Getting a server to build outside of homebase protection

[kurosawa]

I believe responsibility for balancing the grind>=<fun equation falls entirely on the player.

Exactly, which is why there are so few bases

So, it's war. We WILL lose stuff. Next move?

Good luck bombing home bases. Your turn
[doublepost=1482966746,1482965259][/doublepost]I made small warp gate station, only 100K shields, no guns and just under 30000 blocks.
Im going to deploy them all over the place next year and see how long they last.

 

[psteiner]

I used to play on the Brierie server a while back and managed to manage a warpgate system between two galaxies for about a week before the cost of replacing warpgates became too high. I would loose 1 or 2 for the first few days, but quit when half the network was slavaged.

I will admit that the gates were underpowered, undershielded, and lacked substantial defenses.

What we really need is some way to:

• Detect and destroy torpedoes autonomously
• Set individual players as enemies

 

[qball]

Hi Folks,

OK, not a solution to the issue, but maybe a piece in the puzzle, but I have an idea on how to make folks expand in the game... here's my idea:

1. You need a 'Home Base/Planet' to be able to form a faction - i.e. faction blocks won't work unless you have a home base/planet.
2. Home Base/Planets are invincible, however, to be able it to be invincible, the faction must 'own' other systems other than the home system, thus driving expansion. Once there are no other systems owned then the Home Base is vulnerable...
3. Once the home planet is destroyed, the faction is disbanded and any factioned ships / entities are now unfactioned. (ripe for pillage...)

Anyway, let me know what you think...

Q

 

[DrTarDIS]

I sympathise.

This made me wonder (nothing to do with you in particular Edyminion, and certainly not any kind of criticism at all) why we can't/don't build stations with shields that make titan weapons look like pop-guns that don't even tickle the station.

Weight isn't an issue, size isn't either really, and no power has to be allocated for thrust, so couldn't shields be made to a monstrous scale that dwarfs ships and their weapons? Use multiple reactors or aux power.

Of course warheads from cloaked ships would still be an issue that needs a solution.

For station defence I was also thinking of cloaked, jamming mines that use damage pulse. As cheap and disposable as possible. Spread them around maximum missile range from the station, and they'll attach themselves to the hull of any ship that comes near and damage pulse it for as long as they're able.
I think a swarm of these would be quite nasty.

1st, hard to get non-player objects to cloak/jam and stay that way (other than multy-boxing and not-yet-developped-bot-scripts). Interesting brainstorm on the mines but not really feasable IMHO. also, I wouldn't like having to thread a needle to get to my own damned station.

I've gone the shields-for-days route myself, back in the dark ages. I'd think that a modern version of it would be something like 1:8:2 Shield-Capacitor:shield-regen:Power-recharge ratio, with 20:1 ratio of "that grouping"ther-systems, wrap the whole thing in 8-10 layers of Scaffold or girder(cheap sys&block HP padding) + a couple layers of basic hull or standard armor(advanced is resource-intensive, something like 40+ crystals goes into the advanced hardener last I checked), and strap the whole thing with max Ion&pierce&punch passive set to a sensor-activated state.

Even with that ridiculous level of overbuild (the aforementioned "lavish monuments to wasted time" MacThule mentioned) I could use a starter-account and wipe it out to harvest the remaining blocks inside of 45 mins. My current work-around methodology(until we get logic or AI scanners FFS) is to just spawn in an Alt and home-base protect the stuff, and hope I remember the alt's password when/if I ever need to change things, which is a whole-other level of tedious...
[doublepost=1482969864,1482969719][/doublepost]

Hi Folks,

OK, not a solution to the issue, but maybe a piece in the puzzle, but I have an idea on how to make folks expand in the game... here's my idea:

1. You need a 'Home Base/Planet' to be able to form a faction - i.e. faction blocks won't work unless you have a home base/planet.
2. Home Base/Planets are invincible, however, to be able it to be invincible, the faction must 'own' other systems other than the home system, thus driving expansion. Once there are no other systems owned then the Home Base is vulnerable...
3. Once the home planet is destroyed, the faction is disbanded and any factioned ships / entities are now unfactioned. (ripe for pillage...)

