Invulnerability and Base Raiding

[SeventhSandwich]

This thread isn't supposed to be a specific suggestion but rather a discussion of base raiding and the invulnerability of home bases.

A couple days ago, I started playing this game again after a several month hiatus, and I saw, among other things, that faction homebases were still invincible vaults that can't be captured. After searching around online, I realized that this lack of base raiding is actually an intentional feature and most of the community here supports keeping home bases and docked ships invulnerable.

All I have to ask is, why? If a faction can keep most of their belongings under lock and key without any risk of losing them, then what's the entire point of making ships that have weaponry? You're just making them for the occasional run-in with pirates or a lost player. Or even worse, your ships are just for 'organized' battles between factions. Bleh. On the same note, if your base is essentially invincible, what's the point of making defenses? It'll keep people from loitering around outside of your base and shooting dice, but you're not actually repelling any kind of danger.

The justification I've seen on these forums is that people don't want to lose their ships, but why not? What's even the point of making a magnificent battleship if you can't actually wage war against someone else? Are people just interested in having some kind of pissing contest for who can make the shiniest decorative ship? Or do people want to have epic space battles that aren't pre-arranged?

Why is there seemingly no demand for this?

 

[ltmauve]

Because of griefers. The total invulnerability is the only way to protect ships and the station while offline. Some griefer could always come in with a doomcube and destroy a base, given enough time.

Here are two common ideas to reform it:
Siege: The homebase still has shields, and the shields still take damage. When the shields are depleted, instead of block damage, the homebase is now under siege. The defenders now have 24/48/whatever hours to clear out the homebase sector or something. During this period, the homebase is still invulnerable. Once the siege period has expired, the homebase will be unfactioned (and probably decayed as well)

Capture: (This requires some sort of hacking tool.) Astronauts can attempt to board the station and reach the faction module. Once they do, they can attempt to hack it. This starts a 24/48/whatever hour period during which the defenders have to come in and reset the faction module. If not, the homebase will be unfactioned (and probably decayed as well)

 

[SeventhSandwich]

That all sounds fine and dandy but you're still going to have to put in some way to make homebases vulnerable.

The way you've phrased it makes it sound like raiding a base with a doomcube is somehow a bad thing. If a person can come to your base and destroy it, that means (in my book) that your base has insufficient defenses. I don't see the issue here.

As for those suggestions, having a 'siege' last for 24 hours before rendering the homebase vulnerable does almost the exact same thing as letting people attack it straight away, since you'll be attacking them while they're offline. It just makes it near-impossible for anybody to raid a homebase, which is the problem I brought up from the beginning. Likewise, having a 'hacking tool' that works on the faction block would only work if someone left all the doors to their faction block open. For 99% of bases, that would mean the same thing as invincibility.

 

[CyberTao]

One of the features of the faction point system was that setting a station as homebase would create an upkeep cost that increased with the mass of protected items (Station+ everything docked). The feature was never added in as the faction point system was never fully finished, and would have provided the option for stations to lose that protection once their FP dropped too low to maintain it (You lose FP from members dying for example).

That all sounds fine and dandy but you're still going to have to put in some way to make homebases vulnerable.

The way you've phrased it makes it sound like raiding a base with a doomcube is somehow a bad thing. If a person can come to your base and destroy it, that means (in my book) that your base has insufficient defenses. I don't see the issue here.

I used to abuse that tactic. I'd fly inside of a pirate station with a small ship and then add blocks to it while I was inside the turret blindspots. This allowed me to wail on the station with 0 risk and using 0 skill. It was just an ugly blob of systems that exploited on the fact that people want decent looking stations. That isn't warfare, and no one wants that except for the griefers that we have the protection for. There is no fun in logging in and seeing everything destroyed because some new noob decided to nubsmash everything in a cube overnight.

 

[godmars]

That all sounds fine and dandy but you're still going to have to put in some way to make homebases vulnerable.

