Raw Materials:
Getting raw materials means finding a place to get them, and use time to mine/harvest.
There are two principial kinds of raw materials:
1. Organic get by harvesting plants
2. Minerals (Ores & Liquids) get by mining the surface
For each color of island (blue, green and orange) there is one ore and one plant missing, so you need to change island or trade to get all possible raw materials.
There are the following special raw materials:
Noralgis (organic) grows only on plants seeded by player, grows on every island, on beta/gamma better than on alpha.
Epitron (ore) only mineable on beta island
Colixum only mineable on gamma, needs gamma building to mine.
Finding plants to harvest:
Drive around and keep your eyes open. If you target a plant, the landmark info window shows in yellow text its name and in brackets the number of cycles to harvest.
Finding minerals:
Equip geoscanner with directional scan for the appropriate mineral. Do a scan to get the direction to the nearest mineral spot of that kind, until you are above the mineral spot (X in directional scan, or be sure by triangulation) then use tile based scan for this mineral to get a picture of tiles. Red and large are the tiles with most cycles, dark green and small the worst spots to mine.
Attention: The accuracy of the scan result is limited and bad accuracy leads to wrong information. The tier of the geoscanner and the extensions „Basic Geochemistry“ increase the accuracy of scans as well as the bot bonus of Argano and Termis.
Area scan charges are the old system but can still be used. They say for a larger area how many percentage of ore is in. Typically you strip the island until you found spots with more than 1%. Good spots should be over 5%.
Refining Raw Materials to Commodities
The raw materials can be refinedto commodities using a Refinery.
The amount of materials needed for one commoditie depends on the Tier of the facility (T1 & T2 on alpha, better on Beta and Gamma) as well as the level of the extension refining and the standing to the terminal owner
[Edit: Standing and island to find epitron updated to reflect changes in game]