Workers and Production: Your Economic Engine
Workers are the quiet powerhouse of your colony. They are not just a resource you spend, they are a multiplier on your entire raw-material economy. Two colonies with the same mines and wells will produce very different amounts of Metal and Oil if one of them keeps its worker count high. Understanding how workers grow and how they boost production is the single biggest lever on early and mid game income.
How workers are produced
Workers come from your Farm. Unlike Metal, Oil, and Energy, which accumulate every tick, workers pay out in a lump sum every 24 ticks. When that worker payout tick arrives, your Farm adds its full batch of new workers in one go, up to the Classic storage cap of 1,000.
This rhythm matters for planning. If you are about to recruit a large batch of units or build something worker-heavy, it is often worth timing it just after a payout so you are working with a full pool rather than a near-empty one.
Upgrading your Farm increases how many workers each payout delivers, so the Farm is one of the most valuable early structures in the game.
Worker efficiency: the production multiplier
Here is the part that makes workers so important. Your Metal Mine and Oil Well do not produce raw output on their own. Their output is scaled by worker efficiency, a percentage that grows as you level those structures and that draws on your worker pool.
On the Classic ruleset, a level 1 Metal Mine works at roughly 6% worker efficiency, rising to about 20% at the highest level. The Oil Well starts lower, around 3%, and climbs to about 13% at top level. In practical terms: the more workers you keep available, the more your mines and wells turn that efficiency into actual Metal and Oil each tick.
Energy is the exception. The Energy Reactor does not use workers at all, so its output is steady regardless of your worker count.
Why keeping workers high matters
Workers get drained by upkeep. Your army, outposts, planted agents, and armed heavy weapons all reduce your worker growth, and a large enough military can stall worker income entirely. When your worker pool sags, your Metal and Oil production sag with it, because the efficiency multiplier has fewer workers to act on.
The takeaway: do not over-extend your military or outpost network past what your Farm can sustain. A balanced colony that protects its worker growth out-produces a top-heavy one that has choked its own economy. Treat your Farm levels and your upkeep as two sides of the same dial.
See also
See Resources for the full picture of all four resources, read Economy and Income to learn how upkeep eats into worker growth, and check Structures for Farm, Mine, and Well levels.