Industry

Industries are buildable colony improvements at player and AI owned colonies. The economy for the whole starsector is based on industry production, and trade shortages. See the colony page. Upgraded player colonies or AI colonies will provide a market to buy and sell goods.

The player can build industries on their colonies for credits. A size 3 colony will allow one industry improvement. Larger colonies get more build slots, up to four slots at colony size 6. Some defensive colony improvements use an industry slot, some do not.

The Waystation improvement also improves a colony's inventory to provide thousands of supplies and fuel (at base cost).

Build Order

This flowchart details the requirements and production of industries

A newly establish colony can only house a single industry, and different planet types suit different industries. To produce a self-sufficient economy requires multiple colonies, so choosing which industries go on which planets and in what order you develop can make a big difference.

There is no wrong planet to colonize or industry to construct as you get started with colony management, but prioritizing base resources will often yield higher profits and lay a foundation for future advanced industries.

A Farming industry can be established on most habitable worlds as your first industry since it is lucrative(particularly for rich farmland and with the use of Soil Nanites), requires little in the way of imports to operate and all colonies require food and will surfer stability penalties if subjected to a shortage. However, caution should be taken when colonizing habitable worlds as they typically have lower hazard ratings and benefit from increased growth which can attract Unwanted Attention.

Otherwise a mining operation on a planet with at least Rich transplutonics can produce high profits right out of the gate on a size 3 colony, particularly when augmented with an Autonomous Mantle Bore, rarely you may even be able to find a world with organics and/or volatiles alongside normal ores on Toxic or Frozen worlds. Mantle Bores require non-habitable worlds and rich ore deposits are most commonly found on high hazard volcanic worlds, however the mining industry's low upkeep means the impact of hazard rating on profits is minimal unless you invest in hazard pay to grow the colony. Such worlds will not grow past size 3 without outside intervention, but this can be quite useful for a player in the early game trying to maintain a Low Profile.

All colonies also benefit from supporting structures: Starports & Waystations for Accessibility, and Military buildings for Stability, Ground Defences, and space-based Patrols. These structures depend on Fuel & Heavy Industry outputs, which in turn require mining and refining of Metals, Transplutonics, & Fuel. These goods are difficult to produce profitably early and are suboptimal to produce on habitable worlds. They are also more likely to incite colony crises so these pursuits are not recommended for your first colony.

Stability

• Ensure that your colony has good Stability so you don't destabilize into decivilization
• Colonies can also be stabilized with the "stabilize" button, or by spending a story point into the "Population and Infrastructure".
• Check the demands for each industry, in particular check "Population and Infrastructure." If the demands are not met, you'll get a penalty.

Ground and space defenses are like a bullet-proof vest in an important way. A bulletproof vest doesn't prevent a person from being shot, it just makes it much less painful. Ground Defenses can help prevent unrest penalties from compounding after Colony Threats. It is recommended that new players quickly construct this building to mitigate the severity of raids on important planets. Space defenses are expensive, more dependent on imports, and won't perform as expected at the first and second tier buildings.

Profit

Your colony demands are basically free, to a point. It's not free if-your colony doesn't have enough accessibility to import (tallies on the right will show this.) Industry buildings also receive a small upkeep reduction if your demands are supplied internal to your faction.

Colony profitability will vary greatly, depending on the whole economy of the sector. You will only profit if you can produce big numbers of valuable goods: food, drugs, fuel, volatiles, ore. Then you will have to make sure your colony accessibility is good enough to export, while keeping your upkeep low and your stability (above 4 to allow more profits.) For example, fuel production is a good building, but it produces -2 fuel below your colony size, and the building upkeep is 9000¢, or greater. You'll be making about -8000¢, even as the costs for the imports will be very low (or hidden into the building upkeep.)

