Research Marsh Harvesting and commission a Resin Harvester. Designate a harvest rectangle over surveyed dry resin fields in the Methane Marsh. Deposits are finite and saved when harvested. Bring resin home to a District Materials Press, or supply an industrial District Fabricator, to produce Plasteel and Concrete Board for district expansion. Basic steel and concrete remain available without resin. Landing cargo provides a starting stock of district materials; industrial construction remains exempt from the district material bill to avoid a circular supply chain.

You place civic buildings directly and paint zones for the rest. Builder bots and constructor drones travel to the site, courier drones fly the materials in, and the building rises as it is built. You can prioritise sites, and unfinished work survives interruptions. Megastructures are harder to bring down than ordinary pads.

Placement defaults to the tile grid with 90 degree rotation. The F key unlocks freeform placement for most buildings, with any position and 15 degree steps. Anchored structures like the landing pad, maglev stations, extractors and the armory stay grid locked so they meet sockets and terrain exactly. Foundations level themselves, neighbouring pads snap to shared terraces, and steep ground costs extra material to carve.

Build a District Hub and connect power, pipes and conveyors directly to it, then paint zoning nearby. Habitats, commercial venues and industry have separate construction queues. Up to three habitats can be under construction together; the planner keeps adding capacity until completed and planned beds meet population demand, and resumes when population grows. Commercial construction follows unmet wants, supports duplicate venues when demand warrants them, and can close businesses that lack customers or supplies. Industry responds to colony resource shortfalls, rather than a population cap. Research, resources, suitable zoning and working utilities gate each choice. Planner buildings rise from their foundations over their construction time, including in free-build sandbox games. District conduit remains available for linking arcologies and Mega Domes to their hub.

Connect a district conduit from a District Hub to the foundation edge of an arcology or Mega Dome. The same conduit brings electricity and access to the hub's pipe and conveyor networks; these buildings do not accept direct power-pole, pipe or conveyor connections. Their cards show District conduit REQUIRED or DETECTED and identify an offline hub. Keep the hub powered and supplied, and ensure its power grid can support the added load. A broken conduit stops service. Each residence keeps its own housing, resource consumption and benefits. Mega Domes also require their one-off oxygen pressurisation charge before opening. Residents still need accessible routes to outside jobs and venues.

The founding ship lands along its approach path, rotates four thrusters downward, settles on their suspension and lowers the builder platform. Two Builder Bots face outwards and drive off before the platform retracts. The Mobile Miner clears the underside before the hull lowers further for colonist access. Cargo drones deploy from the hangars and can use all four landing pads. The ship stores starting supplies without requiring grid power. Launch probe orders cost resources and choose a survey destination from the ship card.

Active resin harvesting, Vitriol extraction and Deepvein Luminite extraction can disturb nearby nests. Site cards show local agitation. Gentle operation produces 60% of normal output with 45% of the disturbance per extracted unit; Intensive produces 140% output with 180% disturbance per unit. Idle or blocked machines generate none. Agitation cools over time, but an already mobilized raid is committed. Provoked raids and normal timed attacks share population limits. Clearing nearby nests makes the extraction area safer.

Disturbance raids introduce four threats alongside the normal timed roster. Micarites are fragile short-range air swarms. Tektites telegraph a committed dive and recover before diving again. Scoriates deploy to lob siege projectiles and are weak at close range. Laterites stay above ground and raid extraction operations and exposed logistics with committed rams. Protect outposts with escorts and air defence; observe the attack warnings before increasing extraction.

Combat and support vehicles can request permanent armour and shield fittings from their selection card after the corresponding research. They return to an operational Armory; fitting takes four simulation seconds per module and consumes the listed materials at completion. Both modules can be fitted to the same hull. The unit cards below show its exact rating, capacity and material costs. These refits do not apply to buildings, civilian drones or carried cargo as a separate target.

Colony Defence unlocks both walkers alongside the Siege Tank. The Jackal gun walker is an economical escort with an autocannon and separately stocked rocket pod. It tracks air targets and fires while moving with reduced accuracy. The Mantis artillery walker must stop, brace and acquire a visible ground target outside its minimum range before firing; it unbraces before moving. Its shells require current allied sight and respect friendly blast safety. Each walker takes eight game hours in the Armory ground queue, accepts ammunition deliveries and uses ordinary ground routes and formations.

