One of the first things you can do in Ascent is purchase your very own starbase. It is surprisingly affordable, only costing 10,000 credits. You pick up the deed for one on SS Plato in the Apollo system using the contracts board. Once purchased, you'll have a new autopilot option to go to Deep Space.
So what is a starbase for? The basic idea behind it is that you build starbase rings and place modules on them, 6 per ring. You can have a maximum of 100 rings! Although, you'll need to upgrade to Premium in order to build that many. More on that in a later post though. On a starbase you can build things like ships, modules and some materials.
My initial goal with the starbase is to produce a Class 2 Mining Beam. My current ship came with a Class 1, so moving up a class will help improve my mining yields. Before I can manufacture the beam I need to conduct some research. So my first starbase module is the Research Lab. You can find the blueprint for the lab on a Contracts board. You'll need Electronics and Mechanical Parts in order to build the lab. You can purchase these off of the Galactic Market.
Building a Research Lab works just like it did for the Grain Farm. You place the module, then give it the raw materials. Once it has the materials, it took close to a day to complete. Now that I have a lab, I need a blueprint for the Mining Beam. First, I need to acquire the blueprint for a Class 1 Mining Beam, then research it to Class 2.
To obtain the blueprint for a Class 1 beam you'll need to participate in some combat. Head over to Janus A, and do the first 2 combat missions. Once those are complete, you'll have new contracts available which allow you to purchase a number of blueprints. Now we should be able to Up Class our Class 1 Blueprint to Class 2.
It'll take a couple of days for the research to complete. I also need to build a Shipyard in order to manufacture ship modules. That sounds like a good idea for my next post!
