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

[jayman38]

Define "secure."

7. adj. The entity's status of being able to be left alone and non-invulnerable for approximately 30 days on a public server not farther than 20 sector lengths from spawn, containing more than 100 non-invisible blocks, and remaining mostly intact, factioned correctly to the original owning faction, and functional throughout that time without admin commands, repair, or rebuilding.

 

[Kimiro]

7. adj. The entity's status of being able to be left alone and non-invulnerable for approximately 30 days on a public server not farther than 20 sector lengths from spawn, containing more than 100 non-invisible blocks, and remaining mostly intact, factioned correctly to the original owning faction, and functional throughout that time without admin commands, repair, or rebuilding.

Not sure if any station could survive 30 days unattended, IMHO. At least against players. Against AI I think the goal would be indefinite survival.

But that does raise another interesting aspect of securing a station: Distancing yourself from threats. Most people don't go too terribly far out of their way to find stuff unless everything nearby has been picked clean. For every system you jump away, you're increasing the potential search volume by an absolutely enormous number of sectors. 8 systems out from spawn, the search area is functionally 2,097,152 cubic sectors. 16 out is 16,777,216 cubic sectors. 32 systems is 134,217,728 cubic sectors (granted the areas near stars could largely be ignored but even then, you still might have to search them if your enemy was particularly crafty with a planet segment or asteroid). Every time you double your distance you octuple the search volume. Since systems aren't, by default, revealed, until the system your station is in is explored they won't know which system your outpost is in. And once they do, they still have to search every station within the system to find yours (which means derelicts and pirate stations and stuff are technically defensive features). That's actually part of the reason I never reveal my outposts existence except on a need to know basis. After all...

 

[Jojomo]

7. adj. The entity's status of being able to be left alone and non-invulnerable for approximately 30 days on a public server not farther than 20 sector lengths from spawn, containing more than 100 non-invisible blocks, and remaining mostly intact, factioned correctly to the original owning faction, and functional throughout that time without admin commands, repair, or rebuilding.

30 days is more extreme than scenarios I was thinking of (3 to 4 days) but it's up to individuals to decide what they consider secure and how secure they want to be.

 

[Gasboy]

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.

Except move.

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.

The thing is though, is that the griefer will win in the end. You will have to spend far more time building those defenses than a griefer ever will in taking them down. When you can easily build torpedoes, and create automated launchers for them, a griefer can sit back and enjoy the show. Once they've made a large enough hole, they can (relatively) safely move a bit closer and start picking apart the defenses in earnest. If you've ever played EVE Online, or a well populated PvP MineCraft server, you know that there are many griefers who do not get bored. True griefers want to mine the salt of your tears, and they will persist until they get what they want. Take it from someone who has been "that guy".

There's a balance between "good enough" defenses and the amount of time you have on hand. If you (and your faction) can't be online often enough, it doesn't matter how good your defenses are, people will wreck your base because you aren't there to actively prevent it. If this is the case, you're better off with a mobile option to allow you to secure a sector for the mining bonus, and go wreck the asteroids. Jump your mobile "station" out, and suck up the million credit loss of the station, when you have to leave. If it's still there when you go back, cool. If not, oh well.

If your faction is frequently online, then that's when you build more permanent options, because then the station only has to survive for a short period of time before someone logs on and comes to its rescue. That's when the extensive measures outlined in this thread will be most useful.
[doublepost=1486733272,1486732879][/doublepost]

Not sure if any station could survive 30 days unattended, IMHO. At least against players. Against AI I think the goal would be indefinite survival.

