Orbital trade beacon
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Orbital trade beacon
Required for orbital trading. You can only sell goods to orbital traders if they're near an orbital trade beacon. Can be placed indoors.
Base Stats
Building
- Size
- 1 × 1
- Minifiable
- True
- Placeable
- True
- Cover Effectiveness
- 15%
- Terrain Affordance
- Light
- Power
- -40 W
Creation
- Required Research
- Microelectronics
- Work To Make
- 800 ticks (13.33 secs)
- Resources to make
40 + 
1- Deconstruct yield
- 20 + 0 - 1
- Destroy yield
- nothing
- thingCategories
- BuildingsMisc
An orbital trade beacon is a miscellaneous structure that allows items stored within its range to be used for trading with orbital traders.
Acquisition
Orbital trade beacons can be constructed once the Microelectronics research project has been completed. They require 40 Steel, 1 Component and 800 ticks (13.33 secs) of work.
Summary
To initiate the trade a ship must be in range, which a colonist can communicate with using the comms console. All silver and tradeable items within range of a beacon will then be available for trade. Payment towards factions for whatever reason also requires silver near beacons.
Trade beacons will work outdoors or under a roof. Solid walls and separate rooms will break the area of influence of a trade beacon, however support columns for larger rooms don't block its effect. Items purchased from a trader will be dropped within range of a beacon if unroofed, otherwise they will be dropped as close to the beacon as possible, avoiding the roofs.
Unroofed beacons can be used to designate the area where goods will be dropped, as the trader will prioritize dropping goods within the area of effect of the beacon. Drop pod raiders will also preferentially drop near an unroofed beacon.
Trade beacons do not need to be placed in range of your comms console. You can place them wherever you want throughout your colony.
40% of centerdrop pirate raids will target a powered, unroofed orbital trade beacon if one is present, but will default to regular behavior if one is not present.[Outlanders?]
Analysis
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Orbital trade is a significant resource that should be exploited. For ease of use, it may be best to place your stockpiles with beacons in mind - shaping them such that places are left for the beacons and the beacons cover at the very least anything that will likely be sold, if not everything in storage.
Even if you don't intend to do orbital trade for some reason, it is still worth building a beacon outside of your base to force some percentage of drop pod raiders through your defenses rather than having them drop on your base. This can be further exploited by having defenses such as IED traps built around the landing site. Note that this will also attract received trade goods, so it must still be safely accessible to colonists. Alternatively, the bait beacon can be powered off, and the receiving beacon powered on when trade is performed, and then switched back for daily operation. However this adds additional micromanagement and trade ships are ultimately time sensitive
Version history
- 0.3.410 - Landing pad replaced by Orbital Trade Beacon.
Original landing pad sprite
- Misc
- Caravan hitching spot • Egg box • Grave • Marriage spot • Party spot • Pen marker • Sarcophagus • Tool cabinet • Meditation spot
• Nature shrine (Large, Small) - (research)
- Comms console • Cryptosleep casket • Firefoam popper • Ground-penetrating scanner • Long-range mineral scanner • Moisture pump • Multi-analyzer • Orbital trade beacon • Pod launcher • Stele (Large, Grand) • Transport pod • Vitals monitor • Ship landing beacon