1) They're *stations*. Stations are going to have additional functionality in the future and will do things that *REALLY* should not be allowed to move around.
Just as I said with home bases and warp gates (and probably race gates, thinking about it), you can disable the jumping and show a message.
"The station cannot be relocated because ********** is active"
2) As stated already, the coding nightmare that would ensue
I have some experience in the trade, I'm not really believing this unless it's a Shine guy stating it.
(Plopping down stations wherever, whenever with zero effort.
Jump drive limitations still apply, 8 sectors, recharge times, jump drive inhibitors block the jumping. Since stations won't be able to use jump gates, this might be a long haul.
Blueprint system has this issue to some extent already and it is being worked towards removal, not adding to the problem.
If they rework blueprints to stop being magic wands that let you spawn stuff as long as you have the blocks, then you need some way of mass-producing stations too (the same as for ships), so I think there will eventually be some shipyard-like structure somewhere where stations get built and then they must be moved to their actual new place (like for example sea-based oil rigs).
3) Warping, mostly-immobile entities are already planned.
I think I missed this. What are these "mostly-immobile entities"? We have ships that can move and jumpdrive and stations that cannot move nor jumpdrive.
I saw that there were plans to add some limited/dedicated shipyard-like facilities on ships, but that's it.
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Perhaps we speak about if stations should be allowed to be converted to ships back and forth then?
What about stations with active factories? (only needs an answer if you think this thought should be continued).
Dunno, in my mind the difference between a ship and a station should be installed systems, not a decision I make when spawning them.
For the game, everything should be a "ship" object (i.e. a object that can be moved), if this object can or cannot move on its own depends from its own engines, and any ship/station blocks should check that to see if they can be activated or they need to stay inactive.
The factory/refinery issue has to be dealt separately in a overhaul of the "manufacturing stuff" part of the game
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If a station jumps into a planet sector, it has to be repositioned not only in sector coordinates but also subsector position.
Assuming a maximum of 32 planets a system, it's just 32 out of 3000 possible destinations … not really useful.
Instead of having to fix problems with stations in sectors which turn around, maybe just jump them into an adjacent sector.
I think the game can deal with some collision avoidance for in-sector coordinates, but jumping in an adjacent sector is good enough for most intents and purposes too.