Colonisation

• Claim an empty system within 15 ly of populated space. Pay about 25M credits. Drop a beacon within 24 hours.
• Haul the commodity list to the Colonisation Ship within about 28 days, or you lose everything you delivered.
• Your first port makes you the System Architect, permanently.
• Then it is a points game. Free Tier 1 builds earn points. Tier 2 and Tier 3 builds spend them.
• The founding faction comes from where you buy the claim. That choice is locked and sets your superpower.
• Do not do this for money. Even a big system pays about 1M credits a week. Do it for the system you build.
• Two tools do the heavy lifting: the Colonization Mega Guide and Raven Colonial.

1. 1Scout an unpopulated system within about 15 ly of populated space. Honk and scan it. The system map shows the flagged primary port location and how many build slots you have.
2. 2Buy the claim at a Colonisation Contact, at a station whose controlling minor faction is the one you want to found your colony. This locks your allegiance.
3. 3Pick your primary port type and pay about 25M credits. The claim holds for 24 hours.
4. 4Fly out and drop the beacon at the flagged spot. A Colonisation Ship arrives.
5. 5Haul the commodity list to that ship. You have about 28 days.
6. 6Wait for the Thursday tick. The port finishes. The ship leaves. You are now the Architect.
7. 7Expand. Place new facilities from the system map or by flying to surface sites.

The first facility in a system costs more commodities than the same build placed later: roughly +16% at Tier 1, +32% at Tier 2, and +20% at Tier 3.

Recommended first colony: Coriolis. Large pad, manageable haul. Recommended for a capital system: go straight to Tier 3. The primary port costs no construction points and is exempt from the escalating cost climb.

• Biggest line items: about 14,000 Steel, 11,300 CMM Composite, 10,000 Aluminium, 8,200 Titanium, 3,800 Liquid Oxygen, 1,600 Water, 1,200 Ceramic Composites.
• Actual lists vary by system. ⚠️

This is what confuses new architects.

The loop: build free T1 facilities, bank T2 points, spend on T2 facilities, bank T3 points, spend on the showpieces.

Base cost is 3 points for a T2 port and 6 for a T3 port. The first two of each tier cost base price. The climb starts at the third.

Points are charged when construction begins, not when it finishes.

1. 1Build T3 before T2. T3 escalates at +6 per step. T2 only climbs +2. A T3, T3, T2, T2 order can cost about half of T2, T2, T3, T3.
2. 2Large surface settlements are the point engine. A large Tier 2 settlement costs 1 T2 point and pays back 2 T3 points for about 8,530 tons. Stack a few to bankroll an Ocellus.

• A fresh system shows the Colony economy, which is a placeholder, not a specialisation.

Only for Colony type ports. Specialised ports (Industrial, Scientific, Military outposts, Asteroid Bases) set their own.

Body features add modifiers on top: rings and belts push Extraction, organics push Agriculture, surface geologicals push Extraction and Industrial. Modifiers overlap rather than stack.

• Early on, economies cannibalised each other and a careless mix could wreck your market.
• A 2025 patch fixed that: a market's top two economies are protected. Supply is calculated as if no other economy existed. So Extraction plus Industrial now works fine.
• Design for one or two strong economies and keep any third minimal. Guides written before this rework will steer you wrong.

Scout for all of these:

• At least one ring-bearing planet, ideally metallic. That gives you RES sites and an Asteroid Base spot.
• A landable rocky body, for surface settlements and a Refinery port that makes your own CMM Composite.
• 10 or more orbital and 10 or more surface slots. A 4-slot system may never earn enough points for a T3 station later.
• A short primary port distance from the arrival star. A site hundreds of thousands of light-seconds out makes the build carrier-only.
• Close to a source market of your chosen allegiance.

Your founding faction comes from the station where you buy the claim. It stays forever, even if a Power takes over politically.

Important: owning a colony does not grant you navy rank. Rank locked ships still need the rank. But a healthy founding faction is a mission source you control, which helps the grind (Module 6). Also important: minor faction allegiance and Powerplay are separate systems. Colonising does not move your Powerplay standing.

This is most of the work. A Coriolis primary is about 69 trips. A T3 station is over 270.

• The 28 day clock is real. Do not claim until you can commit.
• Primary ports cannot be demolished, ever.
• Demolishing anything else refunds nothing. Not commodities, not ARX spent on personalisation.
• The founding faction is locked at claim.
• You can get sniped. A new construction site is yours alone for about 30 minutes, then your squadron's for the rest of 24 hours, then anyone's. Solo builders should create a one-person squadron first.
• Up to 5 facilities can be under construction at once, with 200 m minimum spacing.
• Orbital ports have their own 28 day timers. Many surface settlements have no timer, which makes them good slow projects.
• Some facility variants are bugged. Advertised landing pad sizes do not always match what you get.
• Old guides predate the 2025 economy rework. Weight them accordingly.