station building ideas

[Lothos]

So, in partial effort to deal with the amount of resources I get and ther other to act as a gathering hub for my friends and I, I am going to build a station finally :D

I am sort of unsure of where to start though from any practical standpoint. I mean, I know the facilities and modules I need along with longterm needs and stuff, but some tips wouldn't hurt on things like where to build, what to avoid, things to plan for early on.

Currently I have a parking lot in orbit of an asteroid and I cannot decide between a freestanding death star or something carved into the side of an asteroid ala Last Starfighter. I don't think resource wise it matters what rock I park near as I eat entire asteroids whole when I do mine them leaving nothing. Beyond that though I am at a loss.

[Out0fAmmo]

If you're playing with station voxels, anchoring your station in an asteroid will prevent it from moving. If you're playing without sun rotation, I like to align my station with the sun to maximize solar power without getting into rotor shennigans.

My station priorities go something like this:

1) Initial power source/refinery/assembler
2) Build solar array
3) Expand refineries
4) Expand assemblies
5) Build oxygen farms and/or pressurize station
6) Introduce some kind of hangar or landing pad
7) Increase automation through sorting blocks and such.
8) Build some kind of large enclosure for grinding down salvaged ships

At this point, I'm usually starting work on some large mothership. If you play with meterors and/or pirate drones, you'll have to think about defense as well. I'm not the best at planning out features, and tend to have a kind of "industrial sprawl" that I hide underneath the platform. There are many stations on the workshop that can give you ideas as well.

[Lothos]

well, I decided to carve a slot in an asteroid for my base and chose the nice sunlit side only to find out after about half the "floor" placed to ensure level placement I saw the sun does indeed rotate behind the asteroid. I'll have to figure out something to do about that perhaps at a later date some kind of solar panel mast out the top of the asteroid.

[dga8705]

Personally I've always preferred the freestanding station because you can move it when you run out asteroids in the immediate area.

[Lothos]

Originally posted by dga8705:

Personally I've always preferred the freestanding station because you can move it when you run out asteroids in the immediate area.

thats sort of why I've always built massive motherships in the past. Are asteroids immobile no matter how much is left of them?

Of course, there's nothing to stop me from building a death star later to move around with :D With the addition of jump drives you can get back to a stationary base relatively easy these days.

[Lothos]

surprised nobody else had any tips to share :/

[JD 940]

couple here.. have good space for incoming ships.. connectors and stuff:) if building in astroid or so.. make it so that u can expand refining area... me and my frend built a station that was partly inside roid.. we had to reimagine the way to make more room since we closed up the entrance we had to build a drill inside the station to drill longer into the rock..

also good tubing is nessesarry. i prefer sorters in the system

best (dream reffinery) would be sorting system and 1 refinery per type off ingot:) well ofc if bigger scale 2 -3 or on per type

good storage is importante..

we are playing on survival hardcore 1x1x1.. planet start .. get a ladnder.. left planet after a few days built station 2 large containers 3 refinerys.. 1.5 days later we are sitting waiting on the reffinerys to finish stuff like cobolt that takes long time refining.. therby expansion ended up having 12 refinerys in the rock and 6 large container and some small once 3 connectors 1 for large ship 1 medium and one for smaller wessels

and dont mind to much how station will look at first.. make a good system and then u can start wondering abaut the station itself.. how it will look how to get it pressuriced..

lcd pannels showing inventorry is very handy to have.. 1 for ore 1 for ingots 1 for power and what ever else u need:)

[DarkStar]

For a station design I recommend two large round storage areas either side/at the base of one long main area.

Suggest you paint it all black, for camouflage.

[Lothos]

i've yet to get lcd's to display any useful information for me on anything i have built so far.