How to make other stations secure - Discussion Thread ***PLAYER SOLUTIONS ONLY!***

[Az14el]

"red" damage is able to drop both jamming & cloaking whatever it hits (its not 100%, and im not sure why or if its intended in the first place), there are several effects you can slap on a series of shotguns that deal red dmg through shields, while a scanner can't be automated, a weapon system can.

to do this you would also risk war declaring NPCs or players who drop by though

 

[Kimiro]

I'd be terribly disappointed in myself if I didn't put in a few thoughts here. Chiefly:

1. The defensive cloud idea is great, but could be augmented with a sprinkling of its own warheads warheads and area triggers. Assuming a properly random distribution of these components (each warhead paired to an area trigger controller somewhere else in the cloud and surrounded with the intangible area trigger blocks), it would prove to be a nightmare to navigate in a stealth vessel, since (as is the issue) warheads hit hull directly and would decloak any unlucky bastard trying to sneak in, meaning even shielded cloaker pokers would be vulnerable. Of course such a system would require frequent replacing as, sadly, warheads are consumed - but it'd probably be pretty easy to maintain since area triggers, to my knowledge, don't get blown up by warhead explosions, allowing you to replace any warheads lost quickly. This of course also means that fleets used for defensive purposes may have... Issues.
2. Make some portions of the cloud out of Glass, turning it into a nearly invisible maze.
   
3. Use Plex/Blast Doors as a means of creating a safe passage through the cloud, along with toggling indicator lights to indicate the way through. This means of course that there's an upper size limit to the vessels that could actually visit your station, and you'd have to more or less create a tunnel through the death cloud (you probably wouldn't want more than 10 meters of contiguous space to fly through, and the ideal route would probably be one that twists and turns a fair bit through the cloud to limit speed of both friendly and potentially hostile people).
4. Defensive baffles comprised of force-field/door blocks. Combined with an area trigger a short ways away (have the actual area triggers run from a couple blocks away from the baffle to about 8-12 blocks out; the logic and controller could be stashed onboard the station proper for safety) would be a quick and dirty way to screen out would-be suicide drones. Essentially if they approach the location of the baffle, it pops up into place, blocking entry from that vector. Assuming you build the baffle 3-5 blocks deep it'd both prevent physics tunneling exploits and provide an early warning system that could trigger automated defenses, like the ones already listed, if they got damaged.
5. Build large, permanent baffles out of advanced armor a ways away from the station, but perhaps within the cloud. Something in the size range of a 5x5 panel. You could even make them part of the station esthetic by disguising them as billboards, fragments of partially salvaged ships or even as whole, severely damaged ships that are there for repairs. In addition to bloating the armor and HP pool of the station, they'd have to be navigated around or tunneled through, which buys time and costs the enemy resources, potentially.
6. Consider certain things expendable or have redundant backups. For example, if you have a large warpgate on your station that leads to somewhere else far away, consider having a second one that's much smaller hidden within the station itself, just large enough to send a ship core through. That way, if the main, large gate gets taken offline, you still have a quick means of recovering the damage and re-linking the gate.
7. Deception, pure and simple. Create a set of fake docked ships that house backups or supplemental systems. You can even add to the deception by docking an actual vessel inside the fake one (literally a core and a rail docker is all it takes). If the attackers intent is to take out the station, he's probably not going to pay much attention to something that looks like it's just a crappy little salvager, especially if it's showing up as a docked entity named "Backup Salvager #4".

That's about all the ideas I have at the moment, but I've used a fair number of these myself in previous servers, though some of them aren't really specific to dealing with cloaker pokers (though they can still be fairly useful).