Anyway, let me know what you think...

Q

I think you you copy-paste-spamming every thread with your idea, instead of making your own thread in suggestions, is annoying and tempts me to apply for admin just so I can clear your slate.

 

[qball]

Touche

That being said though - while it IS the same idea, I believe it applies to both scenarios, and I did re-word it to fit... :P - but point taken.

 

[Jojomo]

1st, hard to get non-player objects to cloak/jam and stay that way (other than multy-boxing and not-yet-developped-bot-scripts). Interesting brainstorm on the mines but not really feasable IMHO. also, I wouldn't like having to thread a needle to get to my own damned station.

Yes, I haven't ever actually done it myself
but I've seen mentioned in the forums that if you enter a ship and turn on cloaking it stays on?
"Threading the needle" wouldn't be an issue - you couldn't possibly lay enough mines to have anything above a very small chance of collision, they'd have to have some thrust to fly to enemy factioned ships that came within range.

Even with that ridiculous level of overbuild (the aforementioned "lavish monuments to wasted time" MacThule mentioned) I could use a starter-account and wipe it out to harvest the remaining blocks inside of 45 mins.

I don't claim you're wrong Tardis, you know more about it than I do, but wouldn't an extreme amount of shielding make this close to impossible? Say 100million shields with 1 second full recharge, to pick a semi-random number (adjust if I'm picking a number that won't work).
I realise what I'm suggesting is very extreme, but surely it's actually possible?

 

[DrTarDIS]

Yes, I haven't ever actually done it myself
but I've seen mentioned in the forums that if you enter a ship and turn on cloaking it stays on?
"Threading the needle" wouldn't be an issue - you couldn't possibly lay enough mines to have anything above a very small chance of collision, they'd have to have some thrust to fly to enemy factioned ships that came within range.


I don't claim you're wrong Tardis, you know more about it than I do, but wouldn't an extreme amount of shielding make this close to impossible? Say 100million shields with 1 second full recharge, to pick a semi-random number (adjust if I'm picking a number that won't work).
I realise what I'm suggesting is very extreme, but surely it's actually possible?

Not saying such an effigy wouldn't be a good deterrant. Espescialy if you bruteforced your way up to a couple times softcap in regen. Check out the wiki and do the math on that ratio I dropped in the previous post(or build a copypaste brick or large size to see it in single player), it's pritty much what you ask about "actually possible"...but it is a LARGE investment.

the problem is that there are a couple ways to bypass shields, a couple ways to almost-instacollapse any arbitrary number of shields(not a weapon), and that unfactioned mytarget Bobbyturrets don't draw counteraggro or declare war. Not to mention jamming=invisible as far as artificial stupidity is concerned.

 

[Jojomo]

the problem is that there are a couple ways to bypass shields, a couple ways to almost-instacollapse any arbitrary number of shields(not a weapon), ...

What are these holes? Are there ways to counter them? Are they bugs or features?

...and that unfactioned mytarget Bobbyturrets don't draw counteraggro or declare war.

Do you mean unfactioned attackers would be ignored by the mines? Setting neutral=enemy would fix this wouldn't it?

Not to mention jamming=invisible as far as artificial stupidity is concerned.

Don't jammers go down for a cooldown period when you fire? Anyone coming to max missile range to fire missiles would still be vulnerable to mines there?

 

[Mork2]

I did find that I could actually get ion defence effect working with logic on stations only. I did make a general post about it. There is a sensor on the shields to activate the ion defence after the first hit. So it should work even if someone isn't there. The only problem would be if the clock running the sensor broke....I tested to activate it with the handgun.

So I have designed and tested a 500k+ mass battle station with 200mil shields and 8million regen before the full ion defence effect..... That gave it equal to 500mil shields which would require over a 2.5bil energy of 100% ion weapons to break (double for normal) and max combat regen is 25% so the shields would be regenerating at 2mil a second max requiring another 5mil energy of ion weapons a second just to keep up with the combat regen.....

