This was Goal 1, in that I wanted to unlock all options and see what they do. Quite an interesting collection of things.

New Buildings

• The Converter is the big ticket item, and core to all of Tier 9. It creates all the new base products, including two new types of gasses. It is expensive to build in terms of material, and you’re going to need a few dozen. You can use it to covert material too, though I haven’t found use yet as the math is too complicated. (Note: Mk3 extractors @250% = 150 Nuclear Plants, not sure you’d need more.)
• The Quantum Encoder is used primarily for Space Parts, but you’ll also need a few to get the new power structure running. They all have a by-product of Dark Matter gas, which you need to recycle somehow.
• Portals are here. 1 hub building, and they can connect to satellites. Takes 2 singularity cells per minute to keep running (more on that). An interesting tactic is to keep the materials for a satellite portal and only use it when you need it.
• Blueprint Mk3. Quite honestly, this thing costs too much to research and build. I tend to carry the mats for this with me, and build it next to a new factory location, allowing me to speed up construction. Look at this as QoL.
• Mk6 belts. It’s the only way to make 250% overclocked Mk3 extractors function, but also works WONDERS for high production lines, like pure Bauxite/Sloppy Alumina, or dedicated Plastic/Rubber factories. They are great where stack sizes are massive and you want cleaner belts. The build costs are expensive due to Time Crystals.

New Material

• Ficsite Ingots + Ficsite Trigons. Uses SAM ore with another metal. Relatively simple to construct at volume.
• Diamonds + Time Crystals. Massive conversion loss where a pure node running at 250% may give you 30/minute. They stack to 200, so this may be a target for drones, or a dedicated train that collects only this item. You will need a lot.
• Excited Photonic Matter. Converters make this out of thin air, used in Quantum Encoders. Meh. You never need to balance gas, so it’s effectively an energy tax. I guess it makes sense to go in ‘clean’ and leave ‘dirty’.
• Dark Matter Residue. Byproduct of Quantum encoders and can be made from SAM ore. Used to make Dark Matter Crystals. You “burn” excess in making crystals.
• Dark Matter Crystals. Holy cow you need a lot of these, space parts will bleed you dry. For sure the major bottleneck in Tier 9.
• Superposition Oscillator + Neural Quantum Processors + Singularity Cell. Late game production items made in Quantum Encoders. Think of it like an upgraded Supercomputer. Your entire factory may end up producing at 50% rate for these items, but more like 10%.
• Ficsonium + Fuel Rods. Allows you to recycle Plutonium Waste. If you’re actually running Plutonium, this is relatively simple to add to the chain.
• Power Shards + Alien Power Matrix. Boosts power form 10% to 30%, at scale. I have 6 Alien Power Matrixes active (60% boost), and if I fed each 5/min, I would go up to 180% boost. In that sense, it’s like doubling my powerplant with a fraction of the complexity. Yes please.
• Space Parts. Phase 4 gave you a taste with 100 Nuclear Pasta. Now you need 1000, and it’s the easiest of the parts to create. Getting this to work at scale is wildly complicated, mostly due to Dark Matter Crystal demands.
• Alien Power Matrix. These boost Augmenters by a further 20%, but cost 5/min. You can create 2.5/min per building, so you have to boost it with a Somersloop to get the 5. It is absolutely not worth the work until after you are burning Ficsite Rods. Without hesitation, this is the most expensive part in the entire game, and as such, only meant for the extra late late late game.

After years of balancing, any new content is a huge breath of air. Overall, this is a nice new added layer of complexity, with similar throughput challenges we saw before. It isn’t terribly clear at the outset what throughput you actually need as you don’t really need any new nodes to mine, it quickly escalates. The great news is that the power requirements for early Tier 9 are not crazy, so you don’t feel like there are going to be cascade failures as you test things out.

Honestly, it’s quite impressive to see what’s here.