Buildings — SFC2 Wiki

Buildings are the structures you put up on a planet or a moon. Everything else in SFC2 comes out of them: mines pay for the whole game, the Shipyard turns those resources into ships and defenses, and the Research Lab opens up the tech tree. The Buildings link in the top nav takes you there, and it always shows the planet or moon you currently have selected.

Every structure starts at level 0 and gets better each time you upgrade it. Each level takes up one field, and a planet only has so many fields. When you run out, nothing new goes up until you tear something down or terraform for more.

The Buildings page

The panels down the left are the planet at a glance.

Fields is levels built against fields available, with the Terraform button underneath.
Production is what the planet earns per hour. The hydrogen lines split out what the Synthesizer makes against what the Nuclear Power Plant burns, so you can tell whether you are actually gaining hydrogen or losing it.
Energy is energy used against energy produced. Go over and every mine on the planet drops output by the same share, so a planet short on power earns less of all three resources at once.
Storage is how full each warehouse is. Hit the cap and that resource stops coming in until you spend some or build more storage.

Each row on the right is one structure. It shows the current level, the cost and time of the next level, and what that level buys you. More Info opens a panel with production and cost tables running several levels ahead, plus the Teardown button. The pin next to it sticks a structure to the top of the list so the ones you use most are not buried at the bottom.

A planet works on one structure at a time. Start an upgrade and every other Build button on that planet greys out until it lands. Your other planets are not affected, so you can have a job running on each of them at once.

You only see a structure once you are able to build it. Anything still locked is left off the list, and the line under the list tells you which one is next and what it needs.

Mines and power

Mines are your income. They only exist on planets, so a moon never gets mines, power plants or warehouses.

Mines burn energy, and two buildings supply it.

Solar Array costs nothing to run.
Nuclear Power Plant makes far more energy but eats hydrogen doing it. Both the output and the hydrogen bill climb with your Energy Tech.

Every mine and power plant has a Capacity box that runs from 0 to 100 percent in steps of 5. Turning one down cuts its output and its energy draw together. Use it to stop a Nuclear Power Plant burning hydrogen you would rather keep, or to idle a mine whose warehouse is already full.

Shipyard and Research Lab

The Shipyard is where ships and defenses get built. In SFC2 the Defense page is its own link in the top nav rather than a tab inside the shipyard, but both build out of the same Shipyard building on that planet. The Shipyard needs a Capitol at level 2 first.

The Research Lab is where you research technology. Research is player wide rather than per planet, so only one project runs at a time across your whole empire, and while it is running the Research Lab cannot be upgraded on any of your planets.

SFC1 had a Factory that built droids. SFC2 has no droids and no Factory, so the Shipyard is the only place units come from.

Build speed

Two buildings make everything else go up faster.

Capitol shortens every building and mine job on that planet. The time gets divided by one plus the Capitol level, so going from Capitol 4 to Capitol 9 cuts build times in half.
Foundry halves the time again for every level it has. It is very expensive, it needs Capitol 10 and A.I. Tech 10, and like the Shipyard it cannot be built or upgraded while ships or defenses are being built on that planet.

The base time comes from the ore and crystal cost of the job, so a cheap level is quick and an expensive one is not. Capitol and Foundry are the only two things that shrink it.

Storage and protection

Warehouses set how much of a resource a planet can hold. Hit the cap and that mine stops producing until you spend some or upgrade.

A planet with no storage buildings holds 100,000 of each resource. Every level after that adds more than the one before it, so a level 7 warehouse is already up at 1.4 million.

The Resource Den works differently. It does not raise your cap. It hides a slice of what you are holding so raiders cannot plunder it and spies cannot see it on an espionage report. The protected amount is 22,500 plus 7,500 for each level.

The Missile Silo holds missiles. Each level gives 10 slots. An ABM takes one slot and an Interplanetary Ballistic Missile takes two, so a level 7 silo holds 70 ABMs, or 35 IBMs, or any mix that adds up to 70. It needs a Shipyard first, and because it is a planet building a moon never carries missiles.

Moon buildings

Moons run on a much shorter list.

Lunar Base is the first thing you build on a moon, because a moon has no fields of its own. Fields are the Lunar Base level times three, plus one. It is also the one structure in the game that cannot be torn down.
Capitol works the same as it does on a planet.
Oracle shows you fleet movements around nearby systems. Each scan costs 5,000 hydrogen, and the reach is five solar systems either side for each level of the building.
Warp Gate jumps ships between two of your own moons with no hydrogen burned and no cargo carried. Both gates go on cooldown after a jump and higher levels shorten it. A single gate does nothing on its own, you need one at each end. It needs FTL Tech 7.
Lunar Dock lets a Hephaestus Class Attack Platform undeploy and go back into orbit around the moon.

Everything except the Lunar Base needs a Lunar Base at level 1 before it will show up.

Fields, teardown and terraform

Fields are the hard limit on a planet. Every level of every structure is one field. A homeworld always starts with 163. Colonies get whatever the slot rolls, so some are cramped and some are huge.

Teardown takes a structure down one level and hands the field back. It is not free. It costs a third of what that level cost to build and it takes time like any other job, and it uses up your one build slot on that planet while it runs. You start it from More Info on the structure you want to shrink.

Terraform adds 5 fields to a planet for credits. The price climbs in bands as the planet gets bigger, from 5,000 credits on a small one up to 60,000 near the top, and 320 fields is the ceiling. Moons cannot be terraformed. They grow through the Lunar Base instead.