In Delta Quadrant: Horizons, your empire requires many resources in order to work effectively. In this section you can find the details of each resource, what they are used for and how they affect your empire.

Several units of food are required to support about 1 million population . Usually planets produce enough food for its own population, however if you have extra food it will be transfered to other colonies if they run short.

Production points are required for building space ships and buildings. Each colony produces a certain amount of production points each turn, and this will affect the time it takes to build things at that planet.

Research points are required to progress along the tech tree and research new technologies. For more information about research, see the Science section.

Population is measured in millions. Each million population on a planet adds an extra specialist to that planet.

Specialists represent 1 million population at a particular colony. Specialists can be assigned to various jobs in order to increase output in that area. The three areas are Farming, Industry and Research. In each case the symbol used to represent the specialist is different.

- Farmer (specialist assigned to farming)
- Worker (specialist assigned to industry)
- Scientist (specialist assigned to research)

Note: By default specialists are assigned to farming.

Income is the amount of money made by your colonies and empire each turn, and is added to your empire treasury. Income is made from selling excess food and production made by your colonies, this happens automaticaly each turn.

The empire treasury holds the total amount of money that your empire owns. This money is required for maintenance of your buildings and ships, but can also be used to purchase production points at a particular colony in order to speed up the building time of a selected item. Each unit of production costs 3 money when ordering this way. See Accelerating Construction for details.

Note: If the amount of money in your empire treasury becomes negative then your production queue at all planets will be frozen, and you will be unable to build new ships or buildings until your treasury becomes positive again.

While many resources are needed by your empire, there are also some limitations that have an effect on how fast you can produce a particular resource, and some may even have a negative impact on your empire.

Food Consumption is the amount of food that your population consumes each turn. If a planet is producing less food than its food consumption then the following turn some population will starve and be lost, unless you have spare food at other colonies.

Some buildings and space ships require money each turn for maintenance . This is subtracted from your empire treasury.

Note: For buildings, the cost of maintenance can be affected by the planet class and maintenance buildings. See Planets and Building Categories for details.

Your industry buildings also produce pollution , and if left unchecked will lower the food and industry points made on your planet.

A single unit of pollution is made when producing 4 industry points .

2 units of pollution reduce food production by 1.
4 units of pollution reduce industry points by 1.

You can reduce pollution at your colonies by building ecology buildings. See Building Categories for details.

Population growth rate is the speed at which your population grows on a particular colony. It is affected by the planet class, governer skills and some buildings. While population growth increases the number of specialists on a planet, it also increases the amount of food required.

This is the maximum population that a planet can support. When your population at a certain planet reaches its maximum, it will stop growing.

Galactic credits are a special resource, used for buying services, and activating additional features within Delta Quadrant: Horizons. See the services page for more details.