Outposts

Outposts are the ultimate form of Alliance infrastructure - fully-functional space stations built from scratch by capsuleer forces. Requiring an immense investment in resources and logistics, the payoff is a permanent facility that meets, and in some cases exceeds, the capabilites of Empire stations.

Some parts of this guide - mainly the Warfare and Management areas - also apply to conquerable stations.

Types of Outpost

Outposts are currently available in four basic types - one from each Empire - each of which specialise in certain areas:

• The Amarr Factory Outpost. Strengths: 20 manufacturing slots with a 0.7x build time modifier, 10 booster manufacturing slots. Weaknesses: only one slot for ME, PE and Copy research, only four offices.
• The Caldari Research Outpost. Strengths: Ten ME, PE and Copy slots with a 0.7x research time modifier, 10 invention slots, 5 booster slots and 8 office slots. Weaknesses: only two manufacturing slots.
• The Gallente Administrative Outpost. Strengths: 24 office slots, 10 booster slots, one invention slot. Weaknesses: only four factory slots, only two ME and PE slots and only one Copy slot.
• The Minmatar Service Outpost. Strengths: the only Outpost with inherent refining capability (35% base efficiency). Weaknesses: only two manufacturing slots, only six offices, no other capabilities.

Each Outpost can utilise its own upgrade tree to improve and extend its services; this will be discussed in further detail below.

Building an Outpost

Building and deploying an Outpost is no mean feat, and requires a lot of planning.

The first thing you need is a construction platform (also known as an "Egg", for obvious visual reasons) of the correct type. These must be built from blueprints, which require large quantities of various station construction components.

The finished platform will then list a large number of material requirements, which include both minerals and trade goods. These all need to be added to the platform once it's deployed, and should be collected in advance.

Once you have your platform and all the required materials, you need to move them to the target system. The platform itself requires a freighter to move, and the total material requirements also take up a very large volume, so you will probably need multiple freighters to deploy them successfully.

In order to successfully deploy an Outpost, you must place it in a system meeting two criteria. First, there must be no other stations in the system; second, your Alliance must have a system sovereignty level of at least 1 in that system.

If these two criteria are met, you can deploy your construction platform. It must be anchored at a planet in the system, and to do so the anchoring character must have the skill Outpost Construction trained to Level 1. Once anchored, the material requirements must all be placed inside the platform.

Once the platform is anchored and filled, right-click it and choose Build. If you've done everything right, This will tell you that the build is in progress. You must then wait until the next server downtime. When the server comes back up, your construction platform should be replaced with a brand new Outpost. Congratulations!

Conquering Outposts

It is possible for your enemies to take your Outpost from you by force, but it's not a trivial matter. Outposts cannot be targetted (and thus cannot be captured) while system sovereignty is held by the same Alliance as the one which owns the Outpost - any attacker must at least neutralise system sovereignty before he or she can attempt to take control of the station.

Once the station is vulnerable, it must have its shields stripped away completely. When its shields are entirely depleted, it cannot take further damage and ownership is transferred to the Corporation of the last person to do damage to it. If this person belongs to the Alliance which holds sovereignty, no further damage can be done; if not, once the shield regenerates up to 1% it can be shot back down by a different player, to force it to change hands once again. It is impossible to actually destroy an Outpost.

As an additional layer of protection, if the Outpost system has System Sovereignty 4, the Starbases in the system are invulnerable and will remain so until constellation sovereignty is contested.

Attacking Services

Outpost services can be attacked and disabled independently of the outpost itself. They are always vulnerable, and sovereignty has no effect. Services appear in space at the same location as the Outpost itself, and can be targetted and shot at as usual. When they reach structure damage, they are disabled and will not function until repaired by remote structure/armor repairers and shield boosters in the normal way. When they reach 50% shield, they become active again. The different services have different numbers of hitpoints, and services cannot be completely destroyed.

Upgrading Outposts

Outposts, with additional heavy investment, can be upgraded beyond their initial capabilities. In order to do so, you must first install an Upgrade, which adds slots for one or more Improvements, and then install the Improvements themselves to increase the station's capabilities.

