Buildings, Power and Logistics

Everything you build is either a power structure, a logistics structure, or a production structure that sits between them. Get the first two right and the third mostly manages itself.

Power

• Solar Array - cheap and abundant on sunny worlds, but useless in shadow and vulnerable to rift storms.
• Geothermal Tap - the right answer on volcanic and tectonic worlds, including half of Kourou.
• Fusion Reactor - the most powerful and most expensive option; it needs a constant supply of specialised fuel, which is a whole production chain of its own.
• Power Cell - storage, so you can ride out an eclipse or a storm shutdown without everything brown-lighting.

Hold a 20 to 30 percent power surplus

Weather, eclipses and emergency shield activations all eat into your margin at once. A grid running exactly at capacity is a grid that blackouts the first time anything happens. And never rely on a single power source - interconnect your grids so one failure does not take life support down with it.

Logistics

• Conveyors - the backbone. One material per line.
• Sorting junctions - for when a line genuinely has to handle more than one material.
• Transporters - teleport materials across distance without a physical belt. Disrupted by rift storms.
• Shuttle pads and cargo landing pads - for moving bulk material from off-world sources.
• Ground vehicles and aircraft - for the away-mission layer.

Research

The research tree, powered by the Science division and a Research Lab, gates new buildings, vehicles and resources rather than just recipes. Pair it with a Scientific Sample Collector placed near an anomaly, because samples are what feed the tree. The wider science progression includes an exospacial research laboratory, an experimental station, a sample containment unit and data samples.

Production and refining

The refining tier runs through a metallurgy lab and a biomass synthesizer, with thermal concrete, refined silicon and advanced metal as the core intermediates that unlock dutronic chips and memory banks. Placing the refinery next to the collector it serves matters more than the raw numbers suggest.

Crew facilities

Crew quarters, mess halls, medical, entertainment and lounges all feed morale and health, and morale feeds productivity and survival. They are not optional extras - they are the difference between a crew that works well and a crew that dies of overwork.