Starfield

I've been playing with my outposts for the last few days and I can now say with confidence that they are completely useless. The problem comes down to how storage and cargo links work.

FO4 had a simple "network" system. Add a node to the network, and all nodes had access to all materials at all other nodes. That encouraged you to use each node (settlement) to specialize in some kind of resource, which became building blocks for your crafting node.

In Starfield, you only have access to the material in your backpack, ship, and transfer storage. Everything else is stored in unlabeled boxes that you keep adding as you run out of storage. If you need a mat that isn't in your backpack, ship, or transfer storage, you have to manually search for it amongst all of your unlabeled boxes. You can attach an assembly machine to a box, but how do you get the right materials into the box? Manually? Everything time? Great fun.

Rather than networking your resource outposts, you daisy chain them. Your first outpost sends everything to your second. Your second takes all of that, adds its own, and sends it to the third. By the time it gets to your crafting outpost, the transfer pipes are hopelessly clogged and you get nothing but your final outpost's resources showing up. What can you make with Beryleum and He3? This doesn't really matter because what would you have done with the unsorted mess from all of your other outposts? You can't feed it automatically into your construction machines, because you will, inevitably, not get the right mix of goods.

So I now have 5 outposts mining elements I can't use and shipping (some of) them to an outpost that can't do anything with them. This is hopelessly borked and I will now move on from outpost building for approximately 18 months, after which BGS or modders should have a functional replacement system available. Until then, it is literally pointless.

BTW, I am not a Starfield hater. I just logged my 123rd hour and I'm mostly having a good time. But this seems like a lot of work went into making something that just doesn't do anything useful.

I haven't figured out the point of outposts yet. You can use them to make money, I guess, but it's not like money is hard to make in this game. It would be cool if they put something in the game that you could only get through outposts, like end-game crafting mats for modding or something.

But AFAIK, there's no point to outposts... another of the many shallow mechanics in this game.

I'm skipping the whole building aspect of all Bethesda games. I buy the research and crafting resources from vendors.

When I land on a planet and the thought "I should build an outpost here" pops into my head, I just boot up Satisfactory and start a new build in a similar biome.

I like the idea of constructing a productive home base in Starfield, but the current implementation just seems to be a combination of useless, tedious, and generally lacking in features, and I just can't be bothered.

My home base is my ship and I'm happy with that.

I've not bothered with them. Seems like a lot of faff and organisation my ADHD brain cannot be arsed with.

For my first playthrough I made a chunk of change making/selling adaptive frames. They're made from iron and aluminum which are very abundant. Outside resource gathering via herbing or mining, the only point of them is as a home for you to decorate and store excess crew/loot. You can setup crafting stations but every station minus a herb farm you can setup for an outpost, you can buy to put in your ship. For me that makes them less useful as I just use my ship as my home and only visit outposts to gather up mined resources to craft into goods to sell or upgrades. In my initial 70 hour playthrough I even setup defenses and made sure the crew stationed there had bitching weapons but was never attacked to my knowledge.

Extractors, cargo links, and cubicles. I've got the ~~annoying~~ adoring fan all alone on the moon with nothing but the outpost beacon and a desk.

Looking at it, it looks like just busywork for Lin and Heller. Looks like Andromeda has an outpost specialty too.

https://www.polygon.com/starfield-guide/23853471/companion-crew-member-hire-recruit

Workbenches in a circle and stacks of shipping containers everywhere.

I use them to make a base for myself, I like having tons of displays for armor and weapons and chests for random stuff like notes and books, basically to hoard