- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
- Messages
- 40
At last, the time has come. After laying the groundwork by discussing ways to make Stations more valuable, how to use Sensors to detect your enemy, and how to project Territory to stake your claim, it’s time to talk about how to take someone’s Stations and make them your own. After all, clearly you need them more. Just like Resource Generation is the way to drive economic input, Sieges are a great way to drive economic output. With both being two sides of the same economic coin, they’re both important to the game that is Starbase. As always, we must start at the beginning, with how to find your enemy.
The second half of preparing for a siege is encoding a valid Navigational Chip. Normally, unpermitted Capital Ships cannot warp into the Outer Sphere of a Station, but I propose that this be changed for Sieges to account for the influence of the attacking Capital Ship’s Shieldbreaker. The Navigational Chip should have to be encoded within a certain range of the enemy Station, perhaps 50km or less, and can then be inserted into the Navigational Computer of any Capital Ship as detailed in Article 4. After the data is entered into the Capital Ship’s computer, any player with appropriate permissions can start the Siege. Unless the Capital Ship is used to start a Siege though, it still must abide by the normal restrictions on warping into enemy Territory. Using the Shieldbreaker to break through into enemy Territory is equivalent to declaring war and must start a Siege.
Defenders must also prepare before the Siege starts, or it is even suspected. As part of establishing a Station, defenders should be required to set a schedule where Sieges are permitted. This can range from “any time” to some minimum number of hours per week. This ensures that defenders cannot have their stations yanked while they’re offline sleeping. This schedule should be changeable, but with a minimum age to stop people from constantly scrambling their schedules and making it impossible for attackers to pick a date and time.
The last bit that should happen is of course preparing the attacking Capital Ship for the siege. As part of the data granted by a successful Deep Scan, the attackers can tell the shield rating of the target Station. If this Station is part of a Station Cluster, its shields can be bolstered by the other Stations part of the Cluster. The shield rating of the target station versus the Shieldbreaker rating of the Capital Ship determines how long it will take to start the siege from arrival of the Capital Ship, with a hard cap for minimum time. If the Shieldbreaker of the attacking Capital Ship is too weak, it may not be able to start the Siege at all, or it may take several days to do so. Before warping the Capital Ship in, the attackers of course want to stock it with plentiful ship hangars and some repair infrastructure.
Once the time is picked and the attacking Capital Ship begins its warp process, the defender will be notified of the upcoming Siege. This notification of course details the time of the Siege, but it also alerts the defender as to who is attacking. This gives the defender time to rally friends and company members, or to reach out to the community at large to try to convince rivals of the attackers to aid in the defense of the Station. The game could perhaps include some form of formal Contract system for hiring mercenaries to aid in Sieges or other times, but I’m uncertain as to how to ensure that the Contract is enforced correctly.
Once the Capital Ship is warped in, the process of destroying the defender’s shields begins. Once this is complete, both the attacking Capital Ship and the defending Station lose their safe zones and are fully destructible. If the defending Station is part of a Cluster, I think that it would be defeat the point of a Cluster if all Stations in the Cluster lost their safe zones, and that instead the overall “Cluster Shield” should be disabled with all other Stations in the Cluster reverting to their independent safe zones. This evens things slightly when it’s a completely unprotected Capital Ship up against potentially multiple, fully protected Stations.
Both the defenders and attackers can warp in reinforcements for the Siege. The attacker has to have encoded Navigational Data for starting the siege and can distribute this data to other friends to warp in more than one Capital Ship at a time. These additional Capital Ships do not contribute to the Shieldbreaker strength of the attacker, and they may or may not lose their safe zones during the Siege. If they do not, then it could lead the attacker to try to cheese the full destructibility of Sieges by making a Capital Ship that’s just a Shieldbreaker and thrusters, and then putting all the important infrastructure on another indestructible Capital Ship that also warps in. However, if all attacking Capital Ships lose their safe zones, then it opens things up to a devastating counterattack by the defenders. I’m inclined towards all attacking Capital Ships losing their shields to reinforce the concept that Sieges are high-risk, high-reward opportunities.
