Mines are the basis of your entire economy. They produce Metal, Crystal and Deuterium, valuable resources that are used to build everything else, as well as research technologies. While this is often referred to as a space “war game”, you can’t sustain a war without a strong industrial base to produce spacecraft, weapons, and the technologies needed to build and improve them. If you lose a battle and your fleet is destroyed, you will be able to rebuild very quickly if you have good mine levels on multiple planets. If you don’t, you will probably get discourages and quit. Building higher mine levels increases the mine’s production. As the mines drill deeper, more energy is required for maximum production.
In addition to mining for these resources, you can salvage metal and crystal from the wreckage of destroyed spacecraft. When ships are destroyed in combat, a percentage of their metal and crystal makeup is thrown into a “debris field” orbiting the planet where the battle occurred (the percentage of debris is determined by the current settings of the game universe). Harvesting a debris field is performed by a specialized spacecraft called a Recycler, and is therefore referred to as Recycling. Gathering debris by recycling can be very lucrative! Combat ships are expensive, requiring large amounts of metal and crystal to construct; when a large fleet (hundreds or even thousands of ships) is destroyed, the size of the debris field can easily be in the millions of units. Debris fields (and their size and composition) can be seen in the Galaxy Screen.
A Metal Mine is a building that mines metal ore and processes it into metal alloy of the highest quality. Metal is the primary resource used in the foundation of your empire. You can use the available metal to construct buildings, ships, defense systems, and research new technologies. As metal is the most abundant of all resources available, its value (relative to crystal or deuterium) is the lowest of all resources for trading. In the beginning, you will use far more metal than any other resource.
A Crystal Mine is a building that mines and processes raw crystals. Crystal is used in the production electronic circuits, computers and communications systems, and in forming certain alloy compounds. Crystal mines are more expensive and consume more energy than metal mines, making crystal more valuable and somewhat less abundant in the universe. All buildings, and most ships and defenses, require crystal. It is also required to research many technologies.
The Deuterium Synthesizer is used to produce deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance in the oceans of colonies. Deuterium Synthesizers are built in huge extracting platforms under the sea, and can separate the water from the deuterium using specially designed centrifuges.
Deuterium is used when carrying out sensor phalanx scans, viewing galaxies in the Galaxy screen, researching some technologies, and as fuel for spacecraft and fusion reactors.
Deuterium is more plentiful in colder environments. Due to the lack of solar radiation, the farther a planet is from the sun, the more abundant deuterium in its oceans will be. This means that deuterium synthesizers on cold, outer planets will produce deuterium more quickly and efficiently. Due to its relative scarcity and production costs, deuterium is the most valuable resource in the universe for trading purposes.