Silicon and Stone Processing Guide

If your early factories are stalling because you need more Glass, a cleaner Silicon Ore supply, or a way to feed electronics without dragging raw ore across the map, Stone and Silicon Ore are the chain to get under control. The good news is that both resources can be mined, smelted, and routed in a simple way once you know what to prioritize. Start by locking down the nearest reliable deposit, use Stone as your early fallback, and then switch to direct Silicon Ore mining as soon as you find a real vein.

Start with the resource you can mine most easily

Begin with whatever you can reach quickly. Stone is the easiest early target because it is common on rocky planets, you can mine it with the Mining Machine, and you can also pick it up manually from rocks and pebbles if you need a stopgap. Silicon Ore is much rarer in a star system, so don’t plan your early electronics around it until you actually find a vein worth tapping.

A single Stone vein or Silicon Ore vein can support multiple Mining Machines, so your first move should be to automate the nearest dependable deposit rather than chasing perfect rates. Put down enough Mining Machines to keep a Smelter line fed, then expand from that vein instead of spreading your setup too thin. That is especially important for Stone, since it gives you both construction materials and an emergency Silicon Ore fallback. Natural Silicon Ore is the long-term source, though: once you find a proper vein, treat it as the main supply and stop leaning on stone conversion.

Decide what to smelt locally before you build long transport lines

Before you start shipping ore around, decide what you actually need on-site. Stone is smelted into Stone Brick and Glass, and those are the products you should prioritize first because they get spent immediately in infrastructure and expansion. Don’t sit on piles of Stone waiting for a “better” use if your builds are already asking for Glass.

Silicon Ore is simpler: its only direct industrial use is High-Purity Silicon, so you should smelt it as soon as it comes off the miners unless you have a very short-term bottleneck elsewhere. The fewer steps between the mine and the finished product, the cleaner your logistics will be. If you are setting up a new outpost, local refinement is usually the best habit to build early.

Use the stone fallback only as a temporary bridge

Stone-to-Silicon Ore exists so your factory does not hard-stop before you find a proper deposit, but you should treat it as a bridge, not a plan. The slow Stone-to-Silicon Ore route is described as highly inefficient, so it is fine for very small early-game demand, such as keeping a few buildings supplied, but it is the wrong choice for anything you expect to scale.

Use this fallback only long enough to keep construction moving. If your starting planet or nearby system has not revealed a Silicon Ore vein yet, convert just enough Stone to cover the immediate need and keep scouting. The moment you find natural Silicon Ore, cut over to direct mining and never look back. You will save time and stop feeding an inefficient chain with a resource that is otherwise abundant and useful.

Refine Silicon Ore near the mine before you ship it

Once you have a Silicon Ore vein, the best next step is to smelt it on-site into High-Purity Silicon. That matters because two Silicon Ore are required for one High-Purity Silicon, so shipping raw ore doubles the number of trips you need compared with shipping the refined product.

This is where logistics planning starts to matter. If you are moving silicon products between planets, use an Interstellar Logistics Station for the transfer, but keep the heavy lifting at the source. Refine at the mine, then export High-Purity Silicon instead of ore. That keeps the route simpler and reduces the load on your interstellar network. If you already imported raw Silicon Ore to a central factory, do not keep expanding that design; move the smelting back to the deposit as soon as practical.

Prioritize the upgrade and scale-up choices that keep the line efficient

If you want one upgrade to stretch both Stone and Silicon Ore, make it Veins Utilization. Each level increases mining rate by a flat 10% and reduces consumption by 6% per level, so it pays off whenever a vein is doing real work. That is especially useful when you want to feed multiple Mining Machines from a single deposit or squeeze more life out of a planet you plan to use heavily.

Use that upgrade with a simple priority: first, stabilize your local supply; second, scale one strong vein rather than opening a bunch of weak ones; third, move your silicon chain to direct mining and local refinement. Stone should stay healthy because Glass remains important well into the late game, even after Sulfuric Acid is no longer a major headache. Silicon Ore, by contrast, becomes more important as Processor and Quantum Chip production ramps up, so it is worth investing in a better Silicon Ore outpost instead of trying to brute-force it from Stone forever.

A good rule of thumb is this: keep Stone flowing for Glass and infrastructure, but let natural Silicon Ore carry the advanced electronics chain. That split keeps your logistics manageable and prevents your early fallback from becoming a permanent bottleneck.