Defenders can also call for reinforcements. This also opens up the opportunity for ongoing narratives, as history is filled with examples of countries hiring mercenaries to defeat enemies. The mercenaries win, but afterwards can sometimes turn their attention to their former employers. After a Siege, third party defenders are already in the area and already have the Navigational Data required for their Capital Ships.
The duration of the Siege should vary based on the class of the defending Station. Larger Stations would naturally take more time to capture and should extend the time duration of the Siege. Normally, the attackers will be attempting to seize control of the defending Station, but they should be on guard against defenders attempting to capture one or more of the attacking Capital Ships. If an attacking Capital Ship is captured, then attackers may not use any hangars or reconstruction machines on that Capital Ship until it is at least partially recaptured. The Siege will end when the timer runs out, when all attacking Capital Ships are captured, or when the defending Station is captured.
If the attackers must retreat due to either a loss or a draw, a timer should activate where all attacking Capital Ships must leave the area of the defending Station. This could be the Territory claimed by the Station / Station Cluster, or it could be a certain radius around the Station if no Territory is claimed. If the timer ticks down to 0, all Capital Ships pick the closest encoded Navigational Data and attempt to warp there. If a Capital Ship cannot warp due to either insufficient propellant or destroyed thruster/transit systems, its safe zone goes back up, but only for a limited time before it drops until the Capital Ship warps out. If it still hasn’t warped when the safe zone drops, defenders or third parties can attempt to loot, damage, or even disassemble the Capital Ship. However, once the Capital Ship is in a state where it can warp, the safe zone is restored, and the warp begins. This encourages attackers to defend their Capital Ships during a siege and to make sure that they have a way out if things go very wrong. It also offers the opportunity of ongoing convoy defense missions if supplies have to be shipped in to restore a stricken Capital Ship.
After the Siege is over, there will likely be lots of salvage in the area. Article 5 detailed various methods of salvaging, and these will likely be extremely valuable here. Station blueprints as well will help defenders, or new owners, to restore their Station after a siege and get everything into working order. However, Station components that have gained experience over time will not retain this experience if they are destroyed and recreated from a blueprint, which is an additional incentive for attackers to limit collateral damage and for defenders to try to keep the battle away from the immediate vicinity of the Station. Station Owners can also open up the area for third parties to salvage ships, or third parties can do so anyways outside of safe zones.
Lastly, Sieges offer the ability for Station Owners to temporarily harvest new resources from the area. Frozenbyte has previously described a system where destroyed and damaged ships generate gas clouds for the Station to harvest, and I heartily agree with this. Depending on how much gas is released, Gas Adsorbers mounted on Stations in the area can extract this gas from the belt over time and convert it back into raw materials that can be used in new ships. Over time this gas should be depleted and the belt will go back to its normal composition, but it offers an opportunity to recoup some losses through ways other than salvage.
This article on Sieges is the last system that I plan to examine in detail. Next article will be the last one, and I hope to summarize my thoughts there and discuss a few “long range” ideas for Starbase. If you’ve been communicating with me on the ANC Discord, you probably have a good idea as to how I think, but I also plan to detail the “theme” that I’ve been working towards through these articles.
Before the Siege
In order to start a Siege, players should be required to know their target. This requires two things: a detailed scan of the target Station, and an entry in a Capital Ship’s computer within a certain range of the scanned Station. Both of these require flying a ship within a certain range of the enemy Station, potentially within the Outer Sphere of its Territory, and Deep Scanning the Station and creating a navigation chip. While players may be able to drop pins on their personal and Company maps to mark the location of stations, this should not be sufficient to establish a target for a Siege. By requiring active radar scanning over a period of time, the future defender has at least the chance of detecting that something suspicious is going on and can try to destroy the scanning ship before it can complete the scans. If this happens, then the attacker has to start over and send in a new ship to Deep Scan the area. Sneaky attackers can wait until most or all of the defenders are away or offline, can escort the scanning ship, or can send in multiple scanners at one time. After the active scan is complete, the defending Station is added to the attackers’ maps and can be targeted for a siege.The second half of preparing for a siege is encoding a valid Navigational Chip. Normally, unpermitted Capital Ships cannot warp into the Outer Sphere of a Station, but I propose that this be changed for Sieges to account for the influence of the attacking Capital Ship’s Shieldbreaker. The Navigational Chip should have to be encoded within a certain range of the enemy Station, perhaps 50km or less, and can then be inserted into the Navigational Computer of any Capital Ship as detailed in Article 4. After the data is entered into the Capital Ship’s computer, any player with appropriate permissions can start the Siege. Unless the Capital Ship is used to start a Siege though, it still must abide by the normal restrictions on warping into enemy Territory. Using the Shieldbreaker to break through into enemy Territory is equivalent to declaring war and must start a Siege.
