬Boutiques selling luxury/status goods — tier-3 Acquisition.
🔬Spas and medical-wellness — tier-3 Wellness.
🔬
🔬Luxury residences for the affluent.
🔬Low-G coasters and rocket rides — extreme Fun. Power-hungry.
🔬Observation domes and trails — tier-3 Nature.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Racking and compression: every storage building holds twice as much.
🔬Optional, minor. Horizontal/variety — panels shed dust themselves.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Gourmet Kitchen - delicacies for tier-3 dining (optional). District-built when affluent tastes demand delicacies; your zoned Industry raises it and its feed chain on its own. You never place it directly.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Optional, minor. Never required.
🔬Optional, minor. New, stronger engine variants.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Optional, minor.
🔬Doubled charge banks let the Mobile Miner run deep into the night. With Solar Boost: 24/7 in full-sun biomes.
🔬Upgraded canopy panels charge the Mobile Miner faster. With Battery Packs: 24/7 in full-sun biomes.
🔬A mast turbine trickle-charges the Mobile Miner day and night - 24/7 operation in windy, dim biomes.
🔬Ship comes around more often (lowers ship_pass_interval_sols).
🔬Optional, minor. Never required.
🔬Specialisation: raises how many buildings a Resource Point can service before tiles go yellow.
🔬Specialisation: extends a Resource Point's service reach — the green serviced area grows. Minor, and it stacks.
⬡The generic skeleton unit every orbital structure needs. Cheap and common — build ahead and stockpile.
⬡Powers a reflector or an asteroid outpost.
⬡The reflective face of the Orbital Mirror.
⬡Aims and articulates a reflector or an elevator segment.
⬡The extractor unit of an asteroid mining compound — the module that actually digs the rock.
⬡Crew quarters and life support for a crewed asteroid outpost.
⬡A length of the Space Elevator's tether — the exotic-luminite composite that makes the megastructure possible. The elevator needs many of these.