Space City Construction

Space Cities are massive orbital or deep space constructs capable of colonizing space itself, allowing for a strategic or civilian presence to exist where a planetary colony is impossible. A space city is often built with a narrow set of functions in mind, but can be built with a wide range of options and additional features to make it suit whatever the environment or circumstances demand. The core of a space city is its central hub, a large rotating cylindrical station section with a hollow interior where a docking bay allows for easy loading and unloading of cargo in a micro gravity environment while offering protection to docked ships from outside threats. In addition to docks capable of servicing a wide range of ships both hive made and otherwise, the central hub provides a basic level of defensive features, including a wing of fighter bays and swarm drone bays in addition to enough weapon hard points to fend off would-be pirates or other small attacks, and enough interior room for a specialized module which often serves as the primary function of the city itself and offers extensive bonuses to that function. The hub contains a number of available open areas for expansion, allowing for up to six additional wards to be built and developed with more modules, weapon hard points, and other features as needed. Each ward is itself an entire district in its own right, with its own subsystems, life support, weapon systems, and living space for hive and non-hive life tailor made to suit the ward's intended function.

Construction and maintenance
Space Cities are gargantuan industrial, political, and economic entities, literally an entire metropolis lifted into the void of space, and as such their construction and upkeep is a major undertaking for even the most well established of interstellar governments. The fastest and most easy method of construction is to find a naturally suitable location, such as a pre-existing derelict that can be retrofitted, or a suitably large asteroid that can be hollowed out and inhabited. Such locations have the benefit of being able to recycle resources extracted in the process of making room for construction, greatly reducing or negating the overall costs, as well as boosting the speed of construction. The second most effective method of building a Space City is to construct it into pre-existing infrastructure, such as adding on to a Capillary Tower's anchor station and building it into a new Hub. This is expensive, but operational infrastructure allows the process to finish at a greatly accelerated rate. The third, and most taxing method, is to simply assemble the city in deep space as one would any typical station, although on a scale grand enough to bankrupt all but the most wealthy of interstellar powers. This is highly expensive, time consuming, and requires the coordinated effort of entire planets to accomplish, reducing the total income scores of entire star systems until the project is completed. In order to provide the constant flow of resources, at least one Trade Route must be connected to the construction site from either the star system of a willing trade ally, or a Hive owned system, and will lower the income score of the entire system by 50%, including any completed and functional space cities within the system. The more resources are diverted to the construction site, the faster the City will be built, and a construction site may be fed by more than one trade route. Once finished, a Space City does not have any actual upkeep per se, although they do require a vast amount of resources and labor to maintain, such constructs tend to be mostly net self sufficient.

Economics of Space Cities
There is no such thing as an undeveloped Space City. Such things are simply called derelicts. As such, Space Cities cannot directly invest in their development score. Their industrial and agricultural functions are a product of their specialized facilities and do not have the luxury of spacious lands on which to grow unplanned hive sprawl, on the other hand, while they have space for far fewer residents than the billions most planets are able to support, Space Cities benefit from a logistical and developmental advantage, allowing for its population to be far more effective as an economic resource per capita than any terrestrial world's teeming masses, allowing Space Cities to have a population capacity that is seemingly on par or exceeding some planets. Space Cities also lack resources to exploit within themselves as planets have, but instead serve as a command center from which to coordinate the extraction of orbital and deep space resources within the system. As such, a Space City's Metal and Nutrient scores are the sum of all resources within the Space City's range, for most cities, that range is local orbit unless specified otherwise. In addition to metals and nutrients, Space Cities are able to exploit tourist attractions, and even further are able to chain systems together using trade routes to provide a regular credit income as well as to push certain forms of political influence upon other worlds. Certain space cities can also serve as the HQ of mega-corporations operating within Hive space, granting large sums of taxable income and direct access to the arcane machinations of alien political lobbying firms, legal structures, and economic levers that the single-minded have used to build and organize their societies. Not all Space Cities are able to utilize these features, but those that do are typically built almost entirely around them.

