Metals
| Beauty Factor | Beauty Offset | Flammability Factor | Mass Base | Max Hit Points Factor | Melee Cooldown Factor | Work To Make Factor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | 4 | 20 | 0.4 | 0.008 | 0.6 | 1 | 0.9 |
| Plasteel | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0.25 | 2.8 | 0.8 | 2.2 |
| Silver | 2 | 6 | 0.4 | 0.008 | 0.7 | 1 | 1 |
| Steel | 1 | 0 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Uranium | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2.5 | 1.1 | 1.9 |
Gold
The most seductive metal of them all. Millions have died in attempting to feed the endless human thirst for gold. This soft metal is little use on its own, but is strikingly beautiful and very rare.
Gold is a very beautiful and valuable resource. The primary source is from mining gold veins or drilling with deep drills.
Plasteel
Advanced spacer tech structural material. Plasteel is extremely strong due to its unique molecular structure.
The strongest material in the game. Used for a lot of high tech stuff, especially ship engines and other modules, which are needed to build a spaceship to escape the planet and win the game. Can be obtained by
- trading,
- disassembling a dead Mechanoid,
- mining compacted plasteel deposits,
- using a deep drill on an underground plasteel vein.
Silver
This metal is mostly used as a commodity currency. It can also be used for making attractive decorations.
Silver is a precious, uncommon material. It is ill-suited for industrial or structural use, but is recognized as a trade currency which all traders will readily accept. Furniture, recreation sources, and sculptures built with silver tend to have very impressive beauty values, and it can also be used to produce slightly better-than-average blunt weapons (though this is rarely a wise use of the metal). Although an equivalent value of Jade has higher beauty and blunt damage meaning that Jade is a preferable resource to use if it is available. It is a small volume material, similar to gold, so weapons and art made of silver will require ten times the units of a normal resource. Silver is also a necessary ingredient in building sterile tiles, which improve the rate at which your colonists do research and reduce the chance of infection during recovery from wounds. Sterile tiles boost cleanliness up to 0.60 (Sterile).
Steel
An iron-carbon metal alloy used for building structures, tools, and weapons.
Steel is a raw resource, crucial throughout the game for different purposes, such as construction of various structures, and production of weapons and armor.
Uranium
"An extremely hard, dense metal. While it is best known for its use powering nuclear reactors, its physical properties also make it excellent in some roles as a tool, weapon, or armor."
Uranium is one of the rarest materials in the game. It can be used to craft very powerful but slow blunt weapons (with the uranium mace being the most powerful blunt melee weapon in the base game), and it is also a required element in the construction of certain late-game high-tech constructions, most notably the end-game ship.
