Orders and Shipbuilding

Explanations for what some of the PDA buttons do, and tips on how to use them.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BUTTON FOR SHIPBUILDING

See that little button next to Behavior? That's the button that makes the rest of this guide work. When you've got all of your build actions queued up and your orders set, press AUTO to make things happen. Otherwise, you'll just stand there for the most part.






Onto the rest of the guide.

Roster

Controls the schedules and limits on you and your crew, as well as what the AUTO behavior button does.

If your roster time has 8-16 set as work, the AUTO behavior will have your crewmember restoring parts and carrying out orders and whatnot. if your roster has 8-16 set to sleep, your crewmember will sleep (or try to sleep, or just generally mess around socializing with people.) if it's set to free time, they'll probably check their pockets for food the entire time, or caress whoever is nearby. Not too useful.

When you're shipbuilding, you want your roster schedule to be all work.

Having restore set to thumbs up is helpful if your ship is in mostly pristine condition, but if there's a lot of damaged floor and wall pieces, your crew might end up prioritizing repairing those over installing new hull pieces.

Set open airlocks to thumbs up if you've got an EVA suit or are okay with losing some atmo from your ship. Otherwise, set it to thumbs down. If you you need to work on the exterior of your ship and you don't have a suit, you WILL die of exposure. Setting disembark to thumbs up is necessary if there are components on a derelict that you need to fetch.

Note, however, that if you are docked to a derelict and restore is set to thumbs up, you may end up restoring everything on the ship you're docked to. This is usually going to be a waste of time.

Tasks

Lets you see a list of queued tasks. Very useful.

If you accidentally set an order wrong and want to cancel it before it happens, pause and find it in the tasks list. Cancelling the task in this list will stop that task from being completed.

Also useful to see what exactly your guy is going to do.

PowerVis

Lets you see everywhere that power is present, as well as the location of every device that needs to be provided power.

When you're shipbuilding, or even salvaging, you're going to always want this setting set to on. You'll see a yellow lightning bolt symbol everywhere there is power, and a grayed out one everywhere there's a device that needs power but doesn't have it. This lets you find where conduits are damaged or missing on derelicts, or where you need to make connections on a hull that you're expanding.

Something to keep in mind is that the grayed out symbols are only displayed where power needs to be inserted, not where the device that needs power actually is. So if you're scavenging for lights on a derelict, the actual location of the light will be adjacent to the grayed out symbol, rather than on top of it. Loose items, on the other hand,will never have a symbol.

Build

This is where the fun begins.

The name is a bit of a misnomer. You can't actually build things in this game because you need a loose copy of the item you're "building" to actually get it installed.

For example, if you put in a build order for a heater, your character (or their staff) will automatically go over to the nearest loose heater, drag it over to the location it needs to be built, and begin to install it. If there is no loose heater nearby, they'll just stand there and won't do anything.

If you put in multiple build orders, say, for 10 walls, your character will first go back and forth dragging all 10 walls to where they need to be built before actually beginning the long installation process for each wall.

Orders

Lets you queue up basic actions like uninstall and restore, specify what kind of object you can apply these basic orders to, and haul loose objects to any zone marked as a stockpile.

EXTREMELY USEFUL.

Using this tab in coordination with the Build tab is how you're going to be building ships in a sane amount of time.

Say you want to make a new cargo bay for your ship, because you're tired of docking at K-leg every 15 minutes to unload 2 nav consoles and a cooler. If you're like me, you waste 8 hours speeding up time, slowing down time, telling your guy to uninstall and drag over each bit of floor and wall for your new space.

What you can do instead is open up the order menu, order every tile that you want uninstalled on the nearby derelict to be uninstalled, and then go over to the build menu on your ship and draw out the space that you want to create (using tiles that are avaliable to you from the stuff you've ordered to be uninstalled.) Then, once you turn on auto behavior, your crew will start the long process of uninstalling and installing, and you can turn on 16x speed and go get a snack or something while you wait.

Various Design Tips

• Power switches are your friend. if you need to knock a hole in your ship to expand, having a power switch connected to your power supply/air pumps is very useful.
  
• More air vents means less air pumps. Connecting a few rooms with air vents lets you save on space, and is mostly harmless as long as the rooms you're connecting aren't bedrooms or near airlocks.
  
• Space out your modules! You can only reach locations ~2 tiles away, so if you put a battery in the corner of your ship, you're going to have to do a spacewalk to be able to repair the conduits and walls in the corner.
  
• Certain ship manufacturers have certain hull characteristics. Particularly useful are the hull pieces from Mobile Space Systems, as their walls and floors are 20% lighter than typical Testudo pieces. Ryokka pieces are 20% heavier, but have a higher "hp" than other hull pieces. Not particularly useful when a micrometeorite can take it out in one hit regardless, but it helps out sometimes.

[Meridian]

Would it be possible to update the guide with the new zone feature, mainly in the end of roster. If I understand things right a player could restrict zones to prevent a crew member from doing repairs.

[ArtVandelay]

Cool guide thanks, hard to get info on this game so far. I've been playing for a week or so, I do wish there was a way to just build the items. Maybe a manufacturing update in the future?