Central Hub module
The Central Hub of a space city features a number of standard features in addition to its specialized functions. All central hub designs include a hollow docking chamber within the center, accessed via a pair of open access docking corridors on either side of the hub module set on the city's axis of rotation. The entire city spins, granting cheap access to gravity, and providing a mild .2 Earth gravity within the docking bay for easy ship maneuvering and cargo hauling. The interior facility can accommodate all known ship designs up to cruiser size, with additional docking piers for larger ships to tether to the outer shell. The Space City comes standard with the most advanced shield tech available, and a large number of auxiliary weapon points, as well as a full wing of fighter drones and swarm drones. Additional weapons are included in small number, depending on the design. The outer torus layer of the hub is dedicated to the hub's specialization, with transport capillaries running to any wards build onto the city and a nervous system of interlinked ship grade sub-thinkers dedicated to controlling and maintain the city's functions, drones, and an egg layer to replace them.

Star Hive
1 Strategic Trade Route
+0 Pop Cap
+0 Dev
+10 Docking Pylons
A powerful and purpose built military facility dedicated to force projection and rapid repair and resupply of military ships. The hub does not spin, allowing for larger military ships to dock more easily, but the rigors of zero gravity render the city largely uninhabitable to non-hive life. The armor of the hub and all wards is made of heavy plating, cutting down on internal space for non-essential systems, removing the luxury of spacious internal compartments most non-hive species consider a necessity for comfort. The hub is covered in particle beam cannons graded for anti-orbital fire, allowing the space city to fire on any approaching hostile with devastating effect, and a planetary missile defense system has been installed in the hull allowing the city to attack enemies almost anywhere in the system. In addition, additional fighter bays and swarm drone bays are included, as well as additional and improved micro-factories to replace them more quickly, allowing the space city to continuously replenish lost strike craft even in battle so long as there are resources available. Amid all of these emplacements are additional weapon hard points, sacrificing the multi-design compatible docking facilities to make room, severely limiting the number of non-hive ships that can dock, and preventing larger non-hive ships from docking at all.

Macrofactory
+1 Trade Route
+0 Pop Cap
+25 Dev
+75 Docking Pylons
Exploits all local resource sites
Allows export of Development score
A sprawling collection of manufacturing facilities, molecular assembly vats, protein sequencing vats, refining facilities, and resource extraction facilities all dedicated to the fast and efficient collection, refining, and distribution of needed resources, component organs, and starships. While there is a standard number of docking facilities that can accommodate non-hive vessels, the hub lacks any location for visitors to stay within the hub itself. The hull is plated with typical combat armor plating with reflexive armor beneath to protect against accidental collisions with mining ships, cargo vessels, and asteroids and other targets of resource extraction. The Macrofactory is dedicated to sourcing, extracting, and refining resources and moving them to where they are needed most, as well as producing finished military and industrial products at a rapid pace and facilitating their distribution across the greater Hive. The Macrofactory will automatically extract and refine all non-planetary resources in the local system that the Hive has the technology to exploit at a development score of 25. In addition, it may export its development score's effect either in whole or in part to any planet within the local system, with a 25% penalty, to any Hive-owned planet with a 50% penalty, or to any willing planet with a 75% penalty. Much of its internal docking facilities and large swaths of its outer shell are dedicated shipyards, granting the equivalent of 75 Docking Pylons capable of ship construction.

Promenade
+3 Trade Routes
+70 Pop Cap
+20 Docking Pylons
+1 Mega-corporation HQ
Exploits all local tourist attractions
A facility dedicated to catering to the delicate and highly specific needs of non-hive life forms, this hub module is designed to maximize docking space, allowing for a large number of non-hive ships to dock at once. The interior space is coated in gravity plating to grant the appropriate gravity level for visitors, and space is dedicated to real estate patches rented to non-drone hive citizens when possible, or those otherwise deemed worthy of renting the space, as well as hive-run facilities that include restaurants, hotels, trading posts, communications services, and other economic functions to provide a steady stream of credit income, as well as capitalize on any natural attractions the system may have.  The hull is plated with standard armor, with additional space dedicated to merchant docking facilities and cargo handing equipment. A promenade will not extract or refine resources itself, but instead collects an amount of credits equal to the station's population multiplied by the sum of all Tourist Attractions in the system, in addition to the sum of all trade routes linked to the station: (Pop * Tourist attractions) + Trade routes. A Promenade can serve as the local headquarters for a single mega-corporation. The station technically could accommodate more than one, however such organizations tend to be territorial, and forcing them to share office space is typically unwise.

