Station Siege Mechanics v3.0: Burnside's Hybrid Revision

[Burnside]

Core conceit: invading forces use a large structure to enable siege gameplay
Primary goal: merge the standard safezone mechanics with Recatek's siege mechanics while keeping the spirit and intent of both
Secondary goal: create opportunities for "grand strategy" and enmesh sieges with various economic factors that have historically driven real-world campaigns

Terms
Siege Window: a time slot, about three hours in long, selected by a station's owner- changing a siege window causes it to Activate once as part of the reset process
Activated Siege Window: a siege window that will go Online once its selected time slot arrives and go Offline and Deactivate once the time slot closes
Offline Siege Window: a station's safezone is immune to Suppression while it is Offline
Online Siege Window: a station's safezone is vulnerable to being Suppressed by attacking forces while it is Online
Closed Siege Window: a siege window that is Offline and Deactivated is called Closed
Safezone Suppression: a safezone with an Online Siege Window can be deactivated, or Suppressed, by attacking forces if they have x times as many military ships as the defender, called Suppression Ratio, once this ratio drops below the 'x-value' the safezone while reactivate after a certain time limit. While a station's safezone is Suppressed its Core can be captured or crippled.
Crippled Station Core: when the safezone system within a station core is rendered nonfunctional by damage or other effects, its is considered Crippled. Without a safezone all parts of a station can be damaged or destroyed.

New Station Core Type: Siege Command Core
Function: a station with a Siege Command Core anchoring it allows the owner to target another station within the same economic zone, this will be called a "War Declaration" or "wardec" for simplicity
Effect- War Declaration: a station that is wardec'd by a Siege Command Core has its Siege Window Activated and when the allotted time selected for the Siege Window next arrives, that station's safezone will become Onlined and vulnerable to the presence of hostile fleets and may drop if the attacker maintains a certain ratio against the defenders
Cost- Reprisal Window: activating a wardec puts the Siege Command Core into an Online Siege Window immediately, regardless of the current time slot -AND- Activates its next allotted Siege Window as if it had been the target of a wardec, these primary and secondary siege windows are called "Reprisal Windows"; A Siege Command Core cannot activate a wardec if it has its Siege Window Activated and/or Online; Secondly, all faction-members or allied factions of the siege station's owner become listed as hostiles to the defending station and its owning faction or allied factions until the Reprisal Windows Close.
Special- Decay Period: in addition to their normal Siege Window, stations with Siege Command Cores also suffer from a Decay Period that Activates its Siege Window once each week on a day selected by the station owner.

Optional Rules: Siege Command Link
Function/Effect- Enable War Declaration: A Siege Command Link is a large ship-based system that is used to target a station in order to make a War Declaration; a ship cannot use a Siege Command Link unless it is a military ship (and thus not protected by safezones) and must charge the link to enable its wardec function in cooperation with a nearby Siege Command Core; charging a Siege Command Link takes a comparable amount of power to one or two railcannons, is an identifiable signal like a transponder, and is considered a hostile act; once charged a player aboard an affiliated Siege Command Core within the same economic zone can use its wardec ability on the station nearest to the active siege command link (and only a station whose safezone is covering the vessel with the command link) and if multiple affiliated links are charged and active, only the nearest one to the siege station will be used as the origin of the wardec. Note: stations owned by the same faction or an allied faction cannot be targeted by a friendly wardec.
Missed Wardec: with Siege Command Links, a War Declaration without a charged link Activates the Siege Command Core's Reprisal Windows and wastes the wardec, requiring basic timing and communication skill between the station crew and command linked ship crew.

