Colony & Buildings
Every colony has 25 building slots and (for most factions) a single build queue. Buildings follow one predictable shape — cost grows roughly ×1.5 per level, build time grows a little slower — and extractors, which compound forever, are almost always your best early spend.
The Build Queue & Cost Curves
Every colony has one build queue (two, for the Combine), and every building follows the same shape: cost grows roughly ×1.5 per level, build time grows a little slower than cost (so the late game is bottlenecked by resources, not queue-waiting), and each has its own maximum level and prerequisite buildings.
Cancelling a queued build refunds its full cost — the game wants you experimenting, not regretting a misclick.
The Four Extractors
The four extractors — one per base resource — are your earliest and most important investment. Early on, an extractor level is usually the single best thing you can spend resources on, because production compounds: every level is worth more than the last, forever. The Command Center is the key multiplier on top, speeding all construction empire-wide.
All 25 Buildings
Beyond the four extractors, the rest of the catalog unlocks in roughly the order below. Every one is real, shipped, and playable today.
| Building | What it does |
|---|---|
| Command Center | Every level speeds up all construction empire-wide by a further 4%, and gates most later buildings. Your most important non-extractor investment. |
| Cargo Depot | Raises the shared cap on alloys / crystal / isotopes storage — and, indirectly, your Munitions cap (it shares that depot's space). |
| Ration Silo | Raises your rations cap — deliberately smaller than the Cargo Depot. |
| Orbital Shipyard | Required to train any ship; each level trains ships faster. |
| Fleet Academy | The tech tree for your unit roster — higher levels certify heavier hull classes. |
| Planetary Shield | Multiplies your garrison's defense and adds a flat bonus. Breachers degrade it in battle. |
| Command Nexus | Every 5 total levels across your empire grants one more colony slot; level 10 certifies Colony Ships. |
| Bastion | A separate additive defense layer — up to +50% flat, stacking underneath the shield's multiplier. |
| Research Spire | Hosts technology research and caps how far your interstellar reach can go. |
| Muster Hall | Trains your ground-unit roster and raises your colony's ground billet cap — the Ground Forces & Field Battles entry point. |
| Munitions Plant | Converts alloys and isotopes into Munitions, the ammunition resource every ground unit trains and fights on. |
| Commodities Exchange | A one-time unlock: build it once and this colony can trade on the Market. |
| Trade Port | Raises how many market offers you can keep open (best one counts empire-wide) and shaves the freight fee. |
| Repair Bay | Speeds up how fast wounded battle survivors heal. A base field-repair rate works even at level 0. |
| Diplomatic Relay | A small always-stacking bonus to how fast a colony's loyalty recovers. |
| Administrator's Quarters | Reduces loyalty damage a colony takes per enemy attack — the counter to a conquest campaign. |
| Bomber Hangar | A second slipway, splitting heavy siege-hull training off the main Shipyard queue. |
| Support Bay | A third slipway for light utility hulls, so they don't compete for build slots. |
| Orbital Dock | Shaves a further percentage off every fleet's travel time from this colony. |
| Commander Training Center | Speeds up how fast your Captain earns experience (best across colonies counts). |
| Sensor Array | Extends your (and your alliance's) live sensor coverage by one star system per level. |
The older design doc describes exactly 11 fixed buildings; the live game has since grown to 25(the four extractors plus everything above) — most recently with the Muster Hall and Munitions Plant, the pair that opened up ground warfare (see Ground Forces & Field Battles). All 25 are shipped and playable — the design doc's list is simply stale. Everything about how buildings work (queueing, cost curves, cancel-refunds) is unchanged and accurate.
The Combine's Parallel Queue
Every other faction runs one serial build queue for everything. The Combine alone can run one extractor job and one facility job at the same time — the only structural (not just numeric) faction difference in the game. It suits players who hate watching an idle build queue.
Colony Charters
Once a colony's Command Center reaches level 5, you can adopt a Charter: a named, mutually-exclusive economic specialization for that one colony. Adopting or switching costs real resources and starts a week-long cooldown before you can switch again (clearing to “none” is free but still starts the cooldown — no fast-swap loophole). No charter touches attack power, upkeep, or Aurium — they're strictly an economic trade-off layer, and deliberately smaller than what a good territory claim already gives you. A colony with no charter behaves exactly as if charters didn't exist; this is entirely opt-in.
| Charter | Trade-off |
|---|---|
| Mining Compact | More alloys and crystal, fewer rations. |
| Deep-Core | More isotopes, less alloys / crystal. |
| Agri-Combine | Much more rations, a little less of everything else. |
| Trade Hub | A little less of everything, but cheaper market fees and faster freighters from this colony. |
| Fortress World | A little less of everything, but a flat +10% home defense, stacking underneath Bastion and the shield. |