Building

The Tools Facility

The tools facility is extremely important to build as a first facility, as it provides the necessary tools for crew members to be able to build any facility. The tools facility produces building tools for the construction guns crew members use to 3D print facilities.

Setting up a power grid

To have functional power grid you need two things:

• A power generator to generate power
• Power nodes to expand the power grid network
• (More power generators if power network is too weak to sustain all facilities)

Remember to link power generators and power nodes to each other to create the power grid network. This can be done by selecting a power generator or power node and clicking the "links" button.

To know more of how the power grid works see the power grid section.

Building for Life Support

Certain modules are needed to establish a safe environment for the crew. These include:

• Oxygen Generator Module - Provides Oxygen.
• Gas scrubber - Purifies hazardous gases from the air.
• Thermal regulator - Keeps the temperature at optimal levels.
• Power nodes - Expands the power grid and helps provide power to all facilities.

How many to build

This depends on things like the amount of crew members, how walls might stop gases from spreading and so on, but a small area (15x15 tiles) generally only requires one of each. Use the view modes and the notifications crew members give. After this, continue using view modes to check temperature, various gas levels and how the power grid is extended.

Building for Comfort

Crew members love comfort, they are humans after all! Better comfort can be achieved through:

• Surrounding uncomfortable facilities with walls, or enclosing many of them in a room - This will prevent the discomfort from "spreading". You cannot make an industry facility comfortable to be around, but you can limit how wide of an area it affects.
• Building lights - Light increases comfort, as it is not fun to be in the dark all the time.
• Building facilities, which increase comfort - These include:
  • Beds
  • Kitchen
  • Arcade Machine
  • Jukebox

Use the comfort view mode to check comfort values on your ship.

Building for Production

Food production

When building for food production it's important to realize that it is best to have a separate room for these. Crops will grow faster and have less risk of failing when they have access to light, CO2 and a steady temperature. Create a new room and place your grow beds in there, along with a light, a thermal regulator and a CO2 producer.

A botanist will take care of the plants and speed up the growing process based on their botanist skill.

Industry area for resources

Industry facilities, such as assemblers and refineries are also best placed in their own separate area, enclosed with walls. This will keep the discomfort from spreading inside the ship from all the noisy facilities.

Having the industry area close to the hangar area is usually a good idea, this will help keep the path distances when hauling resources to the industry facilities shorter.

Building for Hyperspace Capability

To make a ship capable of jumping into hyperspace it will need:

• A navigations console
• Two hyperium hyperdrives

One of both is enough to make any ship hyperspace capable, but when mass increases more hyperdrives are needed. It is good to build two hyperium hyperdrives in the beginning, as these basic hyperdrives don't have high mass capability.

Expanding Hull

Expanding hull is done with the hull expansion tool, found in the build menu. Hull can be designed with the hull sketching tool, which will only sketch hull tiles but not yet give the command to your crew to build them. You can use this tool to create a larger design before you start to actually build the hull. Sketches can be activated with the hull activate sketch tool, found under the same menu.

If you don't want to sketch anything you can use the build hull tool, which will immediately give the command to your crew to start building new hull tiles. Note that new hull is built with mining pods, and will require hull blocks. As long as you have the required resources (Hull blocks) and some crew members assigned to construction the hull will eventually get built.

Expanding Fleet

Expanding the fleet can be done via the management menu. This menu can be found in the upper left corner of the user interface. The plus button next to your existing ship(s) buttons will open a "Create New Ship" menu, from which you are able to choose a desired spaceship canvas to start building on.

• A new spaceship canvas requires ship points, and the amount depends on the size of the canvas.
• Toggle through various canvas sizes (In the lower section of the menu) and drag one of your liking to the sector area (The upper section of the menu).
• You have now created a new ship canvas you can start building on. You can use the same tools as before, and simply pan to the area of the new spaceship canvas to start building the new spaceship hull.

Even if the canvas is empty it still uses ship points and is referred to as a ship in the current sector.

Building a Prison

A prison can be created using the Prisoner area permission tool. This tool can be found in the build menu.

• The tool allows you to paint a prisoner area, where prisoners may stay on your ship.
• Use the tool to paint a small or large area, however you want it. Note that the prisoners have all the same needs as your own crew members, and will eventually complain if they do not have beds, a toilet, a Kitchen and so on.
• You can create a specific area just for the prisoners, with all the required facilities for comfort OR you can paint pathways to facilities like a Kitchen, to allow prisoners and your own crew members share these facilities.

When you bring a prisoner to your ship, where a prison area has been marked, the prisoner will aim to seek out such an area and stay there. You can also lead them to a specific prison area you've created. To know how to take someone as a prisoner see the Taking Prisoners section.

Step-by-Step Guide To Build A Spaceship

When starting to build your first spaceship its generally enough to start with 1 module of each facility. Keep the spaceship small initially, be careful with expanding the spaceship too much right from the get go, as that will eat up a lot of time and resources.

Don't panic in the beginning. Your crew members will stay alive for a while even if you take a little time, they will use the airlocks to equip themselves with spacesuits. The airlocks also have a supply of oxygen which will give the crew members some refills for their spacesuits.

There is no need to draft your crew members. Crew members will carry out orders automatically. Use draft only in special situations, like combat.

STEP 1

Building for minimum life support

• 1 Build tools facility - This is important to build in the beginning, as crew members cannot build without build tools.
• 1 Oxygen Generator and 1 Gas Scrubber - Oxygen generator will provide oxygen and the gas scrubber will remove hazardous gases.
• 1 Thermal Regulator - This module will produce heat or remove it, trying to maintain a optimal temperature for your crew members.
• 1 or 2 Power Nodes - These will provide power within an area, place them in a way where they create a link to the core and cover the modules you have built previously. To know how the power grid works see the step-by-step on how to set up the power grid.
• 1 - 3 Lights - These will make the ship less dark (Allowing crew members to work faster).

