The upkeep for your base is essentially your protection or occupation. Once your upkeep time has run out, your base is free game to be destroyed or taken. Upkeep time is shown in the Maintenance terminal or on your screen while inside your base. It is displayed as "Occupied" or "Unoccupied". The Maintenance Terminal can be learned in your skill tree under Electrical Engineering. It is the single most important item in your base. If destroyed, you can no longer handle upkeep, and your base will be in serious danger. (To compare, it is like a Tool Cabinet from Rust)

Just placing the maintenance terminal will not secure your base for long you only receive a few days of ownership, but to increase this, the terminal requires you to pay FloPs to upgrade. This upgrade will increase your claim time as well as the total amount of building pieces your building can have. To upgrade your terminal, you must pay a set amount of FloPs directly in the maintenance terminal. Now the cost of upgrades does vary, but the first upgrade starts at 100 FloPs. Every building piece, every crafting station or storage you place in your base are included in the building limit. Its best to not over build in the beginning, as the upgrades cost progressively more FloPs and you need those to learn blueprints also!

How to manage the size of your base with the cost of FloPs can be tricky. I truly recommend to not build your first base more than a 2x2. You will get roughly 3 days of time, and the smaller base is all you need. But managing your upgrades will be important too. I do have a tip on how to manage upgrading your base throughout your time.

The best advice i can give you is to treat your base as a fellow player. Split the flops you get with it, 50/50. This way, the base will never run out of flops. You may have to farm a bit harder, do a few more Flop events, but in the end, you'll always have upkeep. One of the best solutions i can offer, (and has worked wonders for me), is when getting materials, or looting a station, when you kill the enemies, those flops you gain are for your base. This constant stream of flops will keep you moving to the next upgrade. This is only a temporary option though. You cant be on all day every day. Most people have lives. But to help this trick, and to make it more effective, you could also use any flops remaining from learning schematics to, boost per-se, yourself to the next upgrade. Generally the amount left over will give you 25 FloPs, but 25 FloPs towards your upgrade is one to two less spiders to kill later... Or, if you are the cautious kind, before you leave your base (Unless you're saving) dump your remaining FloPs into your next upgrade. Best your base have them than a player who kills you.

I hope this guide has given you at least a small amount of insight and helped you a small bit. Keep trying to find better ways that work for you. That's all for now. Thanks for reading.