Stations

Introduction

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 budget that you can define the size of within the Manger's Detail Menu. Those trade deals may be fulfilled by NPC traders, your manual traders or civilian ships that you assign to the Station Manager (recommended to reduce the chance of a ware shortage stopping production). Production Modules will often need multiple types of cargo (Bulk, Container, Energy and/or Liquid) in order to function smoothly, assigned ships offering relevent types.

Station construction

Stations are build by Construction Vessels (CVs), which are sold by XL Ship Dealers and can only build the sorts of stations that are found in the system that the CV is built in. The CV needs an Architect NPC (and also 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 want to build it in the place to begin with rather than risk the possibility of something bugging out with the CV and/or Architect.

Stations can only be built at pre-defined build locations. Of which there are usually 2-3 per regular zone, or 7 in "empty space" (which you can claim by renaming renaming after a station is built there). The build locations are only visible when you have a CV in your player ship's squad, and building can only be order if there is an Architect already on the CV. 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 ot the Architect.

All stations are built from a very similar collection of wares (fewer types than ships):

• Reinforced Metal Plating
• Fusion Reactors
• Energy Cells
• Food Rations
• Bio-Optic Wiring or Plasma Pumps (Albion/DeVries/Home of Light vs Argon economies)
• Optional surface elements (weapons and Force Field Projectors)

All of the above, apart from Energy Cells, are Container wares and they 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.

Station management

Once constructed, several NPCs are needed for crew in order for the station to run smoothly and safely. Those being the Manager (trading), Architect on CV (station extensions, repairs and equipping), Defence Officer (controls surface elements to attack hostiles; will actively protect the CV when set to Attack) and optional Specialists (production yield increases). Drones are also needed. Upkeep missions are generated to help guide their acquisition.

In order to function successfully, a station needs a few other things apart from crew:

1. Cargolifter URVs:
   1. Required for transferring wares to and from Large Extra Large ships.
   2. Lacking any on a station or assigned ships can lead to the ships buying needed wares they cannot unload.
2.  V Crushers for any installed Launchers:
   1. In v3.61 they are not needed but that may have changed in v4.00 alongside the new CV Supply Options menu.
3. Lots of credits:
   1. Manager's budget is used for buying ingredients, receiving sales, and paying for Supply Options (Rebirth v4.00; see below).
   2. Architect's budget is used for buying wares for constructing or upgrading the station.

Manager settings (1-3 also apply to Architects):

1. "Current budget" is a definable balance for trading (Manager will ask for more or give surplus when total is +/- ~25% of the defined level).
2. "Restrict trade to other factions" set to "Yes" prevents other factions selling wares to the station.
3. "Manage trade offer prices" allows for changing supply/demand-based automatic pricing to manual pricing.
4. "Supply Options" govern the optional automatic stocking of Cargolifters, Defence Drones and Missiles.
5. "Trading operation range" applies to ships that are Trading only (selectable between zone, sector or system (if a Command Relay is built)).

Civilian ships working for stations

There are 3 main types of Trade ships:

1. Carries individual types of cargo, such as Bulk (examples available in all ship sizes).
2. Carries either Container and Energy, or Bulk and Liquid (Large ships only; segregated volumes).
3. Carries any cargo (XL ships only) with either shared/universal storage (e.g. Lyranea) or segregated volumes (e.g. Scaldis).

Mining ships are described in more detail here. Essentially, Mining ships will collect harvestable resources that the stations needs if they can carry it and typically, a Mining ship cannot carry both Bulk and Liquid resources. Mining ships do not follow the Trading operation range setting mentioned above (see here for information on the travel behaviour of ships that are Mining).

Ship assignments: Manager

Although the station will generate Upkeep Missions for missing ship types, as your stations grow you may need to invest in multiple ships covering the same type(s). Civilian ships come in Trade and Mine varieties, although the distinction is a little soft since both types can do fulfil both rolls with what they chose to do for a station being largely driven by whether they carry mining drones or not. See here for further details on Manager-controlled ships and about how to control where your ships will operate

Ship assignments: Architect

If you assign a Trade/Mine ship to a station's architect, the architect will try use the ship to help supply wares that the CV needs for whatever building or upgrading orders it has been given. The operational range of a CV is restricted to Sector, only. Given that there are few, if any, sectors that contain all station building materials, and you may not want to build in that sector. assigning ships to Architects may not be idea. However, if you've already supplied the local sector with a station(s) selling such materials, or have used a mod to change the range setting for Architects, it's a handy feature to consider.

Ship assignments: Defence Officer

Any ship assigned to a station's DO will be used to patrol the local zone. This includes Trade/Mine ships, not just Fight ships. 

Useful info from elsewhere on the web: 

• There's an interesting thread here about how trades are currently (v3.61/v4.00b) worked out, & why your station may stop trading for a time, with Dev comments/clarifications.