Buildings

Buildings is the catalogue of structures available in Corsair Cove. The release build documents the full roster, sorted into community, housing, production, and principal structures. For the layout philosophy behind why every haven looks different, see Vertical Construction; for what runs through these buildings, see Goods and Production; for who works in them, see Crew and Population.

Building Categories

The release build sorts every structure into four categories. Community buildings form the core of the haven, housing buildings provide the beds every pirate needs, production buildings gather and refine goods, and principal buildings are the unlocked structures with powerful and varied effects.

Every building has to be placed within reach of a Pirate Camp, and its workers are housed and supplied by that camp. Goods can be carried in from anywhere on the island, but a pirate has to be fed from the Galley in their own camp. Buildings also need a connection to the haven before construction can start: roads, rope bridges, cliff paths, and ladders all count, and a structure that loses its connection stops working. Only a few buildings need no connection at all.

Most buildings need a set number of workers and will not run without them, because they cannot be partially staffed. Any building can be switched off at will, which frees its workers for other jobs and stops its draw on goods.

Community Buildings

These are the structures a haven cannot function without. Their input column lists the goods they consume per pirate they serve rather than a production recipe.

Housing

Housing is where the four progression paths first show up in the build menu. Tents are available from the start; every other dwelling is gated behind points in a specific path, and each path's cabins and houses are paid for in the goods that path's economy produces.

Principal Buildings

Principal buildings are the Compass unlocks with distinctive effects rather than a production recipe. Each one is tied to a path and a point threshold, and the tier 5 structures are the most expensive things a haven builds outside its fleet.

Production Buildings

Production buildings are staffed by Greenhands and grouped by what they feed: food, drink, materials, equipment, weapons, and ships. Output is expressed per minute at full efficiency. The table below covers the chains a haven meets early and the ones that gate ship tiers; see Goods and Production for how the chains connect.

Pillar-Linked Structures

Each of the four Progression Paths unlocks pillar-specific buildings. Two have been named in public coverage:

Empire, Seafaring, and Wealth almost certainly add their own named structures (shipyards on Seafaring, civic and political buildings on Empire, trade and counting-house structures on Wealth), but the specifics have not been disclosed in detail and are not listed here.

Confirmed Release-Build Details

A handful of specific building behaviours are documented for the release version.

Demolition refunds in full. Buildings cannot be moved once placed, but demolishing one returns its entire build cost. The catch is stock: if the building is not empty and its output has nowhere to go, those goods are lost, so empty a building before tearing it down.

Building Roles by Layer

Whatever a haven's shape, the same six jobs have to be covered somewhere in it.

Vertical Placement

Every confirmed building obeys the same placement rule: buildings can sit on cliffs, hilltops, slopes, and uneven coastline rather than only on flat ground. A workshop on a cliff can sit directly above the gatherers feeding it, and defensive towers on high ground command long firing arcs. Two havens built on different islands rarely look alike, and the early site choice sets the shape of every later expansion. See Vertical Construction for the infrastructure tying tiers together.

Workers, Fetchers, and Drain

Buildings that grow, produce, or assemble goods have a maximum production rate shown at the centre of the progress wheel on the building's panel. A Woodcutter tops out at 8 Hardwood per minute. If its inputs are scarce or have to travel a long way, it will fall short of that ceiling.

Everything a building makes goes into its own output storage, shown as a large resource icon with a meter. The rate at which goods leave that storage is called drain, and comparing drain against production is how the game shows whether a building is keeping up. Drain rises whenever a new fetcher is assigned to collect from it, so a producer that was comfortably ahead can fall behind simply because a second consumer was plugged into it. When drain outruns production on something essential, the answer is usually another copy of the building, placed where it shortens the route.

Fetchers are pirates who carry goods one way between two buildings, and every route needs its own fetcher. Input storage sits above the production display on the panel; clicking an input resource and then the producing building assigns the carrier. A building whose input storage runs dry stops, and if the fetcher is idling at a source that is not producing either, the link icon turns into a red hourglass to flag the break in the chain.

Route efficiency is drawn directly on the map, with high, medium, and low efficiency routes shown in green, yellow, and red by default. Clicking a link icon highlights that one route, which is the practical way to avoid disconnecting the wrong carrier in a dense haven. Fixing a red route by inserting a closer producer often does more for upkeep than adding capacity at the far end. See Vertical Construction for how terrain lengthens these routes.

How Buildings Unlock

New buildings arrive through the Compass. Unlocking a tier of ship opens a matching set of structures, listed on the Compass alongside it, and the buildings needed to sustain that ship's crew unlock automatically once the ship itself is built. The Marketplace, for instance, is required by Buccaneers but does not appear until the first tier 4 Prowler or Destroyer is laid down at a pier. See Ships for the tiers that drive this.

Unconfirmed Details

Most of what this page once listed as unknown is now published. What remains open:

• Adjacency or area-effect bonuses between neighbouring buildings, beyond the stated area of effect on guildhall-style structures.

• Construction time for each structure, as distinct from its goods cost.

• Whether any structure has an in-place upgrade path rather than being replaced by a larger building.

Modding Support

The Steam storefront lists Moddable as one of the official tags for Corsair Cove. The developer has not yet published the tooling scope or formal mod-API surface, and Moddable is a community-applied tag rather than an announced feature, so treat it as player expectation rather than a commitment. No mod tooling or workshop integration shipped with the 1.0 release, and the developer has not set out a timeline.