Strategic Concerns, Gameplay Offerings
-As a "siege station" can target any other station in the same economic zone (regardless of whether or not command links are in play), the presence of one in any economic zone is a serious concern that merits an immediate response, whether diplomatic or military, and factions that "own" or "protect" an economic zone may even wish to maintain such a station as a defensive measure instead of relying on the decay period and reprisal windows of an invader's siege station
-Further, the 'economic reach' of a siege station incentivizes the separation of economic zones and may lead to fights over the separation or joining of economic zones because of concerns over making a zone too vulnerable to a single siege force.
-Given any station can hypothetically be repurposed into a siege station, concerned companies and factions will need to monitor their spheres of control, creating a need for patrols and similar military actions necessary for the upkeep of a territory and placing an upward limit on the amount of space even very large and belligerent factions can maintain a hold on and making them vulnerable to raiders and smaller factions if they spread themselves too thin
-While being able to wardec stations from the security of a siege station, the fixed nature of stations and the twin-threat to the besieging party of the Reprisal Windows, allowing an immediate retaliation "raid" and a later more prepared siege, counterbalances the increased range of the ability and the secure nature of stations- moreover, the addition of the Decay Period ensures that no siege station has total supremacy over an economic zone and allows even small (or sneaky) factions to make occasional raids against them.
-This revision endeavors to approach the "instanced and planned siege" concept espoused by Recatek while preserving the sandbox nature of Starbase's gameplay and offer players security on the their stations and free enterprise in pursuing, or defending against, conquests

 

[CalenLoki]

Some concerns:

1. ATM the only economic zones we've heard about are the close clusters of dev stations sharing market prices.
I'm not sure if that kind of functionality (sharing auction system) will be available for player stations. But I'm pretty sure any station owner will be able to leave such economic zone on a whim. Thus entirely avoiding whole siege mechanics.
KISS - range is an hard factor, easier to work with.

2. Declaring siege and not showing up doesn't cost attackers anything, unless defenders send out a fleet to attack the siege camp. There is also no way to deactivate the siege window if no/few attackers show up.

3. It splits battle into two separate sieges. If either side decide to keep all the forces at their base, the other side needs to leave some soldiers on guard duty. Which is starring into empty space for 3h.

4. Because magic shield is still up during battle, it can be used for cheese tactics. Like going in and out or using civilian shield ships.

5. Using arbitrary ship definitions ("military", "civilian") makes it game of numbers and easy to cheese. Things like 100 cheap vasamas flagged as military would be used for keeping/dropping safezone.
Better to keep artificial numbers out of the encounter itself, and base battle outcome on actual combat efficiency.

6. Periodic siege window ("decay period") just forces players to log in and stare into void for hours without anyone attacking. Not fun.

7. Why ship siege module ("Siege command link") can't be used by allies? After all it just activate the siege, without preventing enemy to do the same next day.
Also limiting anything based on official alliances is trivial to work around by having one allied faction officially become your enemy. So using that as game mechanics just makes it look funny and be slightly inconvenient for noobs.

I don't like the very core idea of splitting the battle into two, but maybe addressing those concerns will make it more appealing to others.

 

[Burnside]

Salient points
1. Integrating economic zones sounded interesting, depending on how they work relative to player stations reverting to a basic range with or without some type of enhancer module might be more appropriate.

2. Cost of wardec is making the siege station vulnerable with the reprisal windows, it could also have a power/material cost to fuel the "inhibitor beam" or whatever

3. there's a move in the game of go, i forget the name, but it's when a player abandons a chain of pieces and places on an empty section of the board. Giving sides cause to split their forces creates choice, and i think this choice in particular, how much force to commit, is one that makes and breaks strategies. It's not an argument to say that having a deployment dilemma is boring- too bad, smashing two fleets together at maximum strength is more boring, go set up a space demolition derby between two factions if that excites you, don't force it on the rest of us. As a fan of strategy and tactics, I will always feel strongly about pieces of gameplay like this and you won't see me compromise on it without very good reasoning from the opposing view. "Oh but cheesing" be damned, it's irrational argument to a platonic fear, fears of cheesing will always be a viable excuse, so it's not a valid game design argument and never will be you cannot design around preventing exploits.

4. The devs were going to have sieges interact with the safezone this way, they probably have systems on the drawing board to prevent shell-shield cheese. Try and develop the complaint more.

5. I don't see that as a relevant concern, one man on a military vasama is one man not in a fighter, the cheese defeats itself.

