Stardeus — automation guide: hauling loops, order queues and the systems that run themselves

Stardeus describes itself as a colony sim "with aspects of automation", and the automation here does not look like Factorio. There are no conveyor belts, no inserter arms and — as far as the game's own object list goes — no logic gates, comparators or signal wires. You automate by giving devices an order queue and by giving robots parts and cores that let them do specific kinds of work, then arranging those two things so they feed each other. The official site is blunt about the transport layer: "Instead of conveyor belts, the automation pipeline depends on workers hauling materials from one device to another. Specialized 'Carrier Drones' are especially great at this job."

That single design decision shapes everything below. A production line is only as fast as the bots walking between its machines, and a bot is only as capable as the parts and core installed in it.

This guide covers the automation systems — order queues, the part and core economy that decides what a bot can do, the research bill for the whole branch, the grid as a control bus, and the handful of devices that trigger themselves. Written for v0.14.45 (2026.05.12), the newest entry in the official changelog at the time of writing.

For the opening — power, atmosphere, food and the first research — see the companion Stardeus starting guide. This one assumes you have a working grid and a Grinder.

What the Codex does and does not give you

Everything numeric here comes from the official Codex at stardeusgame.com/codex, which the developer describes as generated directly from the latest released build. It is the only reliable source for this game: the community wiki the queue pointed at, stardeus.wiki.gg, answers HTTP 401 and is not public, and Fandom's extraction is blocked from the tooling used here, so no community-wiki number appears anywhere in this guide.

The three layers of automation

Only three things in Stardeus run without you clicking:

1. Device order queues. A Processor or Crafter works through the orders you give it, forever, until

it runs out of inputs. This is the production engine.

1. Worker jobs. Bots with a core and the right parts pick up hauling, building, crafting, cleaning

and repair work from the job system. This is the transport and labour engine.

1. Self-triggering devices. A short list of devices that react on their own: auto repair tasks,

Nanobot Hives, auto-connecting grids, automatic deep scans, and the defensive suite.

There is no fourth layer. The Codex's own object index contains no conveyor, no solid-material pipe, and no logic, comparator, sensor or signal device — so "if X then Y" is not buildable from devices. The nearest thing to conditional logic is the Switch, which is a manual cut of part of your grid, and the Emergency Siren, which can be set to trigger automatically. Hidden research exists in this game, so I cannot promise that a technology you have not discovered adds something — but nothing in the published research tree does.

The other consequence: the official framing of the two device archetypes is worth memorising, because it tells you what to chain.

• Processor — turns an object into one or more different resources. The developer's own example is

the Disassembler breaking a dead robot down into microchips, titanium plates, copper wire, gears and batteries.

• Crafter — combines one or more resources into an object. The official example is an Auto Kitchen

turning flour and water into bread.

Practical chains are Processor -> Crafter -> Crafter: grind or salvage raw material, refine it in a Furnace, then feed the plates and wires into an Assembler that produces the parts for more bots.

Layer 1: the order queue, and which devices need a body in the room

To configure a machine: select it, click New Order, choose what to produce. You can create multiple orders on the same device and click and drag to rearrange them. That is the entire UI. The Codex does not document what happens to an order once it is fulfilled, or any priority semantics beyond list order, so do not build a plan that depends on a specific interleaving of two orders on one machine — queue one thing per device if the ratio matters.

What the Codex does state plainly is whether a device needs an operator, and that is the difference between a line that runs overnight and a line that stops when a colonist goes to bed.

That is not a small distinction at the start of the game. The Crafting Station (Steel Plate x2, Transistor x3, Glass x1, Gears x4, Copper Wire x5; Production -> Assembly) is the cheap device and the only one that can run many of the component recipes early — and its Codex description is literally "Crafts items from raw materials. Requires an operator." The Assembler (Titanium Plate x3, Gears x5, Optical Fiber x1, Microchip x1, Gold Wire x5; Production -> Assembly -> Electronics -> Improved Assembly) is the same recipes, automated, for titanium and optical fibre. Build the Assembler when you want to stop paying a colonist to stand at a bench.

Costs of the rest of the chain, for planning the layout:

Two notes that matter more than they look. The Storage Unit "stores selected materials" — you are meant to configure what goes where, and a storage unit left on defaults is how hauling gets scattered. And a 3x3 Disassembler that produces heat will cook a sealed room, which is where the Radiator (Steel Plate x3, Copper Plate x2, Transistor x3, Copper Wire x1; Life Support -> Atmosphere Control) earns its slot.

Layer 2: parts and cores decide what a bot can do

This is the part of Stardeus that most players get wrong, because the game never says it in one place. Work is gated four times:

1. Job category capability — a being can be incapable of a job type entirely, by species, trait or

past experience. You configure which job types each being may perform.

1. Abilities — most tasks require a specific ability. The Codex's example: cleaning solar panels

requires the ability to fly, so a bot without a Mini Jet or Jet Suit cannot do the task at any skill level.

1. Intelligence — the core or brain limits the work. A being with a **Dumb Core or Lite Core cannot

operate a Research Station**; a Mini Core or a human brain can.

1. Skill — level 0 means amateur and "may make mistakes"; higher skill improves proficiency, success

chance and speed.

The second and third gates are bought with parts. So the honest way to read a bot's sheet is to read its hand, its mobilizer and its core.

Hands: the hauling question

Carry capacity lives on the hand, not the body — the Carrier Drone's own page lists no carry figure at all. If you want a hauler, you are choosing a hand.

Read that table twice. The Grappler is the best hauler by a wide margin (575 against 287) and the only cheap one — but it cannot build, mine, cook, craft or pilot. The Manipulator is the only hand in the game that provides Craft and Pilot, plus Clean Device and Cook, so it is what you install when you want one bot to operate a Crafting Station or fly a shuttle, and it hauls less than half what a Grappler does. The Multi Tool is the middle option: build, carry, mine.

The practical consequence for an automated line: specialise. Grapplers on the haul route, a Manipulator (or a Microchip-grade colonist) on every operator-required device, Multi Tools on construction. A line staffed entirely by Grappler bots cannot build the next machine when one is destroyed.

Mobilizers, batteries and cores

Three things fall out of this table and they are the difference between a fleet and a pile of parts.

• Flight is a separate purchase. Mini Tracks and Tracks give Move; only the Mini Jet gives Fly,

and it is the fastest mobilizer at 0.69/m. Anything that requires flying — the Codex's own example is cleaning solar panels — needs a Nuclear Cell spent per bot.

• Only the Mini Core (or a human brain) gives Intelligence. That single line is why a Dumb Core bot

can haul ore forever and can never run a Research Station.

• Machine Learning is a core property, not a device property. The ML Booth trains robot skills, but a

Dumb Core or Lite Core is excluded — and per the jobs page, training means removing the core, "which carries some risk."

Bot bodies: what you actually assemble

Bodies are craftable items; the numbers below are the real budgets. Every one of them is parts plus the core, hands, mobilizer and battery you install — the body is the chassis and the art, the capability is the kit.

Note what a Carrier Drone actually costs against a Construction Drone: 35 kW x 14d versus 50 kW x 21d, and fewer Silicon Wafers and Transistors. Carriers are the cheap bot. If your line is starving for haulers, the answer is usually "build more Carrier Drones", not "build a better bot".

The buildings that keep a fleet alive

The Assembly Hub is the bottleneck most players miss: it is the facility the Codex describes for installing and removing body parts — no other device in the game carries that description — and it is Operator Required. Until you have it placed and staffed, every bot is whatever it was salvaged or built as.

Layer 3: what runs without being told

The Emergency Siren is the one automation in the game with an explicit downside: "Colonists won't be happy when sirens are blaring, so don't forget to turn them off when it's safe." Automatic does not mean free.

Power is the control bus, so size it like one

The grid is not just electricity. The official description: it "does not just power the devices, it acts as a digital data link — you can control the devices only when they are on the same electricity grid as your Ship Computer." An automated base therefore has two power problems: watts, and connections.

Connector capacity is the number nobody plans for, and it is printed on the part names:

Wall-mounted variants exist with the same 32-8 name. A Grinder, Furnace, Assembler, Fabricator, Charge Station, Bot Dock, two Storages and a Nanobot Hive is already ten devices on one connector — which is exactly when you discover the Codex's framing of the alternatives: more range and fewer slots, or fewer slots' worth of range for double the connections.

