The single direct resource that requires active management is energy. It comes in the form of geothermal energy extracted via multiple, deep bore nano filament cables that are extruded by the Reactor Facilities and extend 10’s of km down into the planet's crust.
The efficiency with which the energy can be extracted is, in part, down to the upgrades that the reactor has been equipped with when it was created, but also the suitability of the location in which it was built. The thinner the crust is, the more cable that can extend down into the hotter outer mantle, thereby extracting more heat which in turn, will generate more power for production and operation of units, their weapons and components.
Equipping recon or deployment units with environmental scanners will allow you to build up a detailed view of the units immediate surroundings in order to locate the most favourable sites for Reactors.
The placement of Wind Farm Outposts is highly dependent on the direction of prevailing winds for the season your engagement takes place during. In addition to this data being available in the mission briefings that are accessible from your team's battle bridge on their starship, there are in mission visual indicators by observing which face of any mountain has the most snow. This will be the direction the wind is coming from and the higher up these faces you can build the outposts, the more energy they will produce. Conversely, building on the opposite face will result in a marked reduction in output.
As with geothermal energy, you can use environmental scanners to build up empirical data that can be displayed on the holo maps of the starships command deck.
The effect of the ambient temperature of a given island is more subtle. The effectiveness of thermal technology becomes more pronounced in colder climates. In arctic conditions, a thermal scanner will locate other heat sources far better than in desert or volcanic regions. Conversely, the importance of thermal shunts increases greatly in colder conditions as it can store far more heat - this will have a direct bearing on how you decide to equip your units and where you focus your research efforts...
Due to the axial tilt of the planet, its rotation causes a Coriolis effect in the atmospheric jet streams and oceanic currents. Is the rotational period is shorter than Earth, approximately 18 hours, the effects felt in the various climatic zones are around 25% stronger than those of Earth.
Oceanic currents resulting from the Coriolis effect of the planet's rotation, combined with the equatorial low-pressure regions, both lift and warm the oceans. This results in a transfer of large volumes of water via fast surface currents from the equatorial regions to the North and South poles where the water cools and returns to the equator via deep water oceanic flows.
Land on the wind facing side of mountains will tend to have greener vegetation and more rivers, the other side of the mountain ridge will be correspondingly dry. As the effect is more noticeable the higher the land mass, wind farms will be more effective on the green side (more so as you move higher) as they will not be shielded from the air stream - these visual clues will be apparent in game and should be used when deciding where to place the wind farms for maximum efficiency.
For northern islands up to 60 degrees latitude, the East coast of islands will be warmer due to oceanic currents. For southern islands it is the West coast that receives the warmer waters. Levels of precipitation will directly affect the number and size of lakes and rivers across a given island.
In addition to the season, time of day and latitude, local thermal levels are also affected by the proximity to volcanic vents and lava flows as well as the thickness of the planetary crust at a given location (as detected by the environmental scanner. Typically, the ambient temperature is slightly higher where Reactor facilities are likely to be found and slightly lower at coastal regions facing prevailing winds.
The tropic of Capricorn and cancer are the same angle from the equator as the planes axial tilt (25 degrees) and represent the location where the noon sun is directly overhead during the summer (northern hemisphere) and winter (southern hemisphere) solstice (longest day)
Planetary rotation is anti-clockwise, therefore the sun rises in the east. Winds are deflected to the right in the Northern hemisphere and to the left in the Southern hemisphere.
Between 30- and 60-degrees latitude, winds moving towards the poles curve east. For small, local weather systems such as thunderstorms, the wind will flow directly from high pressure to low pressure and is not affected by the Coriolis Effect.
There are also highly localised, semi random weather variations that override prevailing conditions. These include rolling fog banks, ground water, storm clouds etc
The diagram below shows the prevailing wind directions for each zone during the Summer. During the Winter, the directions are reversed in the respective hemisphere...
Depending on the latitude of a given island, the time of day, and time of year, you may experience wildly varying climatic conditions which will have a direct bearing on how you chose to equip and research your units, as well as the tactics and strategies that should be employed...