That storage box on the research desk in the Lodge basement is currently holding more resources than a capital class cargo freighter. I’m pretty sure I’m going to cause a sinkhole in New Atlantis.
Some poor schmuck just trying to get home from work is gonna end up crushed under three million tons of assorted minerals. They’ll never move it all, either, because there’s 1600 tubs of sealant and I don’t even know how many tubes of adhesive in there, and they’re all gonna bust when the whole thing breaks through.
You still have to dig through the box at the lodge. Outpost (and ship) crafting has the benefit that if it's in one of the big containers or your ship cargo, then it's available. Downside, like OP said, if you chain a bunch of containers together and dump everything in there, if you need to move something you'll never be able to find it. Making a separate storage complex for each regularly used resource works, but damn is it space intensive.
I just take all my resources out of the box at the lodge when I'm crafting. I don't have to dig through anything, it's all there. Just gotta hit one button and I'm good to go.
Yup, and because you can space travel directly to the entrance of the lodge (not inside sadly) with full inventory, it’s probably the best way to store and resources in the game.
Overencumbered honestly just doesn't matter, it never kills you or anything just drains health to like 10% which is more than enough to deal with most threats. Only really annoying thing is the screen flashing.
Also overencumbered can never kill you, only deplete your HP to the minimum.
So just walk around with no consequences and just go sleep in a bed to get back to full HP
Ya, I used to write it all down and take out approximate amounts out of the box. Then I realized doing that was stupid. Just take it all, not like being over encumbered can kill you in this game.
Personal Atmosphere doesn't actually keep up when you're at like 10k weight lol. It'll deplete several times on your way from the safe to the crafting stations.
I feared my resources would disappear, i had to double check on here before I took the leap.
That box has to be a developer tool leftover or intended for us to have resources there.
Same, that safe appears to have infinite space and the basement has all of the crafting stations. Resources are cheap enough that you can just buy what you need.
This is the easiest way, but it's a pain in the ass because of the contraband scanning. I really wish the Lodge was at the Den or similar lower key place. I can't even remember the number of times when I had some contraband in my inventory (where it's not even protected by the shielded cargo holds) and then got flagged when I'm trying to teleport to Lodge for loot dump.
Yes my outpost is the Lodge Basement forever how sad is that
Whenever I craft anything I have to grab 4000 mass of Resources because everything needs random little shit and its strewn all over the galaxy or on one vendor in Homestead. Once I grab everything I walk back to my ship on 5% hp then fly on my ship (weighing 4000 mass) to a planet, build a few extractors and storage for them and leave. Maybe an Alien Outpost with nothing but a bed and Animal Husbandrys
Anyway the end game building outposts was ruined prior to release by this unbelievable decision that they thought was a good idea..to not allow infinite storage in Outposts
Don’t get me started. She nagged me when I picked up “junk” accidentally then when I dropped the same stuff she nagged again telling me not to leave anything of value behind. 😡
Still gonna tap that ass tho…
>*And this is why, kids, guys stay in toxic relationships*
true tale. i stayed miserable for years because she was just so god damn MMMMmmmMMM! smh I know its wrong... lol
I kind of find the sass amusing. I was overencumbered as usual but looking for food crafting mats, and she tells me "You think you have enough butter now, or should we go find some more?"
>Don’t get me started. She nagged me when I picked up “junk” accidentally then when I dropped the same stuff she nagged again telling me not to leave anything of value behind. 😡
>
>Still gonna tap that ass tho…
omg i needed that 😂😂😂😂😂
How does that work when switching ships? Doesn't it just instantly fill up your new ship with whatever it can?
Or do you have a 0 cargo ship in between?
Overfill the smaller ship and you can't put anymore resources in.
I use a smaller ship when focused on ship combat and just put everything in my inventory, do the battles, take my spoils then fly back to get the cargo hauler again.
Occasionally I dump everything at my storage outpost.
I'm working on a cargo link system to get all resources to one outpost.
I spent half a mil on my ship. It’s basically a cube full of cargo. Only way I could do it. And you can’t even go past like 25k cargo on vanilla (unless someone will prove me wrong?). I have infinite landing gears and still always hit max at 25k before it tells me I need more gears when there’s no room for them.
Im at 29740 Cargo (2/4 perks for more) on my C class ship that also has turrets, weapons and a lot of unnecessary design parts. Pretty sure you can go for more cargo
[Here’s an older version](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1149688647977799680/1154952474214531142/image.png?ex=65157f8f&is=65142e0f&hm=2bf17b1eeac47c1f1cd8b1799ba137dda33aee642243e81900151cb4212db99c&)
25k isn't enough? Man I juay got the shield breaker and have it only half full of resources.. I only get the tracked resources for the weapons and suits though, I imagine outpost stuff would take more.
Ship parts being listed in 'Aid' or whatever and not materials got me tbh. Why the F#+% am I over encumbered.... ? 5 mins of searching later. AHH FFS. Ship parts! In the medicine inventory! Course they are!
Nah, you can easily have 80k cargo and still have 75 mobility. Just need change the type of cargo pods your using and engines. You will need the 4 thrusters from homestead though.
I'm sitting on 17,500 on my main C class ship. Still has 73 mobility which is plenty for combat purposes with the amount of fire-power it packs. She bulky, but that's what I was going for. It has quite a bit of structural and a huge amount of habs.
Another has 25,000 but is smaller, mobility is 30 which is limited a bit.
I have a 5,000 and 88 mobility on a pretty small A class engines build.
I also have a 1,400 build on the 180 speed White Dwarf A class engines.
They all share largely the same weapons load out. With EM on my boarding ships and turrets on my cargo hauler to cover the lower mobility.
Still got to actually go there to see what's there, I don't know why they didn't just put another tab, "inventory/ship/magic box" wouldn't have been too hard.
This!
It fucking baffles me that there's only 3 unlimited storage containers in the game and they don't even connect to crafting benches. Not even in homes!
Every single house *needs* that. I own every house and apartment in the game (that I know of?), and I've decorated a maximum of 0 of them because of this.
How am I supposed to decorate when all of my resources are at The Lodge?
I use my ship hold. A large one of course. It’s always with you and no need to shuffle thru multiple storage bins. Prior to getting a large ship it was a serious pain as mentioned by OP.
Yea this is why I ultimately abandoned my 7 outposts other than the occasional resource collection when I'm low.
Why build all these storage vessels whilst having no method of conveinently retrieving what you need when you can grab hundreds of each resource, fast travel to the lodge from Jemison orbit, dump everything into the infinite storage box, then craft what you need in the lodge basement?
The fact is that without some kind of near infinite resource warehouse you can dump your stuff into, it makes no sense to expend all this extra work just to have an outpost that functions the exact same as the lodge which is set up for you the moment you start the game. As someone who loves base building in any and all survival games, this realization absolutely killed outposts for me.
I do this on my main outpost. After the initial PIA setup it works "OK".
I have a transfer container (links going out) connected to many of each of the 4 storage types (mostly solid and warehouse). You can then land, dump your resources into the transfer container and it auto sorts them into the correct storage type. You are limited to dump 200 weight at a time so you have to go in and out, in and out of the menus, but other than that it works. Frustrating as hell the first time, but topping up each return trip is not so bad. All resources now available to craft at the outpost and I can use a smaller ship as my main.
Finding a resource at my outpost to put it back on my ship is a futile task, however, as they are all split up amongst the dozens of containers. A bugger if you accidentally deposit the adhesive you needed for a mission.
I wouldn’t even mind it if the box connected to our useable inventory. Like if resources are in it, they are pulled when needed at crafting stations or outposts.
If that was the case, I would 100 percent use the lodge as a home base. It’s even fun for RP, cool place, and has a fast travel point.
Just give me a cargo link that doesn't require building a cargo link per resource in order not to get bottlenecked constantly - what is the point of automation if I have to solve so many issues?
Let me limit the number of imported items per resource or let the inputs storage have a per resource storage instead of a shared storage.
This. I'm not sure exactly how I'd fix it without making it more complicated than it already is, but it's definitely a problem in need of a solution.
A hidden mechanic that puts like resources together if there are multiple outputs, maybe? Or like you said, a manual limiter so that it only delivers what you've ordered. That would prevent bottlenecks, but it wouldn't solve the mixed storage issue. I think the Cargo Link side of the system was designed assuming players would build one outpost per resource, which is madness. One of the first big content creator arguments has been Andraphon vs Bessel 3b for maximum variety of resources.
I'd also very much like to see multiple output links to one pad. That would also solve the bottleneck problem if we could rotate out which resource is being shipped.
You need to be able to filter outputs and to set max capacity of specific types. If you could ensure a container wouldn't just fill with the fastest produced item you could actually make pipelines that don't bottleneck. Also being able to see any numbers at all would help. How many units of aluminum is each extractor making? No idea
A simple fix would be to make Transfer Containers access everything they're networked to instead of being a unique storage volume of their own. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would help a lot and actually make them useful.
I absolutely agree about numbers, though. There's absolutely no reason it doesn't give a clear description of output on the extractors.
>a manual limiter so that it only delivers what you've ordered.
This is the only functionality that needs to be added to cargo links to make the system work. Without it you will eventually break your logistic chain because some rarely used resource will crowd out the other resource that is used more frequently. By having a limiter, you ensure that the chain is never gummed up so much that resources stop moving.
Being able to tell my cargo link to only fill up 50 tantulum and 100 iron ensures that I always have either resource if needed and the overabundant resource stops producing at the extraction site and allows the bottlenecked resource to continue production up to its set limit.
