Recognized Personal Response Fleets

[Drumboy168]

You could have the cost of having the ships on standby (in addition to the raw materials needed for the ships) be a steady trickle of faction points when not in use, and a heavy point deduction when the fleet warps in. These costs should ideally be based on the credit cost (or something) of the ships in question, with more expensive and powerful ships being more costly in terms of faction points.

As an intermediate solution (for the moment) for those wanting station defense, could one not simply have docked ships on a rail rotater, extended out 1000-plus blocks, and with the connection strut deleted, so that the ships orbit the station?

With turret heavy capital ships, would this not also be effective for station/sector defense?

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Warp speed Mr Sulu...... WEEEeeeeee......eeeeEEEEEeeeee.....eeeEEEEEeeee!!!!!!

 

[CaptainTaz]

Warp speed Mr Sulu...... WEEEeeeeee......eeeeEEEEEeeeee.....eeeEEEEEeeee!!!!!!

Is... is that on an XP?

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Is... is that on an XP?

Not sure what you mean by an XP, but the ship is just being moved around by a rotator rail with enough mass enhancers. The ship is about 3.4k mass and the radius is 1km from the rotator .

 

[Drumboy168]

Warp speed Mr Sulu...... WEEEeeeeee......eeeeEEEEEeeeee.....eeeEEEEEeeee!!!!!!

Exactly what I meant. Just a wee bit faster than I had in mind.

 

[CaptainTaz]

Not sure what you mean by an XP, but the ship is just being moved around by a rotator rail with enough mass enhancers. The ship is about 3.4k mass and the radius is 1km from the rotator .

Was talking about the Operating System......

Note the window.....

 

[whooplaah]

My initial thoughts:

Communications Comp + Beacon Module = Station can summon support ships, automatically inform owner/faction of attack
Scrambler Comp + Static Module = Attacker can jam distress beacons/messages

The relationship between these two is like the jump inhibitor: if there are more scramblers than beacons then no message gets out. If there are more beacons, a reduced message gets out.

What do I mean "reduced message?"

The size of the fleet summoned (and cost of summoning it) depends upon the size of the Communication array (or 'strength' of the message sent). When the fleet is finished and departs, funds are returned according to the number of ships/blocks that survived (this prevents a single attacker from draining resources by repeatedly calling in large defense waves).

For the message that goes to players, the bigger the module the farther away a player can be and still receive the message. A scrambled message goes out to fewer members who must be closer to the station, may also be garbled, or not tell the player which station is under attack, or give the wrong coordinates, or may be delayed.

The Communications Comp can be the block to hold the credits/blueprints of ships to summon, and (depending on whether survivors offer refunds) always summons the most powerful wave it can based upon the signal strength it can send out.

Edit:
It might be a good idea for ships to be summoned when enemy faction ships are detected nearby, instead of waiting until after they attack. The radius at which the beacon activates could also be tied to the beacon array's size.

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Was talking about the Operating System......

Note the window.....

Win 7 64 bit just modified to remove all of microsoft's fluff (i hate aero) and make it look/work like xp.

 

[CaptainTaz]

Win 7 64 bit just modified to remove all of microsoft's fluff (i hate aero) and make it look/work like xp.

ah, alright then.

 

[LunaIsBestPony]

 

[whooplaah]

It might be because they plan to implement NPCs in a different way. You wouldn't need to have defense waves spawn out of thin air if there is a mechanic for having NPC's live on the station. You wouldn't need the fancy modules or mechanics to track cost of summoning ships; you'd have the logistics of maintaining crew instead.

In all honesty, I'd rather have what I just said than what this therad is about.

 

[DrTarDIS]

lI think if something like this were implemented, it would be more interesting to have the "under attack" flag call to any faction ships within N*jumps of that particular base.
Cost of implementation is spawning ships with an active AI, in range of whatever

• New AI option: Ship (picket)

• responds to ANY enemy signal that enters faction controlled territory.

• New AI option: Ship (base defense)

• responds to any ship causing 1% or greater shield damage to a structure

• New AI option: Ship (Playername)

• Follows the (Playername) as long as that user is logged in, or their spawnflagged ship if they are logged out.

expected meta gameplay:

• AI fleets charge their jump drives when they get the signal, jump in system individually.
  • varied jump drive charge times, along with actual deployment will result in staggered arrival.
  • no jump drive means an "in system drone" that flys on manual power alone.
• ships remain in the new location for the duration of hostilities (at minimum)
  • return to a homebase might be possible with marker-gun, but would depend on jump cycles time.
    
  • keeping massive fleet responses "busy" at one location with a main thrust elsewhere becomes a viable tactic.
  • kiting fleet responses to one far location prior to the main thrust at another becomes a viable fleet tactic.
• ships must be manually replaced
  • short of ship docks gaining an automated build cycle, the faction must replenish it's guardian fleet with human interaction.
  • factions are free to choose between expensive/big and hard to kill, or cheap/small and plentiful, or anything in between.
    
  • factions are free to chose what type of ship responds to which type of incursion
• large picket fleets (and neutral as enemy)
  • Allows factions to actually claim a territory for valuable resources
  • are in of themselves a resource/time investment
• on stealth/jamming
  • have AI use the jammer if it's on the ship
  • have AI use the scanner if it's on the ship
  • for the love of kittens, have AI use the jammer/scanner if it's on the ship

 

[Ithirahad]

It might be because they plan to implement NPCs in a different way. You wouldn't need to have defense waves spawn out of thin air if there is a mechanic for having NPC's live on the station. You wouldn't need the fancy modules or mechanics to track cost of summoning ships; you'd have the logistics of maintaining crew instead.

In all honesty, I'd rather have what I just said than what this therad is about.

Wait, what? NPCs living on a station, and somehow being able to mobilize and enter ships to defend bases? This will be really hard to pull off, and in the time it takes for the AI to stop running into walls the enemies will have already destroyed the base.

 

[Lecic]

I would rather have it call an actual fleet in reinforcements from another station, rather than magically summoning the ships from your own storages.

EDIT-

Communications Comp + Beacon Module = Station can summon support ships, automatically inform owner/faction of attack

Scrambler Comp + Static Module = Attacker can jam distress beacons/messages

Or, we could expand the current scanner system, so we only need to implement 1 new system instead of 2.

 

[Dellexe]

I would rather have it call an actual fleet in reinforcements from another station, rather than magically summoning the ships from your own storages.

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This would be interesting.
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A benefit of this type of system is that it puts a bit more emphasis on logistics and strategy. Stations that are further out from the main bases will have fewer reinforcements because it would take longer for ships to arrive there.
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A drawback of this strategy is that players could fool the AI by tricking the AI into drawing off large portions of the fleet and then attacking the now undefended/underdefended bases.

 

[Lecic]

A drawback of this strategy is that players could fool the AI by tricking the AI into drawing off large portions of the fleet and then attacking the now undefended/underdefended bases.

Allow players to control things like that. How important is that tiny mining outpost on the other side of the galaxy? Not very. It gets maybe a couple corvettes or a frigate at most, but probably nothing. This would also be a stepping stone for allowing for RTS-style fleet command.

 

[whooplaah]

Wait, what? NPCs living on a station, and somehow being able to mobilize and enter ships to defend bases? This will be really hard to pull off, and in the time it takes for the AI to stop running into walls the enemies will have already destroyed the base.

I don't want to get too off topic, so I'll just ask this: what if the NPCs on a station didn't have pathing problems? Hypothetically, if they could navigate a station perfectly to get from dorm/mess hall/recreation pods to the docks where emergency ships are kept, would that be better than, or worse than, or the same as ships spawning out of nowhere?