Resource bonus stations to fight over

[FireLeaf]

In the current game there is no good reason to fight other players or to expand your influence beyond a few systems you need for mining. I suggest resource mining bonus stations, or simply resource stations, that provide bonus resources to both miners in the same system and its own inventory equal to the bonus it gives to miners and higher tier resource station that act similar, but cover multiple lower tier stations instead. The higher tier stations will provide a bonus to all miners in the larger area and also produce resources for its own inventory equal to the bonus it provides. Players and factions can take control of others their resource stations to take the part of the bonus that is provided to the resource station its inventory. These resource stations give control over a part of the resources produced in an area, but instead of taxing miners they provide bonus resources to all parties involved.


The following list provides a summary of the properties I believe are needed

All resource stations

• Can not be built within three sectors of a home base or a different resource station
• Can be both player and faction owned
• Any player can only own up to three resource stations of any tier
• the amount of resource stations a faction can own is based on its active player count, giving two resource mining bonus stations per active player
• faction members can not own any resource mining bonus stations that their faction does not own.
• if a player or faction takes or has control of more resource stations then they may own they must choose to lose control of a selected resource station or lose control of a random resource station of the lowest tier they own

Tier one

• Provides its bonus to the system it is built in
• Can be built by anyone
• Can be built in any system
• Only one can be build per system
• Can only be connected to one resource station that is one tier above it
• Provides a 50% bonus to anyone mining in the area that are given to the miner
• Provides resources to its connected inventory that is equal to 50% of the resources mined in the system without bonus, making extra resources to do so
• Can be taken by anyone that destroys its faction module and replace it with their own

Higher tier

• Can be built when it will cover at least three other stations that are one tier lower
• Connects to any resource station that is one tier below it and within its coverage
• Cannot be built to have an overlapping coverage with a resource station of the same tier
• Provides half the bonus of the tier below it to miners
• Provides resources to its inventory equal to all bonusses it gives, making extra resources to do so
• Covers an area of 2x2x2 times the size of the previous tier, covering up to 8 of the previous tier stations
• Can be taken when you own a resource station that is one tier below it and covered by the higher tier resource station you are trying to take.
• Can be taken when you own a station of the same tier that is connected to the station above the station you own
• Can be taken when you own a station above the tier of the station you are trying to take

Faction home base

• can not be built within three sectors of a resource station

The resource stations will provide a bonus to miners just like how mining bonusses currently work, but equal to 50% of what a miner would mine without the bonus. The tier one resource station in the system will also get resources equal to 50% of what is mined in the system. A tier two resource station will provide and earn half the bonus the tier one gets. So the tier two will get 25% of what a miner in its area of influence would mine and give a bonus equal to that to the miner aswell. Players can keep building higher tier resource stations as long as the new resource station covers three resource stations that are one tier below it.

The bonusses will be additive so a miner will get 150% when covered by a tier one station and 175% when covered by a tier one and a tier two station. The resources the stations gets are calculated before adding the bonus to the miners resources so a tier one actually gets one third of the recources the miner gets if the miner is only covered by a tier one resource station.

Each tier will cover an area twice as long in all three dimension then the previous tier. So the tier one will cover one system, the tier two will cover 2x2x2 in total eight systems and the tier three will cover 4x4x4 in total 64 system. The restrictions to take over others their resource stations are put in place to prevent small players from quickly taking over higher tier stations and to prevent big players from too quickly taking the higher tier stations from their enemies.

I hope this gives a clear idea of my suggestion. Please tell me what you think about it.

 

[Cluwne]

What's to stop anyone from blasting those stations to dust then building their own?
I assume the process of capture will be a bit more complex than "shoot at it until it dies", meaning that only few would actually bother to go through with it, opting for the destructive route instead, if only to save time.

And besides, the mining bonus won't do you much good if nobody in your faction bothers to go mining.
On the other hand, a station that's collecting resources on it's own, even unloaded, is both an asset and a high-value target to a faction.

Each tier has it's own reach in sectors it can "mine", making station's placement strategically important, creating opportunities for conflict over best station spots.
In addition each tier could have varying cycle duration — from low tiers with short reach and constant but weak flow of resources, to high tier which gives tremendous amounts every hour.

Simple restrictions, like no homebase or other mining stations in range, and overlapping mining sectors yielding less.
I don't see why you insist on only being able to own what your factions owns already. Allow private stations, the ones your faction doesn't know you have.
Nothing's wrong with having a safety net in case your faction deems you a liability and kicks you out.

