For most people, building a home base will probably begin with the crafting grav cart (CGC), or what I have been calling “the Zamboni”. This small hover device is the smallest building fabricator that CIG currently has planned (that we know about).

As the demo took place in Pyro, there was no need to make an official “claim” on the land as land in the lawless systems is basically a free-for-all. Where we build will be informed by several factors specific to the plot of land that we choose. Claiming and building in lawful space will require purchasing a land title and paying taxes. If we want to set up a harvesting operation, then we can use the scanner on the CGC to survey the area to find unoccupied land with resources beneath the surface. This can identify where the resources are as well as their quality.

Once we are ready to build we can use the CGC to select a structure. This will provide a wireframe outline of the structure which we can move and rotate before placing (yellow is blocked, blue is OK to place). In the demo the placement of structures was instant, but in the real implementation this process will take some time based on the resources used, the size of the fabricator used, and the size of the structure we are building.

With the new structure placed, the first order of business is to get the lights on, and by “get the lights on” I mean the literal lights, but also to get a breathable atmosphere inside the building. Naturally in places where the planet or moon has breathable atmosphere this is less important, but it’s part of the power-up operation regardless.

Back to the CGC, and this time we are constructing a fuel-based generator. This power source is quick and easy to build, but requires that it have two things: fuel, and working fuses. Fuel in this case must be constantly replenished, and the better the quality of the fuse the longer it will last. Structures will also have integrity that can degrade through methods that were not mentioned, although being attacked is certainly one of them, and we will be able to repair them using the MultiTool and RMC in much the same way we can repair targeted parts of our ships today. It might also be the case that buildings could get damaged during storms, although that’s me pulling the “simulate everything” thread that characterizes Star Citizen, and has no evidence to back it up.

This demo included an item fabricator which didn’t get used, but I have included a screenshot here to show the scale of the machine which should give you an idea of the kinds of machines available and the sizes of things this machine can make (fuses can be made here, of course).

This setup comprises the basic “homestead” that will probably suit all players initially. It’s got shelter from rough weather, a bed in the corner which I will assume can serve as a log-out/log-in point, and power.

If you look carefully in the survey/CGC mockups, you will see the kinds of things that it can build which includes different living quarters, material extractors, vehicle hangars, building connectors, and freight elevators. As we’ll see, though, this menu and system, as a work in progress and might be misleading as it was mentioned later on in the presentation that the CGC, as the smallest constructor, can only craft small-sized (S) items. Some of those (M) and (L) items should require other construction vehicles to create.

UI Mock-Ups

While the demo showed an actual base-build in real time, the UI was just placeholders. The presentation shifted over to UI mock-up slides which shows the ideas that CIG is bandying about for how the actual process might looks.

The CGC is small enough to fit into ships as small as a Drake Cutter, so pretty much anyone (aside from Aurora or Mustang starter pack owners, sorry) should be able to use this construction vehicle. The CGC can claim land (anywhere in lawless zones, or by paying a fee in UEE territory), survey the land for materials, and construct buildings.

The small cart holds two drones which will do the work.

This mock-up gives us an idea on how the drones might see the land in survey mode. It shows underground materials and their quantity and quality. It will also display no-build areas (such as lawfully protected areas or areas claimed by other players) if present.

Building Buildings

Here we see a concept for selecting and placing buildings.

Switching to the Build tab, we can see the “construction bill” or which materials we need and in what quantities, shown on the bottom, and our inventory of materials, shown on the left.

When we press the Craft button, the drones will leave the CGC (or other construction vehicle) and will need access to the materials to build the structure. These can be on the property, but I’m not sure if they need to be within a specifically designed zone or not, or, in the case of other construction vehicles, within the vehicle itself. As the drones print the building, they will return to the material stockpile to replenish their internal storage. If the drones run out of product, production will be halted until more materials can be made available.

Power generators have a maximum output value, and each item that consumes power has a power requirement. A single power source can power multiple consumers. Naturally, if the power goes down, all connected consumers go down with it, making a good case for fielding multiple power generators. We only saw fuel generators, so It’ll be interesting to see if we get wind, solar, water, or fusion generators as well.

Upgrading doesn’t appear to change the size or features of the building, but in the case of this HAB shown here it will improve it’s durability and wear resistance. I would assume that for power generators, efficiency and maybe output might be modestly increased with upgrades.

Finally, we can choose to decorate our buildings with decor and furniture that we find, buy, or craft ourselves. It wasn’t mentioned in regards to smaller settlements like this one so I don’t know if there’ll be a way to decorate the outside of our buildings. Maybe farmers can grow trees suitable for the existing climate, and we can plant those wherever want in addition to just placing objects we have in our inventories. Placed items can be “mag-locked” which will disallow movement of an item after it’s been placed.

Even better, though…

That means that we will no longer need to use tractor beams to move items in our ships or hangars either, so thanks for that!

Bigger Bases

The CGC can claim and manage personal plots, but neither the mock-ups nor the demos showed the bounds of the land (possibly due to the fact that it was in lawless Pyro which has no concept of “land ownership”). How much land we have under our control will determine what we can put there and how much of it that the claim will hold (and in lawful space, how much we have to pay for the land and how high our taxes are, no doubt). If we want to build bigger, we’ll need larger construction machines.

This is the construction hub. When we want to build larger, we’ll need to create one of these to manage the building process. It’s a tower with integrated elevator, and players will be able to oversee construction over quite a distance from the seat in the crows nest. This particular construction hub has 4 drones and each drone can work on one construction project at a time, and can build small, medium, and large buildings.

In the demo, this larger base was situated on an underground resource deposit, so a resource extractor (large solid) was created.

Extractors have a special “output grid”. As the materials are dredged up, they’ll be boxed and placed on the output grid where players can manage them by shunting them to ships or freight elevators. Resources can be depleted, so all extractors are temporary.

