The Station Alternative to overheating: MELTDOWN

[Markus_McCloud]

Markus_McCloud once again. So I've read this thread and thought a bit about Pirate space stations. They may be fun to destroy as well as a good way to beta-test a starship before releasing it to the Dock, but there's not much of a reward for those who actively seek and destroy them. Sure, the station inevitably calls for backup, and they have loot, but that giant satellite that should be loaded with goods? Nothing but scrap...

What I am proposing is a way to make sure pirate-hunters don't leave empty-handed. I propose a new game mechanic called meltdown.

What is "meltdown"?

Meltdown is the alternative to the already implemented overheating system, except it's specific to space stations; a station enters meltdown when it reaches a certain threshold of damage.

What make it different from overheating?

Meltdown differs from overheating in that it's much more violent. Instead of just slowly decaying and disappearing, after the timer runs out, the station flat-out explodes. Also, unlike a decaying station, during meltdown, the station can be salvaged as blocks instead of scrap. That's right, no more endless heaps of Scrap Alloy!

What happens during meltdown?

At the very start of meltdown:

• The HUD indicator for the station in question changes from its normal color (red for hostile, green for friendly, etc.) to a bright orange. The indicator also has the word MELTDOWN and a timer next to it (much like overheating entities)
• All docked entities with active BOBBY AIs (such as turrets and drones) will immediately undock and will try to fly out of the blast radius. (anything without a BOBBY AI will stay docked)
• Speaking of which, any AI driven ship (such as Pirates) would evacuate as well.
• If your faction owns the station, you will get an alert warning you that your station is about to self-destruct.

During meltdown:

• After half the allotted meltdown time has passed, randomly-selected system blocks (power, shield, etc) will start to explode like Warheads.
• When the meltdown time has dropped even lower, if you're still within the blast radius, you will get an alert warning you that the systems are going critical.

The explosion:

• The primary blast radius scales with the total mass of the station. Likewise, the damage of the explosion scales to the amount of power systems that the station possessed at 100% health.
• Any systems yet to be destroyed during meltdown would now explode, leaving behind mostly hull and decorative bits.

The aftermath:

• At this point, the station would now be mostly demolished.
• At the center of the wreckage would be a bunch of item drops, similar to a destroyed Pirate ship.
• The station is now marked as "decayed".

So what?

Put simply, this would revolutionize the whole resource gathering aspect of the game! Attacking Pirates would become much more profitable; better yet, you could basically become a Pirate yourself! Hardcore PVP would be completely rewritten! Battle-miners can expand their diet from devouring asteroids and planets to devouring space stations! People might start creating red-alert logic based on this system!

Could you give me an example?
Gladly! Let's say there are two stations. For the sake of simplicity, let's call them "Dynamo" and "Fortress".

--Dynamo--
Mass: Relatively small
Power Generation: Insanely high
Exterior: Mostly unarmored hull
Docked: A couple of small drones

--Fortress--
Mass: Huge
Power Generation: Just barely enough for its systems
Exterior: Almost entirely Advanced Armor
Docked: Some heavy defense turrets and a hangar door

Both take severe damage and are now melting down.

Dynamo is a small station; thus, the blast radius from the explosion is actually pretty minuscule. However, because the station generated so much power, any ships within the small blast radius would likely be crippled. if not completely obliterated! Fortress is the complete opposite; while the explosion would be MASSIVE (possibly creeping into other sectors), the damage from the explosion would only be a threat to smaller, weaker ships.

Because Dynamo was made of such weak material, the post-explosion wreckage would most likely be minimal. Most of it would be destroyed when the systems start to explode. Fortress, however, would be somewhat intact, considering it didn't have that many systems to explode and it was mostly Advanced Armor.

The drones docked to Dynamo were easily able to escape the explosions, both because of its small size and because they were full ships with working thrusters. The turrets docked to Fortress were not so lucky. They were able to undock, but they lacked the thrusters needed to escape the explosion. The door remained in place as the station went to pieces.

