Buildings
From Starport: Galactic Empires
Colonists can be assigned to work on the current construction project. These workforce settings are adjusted in the biodome management screen, in the lower left corner.
Construction projects lead to new colonial improvements. The current improvement building is shown in the lower right hand area of the biodome management screen and can be changed there as well.
The more colonists set to construction, the faster the project will be completed.
Some projects also require a certain amount of resources to complete. Those resources are stored in the colony's Refinery, which is a colonial improvement itself and a prerequisite for many of the other types of buildings. This list shows the common buildings and their build times with 100 colonists working on them (i.e. a colony of population 100 set to 100% Constructing, or a colony of population 1,000 set to 10% Constructing). Build times can be rushed for an expensive price tag, about $150,000 per day in the day units listed below. Rushing takes care of the time requirement only; resources may still be required.
| Building | Days To Complete | Build Points | Function |
| Refinery | 5 | 300 | enables harvesting |
| Refinery Level 2 | 6 | 500 | increases harvesting output 50% |
| Refinery Level 3 | 7 | 800 | decreases pollution rate and allows cleaning |
| Biodome Level 2 | 5 | 800 | raises maximum population to 5,000 |
| Biodome Level 3 | 10 | 1400 | raises maximum population to 25,000 (10,000 on level easy galaxies) |
| Radio receiver | 3 | 250 | increases morale growth |
| Broadcast Receiver | 5 | 800 | increases morale growth |
| Weapons factory | 8 | 1600 | enables weapon construction |
| Solar cannon | 12 | 2000 | a necessary defense for any planet |
| Entertainment | n/a | n/a | A non-ending build item which increases morale by 0.01 per hour |
Each planet type also has a special colonial structure that can be built only on that planet type:
