Structs Production

Production is the engine of everything: you mine ore from your planet, refine it into Alpha Matter, and Alpha Matter funds power, structs, trade, and guild collateral. The whole game’s PvP tension lives in one fact — ore is stealable, Alpha Matter is not — and mining/refining are multi-hour proof-of-work expeditions, so production is fundamentally a scheduling and risk problem, not a clicking problem.

Conventions (TX_FLAGS, the -- rule, the -D 3 PoW policy, the per-player charge bar, one-tx-at-a-time) are assumed from conventions.md. Read it once.

When to use it

• You have an Ore Extractor + Ore Refinery and a planet with currentOre > 0.
• A mine or refine job just landed (start the next stage immediately).
• You’re sitting on storedOre (a liability — refine it).
• Your planet is depleting and you need to decide expand vs. squeeze the last ore.
• You’re planning throughput, or scaling across multiple accounts.

Decisions

Beginner default: One Ore Extractor + one Ore Refinery (both 1-per-player). Mine, and the instant mining lands, start refining — never let ore sit. Refine at -D 3. Keep your Command Ship online the whole time so the planet is unraidable (see structs-combat). That alone wins the early resource game.

The core trade-off — ore exposure vs. CPU: mined ore is vulnerable for the entire refine window. At -D 3 that’s ~34 hours but zero wasted CPU; at -D 8 it’s ~15 hours but burns real compute. Default to -D 3 and protect the window rather than racing it.

Advanced considerations:

• Throughput is capped per player — 1 Ore Extractor, 1 Ore Refinery, fixed 1 ore/cycle. You don’t scale by building more extractors (you can’t). You scale by: tighter cycle cadence (always have something aging), refining during the owner’s off-hours, and multi-account orchestration (separate keys mine in parallel — different accounts transact independently; see structs-permissions).
• Harden the window with bunkers/OSGs (shield/PoW only — not ore vaults). Real protection: refine promptly + CMD online + fleet onStation. Mine and refine are rejected while a visitor heads the raid queue (under_raid); do not retry compute mid-raid. See under-attack.
• Keep a reserve. Hold ~20-30% of Alpha Matter liquid for emergencies (power, rebuilds) rather than infusing everything.
• Decisions live in playbooks/situations/resource-rich and resource-scarce.

The pipeline

Ore Extractor ──mine (~17h)──▶ storedOre (STEALABLE) ──refine (~34h)──▶ Alpha Matter (SECURE) ──▶ power / build / trade / stake

Both stages are expeditions: the compute helper hashes for hours then auto-submits its completion transaction (this is why -y is required on compute commands — there’s no shell to confirm when the proof lands). Log every job to memory/jobs/ and never block on PoW.

Procedure

1. Check the planet — structsd query structs planet [planet-id]. If currentOre == 0, the planet is spent → go to Depletion below. Otherwise continue.
2. Confirm the extractor is online — structsd query structs struct [extractor-id] (status Online). Activate if needed (struct-activate, 2 charge). Activation is the start of the mining cycle when you are the first online extractor on the planet — it stamps the shared planetBlockStartOreMine. There is no separate “begin mining” action. Deactivating decrements the planet’s active-miner count; the clock stays until quantity returns to zero and a later activate re-anchors.
3. Confirm the planet is not under raid — if locationListStart is set, mine/refine compute and complete reject with under_raid. Wait for the visitor to leave; the planet clock’s pre-raid age is preserved, not decayed through the raid. See hashing.md — raid pause.

4. Compute the mine completion (background expedition, ~17h to D=3, difficulty 14,000). This hashes against the clock activation already armed and submits the completion — it does not “start” anything.

   Approval Block — confirm before launch: extractor id is correct; planet currentOre > 0; --from is the owner key; you accept an auto-submitted completion ~17h out even if state shifts.

   nohup structsd tx structs struct-ore-mine-compute -D 3 --from [key] --gas auto --gas-adjustment 1.5 -y -- [extractor-id] \
     > memory/jobs/mine-[extractor-id].log 2>&1 & echo $! > memory/jobs/mine-[extractor-id].pid
   

5. Do other work while it ages — scout, build defense, plan. Always keep something aging (activate early, compute later). The mine clock lives on the planet and resets after each successful mine (any extractor), so every cycle re-enters the full ~17h decay. Cycles never expire: an aged clock is cheaper to complete, not wedged — never “reset” or “clean up” an old mine/refine. See hashing.md — cycle lifecycle.

6. Refine in parallel — don’t wait for the mine. A refinery can be activated with 0 ore; ore mined (or received) mid-cycle counts at completion time. Activate and compute the refinery alongside the extractor rather than serially, and the pipeline completes faster (~34h to D=3, difficulty 28,000). Refined Alpha is secure; unrefined ore is stealable, so keep the refine cycle always running.

   Same-key compute processes are safe to overlap only when their expected auto-submissions are well separated. Fresh D=3 mine/refine clocks normally settle ~17 hours apart; record both ETAs. If clocks are already aged enough that completions could land together, sequence them or use a signing queue to avoid an account-sequence collision.

   Approval Block — same five checks, applied to the ~34h refine window.

   nohup structsd tx structs struct-ore-refine-compute -D 3 --from [key] --gas auto --gas-adjustment 1.5 -y -- [refinery-id] \
     > memory/jobs/refine-[refinery-id].log 2>&1 & echo $! > memory/jobs/refine-[refinery-id].pid
   

7. Protect the window — Command Ship online (unraidable), Ore Bunker(s) up, defenders assigned. See structs-combat.
8. Put the Alpha to work — refined Alpha is deposited in your player vault (structsd query structs vault [player-id] → address; playerInventory.rocks on the player query is the spendable amount), which is exactly where reactor and generator infusions draw from — so infusing for power (structs-energy) or staking/selling (structs-commerce) needs no transfer step. To pay native fees from it, move some to your key: player-send TX_FLAGS -- [vault-address] [your-address] [amount]ualpha. Or hold reserve.

Charge-bar scheduling

Activating the extractor/refinery costs 2 charge each from your shared per-player bar. If you activate several structs back-to-back, space them by ~2 blocks. The compute (mine/refine) itself isn’t charge-gated; the activation that precedes it is.

Depletion → explore handoff

When currentOre hits 0 the planet becomes complete: all its structs are destroyed, fleets are sent away, and the planet becomes unreachable — no fleet can move to it and it cannot be raided, so any storedOre you still hold is safe from theft but you also cannot operate there. Before the last ore is mined, decide:

• Squeeze the last ore if you can refine it before depletion forces you off, or
• Move first — relocate critical structs / evacuate, then explore.

Then hand off to structs-planets-fleet to chart and claim a new planet. If an extractor/refinery is destroyed mid-job, progress pauses (mined/refined amounts aren’t lost) until you rebuild.

Commands reference

TX_FLAGS / TX_FLAGS_APPROVED and the -D policy are defined in conventions.md. Mine/refine compute are the documented -y exception (they auto-submit) — your Approval Block is the gate.

Requires: structsd on PATH and a configured signing key.

Verification

• Planet currentOre decreases after a mine lands.
• Player storedOre rises after mine, returns to 0 after refine.
• Vault Alpha Matter (ualpha, 1g = 1,000,000; playerInventory.rocks) rises after refine — your signing key’s balance does not change; EventAlphaRefine carries the vaultAddress credited.
• Broadcast ≠ success: query state to confirm before assuming a stage finished.

Errors

• “under_raid” — a visiting fleet is in the planet’s raid queue. Mine/refine compute and complete are rejected until it leaves. Do not retry; the clock’s pre-raid age is preserved. See under-attack.
• “struct offline” — activate the extractor/refinery first.
• “insufficient ore” — planet depleted or nothing in storedOre; check currentOre / storedOre.
• “proof invalid” — re-run compute at the right difficulty; ensure the process wasn’t interrupted.
• Ore stolen — you left it unrefined or your Command Ship went offline mid-window. Refine immediately and keep the CMD ship up. See the reconnect flow in awareness/async-operations.

See also

• knowledge/mechanics/resources — conversion rates, vulnerability window, security model
• knowledge/mechanics/hashing — mine/refine clocks, raid pause, difficulty decay
• knowledge/mechanics/planet — depletion, raid vulnerability
• playbooks/situations/resource-rich / resource-scarce — production strategy
• awareness/async-operations — background PoW, job tracking, pipeline scheduling
• structs-combat — protecting the ore window; structs-energy / structs-commerce — spending Alpha