Stations in space

Sorry for my recent lack of activity. I've been working full time(but this is my last week) and I'm usually too tired to work on the map when I get home. Let's talk about my new suggestion.

I've talked about this in other places before, but I thought it warranted its own thread. I think there should be stations in the game.

Why?

* It'll give players something to fight about

* It'll add another element to the game

How? Well I just have some random ideas. I'll just go through them in some kind of incoherent manner and then you can read it and comment on what parts you like and what you don't like.

Should the player be able to build the structures? It'll let the teams create some kind of small base. I don't think we want to give them the ability to build stationary defense as it might easily lead to a boring stalling game. Maybe there should be neutral stations as well that gives some kind of bonus? How would you create the stations? We've discussed launching it as a missile(in a specific station missile bay, kind of). The easiest way would be to make it an item that you can use if you load it into a smaller ship.

Ideas for stations:

* Radar station: works like the radar tower. Reveals ships that come close as a red dot on the map. Enemies can see the range of the radar station.

* Repair station: repairs nearby ships. It might make too much of a defender's advantage and encourage turtling. Maybe it would work if you can't get repaired if you got damaged in the last minute or so.

* Mining stations: how would they work? The cargo drones automatically goes to the mining station if it's closer than the battlecruiser, maybe? and when it reaches the mining station, it gets automatically refined and into your resource storage.

* Mining Research Facility: Neutral station(?) which can be captured. Gives a bonus to mining somehow(please suggest how it should improve mining)

* Other research facilities that give bonuses to stuff

Please tell me what you think of this.

Suggest: Laser turret with a battery which you have to manually change when it has run out of energy.

and now you might say "too turtle"

well that isnt that much of a problem:
*Short range
*manual reload <- Reloading: dock it to the main cruiser, change battery and launch it again
(or a ship specialized to station/stationary buildings operations).
*Short fireing time 5-10sec?

Use?
*protection against smaller ships
*offers limited protection to other buildings, stations, etc
(*Laser-point-defense against missiles??)
*Deployable during fights to add up some damage
*L4S0r!!!!!!

Other:
* Upgradeable? maybe only upgradeable by stationary research stations (if they get implemented)
*Variations? small, medium or large -sized
*Other than laser? like: Missiles, "Webifiers"?

Hmm, it's possible. It'll need some balancing to get right. It would work almost the same as my turret idea in the thread with misc suggestions.

For the mining station, maybe no automatically refine them into your storage, but the mining station to be a refinery and storage, so you have to dock with it to get the resources. And your enemies can raid the mining station to get whatever resources it currently has.

All right I'm an avid player of the game and I'd like to voice my opinion on this. I also agree in that I don't like the idea of people making bases full of defenses and * Turtling* However I think the bases wouldn't be a bad idea. Some things that would make this more viable/fair etc etc.

*Randomly Placed: They are placed randomly throughout the map to encourage exploration.

As for the types of tower

*Radar Station: I really like the idea of a tower that you have revealing an area around it. This would be great of finding those pesky raiders or elusive mining ships.

*Mining Research Station: This could be a station that when captured gives your miners a 10 % increase in mining yield. (Speed at which you gather minerals)

I would like to reiterate however that I think Stationary defenses are a BAD IDEA! Auto firing turrets would be encourage people to camp those stations which I think would be really bad. Same with the repair station. Also a mining station that auto mines I think is also a bad idea! One thing that's great about this game is that you have to do everything yourself. I think self firing stations/ Self mining stations would be bad.

Also you listed off a lot of station types. Imo the map isn't too big yet so I don't think it needs to become cluttered. I kinda like the Vastness of it.

New idea:
You can buy an item that creates a space station (only 1 per team).You can build extension arms at the station to build some turrets or a radar tower or repair bay.And you can build a refining station there.It can refine a bit better than the bc and the refined minerals are automatically sended to the bc with a cost-free transporter.The transporter is immune to ramming damage and have around 50 hp.Also,you can build a little hangar where you can build auto-explorer drones (automatic rebuild).You also can build repair drones and little mining drones there.

oh its a good idea but i think the map is a little small to implement stations, it starts to feel packed that way but good idea

A lot of these ideas sounds like good temporary deployables (think raven's turret and point defense drone), but not permanent stations. Stations need to offer a defensive disadvantage or else risk the game becoming turtley. The only thing I can think of for stations would be mining facilities-- maybe add singularities that you harvest resources like pyro from them by building a station over them them (similar to vespene geysers).