Each operational Armory has separate first-in, first-out air and ground queues and builds one of each at a time. Hornet: 1 game hour; Quillback: 2; Condor: 4; Siege Tank, both walkers and Warden: 8; Hunchback and Bastion: 16. At normal speed one game hour is 15 real seconds. Materials and CPU are reserved on order. Construction pauses offline; cancelling an unfinished order refunds its paid resources and CPU. Ordinary aircraft use the hangar lift and ordinary ground units the side bay. The Bastion drives out along the side-bay ramp; the Warden finishes on a clear outside assembly apron and waits if it is obstructed. The next build can run during deployment. Queue progress survives saving; free resources and instant building settings do not skip vehicle construction. Demolishing the Armory loses unfinished orders.

Deploy the Bastion to support a forward position. It starts empty and carries 60 ammunition plus 20 steel. Its supply drone fetches up to 12 ammunition and 4 steel from an operational warehouse within 80 tiles; goods leave that warehouse at pickup. A separate service drone visits ground vehicles within 25 tiles, carrying up to 12 ammunition and 2 steel. One steel restores 20 percentage points of hull condition. Its roof pad serves one compatible small aircraft, with others queuing; oversized aircraft use the Armory. Moving recalls the drones and clears the pad. Two independent guns use the ammunition store. Deployed radar provides contacts within 40 tiles to Hornet guided rockets and Mantises, still limited by weapon range; buried threats remain concealed.

A low-hover escort with two independent beam turrets. Each prioritises incoming physical enemy projectiles within 14 tiles, then visible hostile aircraft within 10. The shared capacitor holds 100 charge, regenerates 6 per simulation second and spends 8 per pulse; each turret waits 0.48 seconds between pulses. Anti-air hits deal 7 damage with 2 penetration. It needs no ammunition. It cannot intercept melee, hitscan lightning or friendly fire. This projectile screen is separate from the personal shield module that can also be fitted to the Warden.

Vehicle armour is a single permanent refit, not a stacking upgrade. Hulls with up to 150 HP get rating 6; 151–300 HP get 8; larger hulls get 10. It costs 4, 8 or 12 Hardened Armour Plates respectively and reduces travel speed by 8%. Enemy penetration subtracts from that rating; the remaining rating subtracts from hull damage, capped at 60% of the hit. Shields absorb first. Example: a 20-damage hit with penetration 4 against rating 10 deals 14 hull damage. Enemy natural armour uses the existing separate rule: weapon damage + penetration − natural armour, subject to the weapon damage floor. Excess weapon penetration therefore adds damage against threats. See Weapons and Threats for the current values.

A shield holds half its hull maximum HP, with a minimum of 50 and maximum of 260 points. The light/medium/heavy refit costs 4/8/12 Luminite, 6/12/18 Vitriol and 4/8/12 Electronics. New modules begin empty and recharge. After six simulation seconds without a hit they recover up to 8 points per second, spending 0.5 onboard energy per point. Energy capacity is 100, recovering 1 per second in the field or 15 at an operational Armory. A cyan outline flashes on an absorbed hit; electrical hits flash more brightly, rather than drawing a permanent bubble. Fulgurites roll lightning on 10% of attacks, rising to 20% against charged shields: the bolt does triple attack damage and consumes double shield charge. The shield bonus does not double damage that spills into the hull.

Ctrl+0-9 stores the selected defence units; Ctrl+Shift+0-9 adds units to a saved group. Press 0-9 to select that group, or Shift+0-9 to merge it into the current selection. Double-tap its number to smoothly centre the camera. Groups survive save/load. Mixed selections share guard, patrol, colony patrol and formation commands. Health and ammunition bars appear above depleted units; toggle them in Settings > Gameplay. Comma and period change game speed; Space pauses.

RED SOL is set on a living alien planet with different biomes, weather events, disasters, fauna, megafauna and other challenges. Every new game provides a unique seeded world.

The dropship brings the colony resources, a mobile miner, two builders and its starting cargo drones. Its sealed drinking water and oxygen each cover four sols for the founding population; food covers seven sols. For the standard 40 colonists that is 160 water, 160 oxygen and 280 rations. Only residents living aboard consume these reserves, so daily use falls as they move into habitats. Establish habitats served by a supplied District Hub before onboard reserves run out. The hub receives food by conveyor and water and oxygen by pipe; the dropship keeps its onboard life support separate. Its four engines rotate down during the landing approach, extend their feet and compress as the hull settles. The miner leaves from beneath the bow; a rear lift lowers both builders. Drones launch through the two roof hangars and wait for a clear berth before collecting cargo. Ten sleeper freighters remain in orbit; shuttle Colonist Runs bring their passengers down.

