Star Citizen Base Building – What We Know & What We Dont
Cloud Imperium have talked a lot about Star Citizen’s Base Building and it’s evolution over the last few weeks… in fact it appears that Base Building and Homesteads have changed and expanded significantly, you can call this feature creep but it is something that genuinely excites me. We will discuss What We Know & What We Don’t about Base Building and you’ll get what I reckon and would like to see as well… so take those takes with a pinch of salt.
Base Building Originally was going to have the Pioneer as an outpost constructor.
There were going to be various types of outposts for various exploitation of resources on planets and for different functions for your base BUT it was basically the modular outposts that are currently in game with a bit more customization. It was reasonably basic.
There are Land Claims too which I actually assume have remained the same or similar mechanically.
In UEE systems and where there are Laws in place you will need a Land Claim.
Land Claim Gameplay has been discussed in some detail previously.
First you’ll want to find a piece of land that you want on an appropriate planet or moon, there are going to be restrictions so that you can’t block certain areas.
These claims were sold in 4×4 and 8x8km plots previously but you can have as many claims as you want I believe… tho there will be cost associated with them
Then you’ll need a land claim beacon, you’ll place it and then register your claim.
This area now belongs to you, it will be protected by UEE law and security “patrols”.
If someone tries to steal mineables on your plot OR damage your property they will get a crime stat and you’ll be able to also freely engage players on your property if they don’t leave. We don’t 100% if this will be a countdown LEAVE OR ELSE warning before you can attack them or not. Your land and base should be reasonably safe tho.
In lawless zones its expected that you can place your base or homestead anywhere… though it’s not afforded the same protections AND either hiding it OR defending it is how it will remain protected.
Cloud Imperium have said that Base Building Mechanics are going to be more sophisticated and expensive than previously planned.
During the Star Citizen 2020 Birthday there was a question asked to Chris Roberts
Can you elaborate on the current thinking on how base building is supposed to work?
We have some pretty exciting plans on the base building / player settlement front. One of the fall outs of iCache, which we’ve been working on for full persistence of state and location of all dynamic objects in the universe of Star Citizen, is that recording and restoring a building you’ve just constructed is really no different to remembering where you dropped your coffee cup on some distant planet, or which shelf you placed it on in your hab.
Basically, iCache will enable us to allow all of you to settle the stars!
When we first came up with the concept of player built outposts and land claims iCache hadn’t been technically designed, but now we have a system that will have a much higher degree of fidelity in remembering where each building or component is and what state it is in. So rather than just dropping down a singular Outpost, you’ll be able to place down various structures and connect them to things like power generators, turrets, resource collectors, hydroponic domes and so on.
In parallel with this we’ve been working on tools to build settlements or homestead both for our artists / designers (more of a RTS god like view) and players (a first person view).
With this we’ve been rethinking how the Pioneer will work to make her more flexible rather than just spitting out a pre-fabricated outpost we want her to me more of a mobile fabrication facility that would be near your building site. With a Pioneer you’ll be able build these structures without having to ship in the component parts as long as you have a supply of raw materials. You don’t need a Pioneer to build a homestead but if you want to build a decent settlement, or you want to build something relatively quickly as opposed to having to fly in prefabricated components from major landing zones you will want to have a Pioneer, or have a friend or someone that is willing to lend their services to you.
We’re very excited about the gameplay that all of this will provide and can’t wait to see what kind of player settlements sprout up over the huge amount of land area the game has. We will need iCache in and working well before we will see this in the game, so expect to see some updates on this later next year.
CI have also been building out New Homestead concepts and assets. We’ve seen these in ISC and the Subscriber Vault. At this stage they are looking at reasonably modular designs and choosing the shape and general look of the buildings.
I think you’ll agree that is a lot more than expected, it sounds like you’ll be able to build reasonably large functional bases and they will follow the same rules that ships do with needing power.
There is now a lot more for Potential Base Building Various Types of Functionality with Mining, Storage and even shopping or refining facilities.
The expectation is that you will be able to extract and process resources, farm and potentially even manufacture and craft with bases now (as they also mentioned they have big plans for that in the future).
Potential Gameplay
My ideal gameplay for PvP / Org War Mechanics and bases are that you’d have bases built in lawless areas to exploit wealth, mineables AND/OR as a supply outpost for your operation, it’s where you refuel rearm and repair or at least get the materials to be able to do that without travelling to a space station or a different star system.
This would then have Players hunting bases down and destroying them to dislodge an org or group in that area as then they can’t resupply as easily.
With Base Gameplay as well you need to have it so that you can’t destroy a base entirely from Orbit. You need to ground assault those to make it fun and balanced AND the type of defenses that the base along with the response of NPCs/Players will decide whether they win or lose.
Now are bases going to be fully destructible, capturable, deteriorate over time? We don’t know yet.
Bases also allow players to express themselves, they can be your home in game and some people will just want to make them look cool. I would expect to see a reasonable amount of customization, you’ll be able to move stuff around inside anyway but I would expect some of the “ship type” aftermarket customization to be there too though exactly what I don’t really know what’s viable yet… and this is partly because they are still building out the plans for the gameplay, it’s very early stages.
The scale of this is pretty interesting as an org with multiple 8x8km plots could take a sizable chunk of a moon.
I am interested to see what defenses we can get… as they need to be powerful.
What functionality will bases give, can we use them fully to repair & rearm as well as gather resources to be totally independent. We know there will be a good few types of placeable building… will there be a 3d printer type item OR a base building vehicle… well that makes sense actually.
We also know that they wanted to have a base location incredibly important and part of that land claim gameplay should be surveying the area to see what materials are under the ground AND finding the right location might take the most time (or cost the most money, if you are paying for the information). Exactly how surveyed information can be seen or sold remains to be answered.
So yeah, base building is sounding pretty cool BUT there is a lot to plan, develop and although iCache allows for this gameplay it’s going to probably be a couple of years at least before it’s in game imo… the Persistence of peoples bases is important and they really need SM and a fully persistent universe otherwise you could have bases on bases… and that would be strange if you see what I mean.
We should be hearing a lot about it next year BUT before that we may well get rentable or more persistent habs at Landing Zones, I love the idea of living in a nice suite at microTech or Orison above Crusader!