Making first asteroid station woes - am I stuck?

[Jigsawn]

On my first asteroid station building mission (just one from the merchant faction). The pop up is quite good at explaining what to do but I had a number of problems:

I have built the cargo loader on the asteroid and landed the allied cargo ship full of resources.

Unfortunately I 'released' everything on it, hoping to free it up for my guys to start building. Which I guess is wrong. Because I guess I just clicked unload and it just filled all the unloading spot with tons of infrabricks.

Now because the unload spot is blocked on the asteroid, I don't seem to be able to access anything else in the cargo ship, and there are no other menu options or way to 're-load' the cargo ship. I tried making a storage on the asteroid with rules to fill up on infrablocks, but that hasn't seemed to do anything.

Any ideas how I can get out of this situation and access the resources I need?

Another thing I am confused about is the station building tutorial tells you to build an airlock. I tried making a big enough hull space on the asteroid to fit an airlock, but I still couldn't build one. Does it have to be on the edge of the rock or something?

I also finally found the asteroid 'airlocks' (i.e. spacesuit doors) hidden in the walls menu. Why is the game asking you to build a normal airlock, wouldn't these suffice instead?

[Jigsawn]

Found out the issue with unloading, I had built a hull wall too close to the cargo dock and it must have been blocking it even though the tiles with resources in weren't blocked by access. Once that was clear my crew delivered the blocks to storage and I was able to continue.

I'd still like to hear about airlocks on asteroids though, how you do it and why the tutorial wants you to build one for the station building tutorial.

Also if there are ways to manage allied cargo ships to undo stuff like 'unload all' commands to avoid me getting stuck in future!

Cheers!

[starship]

Yes, the airlock has to be on the edge so a ship isn't hitting the asteroid.

Honestly not sure you need one, other than that the tutorial wants you to make one. Last couple of times I did a station, I just used the on-asteroid platforms.

IDK about undoing "unload all" commands. Maybe if you catch it in time before it's actually unloaded, but I think starts doing it right away. IMO you just want to be careful with what you choose to unload.

You can always undock the carrier, park it in space, and dock a different carrier.. or cargo ship or whatever. But be aware that they drift in space and eventually, given a lot of time, they might leave the "map" and be lost.

[IIpocTo urpok]

I did the same mistake with hitting "unload all" button. Make sure you have a big storage already built, or only unload what is required for current facilities/furniture.

You don't need a docking airlock, just station airlock for people to get inside, the one hidden in walls category. And no, you can't manage the cargo shuttle in these missions. Once it landed it will only leave after you transfer the station under your employer's control.

Tutorial is basically for you to know how to enter the inside of the station. The mission itself has only two checkboxes:

1. Cargo pad is built.

After you built it, you can click on the mission to your right and cargo shuttle lands there, giving you access to the resources to build the station.

2. Everything required is built and powered.

After that you can click on the mission and finish it. You will lose ownership and all remaining resources on the station. Nothing stops you from taking blocks (or everything) back to your ship before closing the contract. Though considering station will now remain in sector and provide it's service it might be in your interest to make it at least somewhat functional.

[Jigsawn]

Cool, thanks folks. It's all built now, though I didn't steal any blocks from them (aside from a few my crew took for my own ship repairs - let's call it a bonus :P ).

[neo5apien]

I was having similar issues with my first asteroid base. I had another one too. Rocks kept hitting my hull creating breaches and breaks in the base, and my crew were adamantly refusing to repair them even when I essentially locked them on the asteroid with nothing else to do.

[starship]

Originally posted by neo5apien:

I was having similar issues with my first asteroid base. I had another one too. Rocks kept hitting my hull creating breaches and breaks in the base, and my crew were adamantly refusing to repair them even when I essentially locked them on the asteroid with nothing else to do.

You should be able to click on those breaches and view the jobs for the breach, and then be able to choose someone to do that job directly. This sort of thing can be crucial in emergencies unfortunately.

Though it also sounds like they were idle... it's possible they didn't have the ability to repair it? Missing resources? Or even no skill to do it?

Hard to diagnose without seeing it in action and seeing the state of the crew, sorry.

[IIpocTo urpok]

Originally posted by neo5apien:

I was having similar issues with my first asteroid base. I had another one too. Rocks kept hitting my hull creating breaches and breaks in the base, and my crew were adamantly refusing to repair them even when I essentially locked them on the asteroid with nothing else to do.

There are two types of breaches, minor ones and major ones. Crew do automatically repair minor breaches while major breaches requires building pod to repair. You also need to open building menu and check the hull of the station/ship to manually replace all the missing hull parts. This should do the trick.

Major breaches happens when the hull of the ship/station has zero stability. Hull stabilizer should prevent them from happening... though I somehow had a major breach on a shielded ship with working PDs and struggled to figure out how to fix it.

[Jigsawn]

Originally posted by neo5apien:

I was having similar issues with my first asteroid base. I had another one too. Rocks kept hitting my hull creating breaches and breaks in the base, and my crew were adamantly refusing to repair them even when I essentially locked them on the asteroid with nothing else to do.

I had this problem as well - solution is on top left of screen, click on the box that has your named asteroid base. In the bottom left see the 'sliders' icon for settings. In there you can toggle on auto-maintainence, that way your crew will auto fix any breaches.

It is a bit silly though that you can be tasked with building a base in an asteroid hazard zone with no defences. And I can't afford extra resources to build them any defences, and they don't give you the tech blocks etc needed to do so.

In a future patch I feel like if a base is in an asteroid hazard zone it should make you build point defence or shields on a mission base, ignoring whether you have researched them or not (obviously disallow for building on other player ships/stations. Either that or just don't have base building missions spawn in asteroid hazard zones.

I returned to the now AI-controlled asteroid base less than a week later and it was already in dire straights without asteroid defences, so it will probably be destroyed soon. I guess another option would be to make it so that once AI controlled the base is given resources to build basic defences and can build a few point defence turrets or shields.