I just have to add some anti astronaut turrets vs boarders and it should be good against everything except.....

One cloaked guy with warheads will eventually kill it anyway.....when he finally makes it deep enough to the aux power cores in the middle.

 

[Jojomo]

I just have to add some anti astronaut turrets vs boarders and it should be good against everything except.....

One cloaked guy with warheads will eventually kill it anyway.....when he finally makes it deep enough to the aux power cores in the middle.

What changes can they make to fix this without nerfing cloak or warheads? Activate cloak cooldown whenever something undocks from a cloaked entity?

A workaround would be to surround the station with multiple rotating hulls, that would make concentrating warhead torpedos in a location to drill through to the soft stuff very very difficult and time consuming, if done well. Very extreme though, I admit.

 

[Mork2]

I like the rotating hull idea. It would have to be rotating in two directions though so the lots of mass enhancers required. I would mount the turrets on the main body of the station but have the final turret pieces outside......that would be the tricky bit....

I think I will put this on my list of engineering challenges to do list.

Another idea is to just dock a mass off useless things inside to generate lag when something else gets close to hopefully lag out the cloaker to cause him to de-cloak...

 

[Jojomo]

I like the rotating hull idea. It would have to be rotating in two directions though so the lots of mass enhancers required.

Ideally they'd be spherical, and have them all rotate at different speeds and/or directions. Not really any need to make any rotate on two axes at once (well, except perhaps the outside one).

 

[Mork2]

Yeah the outside one you want on a second axis otherwise someone can just wait until the same spot came around again. It would have to completely encapsulate the inner rotating segment. The inner only has to have enough mass enhancers to keep the outer one rotating. Then be annoying and make the outer one extra layers thick. Each layer would take a direct warhead hit to kill so they would need to line up that many warheads in one spot just to get through.....

 

[Jojomo]

Another thought: if they're ramming the station to use warheads, could you build a (very) thick layer of forcefields around the station that activate on station damage, and so trap the attacking ship where it is, right up against the station, unable to move?

Insect in amber type situation.

 

[Batavium]

We have learned first hand that pinhead griefers will destroy warpgate stations when u are offline as well your assets docked there,but it isn't going to slow down my building of a trade network and shipyard for hire!

That is the spirit. Less bitching about it and more elbow grease. Losing stuff never stopped me from getting out there.

I had over a DOZEN individual enemies on my list.

He i put whole server populations on it good stuff.... Let us hear the drums of WAR.

So somewhere out there some troll forum had made it their personal mission to come to our server every damned night and blow up my gates like it was a game to them. Nope, fark that.

Yes that is the game to them as well as to me. Shove any moral talk about it in some dark place. Pew pew pew pew pew pew!!!

I am all in favor of making non Home Base stuff harder to take down. But talk about not beeing allowed to take it down. Just because you placed it there does not fly with me. I am especially red flagged by people that place stuff on behalve or for new players near spawn. Like they are somehow special for doing that. That kind of sector pollution has to come down!

Automated scanners - much needed for outposts, cant really be exploited as its a power cost to keep it always charging

I am not a fan of logic. I have seen to many servers die because of weaponclocks and other bizarre contraptions. What we need is a block that works like the Jump Inhibitor. You can leave a ship with a Jump Inhibitor docked to a base with it turned on. It will stay on even if your not in the core. No logic is needed for it to work. The same is needed for a kind of Anti Cloak Field block. Just a block that effects the sector it is in. That can be turned on and keeps working even if your not there. It will then decloak anyone who enters the sector. Just how a Jump Inhibitor now start draining your Jump Drive if you enter a sector that has a Jump Inhibitor in it.

Of course warheads from cloaked ships would still be an issue that needs a solution.

A server Admin can remove warheads from the game. Or if he wants to keep Blueprint compatibility and the block in game. Just reduce their damage to zero in the BlockConfig.xml.

