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Available Subsystems:

Provides Command And Control:
Command centre (electronic central computer). 10 PU. Size 2, Mass 1. Electricity 0.5 MW. Basic ship command. Requires 5 reltips awake at all times.

Command centre (optronic central computer) 20 PU. Size 1, Mass 1. Electricity 1 MW. Improved processing speed, reliability and hard drive storage capacity over electronic command. Requires 5 reltips awake at all times.

Smart Command centre (optronic central computer /w Expert Systems) 40 PU. Size 2, Mass 2. Electricity 3 MW. An optical-electronic computer connected to a series of high-tech expert systems for increased automation, navigation, self-optimization, software debugging and crisis management. Requires 1 person awake at all times. Warning! Advanced technology: major components not in storage. Time to build functional unit: 1 turn/ 2 months.

Provides Thrust:
Electrostatic Ion Engine. 30 PU. Size 3. Mass 5. Electricity 5 MW. Does not require fuel. Warning: Low thrust! Removes 3 months from Launch Timers, adds 30% to journey lenght.

VSI Magnetoplasma Rocket. 20 PU. Size 20, Mass 30. Electricity 1 MW. Requires fuel. Note: Rugged technology, unlikely to malfunction.

Fusion Plasma Torch. 10 PU. Size 30. Mass 10. Requires fuel. Note: High fuel consumption system. High Thrust: Removes 10% from journey lenght. Note: Rugged technology, unlikely to malfunction.

Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster. 20 PU. Size 10, Mass 20. Electricity 5 MW. Requires any fuel tank. Note: Fuel Efficient. High Thrust: Removes 20% from journey lenght. Warning! Advanced technology: major components not in storage. Time to build functional unit: 3 Turns/6 months.

Provides Power:
Radioisotope thermoelectric battery. 1 PU Size 1. Mass 1. Generates 1 MW for 50 years. Note: Simple technology, fast and easy to install. Extremely unlikely to malfunction. Cannot be refuelled.

He-3 Inertial Fusion generator /w external radiators. 20/50/100 PU. Size 5/15/35. Mass 5/12/25. Generates 50 / 150 / 500 MW. Requires fuel. Note: Rugged technology, unlikely to malfunction. Reactor design maintenance-friendly. Minimum output at all times 50%. Medium design is High-Consumption. Largest design uses twice that.

He-3 MTF Fusion generator /w external radiators. 10 / 30 PU. Size 5 / 20. Mass 3 / 12. Generates 50 / 200 MW. Requires fuel. Warning! Advanced technology, major components not in storage. Time to build functional unit: 2 / 6 months. Lack of widespread practical use means not all reliability or maintenance issues are fully understood. Larger version is High-Consumption. Minimum output at all times: 50%

Provides Life Support:
Biodome /w hydroponics. 5 PU. Size 20. Mass 2. Provides near-indefinite life support for 10 awake reltips / 50 cryosleepers. Note: Meditative atmosphere and living plants help stave off psychological issues. Vulnerable to external damage.

Oxygen scrubbers & water recyclers. 5 PU. Size 2. Mass 3. Electricity 3 MW. Provides life support for 20 awake Reltips / 100 cryosleepers. Note: Does not provide food. Crew requires food stores. Requires 1 additional Rel’tar awake.

Closed Loop Life Support /w hydroponics. 20 / 40 PU. Size 4 / 8. Mass 3 / 5. Electricity 6 / 10 MW. Provides near-indefinite life support for 15 / 30 awake reltip or 75 / 150 cryosleepers. Requires 1 additional Rel’tar awake.

Other subsystems:
He-3 Fuel Tank. Cost 2 / 4 / 6 PU. Size 2 / 4 / 6. Mass 3 / 6 / 9 (including fuel). Small fuel tank provides fuel to run a single small fuel-dependant system for 5 years, 2.5 years if high-consumption.

Cargo bay /w industrial cargo handling system. S / M / L. Cost 1 / 2 / 4 PU. Size 11 / 22 / 43. Mass 0.5 / 1 / 2. Allows the Outpost vessel to carry greater amount of cargo, adding 9 / 20 / 40 units of cargo space.