There are three levels of Upgrade available for each Outpost - Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3. Tier 1 Upgrades add one Tier 1 Improvement slot, and require Sovereignty 2 to deploy. Tier 2 Upgrades add one Tier 2 Improvement slot and an additional Tier 1 slot, and require Sovereignty 3 to deploy. Tier 3 Upgrades add one Tier 3 Improvement slot plus an additional Tier 2 slot and an additional Tier 1 slot, and require Sovereignty 4 to deploy. There are no Sovereignty requirements for the Improvements themselves - they can be installed by the owning Alliance at any time.

Upgrades and Improvements are added in the same manner as the original construction of the Outpost: buy the appropriate platform blueprint, build it, ship it to the outpost, fill it with the material requirements and tell it to build. The Upgrade or Improvement will be added to the Outpost during the next downtime. Installed Improvements can be viewed in the Management window, which will be discussed shortly. Every Improvement and Upgrade has its own blueprint.

There are five upgrade paths of three Tiers each for each outpost - one Refinery path, one Office path, and either two Factory and one Research paths or two Research and one Factory paths. Each path has a Tier 1, a Tier 2 and a Tier 3 Improvement; Tier 2 Improvements require a Tier 1 Improvement from the same path, and Tier 3s require a Tier 2. You can only install one of each type of Improvement.

This makes for fifteen Improvements per Outpost for a total of 60, and 60 different ways for any fully-loaded Tier 3 Outpost to be configured. The full list of available improvements is as follows:

As you can see, there are a lot of options, and as you move along any particular path the Improvements become increasingly powerful.

Station Management

The Station Management button can be found in the bottom-right corner of the screen when docked in an outpost which is owned by a corp in which you are either CEO, director or have the Station Management role. It is broken into several tabs.

Station Details

This lets you define basic settings, such as:

• Name. This is the name of the station, which will be displayed in the station, in space and on the map
• Description. This is a short piece of text which other players will see when they perform a Show Info on your station
• Docking cost per volume. This is the base amount of ISK per cubic meter that will be charged to anyone docking at your station
• Office Rental Cost. This is the monthly rental cost for an office in the station
• Reprocessing Stations Take. For stations with a refinery, this sets the tax rate on reprocessing. This percentage of all refined minerals will be diverted to the specified hangar
• Reprocessing Output. This specifies which of the owning Corporation's office hangars the tax minerals will be diverted to.

There is also a button at the bottom of this screen marked Transfer Ownership. This allows you to seamlessly transfer the station to another Corporation in your Alliance.

Service Access Control

This allows you to specify who can and can't use the various services. For each service there are five options.

• Min Standing: this is the minimum derived standing required to use the service
• Min Character Security: this is the minimum corp-to-character (from the corp owning the station) standing required to use it
• Max Character Security: this is the maximum corp-to-character standing allowed to use it
• Min Corporation Security: this is the minimum corp-to-corp standing required to use it
• Max Corporation Security: this is the maximum corp-to-corp standing allowed to use it

To set a minimum threshold for access to a particular service, simply defining Min Standing at the threshold value is the easiest solution.

Cost Modifiers

This tab allows you to modify the costs of various services, including refining and docking, based on standings. Generally the standing used is corp-to-corp, but in the case of certain services such as refining, it's corp-to-character instead.

Clone Contracts

This tab lists all Corporations who have medical clones at the station. You can revoke all Clone Contracts belonging to members of that corp, or view all individuals who have a Clone Contract there and revoke them individually. This is standard practice when conquering a station. Note that it is not possible to remove jump clones installed at the station.

Offices

This tab lists all the office slots in your station, and for those being rented, the name of the renting corp, the rental period and amount they are being billed. Each slot has a Publically Available checkbox; when unticked, nobody can rent this slot. This allows you to reserve any number of slots you choose. If you untick a slot which is currently being rented, the renting corp will be ejected at the end of their billing cycle.