Outposts and Camps
Outposts are how you project power away from your home colony. They are points on the map you can build or capture, station squads at, and attack from. They also let you reach across the map with specialized roles. If your colony is your base, outposts are how you spread out and hold ground.
Building an outpost
On the Classic ruleset, a basic outpost costs about 500 Metal, 300 Oil, and 15 Workers. Building one is only the start, because an outpost is not truly yours the moment it appears. You have to hold it.
Holding is measured in control ticks. A freshly built or freshly captured outpost must be held for about 24 control ticks before you can fully rely on it: that is the gate before you can upgrade it, raze it, use a gate jump through it, or lock it down. If an enemy takes it from you before that, your control resets to nothing in their hands too. Outposts are easiest to lose right after you plant them, so defend new ones until they settle.
Outpost roles
A plain outpost is a staging point, but you can upgrade one into a specialized role once you have held it long enough:
- Training Base. Lets you train and stage squads forward, away from your home colony.
- Radar. Projects radar coverage over its area so you can see incoming threats.
- Gate. Enables instant squad movement between valid linked gates and colonies.
- Silo. Arms and launches heavy missiles.
Each role turns a piece of held ground into a strategic asset, which is exactly why outposts are fought over so hard.
Razing an outpost
If you no longer want an outpost, or you would rather deny it than lose it, you can raze it. Razing returns roughly 50% of the Oil that went into it. It is deliberate and cannot be undone once started, so raze on purpose, not in a panic. If squads or spies are still attached when it falls, it can collapse into a camp instead of vanishing cleanly.
Neutral camps and resource nodes
The map is not just your outposts and your enemies'. Neutral camps and resource nodes sit out in the world waiting to be taken. Resource nodes are economy points: a captured metal node feeds Metal income and an oil node feeds Oil income, paid out while you hold it. Camps are temporary footholds that appear in raze and edge cases and cannot be used to attack from. Both are worth scouting, because uncontested map objects are some of the cheapest power available.
See also
Read Conquest, Tax, and Rebellion for taking colonies instead of outposts, Teleport Gate for how gate outposts move squads instantly, Scans and Radar for what radar outposts reveal, and Score and Ranking for how holdings translate into power.