Presidium
+1 Humanitarian Trade Route
+40 Pop Cap
+1 Mega-corporation HQ
X2 bonus to Exploited Tourist Attractions
Grants large credit income at irregular intervals
Grants random intelligence and espionage opportunities
A vast expanse of offices, communications arrays, psionic relays, and luxurious living facilities dedicated to tending to the care of foreign dignitaries, government officials, and influential individuals. Trade docks are sacrificed for additional protection, allowing the fitting of multiple layers of combat armor to provide good protection against all but the most dedicated of attacks, and extensive weapon hard points cover the outer hull in addition to an additional wing of fighters and swarm drones, all not as numerous or plentiful as the Star Hive, but still suitable for the protection of politically important individuals. In addition, gravity plating along the internal compartments provide finely tuned gravity to suit the needs of visitors, and channels of water, pools, and a drain system allows for the easy maneuvering of aquatic species, while an open and spacious interior far away from the floor's gravity plating allows for easy maneuvering of more avian species capable of limited or greater flight. A moderate amount of space is reserved for extremely high quality services, including hotels, restaurants, and recreation facilities all micromanaged by hive workers to painstakingly recreated specifications that suit the needs of visitors. In addition, the architecture is made to conceal a large number of moderate relays capable of covering every inch of the facility, allowing for total surveillance both physically and psionically, as well as all the other bonuses that includes. The Presidium emanates political and cultural pressure in all respects, and functions as a kind of embassy to the rest of known space. A sizable but irregular credit income is earned from high class tourists, celebrities, and political and corporate leaders, all tourist attractions in the system being exploited by the Presidium provide double the credit income, and random intelligence and espionage bonuses are gained periodically, as well as random events that may offer chances to capitalize on unique opportunities. The Presidium can function as the local headquarters of a mega-corporation.

Orbital Anchor
+1 Logistics Trade Route
+1 Trade route
+5 Dev score
+4 Utility Ward slots
Gains small credit income
All station statistics, bonuses, and income are applied to connected planet
The anchor station of a Capillary Tower expanded, inhabited, and built into a full Space City, the Orbital Anchor offers a rather unique opportunity in the field of space station architecture in that it does not need to spin to enjoy affordable and reliable artificial gravity. Due to the nature of orbital tethers, only the geostationary point of the tether rests in zero gravity. Everything bellow that point is pulled by the planet, and everything above is pulled by the centripetal force of the planet's spin. Because the geostationary point is equidistant to both the ground and the anchor station, the centripetal force felt on the anchor station is typically close to or equal to the local planet's own gravity. As such, the anchor station is instead built similarly to a terrestrial city, but hung upside down from the tether. The Orbital Anchor is thus a massive structure of interconnected vertical towers concealed in a protective shell of chitinous armor plating and coated in hangar bays and docking ports for visiting ships, With the layers furthest from the planet serving as dockyards for merchant vessels. The majority of the rest of the hub is devoted to logistical systems to facilitate the passage of cargo and passengers through the Capillary Tower, allowing the station to function as the planet's space port, while at the 'top' of the station is the anchor itself, consisting of the primary orbital tether, as well as four secondary tethers serving to stabilize the station's position which run from four small Utility Wards to the geostationary station at the main tether's halfway point. All resource stat altering Wards instead effect the planet, and the planet gains a small Credit income score from credits earned through tariffs and fees for use of the tether's lifts. The planet's statistics can surpass the default maximum values using this effect. The Orbital Anchor is capable of supporting 4 additional Utility Wards in a zero-gravity environment which can be configured with a range of specialized functions.


Wards
Space Cities are vast structures, and as such their hubs are only a small part of their full layout. While hubs offer a core specialization to the space city, wards offer a way to generalize a space city to best take advantage of the local environment, allowing space cities to either focus in and excel at a specific function, or to diversify into a number of services and abilities. A space city is capable of maintaining up to 6 wards, which extend from the hub's external torus to take full advantage of its spin to provide a cheap and effective gravity to its inhabitants, while other hubs allow for additional Utility Wards to be added, which are smaller and more specialized wards not available to most hubs. A ward has no inherent construction cost, but simply modifies the properties of the Space City itself by granting it additional features or statistics.

