There are several facilities that are particularly helpful - beginning with the Research Station.
If you let it, research can take a really long time -
so long I was able to put this entire guide together while I waited.

If you plan to research every upgrade, you'll need more research stations than you might think. Once upgrades start requiring 100,000+ points, it'll take at least 10-15 research stations to complete them in a reasonable amount of time. It's not a bad idea to build them near a bunkroom, cafeteria, and some showers to maximize the amount of time your researchers spend on task.



30-40% of your officers actively researching is a decent balance. Be careful about building too many research stations though, otherwise your officers may neglect more essential jobs.

The recycler is useful for deconstructing obsolete equipment, deceased allies and enemies, destroyed objects and machinery, as well as certain kinds of garbage. Think of them like trash cans. If you place them throughout your station, clean up will go a lot faster - especially important when your officers and cleaning robots have to deal with the kinds of waste that turn into biohazards if left laying about.

These are really convenient, but they take up a lot of space,
and the larger they are, the less efficient they are. If you see
your officers doing a lot of walking back and forth to a storage
area, you may want to place a few pallets near their workspace
to hold what they need.


To create a storage area, first construct a room. Keep in mind that once you turn that space into a storage area, you will be unable to construct any other objects inside.


then place the storage area object inside. Cargo robots and officers will drop materials into the facility, so it's best to place it near the doors for easy access - though not too close. Officers can't use certain objects properly if the access tile is the same tile on either side of a door.


Selecting the storage area facility allows you to choose what is stored in that area.


You can manually select what to include and exclude, or you can press the Include or Exclude buttons to choose between categories.


Constructing small rooms for work areas within or just off of a storage area works pretty well.


Of course you could opt not to build any storage areas or pallets at all and simply let your officers drop things on the ground. It's just as organized as a storage area; very little time is wasted on restocking; and perhaps best of all - it's free.

There's nothing quite like it - watching a Navigator zip around the galaxy in a Temerity class starship. A Navigator can more than double the maximum speed of a starship, so they're also excellent candidates for piloting typically slow, large-capacity ships like those in the Benevolence, and Diligence class. To train a Navigator, assign a Diplomat to a ship's crew so he/she can gain experience.

You can build multiple Storage units on planets where
you are extracting resources. This is helpful for collecting
those rare resources on planets that take longer to reach.
By the time your ship arrives, your storage units can have
hundreds of resources ready and waiting for you.

Building Embassies is the fastest way
to improve your relationship with other
civilizations. 10-15 embassies should
be enough to move a civilization from
Neutral to Friendly.

You'll see this symbol on the galactic map
below any planet with an embassy.

Certain civilizations dislike each other so much, it's impossible to be on friendly relations with both. The best you can hope for is neutrality. This dynamic gives you some choices to make.

If your relations are friendly with one, the other will be hostile toward you 'til it eventually declares war. You will earn credits and favor from the friendly civilization through tourism, but you will lose access to resources and trade on worlds occupied by their ancestral enemy - unless you conquer those worlds. Your base will also be subjected to periodic raids from any civilization you are at war with.

If your relations are neutral with both civilizations, neither of them will allow tourists to visit your station, but you will have access to resources and trade on all of their worlds though tariffs on imports from neutral planets are 75% higher than imports from an Allied planet. Neither civilization will raid your base.

To bring about peace, you must first max out your diplomatic relationship with one of the civilizations. You do this by building embassies until the civilization becomes friendly enough to allow tourism. Tourists and trading will slowly improve your relationship until you reach the Allied status.


Meanwhile, their ancestral enemy will hate your guts.

Before you make peace with this civilization, make sure you have enough credits. Around 700,000 should be sufficient to make peace and leave enough for all of your normal operating costs.

Click on
the Sell
button.

The donate screen will
pop up. Donate funds
until your relations
reach neutrality.

In the examples below, you can see both civilizations are now neutral even though they are ancestral enemies. Building embassies and trade may help to maintain that neutrality.

Since your base is a joint venture between Humans and Crusantians, these two civilizations will maintain your tourism. Your tourists won't be as diverse without the contributions of other civilizations, but you won't lose money.

As tempting as it is to complete base events as
they show up, there's a fairly compelling reason
to ignore the Pest Critter infestation, and just leave
them alone if you don't mind having them around.

They make a terrific first line of defense since they react aggressively toward Raiding enemies.


A pack of pests is like a furry mine field. Enemies enter at their peril.


A pack of them can keep a lone intruder busy, but they don't last long against the big foes.

Here are a few settings that can help to improve efficiency as well as manage not only your officers and robots, but visitors and enemies as well.

Choosing who is authorized to use certain doors
is a good way to keep Visitors from stealing
your goods, as well as keep your officers
from using up expensive products intended
for Visitors.

Select the door you have in mind, and you'll see a check list below Authorized Units. By default, every door and security door gives everyone access: Officers, Robots, and Tourists. Deselect the group that you do not want using that door, and they will no longer be able to pass through. Choosing Lock denies everybody access, including enemies.

Accommodating tourists is a great source of income, but things can quickly get out of hand once you've got ten or more active visitor docks. A fully operational station can have over a hundred visitors around at any given time. If you ever find your officers struggling to keep up with meeting their own needs as well as the demands of the visitors, you may want to give them a break and a chance to catch up.

It's very simple.

Click on the Visitors' Dock that you'd like to close off for a while.
Go to Docking and select Off. This will keep visitors from using this dock until you turn it back on.

This is probably one of the most important settings because it automates your entire production.

Every workstation defaults to Local Production meaning you have to create orders individually then add them to the queue. That's a complete pain in the neck.


Selecting Global production allows you to choose the minimum amount of any product in stock. From the moment a product enters Global Production, your officers will automatically start producing it whenever its stock falls below the minimum.

Whenever you want to set a new workstation to operate in Global Production mode, or just want to make a change, click on the workstation and select the Factory button.



Then choose Global.


Next, click on
the inventory icon.

From this list you can select any products you'd like to add to Global Production.


Simply select the product, edit the amount in Min stock, and choose accept

Assigning a production object such as an atelier, brewery, or kitchen to a master class officer can dramatically increase its output. But once you start assigning these things, you may want to assign all of them so assigned officers won't wander off to work somewhere else. The downside to assigning objects, is that nobody else will use them, so while that particular officer is sleeping, that object is just sitting there.

To further increase production, you can pull up their Jobs page to eliminate all unnecessary tasks. That way they stay focused on the one job that they're really good at.

The Job Matrix is a convenient tool for modifying
a number of officers at the same time.


You can find it in the task bar on the left-hand side of the main screen.

This feature can improve the efficiency of
restocking your vending machines. It's
particularly useful when you have the same
product being collected and stored in several
different places throughout the station.


If you have assigned a pallet or supply area to hold a product you're making, you can set it up so that one or more vending machines are supplied from that pallet.

In this example, I want this Diner drinks vending machine to get its supply of Vitamin water from one specific pallet. First, you select the vending machine.


Next, right click on the pallet or storage area that you want to supply this vending machine.
The game will highlight your current selection.


Until you cancel it, this vending machine will only be restocked from that pallet.


It's a great way to keep your supplies separate if you're trying to collect enough of something for a trade run. Setting an exclusive source ensures your station vending machines won't deplete that supply. You can also use it to ensure officers and cargo robots use the nearest pallet instead of the one at the other end of the station.

By default the Inventory is arranged in a list.


If you get tired of scrolling, you can click on the List button, and select Table view instead.


This way you can view everything on one screen.