Resources: Metal, Oil, Energy, and Workers
Everything you do in a realm runs on four resources: Metal, Oil, Energy, and Workers. Your colony produces them automatically over time as your tick clock advances, and you spend them on almost every action: building structures, recruiting units, moving squads, running scans, and more. Knowing what each resource does, and how much of it you can hold, is the foundation of a strong colony.
The four resources
Metal
Metal is your primary construction and military resource. It pays for most structure levels, unit recruitment, outposts, and arming heavy weapons. Metal is produced by your Metal Mine, and that output is boosted by your workers. On the Classic ruleset, Metal storage is capped at 15,000. Once you hit the cap, extra production is lost, so spend or expand before you overflow.
Oil
Oil is the second bulk resource. It shares many costs with Metal (structures, units, outposts) and also pays for squad movement: every move order burns Oil based on distance. Oil comes from your Oil Well and is also boosted by workers, though at a lower rate than Metal. Oil is capped at 15,000 on Classic, the same as Metal.
Energy
Energy is your tech and intelligence resource. It is spent on scans, training and operating spies, teleport gate jumps, broadcasts, the ion cannon, jamming, and similar advanced actions. Energy is produced by your Energy Reactor and is not affected by workers. It has a much smaller cap of 500 on Classic, so it is best treated as fuel you generate and spend in bursts rather than a stockpile you sit on.
Workers
Workers are both a resource and the engine behind the other two. They are spent on unit recruitment, outposts, spies and agents, and they feed your power score. Workers are produced by your Farm and pay out in a lump sum every 24 ticks rather than trickling in each tick. The Worker cap on Classic is 1,000. Keeping workers high matters for more than just the count, because they multiply your Metal and Oil income.
Spending and caps
Every resource has a hard storage cap. Production above the cap is wasted, so a growing colony is a constant balance between earning and spending. Plan upgrades and recruitment around your income so resources keep moving instead of sitting at the ceiling.
See also
Read Workers and Production to learn how workers boost your mines and wells, see Economy and Income for balancing income against spending, and check the Structures page for the buildings that produce each resource.