Astroneer got a big, free update today—its "biggest update to date," developer System Era Softworks reckons—that makes significant additions to its base building and power systems.
New base platforms are the high point of the update. These "freestanding, movable" platforms can be placed and rotated individually and then connected to power sources. New fabricators—think little portable printers—were also added. You can use a small fabricator to print medium platforms straight from your backpack, or print a medium fabricator and plop it down if you need larger objects.
Base modules and platforms are also now modular. When you print them, they'll start as prepackaged crates, which you can easily place wherever you'd like before deploying them. System Era says existing bases will automatically be updated to fit these new systems, but advises that you "use old saves at your own risk."
Further fleshing out these base changes are yet more additions to power grids, following up on last December's big power and research update. The gist is that you can now create shared power pools by joining generators together, and use new extenders to better allocate that power.
The official patch notes are a laundry list of details, bug fixes and smaller changes, if you want to read them for yourself.
System Era also outlined its development roadmap in the update. With research and base building in-progress, the studio hopes to release weather and terrain improvements, as well as dedicated servers, in early 2018.