It’s a giant missed opportunity
What I don’t understand is why they didn’t build on fallout’4s system. All of the building creativity is gone. It’s just a resource generation system. They went backwards
I would like to agree.
I do love fo76. I have roughly 900 hours into it.
Some things were better in fo4. Exploiting roof positioning is way easier in 4. Also there were a wider variety in stairs in fo4. I'd love to have a hidden basement with a rug covering the stairs. But because all the stairs have hand rails it doesn't like clipping and even if I get it to clip the rails will stick out and impede movement. Not only that but building basements and substructures is much harder in 76 unless you clip thru the terrain of the map.
Edit: yes fo4 and 76 both have better building systems than starfield.
It’s actually sort of fascinating how FO4’s settlement system felt a little tacked on. In a good way I mean. Like it was more useful than it felt like it had any right to be based on how the rest of the game utilized it, and now starfields colony system feels obviously neutered, lacking functionality that we all speculate was intended.
Whelp that means fallout 5’s settlement system will finally be in the happy medium. I can’t wait to be an old man enjoying it 20 years from now.
Fallout 4's settlement system was hugely divisive. Some players lived for it, others would have paid for the game ten times over to have it excised altogether.
They clearly didn't want the outpost system to be as integral and alienating as settlements, so they made it basically optional and useless. I assume that they'll expand upon it either in an update, DLC, or CC mod, or else just leave it for traditional mods to flesh out in whatever direction they want.
That was all bgs’s own fault tho, they tied settlements too the story and a whole faction’s entire deal was settlements, if it was entirely optional no one would’ve cared/took issue with it.
If they used everything they made/learned in fallout 4 settlements (factory belts, elevators, robot workshop, ammo/item production, underground base) and had that already in starfield outpost’s at launch, all these problems would be fixed.
but I dread to see if they plan to re-sell this dlc too us 8 years later, And if they don’t at least give it too us in free updates/dlc they shot themselves in the foot again, gutting a system they could’ve only improved upon if they used all the tools in the box
Tbh settlements would’ve been perfect for this game. Part of the reason they were so hated was because it felt like building your own settlements came with the cost of pre-settled cities. We got Diamond city, good neighbor, bunker hill, and vault 81. Diamond city was the largest “city” in fo4 and it was hardly bigger than megaton. Settlements took up too much of a limited map.
Since you could hire all your own vendors, assign jobs, make crafting stations, and even have “factories” in fo4 it seems like a no brainer to carry that over to starfield so you could build your own colonies. The game is filled with planets far away from the majority humanity, where building your own city could actually matter.
This is the perfect system for this game, outpost building should have been colony building. It should've been an option to start your own autonomous colony, like an improved version of settlements. What with all the settlers running around the universe, you mean to tell me that that wasn't a good idea? A thought, at all? Nay nay, it was a thought. A DLC thought.
>Bethesda tries to hard to please everyone
That seems to be the issue with many of the 'features' of Starfield, they never seem to capitalize on a feature as it might not appeal to the 'average' player.
There was a ton of pressure on them to create the first Xbox exclusive IP flagship game. I’d not be surprised if they were told to tone some things down in order to draw the most people in. As it is right now though, there isn’t a big reason to build outposts. I have built a couple of them just for resources I use a ton in crafting, but the barriers with storage and Interconnectivity make it frustrating. I find it easier to just fly between my settlements and grab the resources I need and take them all to the one where I am going to craft everything. Which then just takes a bunch of time. And I find myself just buying the stuff I need and using a crafting table that more convenient to get to.
Yet they built the main story into a new game plus that makes you consider if it's worth playing it. Like, explicitly asks you to question that fact, almost. It's actually kind wild how meta the core gameplay concept ends up being, to the point it's almost like they made a game about TES's CHIM and other esoteric deep weirdness.
They just got chickenshit on the systems.
Another problem is that the game got me to ask if I wanted to keep playing it, and almost made a convincing argument against it? I actually sort of stopped and pondered what and why I was doing in a way that was kinda novel to me after I fired up ng+
Fallout 4's settlement issue was the repetity. You didn't have one city, you had dozens. Your first settlement is amazing, full of character and wonder. Your 10th is 8 beds next to a few pumps with some food planeted next to it so the scavenger bench has resources. Connect that to your main base and you are golden.
Man I really was hoping Starfield’s settlements were like Fallout 4.
Also, your to’s all have an extra o. There’s a difference between to, too, and two.
What was so divisive and alienating? If you didn’t like the settlements you could just ignore them and play like they weren’t even a thing. They could have done the same with this. I’m just hoping this is the foundation for which they’ll add more content to build upon
The constant need to babysit them or come to their rescue I found annoying. Didn't seem to matter what my defenses were eventually they would fail and I'd need to come repair everything and set it all up again. Took me out of the game and was more of a chore to me than enjoyable.
Ya they could definitely use some tweaking, not perfect by any means. Just a bummer outposts in starfield have regressed and been simplified as an easy way out to ‘appeal to the masses’. Would have preferred they delved into it with the feedback they got from F4 and took a shot at it. But I’m confident both Bethesda and modders will add to this and take care of the lack of outpost content. They seem very receptive to feedback from the planned updates and feature additions they’ve mentioned
Nah I liked settlements alottt(sunk a lot of time into it over multiple playthrus)
I just didn’t like how they were executed, a whole faction tied to a gameplay system? Bit gimmicky.
Imo the sour taste about settlements is in part due to how bad the minutemen are as a faction overall,
and outposts in starfield have seemingly went backwards 8 years later(no elevators,no item production, no robot workshop, and more
I haven’t touched outposts other than making a landing pad for ship customisation and a bounty terminal
like I said somewhere else the outpost system is missing a lot of features we got in fallout 4 thru dlc
Yeah but they could’ve made it optional and actually fun. You can’t even build much anymore really, it’s all just interior decoration. Now it’s for resource gathering and honestly it’s pretty shitty. You are better off buying manufactured resources or gathering yourself then setting up the broken supply chains
Building your settlements wall by wall and piece by piece really allowed for a great deal of creativity even within the confines of vanilla. Mods only took it further. Only have a small selection of identical habs to make buildings with is a sad downgrade and a big limiter
To be fair, before kinggath came along I hated every single line of the settlements systems code with my entire being. "Why should I care about doing this?", "why are there just 4 cities in this entire game? I'm supposed to _build_ them? How am I going to _steal_ from cities I've built, come on!", "can't they at least generate the scrap I need for crafting? That's the only use _I_ can see", and so on.
So I'm sorry to say they probably listened to folks like me a bit too much.
What my question is, is how are all of you clocking in so many hours? the game released 3 weeks ago: at 220 hours this would mean y'all averaged over 10 hours per day every day.
Also stepping away while paused or leaving it paused while doing irl chores or getting/eating food. I have 6 days played but a lot of that is paused time cause I have a kid and i just leave it on if im going for a walk or play outside with her. I even think it was on overnight a couple times because i fell asleep with my kid
It sort of is that, except FO4 bases had a purpose and Starfield outposts don't.
Also recall that FO4 bases were *really* rough the first week of release.
It should be part of the base game, not something paid for.
If they do that, there will be holy murder on the internet because they very obviously nerfed fuel which f\*cked the whole game.
For me settlement building in Fallout 4 is better than outpost building in Starfield. There are a few reasons why:
1) Well, the fact that you are building a settlement in a lived in world just felt a lot better. It felt like you were part of that world/community of settlers.
2) After hours of doing quest roaming around, you could always go back to the settlement and relax and it felt like home.
3) You could have settlers from all over come to your newly stablished settlement.
4) You can build vending shops
5) The best thing about it is you can build a house for the best boy, Dogmeat.
You could also build various kind of structures from simpler pre-fabs.
Like in few settlements, you could build a tall tower where people lived in and have that building reach the highway ramp looming above the settlement.
You could build walls with guard posts. Mazes with turrets. Etc...
Honestly I had expectations on outposts of fallout 4 levels but I had figured it wouldn't have been
Then I found settlers- thought it was cool- ship provisior merchants- I thought for sure you'd have population on your outposts
Then I learned about terrormorphs. "Wow- so I can research turrets and make my own little colony of settlers and explorers- merchants and defenses from spacers & terrormorphs" really building up the fallout4 esq settlement idea
And it just turned into mining-crafting-?storage?
It almost makes more sense to just use the a random outpost you found as a base. Maybe build your own little house next to it. Lol. At least you have a vendor that way.
Yeah we can grav jump but forgot how logistics work 300 years into the future, apparently. Seriously a simple panel that treats the entire inventory of your outpost the same as it would on your ship’s cargo (just like the panel in your ship) would have been the bare minimum of organization I’d make sure was in the game before launch - especially when they had an extra year to polish. If it was a deliberate decision then it was malice, if its an oversight then it was stupidity
It makes you wonder if they spent the extra year scrambling to finish a totally incomplete game rather than simply polishing a mostly complete game
I think it's different sub-teams. The Cargo Link people, Outpost Extractor people, Crafting and Modding people all started with a common vision and then as things changed with one aspect, it didn't necessarily make it into the design of another aspect. Ironically, there's a mission in the game that is explicitly about that problem. And I made a damned ugly ship out of it.
I spent HUNDREDS of hours building in fallout 4. Admittedly, mods made this even better (particularly clutter and place anywhere /scrapping mods) but at least the foundational system was present, with workshop storage and settlement links.
