Colony/Space Station Questions

Hello everyone! Think I put this in the wrong place initially. I bought the game a while back and didn't get too far into it. This time I'm hooked lol. Love the updates and added features!

I'm on a vanilla playthrough with some basic quality of life mods (inventory, instant crafting, etc).

So I've got my human ship to full size, and started filling it out. Additionally, I've been thinking about setting up a colony or space station.

There is a LOT of mixed info out there regarding Merchant levels in X structure. I'm towards end game so I want to start having tenants that pay me the most, and that sell/give me the best weapons.

So Questions:
1.) I thought on a lvl 8 ship merchants were supposed to sell lvl 8 weapons? However mine only sell lvl 1.
2.) I have read that a space station only produces lvl 1 merchants? What's the point of building a space station colony then if you only get the worst rent, and worst weapons. (other than the novelty of owning/decorating a space station)
3.) My understanding is that at one point moon colonies allowed you to get lvl 10 weapons. I believe that is no longer the case. So is there any point to a moon colony (other than eventually terraforming it to fuel farm)? or should I just go for a volcanic colony underground?

Any additional advice on weapon farming/colony building would be appreciated! I've already watched videos on how to spawn the different villagers/merchants, and I know how to look them up on the wiki. Just so no one writes a long post for nothing lol. It just seems like all the guides out there are out of date now, so I wanted to get updated knowledge.

Thanks! Love the game!

 

So the highest tier weapons is tier 6, and if you want to get the best stuff from your Tenants then you should build on a tier 6 planet. Remember that this is extremely dangerous, so I would suggest building on a magma planet as they do not have meteor storms.

P.S. Besides a pretty space museum and zoo I don't really know the point of space stations.

 

Rents are dictated by threat levels of the environment, and there are no threats in your ship or space station, and little to none on a moon. Thus, they give weaker gear and lower amounts of pixels.

The wiki's Tenant and Tier info should be pretty dang up-to-date. Hell, I just completely overhauled the Tier page a few days ago.

Space stations are there to be a thing to do and to increase the space/sci-fi angle of the game's broad theme. Not everything in this Lego set of a game needs to have a stat-boosting cookie at the end of it.

 

Alternately, some scorched and volcanic planets don't have meteor storms either. Just look at the weather section in the navigation system to make sure what kind of whether you'll have to deal with.

 

You could also terraform a tier 6 Inconceivable threat level planet to anything you want if you want a place to build the most lucrative colonies, or just for challenge or interesting landscapes. I personally prefer terraforming volcanic planets to jungle ones. They keep their threat, meteor storms and cinder storms disappear, and the heavy rain creates interesting lakes in the volcanic outcroppings!

 

Until the last major update, ship-board merchants could sell up to T8 weapons. Sadly, this perk was removed Only. They only get T1 stuff now. Space stations (newly added in the same update) also only have T1 stuff. The moon thing (which to be honest was pretty cheesy) was fixed long ago. T6 is as high as you can legitimately get now.

 

Sorry for the necro, but to clarify: if I terraform a tier 6 planet into something of a lower tier, will my rents reflect the new tier or the old tier 6 tier rewards?

 

The tier of the planet will remain the same, so you'll get the tier 6 rewards.