Industry and processing
Raw ground becomes usable stock through a processing chain that speaks in kinds and states, not part numbers.
The grid language
Industrial stock is organized along two axes: what kind of matter it is — metal, mineral, organic, volatile — and how far it has been processed, from raw through refined to synthetic. Recipes and construction costs speak this language: they demand "refined metal", not a named part, and any stock matching the demand qualifies.
Matter also has a physical phase — solid, liquid or gas — and phase gates handling: a gas needs somewhere pressurized to live, and some processes only accept input in the right phase. Contaminated stock is its own problem, unusable until dealt with.
Extraction: pointing crews at the ground
Raw stock enters the chain through extraction buildings, and each is built for one physical phase of matter: the Surface Mine digs solid deposits, the Pumpjack lifts shallow liquids, the Gas Collector tents what the ground breathes out. Deeper strata hold richer deposits and need heavier facilities the colony earns through research. Extraction is a standing order on a work position — each crew is pointed at one discovered deposit and works exactly that target, so two crews of one mine can dig two different deposits side by side. Output follows the crew, one rule for every line: a position short of people slows down, and an understaffed one brings home nothing and says so.
Every world also carries its own regolith — a bulk construction mineral the Surface Mine can always scrape without any deposit. It is the floor of the economy, never its engine: the ground is everywhere but lean, working it takes far more hands than a deposit crew, and the impure ground refines leaner as well as dearer than a decent deposit. Studying the local ground in the laboratory pays out in yield, and a real deposit out-earns it the moment one is found.
Running the chain
Processing happens in dedicated facilities, one per family of work: the Smelter refines metal and mineral stock, the ISRU Plant melts ices and condenses vapors, the Organics Works handles organic feedstock, and life support is made in works of its own — the Electrolyzer splits water into oxygen, the Bioreactor cultures food. Every line costs energy and consumes stock that must physically sit in the settlement doing the work. The chain is local end to end: a refinery with no feedstock on site produces nothing, whatever the colony owns elsewhere.
Which recipes a colony can run grows over time — some are open from the first day, others wait for research like Materials Processing, which also opens the facilities of the synthesis row.
Staffed workplaces
A production building is a workplace: it offers job positions and reserves a share of the settlement population as its crew. The production order lives on the building itself — each processing building runs its own lines, and a line runs continuously while inputs last and at least one seated operator can work. Nobody in the seat means the line stalls and says so. Anyone able may take a seat: skill above the position's bar makes the same line yield more, while a hand below the bar keeps the line running under its rated output — the work never stops over qualification alone, it just runs worse. The Workshop runs the same way for products: a standing manufacture order on its position builds the configured product piece by piece, each taking several turns, while inputs, energy and staffing hold.
A seat is a real commitment. The character in it counts as working there — boarding a field team or entering training gives the seat up, and the reserved population cannot leave with an expedition. Without production buildings a settlement only produces its survival baseline: enough to sustain the people it has, never enough to expand.