6. Yes, and? Some people find mining boring, don't build siege stations if you don't want to post a guard once a week or once a month for a few hours- at best, the decay period could just allow anyone to make a wardec instead of onlining the window forcibly. you're literally complaining about having to make a minimal activity investment to access the ability to siege other people's hard-built stations, I don't feel bad for you here, especially not with an argument like that.

7. It was so the link doesn't accidentally target a super-close station you own or just captured. I haven't addressed siege cooldown periods at all

 

[Burnside]

RE: Comment in Recatek's Thread regarding the Reprisal Windows
First a timeline is in order:
1) Station makes a War Declaration
2) Reprisal Window Opens, First Siege Window against the declaring station is Onlined Immediately- prospective time is 3-5 hours until window closes and the siege window Offlines
3) Both Wardec'ing Station and Wardec'd Station have their Siege Windows Activated, both online and resolve at their set times (i.e. within the next 24 hours)

The odds of either part of the Reprisal Window coinciding with the target station's own Siege Window is minimal, the cost to the attacker is having to ready themselves to weather two such windows while also moving their forces to besiege the target, spending fuel, organisation, and time that could be spent on other activities. Several factors also influence how risky this is, from whether everyone in the economic zone is notified or only station owners, or newcasters, etc as well as how you can tell if a station is in a siege window visually. Additionally, we haven't considered if, after the Siege station's reprisal window is over how long a cooldown period is before another declaration can be made, if there is any cooldown, and whether there is or isn't an additional cooldown on wardec'ing the same station within a given time period.

Prospective values
Station Cooldown: 72 hrs after Reprisal Window closes, and/or must use power to recharge the siege command core's war declaration ability, power required can scale with the distance of the wardec to further control use of sieges with soft barriers.
Double Jeopardy Cooldown/Sanctions: A station cannot be targeted again by the same company or faction within one week of the previous war declaration. violation of this limitation inflicts a doubled-up Reprisal Window (immediate Siege Window + 3 consecutive set Siege Windows) and adds a Sanction Voucher onto the station.

Sanction Voucher: any station with at least one Sanction Voucher applied to it grants a recharge cost debuff to any wardecs made against the station and allows any other siege station to target it with a wardec to target it regardless of if they are in the same economic zone or not. Sanction Vouchers last for a month each before decaying, decay occurs one voucher at a time.


Alternatively, Any War Declaration could result in a Sanction Voucher if we find it's a more interesting mechanic than cooldowns and reprisal windows, etc. I'm not sure how exactly to apply the idea to mechanics like the inhibitor, maybe the declaring faction/company is slapped with the Sanction Voucher so any of the stations own by them are faster to anchor and the siege windows are extended- but then I'd only make the Vouchers last for a few days to a week since two factions in a territory war would accumulate them extremely fast under such a system. I'll repost this in Recatek's thread with an edit of my latest post

 

[CalenLoki]

I thought about it, and using one station as siege inhibitor against another grew on me.
However, I also identified what turned me off from your implementation.

It allows siege declaring siege to open siege windows at times that won't allow victims to really use them.
The first reprisal window (right after war declaration) is completely useless - no way to bring people online, get into ships and fly the distance. Even real life armies, who are paid to be ready all the time, can't launch counter-offensive immediately. So it will only force declaring side to stare in the void for few hours 99% of the time, for that 1% of chance that enemies manage to launch counter attack.

Second reprisal window can be set in a way to either be right after the first one (still not much time to get forces, even if a bit more likely) or during the battle (which splits battle in half).

And finally without any minimal waiting time, siege battle could happen immediately. Declare-attack right away. That's way too easy way to stomp any station.

I also think that trying to limit anything to specific faction is futile attempt, too easy to cheese.
i.e. giving whole faction tickets, allowing only declaring faction to capture station, ect.
Factions are non-material, and as such can be created and deleted on a whim.
Stations, ships, devices - those are material assets with countable value. Thus should be used for most mechanics.

TLR almost no risk for attackers, almost no chance for defender to react.



Here's my take on it:
1. When you build a station, you set 2-3h possible siege window. You can change it sometimes, but not too often, and with delay.

2. Attackers use station to declare siege to another station. Attacker station needs to be at least half as big/valuable as target station, and need to be within limited range (the bigger the stations, the bigger the range).

Reason: to prevent avoiding risk by using cheap, expendable station or one that is so far away to attack.

3. After at least 12h warning time the next siege window opens.

Reason: IMO "we'll be attacked this evening" is enough time to allow most defenders to schedule game session. (so I'm in-between you and Rec).But the minimal time is up for longer discussion.

4. Attackers need to have active siege inhibitor within battle radius (10km) from the start to the end of the battle. Inhibitor is an large ship module (so it's not static), and need to be proportionally big to target station. No new inhibitor can enter the battle since it started (it just won't count as active). Inhibitor that leaves the battle stop being active.

Reason: To make sure that defenders can close the siege earlier. To give them an active objective during the battle. At the same time, it keeps the battle asymmetric by letting attackers stay mobile. Of course third parties can bring their own inhibitors as well.
Instead of siege hard timers, inhibitors could just corrode the ship carrying them. So it's race against time for attackers, and close to the end of it inhibitor ship will probably need to slow down or stop, to minimise ship frame stress.

5. If attackers loose (no active inhibitors left), the core of the declaring station blows up.
Of course they can rebuild it, or they could have spare inactive core. But activating it will take at least 3h.

Reason: IMO the punishment for declaring siege without having means to succeed should be severe. Just opening it for attack is not enough, because that could be used too easily to lure other side into trap.
Even if it doesn't blow up, and just opens attacker's station to attack, the opening window should always happen right after closing the primary siege. Only then defenders have enough manpower ready to retaliate.
I also think that successful siege shouldn't open attacker station to attack. Just to ensure that defenders focus all they can at the defence.

6. If attackers win, the old core (of target station) is blown up and they can activate their own, or just loot the station. If they want to keep the station, they need to defend it until the core is active.

Reason: To prevent making station invulnerable by letting friendly faction capture it instead. Also to make "loot or keep" an meaningful choice.

 

[Burnside]

I thought about it, and using one station as siege inhibitor against another grew on me.
However, I also identified what turned me off from your implementation.

It allows siege declaring siege to open siege windows at times that won't allow victims to really use them.
The first reprisal window (right after war declaration) is completely useless - no way to bring people online, get into ships and fly the distance. Even real life armies, who are paid to be ready all the time, can't launch counter-offensive immediately. So it will only force declaring side to stare in the void for few hours 99% of the time, for that 1% of chance that enemies manage to launch counter attack.

Second reprisal window can be set in a way to either be right after the first one (still not much time to get forces, even if a bit more likely) or during the battle (which splits battle in half).

that's not how it's described as working, it's the next window AFTER the autosiege closes down- if, we assume you're right, and an immediate strike can't be easily launched, we just do the next two windows- maybe take another page out of Recatek's book and do the 24 hour delay before a window can open in all cases

And finally without any minimal waiting time, siege battle could happen immediately. Declare-attack right away. That's way too easy way to stomp any station.

I kinda feel that could be an element of strategy in activating a Wardec, but in that case maybe not have the window time slot be visible until a wardec is made? it doesn't stop people from remembering after the first and an owner would want to alter the window to keep attackers on their toes, but a free time slot adjustment could be built into the after-siege period if the defender survives. Also, see above on instituting a 24-hour minimum on window openings a la the Recatek method

I also think that trying to limit anything to specific faction is futile attempt, too easy to cheese.
i.e. giving whole faction tickets, allowing only declaring faction to capture station, ect.
Factions are non-material, and as such can be created and deleted on a whim.
Stations, ships, devices - those are material assets with countable value. Thus should be used for most mechanics.

TLR almost no risk for attackers, almost no chance for defender to react.

That's more supposition, we don't really know if there's gonna be fees or whatnot to create companies/factions. Sanctioning ships, or rather their transponders, is harder in one way and it doesn't stop a large faction from rotating its fleets to spread sanction around, unless sanctions hit transponders company/faction-wide?