Why can't you make money making supplies? Click the supplies tally on the right of your colony. You will see that the sector market value of supplies is around 60000¢. However, other factions will be producing about twenty times what you could produce on a normal colony. So, you're competing for a share of 60000¢ with a few other factions producing supplies at a rate-twenty times what you can, all the while paying 10000¢ or so building upkeep. Remember-building upkeep goes down on low hazard planets. See Market Conditions and Colony.

Which isn't to say you can't make money. If you can boost your accessibility into double digits, you'll steal market share from factions with low accessibility, and what if your planet has big numbers on three different items? It's down to luck though. Without luck, you'll just muddle around making a mere 30000¢ profit in your dirt mining.

A community member has made a beautiful profit calculator. It's a static web page that allows you to open a Starsector save file and browse to profitable colonies. See Persean Commercial Realty Group.

Industry List

Name	Cost/Time	Base upkeep	Production	Demand	Notes
Population & Infrastructure	N/A	(Size - 2) * 1,500¢	(Size - 2) * 10,000¢ Crew: [Size -3] Recreational Drugs: [Size -4] Harvested Organs: [Size -5]	See industry page	Present on all colonies Doesn't counts toward industry limit
Farming \ Aquaculture	75,000¢ 60 days	(Size - 2) * 500¢	Food: [Size]	Heavy Machinery: [Size -3]	See Farming for Aquaculture
Mining	100,000¢ 60 days	(Size - 2) * 1,000¢	Organics: [Size] Ore: [Size] Transplutonic Ore: [Size -2] Volatiles: [Size -2]	Heavy Machinery: [Size -3] Recreational Drugs: [Size]	Resources only produced if present on planet
Tech-Mining	150,000¢ 45 days	(Ruin size) * 500¢	Fuel, Supplies, Weapons, and Blueprints	None	Production Diminishes after some times Resources are sent to the gathering point (see Tech-Mining for details)
Refining	225,000¢ 90 days	(Size - 2) * 1,500¢	Metals: [Size] Transplutonics: [Size -2]	Heavy Machinery: [Size -2] Ore: [Size +2] Transplutonic Ore: [Size]
Light Industry	225,000¢ 90 days	(Size - 2) * 4,000¢	Domestic Goods: [Size] Luxury Goods: [Size -2] Recreational Drugs: [Size -2]	Organics: [Size]
Heavy Industry	500,000¢ 120 days	(Size - 2) * 6,000¢	Heavy Machinery: [Size -2] Supplies: [Size -2] Heavy Armaments: [Size -2] Ship Hulls & Weapons: [Size -2]	Metals: [Size] Transplutonics: [Size -2]	Allow usage of Doctrine Fleet Removes Imported Hulls Ship quality debuff
Orbital Works	300,000¢ 150 days	(Size - 2) * 6,000¢	Heavy Machinery: [Size -2] Supplies: [Size -2] Heavy Armaments: [Size -2] Ship Hulls & Weapons: [Size -2]	Metals: [Size] Transplutonics: [Size -2]	Provides faction ships with +20% quality
Fuel Production	450,000¢ 120 days	(Size - 2) * 5,000¢	Fuel: [Size -2]	Volatiles: [Size]
Commerce	450,000¢ 90 days	(Size - 2) * 1,500¢	+50% Colony Income	None	-3 stability Allow buying/selling In-colony
Military Base	450,000¢ 120 days	(Size - 2) * 5,000¢	Patrols: See Military Base Crew: [Size] Marines: [Size]	Fuel: [Size +1] Supplies: [Size +1] Ship Hulls & Weapons: [Size +1]	+2 stability x1.2 Ground Defences Patrols: See Military Base Upgraded from Patrol HQ
High Command	150,000¢ 120 days	(Size - 2) * 7,000¢	Crew: [Size] Marines: [Size]	Fuel: [Size +2] Supplies: [Size +2] Ship Hulls & Weapons: [Size +2]	+2 stability x1.3 Ground Defences Patrols: see High Command Upgraded from Military Base

Structures

Structures does not produce resources aside from Crews, but it doesn't require Industry slot so you can build all of them on a single colony.

