How to Build and Defend in Gravhounds

Building in Gravhounds is not a peaceful city-sim sandwiched between shootouts. Xbox Wire is blunt: building is part of the fight. Your pipeline is the backbone of every operation. It carries power, it gives you sockets for structures, and it becomes a high-speed rail when your propulsion rig hits it. If the pipe dies, the factory dies, and the extract gets a lot more theoretical.

This guide is the construction order Octopus Panic has actually demonstrated, plus packing rules that will still matter when Early Access tunes the numbers. Read Getting Started for the full loop and the Grav Beam page for how kits physically get onto the ground.

The spine: pipeline

Holmes’ walkthrough starts here for a reason. Once you are planet-side at the dropship, you lay pipeline so the operation can grow. Official bullets:

• Extend pipelines across hostile terrain to power your base, move resources, and keep your escape route alive.
• Get onto the pipeline and the rig supercharges — grind at high speed with unlimited boost.
• Unauthorized recreational use is prohibited, which is developer humor for “you will do this constantly.”

Practical rules:

• Power before poetry. A pretty ring of pipe that does not reach the next resource node is a sculpture. Run toward the job, then branch.
• Two ways home. If one spine gets chewed, a second path to the dropship is the difference between a late extract and a highlight wipe.
• Turret cones follow the pipe. Do not snake through a valley you cannot cover.
• Boost is a weapon. The rail exists so you can save the hound who wandered off. See co-op.

The factory: fabricator and Build Kits

The first building you want, in the gamescom overview, is the fabricator — a factory in a box that produces Build Kits for infrastructure. Without it you are placing whatever scraps you landed with. With it you can expand turrets, generators, and more pipe under pressure.

Workflow:

1. Socket power.
2. Print kits.
3. Beam kits to the front. Do not make the fabricator hound also be the only gunner unless you are solo.
4. Keep a kit stash that is not sitting on top of the fabricator. Volatile plus beam plus factory is a Steam disclaimer waiting to happen.

The organs: generators, turrets, the rest

Steam and Xbox marketing name the kit in plain language: deploy turrets, generators, and fabricators to expand the operation and defend it from the swarm. Coverage also mentions refineries in some launch articles as part of the base picture. We will not invent extra building names beyond what those sources use. If Early Access adds named gadgets, they will land on this page.

How to think about them:

• Generators keep the spine honest. A long pipe with one power source is a single point of failure.
• Turrets buy time, not immortality. Place them where the swarm actually walks, which you learn by dying once.
• Dropship remains the heart. Treat it like a third teammate you are not allowed to abandon.

Building stays physical. Grab the equipment, get it into place, power it up, get back to work — preferably before something eats you. That is Holmes, slightly paraphrased, and it is the whole skill floor.

The extended gamescom walkthrough added two factory numbers we will name without inflating them. Collecting resources earns build credits that you spend to expand the operation. Turrets can be promoted into more powerful specialized variants as pressure rises. Credits are not a substitute for a living pipe. Promotion is not a reason to skip the first fabricator. Pair those verbs with weapons so you do not upgrade a turret you cannot reach after a bad grind. See controls for how the rig uses the pipe as a rail.

Defense as a schedule, not a vibe

The swarm escalates the longer you stay. A base that was cute at minute five is understaffed at minute twenty. How to extract is the greed clock; this page is what you spend that time on.

• Early: spine + fabricator + one honest turret line.
• Mid: second power, coverage on the node you are actually mining, kit logistics.
• Late: repair, restock, and stop expanding unless the job is unfinished. New pipe at minute twenty-five is how packs miss the boat.

Dozer’s bone bombs are a personality-shaped version of area denial. They do not replace turrets. See Dozer if you like planting problems for wildlife. Everyone else still places kits.

Loadouts that love the factory

Reward Pods can push you toward defense or mobility. A mobility-drunk pack will outrun its own pipe. A defense-drunk pack will turtle on a node that is already dry. The loadouts page talks about stacking; your job on the ground is to spend those stacks on sockets that still have power.

When the pipe is down, you are not “playing Gravhounds.” You are on a camping trip with aliens. Repair is a first-class action. Assign it in co-op voice chat the same way you assign who is allowed to chase a far crate.

Build fast, build ugly, keep the spine alive. COSMO does not grade architecture.