But that does raise another interesting aspect of securing a station: Distancing yourself from threats. Most people don't go too terribly far out of their way to find stuff unless everything nearby has been picked clean. For every system you jump away, you're increasing the potential search volume by an absolutely enormous number of sectors. 8 systems out from spawn, the search area is functionally 2,097,152 cubic sectors. 16 out is 16,777,216 cubic sectors. 32 systems is 134,217,728 cubic sectors (granted the areas near stars could largely be ignored but even then, you still might have to search them if your enemy was particularly crafty with a planet segment or asteroid). Every time you double your distance you octuple the search volume. Since systems aren't, by default, revealed, until the system your station is in is explored they won't know which system your outpost is in. And once they do, they still have to search every station within the system to find yours (which means derelicts and pirate stations and stuff are technically defensive features). That's actually part of the reason I never reveal my outposts existence except on a need to know basis. After all...

I was wondering when this meme would make it here. XD

As long as you don't claim the system, it will be very hard for people to find you. But an outpost (any base that isn't your homebase) isn't useful unless you're claiming the system to get the mining bonus. If you're just in there to grab some quick resources, you don't need the base. If you need a ton of resources, then you need the base to claim the sector. Your randomly assigned colour will appear on the galactic map.

THOUGH! You can make use of neutral faction's territory for a slightly better mining rate. Then you can create a base and not claim the system.

 

[Kimiro]

I was wondering when this meme would make it here. XD

As long as you don't claim the system, it will be very hard for people to find you. But an outpost (any base that isn't your homebase) isn't useful unless you're claiming the system to get the mining bonus. If you're just in there to grab some quick resources, you don't need the base. If you need a ton of resources, then you need the base to claim the sector. Your randomly assigned colour will appear on the galactic map.

THOUGH! You can make use of neutral faction's territory for a slightly better mining rate. Then you can create a base and not claim the system.

Of course... Nothing stopping you from claiming the system only when you're online. There is a revoke button. ;3
And I am the Lord of the Memes.

 

[nightrune]

I'm at work so can't answer this for myself right now:

I've recently been working on a alloy mesh "noise cloud" (described a few posts up) to surround stations with, that makes flying up to the station's hull slow/difficult or impossible (depending on your size). It's 10k alloy mesh blocks in a 100^3 volume, arranged semi-randomly.

I combine this with area trigger nets in the cloud, and pulse/pulse weapons inside the station hull, to unlcloak cloaker-pokers (and destroy their warheads), or kill astronauts.
The point of the noise cloud is just to ensure that an enemy can't clip through the area trigger net by flying at high speed.

But a bug report I just read about activating warp gates at very high speed makes me wonder if I'm worrying about the no-clipping issue for no good reason, and that the area trigger net won't be able to be avoided.
Is this correct, or not?

Even if it's not, I just realised that area triggers are so cheap I could build the entire noise cloud with them, and no tangible blocks at all, and probably still achieve the desired result...

To me this is just calling for a new proximity sensor block, and would be less computationally intensive.

 

[Jojomo]

The thing is though, is that the griefer will win in the end. You will have to spend far more time building those defenses than a griefer ever will in taking them down. When you can easily build torpedoes, and create automated launchers for them, a griefer can sit back and enjoy the show. Once they've made a large enough hole, they can (relatively) safely move a bit closer and start picking apart the defenses in earnest. If you've ever played EVE Online, or a well populated PvP MineCraft server, you know that there are many griefers who do not get bored. True griefers want to mine the salt of your tears, and they will persist until they get what they want. Take it from someone who has been "that guy".

Actually I think a griefer will have to spend more time taking out the defences I've proposed in this thread that you'd have to spend putting them up (templates).

No-one's suggesting that there's an answer that will confer invulnerability. Of course with enough time, and enough persistence, any defence could be gotten through. The point is to create defences that are good enough for practical purposes (which will vary with who's evaluating it).

There's a balance between "good enough" defenses and the amount of time you have on hand. If you (and your faction) can't be online often enough, it doesn't matter how good your defenses are, people will wreck your base because you aren't there to actively prevent it. If this is the case, you're better off with a mobile option to allow you to secure a sector for the mining bonus, and go wreck the asteroids. Jump your mobile "station" out, and suck up the million credit loss of the station, when you have to leave. If it's still there when you go back, cool. If not, oh well.

