Stations

Introduction

Stations fall into two broad categories:

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

Stations 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 <Please check this: they may also require food - Snafu>

Stations generally have secondary wares that while not required for production but will increase the amounts of wares that are produced from a given amount of primary resouces. Station may have multiple modules that each may contain a different production line; additional modules are added though extension of the initially-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 Warehouses from the HoL DLC are a little different. Things on this page apply to them too but they also have additional 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 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 (and optionally an Engineer for CV repairs and a Defence Officer for CV 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 first rather than risk the possibility of something bugging out with the CV and/or Architect.

Stations can only be built at predefined build locations, of which there are usually 2-3 per regular zone, or 7 in "empty space" (which you can rename 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 ordered 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 to the Architect. This does not need the same <faction> CV; any CV will do provided it has an Architect on board*

*Remember to equip replacement CVs with cURVs & at least 1 cargo drone before assignment, otherwise you'll be waiting a /long/ time for the station to finish!

All stations are built from a very similar collection of wares (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.

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.

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 cargo (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.

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

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 organise stock/replenishment of cargo drones through the Supply Options menu.
2.  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.
3. Lots of credits, at least initially:
   • Manager budgets are used for buying ingredients, selling products, and for Supply Options.
   • Architect's budget is used for buying wares for constructing, repairing or upgrading the station.

Manager and Architect settings

Managers have 5 settings in their Detail Page, with Architects possessing 4 of them.

* 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 not observed by those ships, so they will trade between their station and other factions' stations (the ships' settings are derived from their Captain's skills & you can't specify them - see also below). 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. This can somewhat be worked around by manually fixing the ware price at something unreasonable (minimum for inputs, maximum for outputs) so that the chances of the ware being traded by the manager is very low (and if it is, you get the best deal possible).

 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 Mining 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). Take note of trade ship cargo type restrictions: it is pointless assigning a trader to the manager that cannot transport any of the wares involved by the factory. Once you have a larger more self-sufficient supply chain it might only be necessary to supply the factory with a trader for its product type, as the inputs will be covered by the traders from other factories or directly by mining ships.

Mining ships assigned to Managers

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 mean travelling into hostile sectors or zones to gather resources for prolonged periods of time :(

Where this behaviour is not desired, options include:

1. Placing the station such that safer mining locations will be closer than hostile ones (not always possible/desirable).
2. Not assigning the related Mine ship to the Manager, leaving supply to NPCs or manual trading and mining.
3. Placing the station in a system where required materials are sold in various rare stations (spoiler link).
4. 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, sector or escort manager assigned ships. Due to how carelessly the DO will allocate the ships there is a fair chance that S and M FIGHT ships could be destroyed over time. Instead it is recommended the player manually allocate ships to certain defensive roles such as patrolling zones and guarding vulnerable ships. For station defense a combination of expendable drones and locally assigned patrol ships should sufficiently support the station defenses in case hostiles threaten.

Easy pitfalls

1. As noted, civilian ships come in Trade and Mine (& Fight!) varieties. However, the distinction is not binding since these types of ship are capable of fulfilling any 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 suitable 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.
2. The Teladi Vultures are classified as "Trade" but they are also capable mining ships, as the Vulture (Bulk) has mining lasers. Since they perform (well!) as bulk mining ships their default drone suggestion at shipyards includes a surface mining drone. Thus in relation to the point above, that drone will need deselecting if you wish them to purely Trade for Managers.