Defending Undocked Ships

    Joined
    Sep 11, 2013
    Messages
    348
    Reaction score
    147
    • Community Content - Bronze 1
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    I know it is good practice to dock your ships to your home base when you log off, but if we are to create large space fairing factions then unprotected bases and ships will be critical to defending territory. I'm curious if anyone has any functioning strategies, theories, or ideas on how to do this.
     
    Joined
    Sep 5, 2013
    Messages
    527
    Reaction score
    109
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Community Content - Bronze 2
    • Purchased!
    A friend of mine made a massive box on his home station out of plex-door so that he could build ships inside of it and have the ship protected without being docked.

    If I leave a ship undocked, it has strong shields and plenty of turrets to protect itself from random pirates. I try not to park ships within (close) range of each other in order to avoid friendly fire. The AI is dumb.

    There's simply no point to having bases and ships that are vulnerable while you're offline if you're on a PVP server. Someone will find them, and they will find an exploit that allows them to destroy your stuff. It's not griefing, it's just the lure of a challenge.
     
    Joined
    Jan 4, 2015
    Messages
    629
    Reaction score
    243
    is it really an exploit? its just unfeasible to defend stuff youre not around to protect, in a game where offense vastly outscales defense =p
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor
    Some good points raised here.
    The issue for me is that your forced to have everything docked to your home-base when you log off, resulting in a crazy lag-mess if you have a substantially sized faction.
    If you have bases away from home you'll just log on one day to find nothing there, no matter how well defended it is.
    It just simply isn't fun, and there has yet to be a viable alternative to the current system.

    If you build a jumpgate network for players to use someone will rip it down for parts as well :/ I've long since stopped building those on mp servers.

    is it really an exploit? its just unfeasible to defend stuff youre not around to protect, in a game where offense vastly outscales defense =p
    The AI is pretty easy to exploit/work around so that might be what he ment.
     

    jorgekorke

    bottom text
    Joined
    Sep 6, 2013
    Messages
    642
    Reaction score
    157
    • Purchased!
    • Community Content - Bronze 1
    • Legacy Citizen 9
    Usually people just hide their stuff in far null sectors when they can't dock their things, mostly stuff over 50k mass which lags everything when close to a station entity.
     

    Treefolk

    The Clueless
    Joined
    Apr 4, 2017
    Messages
    20
    Reaction score
    9
    I know certain infamous factions like to hide all of their functional production, storage, ships, manufacturing, etc in dark space.
     

    Sachys

    Hermit.
    Joined
    Nov 30, 2015
    Messages
    646
    Reaction score
    315
    if a server allows docking to shops, make use of it. some servers have so many shops in the universe you can dock whole fleets in a system.
     
    Joined
    Nov 1, 2014
    Messages
    317
    Reaction score
    98
    • Legacy Citizen
    • Purchased!
    A friend of mine made a massive box on his home station out of plex-door so that he could build ships inside of it and have the ship protected without being docked.
    That is awesome. I am now imagining a one-sector-sized cube of plex door...
     
    Joined
    Feb 11, 2017
    Messages
    73
    Reaction score
    11
    I usually either dock all my ships to one that has a chain drive and blast halfway to the next Galaxy, or have a fleet of 10 large ships that complement each other set to defend or sentry. No homebases in site.
     
    Last edited:

    jorgekorke

    bottom text
    Joined
    Sep 6, 2013
    Messages
    642
    Reaction score
    157
    • Purchased!
    • Community Content - Bronze 1
    • Legacy Citizen 9
    or have a fleet of 10 large ships that complement each other set to defend or sentry. No homebases in site.
    Not having a homebase is a common thing, but beware that fleet AI do deactivate and get set to idle mode once the owner(player) logs out.

    That is awesome. I am now imagining a one-sector-sized cube of plex door...
    Sounds laggy and easily exploitable. Make a simple 1core1power1thrust, rush inside, hit so fast that the physics will glich, build inside, destroy/torch the ships.
     

    Ithirahad

    Arana'Aethi
    Joined
    Nov 14, 2013
    Messages
    4,150
    Reaction score
    1,329
    • Purchased!
    • Top Forum Contributor
    • Legacy Citizen 8
    Sounds laggy and easily exploitable. Make a simple 1core1power1thrust, rush inside, hit so fast that the physics will glich, build inside, destroy/torch the ships.
    "It's a trap!"

    This would be amusing, but it would definitely get incredibly laggy :|
     
    Joined
    Sep 5, 2013
    Messages
    527
    Reaction score
    109
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Community Content - Bronze 2
    • Purchased!
    is it really an exploit? its just unfeasible to defend stuff youre not around to protect, in a game where offense vastly outscales defense =p
    It wasn't meant in a negative context - simply that players, given the time to do so, will test the defenses of a base until they find a weakness they can exploit. It may be lack of turret coverage in a particular area, or a weakness to a certain type of weapon. Without any defending players to counter such attempts, PVP'ers have all the time in the world to figure out how to solve the puzzle.

    I've been observing this behavior a lot in Conan: Exiles lately. Bases don't have any form of invulnerability in that game. You have to rely on the sturdiness of the structure and the NPC's you have protecting it in your absence. NPC's are no match for players once they know the limitations of their AI, and a fortress is only as strong as its weakest link. My friends built a walled fort on top of a mesa and felt they had strong defenses for its entrance. In their absence, another group built a bridge from another nearby mesa over to their back wall and broke through. I shouldn't say "in their absence" because a player's avatar lies "sleeping" on the ground while the player is offline. Of the five friends I had playing the game, they have all quit after returning to the game each day and finding their looted base and corpses.
     
    Joined
    Jan 4, 2015
    Messages
    629
    Reaction score
    243
    It wasn't meant in a negative context - simply that players, given the time to do so, will test the defenses of a base until they find a weakness they can exploit. It may be lack of turret coverage in a particular area, or a weakness to a certain type of weapon. Without any defending players to counter such attempts, PVP'ers have all the time in the world to figure out how to solve the puzzle.

    I've been observing this behavior a lot in Conan: Exiles lately. Bases don't have any form of invulnerability in that game. You have to rely on the sturdiness of the structure and the NPC's you have protecting it in your absence. NPC's are no match for players once they know the limitations of their AI, and a fortress is only as strong as its weakest link. My friends built a walled fort on top of a mesa and felt they had strong defenses for its entrance. In their absence, another group built a bridge from another nearby mesa over to their back wall and broke through. I shouldn't say "in their absence" because a player's avatar lies "sleeping" on the ground while the player is offline. Of the five friends I had playing the game, they have all quit after returning to the game each day and finding their looted base and corpses.
    yeah seems to be a common theme in all of the full pvp open survival rust style games