I don't like certain aspects of this. Can I change it to suit my needs?

Absolutely! Notice how I didn't mention any specific numbers? That's because I want this to be adjustable and configurable. Mainly, I would like to see Schine implement options for enabling/disabling meltdown, resizing explosions, adjusting explosion damage, adjusting meltdown time, etc.

It's just a suggestion, and I haven't really ironed out all the details, and as much as I want to, I can't just go out and test my ideas in-game. Besides all that, Schine has the final say. I just wanted to share some ideas on how to incentivize attacking Pirate stations. Please tell me what you think, and if you have any further questions, feel free to ask me in the comments!

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I made this suggestion a wee while back if you're interested.
Debris Entity
[doublepost=1491451912,1491451832][/doublepost]Oh I forgot to mentioned, there are a bunch of great suggestions around the scrap issues people have.

 

[splatthecat]

In principle it sounds like a good idea but I have a couple of thoughts/concerns.

Are pirates as we know them likely to remain in the game? They seem outside of the NPC realms which may sound right but I don't quite see it. Perhaps the idea is to keep them as they are or maybe removed from the game completely?

For me, pirate stations should have "fixed" assets. Each station allocated a number of fighters that can be repaired/replaced over time. These are the fighters that are called in by a station that is being attacked. The further away the local station is, the longer it takes. A bravery factor could also dictate the chance of whether they will run away at the critical moment or have a gung ho, do or die attitude towards their attackers.

Stations should absolutely have their own loot. Some of this should be allowed to float in space but some high value items should perhaps remain in the storage chests on the station and you have to physically find them. Loot should also include weapons, tools and cash.

I think for pure game mechanics the blast radius should be confined to the sector but there is an in game feature that could be applied that could make it cross sector boundaries, sun damage areas. The station would temporarily behave like a sun and cause damage like one. After x seconds, this switches off leaving the remaining pieces as loot for another fixed period of time.

It sounds like a fun and spectacular idea and makes pirate station raids all the more worthwhile.

 

[NeonSturm]

I really like it, BUT not for all stations.

It's nice to blow up pirate stations near your faction HB (secure space), but pirates should not be driven out of the universe by players hunting stations for profit.

EDIT: Pirates should spawn outside faction territories.

The further away from faction territory you are, the stronger they could get.

Factions could have a direction of influence against pirates and the length, number and thickness distribution of influence depends on faction characteristics.​

 

[Dire Venom]

Intersting idea, all you need is pull turrets attachted to your station + a jump drive jammer :3
Of course, there should definitely be an option for the a player to initiate this at will, and for it to happen to ships as well :3

 

[splatthecat]

Pirate ships could randomly spawn into systems where pirate stations = 0 making it important that you make regular sweeps?

All of the old default stations in the game need updating. If they are going to remain in the game maybe these can be modernised and maybe another competition run for new stations? A year ago I would run in fear from an Alpha pirate station, these days providing you have an AMS turret and can keep the power regeneration down you are safe from the station at least.

Again, using a game mechanic, maybe the Pirates could be an actual NPC faction that is galaxy wide but doesn't claim systems? There could be patrols, mining fleets and so on? It is probably possible with little or no tweaks from the current settings.

 

[jayman38]

I want to agree with this suggestion. I really do. It matches so much Scifi media. However, I'm attached to the idea of specific systems exploding for good reason. Example: I would prefer if all power blocks on a station acted explosively when hit. I feel the same way towards ships, but I understand the need for the game to "clear" the field of excess ships.

 

[GRHayes]

I want to agree with this suggestion. I really do. It matches so much Scifi media. However, I'm attached to the idea of specific systems exploding for good reason. Example: I would prefer if all power blocks on a station acted explosively when hit. I feel the same way towards ships, but I understand the need for the game to "clear" the field of excess ships.

I'm sort of with you on this but a bit more specific. I would agree to say fuel being hit more so than a power block. Be that fuel chemical or nuclear... I would also go along with ammo types being explosive.

