Let me say up front you don't absolutely need to optimize your station layout. The main point to doing so is to save time. A good station generates money faster, which means you spend less time waiting. Your crew members will recover morale faster in an optimized station, so you can send them on missions again sooner.

The one case where it makes a substantial difference is if an officer is unhappy enough to quit. In a well laid out station, your officer is more likely to reach Neutral morale before the 5 minute time limit runs out.

The overall plan is to have 7 zones: a central area with all the docking platforms, one zone for each species, and a zone for crew. The crew area can be on the outskirts, but the visitor areas should all be laid out around the central space dock.

I've experimented with various locations for space docks, and the advantage of concentrating all the docks in a central zone is visitors have a single, longer walk from the dock to their zone, and then short walks between objects. The long walk back to the dock doesn't count against a visitor's time limit.

I've tried sprinkling docks around the periphery as my station grew, but that meant that some visitors had very, very long walks as their dock was on one edge of the station and their zone was on the other.

Visitors have two needs chosen at random from a list based on race. Humans, your first visitors, can need Sleep, Hunger, Thirst, Consumerism, or Hygiene. A particular visitor might Need Hunger and Thirst, in which case all he will do is eat and drink, never sleep.

Each time a visitor uses an object, you gain money, their matching Need meter goes up, and they get happier. They'll almost always try and fill their lowest meter, so they tend to alternate between their two Needs. Ideally, a visitor should rapidly ping-pong between two close objects, spending as little time walking as possible.

Except for the rare Human who Needs Hunger and Thirst, their objects must always be in different kinds of rooms. Big rooms force objects farther apart, so you want to keep your rooms small, and you want a regular street grid, so visitors can easily path from one room to another.

I suggest a 4x5 corridor grid, like this:


The idea is to place 3x4 rooms on this grid. The vertical corridors run through the center of each room, and the horizontal ones run through the bottom. Corridors can only touch a room in one place, so part of the room must act as the horizontal pathway.


You want to place various needs of each race next to each other in a checkboard. For Humans, for example, you might have a central bedroom with 6 basic beds or 3 Suite beds. Next to that could be a shop, a food court, a drinks court, and a shower room with 6 basic showers. That's 5 rooms, and every Human visiting your station can rapidly find his way between the two room types he uses.

Decorations have a range of 2 squares. The influence range of a decoration looks like a large square with the corners chopped off.

In the example above, the dance floors show the range of the central decoration, a light pillar. Note that dance squares are like all other objects - even though they look like open space, a visitor must have an open, unoccupied square next to the dance tile in order to use it. Dance squares block movement as if they were solid blocks, even though the visitor appears "on" the tile when using it.

Each decoration adds 20% to the income of objects in range. An object in range of 3 Decorations charges visitors 160% of the normal use price. Variety and type don't matter, you could use nothing but Bald Head busts as decorations for your station. Decorations don't affect crew members at all.

Decorations reach through walls. Referring to this image again:

The Table decoration in the Drinks Court is close enough to the advanced shower to influence it. The Advanced Shower normally charges 10 credits, but will charge 12 because it's near the table. The center Drink station is in range of 3 decorations, and charges 60% more. The other two stations are in range of 2 decorations each, and charge 40% more.

Beds, even Suite beds, have such a low price that it's really not worth the space to boost them. 5 Decorations will boost a basic bed 100%, from 1 credit per use to 2. Deluxe, Suite beds cost 3 credits, and will charge 4 with 2-3 decorations.

For particularly expensive objects, you might consider a larger room with more decorations. For example, this layout boosts the prices of the Bistro's meals by 100%, because all 4 tables are in range of 5 decorations.


The most valuable good in the game is Jewelry. 5 Decorations can boost a Jewelry booth's prices from 40 credits per use to 80.

In theory, you could put up to 18 decorations near a single object, boosting the price to 4.6x normal. In practice, that takes a lot of space, and hurts income overall because visitors spend a long, long time walking around the huge decoration parks.

Suites are a special case, because each Suite can only contain 1 bed. Deluxe beds are not lucrative, since they charge only slightly more than Basic beds. The real value of a Deluxe bed is that it adds twice as much to the visitor's Sleep need per use, so the visitor is happier and has more time to spend money at other objects.

1x1 Suites with just a bed are ideal, and you can lay out 3 in the 3x4 grid space for a normal room. A barracks bedroom in this scheme only has room for 6 beds, so the capacity is similar - 3 beds that operate twice as fast instead of 6 slower beds.

Visitors and crew members have no preference in beds. Blorgs may prefer expensive objects like Spas and Jewelry stores, but they'll sleep in any bed.

Races have specific needs. They also Crave specific goods. A Human may need Hygiene, but all Humans with a Hygiene need crave Basic Soap, so they'll prefer basic showers over more advanced, expensive showers that use Advanced Soap or Antimatter Cleanser.

