Warp Gate/station clarification, how does this all work?

[ReaperEOD]

I just had several questions about warp gates and stations that I don't have an opportunity to play with until it's too late, and I don't want to regret building a network to another galaxy and cause an invasion of my own territory in the process especially when I'm not ready to defend myself. So here it goes:

Who can see the warp gate lines? Is it still a feature that everyone can see them? Is there a current way to mask them somehow?

Who can use the warp gates? Is it truly going to be everyone? This makes me feel like a smaller gate would be better to disable the ability of large fleets coming in.

With stations, can an enemy commandeer a station or modify/build on it somehow to expand a warp gate to force larger ships through the gates over time, even if the receiving gate is smaller?

These are good starter questions, I'm completely new to these concepts and am unsure of what other factions can do to my own stations and gates. Any answers, tips/tricks, defense ideas, anything would be helpful.

I'm also very inexperienced with offensive/defensive measures, I know how to make a homing missile turret but they seem to want to cause collateral damage to my own structures. Maybe just build less turrets? The AI seems to be okay with pointing itself at the station unless I placed it terribly.

Thanks for any information and your time!
[DOUBLEPOST=1423532348,1423529748][/DOUBLEPOST]Although I did have an idea of making some kind of fail-safe and that would be a self-destruction of the gate computer using warheads. I don't know what conditions would need to be set in order to make that work though.

 

[Ravenskysong]

Since warp gates are placed on stations, and your home base is unbreakable you could just make the warp gate on your home station. I would recommend creating some sort of giant hangar. with doors. that way only your faction members can get their ships inside. You could do the same on the other end. have the warp gate inside a heavily defended and door'd area.

A rather mean thing to do is have the jump gate on your home station really, really big. But have the EXIT gate be really, really small. anyone who goes into the large entry gate should, if I remember the warp gate rules properly, have the excess material broken off and ruined upon exit. People might think they can take their titans thru, and then die right?

The jump gates I have seen have been no where near stations, well they have the minimum station to make the gate. I am not sure if these are considered public, or if it is that people are making their jump gates a sector away from their bases for security.

Whatever you do, I would have turrets pointed at where the gate comes out, because in my experience I've been able to use any gate I want, but they did not have faction modules on them so i don't know. I would recommend making a single player game and using the give money command and testing out the different combinations of faction modules, home bases, warp gate, door and turret positions and sizes etc.

Gates, when set up, are one way gates until you go back thru and link to the first gate, so traps or annoyances could be easy to make. I think there's a limit at 128 sectors but that'd still be a pain to be trapped that far out.

I assume that the faction module of the station would apply to the gate, but it might not be a yes/no thing like doors yet.

 

[ReaperEOD]

Since warp gates are placed on stations, and your home base is unbreakable you could just make the warp gate on your home station. I would recommend creating some sort of giant hangar. with doors. that way only your faction members can get their ships inside. You could do the same on the other end. have the warp gate inside a heavily defended and door'd area.

A rather mean thing to do is have the jump gate on your home station really, really big. But have the EXIT gate be really, really small. anyone who goes into the large entry gate should, if I remember the warp gate rules properly, have the excess material broken off and ruined upon exit. People might think they can take their titans thru, and then die right?

The jump gates I have seen have been no where near stations, well they have the minimum station to make the gate. I am not sure if these are considered public, or if it is that people are making their jump gates a sector away from their bases for security.

Whatever you do, I would have turrets pointed at where the gate comes out, because in my experience I've been able to use any gate I want, but they did not have faction modules on them so i don't know. I would recommend making a single player game and using the give money command and testing out the different combinations of faction modules, home bases, warp gate, door and turret positions and sizes etc.

Gates, when set up, are one way gates until you go back thru and link to the first gate, so traps or annoyances could be easy to make. I think there's a limit at 128 sectors but that'd still be a pain to be trapped that far out.

I assume that the faction module of the station would apply to the gate, but it might not be a yes/no thing like doors yet.

Well actually my warp gates are going much further than just my home base and a place 8 systems away. I'm wishing to connect galaxies and prevent a swift invasion of my own galaxy.

I'll try the big to small jump gate using a bunch of rock and see if it clips them off or not, that sounds like a fun idea.

So, with stations, if there's a faction module with a signature on there; can other factions BUILD on it? This is literally my only question left now, I won't mind if my gate is small for now. It's more for getting players over to my galaxy, not big ships.

I've actually figured a way to trap my station finally through logic. A simple 'delay/not' cycle hooked to an 'or' switch. An 'activator' that is then placed near the outside in case somebody tries to blast their way in. Then warheads next to the warp gate computer attached to the 'or' switch will activate the next time it activates from the 'not' block due to the constant 'on' signal from the activator being gone. I could also use an 'and' block and place multiple activators if any are lost then it also destroyed the computer. Alternatively if they only blow the outside and send an astronaut in, I'll use area activators to blow the warheads. Should be protected from inside and outside, might be able to do something to prevent ships from using it too while I'm not around.

Interesting idea perhaps?
[DOUBLEPOST=1423550008,1423547249][/DOUBLEPOST]Update: I tried out the big to small gate jump, it keeps the ship fully intact however if there were ample defenses they would be jumping straight into a trap from where there is no escape. Could still be useful if a big enough turret is made.

 

[Ravenskysong]

"So, with stations, if there's a faction module with a signature on there; can other factions BUILD on it? "
certainly not, if all your faction module and build blocks are unreachable, like behind doors. They MIGHT be able to get into your build blocks, and edit that way the same as ship cores. But if you have your faction permissions set right they should not be able to build or use doors.

Have you tried putting a wall of doors in front of your gate, and seeing if other faction ships can open them with the docking beam? Or I can just not be lazy and go try it in my own world. I assume that a large door infront of the whole gate on both sides as part of the claimed faction station would not be openable by others.

I kind of want to make a super awesome gate system and charge people to go to the new galaxy.

There's an idea. a logic block that takes money from you and deposits it in the logic block or gives it to someone else, and then tiggers (say for opening up the door to the gate) ha! space buses! All shall kneel to my space bus empire.

now I also want space mines. area trigger perhaps?

 

[Gristle]

"So, with stations, if there's a faction module with a signature on there; can other factions BUILD on it? "
certainly not, if all your faction module and build blocks are unreachable, like behind doors. They MIGHT be able to get into your build blocks, and edit that way the same as ship cores. But if you have your faction permissions set right they should not be able to build or use doors.

Have you tried putting a wall of doors in front of your gate, and seeing if other faction ships can open them with the docking beam? Or I can just not be lazy and go try it in my own world. I assume that a large door infront of the whole gate on both sides as part of the claimed faction station would not be openable by others....

Who is going to close the door after you jump 128 sectors? Could possibly be closed with logic.

 

[ReaperEOD]

"So, with stations, if there's a faction module with a signature on there; can other factions BUILD on it? "
certainly not, if all your faction module and build blocks are unreachable, like behind doors. They MIGHT be able to get into your build blocks, and edit that way the same as ship cores. But if you have your faction permissions set right they should not be able to build or use doors.

Have you tried putting a wall of doors in front of your gate, and seeing if other faction ships can open them with the docking beam? Or I can just not be lazy and go try it in my own world. I assume that a large door infront of the whole gate on both sides as part of the claimed faction station would not be openable by others.

I kind of want to make a super awesome gate system and charge people to go to the new galaxy.

There's an idea. a logic block that takes money from you and deposits it in the logic block or gives it to someone else, and then tiggers (say for opening up the door to the gate) ha! space buses! All shall kneel to my space bus empire.

now I also want space mines. area trigger perhaps?

Yeah I have this nightmarish block with a bunch of logic systems and warheads inside. Basically if anybody blasts it or gets inside the warp computers will be lost, and they can't modify the gate itself so they would be forced to use a tiny gate. But that door is a great idea, I'll try that right away and see if the docking beam works to open doors like you suggest. If that's the case then I could add a door with a wall around it with further logic inside the walls tied to the computer to detonate if tampered too much like from external damage. These aren't really meant to be true stations, more like a railway. With traps as tampering fail-safes, in this case. Cheap enough to make anyways, and I don't mind the 300km flight with a stealth/jam ship and a ~15 second jump drive. xP Sure beats the 5000km I did to get out there, took hours.

Now I have two systems with about 14 planets between them, and a wormhole the next system over. It's a very good area.

Who is going to close the door after you jump 128 sectors? Could possibly be closed with logic.

An idea to fixing the door jump is to just have an elongated tunnel and simply use area controller logic to close it behind you and have lights inside or something, and have more of those logic fail-safes inside a 3-layer wall. This way it could let a small buggy through, still have fail-safes, and be reasonable to construct at this time. I have a grid of 'or' blocks in my 'station', as soon as the activators on the outside walls are destroyed my 'not' cycle will trigger it and cause a chain reaction to destroy my warp gate computers and shut down the gates. I'm sure I could just make the logic shut down the computer or something, but destroying your own stuff makes more of a statement anyways.

I also have area controllers on the inside if anyone thinks they could carefully remove a couple blocks and get inside. Realistically I should've put the faction module somewhere harder to destroy. I think I'll go fix that now.
[DOUBLEPOST=1423556522,1423555236][/DOUBLEPOST]Well you live and you learn, I was being far too thorough with my external fail-safes and it somehow set off early. I suppose the bottom line is that as long as there are area controllers inside the station to detonate the warp gate, and have the gate next to the module if somehow external trauma makes it to the faction module then it'll take the gates with it. That's the safest option I can think of without having an 'accident' like mine again lol. It's still good to know that you can have an external fail-safe in the event of breaching, but perhaps better used in different circumstances.

Seems sensible enough, I just don't want anyone blasting my trigger areas away and then make it to the faction module.

 

[ltmauve]

There isn't cutting off if you jump to a smaller gate. I've jumped through a gate with a two block output and not lost any blocks. That's because it's just changing the sector. The faction system denies access to a structure to other factions. If you faction a station, no one else can enter any computer on it, open or close doors, or even dock to it. They also can't use the logic on it.

 

[Forgedrake]

I normally place shields over any warp gate I don't want people to go through - the force field doors you can make a checker board with to limit cost so people can't fly through them - also I will drop a faction module on a decayed station and build a warp gate strait to it without even buying the station - sure I can't easily take it apart but for quick networks its cheap and the station provides its own power - I personally like the big cathedral station - with several turrets thick armor and solid power (not to mention a price tag most players can't touch early game meaning more exists) just drop a few bobby ai's on the turrets arm them and watch them kill any pirates who get near while you fly through your cheap safe gate

 

[Forgedrake]

also quick side note - for those forgetful faction mates who don't lock the door on a warp gate

I find a easy logic solution is
Button linked to the force field gate and linked to a delay button - then simply link 20 delays in a strait line to each other then add a 2nd button at end also linked to the doors - the member hits the button with a core beam gate opens they fly through 30 secs later the door seals itself plenty of time to get through a gate and if not add 40 delays for a full min its pretty simple logic but it works nicely

 

[Edymnion]

Of course, in this day and age you can simply build a wireless logic block into your gate doors and open/close them at will from anywhere.