Name	Cost/Time	Base upkeep	Production/effect	Demand	Notes
Spaceport	50000¢ 15 days	(Size - 2) * 1500¢	Accessibility +50% Population growth +2 Crew: colony size - 1	Fuel: colony size - 2 Supplies: colony size - 2 Ship Hulls & Weapons: colony size - 2	Built Automatically
Megaport	300000¢ 150 days	(Size - 2) * 2000¢	Accessibility +80% Population growth +(colony size) Crew: colony size + 2	Fuel: colony size Supplies: colony size Ship Hulls & Weapons: colony size	Upgraded from Spaceport
Waystation	100000¢ 60 days	(Size - 2) * 1000¢	Accessibility +10% Supplied demand goes into colony stockpile	Fuel, supplies, crew equal to colony size
Ground Defences	150000¢ 60 days	(Size - 2) * 1000¢	+1 stability Provides x2 ground defenses	Supplies: colony size Marines: colony size Heavy Armaments: colony size - 2
Heavy Batteries	300000¢ 90 days	(Size - 2) * 1500¢	+1 stability Provides x3 ground defenses	Supplies: colony size Marines: colony size Heavy Armaments: colony size - 2	Upgraded from Ground Def.
Patrol HQ	300000¢ 60 days	(Size - 2) * 1000¢	+1 stability 2x light patrol fleet Crew: colony size	Fuel: colony size -1 Supplies: colony size -1 Ship Hulls & Weapons: colony size -1
Orbital Station	150000¢	1500¢	+1 Stability 50% Station CR x1.5 Ground Defense	Supplies: 3 Crew: 3	Choices between Low-Tech, Midline, and Hi-Tech
Battle Station	500000¢	6000¢	+2 Stability 75% Station CR x2 Ground Defense	Supplies: 5 Crew: 5	Upgraded from Orbital Station
Star Fortress	1000000¢	12500¢	+3 Stability 100% Station CR x3 Ground Defense	Supplies: 7 Crew: 7	Upgraded from Battlestation
Planetary Shield	750000¢	4500¢	x3 Ground Defense		Blueprint gained from Story Mission

Colony Upgrades

There are several ways to improve your colony further:

• Employ a skilled Administrator
• Spend Story Points on buildings
• Install AI Cores in buildings
• Installable Modules can be found and fitted to buildings

Administrators

The player can administer colonies, and will do so unless another is selected. If one or two colonies are administered directly they recieve a +2 Stability bonus. Every colony past the second applies -2 stability to all colonies instead. If the Industrial Planning skill is taken all structures will have +1 Production.

A Hired Adminstrator can manage your colony for you. Up to three can be hired and they can also have the Industrial Planning skill. The salary is 2,500¢ for a regular administrators or 20,000¢ for a skilled one. There is a hiring fee of twice their salary, and their salary when not assigned to a colony is 10% the normal rate.

An Alpha-level AI Core can also run a colony. An AI core has no Salary, has the Industrial Planning skill, and also has the unique Hypercognition skill that provides +10% Accessibility, +20% Fleet Size, +50% Ground Defences, and +1 Stability. They are illegal however, and may attract unwanted attention

Improvements

It costs 2 SP to improve a structure the first time, and double that for each subsequent improvement. What the improvement is depends on the structure, as seen in the table below.

AI Cores

AI Cores can be installed on industry buildings.

• Gamma: -1 Demands
• Beta: -1 Demands and -25% Upkeep
• Alpha: -1 Demands, -25% Upkeep, and a unique structure-dependant bonus

Instalalble Modules

Installable addons are Special Items that can be found and applied to colony structures. Each Module is unique and has it's own requirements, found in a table below. Modules can be obtained when searching Equipment Caches and the like, or from Tech-Mining Ruins. Some modules can also be stolen from other faction's colony during raids although the economic balance of the sector is highly dependent on thse domain-era artifacts.

