Supply units
The building blocks of any empire

Supplies are of vital importance to your empire. They are used to build structures on planets, but can also be transformed into minerals on special Alchemy Ships or even sold for money. There are two ways to obtain supplies. The most common method is to colonise a planet and build some factories. The second method of obtaining supplies is by colonising planets that have Bovinoid natives on them. These natives are kind enough to donate supply-units to your colonists. How many supply-units you will receive depends on the number of natives and the amount of clans on the planet.

Factories
When you first colonize a planet there will be no factories on it. That is why it is recommended that you bring supplies from your homeworld, which does start with factories. Without supplies you will not be able to build anything on your new world. A factory is a large structure on the surface of the planet that produces supplies every turn. The supplies can be used to build more factories, mines or defense outposts. The supplies can also be converted into megacredits, or even to be shipped off planet for use elsewhere in your empire. A factory costs one supply unit and three megacredits to build. The factories will produce one supply unit per factory on the planet per turn. These supply units can be used in the construction on the planet or they can be converted ("sold") into megacredits. The number of these factories that you can build will be limited by the number of colonists that are currently present on the planet.

Bovinoids
Bovinoid natives are cow-like creatures, and are perhaps the most valuable native race in the cluster. Bovinoids provide your colonists with extra supply units, totally free of charge. Every 1000 Bovinoids will produce one extra supply unit per turn. These supplies can be used to further improve your economy; the most popular use is to convert them into minerals so you'll be able to build more and bigger ships and starbases. This makes planets with a substantial Bovinoid native colony on them good places to build starbases.