Made a mistake? Don't worry, you can always move facilities around and even dismantle them to gain back all resources.

If you built these and linked the power nodes so that everything is working, congratulations! Your crew members should now remove their spacesuits (If they were on) and will be able to survive as long as there is food and Energy rods for the core module.

STEP 2

Building for comfort

• Expand the spaceship hull - You want to start thinking about a Kitchen area and sleeping area. Keep the expansion small enough in the beginning, 8x16 tiles is a good starting expansion for more space.
• Build 1 bed for each crew member you have currently.
• Build walls to surround the beds, creating a bed room. Walls will block out uncomfortable elements like noise from noisy facilities.
  • Place 1 power node, 1 thermal regulator and a light inside the bed room. This will make sure the crew members have a comfortable bed room. Make sure the power node is within reach of another power node already receiving power (Or build many power nodes to make sure that reach is enough)
• Build a Kitchen module
  • Place a table and enough chairs close to the Kitchen module to let your crew members eat while sitting down.
  • You can also build an Algae Dispenser to have as back up if you run out of the good food.

STEP 3

Building for hyperspace capability

• Create two new expansions for a start to a bridge and another one for the hyperdrive.
  • Expand the spaceship 8x8 to the left side for a bridge area.
  • Expand the spaceship 8x10 to the right side for a hyperdrive (Engine area). Note! The hyperdrive cannot be rotated, so it is best to place the hyperdrive towards the right (back) of the spaceship.
• Build a navigation console and operations console in the bridge area.
  • Make sure to build a power node if the navigation console is outside the current power grid.
• Build TWO hyperium hyperdrives in the engine area.
  • Build a power node if the hyperdrive is outside the current power grid.
  • If your ship mass is over limit, build one more hyperdrive to compensate. Hyperdrives increase mass capability. Note! Wait until the hyperdrives have been loaded with fuel, this will update the mass capability number.
• Build a hull stabilizer
  • Hull stabilizers enables hyperspace jump by strengthening the hull, they also add to the total hull stability amount.

Congratulations! Your spaceship is now capable of jumping into hyperspace. Even if you run out of resources now you can jump into hyperspace to new areas and acquire more. Water and Food can be found aboard derelict ships, or traded with other factions.

STEP 4

Building for production

The best facilities to begin with are:

• A water purifier - This will allow you to produce more water by mining ice found on asteroids and using the water purifier to create purified water.
• A recycler facility - The recycler will work really well in the beginning, as it will allow you to salvage derelict ships for scrap resources and turn them into usable building materials with the recycler.
• Grow beds - Build one or two larger grow beds and start growing vegetables, fruits and artificial meat. You want someone to be a botanist to speed up the process.
  • Ensure you build a room specifically meant for grow beds only. You will want the room to have a light, a thermal regulator and a CO2 producer. Plants will grow faster when they have access to light, CO2 and a steady temperature.

STEP 5

Building for ship-to-ship battles

• If you followed step 3 you should now already have at least one hull stabilizers.
• Build a shield generator and a shields console.
  • Shields are operated via the shields console, and requires a crew member to function. Set Shields priorities in the crew management menu for at least one crew member per ship.
  • Note that shield generators require system points, which are limited for each ship.
• Build one or more turrets and a weapons console.
  • Turrets function as your spaceship's attack mechanism.
  • Turrets are operated via the weapons console. Set Gunner priorities in the crew management menu for at least one crew member per ship.

Read more on ship-to-ship battles here.

Using View Modes

The reason to use view modes is to find out where the ship needs improvement. Go through all view modes and check the legend to see if levels are ok.

If you find something lacking, fix it by building a facility to remedy the situation.

• If there's too little oxygen in an area - Build an oxygen generator unit close to that area. Oxygen generators produce more oxygen but need water to operate.
• If there's too much CO2 or other hazardous gases in an area - Build a gas scrubber close to that area. The gas scrubber will purify the air.
• If comfort is low in an area where you want your crew members to spend leisure time, try to build some walls to encapsulate that area and block out all uncomfortable elements like noise from noisy facilities. Note! It's impossible to make certain areas comfortable, like an area filled with industrious facilities. It is best to simply have them in their own rooms, so build walls to close them in.
• If the power grid does not extend to some facility build a power node and link it to other power nodes nearby. This will extend the power grid.

Getting stuck - Out of Resources

So you were merrily building your spaceship and noticed you're out of resources? Are you doomed? Perhaps not! There are many ways to acquire more resources, depending on the situation you are facing.

Dismantling

If you notice you ran out of resources and really need some facility built to solve the problem, you can always dismantle something you have built earlier. When dismantling a facility the resources, which were used to build it, will be returned. You can use this to temporarily dismantle some facility of lesser importance, to solve the puzzle of acquiring more resources.

Scavenging and salvaging derelict ships

If the sector you are currently in has a derelict ship in it you can go on an away mission and explore the ship. If your spaceship is capable of jumping to hyperspace you can seek out areas where derelict ships are present.

If you manage to explore the derelict ship (and neutralize any possible threats), you will be able to salvage it for scrap resources. However, to transform scrap resources to usable resources you need a Recycler. Don't have enough to construct the Recycler? Use the dismantle mechanism explained above to acquire enough resources for the Recycler.

Trading

If another ship is present in the same sector, you can try hailing them and ask for a trade agreement. Trade something you have plenty of and the other party wants to acquire something you really need in return.

Mining

If the current sector has asteroids you can mine for raw resources. You will need assemblers to create resources out of the raw resources. Again, if you cannot construct the assembler you really need, use dismantle to temporarily deconstruct some facility of less immediate importance.