Noble Metals

Noble Metals are a resource collected from Space Mining. They represent expensive or difficult-to-acquire metals, such as gold, titanium, and gallium.

Noble metals are primarily used for the construction and maintenance costs of certain "advanced" modules for habs and components for spaceships, with the Construction Module, Skunkworks, and Operations Center families being major consumers. Nobles are also heavily used for certain specific armors and radiators, as well as being a major part of the fuel for Orion drives, and a poor choice of ship design in the mid-game can easily annihilate a faction's supply of nobles.

Noble metals are a fairly rare resource, typically available in extremely small quantities from Luna, and only moderate quantities from Mars (with a small number of sites dominating the output on both bodies). Metallic asteroids are the best option for rapidly increasing output in the early game, and Io is notable as the best source in the solar system by far.

If the player does not have enough noble metals in space, they can be purchased from Earth for 50 Money per unit and raised into space for Boost. Nobles can also be sold to earth for a base price of 2.5 per unit, which can be raised with projects and certain priorities from Earth's nations, and lowered by selling large quantities to Earth. See Resources#Buying_and_Selling_Space_Resources for details.