Building Your War Machine¶
Battles are won before they're fought. The faction that built more ships last month will win the engagement next month. Production is the bedrock of every long-term strategy—learn it early, or you will find yourself outgunned at the worst possible moment.
How Production Works¶
Each controlled star system with a manufacturing facility can build units. Every system has its own production queue—an ordered list of items under construction. Only the first item in the queue is being built at any moment. Everything else waits.
Each day, the active item ticks closer to completion. When it finishes, a completion event fires, the unit appears at that system, and the next item in the queue automatically begins. You can queue as many items as you like.
What You Can Build¶
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Capital ships | Star Destroyers, Mon Cal Cruisers, frigates |
| Fighters | TIE squadrons, X-Wing squadrons |
| Troops | Ground regiment units |
| Defense facilities | Planetary shields, turbolaser towers |
| Manufacturing facilities | Shipyards, training centers |
| Production facilities | Mines, refineries |
Capital ships and major facilities take the longest. Fighters and troops are fast—you can keep a steady stream of squadrons coming out of even a secondary world.
Build Duration¶
How long something takes to build depends on two factors: the item's material cost and the system's processing rate. High-processing systems—typically your faction's core industrial worlds—build faster than frontier outposts. When you queue an item, its build time is locked in at that moment based on the current facility. If you later upgrade the facility, items already queued won't benefit.
Managing the Queue¶
You have three queue operations:
- Enqueue—add any buildable item to the back of the queue.
- Cancel—remove an item from any position. There is no refund for work already done on the active item.
- Prioritize—push an item one position forward in the queue (repeat to bring it to the front).
If you urgently need a capital ship for an upcoming engagement, prioritize it aggressively. If you have a long queue and your strategic situation changes, don't hesitate to cancel low-priority items and redirect production.
What Stops Production¶
Blockades¶
A hostile fleet in orbit halts your production entirely. The queue freezes—ticks stop counting—until the blockade is lifted. This is why naval superiority and quick relief of blockaded systems matters so much. A critical shipyard under blockade for a month is a month of capital ships that will never exist.
Facility Requirements¶
Production is gated on having the right facilities at a system. A system without a shipyard cannot build capital ships. A system without a training center cannot build troops. Investing in facilities early—especially construction yards—unlocks the full production menu on your most important worlds.
The Economic Loop¶
The basic economic cycle runs like this:
- Secure systems with fleets and diplomacy—controlled systems can produce.
- Build facilities on high-value worlds—better facilities produce faster and unlock more options.
- Queue ships and troops—prioritize capital ships, then fill gaps with fighters and troops.
- Deploy output into fleets—newly built units sit at the construction system until assigned.
- Use those fleets to secure more systems—repeat.
The Empire starts with more systems and production capacity. The Alliance starts lighter but with more diplomatic flexibility. Both sides face the same core challenge: you can never build everything you want, so every production choice is a tradeoff.
Production Doctrine¶
A rough priority order that works for most situations:
- Construction yards first. More yards = faster everything else. Build them at your top three systems immediately.
- Capital ships second. A Star Destroyer or Mon Cal Cruiser changes the balance of a contested sector. You will never have enough.
- Fighters third. Squadrons provide anti-fighter cover for your capital ships and are fast to produce.
- Troops fourth. You need enough to garrison systems you capture, but you don't need them in huge numbers unless you're running a ground-heavy campaign.
- Defense facilities situationally. On your HQ and key manufacturing worlds, planetary defenses buy you time if the enemy arrives before reinforcements do.
Next: The Galaxy—how the 200 systems are organized, what controls them, and how territory shifts hands.