I know there have been many questions about how the resource production chain works in this game and it is in fact very easy once you figure it out.
There are 4 base resources, food, ore, fuel and goods.
At its most basic as long as you have the required building spot you can build buildings that produce each one of these directly. This is straightforward and like most of the other RTS's out there. However there is a twist.
Assuming you open up a new base and do not have resource spots for fuel and goods you will have to build factories that make these for you.
First you start with ore, all planets will have ore spots so it becomes, essentially, the base resource. You then build a fuel synthesizer, this will allow you to turn iron into fuel. You continue the chain by building an industrial plant. This will turn your fuel into goods.
Essentially it goes
ore -> fuel -> goods
Mine -> synthesizer -> plant
Now producing food is a bit different. Again there is a special spot where you can build a farm. This will provide fast and easy food output. However in places that do not have a farm you can build hydroponics. These will provide food but at about half the rate of farms.
So now you know how to produce resources. however in addition to actual resources there are support resources (termed s-res from here on in)
s-res's support the production of resources. The 2 s-res's are power and workers. You can check what s-res's a building requires by clicking it
![]()
If a colony does not have the requires s-res's the efficiency will suffer and it will take longer to produce resources. To boost power output build solar panels, to increase the number of works you can have build colony quarters.