Materials are the physical resources factions extract, refine, and consume to construct buildings, units, and ships. Every district building, every starfighter, every capital warship, and every megaproject has specific material requirements that must be met before construction can complete. Be it credits or physical material goods. 

The galaxy contains a wide range of materials, from common base metals available on most worlds to exotic strategic resources found only in specific systems. Some materials are extracted directly from planets; others are refined or processed from raw inputs. A faction's ability to construct effectively depends on its access to the right materials, either through its own extraction infrastructure or through trade and the global market.

Materials fall into two broad categories.

Raw materials are extracted directly from planets through Extraction District buildings. These include ores, gases, organic compounds, and base elements: you know, things like Iron, Lommite, Carbon, Carvanium, Tibanna gas, Rhydonium, and Coaxium. Each requires a specific extraction building, and each is gated by the planet's geology, atmosphere, or local environment.

Refined materials are produced from raw materials through Industrial District foundries and processing plants. These include your structural alloys and processed compounds used in nearly all major construction: Steel, Durasteel, Quadanium Steel, Phobium, Havod, Transparisteel, Trimantium, and the like. A refined material's production requires both the raw inputs and the appropriate foundry building, with the foundry operating costs paid every turn it runs.

A faction that controls extraction but lacks refining infrastructure must either sell raw materials and buy refined products elsewhere, or pay the higher prices of the global market. A faction with strong refining infrastructure can transform cheap raw materials into expensive finished goods at scale, generating substantial economic value.

For unit and ship construction, the player chooses what material to feed into production. A starfighter, walker, or capital ship's "hull material" line indicates a quantity, not a specific material. The player decides whether to use Steel (cheap and fragile), Titanium (mid-tier), Durasteel (military standard), Quadanium Steel (premium), Beskar (extreme), or any other suitable substance.

The choice affects the unit's combat performance proportional to the material's properties. The system itself does not restrict what may be used; the consequences of the choice are determined when the unit enters combat or operations.

Now, some materials are categorically more valuable than others, both for their combat effects and for their rarity. These include Coaxium (hyperdrive fuel and reactor catalyst), Trimantium (capital-grade structural reinforcement), Spin-Sealed Tibanna (premium weapons gas), Stygium (cloaking ore), Hibridium (cloaking material), Kyber (Force-resonant crystal), and various rare alloys like Cortosis, Phrik, Beskar, and Songsteel.

Strategic materials are typically required in small quantities but have outsized effects on what they enable. A capital warship cannot be built without Coaxium for its reactor; cloaking devices cannot be built without Stygium; lightsaber-resistant armour cannot be built without Cortosis or Phrik. A faction that controls extraction of strategic materials holds disproportionate galactic influence.

Every planet has a Stockpile Capacity, which determines how much of each material may be held on that planet at any one time. Materials extracted, produced, or traded onto a planet that exceed Stockpile Capacity are lost rather than stored. Stockpile Capacity is a hard limit, not a soft one.

This means factions must continually manage material flow. Producing more than can be stored is wasteful; producing less than is needed for ongoing construction creates bottlenecks. Trade Routes allow factions to move materials between planets, but the rate of material flow is itself capped by the lower of the two planets' production or supply rates.

The galactic market is the galaxy-wide commercial network through which factions may buy and sell common materials without needing to extract or refine them directly. It provides factions with access to materials they cannot produce themselves, albeit at a premium. This is to make sure you don't get fully screwed by not having x planet. 

Most common alloys, gases, and base materials are available on the global market at any time, at fixed prices. A faction without Durasteel foundries can purchase Durasteel through the market. A faction without Tibanna extraction can buy Tibanna directly. Coaxium, Spin-Sealed Tibanna, and other premium strategic materials are also available, at substantially higher prices that reflects their rarity. However, the rarest and most strategically significant materials are not available on the global market at any price.

Pricing on the global market is roughly 2.5 times the cost of producing the same material through one's own supply chain. This premium reflects the cost of transport, the merchant guilds' margins, and the convenience of immediate availability. Self-production remains substantially cheaper, but global market access ensures continuity of operations even when supply chains are disrupted.

Material extraction is not infinite. While the galaxy is vast and most resources are abundant, the politically and environmentally costly nature of extraction means that planets steadily lose Influence under sustained mining operations. A faction extracting heavily from a planet without investing in civic infrastructure will eventually see its grip on that planet weaken to the point of losing ownership.

This is the core tension of the material system: the materials that build empires also gradually erode the empires that produce them. The successful long-term faction balances extraction against civic investment, maintains diverse supply chains rather than depending on single worlds, and treats material access as a strategic question rather than an automatic given.

#nooticing