The way you've phrased it makes it sound like raiding a base with a doomcube is somehow a bad thing. If a person can come to your base and destroy it, that means (in my book) that your base has insufficient defenses. I don't see the issue here.

im not disagreeing with you but imo at the current state this game is in all it'd promote if it were implemented right now is waiting for everyone in a faction to log off and then going and smashing their base

 

[SeventhSandwich]

One of the features of the faction point system was that setting a station as homebase would create an upkeep cost that increased with the mass of protected items (Station+ everything docked). The feature was never added in as the faction point system was never fully finished, and would have provided the option for stations to lose that protection once their FP dropped too low to maintain it (You lose FP from members dying for example).


I used to abuse that tactic. I'd fly inside of a pirate station with a small ship and then add blocks to it while I was inside the turret blindspots. This allowed me to wail on the station with 0 risk and using 0 skill. It was just an ugly blob of systems that exploited on the fact that people want decent looking stations. That isn't warfare, and no one wants that except for the griefers that we have the protection for. There is no fun in logging in and seeing everything destroyed because some new noob decided to nubsmash everything in a cube overnight.

The faction point is insufficient for what I'm describing because any faction could just choose to have all of its members log off during a raid. At that point, there's no way to lower their FP and your raid is over.

As for your second issue, people should either build bases that do not have blindspots or the game should just prevent users from modifying their ships in a captured sector. Regardless of that, if people are afraid of losing their bases, then why are they even building them in the first place? Isn't this principally supposed to be a game about space warfare? You're supposed to lose stuff in warfare, even if it's shiny, nice stuff.

im not disagreeing with you but imo at the current state this game is in all it'd promote if it were implemented right now is waiting for everyone in a faction to log off and then going and smashing their base

If there's some way to create defenses which prevent someone from destroying your base, then why is that a bad thing? Attacking someone when their members are asleep/offline just sounds like good tactics to me.

 

[CyberTao]

Isn't this principally supposed to be a game about space warfare? You're supposed to lose stuff in warfare, even if it's shiny, nice stuff.

False. Hell, the game is 90% building orientation right now because the game's combat isn't truly ready.

The faction point is insufficient for what I'm describing because any faction could just choose to have all of its members log off during a raid. At that point, there's no way to lower their FP and your raid is over.

A war should not be decided by a single raid. A war is a long and drawn out conflict and has numerous battles. I don't think a whole lot of people would want a system where a single 10 minute battle determines the fate of the entirety of their assets. You want to destroy a homebase? Earn it. The people who want war, want war, not single stand battles that leave everyone too crippled to retort afterwards.

 

[MrFURB]

This is actually a topic that interests me a lot. The majority of people who have tried to experience extensive faction warfare in a sandbox game know it's hard to come up with a way to wage a PvP war that is both enjoyable for all (or at least most) parties involved AND follows the same free form guidelines of effort-reward as the rest of the features in the sandbox.

The largest problems inherent in faction warfare as it is now (yes, it is wildly incomplete. Can't wait for the next faction/war update) is that when one side is winning a battle due to one of a million conditions, there are no reasons for the losing side to try to fight back. Why would you attempt to defend a vulnerable outpost when there's something five times as expensive as your entire fleet in the area and no gain to be had in combat with it? Why defend your homebase when undocking ships to fight will result in their loss?

Creating reasons for the disadvantaged side to fight or even enjoy that fighting should go a long way towards making base-raping more rare, and multi-pilot engagements less rare. Minecraft's 'factions' plugin suffers from this quite extensively, as the only way to insure an opposing faction loses territory is by killing their players, meaning the opponents are encouraged to not play when losing. That is... Pretty much the exact opposite of what good PvP is. Good PvP encourages the losing side to stick it out and put in more effort in an attempt to eke something out of the war.

Simply removing homebase protection will be disastrous for any faction wanting to have a permanent settlement on the stars. Yes, it forces people to be online to defend it, but it provides none of the tools required to make a forced player presence possible. First we'd have to increase stability and optimization to the point that the inevitable arms race between really big turrets and really big midnight base wrecking ships doesn't kill servers. Then we'd have to have enough players on servers to be able to constantly keep a guard posted on your faction's assets (ask around on EVE online, guard duty ain't fun) which would be difficult on a server with more than 20 factions. Then we'd have to figure out how to accommodate players who are starting out or just making a faction with a few of their friends.