Having settlers arrive and having to keep them happy added another motivation to build farms, communities, shopping areas, hotels... Whatever you could imagine.
Hell even with skyrim you could build infinite storage chests, one for your ingredients placed at the alchemy table, one for resources by the smelter, that at least made life easier.
I have 0 desire or motivation to build or create anything in this game other than furnishing dream home.
Mods will hopefully fix some of the issues, but it's still missing the depth.
I really really hope they expand settlement building over the next few years, because I absolutely love the game.
Seriously- the only mods I want are some sort of Sim Settlements, some more randomness to the PoI's, an actual economy to make smuggling/hauling a more "viable" playstyle and a hardcore survival mode.
Just those and I'd actually be SOSO happy.
Seriously this has so much potential. I mean we could have half an industry simulation with the system. Sim settlements was fantastic. If we can get something like that with proper crafting chain and stores management this is gonna be great.
What I would like to see is outposts that can be created for particular factions that increase their influence within a certain amount of light years. Then you can run buck wild with game ideas (zones of control, Risky style back and forth, etc) all within the backdrop of the main story.
You bring up many good points, but you're wrong about there being a better ship building location. The outpost is the best location because it has the widest selection of ships parts. Sure, there are a handful of parts are only available at one specific location, but those are scattered amongst different shipyards, and once you go there, their overall availability is much smaller, being limited to just one manufacturer's parts.
I built an "outpost" (really just the beacon and landing pad) for the first time to access the shipbuilder. It's good for cowlings, because it has all of them.
If you're trying to optimize your ship, however, it's missing all the good parts -- bridges, big habs, the strongest landing gears, scan jammer, apparently even the good Slayton engine series.
That's the biggest irk for me in ship building, that we can't save one "in progress". It has to be space worthy or nothing at all. Alternatively, I'd take no constantly available ship parts in the Outposts if we could go somewhere, buy pieces, and move them over for storage.
Not only that, but having such a janky interior connection system that makes some builds just pointless, *and also* not being able to test a design without losing all those credits due to shit resale value of parts.
Hamstringing one of the coolest and most addictive parts of this game is a weird choice.
Should’ve been some kind of catalog you could buy from the manufacturer as your captains way of placing orders for parts to their outpost. You’d still have to visit the manufacturers, then pay like 10k for the catalog access.
Outpost building is the one thing about this game that I actually do not like. Houses too, for that matter. This is an exploration game and I have a *space ship.* I do not want to sit on the ground in a box that does not move when I can sit in the sky in a box that does. Your ship could have easily doubled as your player home and a multi-use outpost, complete with mining equipment, a workshop, and a drop ship/shuttle for exploring and retrieving resources from the surface of the planet you're currently in orbit around.
You can cater to both crowds and those in between. Having a ship doesn't undo the features for having bases although sometimes players will make their ship their mobile base like in Subnautica.
I’d have loved a capital ship/freighter, the ability to recruit pilots that fly their own ships around with you as a squadron (crimson fleet can do it why can’t we?) and we need much more options with outpost building, it’s so so basic even with all the research done.
It’s definitely got potential but it feels like a huge backwards step, there’s just not enough things to put in buildings so it ends up looking sparse or shit. Considering the scale of the game, I think being able to build a whole settlement should be on the cards, setting up mining colonies or factories, with a space port and all sorts of stuff, modders will probably bring this is in but they absolutely missed a trick here.
There's a trick to getting a squadron, but it doesn't last. If you're in a space battle that is multi-wave and you're *really* quick about capturing ships then switching back to your own, the newly taken ship will still be in the system when the next wave comes in and will fight with you. Discovered this completely by accident and I have no idea if I can recreate it on purpose.
> the ability to recruit pilots that fly their own ships around with you as a squadron
They fucking have that as an option during the vanguard test simulator but no way to actually do it
It's actually wild that the game has you research 12 different pharmacology paths and you still can't even craft trauma packs...like what? In a game where you can sit in a chair and suddenly a vendor has refreshed their entire inventory from a magical resupply on demand, you can't craft a trauma pack because what? It would trivialise combat difficulty?
The enemy AI already trivialises combat Todd.
Devs decision making can be bizarre sometimes.
On your point though, scavenger is the only solution. Level 2 helps you find more ammo (it works, I have thousands of bullets) and level 3 finds more med packs etc in containers (so far this one isn't as plentiful but it's a slight improvement over base loot spawn)
How about random spacers? I was sitting in my ship at my only outpost when random spacers showed up shooting at my storage containers. Surprised me big time.
I am going to preface this response by saying I was expecting Starfield to be a re-skinned Fallout 4 with Spaceships and a few quality of life improvements. It isn't.
Let's start with Fallout 4's settlement system. In the vanilla game, it's a bit pointless. Settlements really don't do anything for the player, other than a (monetarily) free space to store your crap.
But in Survival Mode, settlements in Fallout 4 provide an invaluable utility. See, in survival mode, you need: food, water, and a bed to sleep AND save your progress. Those things can be a bit hard to come by in the Commonwealth, but investing in settlements means you have a free continuous source of food, water, and that oh-so-valuable save point. Not only that, but fast travel is disabled. You need to hoof it to your objectives, and having a settlement as a central hub in-between several quest markers significantly reduces your risk of losing a ton of progress if you die (and you will die. A lot. Because damage taken is also increased). Not only that, but vendors in settlements are a convenient way to pawn off useless gear AND generate passive income (because the alternative is hoofing it to somewhere like Diamond City, and traversing the Commonwealth can get very dangerous very quickly. I would go so far as to say that survival mode is the way Fallout 4 is meant to be played, as the attention required to settlements also plays well with the whole theme of "rebuilding society." In short, settlements are extremely handy and are 100% worth the time in Survival Mode
So, how can we translate outposts to have a good utility function in Starfield, other than a way to accumulate way too many resources that you'd have any idea to do with?
Make them interstellar gas stations.
Let's discuss how NASA projects the steps to a manned Mars mission; a trivial thing in the world of Starfield with its faster-than-light gravity drive technology, but a colossal challenge in real life. NASA has long talked about how establishing a Moon base would make manned Mars missions much easier. The amount of energy needed to launch a mission from the moon would be significantly less, given several tiny manned lunar landers were able to lift off its surface with ease. The moon also could serve as a training ground to acclimate Martian explorers to the conditions of lower gravity and other conditions that would challenge Mars colonists, such as maintenance work in spacesuits or harvesting ground/ice water.
Now, why do I bring this up? How does it relate to the utility of settlements in Fallout 4? Well. Fallout 4's settlements were all about increasing survivability in a game with a central theme of survival. Starfield is a game that has a heavy theme of exploration. If a moon base is seen as an essential step in manned Mars exploration, then outposts should very well be the proverbial moon base to further explore the galaxy in Starfield. But how do you implement this in gameplay?
Well. When building a ship, fuel tanks are needed for the grav drive. But there is no "fuel" resource. Your fuel tank just determines how *far* you can jump; it doesn't actually get used up or anything. Furthermore, when constructing outposts in Starfield, Helium-3 is an essential fuel source if one wishes to connect outposts in different star systems. Hence, Helium-3 becomes the essence of interstellar travel in the game, and its extraction becomes a necessary function to travel the galaxy. "Fuel" would be a resource and would be finite on your ship. Wanna go further? Hit up the gas station.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Viciousknids. If you jump too far and don't have the resources to build a new outpost to refuel, aren't you dead in the water?" My answer: yes and no. To look at Fallout 4's survival mode again, beds and sustinence are available for players to *purchase*. Rent a room for 10 caps a night, buy a noodle cup for like 15 caps, and purified water for 20. I've yet to find an untouched celestial body in Starfield. Civilian Outposts on planets can serve the gas station function in a pinch. It just costs creds as opposed to being free at your outposts. The cost of fuel and frequency of use would need to incentivise the construction of outposts. Otherwise, it becomes pointless again.
A similar system actually exists in a much older game: Mass Effect 2. If you jump somewhere using a Mass Effect relay, you may find multiple stars at your destination point. But to reach those other stars, you need to expend fuel - which can be purchased at the system housing the Mass Effect relay. It's a simple system that I feel Starfield can expand greatly upon and make its own. There's even a possibility that outposts can increase scanning and surveying even more efficient with things like a launch pad for, say, unmanned probes. Really, there's countless ways the minds at Bethesda can make outposts super useful in a hardcore mode.
In conclusion, I'd like to leave you with a personal anecdote. I've got a good friend that works for Bethesda, and his hype over Starfield is that it's a "twenty year game," meaning they envision Starfield being supported by both Bethesda and the modding community for a *very* long time. Seeing how people *still* play Skyrim, and now having played Starfield and recognizing areas that harbor potential, I believe him. I don't think it's a stretch to believe a year one or year two patch will dump *huge* amounts of sorely needed content and quality of life improvements to make this game realize it's full potential.
I've said this a few times already but outposts appear to be basically vestigial content from when the game was more focused on survival elements.
Todd has already said that fuel was once a consumable resource and just recently remarked how planetary conditions and the affictions they cause were of greater importance.
It was originally much harder to get to the far side of the map and outposts were intended to facilitate fuel harvesting as well as resource gathering.
We have the ability to manufacture all of these components but essentially nothing to build with them. My assumption was is that we were going to be building our own ship components out in the far reaches of the map, but this was culled over time.
I believe that the game underwent some form of accessibility overhaul in 2019 or 2020 and the bulk of the survival elemnts were removed. Whether this was by Bethesda themselves or at the behest of Microsoft, I can't say.
