| Trade Depot | |
|---|---|
 Building in Beyond Earth | |
| Cost | 60 
|
| Maintenance | 1  Energy
|
| Requires | Pioneering |
| Specialist slots | None |
| Effect | +1 Production |
| Notes | Allows Trade Routes to be established from this City and provides 1 free Trade Route slot. |
History[]
From the French for the noun “deposit” (dépot), colonial depots served as the storage buildings for materials vital to the success of the venture. Among the first structures of each colony, these initially served as warehouses for the spaceship’s cargo necessary for survival. Later these would be the repository for salvage and scrap as the ship was cannibalized for colony use; later still depots would store the materials harvested, mined and processed from this new world as the colony grew. Operation was largely automated, and so required fewer man-hours than in previous ages, an important asset when so many other tasks demanded direct attention. The depots were, inevitably, the hub of the freight transport system of the colony as well, a process of increasing complexity as the colony grew. The actual functioning of the depot depended on the underlying economic system of the specific colony. But whether communal, capitalistic or some combination, the depots served as the primary foundation for colonial production.