If none of those problems are solved, then we'd suffer a similar fate to Minecraft's factions plugin. The only bases that would be considered worth the materials to build would be either four months of warping away from spawn, completely hidden and unclaimed, or a dirt house.

Cyber, Seventh, I'm interested to hear what you have in mind on the topic of warfare.

 

[SeventhSandwich]

False. Hell, the game is 90% building orientation right now because the game's combat isn't truly ready.

That explanation would be fine with me if it was actually the case. I've read nothing on this forum which suggests that homebase vulnerability is a planned feature.

A war should not be decided by a single raid. A war is a long and drawn out conflict and has numerous battles. I don't think a whole lot of people would want a system where a single 10 minute battle determines the fate of the entirety of their assets. You want to destroy a homebase? Earn it. The people who want war, want war, not single stand battles that leave everyone too crippled to retort afterwards.

The problem is that a system like what you're describing doesn't exist and can't exist if homebases stay invulnerable. The closest we've got to what you're describing are 'organized battles' which are lame anyway because both parties just set rules for how the battle works. People can't craft their own story of their faction's rise to glory because the game literally prevents them from attacking others.

Cyber, Seventh, I'm interested to hear what you have in mind on the topic of warfare.

I would be glad to share my ideas if I had some kind of assurance that a better system for wars between factions is in the works. I was disappointed reading about faction points when I came back to the game a few days ago because everyone seemed unanimously in agreement that people should just be able to stow away their stuff in invulnerable vaults so that they don't 'lose their ships' or get 'griefed'. The reason why I posted this thread instead of one about features for warfare was because I didn't see any demand for suggestions like that.

 

[MrFURB]

The reason why I posted this thread instead of one about features for warfare was because I didn't see any demand for suggestions like that.

Oh, there's a demand, it's just that people are usually focused on the features currently being worked on or planned. Doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss things that are farther in the future.

And with what limited information I have and can share, I know that there's more being added to the faction system, though it will probably be a few update cycles before then. I don't have any other details, unfortunately.

Bah, I gotta go do something, but when I get back I'll dump some brainstorming here and see if I can't get some brainfood exchange going.

 

[CyberTao]

The main thing I'm concerned with is making sure it isn't possible to be obliterated overnight.

One of the main issues I find right now is that stations are powerless. They are normally around the size of 2-3 battleships, but due to their stationary nature, they can not mount the weaponry to take down those battleships. Sure you could strap oversized turrets, but AI is easy to feint, even if they get an overhaul I don't expect much from it. Stations need to be stronger, they need to be a stronghold so that destroying them is not easy as fuck.

One way I can think of fixing this, is adding a system that boosts the power of "main" stations by a factor depending on how many, and the mass of other stations you have. This incentives having multiple stations, and to defend the stations, while also giving people targets to attack so as to deplete FP and weaken the overall forces of a faction. This idea is probably too complicated for Starmade though, but it outlines mostly what I want.

Anything that would benefit a faction having multiple stations also benefits war. But then you need stations to be strong enough that tiny Tim in 1 man battle fleet can't just roll over the stations.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like proper warfare starts with empowering and incentizing Stations and bases on planets. It would make large and power factions look and feel expansive and well, strong, and give targets for other players to attack during war. From there it's a matter of making it difficult to dock large battleships to invincible Homebases with high FP costs, making larger ships harder to field and maintain and further empowering bases, and balancing offline strength and online player strength.

Maybe factions can have a Day/night system? The "Day" would be when most players are active, and "Night" would be when most players are sleeping and provides extra FP protection. It would provide incentive to attack a faction during it's 'peak' hours, but would probably end up being restrictive in some way. Maybe set the minimum "Day" amount to be based on server configs and member count? I dunno.


I suppose that is targets while at war, but you need incentive for war. That part I don't know. Most wars are fought over expansion or acquiring something. Starmade is 'infinite', as a Sandbox it loses the ability for scarcity of items for the most part, so the logical thing in my mind is to make the wars revolve around the territory and some form of currency.