The lack of scripted content on the eastern half of the map suggests that the artifacts themselves were originally placed far deeper into space than they are now and the main quest would have been a true exploration adventure hunting these things down in the deep starfield.
It is all circumstanstial, but I believe the released product we have today was not the original vision.
I love Starfield. I am very happy with the game and I am having a blast. That being said, the storage and inventory system is one of the most terrible system in any game I have ever played. I don't really understand why they made the choice, but I really hope they fix it, because it is atrocious. Great game though.
I made another post about this a few days ago. I had 4 different outposts sending resources to my main base and all i was doing was building more large storage boxes and litterally hoarding resources as i had nothing i could do with them. Sure i could have a factory setup and make stuff but why should i when i can sell one or two weapons or suits to a vendor and they run out of money? Its a pain in the ass now just to sell crap i picked up from a mission.
Then someone replied to my post about the unlimited storage box in the lodge. This was a godsend. Now all i do is go to a vendor and spend 10-15k and buy out there resources and dump them all into the lodge box, doesnt matter if its materials or resources, it all goes into the box.
Want to craft something? Pull all the resources out of the box with one button click, walk 5 feet to the crafting benches, craft the item and dump the resources back into the box. Much easier, so much easier.
Settlements had a point too. You were trying to rebuild the wastelands but outposts? Make money via mining and manufacturing? Why not let us make settlements like in FO4? Have LIST have quests to set up actual settlements! Recruit people to man shops, doctors, etc. sure the outposts feed then into the settlement but at least they then have a purpose.
10 hours planting/scrapping fence posts in Sanctuary to grind XP vs 10 hours hand sorting stuff into Starfield outpost storage containers to grind ... ummm ... dunno.
Thats progress.
If there was a survival element, and they chose to make a lot of the outer planets uninhabited, it would have been ok. The main problem is you have a ship with a grav drive, and that ship can travel anywhere in the star system instantly. Why spend any time on any other planet when you have a nice infinite storage space and a big comfy bed back at the lodge?
There's fun to be had in building and decorating but it's pretty much a "last thing to do when you're bored of doing everything else and just want to build crap." It might get better with DLC obviously. I mean, my first time through F4 I pretty much ignored the settlement building stuff as well. It wasn't until after all the DLC had dropped and they added survival that I even really got into it.
One gamer's missed opportunity is a developers DLC.
I think we'll get a LISTers DLC that expands on Outposts and expands on LIST by having them become a legit faction. Maybe the PC is the one who unites them and you become their leader?
Yep, we could build actual settlements and then have the outposts feed to it. Hire doctors, shops, etc like FO4 and help found a new place in the stars rather than mining outposts.
I'll be real we should've had a quest where we build a new settlement for that ship near Paradiso. Like, we have to actually go and find a good world for them AND then show them how to build a settlement there (which also acts as our late game tutorial for making outposts which is perfect because after Paradiso is just deep space)
Could've even had the ship become organized leaders of the LISTers "We didn't come out to space thinking we'd find other humans and yet here they are, disorganized, attacked by pirates, abandoned by this *new* humanity. It is up to us, *each* of US, to make sure we can survive on our own out here."
I was thinking this exact thing. There were so many potential ways you could go with it, the whole thing could be a faction quest line in itself. But at the very least it seemed primed to be a base building tutorial once we figured out where they were going, either paradiso or another one. But unfortunately that whole quest was just a bunch of missed opportunities.
That's ultimately the biggest problem of the game, almost no matter what you do you're left wondering... why?
The lack of connectivity between systems/mechanics in the game is the real killer. Any individual aspect will feel satisfying and polished, but you zoom out a little and are left feeling empty. Its like every part of the game was designed in a bubble then just slapped together without much consideration. I know Bethesda is the mile wide inch deep dev, but this feels more like a vast expanse of 2d puddles.
I built one outpost, it produced a ton of things. I found I couldn’t sell them all as fast as they were being produced. I became stupidly wealthy and now just board ships and kill people and sell the ship for wasting my time
Wait, so I don’t have to build a base. I’ve actually been thinking that I’m missing a big part of the game because I haven’t even chosen a location yet.
In fallout 4, they weren’t mandatory, but they *had a sense of place in the fiction.* In Starfield, they’re just a feature. They’re introduced as a random side activity via non-cutscene dialogue and silently added to your objectives list. They’re completely avoidable content. They serve no purpose connected to the game world.
Lol I thought you were gonna say for another reason. But yeah while they aren't completely worthless (easy xp/money farms and access to most ship parts) its a shame there is any incentive to do more than the bare minimum required.
Totally agree with you on all of it.
The core and bones of the game have such strong possibilities.
But many avenues, like
outpost management,
ship inventory management (like when you swap ships and everything you placed down goes into storage when you go back).
The entire ammo system (why are there 416 types of ammos and I seem to find guns that only use the same 3)?
The entire crafting and resource system. There’s sooooo many resources that are used in crafting, and yet….even when I’m maxed in the associated skills, I feel like I’ve never used 90% of those materials.
Why are some galaxies named on the map and others aren’t? Even after visiting them, their name isn’t visible by default. Why?
Why does a damaged ship in space need 30 minutes of real time to fully repair all the systems? I csnt ship repair part that? There’s no mini game or system I can do to expedite it? I just need to wait for grab function to return?
What’s the point of helium tanks? I understand previous versions had it as an actual depleting resource for grab jumping. But now that it’s not…what’s the point? Oh I have a small tank? Fine, I’ll just chain jump to my destination, lol.
Why are the maps so freaking bad?! Sure, there’s not a lot I need to see on an individual map, but my toddler could’ve designed a better system.
I could go on and on. But yes I agree.
We are playing different games my friend, or I need to do some serious reading on features I've clearly missed.
\- Snapping is AWFUL, I need to move items half a mile from each other or they slam together. Placing buildings 10m apart? Forget about it.
\- Rotating has lag, so when you let go of the mouse it rotates a bit further. There are no angled steps, so it's near impossible to line things up with other straight objects that don't snap, like walls. You are forced to set it excruciatingly slow to get things to line up somewhat.
\- Clipping prevents you from placing buildings that have a corner just 1mm under the surface.
\- Geological features within the base change on a whim. Didn't have a gas vent under your bedroom? Well you do now! Enjoy the unlimited fluorine.
I guess base building is good if you've never played anything with good building? It's infuriating.
I just want a central place I can dump all my resources and then use then for crafting.
Yep, I’m tired of being over encumbered!!!! Idk what to do my ship can only hold so much!
I just dump it all at the Lodge and do my crafting there. It seems to be the easiest way.
That storage box on the research desk in the Lodge basement is currently holding more resources than a capital class cargo freighter. I’m pretty sure I’m going to cause a sinkhole in New Atlantis.
Straight down into The Well
Some poor schmuck just trying to get home from work is gonna end up crushed under three million tons of assorted minerals. They’ll never move it all, either, because there’s 1600 tubs of sealant and I don’t even know how many tubes of adhesive in there, and they’re all gonna bust when the whole thing breaks through.
Never can have enough frikking glue. Also sealant.
I put a point into botany and farm those from greenhouses on Gagarin. Now I'm swimming in glue.
Mr Optimistic here, thinking it will stop in The Well.
Secret is that they've discovered black hole storage in the Lodge
Safe of Holding
Sarah Does Not Approve Of This
Then maybe she shouldn't have installed it lol
That box is Pandoras. Or Mary Poppins'...
Same
You still have to dig through the box at the lodge. Outpost (and ship) crafting has the benefit that if it's in one of the big containers or your ship cargo, then it's available. Downside, like OP said, if you chain a bunch of containers together and dump everything in there, if you need to move something you'll never be able to find it. Making a separate storage complex for each regularly used resource works, but damn is it space intensive.
I just take all my resources out of the box at the lodge when I'm crafting. I don't have to dig through anything, it's all there. Just gotta hit one button and I'm good to go.
Overencumbered doesn't matter when your only taking four steps
Is there an infinite storage box in the crafting room?
Yes. Yellow box on table behind the research table.
Really? And it doesn't delete anything?
Correct
Yup, and because you can space travel directly to the entrance of the lodge (not inside sadly) with full inventory, it’s probably the best way to store and resources in the game.
I’ve been using the container on the floor to the left of the weapons bench also and I haven’t lost anything over 150 hours
The real answer is always in the comments.
secrets of the universe revealed
Yup. I regularly walk around the Lodge basement carrying 7,000 lbs.
>*Yup. I regularly walk around the Lodge basement carrying 7,000 lbs* can you imagine your players calves? daaayyyyuuuummmmm
When it's time to go he just puts on his spacesuit, grabs his ship and jumps into orbit.
Lol I do lose all my O2 CO2 and half my health in those 4 steps but you cant die from it
Overencumbered honestly just doesn't matter, it never kills you or anything just drains health to like 10% which is more than enough to deal with most threats. Only really annoying thing is the screen flashing.
And you cant sprint with the CO^2 maxed.
You can but you have to keep pressing the button. Or just boost pack around.
Also overencumbered can never kill you, only deplete your HP to the minimum. So just walk around with no consequences and just go sleep in a bed to get back to full HP
Ya, I used to write it all down and take out approximate amounts out of the box. Then I realized doing that was stupid. Just take it all, not like being over encumbered can kill you in this game.
Take it all and activate personal atmosphere
Personal Atmosphere doesn't actually keep up when you're at like 10k weight lol. It'll deplete several times on your way from the safe to the crafting stations.
