Every mine, ship, and research breakthrough in OGame is gated by a construction timer — and reducing those timers is the single highest-leverage investment you can make on any planet. The Robotics Factory is your first tool for that job; the Nanite Factory is the endgame multiplier. Understand the underlying formula, sequence these two buildings correctly alongside your metal mine and resource output, and you will out-develop players who spend the same amount of resources but build in the wrong order.
How Construction Time Actually Works
OGame uses a straightforward but important formula to calculate how long any building, ship, or defense unit takes to produce. The base construction time for a building is derived from the total resource cost (metal + crystal) divided by a factor that includes your Robotics Factory level. More specifically, each level of Robotics Factory increases the build speed by a fixed percentage, effectively shrinking the denominator in the time equation. The result scales multiplicatively — each additional level of Robotics gives you proportionally less benefit than the previous one, but those early levels are extraordinarily efficient.
The Nanite Factory compounds this further. Each Nanite level halves the remaining build time after the Robotics modifier is applied. Level 1 Nanites cuts time in half. Level 2 cuts it to a quarter of the pre-nanite baseline. Level 3 to one-eighth. This halving-per-level relationship is why nanites are discussed with such reverence in the OGame community — no other single building delivers that kind of exponential time compression.
A few practical implications that veterans internalize early:
- Cheaper buildings benefit proportionally more. A mine that costs 400k metal/200k crystal to level up will see its build time crushed far more dramatically than a 40M/20M upgrade, because the absolute time saved is smaller but the relative time saving is identical — and cheap upgrades happen far more frequently early on.
- Your shipyard timer is also affected. Robotics and Nanites cut ship construction times at the shipyard, not just building upgrades. This is often overlooked when players calculate their Robotics ROI.
- The formula applies per-planet. Each planet has its own Robotics and Nanite factories. A colony with no Robotics build times is exactly the same as your homeworld before you built any — you must invest in each planet individually.
- Commander officers and universe speed multiply on top. On a server running economy 50x or 200x, the base build time is already divided by the speed multiplier. Robotics and Nanites then cut that already-shortened time further. The absolute savings in real-world minutes shrink dramatically, but the sequencing advantage over other players remains real.
Robotics Factory: Your First Accelerator
The Robotics Factory unlocks at level 1 with a modest resource requirement and starts paying dividends immediately. Most experienced players treat Robotics as a building that should reach level 10 before almost anything else on any new planet — because the time savings on every subsequent upgrade you queue compounds across thousands of future build slots.
Level-by-Level ROI Thinking
Levels 1-4 are almost free in resource terms and each one meaningfully cuts your queue. You should have these done on your homeworld within the first day on any speed server, often within hours on Proxima's 200x economy. Levels 5-8 cost progressively more but still represent excellent value; the time saved on mid-tier mine upgrades typically pays back the cost of the Robotics level within a handful of queue cycles. Levels 9-10 are where many new players hesitate, because the Robotics Factory itself takes longer to build and the marginal per-level gain has shrunk. Push through anyway — level 10 Robotics is the prerequisite for the Nanite Factory, and the investment is never wasted.
Beyond level 10, continued Robotics investment becomes a question of incremental efficiency. Levels 11-15 still shave meaningful time off heavy shipbuilding queues and high-level mine upgrades. Whether you pursue them before or after your first Nanite level depends on your current build priorities:
- If you are in an active war and need ships fast, higher Robotics levels on your shipyard worlds have clear tactical value.
- If you are in an economy phase stacking mine levels, each Robotics level reduces the effective cost of every future mine upgrade in time currency.
- If you have just unlocked Nanites at level 10, put your next resources into Nanite level 1 before pushing Robotics further — the halving effect dwarfs the incremental Robotics gain.
Robotics on Colony Planets
This is where many intermediate players leave time on the table. Sending a colony ship, planting a flag, and immediately starting to mine on a new planet without building a Robotics Factory first means every subsequent mine level on that colony takes longer than it should. The recommended practice: on any new colony, queue Robotics 1 through 6 as the very first build chain, even before your first Crystal Mine, then let the accelerated mine levels catch up. You lose a small window of early resource output but gain permanently faster upgrades on that planet for the rest of the game.
For deeper reading on optimizing what those factories will be building, the crystal mine guide and deuterium synthesizer guide both cover level prioritization in detail.
The Road to Nanites
Reaching the Nanite Factory requires Robotics Factory level 10 plus Computer Technology level 10. That Computer Technology prerequisite is worth noting because it means you need a well-developed Research Lab chain alongside your economic buildings — it is not purely an economy-side unlock. Players who neglect research progression to focus entirely on mines often find themselves with a Robotics 10 planet and no path to Nanites because they have not invested in their research lab network.