Territory is unlimited, due to the nature of the sandbox, but if we consider adding effects to sectors (which is planned to some degree), and THEN making those bonuses interact with surround sectors, you could create some key areas. The idea is to make it less "any Sector X" and more "This Sector X", something to make it more appealing to some people. People in factions tend to colour and build their ships in a certain design, so faction diversity would mean more people looking for different combinations of bonuses if done right. I dunno, causation is not something I am suited for.

There also needs to be a reason to not war as well. As fun as it might be to war dec everyone, it isn't practical. Hell, I'd be overjoyed if there was a way to get involved as a 3rd party, I mean war does drive economies, and not just mercenaries.

 

[MeepMoop]

The main thing I'm concerned with is making sure it isn't possible to be obliterated overnight.

One of the main issues I find right now is that stations are powerless. They are normally around the size of 2-3 battleships, but due to their stationary nature, they can not mount the weaponry to take down those battleships. Sure you could strap oversized turrets, but AI is easy to feint, even if they get an overhaul I don't expect much from it. Stations need to be stronger, they need to be a stronghold so that destroying them is not easy as fuck.

One way I can think of fixing this, is adding a system that boosts the power of "main" stations by a factor depending on how many, and the mass of other stations you have. This incentives having multiple stations, and to defend the stations, while also giving people targets to attack so as to deplete FP and weaken the overall forces of a faction. This idea is probably too complicated for Starmade though, but it outlines mostly what I want.

Anything that would benefit a faction having multiple stations also benefits war. But then you need stations to be strong enough that tiny Tim in 1 man battle fleet can't just roll over the stations.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like proper warfare starts with empowering and incentizing Stations and bases on planets. It would make large and power factions look and feel expansive and well, strong, and give targets for other players to attack during war. From there it's a matter of making it difficult to dock large battleships to invincible Homebases with high FP costs, making larger ships harder to field and maintain and further empowering bases, and balancing offline strength and online player strength.

Maybe factions can have a Day/night system? The "Day" would be when most players are active, and "Night" would be when most players are sleeping and provides extra FP protection. It would provide incentive to attack a faction during it's 'peak' hours, but would probably end up being restrictive in some way. Maybe set the minimum "Day" amount to be based on server configs and member count? I dunno.

You're exactly spot on in your thoughts.

People need an incentive for having more stations, so that means increasing the value of the stations- and the increased value also makes people want to take them. In addition, they need to be more expensive so that it's more profitable to defend your station rather than to run off and timidly build another one 2000 sectors further into deep space.

Balancing value and expense in stations actually might be difficult if this approach is taken. If it's too expensive people would just have one or two stations and it's back to square one. If they aren't, then people would rather build a new one than to defend the ones they have if they get attacked. You cleverly figured a way around this, which would be giving a passive benefit for having more stations, though as you said there are some drawbacks regarding complexity.

To be honest, I think that a good way to increase the value of stations might be shipyards. Destroying a station would cripple a fleet, and not having plenty of stations would also cripple you in the long run, as you wouldn't be able to produce enough ships. There are plenty of other things but I want to wait for some input before furthering discussion.

 

[ltmauve]

I'm going to agree with CyberTao: We need reasons to have stationary assets. If all my assets are either indestructible (homebase) or can GTFO when the going gets tough (ships) there's no reason to for a losing team to stick around in combat.

The question is, how do you incentivize having actual combat rather than just attacking when your enemies are offline or just bringing a titan to every fight? (And yes, titans should be economically hard to get. However, a mature faction should not beat out a recently started one simply by virtue of having a doomship.)

 

[Winterhome]

We already are able to technically assault and destroy a faction homebase, by means of draining faction points. Problem is, in order to do so, the faction in question must be so horrifically undereducated that they actually expand their territory. You lose a LOT of faction points when one of your systems is lost, but there's no reason to have multiple systems that you could potentially lose yet.