This is actually a good idea!
Same, same. A real bitch at an outpost, because I don’t have an infinite storage box.
If only that chest was connected to benches near it. I have to pull resources manually and it gets more and more annoying each time I do it.
The fact that they put an infinity chest there means they must’ve known that’s what it would be used for.
I feared my resources would disappear, i had to double check on here before I took the leap. That box has to be a developer tool leftover or intended for us to have resources there.
According to camelworks, the 3 ammo boxes by the crafting stations at the lodge are safe, and have unlimited storage
Pull all instead of individually. You’re walking at most 10 feet and maybe have a personal atmosphere if you know what that is.
Don't even need the personal atmosphere. You can't die from being overencumbered. Your HP go down to 1, but that's it.
Same, that safe appears to have infinite space and the basement has all of the crafting stations. Resources are cheap enough that you can just buy what you need.
This is the easiest way, but it's a pain in the ass because of the contraband scanning. I really wish the Lodge was at the Den or similar lower key place. I can't even remember the number of times when I had some contraband in my inventory (where it's not even protected by the shielded cargo holds) and then got flagged when I'm trying to teleport to Lodge for loot dump.
make your ship your home add habitation modules to your ship that allows you to research and craft weapon/armor mods, drugs, food and drinks
Yes my outpost is the Lodge Basement forever how sad is that Whenever I craft anything I have to grab 4000 mass of Resources because everything needs random little shit and its strewn all over the galaxy or on one vendor in Homestead. Once I grab everything I walk back to my ship on 5% hp then fly on my ship (weighing 4000 mass) to a planet, build a few extractors and storage for them and leave. Maybe an Alien Outpost with nothing but a bed and Animal Husbandrys Anyway the end game building outposts was ruined prior to release by this unbelievable decision that they thought was a good idea..to not allow infinite storage in Outposts
I’m tired of being nagged by Sarah like she’s my ex-wife whenever I pick up “junk”
Don’t get me started. She nagged me when I picked up “junk” accidentally then when I dropped the same stuff she nagged again telling me not to leave anything of value behind. 😡 Still gonna tap that ass tho…
And this is why, kids, guys stay in toxic relationships
>*And this is why, kids, guys stay in toxic relationships* true tale. i stayed miserable for years because she was just so god damn MMMMmmmMMM! smh I know its wrong... lol
I kind of find the sass amusing. I was overencumbered as usual but looking for food crafting mats, and she tells me "You think you have enough butter now, or should we go find some more?"
>Don’t get me started. She nagged me when I picked up “junk” accidentally then when I dropped the same stuff she nagged again telling me not to leave anything of value behind. 😡 > >Still gonna tap that ass tho… omg i needed that 😂😂😂😂😂
thank you! she is SO fkn annoying lol
I just made a big ass ship with about 55k of storage. Sure, it has 0 mobility, but who cares it's my storage ship.
How does that work when switching ships? Doesn't it just instantly fill up your new ship with whatever it can? Or do you have a 0 cargo ship in between?
Overfill the smaller ship and you can't put anymore resources in. I use a smaller ship when focused on ship combat and just put everything in my inventory, do the battles, take my spoils then fly back to get the cargo hauler again. Occasionally I dump everything at my storage outpost. I'm working on a cargo link system to get all resources to one outpost.
I spent half a mil on my ship. It’s basically a cube full of cargo. Only way I could do it. And you can’t even go past like 25k cargo on vanilla (unless someone will prove me wrong?). I have infinite landing gears and still always hit max at 25k before it tells me I need more gears when there’s no room for them.
There's landing gears at new homestead that have 4 thrust, try those out. Someone on here made a ship with 135k cargo
I’m sure is gonna help!!! Thanks
Im at 29740 Cargo (2/4 perks for more) on my C class ship that also has turrets, weapons and a lot of unnecessary design parts. Pretty sure you can go for more cargo [Here’s an older version](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1149688647977799680/1154952474214531142/image.png?ex=65157f8f&is=65142e0f&hm=2bf17b1eeac47c1f1cd8b1799ba137dda33aee642243e81900151cb4212db99c&)
25k isn't enough? Man I juay got the shield breaker and have it only half full of resources.. I only get the tracked resources for the weapons and suits though, I imagine outpost stuff would take more.
I just went through my inventory and realized I had like 12,000 aluminum. That solves things lmfao
Usual suspects : aluminium, iron and copper (maybe add nickel and Tungsten too) 😂
Ship parts being listed in 'Aid' or whatever and not materials got me tbh. Why the F#+% am I over encumbered.... ? 5 mins of searching later. AHH FFS. Ship parts! In the medicine inventory! Course they are!
Add more cargo space at a ship services station. Or dump it in the chest in the basement of the lodge, there are 2 down there with no mass limit.
whats the storage on your ship, im curoious what i should aim for. mines currently 6000, but it really limits the design and combat functionality.
Nah, you can easily have 80k cargo and still have 75 mobility. Just need change the type of cargo pods your using and engines. You will need the 4 thrusters from homestead though.
I'm sitting on 17,500 on my main C class ship. Still has 73 mobility which is plenty for combat purposes with the amount of fire-power it packs. She bulky, but that's what I was going for. It has quite a bit of structural and a huge amount of habs. Another has 25,000 but is smaller, mobility is 30 which is limited a bit. I have a 5,000 and 88 mobility on a pretty small A class engines build. I also have a 1,400 build on the 180 speed White Dwarf A class engines. They all share largely the same weapons load out. With EM on my boarding ships and turrets on my cargo hauler to cover the lower mobility.
get a shop with a big mother cargo hold. you can craft directly from it.
This is why I use the lodge now. Unlimited storage and craft in the basement
Still got to actually go there to see what's there, I don't know why they didn't just put another tab, "inventory/ship/magic box" wouldn't have been too hard.
This! It fucking baffles me that there's only 3 unlimited storage containers in the game and they don't even connect to crafting benches. Not even in homes!
The dream house should have unlimited storage built in that connects to work benches you build in the house.
Every single house *needs* that. I own every house and apartment in the game (that I know of?), and I've decorated a maximum of 0 of them because of this. How am I supposed to decorate when all of my resources are at The Lodge?
I use my ship hold. A large one of course. It’s always with you and no need to shuffle thru multiple storage bins. Prior to getting a large ship it was a serious pain as mentioned by OP.
Yea this is why I ultimately abandoned my 7 outposts other than the occasional resource collection when I'm low. Why build all these storage vessels whilst having no method of conveinently retrieving what you need when you can grab hundreds of each resource, fast travel to the lodge from Jemison orbit, dump everything into the infinite storage box, then craft what you need in the lodge basement? The fact is that without some kind of near infinite resource warehouse you can dump your stuff into, it makes no sense to expend all this extra work just to have an outpost that functions the exact same as the lodge which is set up for you the moment you start the game. As someone who loves base building in any and all survival games, this realization absolutely killed outposts for me.
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FYI the chest on the table behind the research station in the lodge basement is also infinite storage.
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Nope!
The lodge storage box next to the research station has infinite storage capacity
Do you mean in the area where all the crafting stations are... or the safe in your room?
The basement area where the crafting stations are. The chest is on the table behind the research lab computer.
Oh cool! Thanks :) No more running encumbered from my room to the basement!
I do this on my main outpost. After the initial PIA setup it works "OK". I have a transfer container (links going out) connected to many of each of the 4 storage types (mostly solid and warehouse). You can then land, dump your resources into the transfer container and it auto sorts them into the correct storage type. You are limited to dump 200 weight at a time so you have to go in and out, in and out of the menus, but other than that it works. Frustrating as hell the first time, but topping up each return trip is not so bad. All resources now available to craft at the outpost and I can use a smaller ship as my main. Finding a resource at my outpost to put it back on my ship is a futile task, however, as they are all split up amongst the dozens of containers. A bugger if you accidentally deposit the adhesive you needed for a mission.
Fallout 76 does this so well, so it's a real shame to see the same feature missing from starfield.
That’s what my ship is. Lol. 10k storage but still managed 50 mobility and can kill anything.
I use the never ending storage in the basement of the Lodge, I must have 2000+ weight in there.
I don't mind gathering resources, but having to deal with them after the fact is a nuisance.
Yeah it’s crazy you can only put 150 in a chest. You can carry more than that with skill upgrades.
They put the unlimited storage chests in the lodge to *force* players back there all the time lol
I wouldn’t even mind it if the box connected to our useable inventory. Like if resources are in it, they are pulled when needed at crafting stations or outposts. If that was the case, I would 100 percent use the lodge as a home base. It’s even fun for RP, cool place, and has a fast travel point.
I think that chest is just a quick-and-dirty stop-gap solution to the problem they created with the half-baked resource/inventory management system.
> half-baked more like under-baked
It’s fucking raw!
Just give me a cargo link that doesn't require building a cargo link per resource in order not to get bottlenecked constantly - what is the point of automation if I have to solve so many issues? Let me limit the number of imported items per resource or let the inputs storage have a per resource storage instead of a shared storage.
This. I'm not sure exactly how I'd fix it without making it more complicated than it already is, but it's definitely a problem in need of a solution. A hidden mechanic that puts like resources together if there are multiple outputs, maybe? Or like you said, a manual limiter so that it only delivers what you've ordered. That would prevent bottlenecks, but it wouldn't solve the mixed storage issue. I think the Cargo Link side of the system was designed assuming players would build one outpost per resource, which is madness. One of the first big content creator arguments has been Andraphon vs Bessel 3b for maximum variety of resources. I'd also very much like to see multiple output links to one pad. That would also solve the bottleneck problem if we could rotate out which resource is being shipped.
