I think outposts are gonna feature a grid of squares or hexes and you'll drop factories/farms/mines icons into these slots. Different worlds will have different open slots or something.
David loves drawing stuff like that so all the better!
Nothing is impossible but I've yet to see any campaign feature that goes anywhere near that level of detail. I'm still going under the assumption that Combat is King™ and that outposts will be something to build up
so that you have to fight/defend them. I don't expect them to be Sim City but I do believe they'll be built up over time and require varying levels of resources to upgrade/equip. As far as "seeing" the outposts, I don't expect there to be a lot of visual consideration outside of an orbital station (if they're not planetside). I think we'll have to use our imaginations for the most part, just as we do whenever we go to ports now. The difference will be that they'll be *our* ports, which is a big deal.
Hopefully we'll be able to manufacture from raw materials, import/export commodities, build ships and stations, generate fuel, etc. Hopefully it takes a lot of work to get a fully-functioning outpost up, or a series of them (because not every planet has every raw material), but the payoff is that we can become self-sufficient and perhaps operate with a surplus. At that point, you're no longer at the mercy of the factions and that's a huge, and likely necessary, step toward having end-game goals.
That's what I'd like to see, anyway. I wouldn't mind seeing little hex grids and stuff, though, but I don't expect outposts to be a tiny Civilization game.