The Real Cost of the Nanite Unlock
Building Robotics to level 10 is the heavy lift. By the time you have Robotics 10 and Computer Tech 10 on a planet, you have made a substantial resource and time investment. The Nanite Factory level 1 itself costs relatively little in resource terms — the real cost is everything that had to come before it. This is why veterans talk about "the nanite milestone" as a turning point rather than just another building: the moment you place Nanite level 1, you have already won the development race on that planet. Everything from that point accelerates dramatically.
On speed servers, the path to Nanites can be surprisingly fast. On Proxima (200x economy, 400x research), dedicated players routinely reach Nanite level 1 on their homeworld within 24-48 hours of starting. On Andromeda (50x economy, 100x research), expect two to four days depending on how actively you play. The key is avoiding the temptation to over-invest in mine levels before securing Robotics 10. Push mines hard enough to sustain your building queue, but treat the Robotics and Research Lab ladders as your critical path.
Computer Technology: The Hidden Bottleneck
Computer Technology 10 costs substantial deuterium at higher levels. Make sure your deuterium synthesizer is keeping pace — a common trap is having excellent metal and crystal production but deuterium-starved research. Plan your energy infrastructure (solar satellites, fusion reactors) to support a deuterium synthesizer that runs comfortably above your energy break-even point. The energy management guide covers this in detail. Do not let the nanite unlock stall because you ran out of deuterium three Computer Tech levels from the finish line.
Nanite Factory: The Game Changer
Nanite level 1 halves every construction time on the planet. That is not a metaphor or an approximation — it is the literal formula. A mine upgrade that would have taken eight hours with Robotics 10 now takes four hours. A battleship production run that would have taken 20 minutes now takes 10. The compounding effect across an entire planet's build queue over weeks or months of play is enormous.
How Each Level Stacks
Each subsequent Nanite level halves the time again. Level 2 gives you one-quarter of the pre-nanite baseline. Level 3 gives you one-eighth. The resources required for each Nanite level scale steeply, and the diminishing returns in absolute time savings mean that the marginal value of each level depends heavily on what you are building. If you are producing battleships and heavy hitters around the clock at a dedicated military planet, Nanite level 3 or 4 provides real tactical value. If the planet is purely an economy planet upgrading mines slowly, Nanite level 2 or 3 is typically sufficient for most of the game's relevant time horizon.
The Nanite Cascade Effect on Shipbuilding
One aspect that pure economy-focused players sometimes miss is how dramatically Nanites change your military tempo. On a dedicated shipyard world with Robotics 12 and Nanite 3, you can reconstitute a fleet that was lost in combat in a fraction of the time it would take on a planet without nanites. This has strategic implications: a player with nanite-equipped shipyard worlds can sustain offensive pressure and recover from losses far faster than one without. If you are playing aggressively — and on the shipyard optimization guide this point is covered thoroughly — your nanite investment on military worlds is as important as your nanite investment on economy worlds.
Are Nanites Worth It on 200x Servers?
This is the question that divides newer speed-server players. The argument against investing heavily in Nanites on a 200x economy server like Proxima goes like this: build times are already so short that the absolute minutes saved are trivial, and the resources you pour into Robotics 10 and Nanite levels could instead go directly into higher mine levels or fleet expansion. It sounds reasonable. It is wrong.
Here is why: on a 200x server, everyone's base build times are short. Nanites do not return you to a 1x baseline — they halve whatever the speed-adjusted time already is. The real advantage Nanites provide on a fast server is not reducing long waits to short ones; it is reducing short waits to negligible ones, which means your build queue cycles faster, which means more upgrades per day, which means compounding economic lead over players who skipped Nanites. When economy is running at 200x and every player's mines are rapidly advancing, the player who can push one extra mine level per day over a week has a decisive advantage by day seven.
Additionally, on Proxima — with 20,000 DM at signup and 50,000 DM weekly — OGames players have access to Commander-class officers and production bonuses that further multiply the value of fast build cycles. Every mechanic that accelerates your queue compounds more strongly when you have officer bonuses on top. The Nanite Factory is not less valuable on fast servers; it is arguably more valuable because the entire meta of fast servers is about compounding small advantages at high frequency.
The counterargument holds water only for brand new players in their first 48 hours when immediate resource production is genuinely more urgent than build-time reduction. Past that window, Robotics 10 and Nanite 1 should be on the critical path for every serious planet.