Every world is generated from a seed and the selected map size, with terrain, biomes, rivers, lakes, ice, flora and resources. Height changes how things move, but the game plays on a flat grid. Freshwater opportunities are placed within 60 tiles of the landing. Iron ore occurs as separate finite seams only in Ferric Canyon and Oxide Highlands; there is no guaranteed starter seam. Each holds 400-800 iron and accepts one 5x5 Ore Shaft. Emberite and Breather Vents each have a separate 25% nearby roll, subject to suitable terrain; otherwise explore beyond the starting area. Emberite belongs in Dust Basin, Rust Desert and Ash Steppe.

Unexplored ground is black. Surveyed ground stays lit, but hostiles and wildlife stay hidden until a building, robot or vehicle can see them. Buildings, robots and crew see 20 tiles, the dropship sees 30, and vehicles, rail, pipe and roads survey as they go. You cannot build on unsurveyed ground, and wildlife joins the encyclopedia once sighted.

Ten biomes shape construction, weather, resources and native life. Cryo Tundra contains mineable ice inside a clear Frost Barrens margin. Frost Barrens has moderate wind and solar output, occasional snow and no permanent fog; its pale frost is not an ice resource. The other ordinary biomes have freshwater shores for Liquid Extractors. Methane Marsh and Vitriol Fen support their specialist extraction chains. Each biome uses its own mix of plants, rocks and decorative crystals; decorative crystals do not provide mineable resources.

Weather rolls across the world: rain, dust, snow, spore blooms, cyclones and radiation storms. Faster winds can drive turbines to produce more power. Storms slow colonists, vehicles and drones. Cyclones, blizzards and sky veils ground courier and work drones. Defence craft and towers keep fighting, though they still move slower in rain, snow and dust. Cyclone lightning damages ordinary buildings.

Disasters are colony-wide. Tremors, meteor showers, acid, cold, outbreaks, fires and sky veils each hit in their own way. For example, a large meteor impact warns you, then leaves a crater and an irradiated zone where nothing can be built.

A sol is one full day and night cycle, about 6 real minutes at normal speed. Everything ticks on it: shifts, production, aging, research and weather. You can pause time or run it at higher speeds.

New worlds contain one starter Exotic Matter meteor deposit at a random dry location within 60 tiles of the dropship. It appears as an impact crater with a meteor remnant and scattered debris. Explore to find it; keep construction clear while the site is radioactive. Radiation fades over ten sols after its Exotic Matter is depleted. Later meteor disasters can create additional impact sites independently. Older saves keep their existing deposit location and terrain.

Select the landed dropship, choose Launch probe and then select a destination on the ground. Each probe consumes the resources listed on the button instead of credits; further orders are limited by resources. The single launch silo handles probes one at a time: its two covers open, the probe rises clear of the hull, then accelerates towards its survey destination. Launches wait until the opening landing sequence is complete.

New worlds use a repeatable seed with broad basins, connected valleys, highland terraces or broken ridges. Broad building areas sit among the hills and mountains, including in rugged biomes. Generation checks nearby essentials, usable resin fields, Vitriol extraction sites and approaches to deep-vein chasms. A safer resin opportunity supports early expansion; richer remote fields can lie near active nests. Clearing a nest removes its local disturbance pressure. Terrain still affects routes, foundation costs and where large structures fit. Existing saves retain their original world generation. New generation-4 worlds keep mineable ice in Cryo Tundra, surround it with Frost Barrens, and check freshwater access for the other ordinary biomes.

Rare crystal discoveries lie far from the landing site and are much scarcer than ordinary crystal blooms. Once surveyed, select one and choose a single branch for good. Preserve bars new building within 16 tiles and grows the crystal through five stages over ten sols. Tours from Excursion Lodges and Tour Garages in range pay a scenic fee, at three sols the crystal points to a nearby undiscovered site, and the mature landmark can draw the Shell Mountain. Extract builds a rig whose drone carries the site's fixed bundle of Rare Metals, Luminite or Exotic Matter to storage; extraction disturbs nearby nests. Research builds a field station that needs crew and power for four sols and grants one technology, revealed only when the work is done.

