Mines

Mines are where your resources come from. Every planet has three of them: the Ore Mine, the Crystal Mine and the Hydrogen Synthesizer. You raise their levels on the Buildings page, and from then on they pay out every hour whether you are logged in or not. Almost everything in SFC2 is bought with what they dig up, so how fast you grow mostly comes down to how well you keep them running.

Mines are a planet thing. Moons have no mines and produce nothing at all, and neither does a deployed Hephaestus platform.

SFC1 let you put workers and droids on a mine to push its output up. SFC2 has no workers, no droids and no Factory. What a mine gives you comes from its level, the planet's energy, and nothing else.

The three mines

The Ore Mine makes ore, the cheapest and most plentiful resource. Nearly everything you build costs ore, and usually more ore than anything else.

The Crystal Mine makes crystal. Ships, defenses, buildings and every level of research want it, and it comes out of the ground slower than ore.

The Hydrogen Synthesizer makes hydrogen. It is the scarce one, it fuels every fleet movement, and unlike the other two it pays more on a cold planet than a hot one.

	Ore Mine	Crystal Mine	Hydrogen Synthesizer
Level 1 cost	60 ore, 15 crystal	48 ore, 24 crystal	225 ore, 75 crystal
Cost grows by	1.5x per level	1.6x per level	1.5x per level
Production multiplier	30	20	12
Energy multiplier	10	10	20
Free per hour at level 0	40	20	0
Temperature matters	No	No	Yes, colder is better

The Ore Mine is the cheapest thing to level and the Crystal Mine is the dearest, because crystal costs multiply by 1.6 a level instead of 1.5. That gap looks like nothing early on. By level 30 one Ore Mine level costs 7.7 million ore and the same Crystal Mine level costs 39.9 million.

Level	Ore Mine costs	Crystal Mine costs	Hydrogen Synthesizer costs
1	60 ore, 15 crystal	48 ore, 24 crystal	225 ore, 75 crystal
5	303 ore, 75 crystal	314 ore, 157 crystal	1,139 ore, 379 crystal
10	2,306 ore, 576 crystal	3,298 ore, 1,649 crystal	8,649 ore, 2,883 crystal
15	17,515 ore, 4,378 crystal	34,587 ore, 17,293 crystal	65,684 ore, 21,894 crystal
20	133,010 ore, 33,252 crystal	362,677 ore, 181,338 crystal	498,788 ore, 166,262 crystal
25	1,010,046 ore, 252,511 crystal	3,802,951 ore, 1,901,475 crystal	3,787,675 ore, 1,262,558 crystal
30	7,670,042 ore, 1,917,510 crystal	39,876,839 ore, 19,938,419 crystal	28,762,658 ore, 9,587,552 crystal

The free trickle

Every planet makes 40 ore and 20 crystal an hour on its own, with no mines built, no power plant and no energy. That is what gets a new colony off the ground. There is no free hydrogen, so a planet with no Synthesizer never sees any.

The trickle is the one part of production that ignores the energy rules below. Even a planet running at zero percent still collects it. Diplomacy Mode does cut it, and Vacation Mode stops it along with everything else.

What a mine produces

Ore per hour = (30 × Level × 1.1^Level, rounded down) × 2, plus 40.

Crystal per hour = (20 × Level × 1.1^Level, rounded down) × 2, plus 20.

Hydrogen per hour = 12 × Level × 1.1^Level × (1.28 - 0.002 × max temperature) × 2.

The × 2 on the end is the universe speed setting. SFC2 runs at double rate, so every mine pays twice what the bare formula says. It is already baked into every number the game shows you and into every table on this page.

The 1.1^Level part is what makes levels worth buying. Each level is worth about ten percent more than the last on top of the flat gain, so a level 20 mine is not twice a level 10 mine, it is about five times.

Max temperature comes from the planet's slot number and you can read it on the Overview page. Low slots are hot, high slots are cold, and only the Synthesizer cares. See Hydrogen Synthesizer for the full slot table.

