Introduction
Stations manufacture manufacture wares from from materials harvested by mining ships, lower-tech wares, or combinations of the two. The exception being stations making Energy Cells, which require only their system's sunlight.
Stations generally have secondary wares that while not required for production, will increase the amounts of wares that are produced in from a given time period. The station amount of primary resouces. Station may have multiple modules that each may contain a different production line; additional modules become available are added though extension of the initially-build built structure.
Once a station is built or upgraded, it's production lines can work straight away if you manually supply materials. However for it to really work for you, it needs a Manager and ships assigned to the Manager (see below). The Manger will begin to advertise Buy and Sell orders for wares using a player-definable budget within the Manger's Detail screen. These trade deals may be fulfilled by NPC traders, your manually-controlled Traders / Miners or such ships that you've assigned to the Station Manager (recommended to reduce the chance of a ware shortage stopping production).
Player-owned owned Warehouses from the from the HoL DLC are are a little different. Things on this page apply to them too but they also have a few additional notes described features described here.
Information on the wares stations may produce and the building materials needed to make them are nicely presented here.
Station construction
Stations are build by Construction Vessels (CVs), which are sold by XL Ship Dealers and can only build the variants of stations from the CV's originating system. The CV needs an an Architect NPC (and optionally an Engineer for repairs and a Defence Officer for weapons control). Once construction of a station is begun; you can technically cancel construction, but it's better to make sure you build it in the correct place rather than risk the possibility of something bugging out with the CV and/or Architect.
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All stations are built from a very similar collection of wares (fewer types than than ships). These station These station components are not typically needed in huge volumes for individual station build stages, therefore you may find multiple Large ships are more helpful than a smaller number of XL ships.
| Material role | Albion/DeVries/Home of Light | Omicron Lyrae | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Station components | Reinforced Metal Plating | Container | Rare during plot games | |
| Fusion Reactors | Container | Rare generally | ||
| Bio-Optic Wiring | Plasma Pumps | Container | Steady, moderate supply | |
| Station components and/or construction fee | Food Rations | Bofu | Container | Plentiful |
| Energy Cells | Energy | |||
| Standard defences | HIT/MA & Plasma/MA Turrets, V Launchers, and Force Field Projectors | Container | Optional | |
| Occasional defences | Plasma/JET Turrets and Astrobee Launchers | Container | ||
Station management
Once constructed, several several NPCs are needed for for crew in order for the station to run smoothly and safely. Upkeep missions are generated to help guide the acquisition of crew and drones, and to provide reminders about module upgrades.
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Managers have 5 settings in their Detail Page, with Architects possessing 4 of them.
| Setting | Description for Manager | Architect use? |
|---|---|---|
| Current budget | Definable balance for trading that is maintained at roughly +/- 25% this level | Yes |
| Restrict trade to other factions | Governs whether the station may trade with other Factions' ships (See below) | Yes |
| Manage trade offer prices | Allows for changing supply/demand-based automatic pricing to manual pricing | Yes |
| Supply Options | Govern the optional automatic stocking of consumables (see above) | No |
| Trading operation range | Determines how far subordinate Trade ships may operate* | Yes |
* Default range for Managers is Sector (System becomes available after Command Relay is constructed); default range for Architects is System.
"Restrict trade to other factions" setting
The Manager setting "Restrict trade to other factions" purely relates to the station itself and it prevents the Manager from trading wares with ships belonging to other factions. You can use the global setting, or define settings for each individual ware the station may buy or sell. So you could have Global set to NO and a couple set to YES, or the other way around (handy for stations with many potential wares).
If you assign ships to the Manager this setting is is not observed observed by those ships, so they will trade between their station and other factions' stations. Your station may be in the same zone as one owned by a different faction. Intra-zone trade can take place via station cargolifters and in this respect, cargolifters operate like ships, ignoring the Manager setting.
Trading Trading ships assigned to Managers
Depending on what kinds of wares your station needs (Bulk, Energy, Container and/or Liquid), there are a range of of Mining and and Trading ships available across the galaxy that are capable of trading with them (see the Easy Pitfalls section for info on Trade vs Mine ships). Once a Trading ship's Captain has had their commander assigned as a Station Manager, the Captain will begin to try to complete trade offers that the Manager advertises (taking into consideration the Manager's "Trading operational range" setting & current budget).
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Assigned Mining ships are a little different in that instead of following their Manager's "Trading operational range", they will harvest what their station needs in the closest possible zones to the station. This may then mean travelling into hostile sectors or zones to gather resources for prolonged periods of time.
Where this behaviour is not desired, options include:
- Placing the station such that safer mining locations will be closer than hostile ones (not always possible/desirable).
- Not assigning the related Mine ship to the Manager, leaving supply to NPCs or or manual trading and mining.
- Placing the station in a system where required materials are sold in various rare stations (spoiler link).
- An alternative to 1 through the HoL DLC is to place a Warehouse somewhere with assigned miners, then use traders to buy from it.
The rationale behind the "Trading operational range" setting not applying to Mining ships is to ensure that production lines don't stall due to a lack of resources since every system has every harvestable resource in at least one zone (spoiler link).
Trading ships assigned to Architects
If you assign a trading ship to an Architect, the ship will attempt to purchase station construction materials needed by the Construction Vessel. Rebirth 4.0 changed things such that Architects now have an adjustable "Trading operation range" with a default setting of system.
Ships assigned to Defence Officer
Any ship assigned to a station's DO will be used to patrol the local zone. This includes Trade/Mine ships as well as Fight ships.
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- As noted, civilian ships come in Trade and Mine varieties. However, the distinction is not binding since both types of ship are capable of fulfilling both roles as they are essentially very similar. If you would like them to operate in their defined roles, this is done through deciding on whether to equip mining drones to them or not. With no mining drones, they can only Trade; with mining drones they are likely to only mine provided the station needs such materials.
- The Teladi Vultures are classified as "Trade" but they double up as Teladi mining ships as the Vulture (Bulk) has mining lasers. Since they double up as mining ships their default drone suggestion at shipyards includes a surface mining drone. Therefore in relation to the point above, that drone will need deselecting if you wish them to trade for Managers.