Still, even with a dozen stations pumping out resources, there is still a matter of logistics, of taking those resources and hauling them to homebase.
For this very reason a logistic station could be added. Same principle, tiers, cycles and all, only you mark the stations it takes things from and/or gives to within it's reach, which is bigger than mining stations' even at lowest tier.
This way you can have stations all over the system, with a single system hub you take things from and haul back to homebase. Or not.
If a faction bothers to make a proper logistic infrastructure it should be able to automate the whole thing so that resources would flow right into the homebase.
In case that seems OP, which it isn't you idiot, there are still vulnerable elements of this supply chain that can be taken out.

 

[NaStral]

On Light Vs Dark we have a capture point system very similar to this. In our case though, the 8 capture points are invincible so they can’t be destroyed and capturing more stations in the right order yields greater rewards in the form of instanced personal rewards. We use an advanced wrapper system to automate all of this. Upon an attempt at capture, whoever currently controls it is alerted so they can attempt to fight off the attacker or retake it.

 

[FireLeaf]

What's to stop anyone from blasting those stations to dust then building their own?
I assume the process of capture will be a bit more complex than "shoot at it until it dies", meaning that only few would actually bother to go through with it, opting for the destructive route instead, if only to save time.

I think it is not an issue if the player taking control builds a completely new station if he thinks it is more economical or he can build a station that performs better. However I do think that stations should get defensive bonusses because they are static targets. I think it would be intresting if stations can call allied AI fleets towards them to defend for example and as NaStral mentioned notify the player that his station is getting attacked. It could also have more powerfull blocks that boost its defensive capabilities like better shields, only these more powerfull blocks should be expensive and not be easily retrievable after they are placed to prevent players from setting up temperary stations during attacks.

Simple restrictions, like no homebase or other mining stations in range, and overlapping mining sectors yielding less.
I don't see why you insist on only being able to own what your factions owns already. Allow private stations, the ones your faction doesn't know you have.
Nothing's wrong with having a safety net in case your faction deems you a liability and kicks you out.

The reason I want to restrict the amount of stations factions and their members can have is that they are able to use it more efficiently then solo players. They can use and defend the stations of their allies. I also don't want them to be able to double down on the amount of stations they can own, using both the personal stations and faction stations of others. However it may indeed be a good idea allow faction members to have one personal station that is not aligned to their faction. This can also prevent people from losing their station when they join a faction so joinging a faction is not discouraged.

Still, even with a dozen stations pumping out resources, there is still a matter of logistics, of taking those resources and hauling them to homebase.
For this very reason a logistic station could be added. Same principle, tiers, cycles and all, only you mark the stations it takes things from and/or gives to within it's reach, which is bigger than mining stations' even at lowest tier.
This way you can have stations all over the system, with a single system hub you take things from and haul back to homebase. Or not.
If a faction bothers to make a proper logistic infrastructure it should be able to automate the whole thing so that resources would flow right into the homebase.
In case that seems OP, which it isn't you idiot, there are still vulnerable elements of this supply chain that can be taken out.

I want it to be so every link in the chain takes some effort from somebody so no resources are made out of nothing. So I think it is a good thing that you still need to haul the resources if you want them to be safe in your home base. If these resources could be moved by a logistic system it might be to close to a fully automated system.

 

[NaStral]

I wouldn’t mind seeing a proper Schine created solution to capturing and holding territory that actually has an impact on player and faction wealth. Some kind of integration of the NPC system with player or faction owned ships and stations should play a major role in how territories are taken, governed, patrolled, and resources exploited.

 

[EricBlank]

I like the basic concept here of system infrastructure providing local bonuses, but with stations being extremely vulnerable right now id say they need to be made indestructible until some additional condition has been met, and making the requirement for claiming them something other than blowing them up. for instance, "laying siege" to them for a period of time, thirty minutes or something, where the attacker needs to be present in the sector, uncloaked. Maybe applying damage at a minimum rate dependent on the size, defenses and armament of the station or some form of "negotiations" or hacking with the stations computer or crew. That not only gives defenders a chance to rally but means the station could be reclaimed later. An attacker might need to, say, claim the lowest tier stations before moving on to the higher or vice versa, and requiring the attacker to successfully claim all stations within a given system and take the system for their faction before dismantling any of the stations (theyre still protected and faction owned by the defender, even though the defender can no longer access them or their bonuses until they reclaim them through a similar process.)

So in that way system infrastructure is both useful and not going to be griefed out of existence instantly by some random jackass that flies by.

However, claiming a station could give the attacker access to resources in their storage, permitting for piracy.