If there are no objects available that a visitor Craves, he will use other objects that fill that need. A Crusantian may crave Fancy Clothes, but if you don't have any for sale, or the clothes vendors are all in use, he will move to buy anything nearby. If a suitable object is available, the visitor will bypass any number of objects to get to the desired type.

This is important, because it makes it easier to ensure your visitors move to the right parts of the station. If you place all race-specific rooms next to each other, your visitors will stay in that area.

Unfortunately, a few combinations involve ambigious Cravings. A Sleep / Hunger Lemurian might use a bed in a zone intended for Blorgs, and then use a "Crudites" food table in an area intended for Nogi, wandering long distances each time. The Lemurian zone should really be between the two, so Lemurians in Blorg beds will travel to Lemurian food tables, which will be very near a bed section of their own.

All members of a race Crave the same things. All Humans with the Hunger need crave Rations and Pizza, for example. They don't care which they get.

Most rooms should have objects that only a single race craves. Arcades can contain Pinball Machines and Video Games, but Lemurians only want to play Pinball, and Crusantians only want to play Video Games. An arcade with a mix of the two types will waste space for one race or the other.

Humans
Sleep
Hunger: Rations or Pizza
Thirst: Desert
Consumeris: Fuel Cells, Repair Parts, or Souvenirs.
Hygiene: Basic Soap

Note that Fuel Cells require water to make, which is in short supply early in the game. Repair parts don't, and Humans are content don't care if you only sell one of these goods.

Lemurians
Sleep
Hunger: Vegan Feast (Crudites Table)
Thirst: Juice
Hygiene: Advanced Soap (in Suite showers)
Consumerism: Robots, Star Maps
Fun: Pinball (green tokens)

Note that Lemurians have considerable overlap with Humans. Lemurians can efficiently use a Sleep / Thirst room pair intended for Humans.

Lemurians may wander into Nogi areas for food, and Blorg areas for sleep.

Crusantians
Hunger: Fine Soup
Thirst: Orion Soda (bar)
Hygiene: Antimatter Soap (Spa shower)
Body: Pills
Consumerism: Clothes
Fun: Video Games (red tokens)
Aesthetics

Note that Crusantians will not use Holo Fiction or Comics to satisfy their Aesthetic desires. Only Gardens and Museums, which charge no fees.

Crusantians may wander between Nogi areas for drinks or Aesthetics, and Blorg areas for food.

Nogi
Hunger: Exquisite Roll (Crudites table)
Thirst: Tonic X
Body: Vaccine
Consumerism: Jewelry
Knowledge: Books, Training Holos
Aesthetics

Like Crusantians, Nogi need Gardens or Museums, and ignore Comics and Holo Fiction.

Nogi may wander between Crusantian areas for drinks or aesthetics, Lemurian areas for food, and Blorg areas for Jewelry. If the Blorg areas don't have Jewelers, and offer Bon Bons instead, Nogi won't enter.

Blorg
Sleep
Hunger: Luxury Meal
Hygiene:
Consumerism: Cut Gems, Bon Bons
Fun: Comics, Holo Fiction

Blorg have relatively few Needs, and are easy to please, provided you have the rarer materials they need.

Blorg may wander between Human / Lemurian areas for sleep and Crusantian areas for food.

Station crew start with just the need for Sleep, and gradually add more as they increase in level.

Crew have Cravings. Crew get twice the Need satisfaction if they consume a good they Crave. So an officer that Craves Juice will only get 4 Thirst satisfaction from Desert, but 8 from Juice. Cravings are random, each crew member will have a different set of cravings.

High-level crew have a wide variety of needs, far more than the 2 per visitor, and will wander back and forth between different race-specific zones satisfying their needs if they don't have a zone tailored to crew needs.

Because crew needs are so much more varied, and because crew don't care about decorations, it's best to have crew-specific zones blocked off from visitors by Security Gates. If the crew-needs zone is with the various workshops, crew will usually start looking in the crew area first.

This is really a mid-game development, when most Crew have 4-5 needs. In the early game they work fine with the visitor areas, particularly when Humans are the only visitors, and the station only has one species zone.

Crew need:

Sleep
Hunger
Thirst
Hygiene
Fun
Knowledge

Crew never need Consumerism, Body, or Aesthetics. Because Crew can crave practically anything, it's best to have examples of every object in their area.

It's generally a good idea to put the factory areas in the most distant parts of the Crew area. That way, when Crew leave work to satisfy their needs, they'll use the densely-packed, undecorated Crew objects, rather than disrupt the visitor areas.

These are some screen shots from an end-game station that focuses on visitor satisfaction over income. In some cases, particularly the Humans with their desire for low-value goods, I had to eliminate decorations in order to maximize the density of useful objects.

Human zone:

Lemurians. Blorg had a tendency to wander into this zone for the beds, and then cycle into the nearby Crusantian zone for food. I placed a Blorg dining area to satisfy them. Blorgs with other needs (i.e. immersion pools) would leave for the Blorg zone after one night's sleep.

Crusantians:

Nogi:

Blorg:

Crew area, with factory zones:

Overall visitor opinion: