To set up your Astronium empire, first you're going to need a few blueprints. Here are the most important ones:

Auto Extractor
Trade Platform
Medium Shredder (though any Shredder will do)

You'll also need at least 2 EXO Chips handy to get things going. Oh, and you need access to Atrox' core, but that kind of goes without saying since Astronium shows up near the cores of every planet.

For reference, you can trade Astronium for the following goods (ratio is Astronium traded for item given in return):

EXO Chip (3:1)
Packager (1:4)
Solid-Fuel Jump Jet (1:2)
Dynamite (3:4)
Hydrazine (3:4)

To start out, you'll need to build the usual base components near your Astronium deposit (the closer to the core, the better, just in case you do have to trek out for Argon later). You'll want at least one Auto Extractor on the Atronium deposit, at least 1 Trade Platform, and at least 1 Shredder. Storage is recommended but not required.



The key here is to extract Astronium, then trade it for Solid-Fuel Jump Jets. Then when those Jump Jets arive, you scrap them. Then you take that scrap and trade for any resource you need. It's that easy!

From here, you'll want to set up Atmospheric Condensers to gather Nitrogen and Helium (and possibly Methane if you're going to need Silicon, though you probably won't need Sulfur for much since you can just get Dynamite in trade for Astronium). Setting up the usual Smelter, Chemistry Lab, etc. is prudent as well. Bring a good-sized load of Argon back from Glacio or Vesania, and you're set! You can produce every single non-gas material now, and thanks to being able to trade for Hydrazine (Hydrogen's sole product), you never need to worry about not being able to access that gas!



And now, the sky's the limit! You can just trade for whatever you need. With some clever automation, you can set up an array of Astronium miners that supply special-purpose Trade Platforms dedicated solely to ordering Solid-Fuel Jump Jets to scrap, and then convert that scrap automatically into key resources via more Trade Platforms, potentially creating a factory of infinite resource generation. Not bad for what used to be an underwhelming research-use-only material!

This section is just a fun little breakdown of the effective value of Astronium compared to other resources. 1 Astronium can be traded for 2 Solid-Fuel Jump Jets, which can be scrapped for a total of 3 Scrap. This gives Astronium a base value of 3 Scrap, which we can then compare to the trade costs of other materials!

1 Astronium is worth:

6 Compound, Resin, Organic, Clay, Quartz, Graphite, or Sphalerite
3 Ammonium, Laterite, or Malachite
2 Woframite or Hematite
1.5 Titanite
0.75 Lithium
0.3333 EXO Chips
1.3333 Hydrazine