NASS Raider Suppression Mini-Event

    MossyStone48

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    In the coming week North American Sandbox Servers plans to host the first of possibly many attacks of raider stations. A hostile base will be somewhat randomly selected and players will be given the chance to pilot fighters to clear out the contacts in that sector.

    Dates and details will appear here soonish. We're in the middle of another fun project already in progress :3
     
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    You state that players will pilot fighters. Are you distributing the ships, or am I misunderstood?
     

    MossyStone48

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    yes. the capship we'll be using will have fighters onboard they can use but not keep.
     

    MossyStone48

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    For those still watching I have a small tidbit. Still no date but I am building the frigate-ish sized carrier that will serve as the raid suppression flagship. Depending on how many users show up I may spawn more form a fleet and move them into position hoping the AI doesn't go Coo-coo for fruit loops and fruity pebbles all over the server. That'd be "GRRRRRand".


    EDIT: Progress! The plexdoors are installed but left open so you can peek at the goods.
     
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    Az14el

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    *Frigate-sh by Games-Workshop standards
    looking awesome now War :)
     

    MossyStone48

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    She's docked at Spawn for anyone wanting a build mode peek.


    <Copied from what will be the CC entry, pending approval from Darknassius.>
    The internal dock spaces (of which there are ten) are meant for ships that fit within a sixty by sixty by thirty area. About the size of something I'd label a corvette. As of right now the SRSSC "Redemption" is carrying all ten fighters. Four medium fighters, four heavy fighters and two bombers. All designed by darknassius. She also has twelve turrets. Six are OmniTurrets designed that act as Point Defense, specifically anti-missile. By contrast the other six turrets are low power lock-on missiles. The missiles can destroy smaller craft but are meant as a fighter deterrent.

    The ship has 3 logical lifts, two internally docked generators, a pair of barracks with squad meeting areas. There's a fairly unique gravity flip system to access the fighters on the lower half of the ship. Dual jump drives, a speedy engine that eats power but gets her moving fast. A missile based main gun using Ion and Damage Pulse slaves. Internals are nearly done to the point of functional. "Pretty" decor might come later. Wedges and the like are going in already. Ships got a single starboard dock and a port docking collar. Above you see the Redemption docked to NASS Spawn on her port side, leaving the starboard port open for another ship to dock to.

    I do plan on adding teleporters for boarding the fighters and additional combat vessel essentials like scanner and jammer systems. My hope is that the fighters will do most of the hitting against hostile bases and their fighter screen. But pilots in trouble can double back and let the turrets take out any tailing missiles and distract pursuers. We could also place a marine lander on the open starboard dock in hopes of boarding a base. No reason to yet but who knows. Defender NPCs might become a thing and capturing a base in overheat might have perks in the future.
     
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    MossyStone48

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    Hit a slight snag when it came time to test how well a player could use the ship facilities. It feels like an ALL-OR-NOTHING situation where I can't secure parts of the ship without building walls everywhere or staying in the shipcore the entire time which is BORING.

    The fighters all still need systems too. Well, except the medium. I got that done last night :3

    Hopefully I can square away the permissions issues so that anyone can jump into the Redemption and pick a fighter during the event.

    Edit: The roadblock continues.

    What I need:
    Total access for all users to all needed facilities on board the Redemption.
    Secure the doors that lead to the Redemption's shipcore room.
    A way to let the users take a fighter but not have access to its build mode.

    What I can do now:
    Give access to ship facilities.
    Keep curious hands out of my control room.
    Fighters currently unusable by non-faction players.

    Everything that needs a public permission module has one with the exception of a few grav blocks. Easily fixed. As far as I know and experimented with there's not functioning way to loan someone a ship with build mode off. And if the ship is neutral all doors can be opened.

    There's prolly more to it but my brain just decided to become mush.
     
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    Crashmaster

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    I know very little about the faction permission mechanics and only vaguely grasp half the problem but would making the carrier ship neutral and having the secure core room doors be a small docked, faction-ed ship work?
     
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    You could simply make it one of the rules that you are either not allowed to modify your fighter. Or alternatively, that are not allowed to remove anything from the fighter or make major additions to it (i.e. you would be allowed to replace lost blocks and possibly make minor adjustments to the design such as adding a small handful of gun blocks or reallocating them to different computers to change your gun's fire rate and traits). Perhaps with the understanding that damaged/modified fighters may be replaced with stock versions at your discretion.

    Those who break the rules or bend them too much could be punished in context, such as taking away fighter priviledges if not outright kicking them from the squadron (and perhaps even considering them enemies). If they were to play along with the setting otherwise, they may could be allowed to remain on the server as a "wanted criminal" or a mercenary or something, but if they went too out of control (building ships larger than a fighter or otherwise being disruptive to the setting) then banning is always an option.

    A question though:
    If we acquire enough blocks through loot/etc, would we potentially be permitted to build a custom fighter? From the setting so far, it seems like we should definitely not go trying to build big things, but since you mention loot the possibility of getting enough to build a small vessel seems like it would be possible. And if we manage to capture a pirate base, we could have some more space to park fighters, so we could have some space to keep said custom fighters (in this case, you may wish to put some permission models in the pirate base so that when captured it functions as you want it to when under our fleet's control).
     

    MossyStone48

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    I'm trying to avoid goofy dock stuff. There's already 12 turret docks, 3 lift rails, 1 port side docker, 1 starboard side rail dock plus 10 more rail docks for all the ships and 2 more rail docks for 2 internal generators.

    Any more docks and I'll need a Doc with a degree in head shrinking and a magical prescription pad.

    Too many rules spoil the soup. I'm trying to keep as much of this open as possible. Meanwhile I'm automating anything I can. We do want to reduce reliance on the honour system. Let's not tempt anyone into violating the Admin trust.

    I considered a custom fighter setup but ruled it out as being possibly breaking. Also a good reason to have build mode disabled. Rewards should be from your loots not pulling part your fighter and logging out before you get called on it. Plus the last thing we need is someone's fighter growing a giant heatseeker missile array and supporting generator. The lag alone would be troublesome but heatseekers kill anything with an engine heat signature. Friend or foe.

    One of the ideas behind this event is more about improving and honing ACM. Or SCM I suppose. Rather than testing anyone's building skills. It just feels like too few players know how to dogfight in space.
     
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    Fair enough. I've only gotten back to the game recently, so I haven't gotten around to building too much in the way of vessels yet (I seem to have lost my old ones, and they would be a pain to update anyway). At present, I basically have a fighter I rebuilt off a screenshot of one of my old vessels, and a new, larger successor to it (they are still smaller than the "fighters" it looks like we will be using though), and an amusing miner ship that is covered in trees. Well, that and a couple square shooting targets for testing weapons on.

    Just to warn you, regardless of rules I would probably at least want to place a camera block someplace, unless they are already set up pretty well. Sometimes, a design is a bit awkward in how the maker chose to place them (if half or more of the screen is covered by opaque ship parts even when undamaged, its not a good camera spot). Its fine if visibility issues may occur AFTER taking damage, but when the ship is still undamaged it should be reasonable easy to see things. Especially if any of the pirate designs have a radar jammer.