Automation-specific grid parts:

• Switch (Steel Plate x1, Transistor x1, Copper Wire x1; Energy -> Basic Reactor -> Improved

Connector -> Switch, T2): "Place between power connectors to create controllable subgrids." The Codex suggests routing connections through one when you want the ability to disconnect part of the grid quickly. This is the closest thing to a logic device you can build.

• Auto Connect Upgrade (Microchip x5, Battery Cell x3, Plastic, Silicon Wafer x10, Transistor x10,

Copper Wire x2, 50 kW x 12h in a Crafting Station; installed in the Ship Computer): stops you hand-wiring every new machine. It is also recycled by deconstructing a Quantum Ship Computer.

• Reactor Efficiency Upgrade (Microchip, Battery Cell x2, Plastic, Silicon Wafer x5, Transistor x5,

Copper Wire x5, 50 kW x 6h): "Reduces material consumption in compatible reactors" — the automation version of not hauling fuel.

• Energy Efficiency Upgrade and Speed Upgrade: the first "reduces electricity consumption in

compatible devices", the second "increases operating speed in compatible devices". The Speed Upgrade consumes an Energy Efficiency Upgrade as an ingredient (Energy Efficiency Upgrade, Improved Microchip, Optical Fiber, Transistor x10, Gold Wire x5, 50 kW x 8h), so budget two crafts per Speed Upgrade.

• Computer Resources Bonus: "CPU, Memory, GPU and Disk can add stat bonuses to devices on the same

electrical grid. Check tooltips for details." This is free automation for machines you have already built — a CPU Module (2Thz) is Titanium Plate x3, Gold Wire x5, Improved Microchip x2, Transistor x5; a Memory Module (2EB) is Titanium Plate x3, Advanced Microchip x2, Gold Wire x5, Plastic x1. The magnitudes are tooltip-only, so I give none.

• Redundancy, in the Codex's own words: "build more connectors and have important devices connected

through more than one connection", with reactors, batteries, the Ship Computer, the Stasis Array, oxygen pumps, heaters, doors and airlocks named as the critical list.

• Bulk-connect fast: select a connector, hold Left Shift, left-click a device to connect it; holding

Shift and clicking a connector connects or disconnects multiple devices at once. The build tools also take modifiers — Ctrl draws a line, Shift a circle, Alt freehand pencil, Ctrl+Shift bucket fill, Ctrl+Alt delete a rectangle.

The research bill for the automation branch

Every number below is quoted from the node's own Codex page. "Disk" is the disk space the unlock consumes, which is the real constraint alongside the datoids. Datoid types are Basic, Tech, Energy, Synthetic, Biotic, Phyto, Nuclear, High Tech, Alien and Quantum.

A sensible order through it, cheapest and most load-bearing first:

1. Computing -> Basic Research (Basic 8, disk 1) — the data loop that pays for everything else.
2. Robotics -> Maintenance (Basic 10, disk 1) — Charge Station and Repair Station, so the fleet stops

dying while you build things.

1. Production -> Assembly — Crafting Station now, Disassembler as soon as you can afford 8 Steel

Plate, 10 Gears and 3 Transistor. The Disassembler is what turns wreck salvage into automation parts.

1. Docking (Basic 8, Tech 6) -> Assembly Hub (Basic 21, Tech 9) — the part workshop and its

storage.

1. Basic Bot Parts (Tech 10, Energy 5) — Grappler, Mini Tracks, Dumb Core, Arm Socket. Your first

purpose-built hauler is now possible.

1. Carrier Drone (Basic 21, Tech 15) — the cheap body that makes the hauling loop real.
2. Improved Connector -> Connector Automation (Basic 11, Tech 6) — the Auto Connect Upgrade, which is

the single biggest quality-of-life purchase in the branch.

1. Improved Bot Parts (Synthetic 8, Energy 6, High Tech 5) — Multi Tool, Tracks, Mini Cell, Lite

Core. Only now can a bot carry a decent battery and do skilled labour.