Refineries have both input and output grids, although there was no mention of Satisfactory-levels of automation; I am currently assuming that moving materials from the output of the extractor to the input of the refinery is going to be a manual process which puts those Argo ships to work, finally. Refineries have a control panel which will allow for the selection of the desired BP and the refining process that you want.

In order to complete the production loop, we’ll need a long-term storage area by placing a freight elevator. This is a “large” elevator, but when opened, it revealed that it was only 120 SCU which is…not a lot. Later, the demo showed larger elevators so I shouldn’t get too hung up on the decals from a demo. We can place multiple elevators to share the load, and each elevator within the bounds of the construction zone and within a maximum distance of one another can access the same warehouse. That will allow us to put elevators close to separated input and output buildings which can help reduce the distance that we have to move crates by hand or by vehicle.

Finally, we can build hangars. I’m going to assume that this includes a freight elevator that can access the warehouse network if it’s in range.

And now, the reason why players might want to build a massive base with harvesting, refining, and storage facilities: the large item fabricator hangar.

Fab hangars can be used to craft ships, but not all ships, I would assume…something like an Idris or Javelin would require a space-based drydock — and yes, we will be seeing that later.

Decorating

When working with larger bases (at least), we’ll be able to lay down decals to designate areas for landing, cargo, parking, and more. These are just decals, though, and have no practical enforcement abilities. Bases of any type can lay down a special building called a “foundation” that has the ability to deform the terrain, allowing us to level out areas where the ground is otherwise uneven. This is the tarmac you see in the screenshot above, and the option to lay down a foundation could also be seen on the WIP CGC construction menu so they look to be available to any size constructor, meaning we might be able to use decals on CGC projects as well.

We’ll be able to earn paints that can be used on buildings…

…and apply decals, including text and org emblems.

Permissions

It wasn’t covered in-depth, but as a base grows (or if we want to regardless of size) we might want to invite others to use our facilities or even to place their own structures inside the bounds of our claims. I would hope that permissions can get even more narrow, like allowing the public into our product showrooms, allowing alliance members into our crafting tool rooms, and only allowing org members of select individuals access to our material storage warehouses.

Farming and Ranching

Bet you thought this was winding down, didn’t you? Now you know why I made multiple posts.

Farming and ranching require different considerations than straight-up base building or building for resource extraction. Whereas resource bases require the presence of a resource underground, farms and ranches will require certain conditions within the planet’s soil itself (refer back to the Brave New Worlds post for how this ties back to the Genesis system). Simple farms can acquire seeds that are planted directly into the soil, for example, but what grows where will be determined by the biomes, the soil types and the quality of the dirt. The high-tech farming involves hydroponic buildings such as the ones shown above. These can be placed anywhere regardless of the soil, but require power to operate.

Ranching (no slides yet) allows us to keep animals. We’ll need to provide them with feed, water, and shelter and in return we can harvest products from them both sustainably and through slaughter (I assume). Not all animals will be ranchable, though.

More Buildings and Structures

We’ve seen practical constructs, but there will also be “flavor” items we can build to make our bases feel more realistic and useful. We can build garages for vehicles, for examples, fencing, platforms, lighting fixtures, radio towers, stairs, catwalks, and — everyone’s top request for sprawling bases — roads.

Defenses

Building lawless systems comes with a lot of benefits such as no land-claim price and no taxes, but the downside is that our structures are always — always — vulnerable to attack from other players (at least). To help buy owners a bit of survivability, there are some defensive structures that can be built such as walls, checkpoints, shielding, and automated turrets (PDC, anti-air, anti-vehicle, and anti-personnel).

Thoughts

[Deep breath]. Finally made it to the end!

Player housing is a perennial ask in almost all MMOs. I believe that Star Citizen has always promised player housing and although we saw teasers at CitizenCon 2953 it’s nice to see both rough-cuts and some well-considered mockups of how it’ll look and how it’ll play out.

Despite the idea of housing being awesome, I’ve always struggled with finding a reason to use it. I feel that in order for housing to be worthwhile, it needs to have a purpose. Some people like decorating, so that’s one purpose if it works for you; I enjoy it, but not enough to make housing worthwhile. Setting up crafting facilities is also a purpose. Storing our stuff there and not in some “cloud storage” is also a purpose, and is probably one of the best excuses, although global or regional banks can do the job just as well. But most games with housing don’t do all or most of these, or if they do, limit the number of items we can deploy or the number of items we can store. Plus, if everyone is concerned with their own house and it’s functions, then what’s the impetus to visit one another’s home? Most of these concerns can be allayed by making a house a guild or org property, but for all of the games which implement housing, only a few provide player group-centric housing.

Because of the more personal nature of Star Citizen with both the focus being on the player and the org, playing housing does make sense in a lot of ways. It’ll be where we log out and where we log in. It will hold our stuff, but it can also be where we craft and where other players can visit to buy things from us. For orgs, it can be where everyone gathers, shares resources, and stages group activities. Even reaching out to PvP, combined arms base assaults are totally going to be A Thing. I also like the idea that within an org, each division (if they exist) can create the own little enclave, connected by roads, with the facilities that they need and none that they don’t.

Personally, I think I’ll be aiming for a medium construction vehicle — which we’ll be looking at next — in order to be able to create structures large enough to accommodate most of my fleet. I would hope that I could land the Carrack outside on a landing pad, but the Reclaimer — if I opt to keep it long-term — would be an issue as it’s designed as “extra large” and I couldn’t afford and extra large construction vehicle in-game (or outside of the game). Then again, if I stick with my org, I could just build a small HAB in the org base and use the common facilities. Since we can own and build multiple plots throughout the game, I could also keep my own personal home base somewhere else.