Four resources run a planet. All of them move at the hourly update.
Vitarium
The raw material for everything: buildings, units, research, auctions. Each refinery produces 25 per hour (more with the Refining research). Base storage: 5,000; each warehouse adds 5,000.
Energy
Consumed every hour by every building, by orbital stations and by planetary defences while they are active. Solar plants produce 15 per hour. Base storage: 2,000; each accumulator adds 2,000.
If available energy does not cover consumption, consuming buildings shut down in reverse order of construction — the most recent first — and active defences switch off.
Food
Each inhabitant eats 0.1 food per hour, and each soldier eats the same ration — the soldier is the only human unit, and it eats wherever it is, at the base or away with a squadron. Robots, ships and stations are machines: they do not eat. Farms produce 20 per hour. With food, population grows 1% per hour, up to the housing cap. At zero food, population shrinks 2% per hour and soldiers desert at 2% per hour — a mass army with no farms behind it melts away on its own. Base storage: 2,000; each silo adds 2,000.
Population
Your inhabitants are your workforce: they build, manufacture and above all research. Base cap: 1,000; each housing adds 500. A successful ground attack can steal population — except what is sheltered.
Robots, the fifth resource
Technically a unit, the robot is also labour: while at the base, it builds and manufactures. A robot away on a squadron mission does no work.
Three rules to remember
- Any production above the storage cap is lost.
- Starting stocks: 1,000 vitarium, 500 energy, 500 food, 200 inhabitants, 50 robots.
- Population stolen in an attack reaches the attacker when their squadron returns.