Set individual players as enemies

You already can! I do it a lot whole server populations even! Look in your faction menu. Your AI defense will then target them if they get within shooting range. This is great for people that change factions to out flank your AI defense after a hostile act.

Not to mention jamming=invisible as far as artificial stupidity is concerned.

Not really. Radar jam should only jam lockon missiles. Any AI that uses cannons or beams will still attack you. Though now i am also getting shot by AI that uses lockon missiles in the latest version of StarMade. Even though i am radar jammed and that is not how it should work.

Do you mean unfactioned attackers would be ignored by the mines? Setting neutral=enemy would fix this wouldn't it?

Faction Flag of attacker triggers Faction Flag of target if declare war on hostile action is turned on. What he did was use a Turret with NO Faction. Set the Bobby AI to Select Target. Now you target someone and the Turret start shooting that target as well. But because the Turret has no faction it can not trigger war. Since there is no flag to read to which factions the Turret belongs. It has no faction.

Setting Neutral = Enemy does solve it but also makes any other player that is not in a faction a hostile target.

 

[Edymnion]

Yes that is the game to them as well as to me. Shove any moral talk about it in some dark place. Pew pew pew pew pew pew!!!

Then to be blunt, you sir are an asshole of the highest caliber and I will sacrifice chickens to RNGesus that your motherboard fries itself.
[doublepost=1483021807,1483021671][/doublepost]

This made me wonder (nothing to do with you in particular Edyminion, and certainly not any kind of criticism at all) why we can't/don't build stations with shields that make titan weapons look like pop-guns that don't even tickle the station.

Well back in the day it was because rammet was virtually impossible to find. That million+ shields on the last station they destroyed was most likely the single largest concentration of shield blocks on the entire server at the time it was so hard to find.

These days its cheap and plentiful, but back in the day flying a ship with blue armor was a sign that you were a stone cold pimp at the game because nobody could actually find enough blue asteroids to make enough paint for a ship of any real size.

 

[Borr]

Have a super-heavy armour block that is so heavy it's utterly impractical on a ship, but offers very high protection.

Brilliant idea and so simple! I would also add more powerful shield system, more efficient power system and maybe some sort of stationary targeting system that will enhance turret aiming and range. All off that super heavy.

 

[RabidBat]

Shaker Yep cloaking and radar jamming is the main issue due to AI not being able to use or counter it. e.g not using scanners.

For now the best I can suggest is encouraging players to expand, find incentives. Not that I had much luck while I was moderating the server. This is why I pushed for sub factions to become a thing.
Joys of outposts with the safety of Homebase protection everyone seems to cling to.
Just get faction members to fly the coop into their own faction with a similar name so affiliation is clear and ally with them. (Start easy and get them to set up in the sector next door, they can claim other systems for mining.)

Otherwsie do what I am doing at the moment. Making an insanely powered OP weapons platform to drop in adjoining sectors that provide cover for each other and hope they screw up on their cloaking/jamming.

The new AI update is great, but I'd like to see more work on the actual AI itself and what it can use. *Sigh* sometimes the AI can be OP (instant lockons and able to fire all weapons at once) other times it's incredibly flawed (no scanner radar jammers etc.)

Other options are to try and create rules on the server to prevent people from griefing outposts as we did with rules surrounding attacking homebases. It may not stop it, but it gives you and the other mods powers to deal with it when it occurs.

But yeah that is what I found, where the game itself is lacking you have to get creative with the server rules.

 

[Batavium]

Otherwsie do what I am doing at the moment. Making an insanely powered OP weapons platform to drop in adjoining sectors that provide cover for each other and hope they screw up on their cloaking/jamming

Beware that it can be used against you. I have taken down a few stations of people that had them next to each other. Taking shelter in a blind spot and then let one station blast the other to bits. The line of fire was such that while the other station was targeting me it hit the one i was hiding behind.

 

[Shaker]

Taking shelter in a blind spot and then let one station blast the other to bits.

And that is why the ai needs an upgrade.