Economy & Production

The five resources

• Metal - the bulk material of war. Every unit costs metal, both to produce and for ongoing upkeep.
• Ichor - a rare substance that powers a frame's living components and ichor upgrades. Icaroids usually need it; drones don't.
• Industry - not a stockpile but a per-province rating: how fast that hex can pour resources into building and manufacturing. You never spend industry; it's the throughput of a factory or construction site.
• Science - poured straight into research each turn. It isn't hoarded; it flows into whatever you're studying each turn.
• Gems - gathered slowly over time at gem sites, each gem allows you to produce one Icaroid with a potent ability that may be scaled significantly by the ichor pieces and glyphs attached to it.

Metal, ichor, and gems are the resources you actually bank and spend. Industry and science are rates - how quickly you can turn what you hold into units and knowledge.

Income

Each turn you collect metal and ichor from every province you hold, scaled by its resource affinity - a metal-rich province can produce an incredible amount of metal with a mine, an ichor seam produces ichor (see the map guide). Bigger provinces produce more, corresponding with their size. Buildings add to this: a complete mine, workshop, or similar faction building can maximize output of a resource in a province. Research institutes in particular adds science at a flat rate per province.

Upkeep

A standing army isn't free. Every turn you pay a small metal upkeep on the units you field - a fraction of each design's value - deducted from your metal pool before you spend on anything else. It's modest per unit, but a sprawling army of expensive frames adds up.

The lesson is to keep your force purposeful. Idle units still cost you metal you could be spending on the front, so mass what you need where it matters rather than constructing units you won't use.

When production stops

Two things switch your economy off. If an enemy captures your capitol, your income, construction and production all halt until you retake it - the single most urgent thing that can happen to you (see the overview). And a commander with no provinces and no armies left is eliminated outright. Keep your capitol, and keep at least a toehold on the map.

Factories and the queue

You manufacture units on any province that holds a complete factory (every capitol starts with one). A factory has a production queue: a first-in, first-out list of units you want built. Each turn the hex draws metal and ichor from your pool - at a rate set by its industry - into the front unit of the queue. If the front unit cannot receive any more resources (such as if it's waiting on a gem for completion), the factory will begin to walk through the rest of the queue one at a time, constructing things behind the waiting unit.

A unit that can't be fully paid for this turn is left partly-built and resumes next turn; nothing is wasted, since budget the front unit can't use (say, spare metal while it waits on ichor) rolls onward to the next unit in line that can. When a unit finishes it's immediately placed into an army on that hex. Mark a queue item to loop and it re-queues itself at the back once built, so a factory can churn out a steady stream unattended.

What a unit costs

A unit's price is split across the two spendable resources:

• Its metal cost comes from the design's point value - the more powerful the frame and its equipment, the more metal it takes.
• Its ichor cost is the number of ichor grid squares filled - the total footprint of the ichor pieces packed into the design. A frame with no ichor pieces costs no ichor. Keep your designs focused and don't place ichor pieces you don't need.

Drones are all metal and no ichor, which makes them cheap, fast bulk - a good way to convert a metal surplus into bodies when your ichor income is the bottleneck. Which designs and drones you can build at all depends on your research and faction.

Gems

Gems are rare ichor pieces that grant an Icaroid a unique ability - and in a campaign they're a currency of their own. You earn them by holding gem deposits, which trickle a fraction of a gem into your inventory each turn; it takes several turns of holding a deposit to bank a whole gem.

A bare deposit is slow, but you can work it. A Gem Mine built on a deposit province raises its yield outright - half a gem per turn at Mk I, a whole gem at Mk II, and two per turn at Mk III. Mk I needs no research; the higher tiers are unlocked in the Infrastructure branch. The tiers are built on top of one another and the best one sets the rate, so a long-held deposit with a full mine on it turns gem-bearing designs from a rare treat into a standing production line.

A unit whose design carries a gem needs one gem of the right type to complete. If you don't have one banked, that unit sits fully built but stalled in the queue - the panel shows an "AWAITING GEM" state - and finishes the moment a gem is available. Gem-bearing designs are usually limited by your gem counts; ensure these valuable units remain as protected as you can keep them, because you won't get the gem back when the unit is destroyed.

Running the economy

Income scales with the land you hold and the buildings on it; upkeep is the tax on your army; factories convert metal and ichor into force at a rate your industry sets; and gems ration your very best units. Balance the three spendable flows - don't starve your factories to over-build, or drown in metal your slow ichor income can't match (that's what drones are for). Next, Buildings for what to build and Research for what to unlock.