Sprawl
+20 Pop Cap
Increased Pop growth rate
A sprawl is as close to a slum as is possible in space without compromising structural integrity. While a hive drone cares nothing for comfort and desires only to fulfill its duty, non-hive life require more motivation than the satisfaction of a job well done for Queen and Hive, and a part of that natural structure is the economic strife of the underclasses and the struggle of the teeming masses. Without a Queen to determine where populations are most needed, the single-minded species function in a more simple manner akin to the physics of fluid dynamics and pressure differential as populations move from places of poorer quality and fewer resources to places of higher quality and greater resources. By providing efficient habitation units at scale, you can in effect create a low pressure area and attract a large population of moderately to low skill workers in a very small span of time. The fact that such large numbers of individuals flock so quickly to such modest living spaces is somewhat concerning, but they will soon find that the Queen cares for all her children, no matter how inefficient they may be.

Resort
+10 Pop Cap
Allows exploitation of +1 Tourist Attraction on station
Gains random intelligence and chances to obtain Sleeper Agents
While more dedicated Space Cities are able to accommodate the tourism of entire systems, some must relegate such luxury services to smaller, more niche districts in order to focus the bulk of the city on more critical matters. In such cases, this relatively modest but still vast and luxurious ward offers a carefully crafted experience for tourists from all across known space of all species and cultures, exploiting whatever strange attraction the single-minded have taken a fancy to so as to better separate them from their credits. Cheaply made novelty goods spat out of hidden vats sell for prices that make you almost feel shame, shuttles take visitors on leisurely rides over breathtaking horizons, and state of the art entertainment facilities boggle their tiny minds with haptic holograms and gravity that can be adjusted as easily as the temperature, all under the friendly guide of each tour group's own personal Speaker.

Customs
Increases income from Trade Routes
Increases Detection and Failure risk of enemy Espionage activities on station
Only one Customs can be built per station
An administrative formality, to be sure, but an important one. While nothing enters or leaves the Queen's domain without her knowledge and approval, consolidating the process of inspecting and taxing goods and civilian traffic  into a single massive facility of security offices, medical pods, warehouses, and carefully and deliberately assembled bureaucratic labyrinths allows the process of weeding out troublemakers and illicit goods to be streamlined and made both more efficient, and more effective. The result is a more robust and thorough layer of security, and the added benefit of increased trade profits is certainly a bonus.

Trade port
+1 Trade Route on station
Can use the Infest Action on station's Trade Route targets
A Space City's true obstacle to additional trade is not docking facilities for ships or even physical space for goods, but the streamlined logistical systems needed to avoid inefficient buildup of inventory. In theory, the perfect warehouse should be capable of shipping goods at an equal pace as it receives them, and thus only need room enough for a single item of each kind. Perfection is often impossible, but the Hive shall reach as close as possible. Worker drones moving in perfect lockstep pace under the guidance of thinker concerts and a predictive logistics network functioning as a single individual along psionic networks allows for goods to flow in and out of storage like blood through a body's veins, minimizing storage time, and thus maximizing the number of merchant ships that can unload their goods at any given time, and in turn increasing the number of trade routes that can be organized from the Space City. The fact that some of those merchant vessels may carry certain unknown passengers is of no real concern...

Barracks
Adds additional weapons to station and allows the deployment of Gunship class strikecraft
Increases strength against boarding actions
Increases Failure and Detection risks of enemy espionage
While every Space City holds room for security and even military staff, not all have a full ward dedicated to military functions. A Warrior Drone needs neither shelter nor ammunition to be a major threat, but knowing who the enemy is the first step in killing them, as such, the Barracks are far from being simple Warrior storage. With living space for clone and recruited agents, dedicated training holo-chambers, weapon and armor microfactories, and dedicated medical facilities to heal battle wounds, the Barracks is a combination of armory, dojo, field hospital, fortress, and military academy all rolled into one and dedicated to the security of the Space City and the system at large, offering first responders deployed to accidents, smuggling, and even acts of piracy or outright invasion by deploying both gunships and interplanetary transports laden with both Heavy Warriors and skilled Clone commando teams.