Every colonist is an individual with a job, a home and a happiness state. Each works a day, evening or night shift and follows a routine of work, sleep, meals, leisure and commuting. Leisure can take them to a venue or a decoration, where they sit or stand.

Colonists grow from babies through children and teenagers into working adults, then seniors, and eventually die of old age. Families share homes; grown children seek housing of their own. Schools and universities improve entry qualifications. Continued employment provides experience for further advancement. Population, housing and life support must grow together.

Population can grow through families, Colonist Foundries, shuttle Colonist Runs and immigration. Births need suitable households and spare housing and life-support capacity. Foundries still grow adult colonists; they provide an alternative to waiting for children to mature. Immigration is limited by policy, available beds, supplies and reachable jobs. Build ahead of demand so incoming adults and growing families have homes.

Each colonist has one of 12 personality archetypes: Homebody, Socialite, Thrill-seeker, Scholar, Aesthete, Athlete, Gourmand, Status-seeker, Naturalist, Free spirit, Seeker and Ascetic. The archetype weights 10 want categories across 3 tiers. Happiness is how well those wants are met by venues they can reach and afford.

Colonists sit in one of 3 wealth bands: Struggling, Comfortable and Affluent. Wealth comes from wages and savings. Wealth raises the tier of experience a colonist aspires to, so affluent colonists demand higher tier products and venues that need more resources.

Colonists carry a health state, with sickness rolls each sol. Clinics and hospitals are treatment capacity, not a cure-all. Hunger and outbreaks make people sicker and worse at work. Deaths are tracked in 2 registers: preventable losses and old age.

A completed, powered District Hub distributes life support to its district. Connect its pipes to water and oxygen and its conveyors to food and materials. A separate Life Support Plant or District Supply is no longer required for a new district; existing support buildings remain compatible. Stored oxygen alone does not compensate for an offline hub or a missing service route. Arcologies and Mega Domes require district conduit to a working hub; their individual resource needs still apply.

The four arcologies and Mega Dome offer apartments to households. Higher wealth increases their attraction, but no wealth band is barred and existing households keep their leases. Their internal amenities benefit their own residents and need operating utilities and crew. An outage leaves basic shelter but suspends the enhanced amenities and new tourist bookings. Nourishment quality also depends on the colony food supply. Families reserve spare beds in their apartment. Serviced district homes and connected megastructures distribute air for their housing capacity, reduced by crew shortages; residents still consume actual oxygen from colony supplies. Verdant generates its residents' air internally while operating and contributes an oxygen surplus.

After completion the Mega Dome needs 150 oxygen to pressurise, unless free construction is enabled. Its town then opens commercial venues by itself: one for every 35 residents, up to 12, capped at service tier 2. Each sol it opens the venue its residents want most, or upgrades a basic venue to tier 2 once enough residents are well off. Venues are simulated: they need no plots or materials, only research, and the dome's card lists them. Each venue seats 160 residents, so a full town meets about half of its residents' needs; the rest, and every tier 3 want, need accessible venues outside. The town closes while the dome is offline or short of crew and water. The dome builds no housing or industry inside: it provides 420 beds itself.

Wages circulate inside the colony. Colonists earn and spend at businesses, businesses pay staff, and money only enters or leaves at the off-world boundary through trade, visitors and contracts. Your treasury is separate from the colonists' money. It is fed by a 12% tax on business revenue, a 10% workforce levy the charter pays on top of wages, visitor spending and off-world trade. Each sol it pays running costs: every operating building's upkeep and every vehicle's operating cost. When the treasury cannot cover them, the least essential buildings run at half output until it recovers; defence, life support and emergency buildings are exempt.

Commercial and industrial buildings each run a real profit and loss. They survive on resource availability first and profit second. An unprofitable or starved business closes and something else takes the spot. You zone the ground and the colony decides what fills it, with competition and duplicates.

Local prices float on stock coverage. Scarce goods drift expensive inside a clamped band and plentiful goods cheapen. Price movements feed into colonist wealth and happiness. Supply shocks like a stalled chain, a storm or a war are felt in the market before they are felt anywhere else.

Cargo-rocket exports and the station Freight Dock earn trade income, while district businesses export 18% of their revenue once the wormhole is open and Interplanetary Trade is researched. A cargo-rocket export spends 3 sols away, with launch and landing before it is ready again. On a Freight Dock you select goods and the amount to keep, and each berthed freighter buys the rarest goods first up to 60 units per sol. Each unique asteroid resource sells at full value up to 10 units per berthed freighter per sol, without taking stock below its keep amount.