 

[Jojomo]

I'd be terribly disappointed in myself if I didn't put in a few thoughts here. Chiefly:

1. The defensive cloud idea is great, but could be augmented with a sprinkling of its own warheads warheads and area triggers. Assuming a properly random distribution of these components (each warhead paired to an area trigger controller somewhere else in the cloud and surrounded with the intangible area trigger blocks), it would prove to be a nightmare to navigate in a stealth vessel, since (as is the issue) warheads hit hull directly and would decloak any unlucky bastard trying to sneak in, meaning even shielded cloaker pokers would be vulnerable. Of course such a system would require frequent replacing as, sadly, warheads are consumed - but it'd probably be pretty easy to maintain since area triggers, to my knowledge, don't get blown up by warhead explosions, allowing you to replace any warheads lost quickly. This of course also means that fleets used for defensive purposes may have... Issues.
2. Make some portions of the cloud out of Glass, turning it into a nearly invisible maze.
   
3. Use Plex/Blast Doors as a means of creating a safe passage through the cloud, along with toggling indicator lights to indicate the way through. This means of course that there's an upper size limit to the vessels that could actually visit your station, and you'd have to more or less create a tunnel through the death cloud (you probably wouldn't want more than 10 meters of contiguous space to fly through, and the ideal route would probably be one that twists and turns a fair bit through the cloud to limit speed of both friendly and potentially hostile people).
4. Defensive baffles comprised of force-field/door blocks. Combined with an area trigger a short ways away (have the actual area triggers run from a couple blocks away from the baffle to about 8-12 blocks out; the logic and controller could be stashed onboard the station proper for safety) would be a quick and dirty way to screen out would-be suicide drones. Essentially if they approach the location of the baffle, it pops up into place, blocking entry from that vector. Assuming you build the baffle 3-5 blocks deep it'd both prevent physics tunneling exploits and provide an early warning system that could trigger automated defenses, like the ones already listed, if they got damaged.
5. Build large, permanent baffles out of advanced armor a ways away from the station, but perhaps within the cloud. Something in the size range of a 5x5 panel. You could even make them part of the station esthetic by disguising them as billboards, fragments of partially salvaged ships or even as whole, severely damaged ships that are there for repairs. In addition to bloating the armor and HP pool of the station, they'd have to be navigated around or tunneled through, which buys time and costs the enemy resources, potentially.
6. Consider certain things expendable or have redundant backups. For example, if you have a large warpgate on your station that leads to somewhere else far away, consider having a second one that's much smaller hidden within the station itself, just large enough to send a ship core through. That way, if the main, large gate gets taken offline, you still have a quick means of recovering the damage and re-linking the gate.
7. Deception, pure and simple. Create a set of fake docked ships that house backups or supplemental systems. You can even add to the deception by docking an actual vessel inside the fake one (literally a core and a rail docker is all it takes). If the attackers intent is to take out the station, he's probably not going to pay much attention to something that looks like it's just a crappy little salvager, especially if it's showing up as a docked entity named "Backup Salvager #4".

That's about all the ideas I have at the moment, but I've used a fair number of these myself in previous servers, though some of them aren't really specific to dealing with cloaker pokers (though they can still be fairly useful).

#1 is something I've considered, but they're easy to see and avoid, unless I use huge numbers of them. And your point about maintenance is good: no-one wants to spend their time flying around in the noise cloud to repair it.

I like #2, I think I will make a glass version.

For #3 I was planning to use forcefields instead.
[doublepost=1485742687,1485742646][/doublepost]

--snip--

Please don't go OT. The thread topic is VERY clear. Discuss that in this current suggestion instead.

 

[Dire Venom]

Just an idea I'll throw out there,
Using a number of rotation blocks you could make a ball that spins randomly in every direction.
Then simply add Beam-Cannons all over it, even using rails to orientate some at different angles. Attach it all up to a wireless button and then spawn a couple of them in your sector and let them spin : )
It will de-cloak ships pretty easily (as long as they arent spinning too fast) and mean that the cloaked ship is never safe.

For extra awesomeness make each beam a different color

Also, having fake asteroids with jump inhibitors hidden inside them might not be a bad idea

 

[kiddan]

Just an idea I'll throw out there,
Using a number of rotation blocks you could make a ball that spins randomly in every direction.
Then simply add Beam-Cannons all over it, even using rails to orientate some at different angles. Attach it all up to a wireless button and then spawn a couple of them in your sector and let them spin : )
It will de-cloak ships pretty easily (as long as they arent spinning too fast) and mean that the cloaked ship is never safe.

