Habitat

A Habitat is a colonizable megastructure built above a star or planet (one per system), finished in a single stage. It requires the Orbital Habitats technology, takes 5 years, and colonies on it develop twice as fast as on a normal planet.

Habitats are one of the most-used tools for overcoming a shortage of good expansion targets — unlike a normal colony, a habitat is built directly above a star or planet rather than requiring a habitable world to already be there, and each system can only hold one.

Build requirements and cost

You’ll need the Orbital Habitats technology, 200 Influence, and either 1,500 Alloys (Mechanical shipset) or 750 Alloys plus 2,625 Food (Biological shipset). Construction takes 5 years — not instant, so it’s worth planning ahead rather than deciding on a whim mid-crisis.

Tiers matter more than they might seem

Habitats display in one of three tiers depending on their capital building level, and the tier directly affects habitability and district capacity:

Tier I: 40% habitability, +0.25 max districts per major celestial body in the system.
Tier II: 50% habitability, +0.5 max districts (requires the Habitat Expansion tech and 1,000 pops empire-wide).
Tier III: 60% habitability, +0.75 max districts (requires Advanced Space Habitation and 2,500 pops empire-wide).

Upgrading isn’t automatic — it’s gated behind population thresholds and further tech, so a habitat built early in the game will often sit at Tier I for a while.

A restriction worth knowing about early

Only Gestalt Consciousness empires, Void Dwellers-origin empires, or empires that have taken the Voidborne ascension perk can actually build housing buildings on a habitat. For a standard empire without any of those, habitats are still very useful for resource districts, but housing capacity works differently than you might expect coming from normal planets.

Strategic value

For wide-expansion builds: significantly expands the range of systems worth claiming — you’re no longer limited to “must have a habitable planet,” just a star or planet to build above.
For tall builds: habitats make great specialized output worlds (a dedicated research or mining habitat), further squeezing output out of your core systems.

Habitats originated with the Utopia DLC — now free/base-game on PC as of the 10th-anniversary content merge.