After the wormhole opens, Command posts timed requisitions at the Military Complex. Accept a job, bank the goods, and they auto deliver for credits, research and standing. Higher standing brings bigger jobs, and a missed deadline costs standing. A Military Transporter lands on the Military Complex's pad, loads for a sol, and leaves.

Resources and goods move on 2 networks: pipes for fluids and gases, and conveyors for solids. Buildings tap a passing line when they touch it and can send and receive on the same run, with no throughput limits. Laying a line costs steel per tile, so distance is expensive. A Warehouse joins conveyor runs that touch it, and Liquid and Gas Storage joins pipe runs. Separate networks stay separate until you join them and split if you disconnect a run. An ordinary building that touches two runs does not join them. Stores need power, and crew if they have worker slots. Dense Storage research doubles every store's capacity.

You start with 4 small hauler drones that transport resources between the dropship, warehouses and construction sites. When they have no tasks they land at storage facilities and courier platforms. Cyclones, blizzards and sky veils force them out of the sky. They dump a mid-job parcel back into stores and sit on a warehouse roof until the weather clears.

Lay beams with ramps and speed-limited curves, connect stations, buy a locomotive and add carriages up to the platform length. A running train repeats its route with a 20 simulated-second stop at each station; it departs with whatever cargo is loaded. Each passenger carriage serves 40 commuters whose home and workplace are within eight tiles of different stations on its line. Cargo carriages hold 60 units, or 75 with Improved Engines. Trains lean with speed through curves and their trucks follow the beam over hills.

Maglev stations and Skyports require a conveyor connection to a Warehouse at both ends. Their cards show ordinary solid goods stored or produced on that network. Select goods to send automatically, then select the other endpoint's goods for return loads. Deliveries enter its connected Warehouse for local distribution. Full or disconnected receivers leave cargo aboard until it can unload; goods are never delivered remotely. Liquids, gases, power, CPU and hazardous cargo are excluded.

Link Skyports on their Freight routes cards and commission up to six drones per home port. Each drone costs one CPU and departs only when ten selected units and receiving Warehouse space are available. A pod can mix selected resources. It may load the destination's selected return goods, otherwise it flies home empty. Six deck pads reserve landing space; arriving drones hover when all pads are occupied. Unlike trains, freight drones wait for a full load instead of following a station timetable.

Distance is a cost. Long links move fewer goods, and long commutes cost happiness. Roads and packed paths speed colonists and vehicles. A road run stops where the ground is too steep or a building is in the way, and a run onto a raised pad builds a ramp so traffic can climb it.

Ground is never flat enough, so every building carves its own level pad. The Foundation Pad tool lets you do the same by hand: drag a rectangle and the ground is cut and filled to one level, then slabbed in concrete. [ and ] nudge the height. A tall pad edge is a cliff to ground traffic until a road ramps up to it.

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 help survive the night. Buildings connect by pole reach, or by sitting next to a building that is already on the grid, including generators. A packed power farm only needs one line out. When demand outruns supply the grid sheds load by priority, discretionary first and life support last.

Research runs in 5 fields: Biotech, Habitation, Industry, Logistics and Frontier. Each field has 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.

Nests are cave dens in the wild. Waves spill out to attack nearby reachable vehicles or structures, and tear out pipes, conveyors, track or poles in their path. Ground creatures cannot melee airborne aircraft. Fossorites prioritise buildings within local sight and attack vehicles only when no building is nearby; their burrowing still takes them inside the colony. Survivors from retreating waves feed the next wave, and later waves grow as your colony grows. Nests themselves are impervious to defence vehicles: the Bunker-Buster Silo is the only weapon capable of destroying a nest.

The Armory fields Hornets, Quillbacks, Condors, Siege Tanks, Jackals, Mantises, Hunchbacks and two support vehicles: Bastion and Warden. Select craft and right-click ground to move or a hostile to attack. Green shows movement. Shift+right-click appends movement or attack orders with a persistent purple route; a normal order replaces the queue. Red engagement lines show each unit's actual firing target, including automatic attacks. The crossed-target Hold Fire button stops attacks until toggled off while movement and servicing continue. Selection cards provide stance, patrol, formations, service and equipment controls; weapon magazines use bars or small ammunition pips. Hunchbacks also run, use jump jets and automatically pursue visible enemies in melee when empty. Folding turrets have a deploy control (auto folds them away until a target is in range, held open fires without the unfold delay, closed holds fire) and a target priority. Wildlife is not a hostile target.