Refinery
Allows the exploitation of +1 resource site in system
Grants the Space City a Development bonus of +10
While most civilizations are forced to separate the processes of refining metals and organics, the Hive's advanced biological mastery has rendered the processes for both largely identical. Far from the noisy furnaces and clanging steel tankers of other refineries, the Hive's industrial and agricultural sector is combined into a singular facility of acid vats and digestive chemical baths. In effect, a massive, district sized stomach with which the Space City may consume even more resources than it otherwise could.

Star Drill Platform
Allows the exploitation of Canderon from a local star
[LOCKED: RESEARCH REQUIRED]
The extraction of Canderon from the surface of a star is an expensive, dangerous, and logistically demanding process and as such requires a dedicated and advanced platform above and beyond the typical industrial equipment to do so. As such, the Star Drill platform offers an entire ward devoted to the maintenance, repair, and deployment of these advanced resource extractors across the surface of the local star. The platform itself does not perform any extraction, but instead serves as the command center of the mining operation, controlling swarms of automated prospector probes to find and track major canderon supplies across the star's surface, and remotely command the star drills to effectively extract the resources, as well as servicing a number of dedicated tanker transport drones to ferry raw canderon to onboard refineries, and a number of dedicated repair bays specialized in the maintenance of the star drills and the specialized drones used in the operation. Because of the platform's function as a logistical command center, it does not need to be located in orbit of the star, and may exploit the star's deposits from any location in the system.

Laboratory
+5 Pop Cap
Permits Cooperative Research ventures
Improves safety of assigned research at the cost of speed
Critical Failures become regular failures except on a natural roll of 1
regular failures do not reduce research progress
Only one Laboratory may be built per station
A dedicated research facility intended for use by non-hive science personnel. Both recruited Hive Citizens and foreign researchers working under diplomatic scientific exchange programs are given all the equipment and resources needed to further the fields of scientific discovery, including ample space for experiments, the storage of test materials, assembly of experimental products, and living space for the researchers themselves, and all with the added benefits of additional layers of security made possible by the Space City's remote location in high orbit where atmosphere, temperature, and gravity can be manipulated to contain any threat, spillage, explosion, or sudden and uncharacteristic religious inclinations.

Zoological Reserve
Functions as a Tourist Attraction
+10 Nutrient Score on selected planet in system
Automatically performs Dissection research subjects when available
Only one Zoological Reserve may be built in the same System
A dedicated section of the Space City devoted to the collection, study, and preservation of interesting, rare, potentially useful, and otherwise unique life forms found all across known space. Gravity plating offers perfectly matched gravity for any and all life held within, while atmospheric systems maintain a custom atmosphere for every environment, with multiple isolated sections devoted to simulating a wide range of planetary landscapes. Biopods and laboratories are spread throughout the ward offering a constant vigil on every creature and it's behavior and biology, and as an added bonus, the single-minded will flock from all across known space to see such a rare and extensive menagerie of beasts.

Tachyonic Drill
Increases income from Trade Routes
Grants local ships use of Rip Drive to a range of 20LY
Can connect directly to any other Drill within 35LY
What could only be described as the big brother to the Rip Drive, it is a drive core that has been built on a grander scale. While the entire ward is not totally devoted to the Drive itself, it does make up a moderate proportion. The rest of the ward is composed of dedicated navigation systems, intricate long range navigation sensors, and facilities to perform repairs and maintenance, as well as heat ventilators to accommodate a more rapid and intense firing rate of the drive than would otherwise be normal. The result is that the Space City is capable of projecting tears in spacetime within close proximity, allowing for departing ships to pass through to distant systems up to twenty light years away, and if connecting to another Tachyonic Drill directly, both drills can cooperate to bore a tunnel in spacetime up to thirty five lightyears across.

