Building behaviour

While most buildings operate exactly as described in the game’s manual, some behave in undocumented or unexpected ways. See also PAFW and resource deficiency for how buildings fail in a power outage, and building hitpoints for how buildings behave when damaged.

Storage Facility / Storage Tower

If an ore storage building is destroyed, no ore is lost unless the total amount of ore stored at the asteroid now exceeds the total storage capacity. When this happens, ore is lost starting with Selenium and going through the ores in order until capacity is sufficient again.

Anti-Missile Pod

If an asteroid has at least one Anti-Missile Pod, there is a chance to shoot down each incoming missile. The chance increases with the number of Anti-Missile Pods.

The base chance to shoot down each missile is 21% for a single Anti-Missile Pod. Each additional Pod increases the chance by 2%, if it is fired by the alien; or 4%, if it is fired by the player. The latter generally occurs when firing at aliens who have Anti-Missile equivalents (Ore Eater’s Defence Battery, Rigellian Defence Battery, and Swixaran Tentacular Defender), but can also occur if the player fires against themself for some reason.

The chance caps out at 71% for 26 Pods. Aliens cap out at 71% for 14 Pod-equivalent buildings, although they will hit a soft cap before building that many.

In the CU Amiga K240 demo, Anti-Missile Pods are more effective: 31% base, +8%/+4% per additional, maxing out at 81%. The player would reach 71% at 11 Pods. However, neither the player nor the alien can build them in the demo. The numbers are still interesting because it suggests that the building was intentionally nerfed late in development to make missiles harder to defend against.

Anti-Missile Pods will fire at missiles that you shoot at your own asteroids, but will ignore Anti-Virus missile.

Note that the chance to shoot down a missile is unaffected by the rate or number of missiles incoming. Each missile has the same chance to be shot down, e.g. there’s no advantage in sending cheap Explosive missiles along with a Mega missile to try and overwhelm the target’s anti-missile defences.

Decontamination Filter

Each Decontamination Filter decreases the radiation at a colony by 30% while active. It can’t permanently erase radiation, although radiation generated by radioactive ores (Asteros, Traxium and Nexos) goes away when those ores are mined, which may make the Decontamination Filter unnecessary. See health, radiation and population growth.

Mine, Deep Bore Mine and Seismic Penetrator

Each Mine recovers one ore per 4 days, or one per 2 days with the 2nd Generation Mines blueprint. Each Deep Bore Mine recovers one every 16 days, or every 8 days with the 2nd Generation Deep Bore Mines blueprint. Each Seismic Penetrator recovers one ore every 16 days.

The ore mined is chosen at random from the types the mine is compatible with. If there is none of that ore, the others are tried in order. For example, if an asteroid has only Selenium and Asteros, 50% of the time a Mine will attempt to mine Barium or Crystalite and get Selenium instead. This effect applies only to the Mine and Deep Bore Mine, but not the Seismic Penetrator, e.g. if there is only Nexos but no Traxium, the Seismic Penetrator will recover Nexos 50% of the time and do nothing the other 50%.

If there is not enough ore storage capacity at an asteroid, the ore will not be mined. You cannot waste ore by building mines before storage. However, due to a Powerplant bug, un-mined Asteros depletes automatically as if by radioactive decay.

Each mine of any type requires eight colonists as workers. If there are not enough workers, or the colony’s workers are on strike, the mine operates at 40% efficiency. Each time it would normally recover an ore, it instead has a random 40% chance to succeed. In event of a worker shortage, Mines are given precedence over Deep Bore Mines and Seismic Penetrators. If the mine is without power, it does not mine any ore.

Screen Generator

All buildings covered by at least one Screen Generator reduce all damage taken by 50%, to a minimum of 1 damage. The Screen Generator benefits from its own protection.

Gravity Nullifier

In the event of a power outage, the Gravity Nullifier will switch off, but when power returns, it does not automatically switch back on. It cannot distinguish between being intentionally turned off by the player and automatically turned off by power shortage.

Missile Silo

Every 8 days, one of each missile type on order is built.

Each Missile Silo requires 8 colonists as workers. If there are not enough workers or the colony’s workers are on strike, missile construction operates at 40% efficiency. Each day, there is only a 40% chance that one missile will be built. Workers are not required to fire missiles.

Repair Facility

Each Repair Facility restores one point of damage to each building every eight days, up to the building’s normal maximum. Multiple facilities stack; e.g. if a colony has five Repair Facilities, it repairs 5 damage to every building once every 8 days.