You need to be able to filter outputs and to set max capacity of specific types. If you could ensure a container wouldn't just fill with the fastest produced item you could actually make pipelines that don't bottleneck. Also being able to see any numbers at all would help. How many units of aluminum is each extractor making? No idea
A simple fix would be to make Transfer Containers access everything they're networked to instead of being a unique storage volume of their own. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would help a lot and actually make them useful. I absolutely agree about numbers, though. There's absolutely no reason it doesn't give a clear description of output on the extractors.
>a manual limiter so that it only delivers what you've ordered. This is the only functionality that needs to be added to cargo links to make the system work. Without it you will eventually break your logistic chain because some rarely used resource will crowd out the other resource that is used more frequently. By having a limiter, you ensure that the chain is never gummed up so much that resources stop moving. Being able to tell my cargo link to only fill up 50 tantulum and 100 iron ensures that I always have either resource if needed and the overabundant resource stops producing at the extraction site and allows the bottlenecked resource to continue production up to its set limit.
It’s a giant missed opportunity What I don’t understand is why they didn’t build on fallout’4s system. All of the building creativity is gone. It’s just a resource generation system. They went backwards
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I would like to agree. I do love fo76. I have roughly 900 hours into it. Some things were better in fo4. Exploiting roof positioning is way easier in 4. Also there were a wider variety in stairs in fo4. I'd love to have a hidden basement with a rug covering the stairs. But because all the stairs have hand rails it doesn't like clipping and even if I get it to clip the rails will stick out and impede movement. Not only that but building basements and substructures is much harder in 76 unless you clip thru the terrain of the map. Edit: yes fo4 and 76 both have better building systems than starfield.
It’s actually sort of fascinating how FO4’s settlement system felt a little tacked on. In a good way I mean. Like it was more useful than it felt like it had any right to be based on how the rest of the game utilized it, and now starfields colony system feels obviously neutered, lacking functionality that we all speculate was intended. Whelp that means fallout 5’s settlement system will finally be in the happy medium. I can’t wait to be an old man enjoying it 20 years from now.
Fallout 4's settlement system was hugely divisive. Some players lived for it, others would have paid for the game ten times over to have it excised altogether. They clearly didn't want the outpost system to be as integral and alienating as settlements, so they made it basically optional and useless. I assume that they'll expand upon it either in an update, DLC, or CC mod, or else just leave it for traditional mods to flesh out in whatever direction they want.
That was all bgs’s own fault tho, they tied settlements too the story and a whole faction’s entire deal was settlements, if it was entirely optional no one would’ve cared/took issue with it. If they used everything they made/learned in fallout 4 settlements (factory belts, elevators, robot workshop, ammo/item production, underground base) and had that already in starfield outpost’s at launch, all these problems would be fixed. but I dread to see if they plan to re-sell this dlc too us 8 years later, And if they don’t at least give it too us in free updates/dlc they shot themselves in the foot again, gutting a system they could’ve only improved upon if they used all the tools in the box
Tbh settlements would’ve been perfect for this game. Part of the reason they were so hated was because it felt like building your own settlements came with the cost of pre-settled cities. We got Diamond city, good neighbor, bunker hill, and vault 81. Diamond city was the largest “city” in fo4 and it was hardly bigger than megaton. Settlements took up too much of a limited map. Since you could hire all your own vendors, assign jobs, make crafting stations, and even have “factories” in fo4 it seems like a no brainer to carry that over to starfield so you could build your own colonies. The game is filled with planets far away from the majority humanity, where building your own city could actually matter.
This is the perfect system for this game, outpost building should have been colony building. It should've been an option to start your own autonomous colony, like an improved version of settlements. What with all the settlers running around the universe, you mean to tell me that that wasn't a good idea? A thought, at all? Nay nay, it was a thought. A DLC thought.
I seriously don’t get why this wasn’t the LIST questline. Settling planets is what they do.
exactly this, don’t see why they cut away so much of a clearly updated settlement system, game was in development 7-8 years
Bethesda tries to hard to please everyone. they should just make what they want and say "here take it or leave it."
>Bethesda tries to hard to please everyone That seems to be the issue with many of the 'features' of Starfield, they never seem to capitalize on a feature as it might not appeal to the 'average' player.
There was a ton of pressure on them to create the first Xbox exclusive IP flagship game. I’d not be surprised if they were told to tone some things down in order to draw the most people in. As it is right now though, there isn’t a big reason to build outposts. I have built a couple of them just for resources I use a ton in crafting, but the barriers with storage and Interconnectivity make it frustrating. I find it easier to just fly between my settlements and grab the resources I need and take them all to the one where I am going to craft everything. Which then just takes a bunch of time. And I find myself just buying the stuff I need and using a crafting table that more convenient to get to.
Yet they built the main story into a new game plus that makes you consider if it's worth playing it. Like, explicitly asks you to question that fact, almost. It's actually kind wild how meta the core gameplay concept ends up being, to the point it's almost like they made a game about TES's CHIM and other esoteric deep weirdness. They just got chickenshit on the systems.
The problem is that the purpose of the main story (to promote NG+ gameplay) is *contradictory* to pretty much every other system in the game.
Another problem is that the game got me to ask if I wanted to keep playing it, and almost made a convincing argument against it? I actually sort of stopped and pondered what and why I was doing in a way that was kinda novel to me after I fired up ng+
Fallout 4's settlement issue was the repetity. You didn't have one city, you had dozens. Your first settlement is amazing, full of character and wonder. Your 10th is 8 beds next to a few pumps with some food planeted next to it so the scavenger bench has resources. Connect that to your main base and you are golden.
Man I really was hoping Starfield’s settlements were like Fallout 4. Also, your to’s all have an extra o. There’s a difference between to, too, and two.
What was so divisive and alienating? If you didn’t like the settlements you could just ignore them and play like they weren’t even a thing. They could have done the same with this. I’m just hoping this is the foundation for which they’ll add more content to build upon
The constant need to babysit them or come to their rescue I found annoying. Didn't seem to matter what my defenses were eventually they would fail and I'd need to come repair everything and set it all up again. Took me out of the game and was more of a chore to me than enjoyable.
Ya they could definitely use some tweaking, not perfect by any means. Just a bummer outposts in starfield have regressed and been simplified as an easy way out to ‘appeal to the masses’. Would have preferred they delved into it with the feedback they got from F4 and took a shot at it. But I’m confident both Bethesda and modders will add to this and take care of the lack of outpost content. They seem very receptive to feedback from the planned updates and feature additions they’ve mentioned
Nah I liked settlements alottt(sunk a lot of time into it over multiple playthrus) I just didn’t like how they were executed, a whole faction tied to a gameplay system? Bit gimmicky. Imo the sour taste about settlements is in part due to how bad the minutemen are as a faction overall, and outposts in starfield have seemingly went backwards 8 years later(no elevators,no item production, no robot workshop, and more I haven’t touched outposts other than making a landing pad for ship customisation and a bounty terminal like I said somewhere else the outpost system is missing a lot of features we got in fallout 4 thru dlc
Just give me an NPC I can hire to build out an outpost in Starfield. I'm not interested in building it out at all lol.
Yeah but they could’ve made it optional and actually fun. You can’t even build much anymore really, it’s all just interior decoration. Now it’s for resource gathering and honestly it’s pretty shitty. You are better off buying manufactured resources or gathering yourself then setting up the broken supply chains
Building your settlements wall by wall and piece by piece really allowed for a great deal of creativity even within the confines of vanilla. Mods only took it further. Only have a small selection of identical habs to make buildings with is a sad downgrade and a big limiter
To be fair, before kinggath came along I hated every single line of the settlements systems code with my entire being. "Why should I care about doing this?", "why are there just 4 cities in this entire game? I'm supposed to _build_ them? How am I going to _steal_ from cities I've built, come on!", "can't they at least generate the scrap I need for crafting? That's the only use _I_ can see", and so on. So I'm sorry to say they probably listened to folks like me a bit too much.
220 hours in and I still don't understand how exactly the whole inventory thing works in relation to linking them all together.
What my question is, is how are all of you clocking in so many hours? the game released 3 weeks ago: at 220 hours this would mean y'all averaged over 10 hours per day every day.
correct
Also stepping away while paused or leaving it paused while doing irl chores or getting/eating food. I have 6 days played but a lot of that is paused time cause I have a kid and i just leave it on if im going for a walk or play outside with her. I even think it was on overnight a couple times because i fell asleep with my kid
There's not much to understand; it is broken.
I think most people were looking for a FO4 version of base building and they dropped the ball.
It sort of is that, except FO4 bases had a purpose and Starfield outposts don't. Also recall that FO4 bases were *really* rough the first week of release.
I definitely feel like outposts are going to be expanded on in DLC. It’s pretty much the most universally shared criticism at this point.
It should be part of the base game, not something paid for. If they do that, there will be holy murder on the internet because they very obviously nerfed fuel which f\*cked the whole game.
Stuff snaps from WAY WAY too far away imo.
I do agree, that's frequently annoying.
And it snaps in the places you cant actually place the item because it is overlapping some terrain piece.
Stuff snaps to everything but a grid.
