Stations

Introduction

Stations typically manufacture wares from materials harvested by mining ships, lower-tech wares, or combinations of the two. Stations generally have secondary wares that, while not necessary for production, will increase the amount(s) of wares produced from a given amount of primary resources.

Stations fall into two broad categories:

• Stations the player can construct, which typically manufacture wares needed for ship and station construction.
• Stations that are unique to NPC factions and cannot be built, which include all shipyards.

Station construction generally entails building an initial stage, which will comprise a production module, and optionally upgrading with further stages offering further modules or utility. Some modules offer single manufacturing lines, others offer multiple manufacturing lines, and others offer rotating manufacturing lines that make several wares in sequence. Warehouses from the HoL DLC are a little different in that instead of manufacturing, they operate as trading stations (described here). Station construction is described below. 

Once a station is built or upgraded, its modules can work straight away if you manually supply the required wares. 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).

Information on the wares stations may produce and the building materials needed to make them are nicely presented here.

Build locations

Stations can only be built at predefined locations, which only have visible icons when you have a CV in your player ship's squad. Building can only be initiated if there is an Architect already on the Construction Vessel (see below). There are usually 2-3 build locations per regular zone, or 7 in "empty space" (which you can rename after a station is built there). Having said that, due to the size of stations, less than 7 stations per empty space zone can be expected in practice. The following info is mostly from from DocAce and can be useful to be aware of.

• 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 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. 

Station construction

Stations are built and repaired 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 Architect NPC, in addition to the normal crew options (Captain, Engineer and Defence Officer). Remember to equip CVs with Construction URVs & at least 1 Cargolifter URV before before assignment, otherwise you'll be waiting a /long/ time for the station to finish! CVs have priority over stations when NPC ships wish to sell wares so station construction can be a bit smoother than supplying rare wares to stations.

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.

All stations are built from a very similar collection of wares (see below; fewer types than ships). These station components are not typically needed in huge volumes for individual station build stages and are often only available in small quantities which get quickly traded away due to high demand. Therefore you may find multiple faster L TRADE ships are more useful when building stations than a few slow XL TRADE ships. It is also not required that the exact amounts of materials for a build stage be present in the CV for it to progress, only that at least that amount is present for the build stage to complete. This means you can transfer-in excess materials for later build stages in advance so construction on subsequent build stages can begin immediately upon completion of the current stage.

Station construction components differ in Omicron Lyrae to other systems, and are listed in the following table.

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 <player> as his stations cannot assign Engineers and can only be repaired in a costly way.

Station management

Once constructed, several NPCs are needed 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.

Production modules will often need multiple types of storage space (Bulk, Container, Energy and/or Liquid) in order to function smoothly, so stations work best with ships assigned that cover the relevant types. Typically, modules contain some storage for each ware they need, and stations may also be extended with additional storage modules.

Manager and Architect settings

It is possible to control various aspects of how the station trades, in terms of what wares assigned ships may trade and what wares NPC factions may trade. Ships assigned to player faction stations can freely trade with any player station, regardless of settings. Trade restriction options, and ways to set them up, are described in the child page here.

Summary of trade restriction options:

1. Trading with an NPC faction ships and stations (no restrictions).

2. Trading with an NPC faction stations only.

3. Trading with an NPC faction ships only.

Manager and architect settings are summarised in the following table. 

* Default range for Managers is Sector (System becomes available after the Command Relay station module is constructed); default range for Architects is System.

Station consumables

In order to function successfully, a station needs a few things (Supply Options setting supporting the first two):

1. 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 offers to stock/replenish cargo drones through the Supply Options menu.
2.  Defensive items:
   • V Crusher missiles for V Launcher surface elements (optional).
   • Combat drones for use against S/M ships (optional).
   • Station Managers initiate trade offers to stock/replenish defensive items through the Supply Options menu.
3. Lots of credits, at least initially:
   • Manager budgets are used for buying resources, selling products, and for Supply Options.
   • Architect's budget is used for buying wares for constructing, repairing or upgrading the station.

Assigning ships to stations

In order to help stations run smoothly, we can assign ships to the station's crew. This is described in detail in a child page here and summarised in the following table. 

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 surface-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 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 specific numbers, types and positions of weapon systems; 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, 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 ammunition if it gets used.

In addition to weapon systems, stations can also deploy drone units in defence; the number of available drone unit slots depends on the number of surviving drone bay modules on the station. A number of slots should be reserved 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 defence. 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.