What do outposts do when you take them?

[Tridus]

I captured a manufacturing outpost, but aside from offering it to outsource I can't seem to do anything with it. I thought it would speed up my ability to build other outposts, but it didn't do that. I *think* property development dispatches may have gotten faster as a result, but I'm not sure.

Any tips?

I also formed a federation and now I seem to have a lot fewer hostile actions on the federation planets. No more technology stealing for me? Do I need to capture a science outpost to do research on my own to get things that I can't steal from those worlds now, since they won't let me research what they already know?

[x4000]

The manufacturing outposts can be outsourced, as you note, or they do indeed make property development and outpost creation faster.  If the outpost creation isn't faster, that's a bug.

There are also indeed fewer hostile options against federation races, although in the version that is coming tonight the tech stealing and resource raiding are coming back (but with added betrayal influence costs thrown in for fed races).

Science outposts do not let you do research on your own, you always have to have a sponsor race or steal it.  Science outposts make your research faster, though.  And they are the only way to research vaccines if a disease sprouts up (that has to be done via outsourcing).