Part of the series:

No Man's Sky Settlements Guide: Hub for finding, claiming, and running settlements.

How to Manage a Settlement: Daily routines for Overseers.

Quick Answer

Settlement decisions appear every 15 minutes to 2 hours at the Settlement Administration Terminal.
Decision types include Construction Opportunities, Policy Decisions, Citizen Requests, Citizen Disputes, and New Arrivals.
Every choice affects one or more settlement stats: Population, Productivity, Happiness, or Maintenance.
Favor options that raise Productivity and Happiness without spiking Maintenance.
Some decisions unlock new buildings or replace the settlement's worst current feature.

Overview

Decisions are where a settlement is actually run. Collecting production is bookkeeping; the choices you make at the terminal determine what there is to collect. A well-judged dispute ruling lifts happiness for free, while an ill-judged construction approval saddles you with maintenance you cannot remove.

Every decision follows the same underlying structure: you are offered two to four options, each option moves one or more of the four stats, and one option is usually cheap-but-modest while another is expensive-but-large. There is no option that improves everything. Once you see that structure, choosing stops being guesswork and becomes a question of which stat you currently need most.

How to Read a Decision Card

Work through a card in this order:

Check the decision type. The type tells you the shape of the trade before you read anything. Construction spends maintenance, requests spend resources, policies spend one stat to buy another.
Read the stat effects on each option, not the story. The narrative text is written so both options sound defensible. The attached stat changes are the information.
Identify what the option costs on an ongoing basis. A one-off payment of units or materials is cheap even when money is tight. A permanent maintenance increase is expensive even when money is plentiful.
Match it against your weakest stat. Feed the stat that is currently bottlenecking you, which for most settlements below A-class is net productivity, and after that happiness.
Confirm. Decisions cannot be reversed, and hesitating costs you nothing except the time you spend at the terminal.

The one rule that carries most of the weight: if an option adds ongoing maintenance and your settlement is not running a surplus, decline it. Growth you cannot pay for turns into debt, and debt stops production entirely.

Decision Types

Five types cycle through the terminal, and each represents a distinct trade-off pattern:

Type	What it spends	What it buys	Ongoing cost?
Construction Opportunity	Maintenance, plus your only build slot	Productivity, population capacity, or a player-facing perk	Yes, permanently
Policy Decision	One stat, or your Sentinel alert level	Another stat, settlement-wide	Yes, ongoing
Citizen Request	A one-off payment of units or materials	Happiness	No
Citizen Dispute	One stat	Another stat	No
New Arrival	Maintenance	Population	Yes, while the citizen stays

Read down the last column first. The three types with no ongoing cost are low-risk decisions you can take on instinct. The two that add permanent overhead are the ones worth pausing over.

Construction Opportunities

These let you build a new structure or upgrade an existing one. Only one construction project can run at a time, so choose carefully.

When evaluating:

Farms and Warehouses generally provide the best productivity for upkeep.
Residences increase population cap but do not directly produce resources.
Leisure buildings like Saloons boost happiness.
Commercial buildings unlock trade terminals and merchants.
Always check the displayed productivity versus the hidden upkeep cost.

The settlement buildings and upgrades guide lists every building type and its benefits.

Policy Decisions

Policy decisions set laws or town-wide rules. They apply settlement-wide and keep applying, which makes them the most consequential decisions you make outside of construction.

Policies come in a small number of recognizable shapes. The game does not label them this way, but sorting an offer into one of these buckets tells you what you are being asked to pay:

Extractive policies convert citizen goodwill into output. Productivity climbs, happiness falls. Worth taking when happiness is comfortably high and net productivity is the bottleneck.
Concessionary policies do the reverse, spending output to buy goodwill. Take these when unrest is dragging your productivity down, since happiness feeds back into output and the loss is partly recovered.
Security policies move the Sentinel alert level. Lowering alert usually costs productivity or units. Worth paying on a high-Sentinel planet where raids are a real risk, and skippable on a quiet one.
Spending policies buy a stat with ongoing maintenance rather than a one-off cost. These are the policies that quietly push a marginal settlement into debt.

The consistent mistake is trading happiness for productivity on a settlement that has no happiness to spare. Because happiness influences productivity, an extractive policy taken at the wrong time can leave net output lower than before. Check happiness first, then decide.

Citizen Requests

Individual citizens ask for resources, approvals, or favors. Approving requests usually raises happiness. Denying may save resources but lower mood.

Requests are the cheapest happiness in the game. The cost is a one-off payment from your own pocket, whether that is units or a stack of materials, and it adds nothing to your maintenance. Anything you can supply from stock or refine easily should simply be approved. Keep common building materials on hand and most requests resolve without a special trip; the resources and crafting guide hub covers stocking the usual suspects.

If your settlement is already happy and productive, approve reasonable requests. If you are struggling with debt, it is okay to deny requests that cost too much. Denial is not a disaster, it is a small happiness hit that a later approval offsets.

