Bethesda games have had a history of allowing players to design their own homes. Starfield is no different. Outposts are the method by which players can make their own environment. And, thankfully, you can fill them with life if you assign crew mates to them. This system is a bit hidden, but is very important to ensure that a well-oiled settlement is moving at maximum efficiency.
Before you can assign a crew to your outpost, you may need to make one. Designing an outpost requires you to deliver your artifact to Constellation. Then, as long as you’re in a place that can build an outpost, you can hit the left bumper or F key to bring up your hand scanner and start placing your outpost beacon.
This unlocks several menus that allow you to make storage, mining facilities for gathering resources, transfer resources between other planets, and even basic habitation so you can pretend you’re at a resort. However, making an outpost does not assign crew to it automatically. You’ll have to do that yourself, in a rather awkward manner.
How to Assign Crews to Your Outpost
In order to assign a crew to your outpost, you must open your Crew Menu in the Ship Tab of your main menu. By default, this is “C” on keyboard or “Y” on an Xbox controller while in the Ship tab. From here, you can assign crew members to an outpost that has assignment slots to them. The outpost must already be active and there must be things to do on the outpost before you can shove a crewmate onto it.
Thankfully, there’s an easy method of doing that. The Crew Station is what you need if you want to assign crew members to an outpost in Starfield, and you can craft up to three of them.
How to Craft a Crew Station
In order to make your Crew Station and start assigning crew members to your outpost in Starfield, you simply need 5 Aluminum, 2 Iron, and 3 Nickel. This will create a little cubicle for the crew member to operate while they’re on your planet.
You can have three of these suckers within a single outpost at a time. Once you have one, you will be able to assign a crew member to the outpost. One crew member can be assigned to each cubicle, unsurprisingly. So, by default, you can settle three crew members in each outpost of Starfield. You can increase this number through the Outpost Management skill, a Social skill that needs eight points to unlock.
Expert Tip
This is relatively important. Players can only have eight Outposts by default, though they can unlock additional slots through the Planetary Habitation skill. This uncaps you by four per rank, up to a maximum of 24 total Outposts. With this and Outpost Management, players can have another 96 crew members that are assigned and activated.
Benefits of Having Crew at Your Outpost
If you assign crew to your outpost, that person will provide their skill benefit to their outpost. For example, if you hire an Outpost Management Specialist, you’ll simply have the crew member in your roster. However, if you assign them to an outpost, they’ll grant their crew member benefit to their outpost — in this case, improving the number of cargo links that an outpost can use.
Because of this, there are only some crew members that truly benefit outposts. Crew members with Science and Social skills make very impactful outpost crew members. For instance, if you are mining Caelumite, you may want a crew member who specializes in Geology who can give you gifts based on the planet they are on.
Because of this, if your outpost is there for any reason other than just being a fancy storage closet, it’s important to place crew members there that are likely to either provide direct profit or provide a miscellaneous benefit. Rafael Aguerro, for instance, is a member of the Nishina Research Lab and grants both Outpost Engineering and Outpost Management when crewed at an outpost. This means that, whatever outpost he’s on, it’ll be significantly better at providing new modules and can have additional cargo links installed. All in one crew member! Put him where you want to farm the most.