Ship Building in Ostranauts

Your starter tub at OKLG is a suggestion, not a destiny. Ostranauts ship building merges construction orders, room semantics, power conduits, and airtight hull rules into one unforgiving workflow — botch a seal during refit and Manage Atmosphere becomes an obituary. Version 1.0 rewards captains who plan refits between paid salvage shifts, not during a live undock window.

This guide covers install and uninstall orders, room types, conduit and power routing, hull expansion, and how builds interact with flight and economy.

Install orders and construction basics

Install orders place floors, walls, doors, fixtures, and equipment onto the ship grid. Uninstall orders remove them — critical for How to Salvage and for correcting mistakes.

Rules of thumb:

• Work docked at OKLG when possible — clamped hulls do not drift mid-cut.
• Cut power to affected conduits before routing new lines.
• Finish structural seals before spawning atmosphere in new volumes.

Use Controls keybinds to speed order placement; use the atmosphere checklist after every structural session.

Rooms, zoning, and function

The game reasons about rooms — enclosed volumes with flags for habitation, cargo, engineering, or vacuum exposure. Assign functions deliberately:

• Bridge / nav — cluster nav console, transponder, and antenna runs short to minimize cable failure during combat or debris hits.
• Engineering — reactor, batteries, transformers near conduit trunk lines.
• Life support — pumps and scrubbers centralized for even distribution; see life support parts.
• Cargo — isolate from crew quarters when hauling contaminated salvage atmospheres.
• Airlocks — never the only barrier between vacuum and bunks.

Bad zoning creates pathing nightmares for crew AI and slows emergency repairs during Rescue When Stranded scenarios.

Conduits and power

Power conduits carry electricity from generation to consumers: nav avionics, pumps, scrubbers, lights, and tools. A typical failure chain:

1. Salvage uninstall severs a trunk line.
2. Transponder drops offline silently.
3. COMMS undock fails at shift start — see nav console.

Draw a trunk-and-spur diagram on paper before big refits. Redundant feeds to nav and life support beat aesthetic symmetry. Compare generator options on the Builds hub and fusion torch drive page when you upgrade propulsion — torch installs often demand structural and power refits together.

Expanding the hull

Hull expansion adds tiles outward. Each new outer plate must be airtight and rated for pressure differential. Expansion projects should sequence:

1. Attach structural tiles and seal joints.
2. Route conduits and gas pipes before closing interior walls.
3. Install doors and airlocks.
4. Pressurize slowly while watching leak overlays.
5. Add scrubber capacity proportional to added cubic meters.

Expanding cargo without scrubbers guarantees CO2 headaches when Hire Crew fills new bunks.

Integration with flight and salvage

Mass and thrust matter in Newtonian flight. A wider hull without upgraded RCS or main drive handles poorly during How to Fly and Dock final alignment. Heavy salvage modules shifted off-center torque spins — redistribute cargo or add attitude jets.

Internal layout also affects EVA hatch placement. If your primary airlock faces the dock ring, exterior salvage runs start faster; if it faces the hull belly, every EVA begins with an obstacle course.

Economy and mortgage pressure

Refits cost materials, station fees, and shift time while mortgage still deducts. Schedule big builds across multiple salvage profitable days — How to Salvage and the salvage economy explain margin math.

Ship mortgage packages from Character Creation may limit how aggressively you can finance expansions early. Sometimes a second cheap tug beats one mega-hull until cash flow stabilizes.

Long-range planning

When OKLG boneyard margins flatten, builds turn toward range and livability:

• Fusion torch upgrades for outer-system contracts — fusion torch drive
• Redundant life support for multi-day burns
• Extra bunk rooms with independent suit lockers

Check the Map for stations that reward specialized hauls before you commit to torch refits.

Related guides and tools

• Getting Started — first docked tour before you cut walls
• Character Creation — careers with construction bonuses
• Tools hub — planners and checklists
• Systems hub — part catalogs and economy
• Review and Updates — build system changes at 1.0