Here's my take on it:
1. When you build a station, you set 2-3h possible siege window. You can change it sometimes, but not too often, and with delay.

no real argument, I'm more in favor of a tangible cost or vulnerability to switching your window plus a delay on it taking effect

2. Attackers use station to declare siege to another station. Attacker station needs to be at least half as big/valuable as target station, and need to be within limited range (the bigger the stations, the bigger the range).

Reason: to prevent avoiding risk by using cheap, expendable station or one that is so far away to attack.

Still think you would want to make the attacker invest in a siege module or have to install a specialist station core to keep the "expensive bauble" concept intact, I'm fine with limiting siege range based on station size but imo it should stay within the average size of an economic zone, the devs have demonstrated a love of large ranges in some cases, so I'd rather be explicit that the range should be below 100km somewhere

3. After at least 12h warning time the next siege window opens.

Reason: IMO "we'll be attacked this evening" is enough time to allow most defenders to schedule game session. (so I'm in-between you and Rec).But the minimal time is up for longer discussion.

I'd say 18-24 hrs minimum, but that's a tough variable to pin down in a definitively good way, so yeah, way open for discussion

4. Attackers need to have active siege inhibitor within battle radius (10km) from the start to the end of the battle. Inhibitor is an large ship module (so it's not static), and need to be proportionally big to target station. No new inhibitor can enter the battle since it started (it just won't count as active). Inhibitor that leaves the battle stop being active.

Reason: To make sure that defenders can close the siege earlier. To give them an active objective during the battle. At the same time, it keeps the battle asymmetric by letting attackers stay mobile. Of course third parties can bring their own inhibitors as well.
Instead of siege hard timers, inhibitors could just corrode the ship carrying them. So it's race against time for attackers, and close to the end of it inhibitor ship will probably need to slow down or stop, to minimise ship frame stress.

okay, so we're taking the command link idea and replacing it with the inhibitor- given my revision concept as the base model, allowing you to build "inhibitor ships", I could see doing this instead of a special station core. Thoughts on being able to bring the station's safezone back online via [engineering recharge mechanic] and having the inhibitor ship need to perform some kind of temporary anchoring timer to send out another inhibitor pulse? It'd give an uncertain wave-mode aspect to the fight and could help move the inertia of the fleet battle around in an interesting way while giving an in-game reason to keep the inhibitor near the station without resorting to artificial mechanics

5. If attackers loose (no active inhibitors left), the core of the declaring station blows up.
Of course they can rebuild it, or they could have spare inactive core. But activating it will take at least 3h.

Reason: IMO the punishment for declaring siege without having means to succeed should be severe. Just opening it for attack is not enough, because that could be used too easily to lure other side into trap.
Even if it doesn't blow up, and just opens attacker's station to attack, the opening window should always happen right after closing the primary siege. Only then defenders have enough manpower ready to retaliate.

I also think that successful siege shouldn't open attacker station to attack. Just to ensure that defenders focus all they can at the defence.[/quote]
umm, this feels artificial, there's no reason for the core to blow unless it's beaming "inhibitor energy" or whatever to the inhibitor ships and suffers backlash damage when one is destroyed- so each inhibitor on the field is linked to a supporting station core which blows up if the ship goes down- that feels better imo

6. If attackers win, the old core (of target station) is blown up and they can activate their own, or just loot the station. If they want to keep the station, they need to defend it until the core is active.

Reason: To prevent making station invulnerable by letting friendly faction capture it instead. Also to make "loot or keep" an meaningful choice.

another weird mechanic with no internal logic to it, what if the invader's inhibitor ship needs to be within a certain range and pop an inhibitor pulse to blow the target's core, otherwise they'll be force to capture the station and run it through a reprogramming phase and then recharge the safezone via [engineering mechanic] or detonate it

 

[CalenLoki]

Still think you would want to make the attacker invest in a siege module or have to install a specialist station core to keep the "expensive bauble" concept intact, I'm fine with limiting siege range based on station size but imo it should stay within the average size of an economic zone, the devs have demonstrated a love of large ranges in some cases, so I'd rather be explicit that the range should be below 100km somewhere

I have nothing against requiring specialised module. Any way to make sure that the attacking station is valuable enough that loosing it will hurt.
With the range I thought about something similar. 15-60min of fleet flight time, depending on station size. So 50-200km. With the higher ranges being reserved for really huge stations. But I'm good with 25-100km as well.

