Construction Queues

Age of Space has three independent construction queues that run in parallel on each planet. Understanding how they work — and keeping them busy — is the key to efficient growth. An idle queue is wasted time, and wasted time means your rivals are building while you are not.

How Queues Work

Your empire runs on three separate construction queues. Each operates independently, meaning you can build a structure, research a technology, and produce ships all at the same time. This parallelism is crucial — experienced players always have all three queues active.

The three queues are: the Building queue (structures on each planet), the Research queue (technologies for your entire account), and the Shipyard queue (ships and defenses on each planet). Each has its own rules and quirks.

Building Queue

The building queue handles all structures on a planet: mines, factories, storage, research labs, and everything else that appears as a building on your planet surface.

Only one building can be under construction at a time per planet. If you queue multiple buildings, the first one starts building immediately and the rest wait their turn. When the first completes, the next one begins automatically.

1. Click on a building slot on your planet surface
2. Select the building or upgrade you want
3. Confirm the construction — resources are deducted immediately
4. The building begins construction with a countdown timer

Each planet has its own independent building queue. This means you can have buildings under construction on all your planets simultaneously — a huge advantage once you have multiple colonies.

Build times depend on the building cost, your Robot Factory level, Nanite Factory level, and the universe speed setting. Higher Robot Factory levels dramatically reduce all build times.

Research Queue

The research queue is global — you can only research one technology at a time across your entire account, regardless of how many planets you have. This makes research the biggest bottleneck in mid-game.

Research is performed at the Research Lab on whichever planet you initiate it from. The Lab level on that specific planet determines the research speed. Higher Lab level = faster research.

Although research is global (one at a time), the resources are taken from the planet where you start the research. Plan which planet has the resources you need before starting expensive research.

Research time depends on the technology cost and the Research Lab level on the planet where you initiated it:

Shipyard / Hangar Queue

The Shipyard queue builds ships and defenses. It works differently from the other two queues: you can queue multiple batches of units, and they build one unit at a time within each batch.

For example, if you queue 50 Light Fighters, they build one after another — you do not get all 50 at once. But you can add additional batches (like 20 Cruisers after the 50 Fighters) and they will build in sequence.

The Shipyard queue runs independently from the building queue. This means you can upgrade a mine AND build ships at the same time. Always take advantage of this parallelism.

Build time for each unit depends on the ship/defense cost, your Shipyard level, and Nanite Factory level. Higher Shipyard level = faster production for each individual unit.

Cancelling Queued Items

You can cancel buildings, research, and shipyard batches that are in the queue. When you cancel, the full resource cost is refunded to you immediately.

For the building queue, you can cancel the currently building item or any queued item. Cancelling the current item stops construction and refunds all resources.

For research, cancelling returns the full research cost to the planet where the research was started.

For the shipyard, you can cancel batches that have not started production yet. Once a batch has begun (the first unit is being built), that batch cannot be cancelled.

Instant Build with Antimatter

If you have Antimatter (the premium currency), you can instantly complete any building, research, or shipyard production. The Antimatter cost scales with the remaining build time — the more time left, the more it costs.

Instant build is most cost-effective when used on items that are nearly complete. If a 2-hour build has 5 minutes left, the Antimatter cost is very small. If it has the full 2 hours left, it costs much more.

Use instant build strategically: it is best for finishing critical items when you need to move quickly (like completing a Shipyard upgrade before an enemy attack arrives).

Queue Management Tips

Frequently Asked Questions