Structures
Structures are the orbital installations you build inside a star system. They're how a system actually does anything: mining, refining, generating power, storing what you've earned. Every claimed system gets the same starter roster, and you grow each one by upgrading what's already there.
The roster
Every system has the same six core structures from day one, at level 1, plus a Shipyard that stays locked until your Command Center catches up.
Command Center - the orbital headquarters. Speeds up every build in the system.
Reactor - the power plant. Sets the energy budget the other structures spend.
Palladium Extractor - the palladium mining rig.
Iridium Extractor - the iridium refinery.
Resource Depot - orbital storage. Caps how much you can stockpile.
Trade Hub - the income engine. Produces credits for your empire treasury.
Why upgrade
Levels are the only thing that change. Higher levels mean:
More resource income from extractors.
More storage from depots.
More energy budget from reactors.
Shorter build times from Command Centers.
New and better buildings unlock.
Every upgrade costs palladium and iridium (see Economy & Resources), takes real time, and shifts the energy load in the system (see Energy).
How to pace upgrades
A few rules of thumb:
Keep both extractors leveled together. One ahead of the other just bottlenecks the queue.
Upgrade the Resource Depot a step ahead of your extractors. Otherwise your offline income stalls at cap.
Upgrade the Reactor before you push other structures past your energy budget. A deficit slows everything down.
The Command Center compounds: every level shortens every future build.
The build queue
Each system has its own build queue with three slots. Click upgrade on a structure and the job lands in the next free slot. The slot at the front runs first; the others sit at zero progress until their turn.
You can queue the same structure multiple times and each entry targets one level higher than the last queued one for that structure. Stacking three Reactor upgrades in a row is fine.
Resources are spent the moment you queue, not when the build starts.
The × on a queued job cancels it and refunds 70% of the resources.
Queues run while you're offline. Three Reactor upgrades stacked overnight all complete in order.
When the queue is full (three active jobs), the upgrade button greys out until a slot frees.
Across systems
Every claimed system has its own independent roster and its own queue. A busy queue in one system doesn't block work in another because every system runs in parallel. Claiming a new system means a fresh set of level-1 structures and an empty queue to fill.