Cryogenic pods (15 reltips). Cost 10 PU, Size 5 units, Mass 5 units. Electricity 5 MW. Additional crew for the Outpost mission, this unit allows the vessel to carry a larger complement of Rel workforce.

Automated Satellite Launcher. Cost 5 PU. Size 2. Mass 8. This system is connected to the cargo bays with loading rails, allowing a simple program from the command centre to load, prepare and launch into desired trajectory a stored satellite, prior to landing on target planet.

Damage Control & machine shop. Cost 3 PU. Size 4. Mass 2. Electricity 1 MW. Series of metalworking machines, cutting equipment and tools, and diagnosis computers intended to give minor manufacturing and modification capability to a ship. A large help in repairing broken systems, and can even be used for small construction projects. Note: Hands-on types of the crew will find it relaxing, to be able to unleash their imaginations into something concrete.

Interstellar Communications Laser. Cost 20 PU. Size 0. Mass 1. Electricity 15 MW. Previously a theoretical concept only, this massive mirror and modulated laser should be able to communicate with e-mail type messages, still images and very short small-resolution videos at short interstellar distances – up to 25 light years. Of course, you need someone with similar equipment on the receiving end for this system to be any real benefit. Note: The system is by necessity exposed to space – micrometeors might cause damage. Reliability unknown. Ability to communicate to outside the vessel might help, or cause, psychological issues.

Medical Bay. Cost 3 PU. Size 2. Mass 1. Electricity 1 MW. Tightly packed, this subsystem provides small scale medical support to a handful of reltip. Reference libraries, small drug stores and basic equipment for anything up to and including basic emergency surgery allows for treatment of most common illnesses and mundane injuries.

Armory: Cost 5 PU, Size 3, Mass 2. Simple as it gets, a subsystem that provides a secure place to store weaponry in case of emergencies.  Can help to keep the peace as well. Note: It is inadvisable to fire firearms inside of the ship due to risk of damage. Keep locked and secured just in case as well.

Available Vessel Alterations:
Expanded superstructure. Cost: 20 PU. Mass 15 units. Additional support beams are welded on to the existing superstructure. Increase available size by 30 units. Cannot be done, if >60% of ship size has already been filled with subsystems, or this improvement has been applied twice.

Reinforced outer hull. Cost 20 PU. Mass 20 units. By applying a layer of high-quality duranium-steel armor and a layer of lead on top of the more mundane existing plating, the internal systems of the vessel become far better protected from external threats, such as micrometeorite impacts, radiation sources and possible local phenomena at target planet.

Atmospheric flight conversion. Cost 10 PU. Mass 15 units. Size 5. While not exactly living up to a promise of flight in atmospheric conditions, the added fixed wings, enhanced thrusters, steering and landing gear do add a degree of maneuverability. The vessel will not be a fighter jet by any means, but will exceed the previous 'falling brick' levels of aerodynamics, allowing pilots far greater control over the vessel during the landing operation if doing so in an atmosphere.

Planned deconstruction. Cost 5 PU. Mass 2 units. Size 2 units. The plan has always been for the Outpost vessels to be deconstructed at the destination. However, due to the time and size limitations at hand before departure from Ste’lar must begin, to save time the vessels have not been purpose-built as default with systems and designs to make this particularly easy. Executing this modification ensures the outer shell, all subsystems and even controls and cabling are easy to remove and repurpose at the destination, without compromising structural integrity of the completed vessel for the journey.

Available Cargo:

Basic Maintenance Supplies. Cost 1 PU, Size 1, Mass 1. Each unit of supplies is essentially a standard truck container filled to the brim with a wide variety of replacement parts. Can be used to repair or create basic mechanial or electronic systems.

Advanced Technology Maintenance Supplies. Cost 3 PU, Size 1, Mass 1. A truck container of non-standard high-tech and/or high-precision replacement parts for a variety of advanced technologies. Includes complex optronic computer parts, high-performance materials, and so forth. Can be used to repair or jury-rig new Advanced Technology systems.

