Groundwork
Strike at last light
One day the org will hold ground it built itself. Not yet. This is what we know about how that will work, and what we are doing about it in the meantime — which is mostly digging, refining and banking, the same as always.
Base building is not in the game. Cloud Imperium has shown it — a CitizenCon deep dive, and a steady trickle of detail since — but nothing here is playable today, and the specifics below will change before it is.
Current expectation is an early form somewhere around 2027. Treat every number on this page as provisional. Nothing on it can be clicked, because there is nothing yet to click.
What It Is
per CIG, as shownThe short version: base building is an extension of crafting, not a separate game. It runs on the same three things our fabrication queue already runs on — a blueprint, the materials, and someone with the right equipment to assemble it. The bills are simply much larger, and what comes out the other end sits on a planet instead of in a hangar.
That framing is the whole reason this page exists. If base building were its own unrelated system we would wait and see. Because it is crafting at a larger scale, everything the org is already good at counts toward it.
Blueprints and drones
Structures come from blueprints and are assembled by construction drones rather than laid by hand. Survey first, then build.
A vehicle chain
What you can build is bounded by what you brought. A grav-cart or survey trolley serves for the smallest work; larger structures step up through dedicated survey and construction hulls to the Pioneer.
Land claims
Structures sit inside a claim or outside one. Outside, they carry no legal protection — no recourse, no authority, nobody coming if somebody decides they want your ground.
One More Link
the chain we already runNothing about our supply chain changes. It gains a link at the end, and every existing link gets asked for more.
A member who spends this year contributing to the craft queue is not waiting for base building. They are training for it on smaller bills.
Standing Doctrine
what command wants done in the meantimeThree things are worth doing before the feature exists. All three are useful even if it never ships in the shape we expect.
Bank quality, not quantity
Every crafting system CIG has shipped so far gates on material quality, and the fabrication queue already refuses contributions under an order's floor. Assume construction bills do the same. A hold full of low-grade ore is not a stockpile — it is ballast. Refined metals at grade are the thing to be sitting on.
Provisional — no published construction bills yetKnow which hulls we are short of
The construction chain is vehicle-gated, and the org's hangar is what it is. Before we need them we should know who can already field survey and construction hulls, and who is planning to. Put what you own on your hangar page — it is the only list of the org's real lift, and it is only as good as what members enter.
Provisional — final vehicle requirements unannouncedScout ground where last light comes early
Our facilities have always been sited in dense terrain and deep valleys — west-facing ground, high walls, short days. That was written as lore. It is about to become a siting decision with consequences: approach lines, sightlines, how long the dark sits over an installation, and how much warning we get. If you find ground like that, mark it.
Provisional — claim mechanics not yet playableNothing outside a claim is protected. If we build where the Empire will not come, we are the only ones who will — and we plan for that from the first survey, not after the first raid.
When It Lands
what changes on this pageThis page is doctrine. When base building is playable it becomes a console: structure blueprints in the catalogue, construction bills in the production orders, claims and sites tracked like any other org asset, and contributions counted the same way they are counted today.
Until then the fabrication queue is the practice run, and it is not a simulation — those orders are real, and the org needs them filled either way.
Nothing to build yet
So build what there is. The production orders are open, the org is short of materials today, and every contribution is quality-gated the same way the big ones will be.