How Building Works — Construction & Queues in Planet Epoch

Verified against the live game, August 2026. Numbers are the current defaults and can shift with balance patches; each galaxy's host also sets its own pace.

The build tree

There's no research screen — the tech tree is builders. A Colony builds your ground structures: refineries, shipyards, defence stations. A Shipyard builds ships; an Advanced Shipyard builds the bigger hulls. Some ships build directly — the Knosson Worldship is a mobile foundry, and Vatari Crusaders raise temples where they stand. What a unit can construct is fixed by its type; climbing the tree means building the next builder.

Shipyard — construction facility for light and medium ships — Climbing the tree: each yard unlocks heavier hulls — and the drydock keeps them alive.

Advanced Shipyard — city-sized facility that builds capital ships — Climbing the tree: each yard unlocks heavier hulls — and the drydock keeps them alive.

The queue is free — the front of it isn't

Queueing costs nothing, and this is the most useful thing to know about the economy: you only pay when an item reaches the front of its builder's queue and you can afford it. Queue an entire production run while broke — items start one by one as income arrives, and stall harmlessly when it doesn't. Each builder works one item at a time; more shipyards means more parallel lines.

Build times are real

A refinery takes hours of game time; a capital ship takes game-days. Times are on every hull's registry page. The rhythm of the game is queueing before you log off — construction is what your empire does while you sleep.

Transform: the other construction verb

Some ships don't build — they become. Colonisers transform into Colonies, Sharne drones into strip-mining complexes, Derulon Nesters into 10-RP habitats. Transforming is permanent, paid up front, and it's how every empire plants its first flag — see your first hour.

Limits and risks

Some structures are per-system limited — a system supports only so many of certain buildings, and the build menu tells you when you've hit a cap. And construction has enemies: a system in crisis (uprising, outbreak, logistical collapse) cancels its local build queue, refunding half the cost of everything in it. Unrest taxes the things you were about to own — another reason to keep morale out of the Low band.