The More Info button on a mine gives you the next few levels with production and energy side by side, worked out for the planet you are standing on.

The All Planets tab on the Overview page has a Resources view that lines every planet up with what each of its mines is making per hour. It is the fastest way to spot the colony you have been neglecting.

The level 30 wall

Past level 30 the exponent stops climbing at the normal rate. Instead of 1.1^Level the game uses 1.1^{30 + ln(Level - 29)}, so production almost flattens out. Energy use does not get that treatment. It keeps climbing the same curve it always did, and so does the cost.

Ore Mine level	Ore per hour	Gain over the level below	Energy used
28	24,266	+2,988	4,038
29	27,640	+3,374	4,601
30	31,448	+3,808	5,235
31	34,712	+3,264	5,951
32	37,240	+2,528	6,757
33	39,470	+2,230	7,665
34	41,538	+2,068	8,687
35	43,506	+1,968	9,836

Level 30 adds 3,808 ore an hour. Level 35 adds 1,968 and burns nearly twice the power. Very few players go past 30 on purpose.

Energy

Mines are the only thing in the game that uses energy. Buildings, the Shipyard, defenses, ships in orbit and research all cost nothing to run.

Ore Mine and Crystal Mine energy = 10 × Level × 1.1^Level, rounded down, plus 1 once the mine is past level 1.

Hydrogen Synthesizer energy = 20 × Level × 1.1^Level, rounded down, plus 1 once past level 1. That is twice the other two at the same level, so on a starved planet the Synthesizer is the first thing to look at.

Efficiency = energy produced ÷ energy the mines want, capped at 100%. That one percentage is applied to every mine on the planet. It is not first come first served and it is not worked out per mine, so an oversized Synthesizer drags the Ore Mine and Crystal Mine down with it.

When a planet is short you get a red Insufficient Energy warning on every mine, each row shows what you are getting against what you should be getting, and the Energy panel in the sidebar shows how much you are missing.

Mines_insufficient_energy_sfc2.jpg 221 KB

The one thing a shortage never touches is the free trickle.

That leads to the most common new player mistake in SFC2. A new colony has no mines and no Solar Array. Build the Ore Mine first and it wants 11 energy, the planet makes 0, efficiency is 0, and the mine produces nothing at all beyond the free 40 you were already getting. Build a level or two of Solar Array first, or alongside.

Energy comes from the Solar Array, the Nuclear Power Plant, the Helios Class Solar Satellite and the Genesis Solar Satellite. The Energy page has the formulas, the costs and the point where satellites get cheaper than another Solar Array level.

The capacity setting

Every mine has a Capacity dropdown that runs from 0% to 100% in steps of 5. Turning a mine down cuts its output and its energy draw by the same percentage. A level 21 Crystal Mine at 100% makes 6,236 crystal an hour and eats 1,555 energy. At 50% it makes 3,128 and eats 778.

Use it when you are power starved and would rather feed the Ore Mine than the Synthesizer, or when a warehouse is full and you want the power going somewhere useful. Set a mine to 0% and it stops, except for the free trickle, which still comes in.

Storage

A planet holds 100,000 of each resource to start with. The Ore Warehouse, Crystal Warehouse and Hydrogen Storage raise their own resource's cap:

Capacity = 100,000 + 50,000 × (1.6^{Storage level} rounded up - 1)

Storage level	Capacity
0	100,000
1	150,000
2	200,000
3	300,000
4	400,000
5	600,000
6	900,000
7	1,400,000
8	2,200,000
9	3,500,000
10	5,550,000

When a store fills up that mine stops. Not slows down, stops. The other two keep going, and they keep taking their share of the energy, so nothing speeds up to make use of it. Spend the resource, ship it off the planet, or add a storage level.

Plunder, mission rewards and trades can push you past the cap. Nothing is lost when that happens. Once you are at or over the cap the figure in the top right of the interface turns red, and the Storage panel adds a Capacity Exceeded warning when you are actually over.