For extra awesomeness make each beam a different color

Also, having fake asteroids with jump inhibitors hidden inside them might not be a bad idea

Sounds like a nightmare to build, though. Could be even more lethal if you use Beam + Missile and just have two cannons for every face, to make-up for the reload.

 

[Kimiro]

Just an idea I'll throw out there,
Using a number of rotation blocks you could make a ball that spins randomly in every direction.
Then simply add Beam-Cannons all over it, even using rails to orientate some at different angles. Attach it all up to a wireless button and then spawn a couple of them in your sector and let them spin : )
It will de-cloak ships pretty easily (as long as they arent spinning too fast) and mean that the cloaked ship is never safe.

For extra awesomeness make each beam a different color

Also, having fake asteroids with jump inhibitors hidden inside them might not be a bad idea

Sounds like a nightmare to build, though. Could be even more lethal if you use Beam + Missile and just have two cannons for every face, to make-up for the reload.

I guess Cloaker-Pokers would... Panic! At the Disco.

Also, for extra-frustration, add in Stop effects (75% or so). Since even 1 damage will decloak them, you may as well add in the ability to more or less pin them to the spot to let your defenses make short work of them.

Addendum: Also, another possible means of making a station secure: Build it inside the pull radius of a wormhole. Pokers aren't know for having enough thrust to really resist the gravity well.

 

[Jojomo]

I've come to a bit of a halt in publishing my noise clouds, because I want to use the latest template format, and although someone updated the block bit data wiki page since the update, it doesn't appear to be correct, and I haven't had time to figure out the correct format yet - very busy at work.

 

[Dire Venom]

Has anyone had any success building near stars:?
I believe being behind certain cover will negate damage, and if you can stop the station from taking damage you can build warp gates inside to get in and out safely.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Has anyone had any success building near stars:?
I believe being behind certain cover will negate damage, and if you can stop the station from taking damage you can build warp gates inside to get in and out safely.

Problem/condition is the way you spawn relative to the entity you gate to. with sector rotation on you'd have "times of day" with safety, possibly mitigated by a planet-station combo, but it'd be tricky work I think.

I liked the in black hole pull zone thing, though anyone with gravity/momentum passives would be doing their own thing. Nice requirement to play thing.

 

[DoomCarrot]

As cool as all these suggestions are, most of them are two complex or too much work for the average player looking to build a second station. Of all the non homebase stations I've seen on servers, NONE have had anti-grieving minefields or anything of the sort.

There really should be a more simple way to protect against grievers.... Say.... Logic controlled scanners, or something as simple as that.

 

[Jojomo]

A reminder that this thread is for player solutions only. Please discuss OT subjects somewhere more suitable.

As cool as all these suggestions are, most of them are two complex or too much work for the average player looking to build a second station. Of all the non homebase stations I've seen on servers, NONE have had anti-grieving minefields or anything of the sort.

You're right, any proposed solution definitely needs to be reasonably easy to implement.

As far as my own idea goes, a noise cloud and layers of trigger activated pulses, I'm planning to publish them as templates here. Materially they're very cheap, so using them on a station should be pretty quick and painless.

 

[Gasboy]

You're right, any proposed solution definitely needs to be reasonably easy to implement.

I disagree. It comes down to how important is this secondary station to you? If it's not worth the effort of protecting, why are you building it?

Any solution that's easy to implement is easy to destroy.

 

[Kimiro]

Any solution that's easy to implement is easy to destroy.

The issue is the corollary - something difficult to implement is difficult to destroy - isn't true. More thought might be required to facilitate its destruction, but at the end of the day there is only so many defenses a station can have to meet a nearly infinite variety of threats.

Stations can't:

• Cloak
• Radar Jam
• Use defensive subsystems
• Move
• Scan

They can however:

• Mount absolutely massive amounts of shields and armor
• Utilize logic to automate some tasks
• Be theoretically thousands of times larger than even the biggest titan
• Mount turrets
• Dock fleets

The core issue is that the use of warheads or combinations of ion and hull-shredder weaponry means that the HP buffer is merely a delaying factor. Additionally, stealthed ships effectively ignore any sort of return fire that could potentially occur. This means the only advantage stations have is that they can be absolutely huge - which unfortunately means easier to hit.

