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UCH Keystone Orbital T4 Size Class 5

By far the most common outpost used by the United Council of Humanity, Keystones are small but hardy frontier stations offering repairs, production and food production for UCH vessels. They also have a massive shield and fearsome armament to protect the base from drones and small vessels. While perhaps unable to defrat the likes of a Rados Capital ship, they are able to hold their own for long enough for aid to arrive.

Why an orbital base?

Orbital bases effectively offer endless power if they are correctly positioned to face the sun (make sure you do). While the sun strength varies between playfields I get a constant 3KPU in single player with this base. It also has 40 solar capacitors so can store a very large charge as well- particularly useful in multiplayer.

Secondly, once you are mostly done with a planet an orbital place near a warp in point is a lot faster to get to than flying to the planet then flying around the planet to your base.

Finally, its much easier to use the repair bay without errors, particularly when, as with this base, the repair bay is placed higher than other blocks and devices.

Why not an orbital base?
In multiplayer orbital bases are generally even better as they continue to generate power and constructing etc. as long as anyone is on the playfield. Between near infinite power and other people being about to keep your constructors going you can have a ton of stuff produced while you sleep/work.

However, partial rendering glitches are more likely to reduce in the death of plants on an orbital base. This base has two separate sealed greenhouses so hopefully even if part of the base does not spawn, the other plants will be fine as they are still enclosed in an airtight greenhouse.

How is the base structured
The base is spread across two main levels, 2 hangar levels and 2 sub levels. The bottom two levels are segregated as in multiplayer I actually allow public access and public respawn since new players were falling victim to a space poi and getting stuck in death loops. The gardens, public parking and medical area have public access (by setting codes to 0000) and allow players to respawn safely inside my base rather than costant death to turrets.

The upper levels (construction floor, repair control tower and large hangar) are private.

Ooooh guns and a shield, why?
I'm not comfortable with the idea of a space station without guns given the background history of the Empyrion universe. Perhaps for some massive space metropolis deep within UCH space, but not a small orbital like this one. Also space drone attacks are supposed to be in the works and the base guns have good fields of attack in all 6 directions. This is NOT, however, a PVP base.

Why Class 5, why not a class 30 space city?
This is a base I actually use and class 5 seems to be a sweet spot on multiplayer servers where you can spawn it in most PVE playfields.

How many 320K controllers are there?
None. There are 4 container sets that can easily be extended to 320K by adding to them vertically on the construction floor but at present they are all 64K. This is because every single container you add takes 5PU of power which adds up over time if you are including hundreds of container controllers, especially since you can't switch them off. There are also lots of individual named cargo boxes for sorting things if you are OCD like me.

Can it be extended?
Yes it has lots of spare CPU and 0.5 size class of additional devices so you can add constructors, turrets, containers or anything else and safeily stay with CPU and class 5 limit (as class 5 actually goes to 5.49)

Is there a cheaper version or one that doesn't need T4?

Yes, there is a T2 version in steel rather than hardened steel in case you want to spawn a more limited one across playfields as you conquer the universe (or simply can't build T4 extenders yet):
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1990431343