Buildings

Eleven structures you build, three levels each except the Watchtower's five, and four you rent, which have one level and cannot be upgraded — all on a trefoil of three hexagons holding 505 cells you can build on. Placement is free to change at any time, so the only decisions that stick are what you build and when you upgrade it.

All buildings at a glance

Tables scroll sideways on a narrow screen.

Every row above is built with resources and stands for good — except the last four. A rented structure costs no resources, is standing the moment it is paid for, and comes down when you stop paying. Each has its own allowance, separate from the buildings it stands in for rather than a share of them. The price column is the day rate; longer terms cost less per day, down to half.

Rented structures have their own page, because how big one is, what the terms cost and what happens when one lapses all need explaining — Training space.

Reading the construction menu

• The tally is always there, not just at the wall. A capped structure reads 2 / 5 built from the first one you raise, so you can see the ceiling coming rather than discovering it.
• Exhausted rows sink to the bottom and are marked MAX. They are not hidden — five is a number you should be able to check — but they stop occupying the top of a menu whose job is to answer "what can I do now".
• A greyed row says why. LVL 4 means your level does not reach it; a red cost means you cannot afford it.
• The info dot opens this page. Tapping it lifts the relevant entry below into a panel over the game, so you never have to leave a decision to look something up.
• Rented structures are not in this list. They have their own section, Field requisitions, at the foot of the same panel — priced in War Bonds, every term shown at once, and kept apart so that a purchase made with real money never looks like an ordinary construction order. See training space.

What each one is for

Headquarters

granted Your command structure, placed for you and impossible to build a second one of. It produces nothing. Upgrading it buys no production, no housing and no defence — but at an hour and then two hours it is one of the largest single XP awards in the game. Start it when you want a level, not when you want a stronger base.

Its position is not a choice, and that is deliberate. It is seated on the one 2×2 spot on your whole base that lies in all three hexagons at once — there is exactly one, and the game works out where rather than storing it — so your command structure belongs to every part of your ground rather than to one third of it. That is why it is placed for you.

Gold Mine

economy The cheapest income in the game and the one you want most of: gold is what everything is priced in. You may own 5. At level 1 each produces 50 gold per hour, so a full set of five is 250/hr before upgrades.

Power Plant

economy Energy, at 20/hr per plant, capped at 3 plants. Energy is the scarcest resource by production — a full set of three is only 60/hr — and it is what gates Barracks, Training Yards, Motor Pools, Factories, vehicles and most tier-2 research. Build all three early.

Material Depot

economy Materials, at 30/hr each, up to 4. Materials are the second half of nearly every construction bill.

Barracks

military Where infantry are trained — Infantry, Scouts and Heavy Infantry. It also houses a small standing garrison of 5 units at level 1, which is enough to train something before you can afford a Training Yard and not much more.

It runs one batch at a time. Two Barracks is two orders at once; one Barracks is one order and then a queue. Upgrading one takes it offline for the whole upgrade, so a player with a single Barracks cannot train at all while it is going up.

Training Yard

military Housing for troops, and nothing else — but housing is the hard cap on your entire army, and therefore on how much an expedition can carry. Level 1 houses 15; each upgrade doubles that. You may own 4. It trains nothing.

Factory

military Where vehicles are assembled — the Recon Drone, the Light Tank and the Battle Tank. It is the most expensive building in the game and takes twenty minutes. Like a Barracks it runs one order at a time, and like a Barracks it carries a small garrison as a courtesy: 5 vehicle bays at level 1, so unlocking vehicles does not immediately strand you behind a Motor Pool. See vehicles.

Motor Pool

military Hardstanding, fuel and fitters — a Training Yard for vehicles, and the same shape of building in every way that matters. It houses 15 vehicles at level 1, doubling per level, up to 4 of them. It builds nothing.

Its bays are a separate pool from troop housing and the two never mix. Nothing else in the game provides vehicle bays except a Factory and the rented Field Workshop, so if you intend to field vehicles at all, this is the building that decides how many.

Defense Turret

defence An automated emplacement, up to 10 of them. When a raid is aimed at the hexagon it stands in, it fires on the column as it approaches. Its range grows from 3 tiles to 5, and its damage from 15 a shot to 40, by level — the full table is under approach fire. In the battle it adds its damage to the defence's firepower and its health (300, 450, 600 by level) to its staying power.

Wall Segment

defence 500 health for 50 gold and 25 materials, built in a minute, up to 50 of them. The cheapest health in the game per gold spent, and the cheapest XP.

Watchtower

defence Early warning. It tells you about raids aimed at you — sooner, and in more detail, the higher you take it. One per base, 1×1, available from level 10. It does not shoot.

• Only raids on you. The tower never shows you anyone else's march, and never widens what you can see of bases or deposits. It is a warning, not a spyglass.
• Without a tower, a raid you can see shows whose it is, what kinds of unit are in it, roughly how big it is and which way it is heading — never an exact count. Level 3 is the only way the map ever shows you an exact number.
• At level 4 a dashed red path runs from the column to your base, with an ETA chip. When several raids are coming they are numbered 1, 2, 3 by which arrives first.
• At level 5 the path ends in the part of your base it is aimed at, that part is hatched red, and a label names it and lists who is coming, soonest first.
• Below level 4 there is no ETA line: the label shows the owner's name, and at level 3 the counts. At level 4, where the ETA is known but not the hexagon, it says Target: Watchtower 5, on the map and on the base-view arrow.
• Your base view warns you too: the targeted part hatched, and an arrow at the edge of the screen pointing towards each raid.
• An upgrade does not blind it. A tower being upgraded keeps working at its current level. One still being built does not work yet.
• The attacker learns nothing from your tower. What it tells you, it tells only you.