When every advantage you have can be hard-countered or just simply ignored outright, it does raise the question of "what's the point?".

What it comes down to is that a station, for the cost of making one, is insanely vulnerable; it's a sitting duck that is effectively also blind, deaf and dumb. Any method in this thread to compensate for that weakness can only do so much aside from "make the station last slightly longer" in the event it comes under attack.

That all said, another idea did occur to me: Stealth ships still trigger area triggers. So potentially you could surround the station with a sort of sensor net to catch cloaker pokers and activate automated defenses like the aforementioned disco ball of doom.

 

[Gasboy]

The issue is the corollary - something difficult to implement is difficult to destroy - isn't true. More thought might be required to facilitate its destruction, but at the end of the day there is only so many defenses a station can have to meet a nearly infinite variety of threats.

Stations can't:

• Cloak
• Radar Jam
• Use defensive subsystems
• Move
• Scan

They can however:

• Mount absolutely massive amounts of shields and armor
• Utilize logic to automate some tasks
• Be theoretically thousands of times larger than even the biggest titan
• Mount turrets
• Dock fleets

The core issue is that the use of warheads or combinations of ion and hull-shredder weaponry means that the HP buffer is merely a delaying factor. Additionally, stealthed ships effectively ignore any sort of return fire that could potentially occur. This means the only advantage stations have is that they can be absolutely huge - which unfortunately means easier to hit.

Your reply has made me rethink the entire idea of securing a sector.

Because that's what we're actually trying to do, secure a sector. The base is just the means to the end.

This is a ship, designed as a mobile base by DrWhammy, found in here in his Shipyard thread.

Move it to a sector, pop out to plunk down a station block, make a docking point, dock the "station" to it. You now have a "station" that can do all those things that real stations cannot. You can even design the ship in such a way as to cover the station, protecting it with the ship's shields. Now you have access to logic-fired everything, as well as cloak, radar jamming, scanning, jump drive, etc etc.

You can use some of the defences theorized in this thread to protect the ship, which should give you enough time to fire up the jump drive and GTFO. You may lose the station block, and the left-behind defences, but you keep the "station" ship.

I'm predicating my suggestion on the fact that you're able to respond in time enough to salvage the ship. The best defences won't matter if someone has enough time alone with your station.

 

[Kimiro]

Your reply has made me rethink the entire idea of securing a sector.-Snip-

Thank you! I can think of no higher compliment than "you made me (re)think".

I can see one flaw with the "mobile station" idea though: The actual station you dock it too costs a few million credits by default (maybe more or maybe less; I've been on servers where it's everything from free to nearly 4 billion.) Since the ship component is the only part that's saved, that means, unfortunately, there's potentially a hefty price tag on running away.

I do like the idea though, especially since it could easily be automated. Just have a sensor detect hull damage and, if it happens, undock and activate the jump drive. Sure it'll move only 8 sectors by default, but it's then 8 sectors away from the angry thing shooting it.

 

[Gasboy]

Thank you! I can think of no higher compliment than "you made me (re)think".

I can see one flaw with the "mobile station" idea though: The actual station you dock it too costs a few million credits by default (maybe more or maybe less; I've been on servers where it's everything from free to nearly 4 billion.) Since the ship component is the only part that's saved, that means, unfortunately, there's potentially a hefty price tag on running away.

I do like the idea though, especially since it could easily be automated. Just have a sensor detect hull damage and, if it happens, undock and activate the jump drive. Sure it'll move only 8 sectors by default, but it's then 8 sectors away from the angry thing shooting it.

Yes, the default is 1 million credits. And then you have to consider the costs of construction. And if someone comes along and destroys that station (with you being forced to either defend it or flee), you lose the 1 million credits AND the associated costs of construction. Where as in my suggestion, if you flee, you can flee with the "station" ship. You still lose the 1 million credits for creating the station and whatever fixed defences you build, however you do get to keep the ship part.