My new idea:
At the map are 3 Planetoids. (very big asteroids)
One at your start location and one at the center of the map.
To harvest Planetoids,you need to build a mining station on the planetoid.
Only the center planetoid have unlimited ressources.
The other ones have 1000 yellow, 500 blue, 500 red and 250 green.
Each second the mining station will harvest 1 of each mineral.
When the mining station mined 50 of each, it will send a transporter to the bc.
The transporter have 250 hp and 25 speed. (CC speed not sc speed)
The transporter is immune to ram damage.
When the transporter arrives, the minerals will be dropped in the hangar like a miner with the cargo drone.
If the enemy team kills the transporter, all minerals will drop. (if you chomp the transporter, you will instantly get the minerals)
Transporters are auto-rebuilded and cost-free.

also...probably docking at the stations for control of them and fighting on them (marine against marine, that sort of thing) would be fun as different parts of the station like a launch bay and command place and some other things on their to make it more dynamic also probably firing on a station wont ever destroy it but make the scrap parts and fires make it unworkable for a long time and not worth the time

mjshorty wrote:also...probably docking at the stations for control of them and fighting on them (marine against marine, that sort of thing) would be fun as different parts of the station like a launch bay and command place and some other things on their to make it more dynamic also probably firing on a station wont ever destroy it but make the scrap parts and fires make it unworkable for a long time and not worth the time

problem is there is not enough space for physical insides.

it seems that all our problems are because the map isnt big enough =( 256X256 max i think)

DestinyAtlantis wrote:

mjshorty wrote:also...probably docking at the stations for control of them and fighting on them (marine against marine, that sort of thing) would be fun as different parts of the station like a launch bay and command place and some other things on their to make it more dynamic also probably firing on a station wont ever destroy it but make the scrap parts and fires make it unworkable for a long time and not worth the time

problem is there is not enough space for physical insides.

Are you talking about the new map? I could be wrong but I thought there was a fair amount of space available for ship internals on the current map.

So heres an idea: New ship, with a name something like "Director' or something.
Would be a ship for building space stations and then control them and manage them. Such as a mining station which could say, have a maximum of 5 bots (Lesser Drone) which would be limited to only mining. They would spread out from the station (Think mules?) until their timer runs out mining resources kinda like a chomper. At the end of their timer all their resources would be sent back to the mining station and then would be sent back to BC, ready for refining. Or a defender station, which would be (Think raven turretish) a mini much lesser battlecruiser-style turret, firing lesser BC weapons. Or as l saw above, a giant asteroid in the center with lots of resources and needs to be mined with a station.

before we get to far in stations lets just take it one step at a time, lets start with the radar stations, many people like the idea of radar stations and i think we can start there.
1-3 stations on the map, maby have in the startup menu have the option to select none,1, 2, 3, random 1-3
We can control a radar station by simply having a ship near it
now to capture it. It will take some time to transfer control from neutruel or the other team to your team. now it is uneven on the amount ot time it takes for each ship to capture it.
miners/chompers - 30 seconds
wraith/corvette/minelayer - 25 seconds
destroyers - 20 seconds
BattleCruisers - 10 seconds
We could add an affect to it as well if it is captured by an enemy where you first need to deactivate their control (from enemy control to neutruel) then you can leave it if you are in a hurry or something like that and it will remain neutruel until someone gains control of it. so say a wraith is to take control of an enemy controlled radar station. it would take 25 seconds to deactivate then another 25 seconds to gain control taking a total of 50 seconds.

So thats it for starters and we can experiment with the idea of stations, if it turns out well we can go on to boarding it and possible upgrading the range of the radar and adding station weps and increasing internal sucerities (extra turrets so it takes longer for the enemy to reach the control room to take the radar station)
Thats my suggestion on how we can experiment with the idea and possible ways to go forward with it, tell me what you think!