You're Ops 16 or higher and you've just unlocked a new icon in Galaxy view, next to the Peace Shield button. Exocomps are time-limited consumables you slot in ahead of time to boost a specific activity -- mining, station work, or combat -- for a fixed duration rather than permanently. They come from chests, events, and the Store, and once activated they run down a visible timer before being consumed automatically. Think of them as a short-term lever you pull before doing the thing you want boosted, not a passive stat you always have on.
Exocomps don't do anything until you build the Exocomp Factory, a station building available from Ops 16 onward. It's the only way to activate or manage them -- there's no way to use a consumable without it. Treat the Factory as a prerequisite building the same way you'd treat any other station unlock: get it up as soon as you hit the Ops requirement, since every level after that opens more slots.
Upgrading the Factory unlocks four separate slot categories, and each one only accepts consumables built for it: a Galaxy slot for fleet actions like mining, protected cargo, or warp speed; a Station slot for building and research efficiency; a Combat slot for weapon damage or mitigation; and a Wildcard slot that can hold any consumable type. Each slot holds exactly one active consumable at a time, so higher Factory levels are really buying you more simultaneous boosts, not stronger individual ones.
The three main types don't behave identically, and this is the part that trips people up. Galaxy consumables only take effect when a ship leaves your station -- if your fleet is already out mining or fighting when you activate one, you have to recall and redeploy it before the boost applies. Combat consumables kick in at the start of a battle, but you won't see them reflected anywhere in your ship's visible stats beforehand -- they're working even though the UI doesn't show it. Station consumables apply immediately on activation, but only to builds or research you start after that point -- anything already queued keeps running at its old speed.
Every consumable you own lives in your inventory's Consumables tab, where you can check its type, rarity, and remaining duration before activating it. Stacking has its own rule set: two identical consumables -- say, two different 2-star damage boosts of the same kind -- do not stack, so activating a second one just wastes it. Two different consumables affecting the same stat (a 2-star damage boost alongside a 3-star damage boost) do stack. And consumables touching entirely different stats -- a damage boost and an interceptor-damage boost, for example -- always stack regardless of rarity. When in doubt, check whether the two boosts name the exact same stat before assuming they'll add up.