Defenders must also prepare before the Siege starts, or it is even suspected. As part of establishing a Station, defenders should be required to set a schedule where Sieges are permitted. This can range from “any time” to some minimum number of hours per week. This ensures that defenders cannot have their stations yanked while they’re offline sleeping. This schedule should be changeable, but with a minimum age to stop people from constantly scrambling their schedules and making it impossible for attackers to pick a date and time.
The last bit that should happen is of course preparing the attacking Capital Ship for the siege. As part of the data granted by a successful Deep Scan, the attackers can tell the shield rating of the target Station. If this Station is part of a Station Cluster, its shields can be bolstered by the other Stations part of the Cluster. The shield rating of the target station versus the Shieldbreaker rating of the Capital Ship determines how long it will take to start the siege from arrival of the Capital Ship, with a hard cap for minimum time. If the Shieldbreaker of the attacking Capital Ship is too weak, it may not be able to start the Siege at all, or it may take several days to do so. Before warping the Capital Ship in, the attackers of course want to stock it with plentiful ship hangars and some repair infrastructure.
Starting the Siege
After the Attackers have prepared, they can start the Siege. This involves selecting the encoded Navigational Data in the Capital Ship’s Computer, the station that has been Deep Scanned, and then an appropriate time on the Station’s schedule that is suitable for both the defender and attacker. How close the Siege can start should be determined by the ratio of strength between the attacker’s Shieldbreaker and the defender’s Shield, with of course a minimum time of perhaps 12 hours. After the target is picked and the schedule is decided, the Capital Ship begins its normal warp process and automatically warps to the encoded position as soon as possible.Once the time is picked and the attacking Capital Ship begins its warp process, the defender will be notified of the upcoming Siege. This notification of course details the time of the Siege, but it also alerts the defender as to who is attacking. This gives the defender time to rally friends and company members, or to reach out to the community at large to try to convince rivals of the attackers to aid in the defense of the Station. The game could perhaps include some form of formal Contract system for hiring mercenaries to aid in Sieges or other times, but I’m uncertain as to how to ensure that the Contract is enforced correctly.
Once the Capital Ship is warped in, the process of destroying the defender’s shields begins. Once this is complete, both the attacking Capital Ship and the defending Station lose their safe zones and are fully destructible. If the defending Station is part of a Cluster, I think that it would be defeat the point of a Cluster if all Stations in the Cluster lost their safe zones, and that instead the overall “Cluster Shield” should be disabled with all other Stations in the Cluster reverting to their independent safe zones. This evens things slightly when it’s a completely unprotected Capital Ship up against potentially multiple, fully protected Stations.
Both the defenders and attackers can warp in reinforcements for the Siege. The attacker has to have encoded Navigational Data for starting the siege and can distribute this data to other friends to warp in more than one Capital Ship at a time. These additional Capital Ships do not contribute to the Shieldbreaker strength of the attacker, and they may or may not lose their safe zones during the Siege. If they do not, then it could lead the attacker to try to cheese the full destructibility of Sieges by making a Capital Ship that’s just a Shieldbreaker and thrusters, and then putting all the important infrastructure on another indestructible Capital Ship that also warps in. However, if all attacking Capital Ships lose their safe zones, then it opens things up to a devastating counterattack by the defenders. I’m inclined towards all attacking Capital Ships losing their shields to reinforce the concept that Sieges are high-risk, high-reward opportunities.
Defenders can also call for reinforcements. This also opens up the opportunity for ongoing narratives, as history is filled with examples of countries hiring mercenaries to defeat enemies. The mercenaries win, but afterwards can sometimes turn their attention to their former employers. After a Siege, third party defenders are already in the area and already have the Navigational Data required for their Capital Ships.
