Industrial Alloys
Refined heavy industrial materials produced by processing raw Structural Materials. Used wherever standard bulk construction mass is not sufficient — armored hulls, advanced sector infrastructure, hardened defensive installations.
Tier
Tier 2 — Processing. Produced by processing sectors that consume Structural Materials as input. Cannot be produced by an Extraction Sector regardless of the stellar object's composition.
Inputs
| Resource | Source tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Structural Materials | Tier 1 | Must be delivered to the holding — can come from any source |
The processing holding does not need any local Structural Materials occurrence. The raw input is supplied entirely through the logistics network.
Produced By
A processing sector branch that has specialized into alloy production (e.g. a Refinery branch of an Extraction Sector). The holding's stellar composition is irrelevant to output rate — only sector level and input supply determine output volume.
Consumed By
- Sector construction and upgrades — advanced or high-level sectors require Industrial Alloys in addition to basic Structural Materials
- Holding tier upgrades — advancing to Colony tier requires Industrial Alloys as part of the upgrade cost
- Shipbuilding (future) — fleet construction is the primary long-term consumer of Industrial Alloys at scale
- Defensive installations (future) — hardened fortifications and planetary guns require Industrial Alloys
Strategic Notes
Industrial Alloys are the first processed resource in the game and represent the first point at which a player must build a cross-holding supply chain. A player who can sustain alloy production has a structural advantage in expansion speed and fleet capacity.
The processing holding is the economic center of gravity for this chain. Destroying or blockading it is more efficient than attacking the raw extraction sources individually, since raw Structural Materials are widely available but the processing bottleneck is likely concentrated in fewer locations.
Holding position on planets near industrial alloy processors is strategically valuable beyond the object's own composition.
Open Questions
- What is the conversion ratio of Structural Materials input to Industrial Alloys output? Should this ratio improve with sector level?
- Should different branches produce different grades of alloys (standard vs. hardened vs. precision), or is a single unified alloy resource sufficient at this stage?