What is the Space Dock good for?

[Barleyman]

I'm not exactly clear on the function of the Dock. The tool tip implies it's got some shipbuilding functionality and can launch probes. Does it actually do any construction or its only good for refuel + probes?

Is it foolish to put the space dock on the moon base?

[AgaresOaks]

Space docks build ships.

You can theoretically place one on the moon, but be aware that every time you launch a ship it costs some delta-V to do so (possibly a large chunk of your budget), and you can't launch very low thrust ships (ex. ones using an ion drive). It's typically better to build space docks in orbits or on smaller asteroids.

[XartaX]

Luna and Earth can probably share a dock, but besides that it's good to have one for each important celestial body (for example Mercury or Mars if you got a decent chunk of bases there) so you can construct tough guard ships on site that don't need the delta V to travel to other systems.

[RandyNewman]

Originally posted by Ohramies:

I'm big exactly clear on the function of the Dock. The tool tip implies it's got some shipbuilding functionality and can launch probes. Does it actually do any construction or its only good for refuel + probes?

Is it foolish to put the space dock on the moon base?

Yeah. Those two arrows at the top of the hab window will tell you how much thrust your ships will need to launch off the moon/planet. Luna is nowhere near as bad as Mars, but I still wouldn't even bother with it. Many of the dwarf/inner planets and asteroids are much better than Luna.

And even after they liftoff, they usually need refueled right after. You're better off building them on Orbitals unless you're trying to ration MC and you need lots of ships really fast

[Barleyman]

Originally posted by AgaresOaks:

Space docks build ships.

You can theoretically place one on the moon, but be aware that every time you launch a ship it costs some delta-V to do so (possibly a large chunk of your budget), and you can't launch very low thrust ships (ex. ones using an ion drive). It's typically better to build space docks in orbits or on smaller asteroids.

OK, so is the space dock The shipyard you will use until the end of the game or there's another one?

What about building e.g. mines, is the space dock used for that? Or it automagically happens as long as there are enough resources to avoid terran export?

The off-earth resource allocation is a bit fuzzy, everyone shares everyone's resources but I guess it would get a monumental PITA otherwise.

[Soylent_Greene]

So then if you build your main base in Earth's Orbit at the LaGrange Points, will that work to build fleets?
If you're not building them on Luna how does the materials get to the shipyards?

[gigamelon1981]

The dock is just a tier 1 Shipyard.
Shipyard is tier 2.

[AgaresOaks]

Originally posted by Ohramies:

OK, so is the space dock The shipyard you will use until the end of the game or there's another one?

It upgrades to build ships faster as you get bigger platforms and outposts, but essentially, yes. Space dock -> Shipyard -> Spaceworks.

Originally posted by Ohramies:

What about building e.g. mines, is the space dock used for that? Or it automagically happens as long as there are enough resources to avoid terran export?

The off-earth resource allocation is a bit fuzzy, everyone shares everyone's resources but I guess it would get a monumental PITA otherwise.

Originally posted by Soylent_Greene:

If you're not building them on Luna how does the materials get to the shipyards?

In the game's lore, this is what the mass driver tech is for. You're catapulting packets of resources where they need to be. For the sake of simplicity, off-world resources automagically go where they're needed. (and are automagically of the exact type you need in that category so ammonia's just as good as methane) This can lead to some basically impossible scenarios (if your only source of say, fissiles is somewhere in the Kuiper belt, how is that immediately supplying my supercollider at Mercury?), but for the most part it results in fairly sane outcomes.

Originally posted by Soylent_Greene:

So then if you build your main base in Earth's Orbit at the LaGrange Points, will that work to build fleets?

Yes. For the Earth-Luna Lagrange points, this is basically the same as placing them in a Lunar orbit. For the Earth-Sun Lagrange points, you'll need to do it from L1 or L2. I don't think the proper trajectory for jumping between L3, L4, L5 and Earth has been implemented, so using those is pretty impractical (and given the amount of time it gets to Earth from those points, even IF the proper trajectory were implemented it'd still be impractical).