How are you finding the outpost building?

[Minnzy]

Obviously not as overly prevalent like Fallout 4 but is it similar in the sense you can make some pretty good bases? How about implemented enough amazing mods Like Sim Settlements 2 are possible?

[TomOfFinland]

Originally posted by shadowsc133:

Outposts in the game have several implementation issues, making them the worst feature. Setting up a utilitarian production facility is possible, but attempting to create a decorated habitat is impossible without losing your sanity, due to the severely limited item options and cumbersome controls.

The game's interface, overall, ranks as one of the poorest I've encountered, needlessly complicating what should be straightforward tasks. To locate an outpost I created, my typical method involves accessing the Tab menu, selecting Ship, then Crew, and reading the location details. Following this, I return to the Tab menu, open the map, zoom out, identify the system, locate the planet, pinpoint the outpost, and, finally, teleport there in an underwhelming manner.

The whole outpost building REEKS of the game being made for consoles. I thought it impossible to make controls this bad on mouse and keyboard.

[Harris]

Originally posted by Pinder Kingui:

I still have no idea what outposts brings to the game and it could be just me not understanding what's the point of it.

To me, outposts felt like a redundant feature that was carried over from Fallout 4 because "it just worked" for that game. Granted, they straight up copied a lot of stuff, from bashing to peeking corners to mines giving you an indicator and enough time to disable them.

Outposts are redundant for two big reasons:

1) You have your spaceship - it fully assumes the role of your home base, provides you with crafting stations and storage space.

2) There are no benefits to use them that would be immediately obvious. You can't repair power armor, because there's none. You can't craft ammo. Setting up a for-profit mining operation is kinda pointless because loot from enemies will sell for much more anyway.

As a result, outposts felt disconnected from the rest of the game as you don't have to ever engage with them if you don't want to.

[Iratus Machina]

So far, while I'm glad the outpost system isn't quite in your face about it like with Preston urging you to hurry up and build more settlements every 5 seconds in Fallout 4, I also can't help but feel it's a bit of a step back from Fallout 4, too. Materials were easier to gather and scrap, so you always have something on hand for building more and more stuff. In Starfield's case, resource gathering ain't so easy, especially when the Frontier starts with barely any good room for cargo. You can't scrap stuff and you literally have to go out and find the materials if you don't have the cash to buy them yourself.

Best I could start with so far is a shipyard, a couple of boxes, and a few empty buildings with two offices, no chairs, no hydroponics, and not even a refrigerator. I guess Lin and Heller are going to have to hunt down their own food on Procyon III while me and my Constellation buddies are living the life up in the stars...

[Smork Wed]

Within 10 minutes of building a base I struggled with the simple fabricator. If you want to change the item being fabricated it breaks the linkage with your storage crates. Totally asinine. I'm not going to deal with outpost building beyond simple storage solutions.

[Alex]

Have yet to try it. I'm lvl 25 and have 1 point in outpost building. Keep putting it off because I get distracted by shiny things.

[shadowsc133]

Originally posted by Pookie101:

It's pretty barebones at the moment. You would of thought Bethesda had learned to give people access to most if not all the items you see in the world for decoration by now.

It's also missing some basic expected items. A toilet for example exits but no cubicle, no shower or bath

A hint for outpost building.
Tweak the outpost item rotation speed in settings. Otherwise it's freaking impossible to accurately place things without loosing your mind

100% this. What a lost opportunity to make a decent builder with all items, but seen they can`t even get a simple inventory right it is no surprise.

For the rotation, it helps a lot, but I went a step further and added this to my StarfieldPrefs.ini:

[Workshop]
fItemRotationSpeed=0.5

The default I believe was 5, lowered to min on settings was 2. This is as good as it gets to properly align things, only it takes forever to rotate something on larger angles. A crappy design all around, sadly.

[N8Rush]

I am happy to join in an actual discussion on this board, and I have plenty to talk about.
However, to start, I will simply say that outpost building, by in large, feels as if it is a tacked on element of the game with no real polish.
The foundation of a great logistical cargo sim is there, but there are several pieces that are missing for its success, namely a sorter/filter.
There are other things that exist such as the power switch etc, that could have some elements that allow for in-depth automation, but in current state..I have come to the conclusion that base building is simply not worth.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by Pinder Kingui:

I still have no idea what outposts brings to the game and it could be just me not understanding what's the point of it.