Food. 0.5 PU, Size 3, Mass 1. Compressed protein and vitamin bars, carbohydrate sludge and other such forms of slightly distasteful if highly nutritious examples of deep space food. Minimal quality, but sufficient for a healthy diet, for 10 awake reltip for 1 year.

Air tanks & vac suits. 1 PU, Size 1, Mass 1. For some strange reason, Rel’ar who routinely travel in space feel better if emergency vacuum suits and pressurized air tanks are available for those rare hull-breaches or life-support failures, for someone to have a chance at fixing them. Provides 5 suits and 24h per suit of breathable air.

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Orbital Survey Satellite. Cost 10 PU, Size 3, Mass 3. Highly developed satellite intended to be launched in to stable orbit over a planet or a moon. Using a variety of technologies, it slowly if steadily scans the body below it for mineral deposits and transmits the data regarding location, depth, materials and size of deposits to a ship or a ground installation using radio. A single satellite can fully scan an Nat’oar-like planet in 10 years.

Weather Satellite. Cost 10 PU, Size 3, Mass 3. A combination of passive and active technologies, this satellite is intended to gather information of atmospheric conditions. Moisture-analyzers, high-atmosphere wind speed measurers, cloud radar, lightning bolt detectors, particle density optometers and other technologies make this satellite an effective orbital weather- and atmospheric analysis laboratory. Unfortunately, the design cannot incorporate the complex and power-hungry Expert Systems to collate and analyze the data for an on-the-spot prediction of weather conditions. This satellite can only provide a remote user with all the necessary information. In addition, a single satellite can only observe a limited area at a time – the size of central Europe, for reference.

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Habitation Dome S / M / L. Cost 4 / 6 / 8. Size 1 / 2 / 3, Mass 0.5 / 1 / 1.5 An inflatable, basic, vacuum rated plastic habitation dome with aluminium/titanium supports. Provides near-instant, basic empty space for equipment, living space or other such purposes. Simply find a flat piece of ground, assemble the supports, and inflate with air.

Armored Habitation Dome S / M / L. Cost 6 / 10 / 14, Size 2 / 4 / 6. Mass 2.5 / 5 / 7.5. With a core of basic Habitation Dome, this upgraded version includes a rigid outer shell of military-scale composite armor. It naturally weights quite a bit more and takes longer to fully assemble. However it provides solid protection from aggressive weather phenomena or micro-meteors, nearly guaranteeing the physical integrity of the Dome even in the most hazardous environments. Small dome is 300, medium 600 and largest 1000 square meters, with top height ranging from 5m to 20m.

Powered Exo-skeleton Constructor Units. Cost 2 PU, Size 3, Mass 2. A pair of advanced, 2.5m tall constructor units. Forget searching for the right tool, waiting for a crane to swing over or even most common hazards. Simply get into one of these, and you're a single-man hybrid of a constructor team and a cargo loader. The variants being offered to Outpost missions are atmospherically sealed.

Digging & drilling vehicles. Cost 2 PU, Size 4, Mass 4. A pair of advanced vehicles powered by electric engines, intended to be operated by a single person each. These drill-headed, tracked vehicles can dig, burrow and drill through most rock without any real problems. Advanced servo technology allows them to dig even straight down, or make 90 degree turns in spaces smaller than they are, the haul out the materials with their internal containers. Atmospherically sealed and rollcage made from starship-hull grade materials make these excellent, modern tools for basic groundworking or underground drilling.

Constructor Bot Team. Cost 15 PU, Size 5, Mass 4. A team of ten remote-operateable semi-automated constructor robots, that can build anything on personal or industrial scale. These things are not intelligent, but work tirelessly and with precision as long as intelligent oversight is present. They multiply the amount of physical labour a single Rel can accomplish to staggering amounts. You only need to periodically recharge their batteries. User's manual, remote-interface program, recharge station and maintenance manual included, as usual.

