Recognized Personal Response Fleets

[TheKingOfSpace]

Protect your stations with the sudden appearance of several of your ships.


You'd have to provide the blocks for the ships (maybe fill the block's inventory with completed blueprints ?) and perhaps a small credit fee.

 

[Ithirahad]

YES. Rather than a credit fee, though, I'd say that it should use a few faction points, scaling up based on ship mass. Maybe 1 FP per 100 mass? (Also, the beacon block that lets us do this should let us have several custom transmission messages when the station is hit. "NO SOUP FOR YOU!!" anyone? :p)

 

[Parameter]

YES. Rather than a credit fee, though, I'd say that it should use a few faction points, scaling up based on ship mass. Maybe 1 FP per 100 mass? (Also, the beacon block that lets us do this should let us have several custom transmission messages when the station is hit. "NO SOUP FOR YOU!!" anyone? :p)

I like this. Having a beacon block required also makes it defeatable. If you don't want a station summoning reinforcements, destroy its transmitter beacons. I also kind of like the idea that the beacons must be placed such that they can be "seen" from outside, so they are easy targets if shields go down.

 

[Zaphord]

Have the beacon require a long line of modules for it to work, like a transmitter tower or antena. Maybe even cap it off with a rotating radar dish if you like.

 

[Ithirahad]

Have the beacon require a long line of modules for it to work, like a transmitter tower or antena. Maybe even cap it off with a rotating radar dish if you like.

Maybe for larger ships a larger dimension is needed? That way a station with a broken antenna can still summon smaller ships but not bigger ones? IDK.

 

[Criss]

That sounds awesome. There are discussions coming about with regards to AI ships. A lot of this ties into the stuff we are currently working on (secret squirrel stuffs of course). We already want to see NPC factions moving about with AI ships. Having your own fleets protect your homebase or other assets certainly sounds good.

 

[Knack]

Just leave it here
http://starmadedock.net/threads/a-manifesto-on-the-relationship-between-ships-and-stations.8376/

 

[spunkiethefirst]

This might solve the need for station advantage over mobile ships debate. Stations will summon response fleets similar to the trade guild in that they drop nothing on defeat. Would need to figure out a way to balance for dumb ai so players don't milk your bases response fleets for parts.

One solution:

• Build a ship and sacrifice it to response fleet use.
• Ship is added to response fleet wave for your station distress transmission event.
• When the response fleet ship is defeated instead of going into overheat mode it "warps out" de-spawns. (to prevent players milking your fleets for blocks)
• The response is tiered based upon attacking entity and other same factioned/allied enemy entities in range, by mass and the fancy ship score. ( to prevent abuse by defender making a titan in the defense fleet as the only option )
• The cost of the response fleet is only the cost of the initial ships parts.
• Server config options: player response fleets. player response fleet max mass, player response fleet max number of ships, cool-down time between fleet summons, cost per fleet mass.

Edit : added cost per fleet mass on Parameter's suggestion.​

​

 

[Parameter]

This might solve the need for station advantage over mobile ships debate. Stations will summon response fleets similar to the trade guild in that they drop nothing on defeat. Would need to figure out a way to balance for dumb ai so players don't milk your bases response fleets for parts.

One solution:

• Build a ship and sacrifice it to response fleet use.
• Ship is added to response fleet wave for your station distress transmission event.
• When the response fleet ship is defeated instead of going into overheat mode it "warps out" de-spawns. (to prevent players milking your fleets for blocks)
• The response is tiered based upon attacking entity and other same factioned/allied enemy entities in range, by mass and the fancy ship score. ( to prevent abuse by defender making a titan in the defense fleet as the only option )
• The cost of the response fleet is only the cost of the initial ships parts.
• Server config options: player response fleets. player response fleet max mass, player response fleet max number of ships, cool-down time between fleet summons.

​

Assuming you pay a fee per fleet response, I'd also add fleet response cost/summoned mass as a server config. That way admins can dial in how expensive a fleet response is. A server admin who didn't want a titan response fleet would just set the cost per mass higher, making it more cost effective to deploy waves that weighed less.

 

[Ithirahad]

There should probably be a configurable option to either destroy summoned ships when defeated (Permanent despawn on overheat) or to have them warp out, cost a certain amount of faction points, and go on cooldown before they can spawn again.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm better than the Idea I had in my topic to do with the AI spawns for player factions and it gives the devs a way of explaining AI faction waves as well. This would mean one less hard coded thing too since it'd be contained in a block(s). Being able to Expend BPs like ammo for each wave would be good on the player side of things making us have to replace them after a while.

 

[CaptainTaz]

That sounds awesome. There are discussions coming about with regards to AI ships. A lot of this ties into the stuff we are currently working on (secret squirrel stuffs of course). We already want to see NPC factions moving about with AI ships. Having your own fleets protect your homebase or other assets certainly sounds good.