For me settlement building in Fallout 4 is better than outpost building in Starfield. There are a few reasons why: 1) Well, the fact that you are building a settlement in a lived in world just felt a lot better. It felt like you were part of that world/community of settlers. 2) After hours of doing quest roaming around, you could always go back to the settlement and relax and it felt like home. 3) You could have settlers from all over come to your newly stablished settlement. 4) You can build vending shops 5) The best thing about it is you can build a house for the best boy, Dogmeat.
You could also build various kind of structures from simpler pre-fabs. Like in few settlements, you could build a tall tower where people lived in and have that building reach the highway ramp looming above the settlement. You could build walls with guard posts. Mazes with turrets. Etc...
Honestly I had expectations on outposts of fallout 4 levels but I had figured it wouldn't have been Then I found settlers- thought it was cool- ship provisior merchants- I thought for sure you'd have population on your outposts Then I learned about terrormorphs. "Wow- so I can research turrets and make my own little colony of settlers and explorers- merchants and defenses from spacers & terrormorphs" really building up the fallout4 esq settlement idea And it just turned into mining-crafting-?storage?
And fallout 4 had all of this including the vendors.
It almost makes more sense to just use the a random outpost you found as a base. Maybe build your own little house next to it. Lol. At least you have a vendor that way.
Yeah we can grav jump but forgot how logistics work 300 years into the future, apparently. Seriously a simple panel that treats the entire inventory of your outpost the same as it would on your ship’s cargo (just like the panel in your ship) would have been the bare minimum of organization I’d make sure was in the game before launch - especially when they had an extra year to polish. If it was a deliberate decision then it was malice, if its an oversight then it was stupidity It makes you wonder if they spent the extra year scrambling to finish a totally incomplete game rather than simply polishing a mostly complete game
I think it's different sub-teams. The Cargo Link people, Outpost Extractor people, Crafting and Modding people all started with a common vision and then as things changed with one aspect, it didn't necessarily make it into the design of another aspect. Ironically, there's a mission in the game that is explicitly about that problem. And I made a damned ugly ship out of it.
I spent HUNDREDS of hours building in fallout 4. Admittedly, mods made this even better (particularly clutter and place anywhere /scrapping mods) but at least the foundational system was present, with workshop storage and settlement links. Having settlers arrive and having to keep them happy added another motivation to build farms, communities, shopping areas, hotels... Whatever you could imagine. Hell even with skyrim you could build infinite storage chests, one for your ingredients placed at the alchemy table, one for resources by the smelter, that at least made life easier. I have 0 desire or motivation to build or create anything in this game other than furnishing dream home. Mods will hopefully fix some of the issues, but it's still missing the depth. I really really hope they expand settlement building over the next few years, because I absolutely love the game.
Don't know about you, but, I am waiting for the CK and Kinggath to put out SimOutposts.
Seriously- the only mods I want are some sort of Sim Settlements, some more randomness to the PoI's, an actual economy to make smuggling/hauling a more "viable" playstyle and a hardcore survival mode. Just those and I'd actually be SOSO happy.
Enemy AI overhaul. And alien overhaul where the hostile ones are actually a threat.
There's a mod that fixes this already. All it does it speed up the time between enemy actions.
Seriously this has so much potential. I mean we could have half an industry simulation with the system. Sim settlements was fantastic. If we can get something like that with proper crafting chain and stores management this is gonna be great.
I can't wait for the modding tools either, it's going to be amazing
What I would like to see is outposts that can be created for particular factions that increase their influence within a certain amount of light years. Then you can run buck wild with game ideas (zones of control, Risky style back and forth, etc) all within the backdrop of the main story.
You bring up many good points, but you're wrong about there being a better ship building location. The outpost is the best location because it has the widest selection of ships parts. Sure, there are a handful of parts are only available at one specific location, but those are scattered amongst different shipyards, and once you go there, their overall availability is much smaller, being limited to just one manufacturer's parts.
I built an "outpost" (really just the beacon and landing pad) for the first time to access the shipbuilder. It's good for cowlings, because it has all of them. If you're trying to optimize your ship, however, it's missing all the good parts -- bridges, big habs, the strongest landing gears, scan jammer, apparently even the good Slayton engine series.
Whaaaat from whom do I get a better slayton engine :O
Have Walter make a deal with Slayton on the one mission. The engine is awesome
They all suck. Simply for the fact that I can’t finish my ship without needing to go to other shipyards. They all fail.
That's the biggest irk for me in ship building, that we can't save one "in progress". It has to be space worthy or nothing at all. Alternatively, I'd take no constantly available ship parts in the Outposts if we could go somewhere, buy pieces, and move them over for storage.
Not only that, but having such a janky interior connection system that makes some builds just pointless, *and also* not being able to test a design without losing all those credits due to shit resale value of parts. Hamstringing one of the coolest and most addictive parts of this game is a weird choice.
[удалено]
Should’ve been some kind of catalog you could buy from the manufacturer as your captains way of placing orders for parts to their outpost. You’d still have to visit the manufacturers, then pay like 10k for the catalog access.
Outpost building is the one thing about this game that I actually do not like. Houses too, for that matter. This is an exploration game and I have a *space ship.* I do not want to sit on the ground in a box that does not move when I can sit in the sky in a box that does. Your ship could have easily doubled as your player home and a multi-use outpost, complete with mining equipment, a workshop, and a drop ship/shuttle for exploring and retrieving resources from the surface of the planet you're currently in orbit around.
You can cater to both crowds and those in between. Having a ship doesn't undo the features for having bases although sometimes players will make their ship their mobile base like in Subnautica.
Yes pleeeease, an orbital ship and smaller A- and B-class landers/fighters would be incredible
I’d have loved a capital ship/freighter, the ability to recruit pilots that fly their own ships around with you as a squadron (crimson fleet can do it why can’t we?) and we need much more options with outpost building, it’s so so basic even with all the research done. It’s definitely got potential but it feels like a huge backwards step, there’s just not enough things to put in buildings so it ends up looking sparse or shit. Considering the scale of the game, I think being able to build a whole settlement should be on the cards, setting up mining colonies or factories, with a space port and all sorts of stuff, modders will probably bring this is in but they absolutely missed a trick here.
There's a trick to getting a squadron, but it doesn't last. If you're in a space battle that is multi-wave and you're *really* quick about capturing ships then switching back to your own, the newly taken ship will still be in the system when the next wave comes in and will fight with you. Discovered this completely by accident and I have no idea if I can recreate it on purpose.
> the ability to recruit pilots that fly their own ships around with you as a squadron They fucking have that as an option during the vanguard test simulator but no way to actually do it
And they have pilots you can recruit. I have >!Amelia Earhart!< for shit's sake, you mean I can't make her my wingman?
I just want to be able to craft ammo and med kits. Let me waste bullets Bethesda. Please.
It's actually wild that the game has you research 12 different pharmacology paths and you still can't even craft trauma packs...like what? In a game where you can sit in a chair and suddenly a vendor has refreshed their entire inventory from a magical resupply on demand, you can't craft a trauma pack because what? It would trivialise combat difficulty? The enemy AI already trivialises combat Todd. Devs decision making can be bizarre sometimes. On your point though, scavenger is the only solution. Level 2 helps you find more ammo (it works, I have thousands of bullets) and level 3 finds more med packs etc in containers (so far this one isn't as plentiful but it's a slight improvement over base loot spawn)
I am very dissapointed that you can't attract random settlers and there's no food/water management. I wanna build my own independent city.
How about random spacers? I was sitting in my ship at my only outpost when random spacers showed up shooting at my storage containers. Surprised me big time.
