Structures: Building Your Colony
Structures are how a colony grows up. Everything beyond your starting trickle of resources, your first soldiers, your first scan, your reach across the map, comes from a structure you chose to build. They are permanent: structures are never destroyed or captured, so every level you finish is yours for the rest of the realm. This page covers how building works. For the full catalog of what exists and what each level does, see the structure list.
Overview
Your colony has a fixed set of structure types. Each one starts at a level (some start at level 0 and are not built yet, a couple come pre-built) and can be raised to level 5. Higher levels cost more metal and oil and take longer to finish, but they pay off with more income, more visibility, or new abilities you could not use before.
Two structures are already standing the moment you arrive. Your Military Chassis sits at level 1, and your Colony Radar sits at level 1, so you can see a little around your colony and have somewhere to grow your military from on day one. Your Farm is pre-placed at level 0 and is ready to take its first upgrade.
The Build Queue
You order an upgrade and it joins the build queue. The work happens over ticks, not the instant you click, so the structure finishes a set number of ticks later. While a structure is being built you can keep playing normally: produce resources, move squads, run scans. The upgrade simply lands on its scheduled tick and the new level is yours.
Resource structures, military structures, intelligence structures, and radar each run their own track, so building up your economy does not block working on your military, and vice versa. Plan around the long ones: a level 5 structure can take a full day of game time at slower realm speeds, so start the expensive upgrades before you go idle, not after.
Build times scale with how fast a realm ticks. A fast realm finishes the same upgrade in less real time than a slow realm, but the resource cost is the same everywhere.
Levels and Prerequisites
Levels are sequential. You take a structure from 1 to 2 to 3, never skipping, and you cannot start the next level until the current one is finished and paid for.
Many abilities are gated behind a specific structure level, so the order you build in is a real strategic choice:
- The Military Chassis unlocks your forces as it climbs: Infantry at level 2, Vehicles at level 3, Tanks at level 4, and Silos plus Nukes at level 5.
- The Weapon Workshop unlocks weapon technology and unit upgrades, and at level 5 it unlocks the Teleport Gate.
- The Scan and Covert Ops structure unlocks basic scans, then Spy training at level 2, advanced scans and radar jamming at level 3, and a Shield Generator at level 5.
- Colony Radar widens how far you can see, from 3 cells at level 1 up to 6 cells at level 4, and unlocks an Ion Cannon at level 5.
If something you want is greyed out, the answer is almost always "the structure that unlocks it is not high enough yet."
What Structures Unlock
Resource structures raise your metal, oil, energy, and worker income, which fuels everything else. Military and technology structures hand you new units, weapon types, upgrades, gates, silos, and the Ion Cannon. Intelligence structures open scans, spies, and a shield. Radar structures push your vision outward and eventually arm the Ion Cannon. Read the structure list for the exact unlock on every level.
Refunds and Cancelling
Changed your mind, or got attacked and need the resources now? You can cancel a build in progress. Cancelling refunds 50% of what you paid for that level. You get half your metal and oil back and the structure stays at its previous level. It is not a free undo, so commit to expensive upgrades when you have the income to finish them, but it is a useful escape hatch when priorities change suddenly.
The Full List
Every structure, every level, the Classic costs and build times, and exactly what each level grants are in the Structure List. Use this page for the rules and that page for the numbers.
See also: the Structure List, Resources, Recruitment, the Teleport Gate, and Scans.