Lesser Fissure Warrens and Great Crown Dens have distinct shells and open entrance passages. The shell blocks ground travel; building cannot obstruct the mouth. Waves emerge in staggered order along the passage, with flying defenders staying below the roof until clear. Extraction disturbance provokes nearby nests in addition to their ordinary timed attacks. Destroying a nest removes its local source of future defenders.

First sight of a nest musters a local guard group once. Normal starting strength is four for a Lesser nest and six for a Great nest, scaling with readiness, maturity and difficulty to a maximum of ten. Fulgurites support Volvites; established Great nests can add a Dolerite. Attacking the nest or its guards provokes surviving defenders to pursue the firing vehicle or building for six game hours after the last attack, up to 160 tiles from home. Repeated sight, attacks and loading never replenish the garrison. Ordinary weapons cannot destroy nests; bunker busters remain necessary.

Research Drone Carrier Operations after Heavy Ordnance, then build a powered Carrier Dock. One dock owns one carrier. Construction takes two sols and reserves 16 CPU: four for the carrier and twelve for its flight group. The completed carrier includes twelve charged laser drones; replacements cost 2 Steel + 1 Electronics and take half a game hour each. Carrier sight extends 30 tiles. Attack orders deploy drones through one catapult; they make aimed attack passes, then reserve either of two recovery lanes and return to recharge. Each laser shot deals 7 damage. No ammunition is used. A full drone battery allows about 75 seconds of flight before accounting for firing and return reserve; full recharge takes 30 seconds. The carrier automatically recalls all drones and returns home at low energy, critical hull health or four lost drones. It resumes its deployment after servicing. Its card controls recall, automatic servicing, replacement construction and hold fire. Group orders, queued movement, armour and shield refits, and save/load are supported. Refits are installed at the Carrier Dock.

Wildlife appears as you survey: each new stretch of country may hold a herd or flock of the species native to it, and the group keeps to a home range around the spot where it was found. Animals graze and lie down individually, walk between grazing grounds in a loose follow-the-leader column and drink at nearby shores. Vehicles and drones startle them: the nearest animal bolts first and the rest follow, but they never leave their range. Some species hop instead of walking, and some can be tamed and ranched. Megafauna are rare wonders with their own behaviours and dens.

Landing pads host a fleet you build: the colonist shuttle, capture tugs and cargo rockets. Launches burn fuel that a Pad Refuelling Facility refines from piped hydrogen and oxygen. A Prefab Factory on the pad's east socket builds the parts an assigned cargo mission still needs, and its transfer crane lifts them onto the pad. The rocket launches when it is fuelled and loaded, delivers, and returns for the next load.

The late game climbs off the planet. Captured asteroids become mining outposts. Prefab factories feed the launches that assemble the Orbital Mirror and the Space Elevator, and a station grows at the top of the tether. The wormhole that brought you here can be opened again from your side.

At the top of the Space Elevator a station grows one deck tile at a time. Two builder drones raise the tiles from materials that ride up the elevator. Floor costs stability, which the tether head and Stabilisers provide. A hull breach vents that compartment, and the station view unlocks once the ground station stands and the elevator prefabs are assembled.

Modules furnish the deck from a catalogue: berths, bars, shops, labs and docks. Build Crew Berths and staff post up from the colony to live aboard, where they spend on the concourse and work the freight floor. Footfall breeds crime, which only Security Offices bring down. Tourist and freight docks open liner tourism and standing freight trade.

Tourist liners bring visitor parties to the station Tourist Dock. Parties commonly contain couples or families, while single visitors also arrive. Each person has wants and spending funds; parties choose facilities together, use the station modules, and can ride the elevator to ground accommodation, tourist attractions and commercial venues. Visitors are shown individually. Holiday time, funds, satisfaction and return travel affect departure. Tourism and immigration policies control arrivals; eligible visitors can settle when the colony has homes, supplies and suitable reachable jobs.

The fold closed behind the convoy, but the founding dropship still carries a wormhole drive. Research it and Exotic Matter in your stores is routed aboard until 500 are banked. Fill the hydrogen tanks from your silos, then open the wormhole. The ship flies out, the fold fires 3 sols later and unseals trade and contracts, and a sol after that the dropship comes home.