Mining Bot Team. Cost 12 PU, Size 5, Mass 4. Used all over the place in the Ste-system asteroid fields, a single mining bot team works as a unit to dig into rock, excavate the materials, transport them to a site nearby and sort them according to rough criteria (such as "Iron ore here, porous rock there"). They are also often used for underground excavations, for constructor bots to create entire subterranean installations to the space opened up by these units. The bots are not intelligent and a team requires oversight from one Rel, if they are to accomplish anything. However, they are precise and efficient, and have to pause only for recharging. As usual, everything except actual spare parts are included in the package, to ensure stable long-term operation.

Manufacturing equipment. Cost 8 PU, Size 3, Mass 3. A low-tech workshop-type solution for early manufacturing needs. This set contains all the necessary equipment and work benches to construct basic electronics, practice small-scale metallurgy, and turn simple raw materials into spare parts and components, and with time, more complex tools. However, the limited use of robotics makes this manpower-intensive solution and unsuitable for large-scale manufacturing. Requires 8 reltip and 1MW of power for optimal efficiency. Effectively zero maintenance required.

Automated Production Line. Cost 20 PU, Size 4, Mass 7. Robotics based self-contained small assembly line. Provide 10MW of power, intelligent oversight from 2 reltip and basic raw materials, and simply watch finished parts and components come out. Given time, it can produce all the parts of simple bots, or even an unassembled copy of itself. The basic model is unable to produce Advanced Technology parts, such as optronic circuitry. As these units are often used to provide basic manufacturing capability on remote locations with manpower concerns, they have been optimized for batch type work. This makes the units more complex and overall only somewhat faster than manual labour from a skilled team with basic facilities. As such, it requires high-maintenance, though all the information and tools required to operate and maintain this unit safely are included.

My First Factory kit. Cost 40 PU, Size 10, Mass 20. A package of parts and equipment simply waiting to be assembled at a suitable location and plugged to a power generator. Once finished, this heavily automated batch-type industrial unit is capable of turning raw materials into any finished basic technological product, up to the size of a semi-truck and to the complexity of a simple Bot in a single go. Given time and resources, this facility can produce Advanced parts, and eventually produce components to assemble another one like it. Due to heavy use of robotics, expert systems and simple 3D printers, along with in-built ore processor and electronics fabricator, only a single reltip is required to oversee the entire factory and blueprints can be directly fed to the system to being production of the intended finished component or product. Compared to simpler automated systems, this unit is highly effective and productive. You only need 20 MW of power, along with unprocessed requisite raw materials (though availability of pre-processed materials speeds up the function of this unit). Users however often note that complexity of this unit also results in high maintenance demand and periodic breakdowns. Note: Advanced Technology, on-order only. Construction time: 8 months/ 4 Turns.

Ore Processor. Cost 6 PU, Size 4, Mass 5. Basic, rugged design intended to crush rock and ore, and separate materials within by weight, density and/or magnetic properties. 2 MW of electricity required, throughput per day of 2 tons raw ore.

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Bio-recycler kit. Cost 3 PU, Size 2, Mass 4. Nearly all organic materials can be broken down, when mixed with water and put under sufficient preassure and heat. The rest break down just as easily if you add ozone or some recently developed chemicals as catalysts. This kit provides industrial scale mixers, pressure boilers, separator columns, ozone injectors, necessary chemicals and so forth, to reduce any and all organic waste produced by up to 200 reltip into basic but useable hydrocarbons. Simply select a place, assemble the kit, provide water and 5 MW of electricity for continued and fully automated operation.

Hydroponics kit. Cost 7 PU, Size 6, Mass 5. All the equipment – barring water – to begin farming at the target planet. Simply excavate a suitable cavern, build a dome, or deploy outdoors if you are lucky, pickup a wrench and begin assembly Within a matter of months, you'll have your first set of harvest coming along nicely. Provides sustainably sufficient food for up to 50 active individuals, as long as water, and warmth with sunlight (or 15 MW of electricity) is provided. The kit also includes full blueprints and technical manuals as hard copies, for easy repair, maintenance and expansion of the farm.

