Stations

A typical station

Stations are key locations in Vanguard galaxy. They are mission generators, places to unload and sell cargo, they host shops with critical gear, and have many uses. Stations can also be hostile, serving as a large enemy to defeat, and they can exist within neutral locations (such as a typical station the player can dock at), or in combat situations (where the player can dock and use the station while also defending it from hostiles).

Stations are modular and are constructed of various modules. However, at this stage of game development, visual representation of the modules present at a station (suck as energy fields, refineries, cargo bays etc.) has no bearing on functionalities and services provided by the station, outside of combat/defense modules.

Home station: Any station can be set as a Home Station. That station will show on the Map with a blue shield icon.

Home station on map

Overview of Station Services

• Airlock: Important for all Story Quests as questgiver NPCs can be interacted with here. Home Station can be set at this screen.
• Personal Hangar: Lists owned ships, and modifications to crew, boosters, modules, drones, ship name and similar.
• Mission Board: Depending on the Faction, various boards can offer you different types of Missions.
• Shipyard: Ships available for sale are listed here. Different factions offer different ships.
• Bar: In the Bar one can meet interesting people, such as recruitable officers, prospectors, scouts, faction representatives offering goods, etc.
• Workshop: Available at some Steel Vultures stations, allows for module modification and other gear customization.
• Refinery: Smelts collected ores and scrap into refined materials for crafting.
• Forge: Allows for crafting items from collected recipes and refined materials.
• Shops: Many types of shops exist, some of which use different currencies.
• Specialized Boards: These are specific to certain factions and allow for special mission types.
• Trade Terminal: Used for trading bulk goods across subsectors.
• Mercenary Board: Allows recruitment of helpful mercenaries for an hourly fee.
• Umbral Infection: Specialized missions and shops become available by spreading Umbral Reach reach.

Airlock

Example of an Airlock

The airlock is the primary docking point of every station, and has two crucial buttons - Undock, and Set Home Station. Undocking is relevant if you want to operate within the station's POI, such as salvaging floating junk or defending against an attack. Otherwise there is no need to manually undock when setting a target destination - ECHO will do that automatically.

Airlock is where available NPCs show up if there are quest interactions, and active quest is displayed.

Personal Hangar

Personal Hangar

The Personal Hangar allows for swapping of ship modules, crew, booster, drone swaps, as well as ship renaming and skill loadout info.

Right-clicking on Hardpoints or Modules will remove them, and doing the same in Cargo will equip them back. If a Ship is equipped with a Drone bay, one can change the Drone layout on the left side through the small Drone Icon. The Repair button speeds up ship repair in exchange for Credits, otherwise ship will repair itself automatically over time.

• C: Crew: here you can see and change the Crew for the Ship.
• B: Boosters: here you can change the Boosters installed in your Ship.
• M: Modules: Here you can see and swap the currently installed Modules.
• Drone Icon: Click to modify drone layout.

Mission Boards

Regular Mission Board

There are different types of Missions for all ship roles. Different stations and Factions can offer different Missions types. Missions normally reward with Credits, Reputation and sometimes Items and special rewards like Workshop Credit, Tokens and similar. The rewards are always listed in the Mission Tab.

Notes:

• Stations reset the regular Mission board after 5 Minutes.
• There is no penalty when abandoning a Mission.
• One can accept up to 20 Missions at once.
• Missions selected by ECHO carry a hefty reputation and cash penalty.
• Missions accepted manually give full rewards listed.

Shipyard

Shipyard

Shipyard is used to purchase new ships. Ships listed for sale heavily depend on station ownership and the owner's ship manufacturer(s). See Ship Manufacturers for more details. Furthermore, some ships are tied by level - they can stop showing in high level stations, or they won't show for sale if station level s too low.

Certain ships have specific requirements the player needs to match:

• Level: Player cannot buy larger ships until they reach sufficient level
• Reputation: Some ships require higher reputation ranking with station owner than others
• Tokens: Large ships (size 5+) require specific tokens in addition to Credits.
• Permit: some large ships require a special "permit", gained through specific Conquest Reputation (not to be confused with regular Reputation ranking).

The Ships listed for sale show exactly what gear they will come pre-equipped with, and in a pinch can be purchased for that reason alone.

