Last time I made a post about mechanics I talked about the Grid. Now I’m…still talking about The Grid, kind of! But it’s a different one this time.

Home-ship construction is something that had been on our minds since the beginning. Originally it was going to be kicked to the final version! But we had a lot of backer items created that we wanted and so this was a good opportunity to make an initial system out of it.

Construction, Generally

Your home-ship has 2 to 6 decks (2 by default, and you can construct more)[^1]. Each of these decks is a 6x6 grid, upon which you place buildings that have specific shapes. (Again, we’re not falling too far from the original concept.) So for example:

_{I see those hands up from future readers who are already familiar with Celestial Bodies: Empty space is not really a problem in the same way as it is for mechs. Relax.}

Types of Structures

We’ve categorized these structures into a few general types.

• Basic Structures: A few structures are just the defaults you need: a hangar, living quarters, etc. These come along by default and don’t give you anything, but they do give penalties if they’re damaged or not present and you don’t have any mitigating factors in fiction.
• Advanced Structures: These are where we start getting into added functionality. A lot of these add parts for you to put on your mechs. Some of these deal with a functionality that I’m not going to go into any detail about yet! But anything Advanced is extraneous, technically: all the parts in the Terrestrial Edition are the “default” bits. The Ballistics Lab up there is an Advanced Structure that grants the use of Revolvers (reconfigured pistols) and Sluggers (slug-based shotguns) for your mechs.

• Basic and Advanced Expansions: Now we’re getting into the more complicated stuff re: construction. Expansions are classed as structures that need to be placed next to a pre-existing structure: for example, hangar bays need to be placed next to the Hangar. Basic expansions tend to add more direct, universal benefits while Advanced Expansions riff off of the thing they were expanding. The Calibration Workshop up there is a Basic Expansion that grants +1 Precision.

• Complex Expansions: To make matters even trickier, complex expansions need to be placed next to two other structures or expansions. Some of them need to be placed next to two expansions - meaning you’ll have to think about placement of other things to allow that! The more annoying they are to place, though, the more interesting stuff you’ll get out of them, generally.

Because of all of these constraints, it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to add every structure to your home-ship. You’ll have to think about your priorities and decide what you want most.

That’s all for now!

_{How do you determine the rate of construction? Can you do things other than construction during downtime? Can you move structures once placed? Do we ever roll to hit a deck like it’s a mech? Those are questions answered by going too long and too off-topic for this but these questions have answers.}