Organic Sludge Compressor kit. Cost 2 PU, Size 2, Mass 1. Newly established installations often have to contend with limited space or resources. Even hydroponics can at times be an unaffordable luxury. The most recent solution: Organic Sludge Compressor, based upon the theoretical concept of protein resequencers. Sophisticated analysis unit recognizes organic materials and a chemistry expert system calculates required input to turn that material into basic edible nutrition. As long as an organic base is provided, even simple inorganic materials can be processed for the missing elements. Once all requirements have been fulfilled, it processes them into basic nutritious goo containing artificial vitamins, proteins and so forth. 5 MW of power required for continued operation, can sustainably feed up to 100 reltip. Note: Advanced Technology.

Meat-vat kit. Cost 15 PU, Size 4, Mass 5. More than one army has fallen due to poor food supply, more than one rebellion started from hunger. With the wonders from stem-cell research, an industrial scale petri dish, nutrients and a little power, a juicy meat steak ready for cooking is born. This facility takes in 2 MW of power, any organic materials, and intelligent oversight from one reltip, to produce fresh and artificial meat as a supplement for dietary needs. At full production, this facility can feed up to 20 individuals with a meat-based diet.

Water Synthesizer. Cost 1 PU. Size 2, Mass 2. Liquid water is a necessity for all known life. Too bad it cannot be counted upon to be easily available at the destination. This 'synthesizer' plant burns hydrogen in a series of fuel cells in presence of almost pure oxygen. Old-fashioned, but effective and reliable. As long as sufficient raw materials are present, a single unit can provide up to 100 kg of water per day, along with 1 MW of power.

Oxygen Extractor. Cost 5 PU. Size 2, Mass 4. Oxygen is a must for human life, but it is not always conveniently available in a breathable format. Recycling units can also break down, and do not offer a solution to expand a population. This all-purpose unit can process any atmosphere containing even trace amounts of the precious gas, and separate it from the other - probably lethal – compounds present. Requires 10 MW of power, produces up to 5 000 liters of pure oxygen a day, provided high enough concentrations in input material.

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Solar Panels. Cost 20 PU, Size 10, Mass 6. Latest technological improvements at Ste’lar have given solar panels a staggering efficiency, approaching 30% limit. While power output might not be stable, or as high per ton of equipment as fusion generators, solar power is simpler, cannot explode and does not depend upon fuel. Simple take a panel, point it at the sun, and plug in a cord. A single set contains enough panels to provide 30 MW of power on Nat’oar-like conditions.

He-3 Inertial Fusion Generator kit. Cost 15 / 40 / 75 PU, Size 2/10/20. Mass 4/10/20. Generates 50 / 150 / 500 MW. A prefabricated, tightly packed construction kit of the same shipboard systems widely used in ships of Rel’Tar – sans the massive heat radiators required to operate such a power plant in space. Lay down the groundwork and keep building, and faster than you'd might think you'll have a stable, easy to maintain, tried and tested type of fusion generator ready to provide your Outpost with power. As long as you can provide it with fuel, and intelligent oversight to make sure it doesn't go boom.

Radioisotope thermoelectric battery. 1 PU. Size 1. Mass 1. Generates 1 MW for 50 years. Take some radioactive isotopes, surround them with heat-to-electricity converters, encase it all in radiation shielding. Presto; cheap, long term battery. Too bad about the radioactive waste and poor efficiency though.Note: Simple technology, fast and easy to use. Extremely unlikely to malfunction. Cannot be refuelled.

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Optronic Central Computer. Cost 5 PU. Size 2. Mass 2. A large series of Expert Systems, combined with centralized databases and computing power, along with wirelessly connected tablet-computers, this unit is ready to function as a central computer hub for a small to medium installation or colony. It provides capability to run oversight or control programs on a large number of other machines, various other programs, collate and store data, or even provide advice. Extensive knowledge of historical applications to solve problems an Outpost might be facing, is combined with special-built Expert System to accept input from the colonists regarding problems and available materials and equipment. The system then analyzes the requirements and seeks to match it with a solution programmed to its database, finally providing the colonists with the fastest, simplest or cheapest solution that fulfills the restrictive criteria. When required, the system can print out blueprints, assembly guides or historical records regarding the solution, as long as such exist within the system's databanks. Note: Advanced Technology.