Operations Manual

Welcome to the sector, Operator. You command a corporation backed by the Intergalactic Trading Community (ITC). Your mandate is simple: refine raw commodities into finished goods, move them at a profit, and grow your enterprise into a sector-leading powerhouse.

This manual is your standing reference. Work the loop, watch your margins, and scale without drowning in overhead.

The Core Loop

1. Acquire — Buy raw commodities on the Exchange or pull them from Storage.
2. Produce — Refine inputs into higher-tier goods at your Facilities.
3. Sell — Move finished goods via the Exchange, Retail, or direct Tenders.
4. Reinvest — Upgrade facilities, hire consultants, and expand your colony.

Capital & Currency

Credits (cr) are your working capital — you spend them on labor, upgrades, market purchases, and salaries, and earn them back through sales. Your spendable balance is shown in the top bar at all times.

Credits in Orders are funds escrowed against your open limit orders on the Exchange. They are temporarily locked and unspendable until the order fills or you cancel it.

Gems are premium currency. They are scarce — earned from Referrals and Company Level rewards — and are spent to unlock new building plots ahead of schedule.

Facilities & Land

Your colony is a grid of land plots. Each plot holds one Facility — a production building that turns inputs into a specific catalog of products. You begin with a Biofarm and a Food Market. Locked plots are unlocked with Gems or earned as Company Level rewards, then a new facility is raised on them for a build cost.

Every facility carries a Level from 1 to 20. Each level doubles output rate — but also doubles wages. Upgrades cost credits and time, and a facility must be idle to begin one. You may downgrade for a partial refund (full value for levels 1–3, half for level 4+) or demolish a facility entirely to reclaim its plot and a demolition refund.

Operation Slots

A facility runs at most 2 operations at once — one executing and one queued. A facility cannot start an upgrade while operations are pending, and no operation may run longer than 24 hours; lower the batch size if you hit the ceiling.

Production

To manufacture, open a facility, pick a product, and set a quantity. Production consumes the product’s recipe inputs from your warehouse plus a labor cost in credits, then runs for a duration set by the facility’s output rate. When the timer completes, collect the batch to deposit it into Storage.

Products are ranked by Tier, from raw Tier 0 commodities like Power up to elaborate Tier 6 goods. Higher tiers demand deeper supply chains — you’ll often refine low-tier outputs into the inputs for high-tier ones.

Cancelling a running operation returns 75% of the consumed inputs — never cancel a near-finished batch. Cancelling a build or a low-level upgrade (target level < 4) refunds 100% of the cost; higher-level upgrades refund 50%.

Storage

Storage is your central warehouse — every resource and finished good you hold lives here. You start stocked with Power and Water, the foundational utilities most recipes draw on. From Storage you can route any sellable good straight to the Exchange or to a Retail storefront.

The Spacewide Exchange

The Spacewide Exchange is the sector’s open commodity market, driven by a live order book of bids (buyers) and asks (sellers). All Exchange trades carry a 5% fee.

Market Orders

Market Sell instantly fills the highest standing bids; Market Buy instantly clears the lowest asks. Fast, but you take whatever price the book offers.

Limit Orders

Limit Buy escrows your credits (plus fee) at a price you name; Limit Sell escrows your stock until a matching counterparty appears. You set the price — and wait for the market to come to you.

Retail Storefronts

Select goods can be sold directly to consumers (B2C) through retail buildings — the Food Market, Augmentation Center, and Garment Depot. Retail bypasses Exchange fees and typically earns the fattest margins per unit.

You set the shelf price yourself, and demand responds sharply: a lower price sells faster, while a higher price sells slower. Tune the price against the clock to balance speed against profit.

The Tender Network

Through Comms and the Tender Network you trade directly with other operators. Send a tender — a private offer to buy a quantity of a product at a set price — and negotiate one-to-one. Counterparties may approve, reject, or counter your terms. Direct tenders settle with zero fee, making them the cheapest way to move volume.

Consultants

The Consultancy Bureau gives you 3 staff slots. Each consultant holds a Grade from 1 to 10 — the higher the grade, the stronger the bonus and the steeper the hourly salary. There are three roles:

• VP of Industrial Operation — Boosts the production rate of one assigned facility.
• Chief Operating Officer (COO) — Reduces your global Administrative Overhead penalty.
• Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) — Increases the sales speed of your retail storefronts.

Each candidate search costs a recruitment fee that climbs with every search in a day and resets daily. Dismissing a consultant costs 24 hours of severance. You may hold only one COO and one CMO, and at most one VP per facility.

Administrative Overhead

The bigger your empire, the heavier the bureaucracy. Admin Overhead scales with your combined facility levels and inflates the labor cost of every operation. It is the central tension of the game: unchecked expansion can quietly erode your margins. A high-grade COO is the only way to push the penalty back down — plan your growth around it.

Progression & Funding

Company Level rises with the total wages you have paid over your company’s lifetime — so the more you produce, the more you advance. Each level pays out new land plots, gems, or credits. Claim rewards from My Profile.

Corporate Grants are ITC-funded objectives that pay credits for hitting key benchmarks — reaching facility levels, expanding your colony, earning through retail or the Exchange, retaining senior consultants, and more. Grants advance in tiers; clear one step to unlock the next.

Track your standing against rival operators on the Rankings, ranked by Corporation Value — the combined worth of your cash, stored goods, and property. Grow your network through Referrals for gem bonuses.

5x Boost

When the 5x Boost badge shows in the top bar, all production, retail sales, and upgrade timers run at five times speed — the fastest way to climb early.