Station

**Stations** are a persistent structure in Evochron Legacy.

## Summary

Alongside carriers, stations are the main permanent installations that are not stellar bodies and integral to the games economy. If no station is present in a region and neither is a colony, no changes to demand and supply of regional goods happens. They are the source for trade goods, offer internal storages to a pilot, store and offer civilian ships, offer shipyard facilities, can construct new weapons with the needed parts or allow the manufacturing of higher industrial goods and serve as attack targets and unit spawn points. Most importantly, they always have fuel.

Both space stations and planetary colonies share one module pool which is limited to 200 (+1 ownership Command Module in space). As such a planet with 200 modules can not be conquered by a space station without the hostile force first descending on the planet and destroying some modules. Otherwise their Command Module will be without any defense. In a dark space region the entire 200 modules are available for the space station.

## Production

Stations produce new goods based on their closest planet and its economical specialization. On average about 1/3 of the produced items will fall into that specific category, the rest will be randomly filled with other items. The speed of production depends on the amount of production modules, while the actual prevalence of items overall per production cycle is based on the storages. A pilot can just "relog" to force the station to procure a new inventory. This exploit makes building more storages than needed for gun turrets obsolete, unless the base economic level is to be pushed. The region gains 3.3% economy bonus per storage, production and command module.

Since patch 2.0308 higher availability bias is given to commodities in markets with lower global baseline values. Which means an area of cheap metal will offer you more metal to buy.

## Licenses

A station's license price depends on the current economy level and is never cheaper than 150,000 Credits, when economy reaches 0. Above an economy of 0 the price will increase by about 105,000-115,000 credits per level. Building a command module gives one free license to the builder and is the cheaper option. Unless the pilot is already rich, it is proposed to build their own stations first. Typically a license halves any costs for storage and gives a general reduction in fees for production and building.

Added in 2023, stations will now pay the shareholders a dividend based on economic prosperity. Since the payout of a license scales with the economy, a low economy region will pay itself back slower due to the high base cost. In theory this means an economy 100 license will repay itself faster, alas this demands no war and the static economy option. In general it is cheaper to buy them while a region is in a bust state and then to push it into boom. A boom license in economy 100 has no way of growing towards a better profit timer anymore.

The payout for a license is **2 credits per second and economy level**, leading to about 24k every 20 minutes on 100 economy. This incentivizes owners to keep the region prosperous and well-traded. The income in the end is based on economy levels (0-10, 11-20). Due to this fact, it is unwise to buy the "high" (the top economy rating of a level) and one should always buy the lowest available license in a level. The economy level has the same payout regardless, but saves about a million inside its level. For economy 0, this leads to really fast reimbursements due to only paying back the basecost in 21 hours maximum or 2 hours if pushed to boom. Note an economy level means 0-10 and 11-20 etc. as shown in the station overview in the news window. For absolute payment per actual economy, it is 0.2 credits per second per economy value, but this is not applied as such.

Changing the speed of the payout does not change the money accrued. The only thing that changes is the interval when the money accrued until then is paid out. This allows pilots to invest their money earlier, but might spam their log.

**NOTE:**

* If a station license is bought in bust (150,000) and then boosted to boom (100 economy) it will repay itself after 125 minutes or roughly two hours of playtime. If the economy is not boosted and remains in bust, the reimbursement of the investment will take about 21 hours of active playtime as the lowest calculated economy level is 1 and thus pays 2 regardless.
* Station licenses are bound to a pilot and work on any server as long as a station of the same affiliation and name exists on the server. A FDN license does not work in an ALC station or an IND station and will not show up or pay out.

## Station Construction

There can only be one command module in a sector, so pick the name and place wisely, they are very expensive and cost an entire maximum cargo hold of metal (250). It can be replaced but rarely justifies the cost of moving it.

* Power Module: 1 Crew Module for every 2 Power Modules
* Crew Module: 1 Power Module in Range
* Production Module: 1 Power Module in Range
* Storage Module: 1 Power Module in Range
* Command Module: None (provides internal power)
* Shield Module: 1 Power Module for every 2 Shield Modules
* Weapon Module: 1 Storage Module for every 5 Weapon Modules + 1 Power Module

Despite the freeform option to build a station, shield and power modules need to be close to the module that has to be shielded or powered (500 units) and gun turrets need space above and below to aim at enemies.

The command center itself serves as a "negative" gun turret storage and power source for the nearby 1000 units. This means that it will power 5 shield generators and 4 turrets regardless of position in the 1000 range, but will fail to keep them supplied once the base expands beyond this scope. This can lead to distant turrets shutting off later as the base expands with no local storage to take over the role of the command center. It is best to keep this in mind when planning a station. Either plan a small outpost only using the basic supplies or a sprawling base and ensure redundant supply.

The basic directional modules are meant to act as armor to be build around important parts and as an obstacle. They are cheap and can soak attack damage.

Several shields offer redundancy AND a benefit. The energy boost is 70% per additional shield module (implemented as part of the 1.0388 update back in 2016).