Anyway, if we're going to do this whole Faction Warfare thing, I feel that we'll need AI fleets that can be spawned for a resource cost at shipyards - both active shipyards and out-of-sector shipyards. Think of it like a 3d Space RTS in which conflicts are won by efficient ship designs, numbers, and positioning, with all of your hand-built shipyards pumping out skirmishing and defense forces. We'd need a more efficient out-of-sector squadron/fleet system than we have now, though, and we'd need to be able to determine the outcome of combat with just a few dice rolls based on hard blueprint stats like weapon setup, shields, and power.

The only way I can possibly imagine Player faction warfare being even remotely balanced out in the long run is if player factions were supplemented with AI to offset the active and inactive times for players. Perhaps AI costs small numbers of faction points or something to build.

That way, while a player would be dramatically more effective in combat than an AI patrol fighter, it would be more down to a matter of making systems for your shipyards to defend your stuff while you're not personally there than it would be down to begging your members to jump in a ship and intercept the 10 man fleet headed your way.

 

[GreyKnight]

Are people just interested in having some kind of pissing contest for who can make the shiniest decorative ship?

What you describe as a "pissing contest" is the only part of the game I remotely care about. I only want to build things; not even as a contest, just for the enjoyment of it.

I'm also so horrifically undereducated that I expand my territory into multiple systems.

 

[Mariux]

Because of griefers. The total invulnerability is the only way to protect ships and the station while offline. Some griefer could always come in with a doomcube and destroy a base, given enough time.

Here are two common ideas to reform it:
Siege: The homebase still has shields, and the shields still take damage. When the shields are depleted, instead of block damage, the homebase is now under siege. The defenders now have 24/48/whatever hours to clear out the homebase sector or something. During this period, the homebase is still invulnerable. Once the siege period has expired, the homebase will be unfactioned (and probably decayed as well)

Capture: (This requires some sort of hacking tool.) Astronauts can attempt to board the station and reach the faction module. Once they do, they can attempt to hack it. This starts a 24/48/whatever hour period during which the defenders have to come in and reset the faction module. If not, the homebase will be unfactioned (and probably decayed as well)

I like the second idea a lot. However, it's not very difficult for large factions to have enough players that could come every 48 hours to reset the faction module. I have two ideas on how to make this a bit more interesting:
1) The more members the faction has, the shorter the faction invulnerability after attack is.
2) Once the countdown is over, not only the defendants' base becomes vulnerable, but also the one owned by the attackers. This could allow the defendants to launch a counter-strike against the enemy faction.

 

[Planr]

Servers currently have the option to make faction homebases non-invulnerable upon a faction point deficit. Just get the faction to run out of faction points by curb-stomping their territory and camping in their space, and you can drain their faction points to 0 and then proceed to attack. Arstotzka has done this before and defeated enemies with devastating firepower this way on Elewyn, it's really fun. Even if you lose, if you're smart you'll have saved the blueprint of your space station anyway, so you don't have to worry about all your hard work being any more lost than if your ship got destroyed.

 

[Winterhome]

Servers currently have the option to make faction homebases non-invulnerable upon a faction point deficit. Just get the faction to run out of faction points by curb-stomping their territory and camping in their space, and you can drain their faction points to 0 and then proceed to attack. Arstotzka has done this before and defeated enemies with devastating firepower this way on Elewyn, it's really fun. Even if you lose, if you're smart you'll have saved the blueprint of your space station anyway, so you don't have to worry about all your hard work being any more lost than if your ship got destroyed.

Most factions avoid becoming vulnerable to that tactic by taking as little territory as they possibly can and still support themselves.

Comr4de and others have suggested that factions require having territory to regenerate faction points, while members drain faction points, so that turtling isn't really an option - but again, that opens it up to just straight up griefing and offline stomping.

I seriously think the best solution to this is a combination of that and faction-owned AI patrol and trade fleets being spawned by shipyards. Trade fleets being able to make money off of the shops and trade stations in the system that have already been explored and provide a respectable credit income could provide exploration incentives and factory-shop construction incentives.

 

[MrFURB]

I'm going to agree with CyberTao: We need reasons to have stationary assets. If all my assets are either indestructible (homebase) or can GTFO when the going gets tough (ships) there's no reason to for a losing team to stick around in combat.