Economic zones, as they are now, are just dev stations that can teleport resources between each other, to keep common market prices. I doubt that functionality will be available for players.

okay, so we're taking the command link idea and replacing it with the inhibitor- given my revision concept as the base model, allowing you to build "inhibitor ships", I could see doing this instead of a special station core. Thoughts on being able to bring the station's safezone back online via [engineering recharge mechanic] and having the inhibitor ship need to perform some kind of temporary anchoring timer to send out another inhibitor pulse? It'd give an uncertain wave-mode aspect to the fight and could help move the inertia of the fleet battle around in an interesting way while giving an in-game reason to keep the inhibitor near the station without resorting to artificial mechanics

Yes, it's a mix.
From your idea I took use one station to challenge other station, and making inhibitor ship mobile.
From Rec's the need for attackers to bring something to actual battle and keeping it there for defenders to counter-attack.
If I understood your idea correctly, commander link ship was used only during war-dec, and not actual battle.
I simplified wardec compared to both your and Recs idea: It's simple button press, without need to defend anything against foes that won't come anyway. I keep all the action for the battle.

Not sure if any specific manoeuvres/actions/anchoring by inhibitor ship are required. It's big, slow, can't hide, can't run away from the battlefield, and slowly corrode as the battle progress. That's quite a lot of weaknesses.

umm, this feels artificial, there's no reason for the core to blow unless it's beaming "inhibitor energy" or whatever to the inhibitor ships and suffers backlash damage when one is destroyed- so each inhibitor on the field is linked to a supporting station core which blows up if the ship goes down- that feels better imo

another weird mechanic with no internal logic to it, what if the invader's inhibitor ship needs to be within a certain range and pop an inhibitor pulse to blow the target's core, otherwise they'll be force to capture the station and run it through a reprogramming phase and then recharge the safezone via [engineering mechanic] or detonate it

Lore-wise attackers station starts sending "safe zone suppression energy waves" in the direction of target core.
The beam takes at least 12/18/24/36h minimum to charge, and can affect target core only during "daily restart point".
All Inhibitor ships present at the start of the battle ("daily restart point") automatically link to the wave frequency. They need to stay within the battle range, because re-establishing link is impossible later.
During battle they receive it and channel towards the target station core. That suppress the safe zone, and allows invading forces to assault.
Once the power-wrestling between stations starts, it cannot stop until one core loose balance and explode. Either because it has no ships to channel the energy (attackers), or because someone comes and manually reprogram it (defenders).
If defenders succeed, all the received energy allows it to skip next few "daily restart points".


There are several reasons why I want target core to blow up. The decision to try to capture the station, rather than just destroying or looting it, should be a risky one. If conquerors can just restart safe zone for free, there is no reason not to try that. There is no cost to failure.
If they need to invest resources into rebuilding the core, they risk them.

Alternatively attackers could use the declaring core in the state of danger for the time of restarting the conquered safe zone. If during that time the new core get's captured and reprogrammed, both blow up. So there is a chance for clear victory with no cost or loss, but attempting it puts you in even greater danger.

 

[Burnside]

I get the intent and can see some internal rationalisations, it just feels like a really arbitrary mechanic that only exist in a "maximum stakes mode" and I find all-or-nothing gameplay to be mostly unfun and uninteresting, the only time you'd engage is when you have near-complete assurance that you'll be victorious- by adding granularity to the system you actually allow the attackers to consider taking more risks for the sake of expediency or desperation or some other motivation. Death spirals and doomed paths don't tend to translate into good gameplay except in really niche outliers where the sense of doom is carefully curated and actually very much an illusion caused by false or missing information, I think we should keep an eye towards including recovery modes into the mechanics. It's not decisive, sure, but decisive gameplay leads to decisive tactics, not risky ones and the legends and heroes are built on risks, not methodically grinding out every advantage possible before making any move.