If the blueprint Building Armour is available, all buildings’ maximum hit points are increased by 10. A Repair Facility will retroactively apply the new maximum to buildings constructed before the Building Armour blueprint was purchased.

Small ships in hangars are repaired at the same rate of one point per Repair Facility every eight days. Contrary to the manual, ships in orbit are never repaired, and ships in hangars only repair if the colony has a Repair Facility.

Due to a bug, shields are not properly taken into account when repairing ships (see bugs). Repair Facility increases a ship’s Armour unless it has either 0 Armour, or the maximum base Armour for its type. This means a ship with below its base Armour will only repair up to its base Armour, while a ship with more than base Armour due to shields will increase above its maximum up to 255 Armour. At 256 Armour it loops back to 0 and is effectively destroyed.

Laser, Plasma and Photon Turret

Terran turrets have the following damage output:

Turret	Damage	With Optimizer
Laser	2	4
Plasma	5	10
Photon	8	16

The Turret Optimizer blueprint doubles the damage output of all turrets. Each Turret fires once every five days, and the cooldown resets on a power outage or a miss. The turrets on “Protected” buildings operate exactly as a Laser Turret, including the benefit from Turret Optimizer.

Alien turrets have different (usually higher) damage and different (usually worse) cooldown timers. See individual alien pages for details. Each alien has two or three types of turrets, each of which are equivalent to one of the Terran turret types. They are always just called “TURRET” but can be differentiated by appearance.

Asteroid Engines

A random event can cause Asteroid Engines to explode, increasing the colony’s radiation level by 10%.

Asteroid Engines require 2-7 power based on current speed (not 0-5 as described in the manual).

Powerplant

Un-mined Asteros depletes at a rate of one unit per four days, even if no Powerplants hae been built. This is probably a bug, although it could be interpreted as representing the half-life of a radioactive element.

Powerplants run on un-mined ore in the asteroid, not in storage. As long as there is one unit of Asteros left un-mined, every Powerplant on the asteroid produces 32MW of power. Powerplants do not use up the Asteros or cause it to deplete any more quickly, no matter how many Powerplants you have.

When Asteros is depleted, the Powerplant produces no power. Although the manual states that it produces 8MW/day without Asteros, this appears to be a misinterpretation of the game code, which produces 8MW/day per C.P.U, the building appearing next to it in the code (since the four-square buildings appear to have been all added around the same time).

A random event can cause a Powerplant to explode, increasing the colony’s radiation level by 10%.

Issue #12 suggests a bugfix to the Powerplant code.

See the article on why powerplant is the worst building.

Command Centre

A Command Centre requires 8 colonists as workers. A worker shortage is likely to affect only the Command Centre’s speed at building an Orbital Space Dock, in which case it operates at 40% efficiency.

Construction Yard

In order to make a day’s progress toward a construction job, the yard requires one day’s worth of payment from Vehicle Fund. One of each ore is required per day at the end of the ship’s construction, e.g. the last two days of an Assault Fighter’s construction require one Selenium and Crystalite each. If all requirements are met, the ship is reduced.

Each Construction Yard requires 8 colonists as workers. If there are not enough workers or the colony’s workers are on strike, all yards operate at 40% efficiency. Each day, there is only a 40% chance that a day’s progress will be made.

There appears to he a maximum of 64 shipyards at any one time. Orbital Space Docks and Command Centres (producing Orbital Space Docks) may count toward this limit.

Landing Pad

Ships landed in hangars do not repair damage unless the colony also has a Repair Facility.

If a ship is ordered to land on an asteroid’s surface, it may pick a Landing Pad as its landing square. If it does, it will instead land in the hangar.

Medical Centre

Each Medical Centre reduces the effects of radiation (but not the radiation level itself) by 10%. In the event of a virus outbreak, a colony also requires one Medical Centre for every 100 full colonists after the first 50 in order to end the outbreak.

See health, radiation and population growth.

Security Centre

A colony needs one Security Centre for every full 100 colonists after the first 50 to prevent social unrest. See security and morale.

“Protected” buildings

In addition to the laser turret attached to the Protected Resiblock, Protected Solar Matrix, and Protected Environment Control, these buildings have higher hit points than their non-protected counterparts (see building hitpoints). Protected Storage Tower does not.

If a power shortage causes Laser Turrets to fail, all turrets on Protected buildings also fail.