 

[Nosajimiki]

While I agree with the jist of the suggestion, I think I've heard less exploitable and less complicated variants of it. The major problems I see with this idea are:

1. These stations will not be the big fancy things you might expect. Much like current claim stations, people will build the absolute minimum they need with the expectation that they are disposable bases; so, they'd typically be pretty boring plops of blocks.
2. It feels like this idea is trying to artificially put restrictions on player base counts instead of capitalizing on things that are inherently scarce (such as planets, NPC bases, etc).
3. It's exploitable with alt accounts.
4. It does not meet the stated goal of achieving more PvP. People who attack will just nuke them and spawn their own, because they will be disposable in nature. Basically, it will not result in a real fight, because we all know that garrisoning a base is a losing proposition. Especially when people can just attack you while you are offline.

A better alternative for passive resource production IMO would be rare NPC bases that you have to discover. (something with about the spawn frequency of an advanced shop that is indestructible). This way bigger factions would tend to own more because they can invest more time into finding them, but once found they would become valuable conflict points because other factions could rest control of them using a similar "capture the flag" method as LvD uses where you have to sit on it for X time to claim it and an alert goes out.

The only problem with LvD is that their locations are readily available on server announcements; so, people get disheartened by the fact that everyone who is not an ally is a rival vieing for each and every one. In contrast, if I know where 5 are and you've found 3, but one of those bases is one we've both found, we will either need to come to a political agreement about it (fun RP), or it could trigger a war over a spot that we both know that the other person has to frequently visit away from their HB (fun PvP), or someone gets nuked fighting over it so many times, they decide to give up on it and announce it's location publically (fun RP+PvP).

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As for improving mining bonuses, I feel that that should be a separate issue all together. Right now, you drop a faction block on a planet and you double your mining basically for free. A better solution would be to make a sector claim chamber that requires 100% RP to max out. By making it a chamber effect, you put in a factor of size. So, your mining bonus may be something like reactor-class/10 * mining-bonus-chamber-level. This encourages BIG mining bases to achieve big bonuses, and makes disposable claim stations fairly worthless. This also encourages RP and armed claim stations, b/c ppl are more likely to make a real design out of a base that is half a million blocks to begin with vs something that only needs 1 block.

This would also encourage organized mining operations where you'd want to get your faction all on at once, drop a big expensive mining base, and then strip mine the whole system hoping no one shows up, or be ready for a fight when they do. If you want it to encourage PvP, you could even have an option that creates a server wide alert that someone has build a mining base near XYZ. That way they would basically be a built in server wide event feature.
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I like the basic concept here of system infrastructure providing local bonuses, but with stations being extremely vulnerable right now id say they need to be made indestructible until some additional condition has been met, and making the requirement for claiming them something other than blowing them up. for instance, "laying siege" to them for a period of time, thirty minutes or something, where the attacker needs to be present in the sector, uncloaked. Maybe applying damage at a minimum rate dependent on the size, defenses and armament of the station or some form of "negotiations" or hacking with the stations computer or crew. That not only gives defenders a chance to rally but means the station could be reclaimed later. An attacker might need to, say, claim the lowest tier stations before moving on to the higher or vice versa, and requiring the attacker to successfully claim all stations within a given system and take the system for their faction before dismantling any of the stations (theyre still protected and faction owned by the defender, even though the defender can no longer access them or their bonuses until they reclaim them through a similar process.)

So in that way system infrastructure is both useful and not going to be griefed out of existence instantly by some random jackass that flies by.

However, claiming a station could give the attacker access to resources in their storage, permitting for piracy.

The problem I see with this idea is that you could just arm the bases with enough firepower to prevent any ship to survive long enough to siege it. Then you have the opposite problem that people now have not one, but many indestructible bases, they can turtle in. While this feature could create a short spike of conflicts, the total fighting would go down to nothing once ppl learn how to put enough firepower on them that they are essentially backup HBs.

 

[EricBlank]

Thats true, but it would be as simple to fix as allowing turrets on these non-hb stations to be destroyed when shields go down (and letting shields on the station take damage) whether theyre docked to the station or to a ship docked to it.

I do like your idea of hidden resource nodes that can be contested, that is quite nice.

 

[Cluwne]

A better alternative for passive resource production IMO would be rare NPC bases that you have to discover. (something with about the spawn frequency of an advanced shop that is indestructible). This way bigger factions would tend to own more because they can invest more time into finding them, but once found they would become valuable conflict points because other factions could rest control of them using a similar "capture the flag" method as LvD uses where you have to sit on it for X time to claim it and an alert goes out.

Something something progenitor/precursor/forerunner resource harvesting stations.
Sounds like an entire new system of reconnaissance and discovery, tied to stealth & recon, would be better.
Much like in EVE, explorer ships probe the system, finding(read: spawning) sites that contain some sort of clues as to whereabouts of a certain station, resource stash, derelict ships (ship graveyard?), hidden "nomad" planet and what have you. Or just a location of another "clue", i.e. another coordinate fragment for the object (which is spawned on completion of this mini-quest).
This adds stuff for explorers, the RP potential from selling those coordinates, and the means to locate those resource stations.