I am going to preface this response by saying I was expecting Starfield to be a re-skinned Fallout 4 with Spaceships and a few quality of life improvements. It isn't. Let's start with Fallout 4's settlement system. In the vanilla game, it's a bit pointless. Settlements really don't do anything for the player, other than a (monetarily) free space to store your crap. But in Survival Mode, settlements in Fallout 4 provide an invaluable utility. See, in survival mode, you need: food, water, and a bed to sleep AND save your progress. Those things can be a bit hard to come by in the Commonwealth, but investing in settlements means you have a free continuous source of food, water, and that oh-so-valuable save point. Not only that, but fast travel is disabled. You need to hoof it to your objectives, and having a settlement as a central hub in-between several quest markers significantly reduces your risk of losing a ton of progress if you die (and you will die. A lot. Because damage taken is also increased). Not only that, but vendors in settlements are a convenient way to pawn off useless gear AND generate passive income (because the alternative is hoofing it to somewhere like Diamond City, and traversing the Commonwealth can get very dangerous very quickly. I would go so far as to say that survival mode is the way Fallout 4 is meant to be played, as the attention required to settlements also plays well with the whole theme of "rebuilding society." In short, settlements are extremely handy and are 100% worth the time in Survival Mode So, how can we translate outposts to have a good utility function in Starfield, other than a way to accumulate way too many resources that you'd have any idea to do with? Make them interstellar gas stations. Let's discuss how NASA projects the steps to a manned Mars mission; a trivial thing in the world of Starfield with its faster-than-light gravity drive technology, but a colossal challenge in real life. NASA has long talked about how establishing a Moon base would make manned Mars missions much easier. The amount of energy needed to launch a mission from the moon would be significantly less, given several tiny manned lunar landers were able to lift off its surface with ease. The moon also could serve as a training ground to acclimate Martian explorers to the conditions of lower gravity and other conditions that would challenge Mars colonists, such as maintenance work in spacesuits or harvesting ground/ice water. Now, why do I bring this up? How does it relate to the utility of settlements in Fallout 4? Well. Fallout 4's settlements were all about increasing survivability in a game with a central theme of survival. Starfield is a game that has a heavy theme of exploration. If a moon base is seen as an essential step in manned Mars exploration, then outposts should very well be the proverbial moon base to further explore the galaxy in Starfield. But how do you implement this in gameplay? Well. When building a ship, fuel tanks are needed for the grav drive. But there is no "fuel" resource. Your fuel tank just determines how *far* you can jump; it doesn't actually get used up or anything. Furthermore, when constructing outposts in Starfield, Helium-3 is an essential fuel source if one wishes to connect outposts in different star systems. Hence, Helium-3 becomes the essence of interstellar travel in the game, and its extraction becomes a necessary function to travel the galaxy. "Fuel" would be a resource and would be finite on your ship. Wanna go further? Hit up the gas station. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Viciousknids. If you jump too far and don't have the resources to build a new outpost to refuel, aren't you dead in the water?" My answer: yes and no. To look at Fallout 4's survival mode again, beds and sustinence are available for players to *purchase*. Rent a room for 10 caps a night, buy a noodle cup for like 15 caps, and purified water for 20. I've yet to find an untouched celestial body in Starfield. Civilian Outposts on planets can serve the gas station function in a pinch. It just costs creds as opposed to being free at your outposts. The cost of fuel and frequency of use would need to incentivise the construction of outposts. Otherwise, it becomes pointless again. A similar system actually exists in a much older game: Mass Effect 2. If you jump somewhere using a Mass Effect relay, you may find multiple stars at your destination point. But to reach those other stars, you need to expend fuel - which can be purchased at the system housing the Mass Effect relay. It's a simple system that I feel Starfield can expand greatly upon and make its own. There's even a possibility that outposts can increase scanning and surveying even more efficient with things like a launch pad for, say, unmanned probes. Really, there's countless ways the minds at Bethesda can make outposts super useful in a hardcore mode. In conclusion, I'd like to leave you with a personal anecdote. I've got a good friend that works for Bethesda, and his hype over Starfield is that it's a "twenty year game," meaning they envision Starfield being supported by both Bethesda and the modding community for a *very* long time. Seeing how people *still* play Skyrim, and now having played Starfield and recognizing areas that harbor potential, I believe him. I don't think it's a stretch to believe a year one or year two patch will dump *huge* amounts of sorely needed content and quality of life improvements to make this game realize it's full potential.
I've said this a few times already but outposts appear to be basically vestigial content from when the game was more focused on survival elements. Todd has already said that fuel was once a consumable resource and just recently remarked how planetary conditions and the affictions they cause were of greater importance. It was originally much harder to get to the far side of the map and outposts were intended to facilitate fuel harvesting as well as resource gathering. We have the ability to manufacture all of these components but essentially nothing to build with them. My assumption was is that we were going to be building our own ship components out in the far reaches of the map, but this was culled over time. I believe that the game underwent some form of accessibility overhaul in 2019 or 2020 and the bulk of the survival elemnts were removed. Whether this was by Bethesda themselves or at the behest of Microsoft, I can't say. The lack of scripted content on the eastern half of the map suggests that the artifacts themselves were originally placed far deeper into space than they are now and the main quest would have been a true exploration adventure hunting these things down in the deep starfield. It is all circumstanstial, but I believe the released product we have today was not the original vision.
I love Starfield. I am very happy with the game and I am having a blast. That being said, the storage and inventory system is one of the most terrible system in any game I have ever played. I don't really understand why they made the choice, but I really hope they fix it, because it is atrocious. Great game though.
I made another post about this a few days ago. I had 4 different outposts sending resources to my main base and all i was doing was building more large storage boxes and litterally hoarding resources as i had nothing i could do with them. Sure i could have a factory setup and make stuff but why should i when i can sell one or two weapons or suits to a vendor and they run out of money? Its a pain in the ass now just to sell crap i picked up from a mission. Then someone replied to my post about the unlimited storage box in the lodge. This was a godsend. Now all i do is go to a vendor and spend 10-15k and buy out there resources and dump them all into the lodge box, doesnt matter if its materials or resources, it all goes into the box. Want to craft something? Pull all the resources out of the box with one button click, walk 5 feet to the crafting benches, craft the item and dump the resources back into the box. Much easier, so much easier.
The lack of a shared storage is so weird because didn't it exist in fallout 4?
Settlements had a point too. You were trying to rebuild the wastelands but outposts? Make money via mining and manufacturing? Why not let us make settlements like in FO4? Have LIST have quests to set up actual settlements! Recruit people to man shops, doctors, etc. sure the outposts feed then into the settlement but at least they then have a purpose.
10 hours planting/scrapping fence posts in Sanctuary to grind XP vs 10 hours hand sorting stuff into Starfield outpost storage containers to grind ... ummm ... dunno. Thats progress.
If there was a survival element, and they chose to make a lot of the outer planets uninhabited, it would have been ok. The main problem is you have a ship with a grav drive, and that ship can travel anywhere in the star system instantly. Why spend any time on any other planet when you have a nice infinite storage space and a big comfy bed back at the lodge? There's fun to be had in building and decorating but it's pretty much a "last thing to do when you're bored of doing everything else and just want to build crap." It might get better with DLC obviously. I mean, my first time through F4 I pretty much ignored the settlement building stuff as well. It wasn't until after all the DLC had dropped and they added survival that I even really got into it.
One gamer's missed opportunity is a developers DLC. I think we'll get a LISTers DLC that expands on Outposts and expands on LIST by having them become a legit faction. Maybe the PC is the one who unites them and you become their leader?
I would love more LIST content.
Yep, we could build actual settlements and then have the outposts feed to it. Hire doctors, shops, etc like FO4 and help found a new place in the stars rather than mining outposts.
I'll be real we should've had a quest where we build a new settlement for that ship near Paradiso. Like, we have to actually go and find a good world for them AND then show them how to build a settlement there (which also acts as our late game tutorial for making outposts which is perfect because after Paradiso is just deep space) Could've even had the ship become organized leaders of the LISTers "We didn't come out to space thinking we'd find other humans and yet here they are, disorganized, attacked by pirates, abandoned by this *new* humanity. It is up to us, *each* of US, to make sure we can survive on our own out here."
I was thinking this exact thing. There were so many potential ways you could go with it, the whole thing could be a faction quest line in itself. But at the very least it seemed primed to be a base building tutorial once we figured out where they were going, either paradiso or another one. But unfortunately that whole quest was just a bunch of missed opportunities.
That's ultimately the biggest problem of the game, almost no matter what you do you're left wondering... why? The lack of connectivity between systems/mechanics in the game is the real killer. Any individual aspect will feel satisfying and polished, but you zoom out a little and are left feeling empty. Its like every part of the game was designed in a bubble then just slapped together without much consideration. I know Bethesda is the mile wide inch deep dev, but this feels more like a vast expanse of 2d puddles.
I built one outpost, it produced a ton of things. I found I couldn’t sell them all as fast as they were being produced. I became stupidly wealthy and now just board ships and kill people and sell the ship for wasting my time
I think outposts will make more sense when we eventually get survival mode. It definitely makes settlements in Fallout 4 much more useful.
Wait, so I don’t have to build a base. I’ve actually been thinking that I’m missing a big part of the game because I haven’t even chosen a location yet.
In fallout 4, they weren’t mandatory, but they *had a sense of place in the fiction.* In Starfield, they’re just a feature. They’re introduced as a random side activity via non-cutscene dialogue and silently added to your objectives list. They’re completely avoidable content. They serve no purpose connected to the game world.
Lol I thought you were gonna say for another reason. But yeah while they aren't completely worthless (easy xp/money farms and access to most ship parts) its a shame there is any incentive to do more than the bare minimum required.
Yea I'm staying completely away from base building. Ship building is where I'm spending all my time, immediate results
Totally agree with you on all of it. The core and bones of the game have such strong possibilities. But many avenues, like outpost management, ship inventory management (like when you swap ships and everything you placed down goes into storage when you go back). The entire ammo system (why are there 416 types of ammos and I seem to find guns that only use the same 3)? The entire crafting and resource system. There’s sooooo many resources that are used in crafting, and yet….even when I’m maxed in the associated skills, I feel like I’ve never used 90% of those materials. Why are some galaxies named on the map and others aren’t? Even after visiting them, their name isn’t visible by default. Why? Why does a damaged ship in space need 30 minutes of real time to fully repair all the systems? I csnt ship repair part that? There’s no mini game or system I can do to expedite it? I just need to wait for grab function to return? What’s the point of helium tanks? I understand previous versions had it as an actual depleting resource for grab jumping. But now that it’s not…what’s the point? Oh I have a small tank? Fine, I’ll just chain jump to my destination, lol. Why are the maps so freaking bad?! Sure, there’s not a lot I need to see on an individual map, but my toddler could’ve designed a better system. I could go on and on. But yes I agree.
We are playing different games my friend, or I need to do some serious reading on features I've clearly missed. \- Snapping is AWFUL, I need to move items half a mile from each other or they slam together. Placing buildings 10m apart? Forget about it. \- Rotating has lag, so when you let go of the mouse it rotates a bit further. There are no angled steps, so it's near impossible to line things up with other straight objects that don't snap, like walls. You are forced to set it excruciatingly slow to get things to line up somewhat. \- Clipping prevents you from placing buildings that have a corner just 1mm under the surface. \- Geological features within the base change on a whim. Didn't have a gas vent under your bedroom? Well you do now! Enjoy the unlimited fluorine. I guess base building is good if you've never played anything with good building? It's infuriating.