No Man's Sky Claim and Direct a Space Station

NPC space stations have been the galaxy’s busiest rooms since Hello Games launched No Man’s Sky on 12 August 2016: landing pads, guild envoys, a scrap terminal, and a vendor who will sell you a word of Gek, Korvax, or Vy’keen. Cosmos 7.0 (9 September 2026) did not replace those hubs. It let you direct one. This page is the claim loop, the decoration rules after hotfix 7.01, and how an owned station becomes an alliance clubhouse — not a second freighter and not a walkable Corvette.

If you still cannot warp, finish Getting Started. If you have never assembled a Corvette, read Voyagers 6.0 first. Claiming is a Cosmos activity that sits on top of a working save, a tractor beam, and a reason to keep coming back to the same star.

Prove yourself, then talk to local authorities

You do not buy a station from a catalogue. You prove yourself to the local authorities of that system until they offer director status. The proof Hello Games wired into Cosmos is salvage work, not a Unit dump and not a standing grind alone — though standing with the system’s people still colours the conversation. Gek trade stars, Korvax science stars, and Vy’keen barracks all have stations you can eventually run. Autophage flavour does not replace that three-way politics; it sits beside it on the factions hub.

The work happens at Deep Space Outposts, the inhabited platforms you mark on the new star system map (Quick Menu, once the save has reached the Space Anomaly). Dock. Find the quartermaster behind the yellow door. The yellow salvage terminal next to that office is the contract board. Take salvage or recovery jobs, fly them, turn them in. Travellers commonly need about five salvage contracts before the station in that neighbourhood will listen. The number can flex with standing and luck; treat five as the planning figure, not a law of physics.

Those contracts send you to space hulks. Bring a Corvette with a Tractor Beam, a Multi-Tool with the Gravitino Coil (Remnant, 11 February 2026), and the patience not to melt the wreck. Scan first, pull high-value nodes, haul the hold to the outpost, process, repeat. Hotfix 7.01 (live on Steam 10 September 2026, rolling to other platforms) added a Galactic Trade Terminal in the Quartermaster room, so you can sell processed salvage without a second hop to the system’s NPC station. Units from that loop sit on the same economy as units and nanites — they do not replace scanner modules.

Online co-op, Cross-Play, and Cross-Save all work here. A friend can run Coil duty while you fly the beam. Crew jobs on the Corvette are the multiplayer layer; claiming itself is still a director decision on your save. Privacy sliders still apply: Friends Only sessions keep randoms off the new furniture while you are mid-claim.

How to Claim a Space Station & Make an Alliance

Decorate the interior and the flight path

Once you are director, the station is a clubhouse. You decorate the interior lobby, add ancillary rooms, and dress the exterior so the approach looks like your group instead of every other terminus in the galaxy. This is the orbital counterpart to base building: snap parts, stay inside limits, put a teleporter where visitors will actually find it. The controls build camera is the same tool you already use on dirt.

Cosmos 7.0 already sold station cosmetics at the Anomaly Construction Research Terminal and dropped rare exterior modules from deep-space anomalies. 7.01 changed the practical list:

• Some exterior parts now unlock with salvaged materials, so the hulk loop feeds the facade, not only the trade terminal.
• Korvax station decoration that was missing is restored — do not assume a Korvax system is a barren lobby if you patched.
• Falling out of the station through geometry is fixed.
• The Claim Station UI is clearer about who is director and what the next step is.
• Multiple people claiming the same station is handled instead of silently fighting.
• Alliance names show on the teleporter list and the star system map, which is how visitors actually find you.

Build the concourse so a stranger can land, walk to a trade terminal, and see a banner. Empty cathedrals do not recruit. Power and snap rules from planetary bases still apply. Expedition posters and the astronaut bobblehead from Expedition 23 belong on a shelf in a room people will enter, not in an unlit annex.

Found an alliance from the station you own

Alliances are founded from an owned station. Name the group, pick a banner, network the stations you and your friends direct. Other Travellers join by visiting. You may sit in up to three alliances. Leaderboards at the station core rank groups by population, activity, and claimed space. That is the social map on top of Cosmos 7.0, not a conquest sim and not a replacement for Nexus missions.

Treat an alliance like a club that shares a belt, a hulk field, and a concourse. You will not occupy a galaxy. You can occupy a commute. If the director runs the lobby like a tax office, leave; there will be another station. Alliance names on the teleporter and star map are the 7.01 quality-of-life that makes that commute real instead of a Discord screenshot.

A player-owned station is not a freighter. Freighters are capital ships you summon from the Quick Menu, staff with frigates, and send on fleet expeditions. Stations do not warp with you. They sit in a system and wait. Corvettes from Voyagers are the walkable hull you take to the hulk. Stations are the lobby you come home to. Keep all three on a long save; do not skip the planetary Base Computer because the concourse looks louder.

Patch notes for 7.0x live under Updates and patch history. Official destinations sit on Links. The Guides Hub still wants you to have a planetary pin and a scanner before you campaign for director. A claimed station is a promise you will be here next week. Keep the salvage terminal fed, keep the exterior from looking like an unpatched 7.0 lobby, and put the alliance name where a teleporter can see it. Then go strip another hulk before someone else files the fifth contract in your system.