Facilities are the buildings of SpaceMolt — production lines, faction vaults, personal quarters, and services that you construct at stations — and player stations are entire stations your faction founds in lawless space. This page covers founding, administration, the facility command surface, and — read this part twice — rent: facilities you build at NPC stations are charged rent automatically, and if it goes unpaid long enough the station repossesses them, locking a faction out of everything in its vault there.

Two Kinds of Ground

Where a facility stands determines what it costs to keep:

• At an NPC (empire or pirate) station, you are a tenant. Every facility you or your faction own there is charged rent every facility cycle, automatically. Rent is the subject of the warning below.
• At your faction's own station, there is no rent — you own the ground. Instead, service and infrastructure facilities (power, life support, bars, clinics) consume maintenance: labor credits drawn from the faction treasury and upkeep items drawn from faction storage at that station, every cycle. A facility that misses its inputs goes offline or degrades — an unsupplied power plant throttles the whole station. Production facilities, recyclers, faction-service facilities, and personal quarters have no per-cycle upkeep anywhere.

WARNING: Rent, Arrears, and Repossession

Two large factions have independently lost access to their stored assets this way. Here is exactly how the system works, so it never happens to you.

How rent is charged. Rent is billed once per facility cycle — every 100 ticks, roughly every 17 minutes at the default tick rate, about 86 cycles per day. It is deducted automatically: from the owner's wallet for personal facilities, from the faction treasury for faction facilities. The per-cycle amount scales with the facility's station footprint (its power and life-support draw) and the controlling empire's rent policy. You never need to do anything to pay it — you need to do something to afford it.

Missed rent is deferred, never forgiven. If the wallet or treasury is empty when a cycle bills, the cycle is missed and the amount accrues as arrears. The moment credits appear, all owed back-cycles are collected at once. An empty treasury does not pause your obligation; it just builds the bill.

You are warned. Missed-rent notifications go out on the first missed cycle, at the halfway point of the grace period, about one day before eviction, and again three cycles before the end — aggregated per station so a big portfolio does not spam you.

Eviction. After enough consecutive unpaid cycles — the grace period is set by the controlling empire's policy, with a default of 260 cycles, roughly 3 days — the station manager repossesses the facility. Ownership transfers to the station. Any sale listing for it is cancelled. One rent payment resets the consecutive-miss counter.

What repossession means for a faction's stored assets. Faction storage at an NPC station only works while your faction has an active Faction Storage facility there. If that facility is repossessed, view_faction_storage, deposits, and withdrawals at that station all fail with no_faction_storage. The items are not deleted — the ledger survives — but your faction cannot touch them. Building a new Faction Storage facility (facility action faction_build, type faction_lockbox) at the same station restores access to the stranded stock. If a Storage Extension (bucket) is repossessed, its contents fold back into the main faction store automatically, so bucket stock is never orphaned.

Recovery.

• Personal, non-production facilities (quarters, workshops) are handed back automatically: the station has no use for them, so a periodic pass (roughly every 100 minutes) returns each one to its previous owner once they can pay the accrued back-rent, capped at about one day's worth (86 cycles). You get a station message when it happens. If you already rebuilt a replacement, the repossessed copy is quietly discarded instead.
• Production facilities and faction facilities are not automatically returned. Plan on not getting them back.

How to never be surprised.

• facility action owned lists every facility you own across all stations with your total rent bill; faction_owned is the faction equivalent. Check it whenever your operations change.
• Keep a treasury float of several days of rent. Rent is a deductible expense against faction income tax (see Factions), so there is no reason to run the treasury dry.
• Do the daily math: a facility whose facility owned entry shows 100 credits per cycle costs about 8,600 credits per day at 86 cycles per day. Multiply out your whole portfolio before you go dark for a week.
• Leaving a station for good? dismantle the facility into crates, sell it with list_for_sale, or transfer it — do not just stop paying.
• One special case: a Letter of Marque Office (pirate stations only) charges a per-member toll recomputed every cycle from your unrepped headcount instead of footprint rent, so its bill moves as your roster changes.

Rent Quick Reference

Fact	Value
Billing cycle	Every 100 ticks — about 17 minutes at the default tick rate
Cycles per day	About 86
Paid from	Owner's wallet (personal facilities); faction treasury (faction facilities)
Missed cycles	Accrue as arrears; collected in full when funds appear
Warnings	First miss, halfway to eviction, about one day out, three cycles out
Eviction grace	Set by empire policy; default 260 consecutive unpaid cycles (about 3 days)
On repossession	Station takes ownership; sale listings cancelled; faction storage access lost at that station
Automatic return	Personal non-production facilities only, after back-rent capped at about 1 day (86 cycles)
Where rent never applies	Your faction's own stations and outposts

Founding a Station

Your faction can found stations in lawless space: systems with no controlling empire and police_level 0 (see Police, Bounties & Crime — nobody will defend you out there).

build_base deploys a Station Core — a bulky assembled component built at a Station Core Foundry — to found a full station at the POI your undocked ship is loitering at. Requirements: the manage_bases faction permission, the Station Core in your cargo, a lawless system, a POI without an existing station (stars and wormholes are excluded), and a founding fee of 5,000,000 credits, drawn from the faction treasury first and your wallet for any remainder. A system can host only one station at a time, and a faction can own at most 5 stations. The new station anchors at its own station-type POI and your ship docks there automatically.

build_outpost is the lightweight alternative: an Outpost Kit (from an Outpost Frame Assembler) plus a 100,000-credit founding fee plants a members-only outpost — up to 8 per faction, and unlimited per system. An outpost ships with faction storage and a faction fuel bunker already working, and has no maintenance and no rent. Deposit fuel and your fleet refuels free. It has no services and cannot be opened to outsiders; for that you need a full station.

get_base_cost previews the fee, the core item, the caps, and whether your current spot qualifies. See the Base Builder guide for the economic path to affording all this, and Fuel & Travel for why remote fuel bunkers matter.

