Industry
Base automation — quiet factories, loud payoffs
Bases translate ore into options. Done poorly, they become maintenance museums; done well, they free you for combat training, market making, or corp diplomacy. SpaceCraft rewards players who treat automation as staged theatre: layout, power rhythm, drone choreography, storage breathing room, and habitats that keep crews sharp. This chapter links each layer to hauling math in mining and sell pressure in economy.
Extractor layout
Cluster extractors where geology rewards density but keep service alleys wide enough for drones and repair skiffs. Elevate fragile units off floodplains; storms and pipe leaks love low ground. Color-code feed lines: raw in cool tones, refined out warm. Leave expansion pads — tomorrow’s patch might add new ore demands.
Drones & logistics
Drones amplify throughput and complexity. Start with one loop you can watch end-to-end; add branches only when the previous loop idles. Programme collision margins generously; tight indoor turns create traffic jams that propagate upstream. When hostile players appear, drones become nervous liabilities — practice manual overrides with combat awareness.
Power grid design
Power is mood music for factories. Isolate critical chains — life support first, refining second, decorative holograms dead last. Maintain surge banks for extractor startups; simultaneous spin-ups brown out grids politely then catastrophically. Label breakers aloud to teammates; frantic blackouts despise secrecy.
Storage & buffering
Overflow is a design smell. Build staged silos (raw staging, intermediary, export-ready finished goods). Use visual emptiness as telemetry: silence should mean bottleneck solved, not machines idle because nobody updated routes. Tie export batches to courier contracts surfaced in corporation ops.
Housing & upkeep
Human loops matter — beds, kitchens, ambience, signage. Crew endurance improves reaction times elsewhere (markets, dogfights, diplomacy pings). Sprinkle maintenance closets near grime zones; grime accumulates fastest where players pretend it will not.
If you are still bootstrapping, revisit starting steps before expanding to multi-site empires.