I posted a thread with a similar idea a while back that would probably work nicely for that fleets moving about part. http://starmadedock.net/threads/ai-factions-a-giant-ball-of-ideas.5324/

It also ties in with missions and dynamic universe interactions.

 

[Visitor]

Sudden appearance of some magically spawned ships? I am strongly against. Having some drones stationed in the vicinity that are being automatically deployed, call for help to factions if your base/you are in their domain, with their arrival time dependant on how far from their bases you are and for really considerable pay - sure. Still, prevention should be what most of the defense would depend on.

 

[Mr.Steam]

Paying a Mercenary Guild to have fighters available that can jump into a system to help fight seems reasonable to me... For the right price.

 

[Ithirahad]

Sudden appearance of some magically spawned ships? I am strongly against. Having some drones stationed in the vicinity that are being automatically deployed, call for help to factions if your base/you are in their domain, with their arrival time dependant on how far from their bases you are and for really considerable pay - sure. Still, prevention should be what most of the defense would depend on.

I was envisioning ships crewed by faction NPCs warping in, supposedly from somewhere else in faction territory. Not drones jumping in from somewhere. Drones are boring.

 

[reptillianstew]

This idea is awesome, I love the idea of having some sort of backup when i'm attacking something or under attack that just shows up. The only thing I would say is that I don't feel that you should pay for the backup to avoid exploitation. I know that back when you could buy blueprints i had one that was just shield and power blocks that I could buy regardless of shop inventory and being able to pay for a fleet of those just seems like a step backwards balance-wise.

Instead, I feel that it should be resource based, meaning that when a fleet is called, the closest faction owned shipyard would churn out the ships and they would make their way over to the location using jump drives if they have them. Then afterwards they would make their way back and deconstruct once they entered the origin sector returning the resources to the station. This would make calling backup a large risk of resources which I think are more valuable than credits and maintain somewhat of a sense of realism instead of having ships just appear when called for.

Alternatively, this feature could just be lumped into the rumored fleet control mechanic where a higher up member of a faction assigns AI ships to "fleets" which just linger and can be set to respond to distress. This would be cool because the ships wouldn't have to find a way to spawn or despawn because they are part of a persistent fleet and could be used for other things.

Awesome stuff so far though.

 

[Ithirahad]

This idea is awesome, I love the idea of having some sort of backup when i'm attacking something or under attack that just shows up. The only thing I would say is that I don't feel that you should pay for the backup to avoid exploitation. I know that back when you could buy blueprints i had one that was just shield and power blocks that I could buy regardless of shop inventory and being able to pay for a fleet of those just seems like a step backwards balance-wise.

Instead, I feel that it should be resource based, meaning that when a fleet is called, the closest faction owned shipyard would churn out the ships and they would make their way over to the location using jump drives if they have them. Then afterwards they would make their way back and deconstruct once they entered the origin sector returning the resources to the station. This would make calling backup a large risk of resources which I think are more valuable than credits and maintain somewhat of a sense of realism instead of having ships just appear when called for.

Alternatively, this feature could just be lumped into the rumored fleet control mechanic where a higher up member of a faction assigns AI ships to "fleets" which just linger and can be set to respond to distress. This would be cool because the ships wouldn't have to find a way to spawn or despawn because they are part of a persistent fleet and could be used for other things.

Awesome stuff so far though.

My idea is that the defeated ships would warp away or instantly blow up. There would be no overheating, dead hulk to salvage, and no way to enter the core of the ship while it's in space. Of course, this does not work with boarding mechanics very well, so IDK... Regardless, the core idea is that it takes the required blocks (A filled blueprint) to have the ship around anyway, so it would probably not cause any exploits to be able to board and claim the ship - it would be gone from the station's reinforcement list thing.

 

[StormWing0]

From what I saw it looks more like you'll still be using resources to spawn the waves since you have to fill the BPs and maybe they get expended once spawned so you have to refill the BPs that were used otherwise no new spawns?

 

[Ithirahad]

From what I saw it looks more like you'll still be using resources to spawn the waves since you have to fill the BPs and maybe they get expended once spawned so you have to refill the BPs that were used otherwise no new spawns?

Eh, no... They would not be expended on spawning. The way I envision it, they would warp back out if the threat was gone for a certain amount of time and they were still there. The one question is how to handle damage. Damaged blocks could be repaired at a FP cost per mass, or the station's beacon computer might have to hold the repair blocks, but IMO the first option streamlines things more. It couldn't be exploited since a destroyed block is lost, not salvaged, so I don't see why not, as long as damaged ships have a certain cooldown before they can warp back in, simulating repair time and whatnot.

 

[kiraen]

Ships warp out, get deconstructed, blocks go back into the blueprint. The blueprint must be refilled/repaired before it can be used again.