Ore Mine

Ore is the most common resource in SFC2 and the one you spend the most of. Buildings, ships, defenses and every level of research want ore, and for most of them ore is the biggest line on the bill. The Ore Mine is where it comes from.

Every planet has one. You raise its level on the Buildings page and from then on it pays out every hour, whether you are logged in or not. New planets start it at level 0, and even a level 0 mine hands you a small amount for free. Moons have no mines at all, and a deployed Hephaestus platform does not mine either.

The Ore Mine is usually the first thing a new commander builds, and it stays the cheapest of the three mines to level all the way up.

What it produces

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

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.

That flat 40 is the trickle every planet gets for free. A brand new planet with the mine still at level 0 makes 40 ore an hour and 20 crystal an hour, and that is what gets a colony off the ground.

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.

Above 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. There is a table further down that shows how badly the curve turns over.

Energy

A mine only runs flat out if the planet makes at least as much energy as its mines want. If you are short, every mine on the planet runs at produced divided by needed. It is not first come first served and it is not worked out per mine, so an oversized Hydrogen Synthesizer drags the Ore Mine down with it.

The planet below makes 1,471 energy while its mines want 2,022, so it is running at 73%. A level 16 Ore Mine that should do 4,450 ore an hour only manages 3,248.

The Buildings page tells you this in two places. The mine shows "Production: x of y/hr" with an Insufficient Energy warning under it, and the Energy panel in the sidebar shows how much you are missing. Energy comes from the Solar Array, the Nuclear Power Plant and solar satellites.

The free 40 per hour is the one part that ignores energy. Even with zero power on the planet you still get it.

That leads to the most common new player mistake in SFC2. A fresh colony has no mines and no Solar Array. Build the Ore Mine to level 1 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.

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 16 Ore Mine at 100% makes 4,450 ore an hour and eats 736 energy. Drop it to 50% and it makes 2,245 an hour and eats 368.

It is worth knowing about when you are power starved and would rather feed the Ore Mine than the Synthesizer, or when the warehouse is full and you want the power going somewhere useful. Set it to 0% and the mine stops, except for the free 40 per hour, which still comes in.

Storage

A planet holds 100,000 ore to start with. The Ore Warehouse raises that:

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

Warehouse level	Ore 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 the store fills up the mine stops. Not slows down, stops. The ore figure in the top right of the interface turns red when you are at or over the cap, and the Storage panel on the Buildings page puts a Capacity Exceeded warning on itself. To get going again, spend the ore, move it off the planet with a transport or a resource save, or add a warehouse level.

Plunder, mission rewards and trades can all push you past the cap. Nothing is lost when that happens, the mine just sits idle until you are back under.

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

Mines run all the time, 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.

Building it up

The cost of a level does not depend on the planet:

Ore = 60 × 1.5^{Level - 1}, rounded down
Crystal = 15 × 1.5^{Level - 1}, rounded down

Build time does depend on the planet:

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

Level 17 costs 39,410 ore and 9,852 crystal. On a planet with Capitol 6 and Foundry 3 that works out at 10 minutes 34 seconds. On a bare planet with no Capitol and no Foundry the same level takes just under 10 hours. Capitol and Foundry levels pay for themselves across every mine level you will ever build, and a Foundry level halves the time on its own.

Two other things to keep in mind. Each mine level uses one field, so 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. And a planet only builds one thing at a time, so a long mine upgrade greys out every other Build button on that planet until it lands. Your other planets are not affected.

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

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

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 build time, and you pay it. There is no refund. What you get back is the field and the energy draw.

Coming down from level 16 to level 15 on the planet above costs 8,757 ore and 2,189 crystal and takes 2 minutes 20 seconds. It is a repair for a planet you overbuilt, not a way to move resources around.

Other ways to get ore

Mining is not the only source, and past the early game it is usually not the biggest one.

Attacking players and NPC encounters. You take a share of what 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. Destroyed defenses leave nothing.
Missions, secret missions, quests and the Lucky Draw.
The Trade Merchant, which converts one resource into another for 5,000 credits a go. The rate is 1.5 ore to 1 crystal and 2.5 ore to 1 hydrogen, so ore is the cheap side of every trade. See Trading.