I know people think of nuclear plants blowing up like Chernobyl, Fukishima. Those are however steam explosions caused because of the power going off line and not having anyway to remove the heat because the pumps aren't running on the primary.

A fusion based reactor system if you did damage to it it would primarily shut down and stop running. It won't keep generating more and more heat like a fission reactor. See the issue is with a fission reactor even after the control rods drop you have a temporary spike in reaction because the water displacement and a number of other stuff. The core still has a lot of heat in it that needs to be dissipated if it isn't it boils the water causing a steam explosion. Fusion won't do the same.

We also had an exploding power source Auxiliary power. You are free to use. It that or you could just go and put warheads through out your power system and reward the people shooting at you. In truth. Most explosions in space are less damaging in many instance than if they happen on earth. They don't have atmospheric pressure to push back against. Fire doesn't do as much secondary damage...

If a race was at the technological level to be this much in space most likely their damage control and repair systems would be vastly better than what we have in this game.

That said I wouldn't mind having various systems have explosion and so on if the repairs didn't involve stupid reboots and stuff that is entirely unrealistic.

 

[NeonSturm]

That said I wouldn't mind having various systems have explosion and so on if the repairs didn't involve stupid reboots and stuff that is entirely unrealistic.

But what if we had perfect alchemy? Instant repair of hulls during combat, shields which syphon energy from attacking weapons, etc?
We couldn't combat at all lol.

 

[GRHayes]

But what if we had perfect alchemy? Instant repair of hulls during combat, shields which syphon energy from attacking weapons, etc?
We couldn't combat at all lol.

Yep, it would be excessive and thus wreck the game. Not being able to do damage control on a ship escapes all logic and also doesn't help the game.
While some science fiction can be a bonus to a game going to far with anything or simply having something because you don't have a better idea usually works against the games enjoyment.

 

[NeonSturm]

While some science fiction can be a bonus to a game going to far with anything or simply having something because you don't have a better idea usually works against the games enjoyment.

But if we invent 3D-printers and real-time debris-collection or magnetic-armour-fluid for real, we might need to dumb-it-down again.
Fluids and gases may evaporate, but even evaporated they can still be placed between the ship and attacker.

Like programming a medieval game for enjoying the 21st-century-born.​

 

[GRHayes]

But if we invent 3D-printers and real-time debris-collection or magnetic-armour-fluid for real, we might need to dumb-it-down again.
Fluids and gases may evaporate, but even evaporated they can still be placed between the ship and attacker.

Like programming a medieval game for enjoying the 21st-century-born.​

Not trying to be rude. I am kind of missing your point on this one.
We have 3D printers far better than most people even know about. We actually have collected particles using a laser beam. Used for upper atmospheric sampling. It was done at LLNL. Ferro Fluids and shear thickening fluids both exist.
In short this game is actually running behind modern science and what we can do today.
Just look at common tech like IFF and radars and air craft transponders and so on also.

Technically we have the science we could pull asteroids into a orbit equal to that of earths and mine them. We could do a lot more in short than we are doing. Why aren't well this entire nation and industry is generally ran by profit not what we can or should be doing.

An Allen Bradley PLC can handle something like a 150,000 IO controls of various types to control robots to vehicles to entire factories that need automating. HMI systems for interfacing with it is a touch display and you technically could set it up to accept voice commands. They have fault redundancy back up processor systems and so on.
Our nuclear weapons technology is to such a states as we got a nick name of dial a nuke because we can pretty much set it to what yield we want. When asked if we could build a nuke to disintegrate a in coming asteroid the military replied no problem. The reason it wasn't done is they didn't want to risk the potential of it falling back o earth or someone using it for something else. The yield they where looking for was 90,000+ Megatons not Kilotons.

Another graphene heard of it? Hell this is something you can actually make yourself.
Advancements in capacitor technology where they probably with in ten years replace batteries.
While batteries have gotten better they still require acids to work and they can't act as a capacitor however a capacitor can be used like a battery especially the new ones that can hold much larger charges and for far longer times.

