Starfield outpost
Construct a Starfield outpost on any of the Settled Systems' 1000 planets, and customize your base with dozens of structures and crew.
Building a Starfield outpost on every resource-heavy planet you come across will be an important part of fuelling your spacefarer’s intergalactic exploration mission. Unlike settlements in Fallout 4, which were primarily about rebuilding the wasteland, the purpose of Starfield outposts is to harvest materials and fuel, help you make money, and upgrade your gear, ship, and other outposts.
Picking exactly where to place your outpost out of the thousands of Starfield locations will not be easy, and it remains to be seen how a planet’s weather and atmosphere will affect what you can build there. The outpost we see in the official gameplay reveal trailer is built mostly for gathering Starfield materials, which you can use to modify weapons, but as it’s the only bit of information we have to go on we’ve broken down everything you can see in the trailer.
- How to build an outpost
- Beacon
- Build limit
- Integrity
- Structures
- Build requirements
- Operating cost
- Cargo
- Production
- Crew
How to build an outpost
To build an outpost in Starfield you need to open up your scanner and press the X button on your gamepad. This will place a beacon down wherever you’re aiming, which acts as the main interaction point for your outpost. It appears that the planet in the gameplay reveal has been 100% surveyed, and this may be a key factor that determines whether you can construct an outpost.
Beacon
Building an outpost starts by placing an Outpost beacon. This appears to be the main console that you interact with to name your outpost, build structures, and manage your crew. It could also be the location you fast-travel to, but we currently know nothing about Starfield’s fast-travel system.
Build limit
Your Starfield outpost will be limited in terms of how many structures you can construct there. This should be familiar to Fallout 4 players, and it’ll be interesting to see if you can extend this with mods, workarounds, or Starfield console commands.
Integrity
There’s an integrity meter at the top of the outpost building screen and it looks like Outposts can fall into disrepair, whether by alien and human attacks or environmental degradation.
Structures
There are dozens of different outpost structures that you can build and each one appears to have a couple of variations. Here are all the Starfield outpost buildings we’ve seen so far:
- Outpost Airlock
- Four Wall Hab
- Hydroponic Hab A
- Science Hab Small
- Military Hab
- Hydroponic Hab Round
- Small Hex Hab
- Hallway – Industrial
- Watchtower
Build requirements
Every outpost structure will have a different set of build requirements. In the gameplay reveal trailer all of the structures we see require Iron and Aluminum to construct.
Operating cost
Specific structures have an associated operating cost that you’ll need to meet to keep them functioning. There’s also a power meter in the build menu which appears to represent your outpost’s power grid, so it looks like a simple case of making sure you build up your power grid before placing down energy-hungry structures.
Cargo
It looks like you can store up some of your spare resources as cargo. How exactly you then use your cargo is unclear, it could simply act as a glorified chest or refer to a resource that you can ship around the Settled Systems to your other outposts or vendors – we’ll have to wait and see.
Production
In addition to a build menu counter for the crew, cargo, and power, there’s a stat showing your outpost’s production rate per minute. It remains unclear if this refers to resource gathering or so some kind of production line for specific items.
Crew
It looks like Starfield NPC interactions will occasionally present you with crew members who can work on your outposts. Todd Howard says in the reveal trailer that, “you can hire characters you meet to keep [your outpost] up and running”. We have no idea if there will be a limit to your crew and what benefits you can glean from hiring one character over another.