Thermal Regulator
Greatly boosts all shields on station
Boosts rate of fire of all weapons on station
Reduces all Thermal damage on station
In space, heat kills. It is always more easy to gain it than to get rid of it, and any action taken in combat brings the crew that much closer to a painful death roasting within their own vessel like a potato cooked in a wrapper of foil. The most effective methods of venting heat are also the most cumbersome in combat, taking the form of vast radiators that make for a prime target and display the vessel like a vibrantly glowing bullseye. Other methods of venting are either unable to overcome the rate of heat buildup, or require the expenditure of resources such as dumping coolant or heat sinks, reducing the vessel's endurance in combat. While certain technologies such as cooling lasers can help to compensate for this, it remains a reality that most warships can only maintain combat conditions for hours at a time before being forced to retreat or suffer damage. Space Cities cannot retreat, yet they still suffer the heat buildup that can make any protracted siege a short event. To solve this problem, an entire ward is devoted to this singular function, operating as the city's beating heart, quite literally in fact, distributing a near never-ending stream of coolant and heat sinks processed from recycled waste products to overheated sections before taking them back to be cooled again by powerful arrays of cooling lasers, or in the event of an emergency, dumped altogether. This circulatory process allows for the city to not only maintain its shields over a longer period of time and against greater damage, but also allows it to maintain a general battle ready stance for longer. Weapons are freed to fire almost constantly, with little time needed to vent heat between volleys, and the damage of direct thermal weapons is mitigated at a moderate, but constant rate, increasing both survivability and defensive damage of the city at large.

Utility Wards
In order to better stabilize an orbital tether, additional secondary tethers are required to prevent noticeable sway and stress to the structure. An added benefit of these stabilizers is that the additional space can be made to serve as smaller, more focused wards devoted to a smaller, yet still highly useful duty. As such, Utility Wards are smaller, more focused wards devoted to certain functions, granting small bonuses to an Orbital Tether. An Orbital Tether possesses 4 such wards.

Armory
+1 Strategic Trade Route
A secure, isolated, and well guarded facility provides a place to securely store military materials for export or import, providing space to either pack outgoing materials or assemble incoming materials away from the prying eyes of civilians or spies, allowing for a more efficient and unobtrusive military logistics network to be maintained.

Merchant Docks
+1 Commercial Trade Route
Dedicated dockyards offer a purely utilitarian docking facility suitable only for bulk freight, with little accommodation made for actual visitors. These facilities are devoted towards the transport of a specific form of commercial product with specialized loading and unloading systems dedicated to rapidly loading, unloading, and distributing bulk commercial products intended for market.

Construction Oversight Center
+1 Logistics Trade Route
Concerts of thinkers devoted to organizing workers drones and managing material shipments, as well as devoted ports loaded with prefabricated construction materials and bio-mechanical nano-constructor packets serve to export vast amounts of local resources to rapidly develop distant construction projects

Emergency Aid Center
+1 Humanitarian Trade Route
Shelters, medical centers, and streamlined shipping facilities allow the rapid response to remote disasters and humanitarian crises by preparing and distributing care packages, and importing the most critical of individuals for medical care and shelter to those displaced from war damage, natural disasters, poverty, or temporary relocation as a part of a wider urban sprawl renovation project.

Corporate Field office
+1 Industrial Trade Route
A small, humble office for a mega-corporation is established on the station with a dedicated logistics center devoted to the management of local corporate mining permits and the distribution of extracted resources. The corporate entity involved must have an HQ within the region, but it does not need to be in the same system.

Slipway
+10 Docking Pylons
A devoted shipyard provides for construction duties for new ships, with an internal structure that allows for the rapid assembly of new vessels in an area that facilitates a wide range of construction methods at once, allowing for the construction of multiple ships at the same time within the same facility.

Secondary Capillary
+5 Dev score
This secondary tether is reinforced and lined with additional transport capillaries, allowing for additional resources and passengers to navigate between the Anchor station and the geostationary station bellow, increasing the station's overall logistical capacity.

Electrostatic Capacitor
+5 N score
Electrostatic generators mounted along the stabilizing tether farm energy from the planet's atmosphere and are fed into power capacitors within the ward which are then used to improve the overall efficiency of the power grid of both the station and the planet by removing stress from the bio-mechanical infrastructure systems during peak operational hours, improving overall performance.

Orbital Recycling Center
+5 M score
Mounted Consumption Beams gather passing space debris, collecting chunks of natural stellar metals, discarded and lost trash, and components from damaged or destroyed ships, and recycles them for base metals in a central chemical forge before shipping them planetside.

Rest Stop
+5 Pop Cap
Small, cheap, and efficiently structured living facilities offer short term residence to passing merchants, civilians, and allied military servicemen whose short term stay in the area does not require anything more extensive than a single small room with a bed and shower. Such living conditions are rarely tolerable for long, but are often better than a ship's zero-g bunk, making them a welcome sight to weary interstellar travelers.