Message in a Bottle:Fabricator

Fabricators are the descendants or modern-day 3D printers. Available in multiple sizes and configurations for specialized purposes, an appropriate fabricator can construct just about any inorganic object, presuming Forerunner has a template for it and the necessary base elements.

Forerunner used fabricators to create Landfall base,and will use them if the base needs expanding. They were used to create Forerunner's redundancies and backups. They were used by the probe to create more probes. Progressing into the future, they will be used to construct your future colony. Fabricators in general are very versatile tools, even if a specific fabricator has a more limited set of options for what it can create.

Equipment which Forerunner believes is very likely to be needed by the expedition team will have already been fabricated. Equipment that hasn't already been printed can be added to the fabrication queue, although it may take some time before such items become available. Larger items take longer to fabricate, and while Forerunner has multiple fabricators which run in parallel, not all of them are capable of making all things, and there are only a finite number of fabricators in the first place.

There is never a moment when all of the fabricators are silent. Even if the expedition team is not requesting anything, Forerunner always has more things to make to help improve the odds of mission success.