Sequencing with Your Economy
The hardest part of Robotics and Nanite investment is not understanding the mechanics — it is executing the right build order under resource pressure in real time. Here is the sequencing framework that experienced OGame players use:
Phase 1: Early Planet (First 12-24 Hours on a Speed Server)
Queue Metal Mine levels up to around 10-12 first to establish income. Interleave Robotics Factory levels 1-5 during the gaps when mines are building. Build a basic Solar Plant alongside mines to keep energy positive. Do not touch the Shipyard or Defense yet — no resources to spare.
Phase 2: Mid Development (Hours 24-72)
Push Robotics to level 8 as fast as resources allow. Continue mine development in parallel. Start Research Lab and push Computer Technology if you haven't already — you need it for the Nanite unlock. By level 8 Robotics, your mine upgrade times are noticeably shorter and you will feel the compounding effect. Do not stall here waiting for level 10 Robotics — keep mines moving while Robotics builds.
Phase 3: Nanite Unlock
Robotics 9 → Robotics 10 → Computer Tech 9 → Computer Tech 10 → Nanite Factory 1. Queue this chain and protect your resource buffer to ensure it runs without interruption. If you are being farmed, build just enough light fighters to deter probing attacks but do not let fleet investment delay the nanite unlock by more than a few hours.
Phase 4: Post-Nanite Economy Push
With Nanite 1 online, your mine upgrade times have halved. Now is when you execute the mine level push you have been holding back — the resource cost per upgrade has not changed but the time cost has, making it the most efficient moment to invest heavily in metal mines and supporting infrastructure. Continue pushing Robotics above 10 in parallel if shipbuilding is a priority.
Colony Sequencing
On colonies, compress the timeline. A well-established main planet should be producing enough resources to fund a colony's Robotics 1-6 immediately upon founding, then Robotics 7-10 within the first day or two of the colony's life. Do not treat colonies as afterthoughts in terms of Robotics investment — a colony without Robotics 10 is a planet running at permanently reduced efficiency for the life of your account.
For a comprehensive view of how storage capacity interacts with your build queue pacing — particularly important when running large offline production windows — the storage buildings guide is worth reading alongside this one.
FAQ
Does Robotics Factory affect research time as well as building time?
No. Research time is determined by your Research Lab level and the Intergalactic Research Network technology (which links labs across planets). Robotics Factory and Nanite Factory only affect building construction times and ship/defense production times at the Shipyard. If you want faster research, invest in Research Lab levels and IRN.
Can I build multiple buildings simultaneously on one planet?
By default, OGame allows one building construction slot per planet. Certain commander officer classes and special items can open a second parallel build slot — on OGames, check your academy and available commanders for these bonuses. Even with a second slot, Robotics and Nanites reduce both build timers simultaneously, so their value is not halved by parallel construction; it is effectively doubled.
Is Nanite level 1 enough, or should I push higher?
Nanite level 1 is the pivotal unlock that transforms a planet's build pace. Whether you push higher depends on the planet's role. For a dedicated shipyard world where you are producing large fleet volumes continuously, Nanite levels 2-3 provide real time savings on expensive ships. For an economy planet where most activity is mine upgrades and occasional fleet builds, Nanite level 1 combined with Robotics 12-14 is sufficient for most of the game. Push Nanites higher on military worlds first, economy worlds second.
On Andromeda (50x) versus Proxima (200x), does the Nanite strategy differ?
The strategy is structurally identical — Robotics first, then Nanites as early as possible — but the urgency and absolute timelines differ. On Andromeda, the path to Nanite level 1 takes longer in real time, so you will spend more of your early game under slower build conditions. On Proxima, the unlock comes faster but the competition is also moving faster. On both servers, the player who reaches Nanite level 1 ahead of their neighbors gains a compounding development advantage. The 50,000 weekly DM on Proxima versus 1,000 on Andromeda also means Proxima players have more officer and acceleration options available earlier, which interacts with Nanites positively.
Do I need Nanite Factory on every planet, or just my homeworld?
Every planet benefits from Nanites, but the resource investment to reach Nanite level 1 on each colony is substantial. Most players prioritize their homeworld and one or two core planets (typically their best shipyard world and their highest-output economy colony) before spreading Nanite investment to smaller colonies. On a speed server with many colonies, it is common to have Nanites on three or four planets but only Robotics on the rest. Prioritize your colonies by their strategic importance — a colony producing 20% of your total income deserves Nanites far more than one you founded for position and never developed past mines level 15.
Ready to put this knowledge to work? Create your free account on OGames and start building your Robotics chain from day one — Andromeda, Nebula, and Proxima are all open, each with different economy speeds to match your play style. The nanite milestone is waiting.