Field Training Tent

rented A requisitioned canvas drill tent, 2×2, standing in for a Training Yard. It houses troops and trains none. It costs 100 War Bonds for a 24-hour term, stands the instant it is paid for, and is worth as much space as your largest training building is worth today. Four of them, on top of your four Yards. Full details on training space.

Field Barracks Tent

rented A canvas drill hall, 2×1, standing in for a Barracks. It trains infantry, and is sized against your best Barracks alone. Same price, same term, two of them. This is the one that answers NO FACILITY and BUSY on an infantry row.

Field Workshop

rented A canvas assembly line, 2×2, standing in for a Factory. It assembles vehicles, and its space is vehicle bays, never bunks. Same price, same term, two of them, and it needs level 4 like the Factory it deputises for.

Field Research Post

rented A requisitioned canvas laboratory, 2×1. It houses nothing and stands in for nothing. What it grants is a second research line — one more project running alongside your own, for as long as it is paid for. It needs level 3, costs 150 War Bonds a day, and you may have one at a time — if one lapses you can rent another, but you can never run two.

It is the only rented structure that is not sized against a building you already own, because there is nothing to measure: a research line is a permission, not a room. That also means it is the one you can rent without owning anything first. See research for what a second line is worth and the one rule that comes with it.

Telling the four tents apart

All four are pale canvas peaks with guy lines, ground pegs and no foundation — that is what "rented" looks like, and on a dark map they are the brightest things on it. What separates them is a mark painted large on both canvas slopes, so it reads whichever way the camera is facing:

• Rank stripes — three stepped chevrons, red. This one trains infantry: the Field Barracks Tent. It is also the only tent with a long narrow 2×1 footprint, so the plot alone gives it away before any paint does. There is a rifle rack against the skirt.
• A cog — a square ring with four teeth, purple. This one builds vehicles: the Field Workshop. It also carries a steel gantry hoist standing over an open drive-through end, which nothing else in the game does.
• A bunk — two rails between two posts, red. This one houses troops and makes nothing: the Field Training Tent. Gold appears once, on the requisition plate by the door.
• A flask, on chartreuse canvas. This one runs research: the Field Research Post. It is the only one of the four that is not pale — the green is half the identification — and the only one with no doorway: a sealed steel hatch stands where the other three open up. A field laboratory is a controlled volume, and nothing marches out of it.

Two of them share the long narrow 2×1 plot — the Field Barracks Tent and the Field Research Post — so footprint alone will not separate those two on the map. The mark and the colour will: red chevrons against green and a flask. The Post is also the lowest of the four, a bench and a generator rather than a drill hall, so a base holding several does not read as a row of identical peaks.

The rule is simple enough to remember: the three that make or run something are marked for what they do, and the one that only houses troops is marked with a bed.

Upgrades

Each of the eleven built structures has three levels, except the Watchtower, which has five. An upgrade costs more than the original build did but roughly doubles what the building gives you, so once you have hit a building's cap the upgrade is the better purchase than nothing — it is simply not free.

Rented structures cannot be upgraded. They have one level, and their size is fixed at the moment you pay for it — see training space.

Producers

Housing

Both scaling buildings work the same way: an upgrade always adds more places than a second building at the same tier would, and costs less. A Training Yard upgrade is 600 gold to add fifteen places, against 400 gold for a fresh yard that adds fifteen but also eats a 2×2 footprint and eight more minutes. Upgrade before you hit the cap.

Everything else

The Watchtower's five levels, and what each one adds, are in its own table above.

Speeding up construction

A speed-up takes time off a building that is under construction or being upgraded. You cannot buy one — not with War Bonds, not in the store, not at all. They are found.

Where they come from

When an expedition's dig takes a deposit down to 0, the party recovers one speed-up. Its size depends on the deposit's grade, which you can see on the map before you send anyone:

When it happens a card appears — "The deployment discovered a stash of construction speed-ups after clearing the mine." — with what you gained. It goes away by itself, or tap it to dismiss it sooner. Speed-ups of the same size stack.

Using one

• Open any building that is under construction or upgrading. Its SPEED UP block lists the sizes you hold and how much time each would save. If you hold none, it says so and says where they come from.
• One per tap. Each tap spends one speed-up and takes its time off the clock.
• A speed-up bigger than the time left is not refunded. The block warns you first, saying how much of it would be lost, and the button changes to USE ANYWAY — a second tap. The building then finishes at once and the excess is gone.
• Buildings only. Speed-ups do not work on training or research.

Rules worth knowing

• Your ground is three hexagons, and it never fills up. They are the same three tiles your base stands on out in the sector, which is why a base looks like itself on both maps. The ground holds 560 cells and you build on 505; every building at its maximum count is a small fraction of that. Space is not a constraint; resources are.
• The joins are reserved, and that is the one placement rule. The 55 cells along the seams where the three hexagons meet are held for structures the game places — your Headquarters being the one there is today, seated on the single spot that touches all three hexagons at once. You cannot build there and you cannot move a building there; the attempt is refused and costs nothing. A structure that is already on reserved ground can be moved off it, just not around within it.
• Moving is free and instant. Only completed buildings can be moved — which includes a rented tent, so the spot the game picks for it is not final.
• A rented structure is placed for you. Renting from the construction menu drops it on the first free square that fits, because a player buying one is usually mid-emergency. Move it afterwards if you care where it stands.
• Cancelling a construction refunds half. There is no demolish, and no way to recover a building once it is finished.
• Construction research helps everything. The construction branch cuts build and upgrade times by up to 40% in total. See research.
• Upgrades award more XP than fresh builds. A Factory or HQ upgrade to level 3 pays 540 XP; see levels and ranks.