The question is, how do you incentivize having actual combat rather than just attacking when your enemies are offline or just bringing a titan to every fight?

Perhaps in the future the benefits that make a faction worthwhile and powerful would be based on how much territory they have.
If FPs were earned via territory control with a modifier making far off territories give paltry rewards based on their distance (It wouldn't be bad to own a base in two different galaxies, but only the closest to your homebase would provide FP benefits) people would be more inclined to expand. You could still keep the homebase invulnerability, but if you lose a war so completely that you no longer have any other territories your faction isn't going to have much power and will be on even footing with the other startups and more casual factions out there.

Anyway, if we're going to do this whole Faction Warfare thing, I feel that we'll need AI fleets that can be spawned for a resource cost at shipyards - both active shipyards and out-of-sector shipyards.

That's actually been hinted at before, where claiming anything to your faction (this would include automated shipyards producing AI patrol/guard ships) would cost faction points, making automated defense fleets worthwhile but also a liability; enemies could easily figure out their weakness and take them out, gaining resources off of your resource/FP expenditures.

I also think that stations that are claimed to a faction inside the faction's own territory should have some pretty beefy buffs to combat stats, giving defenders an edge in solidifying a hold over existing territory and insuring that attacks against that territory are a big deal instead of a passive 'lets go shoot this for a few minutes' deal.
I'd love to see an attack on a faction base turn into a big brawl between two alliances with a ton of randoms hearing about the fighting and showing up with loot or salvage in mind. All that snazzy stuff... But that would require attacks on territory to take a lot of time and people. If forcing another faction out of a system is as quick as finding their station and blowing it up, most faction fights would be over in a few minutes at most and one volley at the minimum.
Maybe some sort of time/attention sink should be introduced to territory contention. Something to talk/brainstorm about.

So one thing that I think can be expounded upon to give empire builders and 4X players some enjoyment of the game would be something representing how strong of a grasp a faction has on the territory, and link that to the FP benefits in such a way that rewards actually building infrastructure/defenses instead of putting a faction claim block on a planet plate and immediately receiving the full benefits of having that territory.

The solution that comes to my mind immediately is a config setting for territory control mass. This is a value which is compared to the total mass of the controlling faction's claimed stations (with claimed planets being a preset mass to avoid all the silliness that would ensue) and affects what percentage of FPs you gain from the territory. Reaching or exceeding the TCM mass would give you the full benefit of having that territory under your control, while just plopping down a faction module on a random planet would... Give you a little.
The TCM should be visible on the galactic map giving people a pretty good idea of what areas are 'frontier' and what areas are 'controlled' when the entire map is full of colored boxes due to territory claims suddenly being valuable.

 

[SeventhSandwich]

What you describe as a "pissing contest" is the only part of the game I remotely care about. I only want to build things; not even as a contest, just for the enjoyment of it.

I'm also so horrifically undereducated that I expand my territory into multiple systems.

The reason I referred to it as a 'pissing contest' is because it doesn't seem like a productive use of the multiplayer servers that the game gives us. If you just want to build nice things and compare them with your friends, having a server seems unnecessary.

Most factions avoid becoming vulnerable to that tactic by taking as little territory as they possibly can and still support themselves.

This is my primary complaint. 'Warfare' in Starmade seems to either consist of either pre-arranged, organized battles or just taking advantage of another person's incompetence. I just wish there was some other way to wage wars in Starmade that didn't have to work by capturing undocked ships or waiting for someone to expand their territory too far. I like most of MrFurb's ideas so far.

I like the second idea a lot. However, it's not very difficult for large factions to have enough players that could come every 48 hours to reset the faction module. I have two ideas on how to make this a bit more interesting:
1) The more members the faction has, the shorter the faction invulnerability after attack is.
2) Once the countdown is over, not only the defendants' base becomes vulnerable, but also the one owned by the attackers. This could allow the defendants to launch a counter-strike against the enemy faction.

I don't like this idea because it bases warfare around sitting and doing nothing. It's not my idea of engaging gameplay at all.