Any tips on how to build space stations or asteroid bases?

[Panpiper]

Its absurdly easy to cut out a pirate station's faction block with minimal damage to the rest of the station, making them nothing more than giant floating pinatas otherwise.

Yea, if you are omniscient and know precisely where all the faction blocks are. For the rest of us, we pretty much have to absolutely obliterate every last bit of it just in the hope that we'll catch that block in the damage. Cannon/cannon array for stripping turrets followed by a logic fired spread of explosion enhanced pulse missiles. That's about the only way I know to remove those pesky stations.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Nope, its still a million as of the last time I built a station a month or two ago. However the price is something that can be set on a server by server basis, so its entirely possible your server simply decided to help the newbs out.

I stand corrected. Must have been a Light vs Dark exclusive setting.

Not really, no. Its absurdly easy to cut out a pirate station's faction block with minimal damage to the rest of the station, making them nothing more than giant floating pinatas otherwise.

Are you saying that you can take over a station and bypass the decayed effect by taking out the faction block?

 

[Edymnion]

Yea, if you are omniscient and know precisely where all the faction blocks are.

Or if, you know, you just look them up.

 

[Calhoun]

if you are omniscient

You rang?

 

[Lonnehart]

Went out exploring and found a derelict station that appears to be a medical facility. I would love to create a station such as this.

And I'm kinda happy that there's no virus infected zombies inside...


-edit- I'd use spoilers, but Photobucket seems to be down for now...


View attachment 34132

Cute fighter.

It's less a fighter and more a recon unit. It's only got 3k shields and pea shooter guns and missiles. It's got a radar jammer at least...

 

[Dr. Whammy]

It's less a fighter and more a recon unit. It's only got 3k shields and pea shooter guns and missiles. It's got a radar jammer at least...

Recon huh? Either way, it looks nice from the view shown. You'd match well with me and some of the other smaller builders I've met. How cool would it be if a bunch of us got together and swarmed a server with thousands of "little guys" until the titan junkies begged us for mercy? (smiles evily)

 

[Runeseer]

Runeseer’s Top 5 Tips for Station Building

1. Don’t build on planets/asteroids

a. Gravity sucks
b. Too easy to generate server lag​

2. Make sure you are in the center of the sector when building

a. If you build across sector boundaries you will run in many bugs
b. You can check if you are center by comparing the distance to surrounding sectors (should be close to even)​

3. Make sure you are not in an orbital sector

a. Old habit due to early orbital bugs​

4. Don’t build too close to a sun

a. Sun damage sucks​

5. Look for a system with a large number of asteroid rings

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Runeseer’s Top 5 Tips for Station Building

1. Don’t build on planets/asteroids

a. Gravity sucks
b. Too easy to generate server lag​

While I agree with the rest of your post, I must recommend; don't hate on planets. They provide a LOT of resources and building space for newer players when used wisely.

From my experience, planet lag mostly comes from
- overall planet size/mass
- topography errors where all the planet plates are sunken in on themselves; causing overlaps.
- leaving undocked entities (especially lagre ones) laying on the surface.

A reduced lag solution is to find a smaller planet (the smaller the better) where the plates project outward (ice planets often do this) and terraform it (flatten it with a salvager). Then you can build a base with a lot of room to build and gobble up all the resources.

It's easy to work around gravity if you build up toward space and use an "orbital dock". Since gravity is one-directional and not radial, ships won't be affected by the planet's gravity unless they get too close to a plate's surface or fly directly over the dock. Approach from the side to avoid getting pulled downward. In this example, the ship is too far above the surface to be affected by gravity and no part of the ship is directly over the dock so the ship can dock and undock without falling.



In this example, the ship is directly over the dock. Ships with a low thrust:mass ratio will need additional thrust and/or a passive stop effect to keep from falling.


Despite being a strong proponent planets, I would recommend packing up the fleet and leaving the planet in favor of a station when you get strong enough to build 30-50k mass worth of ships in order to reduce your individual load on the server. This is not a requirement. It's just good manners.