To me, outposts felt like a redundant feature that was carried over from Fallout 4 because "it just worked" for that game. Granted, they straight up copied a lot of stuff, from bashing to peeking corners to mines giving you an indicator and enough time to disable them.

Outposts are redundant for two big reasons:

1) You have your spaceship - it fully assumes the role of your home base, provides you with crafting stations and storage space.

2) There are no benefits to use them that would be immediately obvious. You can't repair power armor, because there's none. You can't craft ammo. Setting up a for-profit mining operation is kinda pointless because loot from enemies will sell for much more anyway.

As a result, outposts felt disconnected from the rest of the game as you don't have to ever engage with them if you don't want to.

For #1 getting lots of storage on your ship results in a slow moving brick. Cargo adds a TON of mass to your ship, so better fighters will have far less cargo.

I'll be doing more Outposts in NG+, but its VERY easy to make one to store your loot so your not having to fly around on a space brick.

[blumoose]

I've been making a bunch of outposts and I have a few problems with it:

The Cargo Link system is really annoying. Needing one pad per system to system link is ridiculous. There should be various sized pads that determine how much cargo can come in/go out, and even one pad connects you to your network. You then decide where in the network you want goods to go. Right now it's very clunky. -- also deciding where resources go from any colony to any colony should be doable from your ship or any outpost on the network. I realize this is probably the biggest change, but the current system is just not very good.

Too often find a place to build an outpost and there's some random thing a bit too close. I'd like to be able to remove nearby abandoned factories and the like after clearing them out.

Bulk storage space is WAAAY too small. You can make a container big enough to stuff 100 people and it holds less than what 3 people can carry without being encumbered. Also, we need to be able to sort resources and tell outposts to not ship more if we're full. Right now I just have used console commands to a million capacity since otherwise there'd be all kinds of problems.

Need to be able to make stairs and walkways that snap to cargo containers so you can build large stacks and still access them. Also need different stairs for different gravities, really.

Need to be able to build habitation up -- and I'd honestly like to be able to make underground areas, even if that meant it was instanced.

Need keys to be able to adjust the height of anything while placing. I also need to be able to tell it to not snap things together if I don't want that.

I'd like prefurnished options for habs.

I'd like to be able to make walls. And I'd like to be able to increase the outposts area.

I'd like to be able to put the whole outpost under a dome with anything gathering something from the atmosphere built into the dome. This would just be neat.

I'd like to be able to make platforms that other things can be build on. Even roads and paths to put things together on a grid and other established patterns (including non-square ones too). Having everything on the dirt just doesn't look great if you want it to look like an advanced operation.

Also, you need to be able to make and save templates both for inside habs and outside. And since they have the ability to autoplace clutter around using a storage, I'd like every hab to have a "clutter" storage that you can put stuff in to be automatically placed around that room. Same with the ship, tbh.

I feel the outpost limit might be too small if you want to goof around with some outposts. The talent for more outposts should probably be much larger at least.

[WillowWisp]

I tried it out for a bit, but got frustrated when it, for some unknown ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason since this game never tells you what's ACTUALLY WRONG with the thing you're building, wouldn't let me connect two habs together and kept acting like they were intersecting when they weren't. Pretty much dropped outpost building entirely after that and went off to do stuff in the game I actually genuinely enjoy

[blumoose]

Originally posted by WillowWisp:

I tried it out for a bit, but got frustrated when it, for some unknown ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason since this game never tells you what's ACTUALLY WRONG with the thing you're building, wouldn't let me connect two habs together and kept acting like they were intersecting when they weren't. Pretty much dropped outpost building entirely after that and went off to do stuff in the game I actually genuinely enjoy

It's going to be some terrain thing in the way. Either an incline or a rock and the game is confused -- sometimes it doesn't get that it can remove rocks and sometimes it does get that. Sometimes it's a terrain problem though. That's one reason why we need to be able to make multi-level habitations.

[Martin]

My issue with the outposts, both in fallout and in starfield.. is the textures of the items. I get it that people like to make stuff look genuine.. but I like new. If I am paying for a ship module that is costing me 10k.. I expect it to look clean inside. Not have stickers over screens saying "please fix" or Rusty Gates on windows.. I expect a brand new item a nice and clean game. My base looks like a s'hole and it isn't due to my doing or people attacking me it's designed to look this bad because someone thinks bad = cool. It really doesn't.

