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Discovery, Collecting & Crafting Results
There are many in-game actions that you can perform where the results are rewards that can not only be used by your colony but also sold on the in-game Supply Market.
For example, exploration gives you coordinates of habitable planets. Once you scan and “discover” a planet (watch out for aliens here), you can sell these coordinates on the market.
When starting colonies (and subsequently), you can always discover, identify and collect materials on your planet and sell them as resources. Some of these resources are used by other players in their production – but they can also include basics like food, water, energy, and construction materials that may be in short supply on other planets. Or, they could include unique items like medicine from your planet's rain forests.
Once your colony is mature you can design new assets like vehicles, buildings, software, ships or other products (such as, for syndicate cartels, new drugs), produce them, and sell them. Of course, many of these assets can take a lot time to research and produce (especially ships; ships being large projects that only very experienced colonies can start).