Bar

Bar on a station

Bar allows for personal interactions with people. The following personnel can be found:

• Potential crew members: Available for recruitment for a nominal fee
• Industrial/Faction Representatives: They offer somewhat rarer pieces of gear than can be found in shops
• Salvage Scouts: Offering salvage claims for wrecks
• Prospectors: Offering mining claims for asteroid fields
• Slick Entrepreneurs: Offering a very special quest item that is extremely valuable and worth every penny.

The bar will resets every 24 hours, at midnight tick.

Workshop

Workshop is used to modify and customize modules, turrets and gear, upgrade items and their level, and to extract blueprints. Only (some) Steel Vultures stations provide this service.

For more information, see Workshop.

Refinery

Refinery Interface

Refinery exists on some stations, and is used to smelt ores and scrap into refined materials, for further use in the Forge. After the player finishes the prologue, and moves to the game proper, refinery storage of refined materials is global across all stations no matter where they are.

For more information, see Refinery.

Forge

Forge Interface

All stations that host a Refinery also have a forge, which is used to produce items - consumables, ammo, weapons, modules, specialized and quest items alike.

For more information, see Forge.

Shops

A Salvage Shop

Every station has a shop, but types of shops differ:

• General Shop: A little bit of everything.
• Mining Shop: Higher chance of mining gear, sells Mining Claims.
• Salvage Shop: Higher chance of salvage gear, sells Salvage Claims.
• Patrol Shop: At Canisec stations, sells high-level and rare gear for Canisec Tokens.
• Bounty Shop: At Orsanon Security stations, sells high-level and rare gear for Orsanon Tokens.
• Industry Shop: At Forge Industries stations, sells high-level and rare gear, as well as purple Blueprints for Forge Tokens.
• Conquest Shop: At Conquest Headquarters and Embassies, sells high-level and rare gear for Mars Tokens.

Tokens are gained through various activities available at those stations. See below for more information.

Specialized Boards

An Industrial Ops Board

Some stations offer special quests to earn tokens with them - which can be spent on more powerful gear.

• Canisec - Patrols
• Orsanon Security - Bounty Hunts
• Forge Industries - Industrial Operations

The quests have 3 difficulties: Normal, Hard and Extreme. Extreme can grant a rank increase which makes further missions with the same faction harder, but more rewarding. Rank can be "retired" (reset) at any time in exchange for tokens, and this will allow the player to start from beginning - which is relevant if the activities become too hard to complete.

Nominally, the different activities are:

• Patrol: Fight 5 waves of enemies, rewards with Credits, Standing and Commendations (tokens).
• Bounty: Hunt known Criminals through 5 waves of enemies, rewards with Credits, Standing and Commendations.
• Industry Ops: Support and defend a Station while mining/salvaging resources and crafting support items in the forge, while under an onslaught of enemies. Goal is to craft "Operational Supplies" for the Station.

The Commendations farmed from each Op is needed for the specialized Shop (see above). With increasing rank the items generated in shops will have higher level.

Note: Retiring the rank doesn't lower the highest item level unlocked.

See Factions for more information.

Mercenary Board

Mercenary Board

Mercenaries can be hired at Omnitac Agency stations. These can be found throughout the Galaxy. Mercenaries will fight along your side until they become too damaged to continue, at which point they will go to a station,, repair, and then return. Their contracts are can be extended on an hourly basis.

There are 3 types of Mercenaries:

• C = Combat
• M = Mining
• S = Salvage

Mercenary cost depends on their skill and ship size. A higher Reputation Score grants access to higher quality Mercenaries.

Trade Terminal

Trade Terminal

Available at Intertrade Network stations. Trade Terminal allows for purchase and sale of bulk goods, with the intention of transporting them (via Freighters) to distant Intertrade Stations.

As each Terminal has its own price range, it's possible to earn a profit by buying low and selling elsewhere high. the Economy skill plays heavily into this activity.

Umbral Infection

Umbral Shop

As part of the main story, Conquest Zone stations can be hacked by Umbral Reach. This will enable them to issue special "Umbral Missions" - daily repeatables which reward with massive Credits and Mars Tokens amounts.

Also, such stations will host a special "Umbral Shop", hidden in the regular shop. It will act as a "Conquest Shop" - ie. it will require Mars Tokens, but will offer rare gear at high levels.

Level of items in Umbral Shop is tied to Conquest Reputation with the station owner - every rank of standing increases base item level by +2. Thus, at maximum Conquest Reputation (4500), items generated are at +10 levels - so a level 64 station would generate level 74 items.