A captured asteroid needs its facility prefabs before you can visit and build on it. Place extractors on deposits, connect them to the facility with conveyors and build solar plants to supply power. Extractors consume water and draw from finite deposits, which do not refill when you leave or load a save. Operational mines keep working while you are elsewhere, and cargo rockets bring water up and carry mined resources home.

Deep-Space Mining lets a Capture Tug pursue passing asteroids. A tug needs a ready landing pad, 80 rocket fuel and a capture rig costing 8 composites, 6 electronics and 1 exotic matter. Heavier rocks are harder to capture, and a failed attempt still consumes the rig and fuel. A successful capture creates an unfinished mining facility with finite reserves that vary with the asteroid class and mass, with some variation between individual rocks.

Assign a Cargo Rocket to a captured asteroid from its landing pad to deliver facility prefabs or collect mined resources. The rocket approaches sideways, brakes with its main engines, turns upright with small thrusters and descends onto the facility pad. It exchanges cargo at the midpoint of its 2-sol away trip, then lifts, turns and fires its main engines to return to the same ground pad. Returned resources wait at that pad until a conveyor connects it to a Warehouse or the Elevator Ground Station.

Release an asteroid from its inspection card when you are ready to abandon it. A ready, fuelled Capture Tug takes a 2.4-sol away trip and releases the rock at the midpoint before returning to its own landing pad. The asteroid leaves with its buildings, remaining deposits and any resources that have not been hauled home.

Passenger Docks receive tourist liners, Freight Docks receive buying freighters and each completed Repair Bay houses a hull tender. Liners and freighters brake onto their own berth with small thrusters while the clamps close around the docked ship. On departure they reverse clear, stop, turn upwards and accelerate away with their main engines. Freight containers load across the berth visit, and hull tenders leave their Repair Bays to repair damaged station walls.

The passenger car departs every three game hours, alternating directions throughout the day and night. Ground departures are 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 and 00:00; orbital-station departures are 09:00, 15:00, 21:00 and 03:00. Each journey takes 1 hour 12 minutes, followed by 1 hour 48 minutes at the destination before the next departure. Each operational arrival at the orbital station delivers 60 construction materials. It has 24 passenger places; posted crew and returning passengers board before new excursions. Travellers must reach the boarding area, and family parties wait until everyone is ready and there is room for the group. Passenger and cargo service require a completed elevator and a working ground station. Power loss, shutdown, damage or EMP interrupts service while the timetable continues. Missed cargo deliveries are cancelled, without a backlog on reconnection. Waiting passengers board the next departure; passengers already aboard leave at the next matching operational berth.

Research Orbital Power, then assign a Cargo Rocket to an Orbital Mirror in Spaceport. Each mirror needs 30 prefabs: 10 structural frames, 12 mirror panels, 4 actuators and 4 power supplies. A fully staffed factory in good condition makes one prefab per sol. Automatic launches wait for four useful prefabs, or the final smaller batch, and 80 rocket fuel in the pad. Launch staged load now can send a partial delivery early. Cargo installs at the midpoint of a two-sol away trip; the countdown, ascent and landing add time. Mirrors can be built before or after their ground receivers. Each completed mirror supplies one available Receiver Array, rated at 500 power day and night; normal crew and condition rules still apply. Additional mirrors can be commissioned in Spaceport, which shows completed projects, construction progress, linked receivers and spare mirrors. Receivers also show their beam connection. Available receivers connect in saved placement order; switching one off or disabling it frees its mirror for another. Mirrors and elevator construction do not consume water. Asteroid cargo flights carry water for their facility.

Content lives in CSV tables. Same id changes a value; a new id is new content. Enable packs on the Mods list, Apply, land a new colony. Buildings, vehicles, weapons, fauna, flora, resources, biomes, weather, disasters and places are rows. A flora or resource row with abundance grows or scrapes in those biomes without rewriting a biome table. Vehicle mode is a name; family is rover, lift, train or hover. A places.csv moon is a look-around world. Pack scripts can toast, move a little stock, start weather or a disaster, and grant a research node. A .gd in a pack is ignored.

Jobs have role grades from 1 to 10. A colonist's qualification and assigned role determine their working grade and wages; higher qualifications alone do not create a better-paid job. Schools and universities improve entry qualifications. Experience accumulates while working in an accessible, operating workplace, allowing further advancement and moves into suitable vacancies. Underqualified staff train on the job with reduced effective crew contribution. Provide reachable homes, workplaces and higher-grade jobs as the colony develops.