The Resource Den does not raise your cap. It hides a slice of what you hold from raiders and from espionage reports.

Fields, cost and build time

Every mine level takes one field, the same as every building and power plant level. A level 25 Ore Mine is 25 fields of a planet that might only have 150. When the fields run out, nothing new goes up until you tear something down or terraform for more.

A planet builds one thing at a time. Start a mine upgrade and every other Build button on that planet greys out until it lands. Your other planets are not affected.

Build time depends on the planet:

Hours = (Ore + Crystal) ÷ (5,000 × (Capitol level + 1) × 2^{Foundry level})

So a Capitol level and a Foundry level pay for themselves across every mine level you will ever build. A Foundry level halves the time on its own.

You can cancel a running upgrade and get the full cost back, or finish it early for credits. The price is about 1.12 credits per second still to run, and it is free once there are under five minutes left.

Tearing a level back down

The Teardown button sits at the bottom of the More Info panel. A teardown costs one third of what that level cost to build and takes one third of the time, and you pay it. There is no refund. What you get back is the field and the energy draw.

It is a repair for a planet you overbuilt, not a way to move resources around.

What slows a mine down

Not enough energy. The common one, covered above.

Full storage. That mine stops dead at the cap.

The capacity setting, if you turned a mine down and forgot about it.

Diplomacy Mode. It buys protection from attack and charges you production for it. The cut is 25% under 50,000 RSP, 50% from 50,000 to 99,999, and 75% at 100,000 RSP and up. It applies to the free trickle too.

Vacation Mode. Production stops completely while you are parked.

Mines run continuously, not in hourly lumps. The counter in the top right refreshes about once a minute while you have the game open, and again on every page load.

Other ways to get resources

Past the early game, mining is usually not your biggest income.

Attacking players and NPC encounters. You take a share of whatever is sitting on the target, see Plunder.

Debris. Destroyed ships leave 30% of their build cost floating in orbit as ore and crystal, and recyclers bring it home.

Missions, secret missions, quests and the Lucky Draw.

The Trade Merchant, which converts one resource into another for 5,000 credits a go. See Trading.

Production and energy by level

Production is the full rate at 100% energy and 100% capacity, with the free trickle included. Hydrogen is shown for a 40°C planet, which is the middle of the range. Energy is what one mine draws at that level.

Level	Ore per hour	Crystal per hour	Hydrogen per hour at 40°C	Ore or Crystal Mine energy	Hydrogen Synthesizer energy
1	106	64	31	11	22
2	184	116	69	25	49
3	278	178	114	40	80
4	390	254	168	59	118
5	522	342	231	81	162
6	676	444	306	107	213
7	858	564	392	137	273
8	1,068	704	493	172	343
9	1,312	868	611	213	425
10	1,596	1,056	746	260	519
11	1,922	1,274	903	314	628
12	2,298	1,526	1,084	377	754
13	2,732	1,814	1,292	449	898
14	3,228	2,146	1,531	532	1,064
15	3,798	2,526	1,804	627	1,254
16	4,450	2,960	2,117	736	1,471
17	5,194	3,456	2,474	860	1,719
18	6,044	4,022	2,882	1,001	2,002
19	7,012	4,668	3,346	1,163	2,325
20	8,112	5,400	3,875	1,346	2,691
21	9,364	6,236	4,475	1,555	3,109
22	10,784	7,182	5,157	1,791	3,582
23	12,396	8,256	5,931	2,060	4,119
24	14,222	9,474	6,808	2,364	4,728
25	16,292	10,854	7,800	2,709	5,418
26	18,632	12,414	8,924	3,099	6,198
27	21,278	14,178	10,194	3,540	7,080
28	24,266	16,170	11,629	4,038	8,076
29	27,640	18,420	13,248	4,601	9,201
30	31,448	20,958	15,076	5,235	10,470