Habitats

Habitats, or habs, are space-based facilities operated by factions. Factions may build two types of habs: stations, which go in an orbit, and bases, which go at a hab site.

Both types of habs come in three sizes. Stations grow from platforms, to orbitals, and then to rings. Bases start as outposts, grow to settlements, and finally become colonies. The size determines both how many modules you can have (4, 12 or 20, plus the core), and the maximum size of each module.

Habs are composed of modules. All habs have a core module; upgrading the core upgrades the entire station and unlocks new module slots. Those slots have designated positions in the overall layout of the hab, so construction is a bit “on the rails” instead of freeform.

Habs, like fleets, belong directly to a faction. We had considered some kind of flagging mechanic for space assets, where they were directly associated with your nations, but discarded it as too fiddly. Instead, your hab may be nominally operating under NASA or the United Nations, but what matters is that its people are really working for the Resistance, Project Exodus, etc.

You can found a new hab in a few ways. One is to launch the core module from Earth, using boost. This can be a bit slow if the location is far from the homeworld. A second is to develop and build kits your ships can deploy when they arrive in an orbit or land on a space body. A third is to found habs from other habs in the same planetary system that have a factory module.

Habs need power generating modules for all non-core modules to work. Initially only solar power modules are available, but you can develop fission and fusion modules as the game goes on. It’s important to note that solar power output decreases dramatically the further you go from the Sun – and are unlikely to be useful beyond Mars, but the panels will have huge output if located near or on Mercury.

At present, there are 84 modules the human factions can build. Many can be built both at stations and bases, although some are hab-type-specific. Most need a project completed to unlock them. A few are faction-specific. Several are upgrades of prior ones: The materials lab can become a materials research center, which can become a materials institute at the largest hab.

There are hab modules for research, hab modules for money and influence production, and hab modules that grant engineering project capacity. Most modules have a support cost, which is drawn from your space resources, if you have them, otherwise from your boost. And if you are out of both, or have insufficient mission control, your hab is much more likely to suffer accidents, and be much more willing to switch allegiance to another faction.

Five module types deserve further note:

1) Mines. Buildable only on bases, of course, these produce space resources based on the hab site’s profile. These are built with electromagnetic catapults that fling material into space and into your resource pool.

2) Supply Depots. These let your fleets take on propellant and reload weapons by drawing down your space resource supply, or boost. These can go on the smallest habs; we expect you’ll need a network of them around the Solar System to keep your fleets moving.

3) Shipyards. These let you build and repair your warships. Larger yards speed construction of the ships. You’ll have a shipyard manager interface with build queues so you can coordinate construction across your holdings.

4) Barracks. These hold Marines to defend your hab from enemy assaults. From stations in an interface orbit, the Marines can also drop to assault surface bases, as long as one of your councilors is present to lead them. Councilors can similarly lead Marine assaults from one of your bases against a nearby enemy base.

5) Defense modules. These mount antiship and point defense weaponry for space combat. If a station is involved in combat, the enemy’s objective is to destroy these modules. After the battle, the station can be boarded or destroyed. Defense modules on bases fire back when the base is being bombarded form orbit.

You can also send councilors to habs, either by spending boost to launch from Earth to somewhere in the Earth-Moon system, or by hitching a ride on a ship. Councilors may only board enemy human ships or the smallest habs if they have the “undercover” trait. But second- and third-tier habs are large enough that councilors may board freely.

Once aboard, councilors can run a number of missions, including sabotaging a particular module or persuading the hab’s leaders to switch sides and join your faction.

## Stations

### Orbits

All space bodies and Lagrange Points have one or more circular orbits around them where factions can send fleets and build a limited number of space stations.

Orbits close to a space body's surface are called interface orbits. These are orbits fleets can travel to in order to land or bombard targets on the surface. Around Earth, some hab modules grant bonuses if they are in an interface orbit as they provide greater benefits to the surface.

Stations and station modules

## Bases

### Hab Sites

With the exception of the hellish world of Venus, and the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all space bodies have at least one hab site where the factions may build a base with a mine and other modules. Larger bodies will have four, eight, nine or 16 hab sites, depending on their size.

When a mine is built, a hab site will provide certain space resources to the faction that controls the mine. The type of resources generally depends on the composition of the space body.

Some hab sites are marked with a hazard symbol. These sites receive high levels of radiation, and bases built there require shielding and are much heavier and more costly than bases built elsewhere.

Bases and base modules

## Events

*For the full article on Events, see Events*

Habitats may be subject to events in game, such as cascading failures, strike for orbital debris (man-made and natural) and "Lucky Strike" bonuses to mining.

Events may give you one or more responses to mitigate or improve them, which often depends on spending a resource or may have the prerequisite of a technology.