If your faction is frequently online, then that's when you build more permanent options, because then the station only has to survive for a short period of time before someone logs on and comes to its rescue. That's when the extensive measures outlined in this thread will be most useful.
[doublepost=1486733272,1486732879][/doublepost]

That doesn't cut it when you're trying to carve out a "permanent" territory (for FP income, or whatever). It seems to me that the devs and many players see the late stages of the game as RTS-like, where factions carve out empires and war with each other on a large scale. Only hanging on to sectors long enough to mine them out isn't going to be good enough for that.

 

[Gasboy]

That doesn't cut it when you're trying to carve out a "permanent" territory (for FP income, or whatever). It seems to me that the devs and many players see the late stages of the game as RTS-like, where factions carve out empires and war with each other on a large scale. Only hanging on to sectors long enough to mine them out isn't going to be good enough for that.

True, if you want to keep it. But there are times when it is beneficial to be a locust and clear out a system. If you can manage to do that, your opponents can't have those resources. If you mine out territory your opponents are considering, then they may end up taking a system and not getting much benefit from it (aside from points earned for holding it).

You know, there's been a lot of theorycrafting done here. It might help everyone interested if we put some of the theories to work.

 

[NeonSturm]

Surround stations with single blocks (cheap ones), widely spaced, in a semi-random pattern. For example a single block in every 10^3 of empty space (and not lined up in nice straight rows).
Laying this 100m deep around a station would be a nightmare to try and fly through, or destroy (it would have the station's massive shield protection).

But an intelligent attackers would use these blocks to attack your shields from a greater distance.
I would use invisible blocks (deactivated force-fields) which activate when touched and use different shield entities for 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.

Nice one

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.

Will change if someone makes a wiki entry and copy+pasteable content for it.

'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...

The definition of secure is broad, but the OP narrowed it by providing examples of what he meant with it.
[doublepost=1487023024][/doublepost]

Not sure if any station could survive 30 days unattended, IMHO. At least against players. Against AI I think the goal would be indefinite survival.

But that does raise another interesting aspect of securing a station: Distancing yourself from threats. Most people don't go too terribly far out of their way to find stuff unless everything nearby has been picked clean. For every system you jump away, you're increasing the potential search volume by an absolutely enormous number of sectors. 8 systems out from spawn, the search area is functionally 2,097,152 cubic sectors. 16 out is 16,777,216 cubic sectors. 32 systems is 134,217,728 cubic sectors (granted the areas near stars could largely be ignored but even then, you still might have to search them if your enemy was particularly crafty with a planet segment or asteroid). Every time you double your distance you octuple the search volume. Since systems aren't, by default, revealed, until the system your station is in is explored they won't know which system your outpost is in. And once they do, they still have to search every station within the system to find yours (which means derelicts and pirate stations and stuff are technically defensive features). That's actually part of the reason I never reveal my outposts existence except on a need to know basis. After all...

Don't place your station on "+100 0 0" lol
And start to count systems not sectors (scan range is systems or not?)
[doublepost=1487023265][/doublepost]

THOUGH! You can make use of neutral faction's territory for a slightly better mining rate. Then you can create a base and not claim the system.

Good point

​

Ok, after reading this thread, this is how I would make it:

1. detection gate box
   
2. invisible trigger cloud + scatter beams to decloak
   
3. sweeper plates rotating around the station axis
   
4. counter-rotating sweeper plates
   
5. cheap scaffold plate barrier. Use rails to replace damaged ones
   • perhaps push weapons, pickup rails and a shipyard can produce them automatically?
6. satellites instead of turrets
   • turrets on rails orbiting your station providing uneasy targets and give them time to recover shields + reload alpha-weapons behind your station.

What do you think?​

 

[StarWars1981]

Interesting question - do heatseekers currently actually respect a cloaked entity's state as cloaked?

Other than that just have dozens of full-effect light heatseekers flying everywhere on activation of some block. Anybody decloaks and salvo #2 (automatic timer) kills them. Reactivating the block will cause additional salvos.