What slows production down

Not enough energy. Covered above, and this is the common one.
Full storage. Production stops dead at the cap.
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 40 per hour as well.
Vacation Mode. Production stops completely while you are parked.
The capacity setting, if you turned the mine down and forgot about it.

Cost, energy and production by level

Ore and crystal are what that level costs to build. Energy is what the mine draws once it is at that level. Ore per hour is the full rate at 100% energy and 100% capacity, including the free 40. Gain is the extra you get over the level below. Hours to pay off takes the whole bill, converts the crystal half to ore at the Merchant's 1.5 to 1 rate, and divides by the gain, so it is roughly how long the upgrade takes to earn itself back.

Level	Ore cost	Crystal cost	Energy use	Ore per hour	Gain	Hours to pay off
1	60	15	11	106	+66	1
2	90	22	25	184	+78	2
3	135	33	40	278	+94	2
4	202	50	59	390	+112	2
5	303	75	81	522	+132	3
6	455	113	107	676	+154	4
7	683	170	137	858	+182	5
8	1,025	256	172	1,068	+210	7
9	1,537	384	213	1,312	+244	9
10	2,306	576	260	1,596	+284	11
11	3,459	864	314	1,922	+326	15
12	5,189	1,297	377	2,298	+376	19
13	7,784	1,946	449	2,732	+434	25
14	11,677	2,919	532	3,228	+496	32
15	17,515	4,378	627	3,798	+570	42
16	26,273	6,568	736	4,450	+652	55
17	39,410	9,852	860	5,194	+744	73
18	59,115	14,778	1,001	6,044	+850	96
19	88,673	22,168	1,163	7,012	+968	126
20	133,010	33,252	1,346	8,112	+1,100	166
21	199,515	49,878	1,555	9,364	+1,252	219
22	299,273	74,818	1,791	10,784	+1,420	290
23	448,909	112,227	2,060	12,396	+1,612	383
24	673,364	168,341	2,364	14,222	+1,826	507
25	1,010,046	252,511	2,709	16,292	+2,070	671
26	1,515,070	378,767	3,099	18,632	+2,340	890
27	2,272,605	568,151	3,540	21,278	+2,646	1,181
28	3,408,907	852,226	4,038	24,266	+2,988	1,569
29	5,113,361	1,278,340	4,601	27,640	+3,374	2,084
30	7,670,042	1,917,510	5,235	31,448	+3,808	2,770
31	11,505,063	2,876,265	5,951	34,712	+3,264	4,847
32	17,257,595	4,314,398	6,757	37,240	+2,528	9,387
33	25,886,392	6,471,598	7,665	39,470	+2,230	15,961
34	38,829,589	9,707,397	8,687	41,538	+2,068	25,818
35	58,244,384	14,561,096	9,836	43,506	+1,968	40,694
36	87,366,576	21,841,644	11,129	45,410	+1,904	63,093
37	131,049,864	32,762,466	12,582	47,268	+1,858	96,983
38	196,574,796	49,143,699	14,214	49,092	+1,824	148,185
39	294,862,195	73,715,548	16,047	50,890	+1,798	225,493
40	442,293,292	110,573,323	18,104	52,670	+1,780	341,659

Look at what happens either side of level 30. Level 30 adds 3,808 ore an hour and costs 7.7 million ore. Level 35 adds 1,968 an hour, which is barely half as much, and it costs 58 million ore while putting another 4,601 on your energy bill. The curve turns over, and it turns over hard. Very few players go past 30 on purpose.

How it compares to the other two mines

The Ore Mine is the cheapest of the three to level. Its costs multiply by 1.5 a level, the same as the Hydrogen Synthesizer, but it starts from a much lower base. The Crystal Mine multiplies by 1.6 instead, and that gap gets ugly fast.

Level	Ore Mine costs	Crystal Mine costs	Hydrogen Synthesizer costs
1	60 ore, 15 crystal	48 ore, 24 crystal	225 ore, 75 crystal
10	2,306 ore, 576 crystal	3,298 ore, 1,649 crystal	8,649 ore, 2,883 crystal
20	133,010 ore, 33,252 crystal	362,677 ore, 181,338 crystal	498,788 ore, 166,262 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 Ore Mine also draws the least power. At the same level it wants half of what the Synthesizer wants and the same as the Crystal Mine. Most players keep the Ore Mine a level or two ahead of the other two, since ore is what everything eats the most of. See Mines for the full three way comparison.