Base building

Refineries are very high on the priority list, along with player shops, and both tie into base building, while dedicated repair ships are deferred until crafting is finished, though priorities could shift.

Drones are tied to base building, and a Nautilus turret mine would have its turret work like PDTs, which the team also wants to improve with player control over targeting and threat order.

Plans include crafting directly into local storage soon as a stopgap for larger items, and longer term hangar crafting and intermediate ship-crafting steps through base building.

A copy of every land claim exists on all shards in a region so none can be claimed twice, shop inventories are shared, and raids happen on one dynamically chosen shard where attackers and defenders get transferred.

The Apollo launches next month without drone gameplay, since drones are tied to base building and no longer fit medical gameplay, but all six medical bay modules will be included free on every Apollo.

The developers say bases can be used however players choose, from small mining outposts to trading hubs, with likely links into most gameplay, and even players without bases benefit by using other players' facilities.

The plan is for bases, land and extraction pots, and much of their functionality, to be visible across all shards in a region, but raiding can only happen on one shard, usually the owner's if online, so players must switch shard to attack.

The developer describes plans for player settlements built from connected structures, enabled by iCache persistence, with the Pioneer reworked as a mobile fabrication facility, and expects updates later next year since iCache must work first.

As far as they know there are plans for wear and tear and varied states on outposts, with systems like power and atmosphere that can be disabled, aiming for an interactive rather than static world.

Running a space station isn't being designed yet; Todd Papy wants to see how the modular system works first, and it might end up as something else, like a surface option.

There is a plan for swappable Caterpillar modules but no ETA since it is a lower-priority backlog item, and the Pioneer possibly using similar tech is unconfirmed and not yet built.

Player-built space stations are being considered and the team would love them, but only in the far future, with concerns about players cluttering space.

Outposts are made of interconnected modules, including habitation for respawn, armory, refining, hydroponics, storage and medical, and the owner can grant access to anyone they choose.

Founding player colonies is a long-term, non-promised idea; they'd start with taking over and running existing production nodes, later possibly building from scratch, as player-and-NPC end-game content rather than SimCity-style building.

Chris Roberts is unsure a station as big as the Squadron 42 one would be buyable early, but says players will be able to mine, own silos or warehouses, and possibly build up a mining station.

Fully colonizing new planets and building stations is a long-term goal that probably won't be in the initial release, which should instead have planets and outposts evolving from player action and organizations building up some industry.

Colonizing new planets and building stations is a long-term goal that probably won't be in the initial release, though planets and outposts should evolve and organizations may build up some industry.