Revision 9

Building bases is a core part of growing your operation in SpaceCraft. Bases are how you establish a lasting presence on planets and turn raw worlds into productive industry.

Building Across the Universe

You build and expand your bases across the universe, transforming planetary outposts into fully automated resource hubs. A base begins as a foothold on a planet and grows as you add more to it, becoming a center of production rather than just a landing spot.

What Bases Do

Bases cover many aspects of running an industrial operation. According to the developer, base building spans:

From Manual to Automated

Early bases need your attention, but the goal is to optimize and automate every aspect of your bases. You establish production and delivery lines that run on their own, so a mature base operates as a self-sustaining resource hub. See Automation and Logistics for how delivery lines, drones, and cargo ships tie bases together.

Bases in the Bigger Picture

Bases anchor the rest of your activity. They process what you mine, supply parts for ship building, and produce goods you can trade. For an organized group, shared bases let a Corporation run interplanetary production at scale. See Mining and Resources, Crafting, and Corporations and Co-Op.

Storing Liquids on a Base

Bases store liquids in large cisterns, separate from the storage used for solid resources. All cisterns in a base are automatically connected so liquid flows between them as needed, and a Landing Pad handles transfer between a ship’s tanks and the base’s cisterns. Each cistern holds only one type of liquid. See Liquid Resources.

Automated Extraction

As you progress, some resources can be harvested automatically in player-built bases using extractors, rather than mined by hand each time. This is part of how an outpost matures into a self-running hub. See Automation and Logistics.

Bases Versus Stations

The bases on this page are the planetary outposts you build and own. They are distinct from the space stations owned by The Company, where you refine, trade, and upgrade ships. A Corporation can also own shared bases, currently capped at 12, on top of each member’s personal bases. See Space Stations and Corporations and Co-Op.

Footprint and Build Budget

Every base is limited by its Footprint, often shown as FP, a build budget that caps how much you can place at a single site. Each structure you add spends part of that budget, so expanding a base means weighing what you build against the footprint you have left. Because SpaceCraft is in Early Access, these values are actively tuned: a balancing update raised the default base Footprint to 60 FP and lowered the footprint cost of common structures, cutting Solar Panels to 4 FP each so that power infrastructure leaves more room for production. Community Update #1 on September 16, 2026 went further: the Warehouse footprint fell from 3 to 2, the Factory from 10 to 7, and the Drone Dispatcher no longer costs any footprint at all. Expect further adjustments as the developer continues to balance base building. See Updates and Patch Notes.

Powering a Base

Energy management is one of the pillars the developer names for base building, and it has its own set of buildings: solar panels, larger solar plants that care about sun orientation, a fuel-burning plant, and a transmitter that distributes what you generate. Because power infrastructure competes for the same footprint budget as production, the two have to be planned together. See Power and Energy.

Storage Buildings

Community Update #1 on September 16, 2026 added the Advanced Warehouse, unlocked at Tech Level 3. Against the Basic Warehouse it holds 5,000 SU rather than 2,000, supports 12 route drones rather than 5, links directly to the Workshop so crafting pulls what it needs on its own, and lets you set a maximum storage limit per item so a warehouse can be dedicated to a single material. A Basic Warehouse can be upgraded into an Advanced Warehouse in place, without dismantling it, and every storage interface gained Add All and Add All Existing buttons. The preview priced the building at 40 Stainless Plate, 12 Structural Beam, 40 Concrete and 3 Microchip and gave it a footprint of 3; the patch note restates neither figure, so check the build menu.

The same update added 300 SU of Personal Station Storage, shared across every station, and gave the Micro Furnace ten times its previous storage capacity. Every container is compared on Storage and Warehouses.

Other Base Changes in Community Update #1

The developer has also announced building colour customisation for the next Community Update, to help manage a base as it scales. No date has been given and it has not shipped. See Updates and Patch Notes.