Starfield grants you the opportunity to recruit a crew member and then assign them to various posts, such as on your ship or at an Outpost. You can recruit a plethora of crew members during your first few hours in the game, but this doesn’t mean that all of them will have an available assignment. Your ship only needs two crew members assigned to it, meaning you need to start constructing Outposts to place your other crew members.

While this sounds simple in theory, it can actually be a complicated process. For starters, you need to first get an Outpost up and running, which requires a mass amount of materials. Then, you need to construct a specific item in order to start assigning crew members to that particular Outpost. Without this one item, no crew member will be able to be stationed at your Outpost.

To see exactly how this process works in Starfield, check out the guide below.

How to assign a crew member to an Outpost in Starfield

First and foremost, you need to find a planet that you don’t mind settling on. It’s important to remember that your first Outpost will be extremely rudimentary, so don’t worry too much about it. You will have plenty of time in the future to construct a much more advanced Outpost.

Related: Starfield: How to steal an enemy ship and make it your own

Once you figure out a decent spot, you need to build an Outpost Beacon. With the beacon placed, you can begin building other structures, such as an airlock that can connect to a larger hatch or hallway. You can also place a Large Scanner, Mission Board, Storage Containers, and much more, provided you have the materials.

Before you do anything, though, I highly recommend building a Crew Station. You need to build and place the Crew Station if you want to assign a crew member to your Outpost in Starfield. Without it, no crew members can be assigned to your Outpost.

You can find the Crew Station in the Miscellaneous section of your building tabs, and the recipe for it is as follows:

• 5 Aluminum
• 2 Iron
• 3 Nickel

The hardest material for me to find was Nickel, and I had to go to a couple of different systems before I found a planet that had Nickel Deposits on it. Aluminum and Iron are found in large capacities when you destroy and loot an enemy spaceship. Iron is also sourced by blowing up space rocks floating in a system.

With these material quantities, you can build the Crew Station anywhere in your Outpost. Once it’s placed, you can go to your crew member sheet (accessible through your ship menu) and select up to two crew members to station at your Outpost. Those crew members will then show up and run things for you while you’re not there. Of course, your first Outpost won’t have much to run, but as you construct more advanced objects, your crew members will be able to do much more for you at an Outpost.