Then we need to drop the station's shields, and some kind of hacker module/weapon/chamber to change the ownership, first to neutral, then to you/your faction.
Hacking ships would have to keep their target in range of their hacking module and stay uncloaked, somewhat balancing the potential damage they can cause.

A better solution would be to make a sector claim chamber that requires 100% RP to max out. By making it a chamber effect, you put in a factor of size. So, your mining bonus may be something like reactor-class/10 * mining-bonus-chamber-level. This encourages BIG mining bases to achieve big bonuses, and makes disposable claim stations fairly worthless.

I kinda want same-ish thing for ships so that there will be a good reason to build large mining barges.

The problem I see with this idea is that you could just arm the bases with enough firepower to prevent any ship to survive long enough to siege it.

IIRC warheads ignore shields. Stealth bombers with warhead torpedoes, or even a sophisticated, albeit expensive, stealth torpedo should be a fairly good counter to such strategy.

 

[Nosajimiki]

IIRC warheads ignore shields. Stealth bombers with warhead torpedoes, or even a sophisticated, albeit expensive, stealth torpedo should be a fairly good counter to such strategy.

Warheads don't hurt bases with HB protection. As Eric pointed out, true HB protection would need a workaround if you used it at all.

 

[Cluwne]

Hacking then, simple single-stage for the non-HB stations, long and taking several attempts for HB, that is if server chooses to make them vulnerable to capture.
Since hacking indicates a presence of a "hacker" ship, people will scramble a defensive force anyway. So might as well make hacking not require dropping the cloak. That takes care of firepower turtling if people didn't bother to bring recon ships or show up at all.
Another good suggestion is shields not being protected by station invincibility, allowing turrets to be destroyed once the shields go out. But only the turrets - entities docked to the non-"turret" rails should remain invincible.
This also give an interesting loophole that isn't really OP - once the shields are dangerously low, a sensor could be used to force turrets into safety until they are above the critical level or fully recharged.

 

[MacThule]

As always, I believe that vulnerable infrastructure is an urgent necessity as soon as the universe update comes through.

Mining bonus stations, claim stations, viable warpgate stations (no lines on map unless directly selected by someone with faction permissions), even other bonus stations for additional FP, power generation or mobility bonuses to friendly fleets, passive jamming or jump interdiction against hostile fleets, or other effects requiring at least a small, dedicated station to achieve should all be seriously considered or added as options. Such stations would provide nuance and strategy to area control beyond claim/unclaim, allowing all degrees of development, outposts, staging bases, etc.

Of course the primary value of such features is not even so much the potential for the effects they yield, as fun as that would be. The real boon would be in imbuing value to expanding infrastructure beyond the invulnerable home base and thereby sparking diplomacy, politics, and warfare as a naturally occurring dynamic. Space could be claimed for real value, and players would compete for that value. An invulnerable HB should be enough to stockpile resources, maintain an industrial or trade base, dock and maintain a very modest fleet, as well as quarter a faction, but extensive vulnerable infrastructure should be a prerequisite for fielding larger fleets further from home for longer deployments, and for achieving optimized industrial capacity. To exactly the point that any faction which becomes overbearing will absolutely feel the attrition of popular unrest and be forced to either moderate its own behavior, make extensive alliances and pacts, conduct very effective and aggressive espionage, trade and mine very very effectively to subsidize constant warfare, or fight like demons to maintain dominance.

Making functional stations invulnerable would negate all the depth, drama and excitement they might serve to bring, IMO, and would reinforce the rather static nature of the universe where there is little worth doing aside design and chat. It would directly result in a fixed hierarchy where the first team to start and/or the team of players with the most idle time to play overwhelmingly dominates the galaxy and could not be rolled back without implementing some byzantine system of arbitrary and very artificial-feeling timers. An invulnerable HB should be more than enough - ensuring all players are immune to being completely eliminated, but by requiring frequent patrols, garrisons and alliances to protect, as well as the stockpiling of resources to replace them when destroyed is engaging game play with real purpose. It is very easy to spawn in new, small claim and bonus stations from BPs, once designs are in hand.

The value of capturing them for ones own use in itself should be enough to make players at least seriously consider capture over demolition. I do think that, because of the relative ease of destroying stations while an opponent is offline, there should be ways to multiply the value of resources used in building stations at least, whether through intrinsic bonuses, or engineered bonus options or any other viable alternative. That way going about simply razing stations for the sake of it becomes more likely to end in a net loss for the raiders, so that unless there is some important strategic (or RP) value to the assault most experienced players won't be keen. But sufficient value to owner should substantially reduce random acts of destruction against useful stations in itself amongst the vast majority of the population (Reavers, raiders and trolls aside).