During the Siege
Sieges have received some playtesting on the Public Test Universe already, and I think that the process and goals are in the right field and may only need some minor changes. Capturing areas as opposed to destroying an entire Station is usually desirable, and this will only become truer once Stations gain Inventory Modules and have physical loot that can be gained.The duration of the Siege should vary based on the class of the defending Station. Larger Stations would naturally take more time to capture and should extend the time duration of the Siege. Normally, the attackers will be attempting to seize control of the defending Station, but they should be on guard against defenders attempting to capture one or more of the attacking Capital Ships. If an attacking Capital Ship is captured, then attackers may not use any hangars or reconstruction machines on that Capital Ship until it is at least partially recaptured. The Siege will end when the timer runs out, when all attacking Capital Ships are captured, or when the defending Station is captured.
After the Siege
When the Siege is over, property transfer occurs. If the attackers successfully besiege a Station, that Station is transferred to the control of the attacker, whether the attacker is a player, Company, or Alliance. If all attacking Capital Ships are successfully besieged by the defenders, then some or all of those Capital Ships should be transferred to the defender. To prevent the penalty from a failed Siege from being too harsh, all encoded Navigational Data should be wiped from captured Capital Ships. If the Siege ends from the timer running out, no property is transferred.If the attackers must retreat due to either a loss or a draw, a timer should activate where all attacking Capital Ships must leave the area of the defending Station. This could be the Territory claimed by the Station / Station Cluster, or it could be a certain radius around the Station if no Territory is claimed. If the timer ticks down to 0, all Capital Ships pick the closest encoded Navigational Data and attempt to warp there. If a Capital Ship cannot warp due to either insufficient propellant or destroyed thruster/transit systems, its safe zone goes back up, but only for a limited time before it drops until the Capital Ship warps out. If it still hasn’t warped when the safe zone drops, defenders or third parties can attempt to loot, damage, or even disassemble the Capital Ship. However, once the Capital Ship is in a state where it can warp, the safe zone is restored, and the warp begins. This encourages attackers to defend their Capital Ships during a siege and to make sure that they have a way out if things go very wrong. It also offers the opportunity of ongoing convoy defense missions if supplies have to be shipped in to restore a stricken Capital Ship.
After the Siege is over, there will likely be lots of salvage in the area. Article 5 detailed various methods of salvaging, and these will likely be extremely valuable here. Station blueprints as well will help defenders, or new owners, to restore their Station after a siege and get everything into working order. However, Station components that have gained experience over time will not retain this experience if they are destroyed and recreated from a blueprint, which is an additional incentive for attackers to limit collateral damage and for defenders to try to keep the battle away from the immediate vicinity of the Station. Station Owners can also open up the area for third parties to salvage ships, or third parties can do so anyways outside of safe zones.
Lastly, Sieges offer the ability for Station Owners to temporarily harvest new resources from the area. Frozenbyte has previously described a system where destroyed and damaged ships generate gas clouds for the Station to harvest, and I heartily agree with this. Depending on how much gas is released, Gas Adsorbers mounted on Stations in the area can extract this gas from the belt over time and convert it back into raw materials that can be used in new ships. Over time this gas should be depleted and the belt will go back to its normal composition, but it offers an opportunity to recoup some losses through ways other than salvage.
Closing Thoughts
Sieges are the “endgame” for PvP content, but they should rest on top of a firm foundation provided by other systems. With conflicts stating small and escalating to Sieges, or ambitious companies looking to stake control of entire Moons, Sieges offer the opportunity to start and continue stories. Developed Stations provide a powerful reason to Siege, as the offered infrastructure could be important for supporting further growth. Lastly, the number of people necessary to overpower potential defenders, and the possibility for defenders to hire or convince people to aid them offers the opportunity for some truly massive battles and interactions. After the Siege is over, the story doesn’t end either. Whether it’s a former attacker enjoying the new loot or beating a hasty retreat, or defenders attempting to stake their claim to salvage to gain enough resources to restore their Stations, many things can be done after the Capital Ships warp out.This article on Sieges is the last system that I plan to examine in detail. Next article will be the last one, and I hope to summarize my thoughts there and discuss a few “long range” ideas for Starbase. If you’ve been communicating with me on the ANC Discord, you probably have a good idea as to how I think, but I also plan to detail the “theme” that I’ve been working towards through these articles.