Resource Converters: Trading One Resource for Another

Sometimes your economy is rich in one resource and short on another. Maybe your mines are overflowing toward the cap while your Energy sits empty before a big scan, or you need a burst of Oil to fund a long-distance attack. The Resource Converter exists exactly for these moments: it lets you trade a resource you have plenty of for one you urgently need.

What the Resource Converter does

The Resource Converter is a colony structure that turns one resource into another on demand. It does not produce anything on its own, it reshapes what your mines, wells, and reactor already generate. Each level of the structure unlocks a new conversion route, so a higher Converter gives you more flexibility.

Conversions by level (Classic)

On the Classic ruleset, the routes unlock in this order:

• Level 1: Oil to Energy. The first and often most useful conversion. Energy has a small cap (500) and many tech actions burn it fast, so topping up Energy from spare Oil is a common early play.
• Level 2: Oil to Metal. Turn surplus Oil into construction and military Metal.
• Level 3: Metal to Energy. A second route into Energy, useful when Metal is your overflowing resource instead of Oil.
• Level 4: Metal to Oil. Convert Metal into Oil, handy when you need to fund movement or outpost builds.
• Level 5: This level does not add a new route. Instead it improves conversion efficiency by about 20%, so you lose less in every trade you make.

Note that all four routes flow into Energy, Metal, or Oil. There is no route that produces Workers, since workers come only from your Farm.

When converting is worth it

Conversion is never free: you always give up more of the input than you receive of the output, so it is not a way to grow your total economy. It is a tool for fixing imbalances. Convert when:

• A resource is about to hit its cap. Production above the cap is simply lost. Converting overflow into something useful turns waste into value.
• You have an urgent shortfall. Need Energy right now for a scan, a gate jump, or the ion cannon, but your reactor cannot keep up? A quick Oil-to-Energy trade can unblock you.
• You are funding a one-off push. A long attack or a wave of outposts can demand more Oil or Metal than you normally hold. Converting bridges the gap for a specific operation.

When converting is usually a mistake:

• As a steady income substitute. If you are constantly converting just to stay afloat, the real fix is leveling the structure that produces the resource you keep running out of.
• Far below your caps. If nothing is overflowing and nothing is urgent, you are just throwing away resources to the conversion loss for no reason.

Pushing the Converter to level 5 for the efficiency bonus is worth it if you convert often, because cutting your conversion loss pays back over many trades.

See also

See Resources for the caps and uses of each resource, and check Structures for how to build and level the Resource Converter alongside your other buildings.