1. Improved Assembly (Assembler) -> Electronics -> Energy Efficiency (T3) -> **Speed

Upgrade** (T3).

1. Mining Automation (T3) -> Auto Pilot (T4) — the fleet stops needing you to fly it.
2. Advanced Bot Parts (T4) — Manipulator and Mini Jet, for Pilot, Craft and flight.

Mining, scanning and hauling without a pilot

The end state of Stardeus automation is a ship whose raw material arrives by itself.

• Radar (Titanium Plate x4, Gears x5, Glass x5, Copper Wire x8, Microchip x1; 2x2, must be outdoors)

has scan strength 1 and, crucially, "performs an automatic deep scan of the current sector. Deep scans can reveal several resource deposits per sector that targeted long-range scanning would not find." System Scanner (Titanium Plate x5, Glass x8, Optical Fiber x4, Gold Wire x3, Improved Microchip x3) is strength 3. Building more of them raises scanning speed, and you configure what to look for on the Starmap — System Scanning unlocks uncommon targets, Extended Scanning unlocks "extremely rare resources like Dark Matter or Edenium."

• Autodrill Rig (Titanium Plate x15, Lead Plate x5, Gears x5, Nuclear Cell x1, Advanced Microchip x1;

2x2, must be outdoors): "deployable automated mining rig that extracts resources for later collection." That last clause is the whole design — it mines, something else has to collect.

• Cargo Copter (Titanium Plate x10, Plastic x5, Advanced Microchip x4, Nuclear Cell x1, Gears x8;

2x2, outdoors): "automated cargo drone for deploying equipment and transporting raw materials." This is the collector.

• Shuttle (Titanium Plate x15, Glass x3, Petroleum x20, Gears x10, Improved Microchip x4, Gold Wire

x8, Plastic x4; 3x4, outdoors) plus the Auto Pilot Upgrade is the pair that removes you from expedition logistics. The official site is explicit that expeditions are currently issued by remote command and that you can run several at once, leave a shuttle on a planet for later pickup.

• Beam Drill (Titanium Plate x10, Gears x5, Improved Microchip x2, Optical Fiber x3; 2x2, outdoors,

produces heat) "extracts nearby resource deposits directly from your ship" — under Production -> Assembly -> Smelting -> Remote Mining. It is the option that skips the shuttle entirely.

• Return Beacon (Titanium Plate x15, Glass x5, Battery Cell x5, Improved Microchip x1) creates

fast-travel points, which turns expedition logistics from a one-way trip into a commute.

The material cost of the whole mining-automation set is the thing to plan around: every item in it wants a Nuclear Cell (the Autodrill Rig, the Cargo Copter, the Mini Jet, the Mini Cell), and Nuclear Cells are the Fabricator recipe Enriched Uranium + Microchip + Lead Plate at 300 kW x 6h. Automating your mining is a uranium decision before it is a logistics decision.

Colonists are not automatable by default

The official site states the rule that decides your labour model: "You can influence your robotic workers by adjusting their job type priorities, but you cannot change the priorities of human colonists, unless they have a brain implant that puts them under your control."

So automation on the human side is a research branch, and the Rogue AI tree is where it lives:

The Obey Chip (Titanium Plate, Transistor x25, Optical Fiber x15, Improved Microchip x5, Platinum Ingot x3, 75 kW x 15d; Crafting Station or Fabricator) sets AI Alignment to exactly 100% and is compatible with all body sizes and all species — it is not human-only hardware. The Tube Feeder (Titanium Plate x2, Rubber x5, Plastic x2, Advanced Microchip x3, Gold Wire x3) is the food automation: one device replaces the kitchen, the dining room and every meal-hauling job in your colony.

If that is not the run you want, the alternative is to need fewer humans. Mind Transfer is the mechanism the Codex itself recommends for this: the Core holds a robot's "identity, skills, memories, experiences and traits" and if the Core is irreparably damaged the robot is simply dead — a Replicator (Titanium Plate x4, Gold Wire x5, Glass x2, Optical Fiber x5, Improved Microchip x3) performs mind transfers and can overwrite a captured enemy core with a friendly colonist's brain. The Codex's own sentence: "This is a great way to expand your robotic workforce by giving a second life to your fallen biological colonists." A dead colonist is, in automation terms, a trained bot.