• Eventide (Samarra) has a Fullerene Spool on it's Spaceport
• Nachiketa (Naraka) and Sindria (Askonia) have Synchotron Core Fuel Refineries.
• Chicomoztoc (Aztlan) and Kazeron (Thule) have Pristine Nanoforges on their Orbital Works
• Sindria (Askonia), Asher (Canaan), Culann Starforge (Hybrasil), and Novo Maxios (Magec) have Corrupted Nanoforges on their Orbital Works.
• Eventide also has an Orbital Solar Array, which is similar to an Orbital Fusion Lamp but cannot be installed or removed^{Please Verify}. It is occasionally found on other planets in the sector.

Improvement Effects

Colony Building	Addon Effect	Improvement Effect	Alpha Core Effect
Commerce	+50% Colony Income	+25% Colony Income	+25% Colony Income
Spaceport Megaport	+30% Accessibility	+20% Accessibility	+20% Accessibility
Waystation	-	+20% Accessibility	Greatly increases Waystation stockpiles
Orbital Station Battlestation Star Fortress	-	+1 Stability	Increases station combat effectiveness (Station gets a level 20 AI officer)
Ground Defenses Heavy Batteries	x1.5 Ground Defence	x1.25 Ground Defence	x1.5 Ground Defence
Planetary Shield	-
Patrol HQ	x1.25 Fleet Size (Hot) x2 Fleet Size (Very Hot)	+1 Medium Patrol	Increases fleet size by 1.25x
Military Base High Command		+1 Heavy Patrol
Cryorevival Facility	-	Doubles population growth bonus	Doubles population growth bonus
Aquaculture	-	+1 Production	+1 Production
Farming	+2 Production
Light Industry
Refining	+3 Production
Fuel Production
Heavy Industry Orbital Works
Mining	+3 Production (non-volatile)
Population & Infrastructure	Varies (See below)	+1 Production +1 Stability

Installable Module Requirements & Effects

Name	Value	Installed on	Requirements	Effects
Autonomous Mantle Bore	80,000¢	Mining	Not Gas Giant Not Habitable	+3 Production on all except for Volatiles
Biofactory Embryo	120,000¢	Light Industry	Habitable	+2 Production
Catalytic Core	100,000¢	Refinery	No Atmosphere	+3 Production
Combat Drone Replicator	60,000¢	Ground Defences Heavy Batteries		x1.5 Ground Defense
Corrupted Nanoforge	50,000¢	Heavy Industry Orbital Works		+1 Production +20% Fleet Quality +25% Hazard on Habitable Planets (Permanent)
Cryoarithmetic Engine	200,000¢	Patrol HQ Military Base High Command	Hot Planet	+25% Fleet Size on Hot +100% Fleet Size on Extreme Heat
Dealmaker Holosuite	120,000¢	Commerce		+50% Colony Income
Fullerene Spool	150,000¢	Spaceport/Megaport	No Extreme Weather No Extreme Tectonic Activitiy	+30% Accessibility
Hypershunt Tap	300,000¢	Population & Infrastructure	10 Light-year (max) from a Coronal Tap	+1 Industry Limit +10 Transplutonics Demand
Orbital Fusion Lamp	150,000¢	Population & Infrastructure		Mitigate Hazard Penalty the following features: Cold, Extreme Cold, Poor Light, and Darkness +10 Volatiles Demand
Plasma Dynamo	100,000¢	Mining	Gas Giant	+3 Production on Volatiles
Pristine Nanoforge	250,000¢	Heavy Industry Orbital Works		+3 Production +50% Fleet Quality +25% Hazard on Habitable Planets (Permanent)
Soil Nanites	60,000¢	Farming	No Volatiles deposit No Transplutonic deposit	+2 Production
Synchrotron Core	250,000¢	Fuel Refinery	No Atmosphere	+3 Production

Up to date for latest version, 0.97a.