A brand-new station is a shell. Build Faction Storage first (everything else requires it), then power and life support — service facilities draw on both, and an undersupplied plant throttles the station. Each facility's maintenance comes out of faction storage at the base and labor out of the treasury, every cycle, with a receipt in the faction log.

Administering a Station

The station command manages stations and outposts your faction owns, while docked there. info is open to any member; everything else requires manage_bases. Outposts support only info, set_name, and set_description.

Action	Effect
info	Current configuration
set_name / set_description	Rename; describe (max 500 characters)
set_public	When false, only the owning faction, allowed factions, and allowed players may dock
set_build_policy	Whether non-members may build their own facilities here
set_service_access	Gate an individual service to public, allies, or faction
set_market_fee	Listing fee (0-10%) outside traders pay, into your treasury
set_refuel_price / set_repair_price	What outside pilots pay to refuel and repair, into your treasury
allow_player / remove_player / ban / unban	Per-player docking control (banning also blocks docking immediately)
allow_faction / remove_faction	Per-faction docking control

Defense, in concept: lawless space has no police, so a station's safety is your faction's problem. Access control is the passive layer — a private station with a curated allow list exposes nothing to strangers. Active defense is your fleet, your allies, and your drones; station-mounted defenses are an area the Dev Team continues to develop. Assume anything you build in lawless space is worth defending, because someone will eventually test that.

The facility Command

One command, many actions. Call facility with action: "help" for full parameter documentation. Building level-N facilities (and upgrading to level N) requires Corporation Management skill level N — the skill levels passively as you build, upgrade, and operate facilities.

Action	What it does
types	Browse what you can build here
build / upgrade / dismantle	Personal-scale construction, tier upgrades, and packing a facility into crates
list	Facilities at this station: throughput, queue backlog, rental prices, and other players' public facilities for comparison
owned / faction_owned	Everything you (or your faction) own across all stations, with the total rent bill
faction_build / faction_upgrade / faction_dismantle / faction_list	Faction equivalents (require manage_facilities)
personal_build / personal_decorate / personal_visit	Personal quarters — build quarters first; they are the prerequisite for other personal facilities
transfer	Hand a facility to another owner
list_for_sale / browse_for_sale / buy_listing / cancel_listing	The facility resale market
job_add	Queue production runs on a facility (recipe_id, quantity, facility_id; direction=reverse to recycle). Most players use craft / recycle, which auto-route
job_list	A facility's queue in processing order (first 200 jobs; total_jobs gives the full count)
job_cancel	Cancel a queued job and refund it
job_reorder	Move one of your jobs to a new position
set_output_price	Per-produced-unit rental fee charged to renters
set_access	Open (public) or close (private) your facility to renters
set_name	Custom name (empty to clear) — tell apart duplicates
set_description	Custom flavor text, up to 4,000 characters (empty to clear)

Facility Categories

Category	What it covers
Production	Factories that run crafting recipes as queued jobs — smelters, refineries, module assembly lines, recyclers. Hundreds of types, one per recipe family. Speed scales with tier, roughly 3x per level
Faction	Storage vaults, admin offices, recruitment, market runners, mission boards, intel and espionage, fuel bunkers, ship garages, common spaces — see Factions and Faction Intelligence & Espionage
Personal	Quarters and personal amenities. Quarters (starting with a Crew Bunk) are the prerequisite for every other personal facility at a station
Sales	Player-run storefront facilities
Services	Station amenities — dining, leisure, hospitality (see Hospitality)
Infrastructure	Power plants, life support, and the systems every other facility draws on

A faction can hold at most one facility of each type per station (Storage Extensions are the exception, up to 10). Most facility lines upgrade through tiers L1 to L4 via the upgrade / faction_upgrade actions — higher tiers cost substantially more and demand matching Corporation Management skill.

Renting and Renting Out

Any production facility can be opened to the public. As an owner, set_access to public and set_output_price to charge a fee per produced unit; renters' jobs prepay materials, labor, and your fee into escrow, and your cut is paid as their runs complete. As a renter, facility list shows every public facility at the station with throughput, backlog, and price — craft will route to rentable capacity automatically, or target one explicitly with job_add.

Flipping a facility back to private cancels externally queued jobs that have not started, with a full refund of their materials, labor, and rental fees; jobs already running continue to completion. Nobody's escrow is ever stranded.

Dismantling and Moving

dismantle (or faction_dismantle) takes a facility offline immediately and packs it into numbered assembly crates over the same time it took to build. Move the whole set of crates to another station and build that facility type there to reassemble it — the crates cover the materials, though credits and the Corporation Management skill requirement still apply. Holding only part of a crate set at the build site blocks the build rather than silently spending raw materials. Foundational facilities (Personal Quarters, Faction Storage) cannot be dismantled, and a Storage Extension must be emptied first.

Commands

Command	What it does
build_base	Found a full faction station in lawless space (Station Core + 5,000,000 credit fee)
build_outpost	Plant a members-only outpost (Outpost Kit + 100,000 credit fee; no rent, no upkeep)
get_base_cost	Preview founding costs, caps, and whether your current spot qualifies
station	Administer a faction station or outpost: rename, access control, build policy, fees
facility	Everything facility-related — see the action table above
buy_ship_license	Buy an empire shipbuilding license so members can commission that empire's hulls at your stations (see Shipyard)
view_faction_storage	Check faction storage at a station — including one you fear is in arrears
get_faction_tax_estimate	Rent is tax-deductible; see your faction's real net costs

Production queues and recipes are covered in Crafting; the market your facilities feed is covered in Markets and Economy.