But consider the benefits. You can build the ship "station" in a safe area, and move it to where it is required. Takes seconds to set up, but you then get the mining multiplier benefit. Set it as a mother ship, mine out the whole system if you want, undock and fly away. If someone comes along and destroys the station block, you're only out a million credits, but you reaped a whole system for its multiplier. You come out far, far, far ahead.

 

[Jojomo]

I disagree. It comes down to how important is this secondary station to you? If it's not worth the effort of protecting, why are you building it?

People will weigh up "cost" vs benefit. If "costs" can be kept low, more cost/benefit analyses will end up with a "yes, build it" result.

Any solution that's easy to implement is easy to destroy.

Well that's not correct, even if the reason it's incorrect is because that we can use code to create solutions outside the game and then import them.
[doublepost=1486259626,1486258941][/doublepost]

Move it to a sector, pop out to plunk down a station block, make a docking point, dock the "station" to it. You now have a "station" that can do all those things that real stations cannot.

You mean "all those things that real single entity stations cannot". Multiple entity stations already have the abilities that a docked "ship" acting as a station can give.

Now you have access to logic-fired everything, as well as cloak, radar jamming, scanning, jump drive, etc etc.

The station (the actual station itself) won't cloak or jam. Jumping the entire docked "station" out is an interesting idea though.
All that it leaves behind is a couple of blocks that can be replaced in a few seconds - unfortunately I'm not sure that having a station that runs away as a defence mechanism is worth having though. Like you said, a big reason for having a station is to control the sector.

I'm predicating my suggestion on the fact that you're able to respond in time enough to salvage the ship. The best defences won't matter if someone has enough time alone with your station.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm thinking of security for stations that belong to people who are offline.
Of course no non-homebase station can ever truly be 100% safe, but you can make them so difficult to attack that a griefer will give up from boredom or frustration, and so that an enemy trying to overwhelm the shields will have to spend more time and resources to do so than you spent on the station.

 

[MacThule]

Define "secure."

 

[MacThule]

'Secure' can be anything from secure against casual intrusion by passersby (IRL a locked door) to secure against heavily armed assault (IRL a reinforced concrete bunker designed for military defense). Even a heavy defensive fortification is not "'secure' against 'overwhelming firepower'" though. The point of the thread is somewhate vague, since the basic answer to how to make non-HB bases 'secure' is to put a faction module on them so no one can steal them, end of story. By definition, that is 'secure.' Not very secure, but still secure. Security is a spectrum, not a singular state.

...the way some people talk about it though, I think their definition of secure is something very near to invulnerable, and I think that's an unrealistic expectation.
[doublepost=1486653579,1486652886][/doublepost]Random, unprovoked character assault noted, DrTarDIS - thank you for your valuable input...

 

[DrTarDIS]

'Secure' can be anything from secure against casual intrusion by passersby (IRL a locked door) to secure against heavily armed assault (IRL a reinforced concrete bunker designed for military defense). Even a heavy defensive fortification is not "'secure' against 'overwhelming firepower'" though. The point of the thread is somewhate vague, since the basic answer to how to make non-HB bases 'secure' is to put a faction module on them so no one can steal them, end of story. By definition, that is 'secure.' Not very secure, but still secure. Security is a spectrum, not a singular state.

...the way some people talk about it though, I think their definition of secure is something very near to invulnerable, and I think that's an unrealistic expectation.
[doublepost=1486653579,1486652886][/doublepost]Random, unprovoked character assault noted, DrTarDIS - thank you for your valuable input...

Quite provoked, actually, try clicking the link. This most recent post is (semi)useful. The one before it was just facetious and deserved answering in kind. Grow some organ-hair if you think it was a full on "character assault".
However, a mere faction block is about as secure as a barn door. The point of this thread is quite obviously the same point as razor wire fences, moats, trenches, and any other bulwark . It's to limit the need to sit on a virtual porch with a shotgun saying "git off mah lawn" to prowlers. Once again, your "character" seems to need a good thwacking for readily belittling the character of the thread, it's creator, and honest participants. Take what you dish out, or don't go dishing.