Traps

1. A bot without a Carry hand is not a hauler, and the game will not tell you. The Grappler is the

only cheap source of Carry (575 capacity) and it provides nothing else. A fleet of Grappler bots cannot build, mine or craft.

1. The best hauler cannot craft, and the only hand that can craft hauls least. Manipulator: Craft,

Pilot, Cook, Clean Device, Manipulate, 287 capacity, 50 kW x 10d. Plan both roles or you will be short of whichever one you under-bought.

1. Cores are intelligence. A Dumb Core or Lite Core cannot operate a Research Station — and only the

Mini Core provides the Intelligence ability at all. Do not put Dumb Cores in science or operator-required roles.

1. Machine Learning is gated by the core, not by the ML Booth. A Lite Core is explicitly

Machine Learning: no. And training means pulling the core out, with risk attached.

1. Assembly Hub carries Operator Required. It is the only way to install or remove body parts, so a

new part sitting in Part Storage is not an upgrade until something with hands is standing at the hub.

1. Crafting Station carries Operator Required too. The cheap bench is a job for a being. If you want

unattended production, the device you want is the Assembler (Titanium Plate x3, Gears x5, Optical Fiber x1, Microchip x1, Gold Wire x5).

1. Flight is expensive and Nuclear-Cell-gated. Mini Jet: 0.69/m and Fly, but Titanium Plate,

Transistor x5, Microchip, Nuclear Cell and 50 kW x 10d per bot. Solar-panel cleaning is the ability test the Codex uses, and it costs a nuclear cell per cleaner.

1. Batteries are 115 capacity. Mini Cell costs a Nuclear Cell each. A burst of hauling across a large

ship on a 115-capacity cell means a lot of Charge Stations and Bot Docks along the route, not one in the engine room.

1. Connectors run out of slots before you run out of power. 8 devices per starter connector, 16 per

improved, 32 per floor socket. Count devices, not kilowatts, when you lay out an automated wing.

1. The grid is the control bus. Lose the connection between a device and the Ship Computer and you

lose the ability to command it — the power may still be there. That is why the multi-connection rule matters specifically for reactors, batteries, oxygen pumps, heaters, doors and airlocks.

1. "Selected materials" on storage is a setting, not a description. Storage Units and the storage

family hold what you tell them to; unconfigured storage is how haul jobs end up spread across the ship.

1. The Codex does not document order-queue behaviour after fulfilment. Queue one order per device

when the ratio matters, and re-check what the machine is doing after every change to the line.

1. A 3x3 Disassembler produces heat. So do the Fabricator, the Nutrient Extractor, the Beam Drill,

the Nuclear Reactor and the CPU Module. Radiators are part of the automation build, not decoration.

1. Do not automate the hauling of a fuel you cannot supply. The Matter Reactor burns almost

anything (the developer recommends Scrap Metal or Steel Plate) and the Fluid Cannon burns liquids — the cheap fuel for the cannon is water, and water is also the fire-extinguishing setting.

1. The Emergency Siren is automated annoyance. It can be triggered automatically, and colonists

lose mood while it is on. Automate the trigger; remember to automate the silence.

What this guide could not verify

• No throughput numbers exist for hauling or crafting. The Codex publishes no haul rate, no craft

speed, no recharge rate and no carry-per-trip figure. Any "N carriers per Assembler" ratio on the internet is a guess; I have not given one, and you should not trust one that is not measured in your own save.

• Upgrade magnitudes are not published. Energy Efficiency "reduces electricity consumption", Speed

Upgrade "increases operating speed", Reactor Efficiency "reduces material consumption" — the amount is in the in-game tooltip. The Computer Resources Bonus ("CPU, Memory, GPU and Disk can add stat bonuses to devices on the same electrical grid") is the same: percentages live in tooltips only.

• Order-queue semantics beyond "create multiple orders, drag to rearrange" are undocumented.
• The Mini Core has no listed recipe. Its page documents a core with Dumb Labor, Intelligence and

Skilled Labor, Mind Transfer: yes and Machine Learning: yes — and no Craftable block.

