Final Upgrade – Matter Materializer
The Matter Materializer creates materials using nothing but energy. It takes the same amount of time to make an item no matter what you’re making, the amount of energy required varies per item. An unupgraded materializer takes 8 seconds to make an item (or unit of liquid) and every upgrade halves that time (so a fully upgraded matter materializer makes two items per second).
Item – Energy/Item
Water – 50
Oil – 1000
Iron – 100
Copper – 200
Nickel – 200
Carbon – 500
Silicon – 500
Gold – 5000
Titanium – 2500
Uranium – 10000
Materializing fuels just to burn them is generally a bad idea, but you can get energy from nothing by materializing the ingredients for hydrogen fuel:
2x Iron (2×100) + 1x Nickel (1×200) + 3x Active Compositor (3×1) + 3x Water (3×50) + 6x Active Refinery (6×1) -> 3x Hydrogen (2100 with generator upgrades)
Maybe the materializer isn’t making things from anything. Maybe it’s a ramscoop or star lifter which uses huge amounts of power to transmute the collected matter.