Anyway you can write a book on the new advancements in tech which exceed what is shown in this and most video games and the movies.

 

[NeonSturm]

Anyway you can write a book on the new advancements in tech which exceed what is shown in this and most video games and the movies.

Yes.
I think a lot how you could stop "these control-freaks". I want my fully customizable 3D-printed input hardware which I can repair myself.

With extra keys for custom hotkeys and re-purposed CAPS_LOCK.
I think about how to turn the upper/lower 2 rows of my old keyboard so that keys can be pressed without replacing your finger + 4 keys for each thumb. I would divide the keyboard in 2 halves and place them on top of 2 mouses if a game could support that (Robocraft with vehicle+aim).

​

But back-to-topic, I think that the pirates should have strongholds, similar to a pirate-faction space which regenerates based on surrounding factions.

Pirates could have ship-preferences based on government-type (Anarchy, Imperial, etc) of adjacent factions.
Each blueprint could either suggest or suppress a certain other blueprint/category with a strength between 0% and 100%.

Total suggestion / suppression determines then which blueprints/fleets are spawned next.
Different fleets could weight odds based on suggestion / suppression toward each other, as well as reputation and previous results of setups.
​

As pirate stations naturally draw attention of governments, pirates mostly build larger ones when they have more ships around.

If they are near Imperium-factions, they could have small cheap bases and get a single stronghold to spawn larger ships.
There is no glory/honour in destroying such a station and also they are influenced by the Imp's mind-set for a central station.

Near Technological but peaceful factions, they would build well-built bases, but probably no single stronghold as it isn't required much.

Near Washington-DC-Factions they would build a few large specialized stations and carriers with unmanned drones, as they see their world.
​

They would probably use the melt-down as a weapon to kill attack forces which their ships cannot beat.

"You can kill our station, but prepare to lose your own fleet."
They'd say: "We rather die than giving it to you".
He Demolished His House Just Before the Bank Could Take it Away - A Truck Delievered the Remains in Front of the Bank | Humans Are Free

 

[Edymnion]

Well, a little history, stations used to be salvageable for their blocks.

It was horribly unbalanced because of how EASY those stations are to take out if you know what you're doing. All you had to do was cut out their faction block and you'd be done, which left you with instant access to tens of thousands of shields, heavy armor, etc.

It was changed to scrap precisely because taking one down was an instant-win button for the game.

 

[Markus_McCloud]

The station would temporarily behave like a sun and cause damage like one.

My thoughts exactly! no need to reinvent the wheel, amirite?

I really like it, BUT not for all stations

I had some config options planned for that:
PirateStationsMineable = true //Set to false to make destroyed Pirate bases yield scrap
OtherStationsMineable = false //Set to true to make destroyed non-Pirate stations yield blocks

Again, I'm just kind of spit-balling here. If I was a better programmer (and if Schine would make StarMade easier to mod), I'd create a mod for this, test it out, balance it, etc., but learning how to code at that level will take me a while.

 

[NeonSturm]

Again, I'm just kind of spit-balling here. If I was a better programmer (and if Schine would make StarMade easier to mod), I'd create a mod for this, test it out, balance it, etc., but learning how to code at that level will take me a while.

All answers here:

Perfect Planet solution | Seed of Andromeda Forums
Just check out sacret geometry and shaders.
Then try to program collision matching rendering and you can use graphic cards for collision-checks on spherical bump-maps.
Collision+Rendering+BlockData = A game where you can crash ships.
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1 light second of space = 1 second of time.

Earth travels with 100'000 km/h toward Vega afaik - that's 1/4 the speed of light? Is that causing the gravity-effect?
Which means that our cars all already go at 1/4 the speed of light while standing still, unless gravity cancels that effects.
In Dr.Who, the 8th Doctor and 1st or 2nd serie the movie says that the Doctor can feel Earth traveling. But I like the 11th the most.
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