Citizen Disputes

Two citizens conflict and ask you to rule in favor of one side. The outcome usually raises one stat and lowers another, or favors happiness over productivity.

Disputes cost nothing ongoing, so they are pure reallocation: you are moving points from one stat to another. That makes the rule simple. Rule in favor of whichever side feeds your weakest stat, and rule quickly. A single dispute moves the needle slightly, and the swing from any one ruling is far smaller than the swing from a single construction approval.

What accumulates is the stat effect, so a run of consecutive rulings in the same direction is fine when that is the direction you need. Correct the balance later, once the stat you were feeding is no longer the weak one.

New Arrivals

New citizens want to join your settlement. Accepting increases Population, which can unlock more buildings and higher productivity. Rejecting avoids the maintenance cost of additional residents.

Accept arrivals when you have housing and jobs available. Reject if your settlement is already struggling with maintenance or happiness.

Population is a ceiling rather than an engine. Extra citizens do not generate output by themselves, they let buildings and future construction operate at full effect. Accepting arrivals into a town with no productive buildings adds cost without return, which is why population is the last of the four stats to prioritize on a young settlement and one of the first once your farms and warehouses are upgraded.

Evaluating Hidden Costs

Since the Beacons update, the terminal does not always show upkeep costs for buildings. A project might advertise a large productivity boost while quietly adding a large daily maintenance bill.

To avoid nasty surprises:

Prioritize upgrades to buildings you already understand.
Farms and Warehouses are known for reliable net productivity.
Residences and some leisure buildings have higher upkeep relative to output.
Search community references if a new building type appears.

A reliable workaround costs one cycle of patience: note your maintenance figure before approving a construction project, then check it again after the build completes. The difference is that building's true price, and you now know what that category costs on your settlement. Two or three logged comparisons give you enough of a baseline to judge future offers on sight.

The other habit worth forming is preferring upgrades to new construction. Upgrading a building you already own raises its output against a maintenance increase you can anticipate, since you have already seen what the previous class cost. A brand new structure is an unknown cost attached to an unknown benefit, and you cannot demolish it if the numbers disappoint.

Building a Decision Strategy

Early game:

Accept reasonable new arrivals to grow Population.
Build two Farms and one Warehouse as first priorities.
Approve citizen requests when affordable.

Mid game:

Upgrade Farms to S-class and Warehouses to A-class.
Add a Saloon for happiness.
Keep maintenance below productivity.

Late game:

Add Marketplace, Stardock, and Tower for player convenience and production variety.
Replace negative settlement features with positive ones through decisions.
Push toward S-class settlement rating.

Each phase optimizes for something different. Early, you are reaching a positive net so production starts at all, which means saying no to most things. Mid game, you convert surplus into capacity, saying yes to upgrades and selectively to arrivals. Late game, the stats look after themselves and decisions become about production variety and grinding down negative features. An Overseer who carries the early deny-everything habit into the late game ends up with a stable settlement that never reaches S-class.

Common Decision Mistakes

Taking the largest productivity option every time. It is frequently the largest maintenance option too. The comparison that matters is the difference between them.
Declining requests to save units. Requests are a one-off cost for a permanent stat gain, and the sums involved are trivial against any mid-game income.
Approving construction while in debt. The build adds maintenance to a settlement already failing to cover its costs, which deepens the hole.
Accepting arrivals to feel like the town is growing. Population without productive buildings is maintenance with no return.
Rereading the flavour text for hidden meaning. The stat icons are the mechanics; the prose is dressing.
Waiting for a perfect construction offer. Offers cycle, but so does time. A decent building running now beats a better one you are still holding out for.

FAQ

Can I undo a decision?

No. Settlement decisions are permanent. Think through the stat impact before confirming.

How do I see the effect of a decision?

The terminal usually previews stat changes. Pay attention to both the immediate numbers and any long-term implications, such as Sentinel alert level.

Do citizen disputes matter long-term?

Individual disputes have minor effects, but the cumulative mood of citizens influences happiness and productivity. Consistently unfair rulings can drag your settlement down.

Should I always accept new arrivals?

Not always. More citizens need more housing and maintenance. Only accept arrivals when your infrastructure can support them.

What are settlement features?

Features are modifiers gained through decisions. Positive features boost stats; negative features harm them. New features replace the worst existing feature, so bad features can eventually be pushed out.

Keep Exploring

Fund settlement upkeep with the best money-making methods guide.
Apply the same construction skills at home with the Base Building Guide Hub.

Key Takeaways

Decisions appear frequently and shape every settlement stat.
Construction projects should prioritize net productivity after upkeep.
Policies trade between productivity, happiness, and Sentinel alert level.
Citizen requests and disputes are chances to boost happiness or save resources.
New arrivals grow your town but require housing and maintenance support.
Replace negative features over time by making positive decisions.

No Man's Sky Settlement Policies & Decisions Guide