Your first station

Continuing from Your first faction. A station is your faction's anchor in space — it claims territory (sovereignty), hosts your industry (refinery, fabricator), provides docking bays for friends + allies, and earns ongoing prestige.

What you need before starting

• A faction. You can't build a station as a lone IPU member; you need your own faction. (See Your first faction.)
• A Station Seed. Seeds are crafted, not bought. The bootstrap path: rent a room in an IPU station, install a basic fabricator (Mk I) there, and craft an Outpost Seed from a small amount of refined iron + structural plating. Bigger seeds (Hub / Citadel / Capital) require a T4 fabricator, which can only live on an Outpost or larger station — so the first station every faction builds is an Outpost.
• A Construction Arm. The basic Construction Arm Mk I (any ship can install it) deploys Outpost seeds. Bigger station classes require the Heavy Construction Arm, which only fits on a Battlecruiser or larger.
• Materials for the build manifest. When you deploy a seed, it shows you the bill — you fly cargo to the site and feed it in.
• A non-CORE location. Stations can't be built in Patrolled Lanes (CORE / green zone). Head to MID (Outer Lanes) or further out.

Step 1: Deploy the seed

Fly out to where you want the station. Park your ship near the spot (within ~300 master-sim blocks). Open the Construction Arm console on your ship (there's a console block tied to the arm — find it in your ship's cockpit).

Click "Deploy Seed" and pick your Outpost Seed from cargo. The seed is consumed, and:

• A station is registered at your ship's current position.
• Your faction owns it.
• Its lifecycle state is UNDER_CONSTRUCTION.
• A construction manifest is created — the bill of materials you need to feed in.

You'll see the station's pose in space — a bare hull frame at this point, no modules, no defenses. You can fly around it, dock against it, walk inside the partial structure.

Step 2: Fill the manifest

The Construction Arm console shows your manifest progress: each required material + how much you've fed in. To deposit:

• Mine the required materials (or buy / trade for them)
• Fly back to your station site within ~300 blocks
• Open the Construction Arm console
• Click "Deposit" for each material; the items are pulled from your ship's cargo into the station

You can deposit in chunks. The manifest progress bar fills as you go. When everything's met, the station auto-commissions:

• Lifecycle state → ACTIVE
• Sovereignty anchor placed (your faction's score in this region jumps)
• Station upkeep tracking begins (first charge due after one period)

Step 3: Install modules

Like ships, stations are built from blocks-as-modules. Once active, walk into your station's interior. You'll see hull-painted floors with empty bay slots. Place modules from inventory:

• Refinery — converts mined ore into refined metals
• Fabricator — turns refined metals into modules + components
• Bay — gives a docking slot for another ship (more bays = more guests)
• Turret — automatic defense
• Market Terminal — lets players trade orders here (player market, separate from NPC vendors)

You can keep adding modules over time — there's no "all at once" gate.

Step 4: Set the access policy

Open /faction settings and find the station's per-action ACL. Each action (ENTRY, DOCK, CARGO, MODULE_USE, BUILD_MODULE, BUILD_COSMETIC, MANAGE) has a preset:

• PUBLIC — anyone
• ALLY_ONLY — your faction + actively-allied factions
• FACTION_ONLY — your faction only
• OFFICER_PLUS — your faction members ranked Officer or higher
• LEADER_ONLY — Leaders only

A typical setup:

• ENTRY: ALLY_ONLY (friends can come in, randos can't)
• DOCK: FACTION_ONLY (only your members park ships here)
• BUILD: OFFICER_PLUS (officers expand the build)
• MANAGE: LEADER_ONLY (only Leaders touch settings)

If you set ALLY_ONLY, make sure you've actually allied with another faction via /faction diplomacy propose — ALLY_ONLY is only useful when alliances exist.

Step 5: Defenses

Your station starts with default HP. Install turrets + shield modules for real defense. See Stations → Defenses.

Step 6: Insurance (optional)

NPC Insurance Terminals let you buy a per-station insurance policy. On destruction, an insured station's modules survive into the archive (per the policy tier %) — you don't pay to rebuild them. Premium debits the faction treasury.

Upkeep — keep paying or lose the station

Every few hours (configurable), the station charges a fixed amount against your faction treasury. If the charge fails:

• The station enters arrears.
• Its sovereignty anchor is dropped — the region becomes contestable.
• A grace window starts (typically hours to a day).
• If you don't pay before grace expires → station is destroyed.

The Stations panel (/faction stations) shows upkeep status for all your stations. Pay any time to clear arrears + re-place the sov anchor.

Sovereignty — what your station earns

Stations contribute sovereignty score to the region they're in, under your faction's name. Bigger station tiers contribute more (Capital > Fortress > Citadel > Hub > Outpost).

If your faction has the highest sov score in a region, you're the primary — you control the region. Status transitions on rivals' anchor counts:

• Uncontested — no rival > 25% of your score
• Contested — rivals between 25% and 75% of your score
• Lockdown — rivals > 75%

A rival exceeding your score by more than 10% flips the primary — they take the region.

Watch your sov status with /faction stations (it shows your stations' regions + their state). Read the full mechanic in Reference → Sovereignty.

What's next

You have an Outpost. You're paying upkeep. You're contributing sov score. The full Outpost-and-up progression is:

• T4 fabricator on your Outpost — unlocks the Battlecruiser shipkit (still needs a BPC from a Frontier/NULL Corsair kill) AND the larger station seeds.
• Heavy Construction Arm on your BC — deploys Hub-class and larger stations. The basic Mk I arm tops out at Outpost.
• Hub or larger station — hosts a T5 fabricator (Outposts don't), which unlocks the Dreadnought kit. The endgame chain is Outpost → BC → Hub → Dreadnought, with Reaver kills (Void Fragment) and NULL mining (Tritanium) gating the final tier.
• Build a second station in a different region for sov spread.
• Take quests that reward Capital-tier hardware.

Read the full Stations reference for the mechanics behind each.

Welcome to ground-holding.