• Whether hidden research adds logic or programmable devices is unknown. The published item list has

none, but the research tree deliberately hides technologies you must discover.

• Five codex pages failed to fetch during this pass (Servo Arm, Elysium, Wall Socket, and two upgrade

pages); nothing above depends on them.

• The site's own tagline and the developer's Steam announcements are the only source for design intent

statements (no conveyor belts; colonists cannot be prioritised without an implant). The numbers are all from Codex pages.

Sources

• Official Codex (generated from the latest released build), stardeusgame.com/codex — the object

index, and the pages quoted above: /codex/manual/resources/configure-crafter/, /codex/manual/beings/jobs/, /codex/manual/beings/mind-transfer/, /codex/manual/electricity/computer-resources-bonus/, /multiple-grids/, /unifying-grid/, /grid-redundancy/, /electricity-connect-shift/, /configure-reactor/, /codex/manual/resources/scanning-for-resources/, /codex/manual/resources/launching-expeditions/, /codex/manual/resources/trade/, /codex/manual/controls/modifiers/, /codex/manual/defenses/door-permissions/, /mini-turret/, /fluid-cannon/, /emergency-siren/, /trap-floor/, /tractor-beam/, /codex/manual/ui/ship-computer-apps/, /time-controls/, /codex/manual/base-building/teleporters/, /winching/

• Codex database pages for every device, part and upgrade costed above: /codex/database/objects/devices/

for assembler, crafting-station, fabricator, disassembler, grinder, furnace, auto-kitchen, nutrient-extractor, storage, charge-station, bot-dock, repair-station, mechuary, part-storage, assembly-hub, ml-booth, nanobot-hive, research-station, data-harvester-basic, datoid-loader, ship-computer, cpu-module, memory-module, energy-connector, energy-connector-big, floor-socket, switch, battery, matter-reactor, matter-reactor-mini, nuclear-reactor, solar-panel-array, mini-turret, fluid-cannon, emergency-siren, radar, system-scanner, telescope, autodrill-rig, cargo-copter, shuttle, return-beacon, beam-drill, trade-portal, tube-feeder, replicator, teleporter; /codex/database/obj/upgrades/ for auto-connect-upgrade, auto-pilot-upgrade, speed-upgrade, energy-efficiency-upgrade, reactor-efficiency-upgrade; /codex/database/obj/parts/ for hand/grappler, hand/multi-tool, hand/manipulator, mobilizer/mini-tracks, mobilizer/tracks, mobilizer/mini-jet, battery/mini-cell, shoulder/arm-socket, core/dumb-core, core/lite-core, core/mini-core, implant/obey-chip; /codex/species/ for carrier, drone, robot, cleaning-bot, sentry, orbotron, human

• Codex research pages for every node in the cost table: /codex/research/research/robotics/ for

maintenance, docking, assembly-hub, parts-basic, parts-improved, parts-advanced, carrier, auto-repair, nanobots, machine-learning; /codex/research/research/energy/ for connector-auto, switch, reactor-efficiency; /codex/research/research/production/ for energy-efficiency, speed-upgrade; /codex/research/research/security/ for turrets, door-permissions, emergency-siren, fire-suppression, trap-floor, automatic-weapons; /codex/research/research/space-travel/ for shuttle, shuttle-mining, shuttle-storage, mining-automation, auto-pilot, return-beacon; /codex/research/research/scanning/ for radar, system; /codex/research/research/computing/ for research, cpu, disk-improved, gpu, high-availability; /codex/research/research/rogue-ai/ for elysium, nutrient-infusion, mind-control

• stardeusgame.com (developer site, design-intent statements quoted): the feature page description of

Processor/Crafter archetypes, "Instead of conveyor belts, the automation pipeline depends on workers hauling materials from one device to another", the Job priority and human-implant rule, and the expeditions-by-remote-command note

• stardeusgame.com/changelog — current version v0.14.45 (2026.05.12)
• Not usable, recorded for honesty: https://stardeus.wiki.gg/ returns HTTP 401 (not public);

Fandom extraction is blocked and stale. No community wiki numbers appear in this guide.