You take a Gravity Well. You clear it out, plant Supply Nodes on the asteroids, set up a Listening Post on the rim. And then comes the question that defines everything that happens next: what do you build here?
In the last devlog I talked about structures in general, the pieces you place in a Gravity Well to turn empty space into something useful. Since then, the system has changed in a way that I think makes it much more interesting. Every Gravity Well now has a single slot for what I'm calling the Major Structure. You get one. You pick a chain. And that choice locks out the other two.
Three chains, one slot
The three Major Structure chains are Military Station, Mining Station, and Shipyard. Each one upgrades through multiple tiers, getting more powerful as you invest. But they all compete for the same slot in a Gravity Well. Build a Mining Station and you can't build a Military Station or Shipyard there. Build a Shipyard and no Mining Station, no Military Station. One chain per Gravity Well, period.
The idea is simple: every Gravity Well you control becomes something specific. A fortress. A mine. A shipyard. You can't have everything in one place. If you want defense, production, and economy, you need to spread across multiple Gravity Wells and hold all of them.
Academy, Supply Nodes, Defense Platforms, Listening Posts - those stay free. You can build them alongside whatever Major Structure you choose. The slot restriction only applies to the big three.
Military Station - the fortress
Military Stations are defensive anchors. Three tiers of increasing firepower and durability. A Tier III Military Station is the toughest thing you can build, period. It won't win the game for you on its own (you lose when your Mobile Shipyards are destroyed, not your stations), but it makes a Gravity Well extremely painful to assault.
The trade-off is everything you don't get. A Gravity Well with a Military Station has no local production and no economic boost. Your ships come from somewhere else. Your supply income is baseline. The station holds the line while the rest of your infrastructure does the actual work.
I keep putting Military Stations in chokepoint Gravity Wells during testing. The ones where the enemy has to pass through to reach your core. Whether that's the right play or just a habit I've developed, I'm not sure yet.
Mining Station - the engine
Mining Stations boost the output of every Supply Node in their Gravity Well. Tier I gives a moderate bump. Tier III makes a resource-rich Gravity Well into something that can sustain a war effort almost by itself.
The catch is that Mining Stations don't shoot back. A Gravity Well with a Mining Station and no fleet to protect it is a target, not an asset. Resource-rich Gravity Wells tend to be the ones worth fighting over, which means the Gravity Well where your Mining Station matters most is also the one most likely to get attacked.
Dense asteroid fields make Mining Stations more valuable. An Industrial Gravity Well with a lot of viable asteroid positions and a Tier III Mining Station is an economic powerhouse. A sparse Outpost with two rocks and a Mining Station is a waste of your Major Structure slot.
Shipyard - the factory
Shipyards produce ships. Tier I builds light hulls, Tier II adds medium classes, Tier III unlocks heavy production. And then there's the Capital Shipyard, which is the fourth tier of the same chain. It replaces the Tier III, inherits everything it could build, and adds capital-class ships and new Mobile Shipyards to the production menu.
Shipyards carry light self-defense weapons. Not enough to hold off a real assault, but enough to buy time against a small raiding party while reinforcements are on the way. It's a middle ground between the Military Station's firepower and the Mining Station's total vulnerability.
A Shipyard near the front means reinforcements arrive fast. A Shipyard in the rear means it's safer but the travel time costs you. Having production spread across multiple Gravity Wells instead of relying solely on your Mobile Shipyard is one of the things that separates early game from mid game. By the time you have two or three Shipyards running in different Gravity Wells, your fleet pipeline looks completely different.
The Capital Shipyard at the top of the chain is a serious investment. You need a Tier III Shipyard first, then you upgrade it. Losing the Gravity Well where your Capital Shipyard sits is one of the most expensive things that can happen to you.
The builder problem
Structures don't build themselves. You need a builder in range.
Your Mobile Shipyard has a construction radius. It's not huge. If your Mobile Shipyard is parked in a Gravity Well, you can build structures within that radius, and if it moves away or jumps to another Gravity Well, anything under construction pauses until a builder comes back in range.
This was a deliberate choice. I wanted construction to feel like a commitment, not something you fire and forget. You park your Mobile Shipyard somewhere, you start building, and for the duration of that construction, your most important ship is anchored to that spot. If the enemy shows up, you have a decision: do you jump the Shipyard to safety and pause construction, or do you defend with what you have and keep building?
Stationary Shipyards solve this problem, partially. Once a Shipyard structure is complete in a Gravity Well, it acts as a permanent builder for that entire Gravity Well. Supply Nodes, Defense Platforms, Listening Posts, all of them can be built and maintained without your Mobile Shipyard being present. This is one of the hidden advantages of choosing the Shipyard chain for a Gravity Well: not just ship production, but construction independence.
So the progression looks something like this. Early game, your Mobile Shipyard does everything. It builds Supply Nodes, drops the first structures, produces your initial fleet. You're glued to it. Mid game, you start building Shipyards in key Gravity Wells, and suddenly those locations can sustain themselves. Your Mobile Shipyard becomes free to move where it's needed instead of where it's building. Late game, you might have Shipyards running in three or four Gravity Wells while your Mobile Shipyard focuses on the front line, jumping between Gravity Wells to build defenses or reinforce production in newly captured territory.
The map tells a story
What I like about this system is that by the mid game, your map tells you exactly what your strategy is. A cluster of Gravity Wells with Mining Stations feeding a central Shipyard, protected by a Military Station on the flank. Or a forward line of Military Stations with Shipyards behind them and Mining Stations in the deep rear. Every layout is a different answer to the same question: what do I need, and where?
The enemy can read your layout too. A Gravity Well with a Mining Station and no Military Station is an invitation. A Gravity Well with a Shipyard and minimal defenses says "my reinforcements spawn here, come break it." The structures you build are information, and information goes both ways.
I don't know yet if this creates the kind of strategic diversity I'm hoping for. In testing, I've seen some patterns emerge, but I've also seen myself defaulting to the same builds when I'm not thinking about it. More testing will tell. If it turns out one chain dominates, the numbers will need to change. For now, the framework feels right even if the balance is still rough.
What's next
The structure system ties into almost everything else. Fog of War determines what you know about the enemy's builds. The AI needs to make smart choices about which chain to pick in each Gravity Well. The economy scales with how many Mining Stations you can protect. I'll be touching on all of these in future devlogs.
For now, I'm going to keep playing and see if the Major Structure slot creates the kind of decisions I want it to. The theory is sound. Whether it holds up in practice is a different question.