Space Stations, Orbital Elevators, and the Cost of Cargo

Sectors can now hold more than passing ships.

After Station Construction research, you can build a Construction Ship and raise fixed facilities in orbit. A Hub gives you a small docking point with room for three ships and 5k cargo. A Cargo Station is the heavy option: 500k storage, fifteen docking slots, and enough transfer capacity to keep a busy trade lane moving. One station per sector, built and supplied by your constructor until it is operational.

One transfer at a time

Most entities now run one cargo transfer at a time. Ships, fleets, colonies, and the Hub all share that limit. The Cargo Station is the exception. It can juggle several transfers at once, which makes it the right place to stage bulk freight while smaller vessels come and go.

That change should make logistics feel more deliberate. You plan the next load instead of stacking half a dozen parallel jobs on every ship.

Energy for every move

Moving cargo is no longer free. The initiator pays 1 Energy for every 10 items moved. A freighter offloading 250 units of ore burns 25 energy from its tank. Colonies pay from their power grid. Fleets pay from shared fleet energy.

Energy already mattered for flight and combat. Now it matters for supply lines too. Long hauls and big dumps need fuel in the tank or watts on the grid before you start.

Dock and save

Infrastructure can wipe the toll entirely.

When your ships are docked at the same station, transfers between them and that station cost nothing. Park a freighter at the Hub, unload to the station, and the energy stays in your tank.

Add an Orbital Elevator on the colony below and the link goes further. With an active elevator in the same sector as a station in orbit, you can transfer to the colony surface the same way you would to the station itself. Those colony transfers are free as well.

The pattern is simple: build the spine in a sector, dock your fleet, and run cargo through it without paying the energy toll on every crate.

Where to start

Research Station Construction after Research Satellites, build a Construction Ship, pick your station type, and fund the build from the ship drawer. For station types and stats, compare Hub and Cargo Station on the in-game Ships page.

We hope this gives you new reasons to invest in a home sector instead of treating every transfer like a one-off shuttle run.

Clear skies, commanders.
Ion Space HQ 👋