StarRupture Best Base Building Tips

Base building and automation are two of the core components of the overall gameplay loop in StarRupture. Setting up factories producing all sorts of different materials is the main way of progressing through the game’s tech tree, but as with all automation-centric games, creating a base that does its job efficiently is going to be tricky at the start. If you’re new to games like StarRupture, here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when you’re building your first few bases.

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StarRupture Base Building Guide

1. Plan your production output
2. Survey terrain
3. Place Base Core, extractors, and power generators
4. Build a production floor
5. Build an output line

If we were to summarize how base building in StarRupture should flow, it would be these three steps. They’re all quite obvious, but for players who are new to this genre, they’re very easy to overlook. It’s not rare for new players to fixate on creating small production lines that fail to take advantage of space and available resources, so we’ll be going over how you can maximize the resources available to you without making a complete mess out of your base.

Production Planning

Before you build anything, you need to plan out your production first. There are tons of materials to make in StarRupture, and some may need different types of resources to craft. This drastically affects the complexity of your factory, so before you even place a single tile or building, you need to have a clear idea of how many machines you need and how your greater logistics network is going to flow.

This step is fairly simple at first, but it gets more complicated when you need to make complex materials, so we’re going to circle back to this one later.

Survey Terrain

• Work on flat terrain as much as possible
• Look for the nearest Monolith

Now that you have a basic idea of what you want to make, it’s time to check out the surrounding area. Get to a good vantage point, then map the location out. Think of where you need to put your extractors and where you can set up a production floor for processing. Ideally, you should build on flat terrain, but if that’s not an option, you’ll need to consider building vertically.

One other thing you should always be aware of is the location of the nearest Monolith. Once you upgrade one of your Base Cores, enemies will start attacking your base at regular intervals. They seem to always come from the location of a Monolith, so plan accordingly.

Setting Up Base Cores and Extractors

• Place Base Cores in a good defensive position away from production lines.
• Maximize ore fields by placing Ore Extractors on all possible points.

Base Cores are the heart of your bases in StarRupture. You can’t build anything outside the radius of one, and they’ll keep you and your buildings safe in case of a Ruptura event. Place this somewhere away from the flow of your materials, but keep it somewhere that’s easy to defend too.

As for extractors, place them down on any suitable ore vein, but make sure to point them towards the direction of your planned production area. You don’t have to build production buildings right next to Extractors. Ideally, you should leave plenty of space around your Ore Extractors so you don’t end up covering any workable ore fields with base tiles and other buildings.

Building Production Floors

• Start from the highest point of your build area
• Leave plenty of space for additions/alterations
• Keep your layouts modular

Once you’re done with the previous step, build a large floor using basic Platforms and support buildings. This is where much of the automation of your base is going to happen. Don’t be afraid to cover a lot of ground when making your production floor, especially if you need to make a lot of stuff.

Always leave some space between buildings to make room for Rails. More importantly, doing so keeps your factory modular — this is important because of StarRupture’s commission-based unlocks. You’re likely going to need to build and re-build your factories frequently, especially during the early stages of the game, so it’s best to make factories that can accommodate frequent re-designs.

Output Lines

Now that you’re pumping out processed materials, you’ll need to either send them into space using Orbital Cargo Launchers, or cart them away to Storage Depots for further processing.

If you want to send materials off-planet, we strongly recommend building multiple Orbital Cargo Launchers. A single Fabricator is good enough to support up to five launchers, and you can definitely start scaling up from here if you want to send stuff into space faster.

The Storage Depot blueprint is unlocked after reaching level 3 with Clever Robotics. As their name suggests, these will store materials for later use. They work much like Rail Connectors, with the level 1 Storage Depot having four Rail slots. These are great if you want to make a storage hub for easier resource management later in the game. They’re also great for building ammunition plants and distribution centers.

Other Base Building Tips

• When placing buildings, press the Y key on your keyboard to lock the elevation of whatever you’re placing. This makes leveled building placement much faster and easier.
• When placing Platforms, press and hold the Right Mouse Button to place more than one tile at a time. This will significantly reduce the time it takes to make large production floors.
• Stairs count as powered Platforms. Use this to connect your power grids that are on uneven terrain.
• Rails will transfer power the same way Platforms do. If you don’t want to make a long Platform bridge just to transfer power, build a power cable by connecting two Rail Connectors to each other.
• The Building Drone will make all of your construction projects so much easier. Unlock this first by leveling Clever Robotics to 4.
• Press the Z key to copy whatever building you’re pointing your crosshair at. This way, you won’t have to open the build menu all the time to select new building pieces.
• Start small, then build big.