Moving a Space Station.

[Slyke]

You should be able to move space stations in a kind of warp drive. The cost of moving a station is that you give it some co-ords of a system and it will appear up anywhere in, or around that system (Up to 3 sectors away).

That is, unless we plan to give station thrusters in the futuer :D.

 

[Arclight]

I feel this would be a good use for tractor beams. In this way, ships could tow other ships. As a defense (so people cant just move your station around when you\'re offline) you can only tow a ship that has its shields down.

I wouldn\'t mind giving a station thrusters, but I feel that they should be a nerfed version of ship engines, so people won\'t have their base zipping all over the galaxy. Processing stations with factories shouldn\'t be able to fly to a planet easily and mine it out. I like that you currently need to take your ships out on mining trips to get resources and then bring them back to your base.

 

[Carnanty]

I really like Arclight\'s idea, having ships dedigned (Sassive amounts of thrust power) to move a station, tug ships would kinda be born. Your faction could have several tug ships, and an attacking faction could attack and use their tug ships once ur stations shoulds are down. I also think there shoudl be tug ports kinda like docking ports were u tug from that block and the enhancers would aid in movement by say 5% speed each block.

Having a station with thrusters would kidna defeat the pupose of a station, a station that can move from planet to planet or system to system un-aided wouldnt be a station to me.

 

[Dead_videos]

I can\'t think of a single space station in any kind of sci fi or even IRL that doesn\'t have some form of maneuvering thrusters to you know, not fall into black holes or lose orbit. The way i figure it, maybe there could be a block that is a special thruster for stations only, no matter how many you have their max speed is severely limited say 5 total thrust. so even if your station is all station thrusters it can only move at 5 km/h however each individual thruster is rather powerful so you overall need less than say a ship of equal size to move at that max speed.



Tugs are also a great idea, but again this should be limited otherwise we\'re going to have dreadnaughts towing stations into battle. i\'d suggest that a tug ship once it attaches to a space station can have no shields whatsoever so that even a tiny little fighter is a massive threat to it. and your discouraged from towing stations around to fight things. And again the max speed of a station should be limited to 5, maybe 10 with tugs.

 

[Carnanty]

Yeah i think it was kidna idoitic to say no thrusters at all, i like the idea of menuevering thrusters for short range travel.

I like the tug idea but it wouldnt keep ppl from bringing a station into the same sec as another station, the tug could pull it close and the tug dies but the station is still near the other station, they would have to put restrictions saying if there is a station in this sec, u cannot tug into that sec and it will give u a warning and prevent u from moving into that sec with a tug.

 

[Dead_videos]

Well that sort of where scouts and such come in, if a faction is protecting somewhere they want to keep safe they should have scouts flying about patrolling if these scouts don\'t see a station coming so they can properly prepare an answer to having a station very slowly making its way towards another station that\'s their fault. honestly i\'d love to see a station on station fight with dozens of small ships buzzing about on either side.



wait. can player owned stations be damaged? i\'ve seen some confusion on that topic and i never saw a real answer to it.

 

[Arclight]

Thanks for pointing out that issue, stations that are heavily armed and have tons of shielding shouldn\'t be a part of a battle unless the battle actually occurs next to them. We can make carrier ships, so I see no reason to have a station enter a battle unless that station is being attacked. Speed caps on stations make a lot of sense.

Tugging should also be capped out, as in a tractor beam can only pull a station at a maximum speed, no matter how many tractor blocks you have. Mass could factor into it still, so a station with 1k mass would need 10 tractor blocks to move it at a rate of 1 km an hour. A station with 2k mass would need double the tractor beams to move it at 1 km an hour.

This will make moving stations a serious effort.

I support forcing stations to power down shields while moving, whether being tugged or using engines.

Edit:

Should Tug Ships be required to take down shields to use their tractor beams as well?

 

[Dead_videos]

Tug ships must absolutely be required to take down their shields my original concern was in fact that without that we\'d end up with invincible titans and dreadnoughts towing absolutely massive stations into battle. but without their shields they would be massively easy to take down with missiles or even just AMC\'s on smaller ships.

 

[Slyke]

All these ideas are great! I don\'t mind if any of these are implimented.

 

[Keon]

The Plex Undeathinator and the lifter. Can factory modules be placed on a ship? I haven\'t tried it.

 

[lupoCani]

I think I more support the jump-drive alternative. A slow charge-up and huge energy requirements would remove most of the tactical issues, and if you try to jump into an already occupied sector, it simply doesn\'t work. If you want to make the process really bulky, you could make some form of reciever structure required at the destination.

 

[Bannta]

I believe there should be two parts to moving a station.

1) I should be a away to turn off the power on the station. Once the station is powered down (thus simulating whatever keeps a station from moving in space) than it can be pulled or moved. Also this makes the station vulnerable to attack and such.

2) the ship moving the station must be able to counter it\'s mass and the station combined mass...also the thrust must not exceed, say 5 or 10 (because a station is not designed to move structurally. If the station exceed the speed it starts taking damage. Along all the block in the direction of flight.

--How the ship moves the station could be as simple as building a big loop structure to ring around the station to pull or push while cupping your ship in the nooked out area of the stations.



Once we are able to move station it will help with using blueprints to save them and spawn them. When a station is spawned it is naturally turned off.

 

[Ithirahad]

Stations should be movable, just like ships (But far more slowly.) however there shouldn\'t be a \"flight mode\" for them. Rather, some kind of thruster console block should be used. It would open a half-screen GUI with little thrust arrows, and you could move the station - at about 5-15 km/h - that way. It should also be possible to have a station autonav to new coordinates. You couldn\'t turn, however.

 

[NeonSturm]

Stations are stationary. That is what makes a station a station.

I am fine with a gravity anchor which makes a ship being a station/stationary, but then you need to disable all station-stuff while in ship-mode.



But I would prefer station-shields and station-hulls with more efficiency per cost but a huge ammount of mass to be the limiting factor.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Should have physics like asteriods do, get hit with a mothership? To the sun you go.



By themselves, they should be able to stop and maybe turn very slowly only. But this is why I support tractor beams: for manuvering your station you\'ll need them.

 

[NeonSturm]

They should not turn, just move/strafe.

Enabling physics should depend on server settings, as it affects performance.

Performance is the key word here.

Space stations also server as a land mark. Turning them would make orientation worse.

 

[Zovc]

How about, a station can only move if no turrets, no factory, and amax speed of 5% server max speed, and when moving cant move with shields, and can not be ahome base. I also support the only strafing.the reason for no turrets, is so you are vulnerble moving

 

[Bannta]

If we go with the idea that Stations are stationary then let make it a admin command

/move_object x,y,z

Then admins would be able to move station and make it work for planets and astroids to boot.

 

[awesome270]

u could always use /change_sector 2 2 2 (or whatever else) to move stations. just be in the station or have someone in it that can be tped with the station/ ship/ planet. anything works really