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Stations typically manufacture wares from materials harvested by mining ships, lower-tech wares, or combinations of the two. The exception being stations making Energy Cells, which require only sunlight. Stations Stations generally have secondary wares that, while not required necessary for production, will increase the amounts amount(s) of wares that are produced from a given amount of primary resources.
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- Stations the player can construct, which typically manufacture wares needed for ship and station construction.
- Stations that are unique to NPCs NPC factions and cannot be built, which include all shipyards.
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Once a station is built or upgraded, it's its modules can work straight away if you manually supply the required warswares. However for it to really work for you, it needs crew and ships assigned to them (ship assignment is described below). Managers create Buy and Sell Orders , which may be fulfilled by NPC traders, our manually-ordered trades or ships assigned to station Managers (reduces micro-management).
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- A zone is a box with an edge length of 100 km. A sector is a box with an edge length of 1000 km.
- A new zone in empty space has 7 build spots. In practice you may not be able to build 7 stations in each zone, as build locations that are within a safety distance are disabled, so that fully extended stations can't overlap. Station orientation isn't possible, and doesn't matter for this purpose - the distance checks assume a spherical shape.
- New zones in empty space will not be centred on a station you may build inside one. They are centred on whatever made the zone (e.g. player or passing ship). Therefore the placement of a station within one should take this into consideration if it is of importance to the player.
- Mass traffic will contect connect every station within a zone and will not connect between zones. Even if a station's model is partially is in another zone, the build location defines which zone it belongs to.
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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 first rather than risk the possibility of something bugging out with the CV and/or Architect. If the CV is destroyed at any time after construction begins, you can replace it by being in the same zone as the location and the new CV (in your squad) and talking to the Architect. This does not need the same <faction> CV; any CV will do provided it has an Architect on board.
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If the station is damaged by combat it will need to be repaired by its maintaining CV's Architect. Repairing is done on a module basis and costs building materials related to the hull percentage lost and construction cost of the damaged module. For this reason it may be useful to leave excess construction materials on CVs to allow for light repairs to be made. Keeping a station repaired is very important because any damage done to manufacturing modules decreases their production efficiency, which in turn increases the product cost. Most NPC stations use an assigned Engineer to repair with similar mechanics as L and XL ships, meaning they repair slowly over time for free. This is slightly unfair to the <player> as his stations cannot assign Engineers and can only be repaired in a costly way.
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| Crew | Roles |
|---|---|
| Manager | Manages budgets used for trade with visting visiting ships or assigned trade ships Purchases/replaces drones and/or missiles as required. |
| Defense Defence Officer | Control of available weapons, combat drones and Fight ships |
| Specialists | Increases amounts of product per cycle (like secondary wares) |
| Architect (on CV) | Construction, extension and repair of stations (may have assigned trade ships) |
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* Default range for Managers is Sector (System becomes available after the Command Relay station module is constructed); default range for Architects is System.
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- Cargolifter URVs:
- A prerequisite for transferring wares to and from Large and Extra Large ships. The lack of any on a station or its assigned ships can lead to ships (including NPCs) buying/mining wares they cannot unload.
- Station Managers initiate trade orders for products & resources, and organise stock/replenishment of cargo drones &/or missiles through the Supply Options menu.
- Defensive consumables:
- V Crusher missiles for V Launcher surface elements (optional).
- Combat drones for use against S/M ships (optional).
- Station Managers organise stock/replenishment through the Supply Options menu.
- Lots of credits, at least initially:
- Manager budgets are used for buying ingredientsresources, selling products, and for Supply Options.
- Architect's budget is used for buying wares for constructing, repairing or upgrading the station.
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| Station crew | Ship role | Ship tasks | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manager | Trade | Buying manufacturing ingredients | Buying is a priority |
| Selling manufactured wares | Only if sell price drops below average price | ||
| To buy and sell traded wares | HoL DLC only (Warehouses) | ||
| Mine | To harvest manufacturing ingredients | Will not trade without player intervention | |
| Defense Defence Officer | Fight | Capital ships will patrol the zone | They will engage hostiles in their radar range |
| Fighters patrol or are assigned as escorts | Only medium Trade/Mine ships are escorted | ||
| Architect (on CV) | Trade | To buy station construction wares | Operate Operates system-wide |
Station Damage and Combat
Although stations display a total hull figure when queried, this is made up from the sum of the hulls of all modules. If a module has its hull fully depleted it enters a destroyed state until rebuilt. Destroyed module components stop providing any benefit, and in the case of storage modules they can spill some of the station wares into space where they can be looted. Damaged production modules have an efficiency penalty based on how damaged they are. Since stations lack hull shields it is very likely that any combat will cause some damage to the station hull, unless shielded surfsurface-mounted weapon systems are specifically targeted with non area-damage weapons.
Individual modules can be selected by selecting their information point or by cycling through targetable station components. In the case of NPC stations the player will first need to scan the information point for it to be targetable. For full module details of NPC stations to show on the HUD the target module will need to be scanned to 100%, which may require using a Beholder drone of sufficient mark for hardened modules (usually high end production facilities like shipyards, weapon forges, drone forges etc) or to get 27 reputation with the owning faction.
When the <player> is in sector, stations are subject to "engine damage" from L and XL ships. In theory it should practically never happen as L and XL ships should never fly close enough to stations for their engine damage to be a problem, even when trading with a deal point. However if a L or XL is boosting to another zone for trade then it seems to completely ignore stations which happen to be in its path, even to the point they will fly right through modules as if nothing was there. In doing so their engines will slightly damage the flown-through module. This is no issue for NPC stations due to their automatic repair mechanics; however for <player> stations this requires resources to repair thus has an associated cost.
Station modules are covered in weapon systems much like L and XL ships. These and these can be individually targeted and destroyed, much like L and XL ships. They are also shielded with Force Field Generators meaning that they can take some combat damage before without needing repair. Each module type has a specific numbers, types and positions of weapon systems. It ; it is common for fully built stations to have several hundred weapon systems. Mostly the weapon systems consist of Force Filed Generators covering HIT/MA and Plasma/MA turrets with the odd V Launcher. Some high, but some high-end station modules such as missile and weapon forges have more exotic weapon systems such as Astrobee Launchers and Plasma/JET Lasers. Some weapon systems such as the V Launcher require ammunition to fire, giving them an associated financial and storage cost to use. Managers can be made to automatically order weapon system ammunition up to a certain stock, restocking on ammunition if it gets used.
In addition to weapon systems, stations can also deploy drone units in defense. The defence; the number of available drone unit slots depends on the number of surviving drone bay modules on the station. A number of units slots should be reserved as Cargolifter for Cargolifter URVs to assure efficient trade operation of the station. NPC stations reserve a number of units as Industrial Surveillance Craft (police) which patrol around the station attempting to thwart scanning and hacking attempts as well as flag up ships carrying illegal wares. Next to that any number of combat drone units can be equipped and used in defensedefence. Station managers can be made to automatically order units up to a certain stock, replacing lost units.
A fully constructed station is one of the most powerful combat assets a player can own due to a combination of its huge hull, large number of powerful weapon systems and the potential number of combat drone units. Although L and XL fight ships will be able to damage a station, even many such ships may not be sufficient to completely destroy one before themselves being destroyed. NPC stations are equally as powerful; however the <player>'s ship, when strafing, cannot be hit by most station weapon systems except for the Plasma/JET Laser (if it locks on it always hits) found on very few modules. This means the <player> can manually strip stations of most anti-capital weapon systems, greatly reducing the station's ability to damage the <player>'s L and XL fight ships.