Also being unable to align stuff etc.. no snap on.. it's really annoying. Otherwise I just want more stuff.

[WillowWisp]

Originally posted by blumoose:

Originally posted by WillowWisp:

I tried it out for a bit, but got frustrated when it, for some unknown ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason since this game never tells you what's ACTUALLY WRONG with the thing you're building, wouldn't let me connect two habs together and kept acting like they were intersecting when they weren't. Pretty much dropped outpost building entirely after that and went off to do stuff in the game I actually genuinely enjoy

It's going to be some terrain thing in the way. Either an incline or a rock and the game is confused -- sometimes it doesn't get that it can remove rocks and sometimes it does get that. Sometimes it's a terrain problem though. That's one reason why we need to be able to make multi-level habitations.

Honestly I'd kill just to have a foundation piece. Like, damn, we had them in Fallout 4 and we were literally building with random scrap, hopes, and dreams. You really gonna tell me that a civilisation that's mastered technology capable of jumping between star systems instantly can't put a concrete block in the dirt, Todd!?

[blumoose]

Originally posted by WillowWisp:

Originally posted by blumoose:

It's going to be some terrain thing in the way. Either an incline or a rock and the game is confused -- sometimes it doesn't get that it can remove rocks and sometimes it does get that. Sometimes it's a terrain problem though. That's one reason why we need to be able to make multi-level habitations.

Honestly I'd kill just to have a foundation piece. Like, damn, we had them in Fallout 4 and we were literally building with random scrap, hopes, and dreams. You really gonna tell me that a civilisation that's mastered technology capable of jumping between star systems instantly can't put a concrete block in the dirt, Todd!?

Same. I have that in my big list of things I'd like to see.

[N8Rush]

Originally posted by blumoose:

Originally posted by WillowWisp:

Honestly I'd kill just to have a foundation piece. Like, damn, we had them in Fallout 4 and we were literally building with random scrap, hopes, and dreams. You really gonna tell me that a civilisation that's mastered technology capable of jumping between star systems instantly can't put a concrete block in the dirt, Todd!?

Same. I have that in my big list of things I'd like to see.

Originally posted by blumoose:

I've been making a bunch of outposts and I have a few problems with it:

The Cargo Link system is really annoying. Needing one pad per system to system link is ridiculous. There should be various sized pads that determine how much cargo can come in/go out, and even one pad connects you to your network. You then decide where in the network you want goods to go. Right now it's very clunky. -- also deciding where resources go from any colony to any colony should be doable from your ship or any outpost on the network. I realize this is probably the biggest change, but the current system is just not very good.

Too often find a place to build an outpost and there's some random thing a bit too close. I'd like to be able to remove nearby abandoned factories and the like after clearing them out.

Bulk storage space is WAAAY too small. You can make a container big enough to stuff 100 people and it holds less than what 3 people can carry without being encumbered. Also, we need to be able to sort resources and tell outposts to not ship more if we're full. Right now I just have used console commands to a million capacity since otherwise there'd be all kinds of problems.

Need to be able to make stairs and walkways that snap to cargo containers so you can build large stacks and still access them. Also need different stairs for different gravities, really.

Need to be able to build habitation up -- and I'd honestly like to be able to make underground areas, even if that meant it was instanced.

Need keys to be able to adjust the height of anything while placing. I also need to be able to tell it to not snap things together if I don't want that.

I'd like prefurnished options for habs.

I'd like to be able to make walls. And I'd like to be able to increase the outposts area.

I'd like to be able to put the whole outpost under a dome with anything gathering something from the atmosphere built into the dome. This would just be neat.

I'd like to be able to make platforms that other things can be build on. Even roads and paths to put things together on a grid and other established patterns (including non-square ones too). Having everything on the dirt just doesn't look great if you want it to look like an advanced operation.

Also, you need to be able to make and save templates both for inside habs and outside. And since they have the ability to autoplace clutter around using a storage, I'd like every hab to have a "clutter" storage that you can put stuff in to be automatically placed around that room. Same with the ship, tbh.

I feel the outpost limit might be too small if you want to goof around with some outposts. The talent for more outposts should probably be much larger at least.

Without some sort of sort/filter/extractor the entire purpose of outposts is mute. Every cargo chain will eventually cease when a container fills. This will cause a catastrophic bottleneck that will halt the entire chain.