Space stations allow alliances to set up governance over a region of space. An alliance can have multiple space stations. 

Creating a space station: You need a level 20 embassy and a level 20 university to build a space station hull. Build the Space Station Hull like any other ship in your Shipyard.  Send the Space Station Hull to an uninhabited planet around a star.  It will act like a colony ship with the same happiness used and will replace the planet it is sent to. The space station counts as a colony for your empire. Once the Space Station is founded (by the Space Station Hull landing) the station will be under the control of your whole alliance via a vote of Parliament.  Space Stations cost happiness to launch.  The cost is the same as starting a new colony.  Also in calculating costs for your next colony any Space Stations you control count as a colony for that purpose.  This happiness cost does not extend to the remainder of your alliance even though they have just as much control over the station as the owner does.

Upgrading modules: Instead of buildings, the space station has modules. The new station will have a level 1 Station Command Center, level 1 Parliament, and level 1 Warehouse built for free. Upgrading or building new modules requires the appropriate plan. A Space Station Lab is required to build module plans for a space station.  Plans for the Space Station Modules have long build times, so having multiple Space Station Labs can help to produce plans faster.  Only 1 plan can be in the queue at a time.

Restrictions: If your empire owns a Space Station you may not quit your alliance. If the space station is abandoned, the space it occupied will be replaced by an asteroid. Therefore, a space station can only be built at a given position once. Deployment of the space station, like any colony, breaks isolation.

Warnings: 

• Once you lose your Station Command Center, you have no available plots. 
• Once the SCC and Parliament are both destroyed, the station will self-destruct leaving behind an Asteroid, no further Space Station Hulls will be able to sent to that location again unless the Asteroid is converted back into a planet by something like the Black Hole Generator.
• Care and feeding are needed to keep space stations active.  If they aren't supplied, the modules start taking damage.  Once a module has reached 0% it will lose a level and reset back to 100% and then continue to be damaged again until more resources arrive at the station.
• If the Command Module is destructed, your alliance loses control of the station. 
• A new Space Station does not have a lot of supplies to start with: possibly only about 4 hours worth of supplies. Be ready to supply a Space Station as soon as you deploy it.  Space Station Hulls are slow and can take a few hours to arrive even to an adjacent orbit in the same system.
• All space station modules in the space station only consume resources. They produce no waste and no happiness.
• Space Stations consume more energy than any other resources.  In trying to calculate how long until a station is out of resources it is best to look at the energy consumption rate. 

Tips:

• Stations consume energy faster than any other resource.  When calculating how much storage is left it's best to look at the energy amount.
• Build lots of Warehouses and keep adding new ones as the Station Command Center increases in level.  Greater storage capacity means you can keep the station alive longer with greater intervals between supply runs.
• In general its not very possible to get more than 16 hours worth of storage into a Space Station.
• Space Station influence, influences an alliances rank more heavilly than any other factor including population.  If you want to increase your alliance's ranking then increase the levels of your influence buildings.
• Use a script to resupply your space station.  Manually supplying one is a lot of regular work, and even more work should you let the station become damaged due to a resource shortage.
• Support stations from planets with glyph building resource production.  Space stations get to be very hungry relatively quickly and can be difficult if not impossible for a planet with only stardard resource producing buildings to rely upon.
• Don't forget to put some spies on Counter Espionage on the station and to Assign fighters or to have SAW coverage of your station.  Space Stations by themselves are defenseless and easilly killed.
• Letting a Space Station die is a great way to create additional Astroids in a region where they may be scarce, and this much less risky than using a Black Hole Generator.
• When using a script to build modules, the module names are: 

  command
  ibs
  art
  opera
  food
  parliament
  warehouse
  policestation

 

Requirements

• Embassy Lvl 20