Station Siege Mechanics

[The Dungeon Master]

@Burnside I thought about the need to visit inhibitor/core only during battle, not during the waiting period. I would never suggest forcing anyone to do boring things for days.
And it doesn't need to blow up right away. Maybe it just speeds/slows down the timer? Or increase/decrease corrosive aura strength? So soft punishment, but still preventing blocking access.


The logic is simple: it prevents stockpiling tons of inhibitors for sudden use.

Personally I have nothing against newbies or trolls wrecking active ships (those that they pilot, or just crash into). Careful navigating within tight station "streets" is part of the gameplay that is completely absent ATM.
We're talking about stations designed, built, owned, run and policed by players. So they can do that in a way to prevent/lessen the chance of accidental crash and active griefing.
Starting safe zone (so the place where noob protection is necessary) would still prevent any all forms of damage. Also because players don't have much control there to actively prevent it.



A space station is something that should be available to anyone.
Locking such huge feature out of everyone except zergs is counterproductive.
Of course station functionality should be proportional to the amount of work put into it. And proportional to effort required to capture it.
But small company should be able to have small station, and should be assured that nobody will ride it while they're asleep.

Fair enough. I take back what I said about small space station, they should be available. But in my opinion they should be vulnerable to raids and sieges. What strategies can these players employ to survive?
A. Get as far away as possible from everyone and hide the base hoping nobody finds you.
B. Hire mercenaries to patrol the area. Having sensors that calls the guards if the base is under attack.
C. Build it close to a cluster of other small space stations that help protect each other.
D. Build the station close to a megastation and pay taxes for benefits and protection.

 

[Recatek]

Why on earth make it more complicated? Make a 2-3 hour window for station capture. Invaders fail, they have to wait 21-22 hours to try again while the SZ builds again, meaning they have to maintain their siege.

I address this earlier in the thread but weekly or daily window systems force defenders to log on and sit around at their station even if nobody is interested in attacking it. I think that's pretty boring when I have to do it in other games. The point of a declared siege system is that you only have to babysit your station if you know someone is interested in showing up to fight you over it. Otherwise, that's time better spent having fun in-game doing the other things you logged in to do today.

A space station is something only big factions should afford building. And big factions should have the manpower to man the station 24/7, otherwise they shouldn't be investing in something they can't protect.

Space in Starbase is very big, and I think it's big enough to accommodate stations owned and operated by factions besides just the largest and most populous. Small trading stations, fuel resupply stations, repair stations and the like seem to be pretty well aligned with the devs' ethos, and I think a system like this could help foster an environment where those smaller groups get to have fun engaging in the "station endgame" without losing their work overnight. I find guarding a single spot in space for long periods of time very boring, and it isn't the sort of thing I want to log on and play the game for, especially not as part of a rotating 24/7 "shift" system. I've suggested this siege window system to demonstrate how you can have a territory metagame, big station battles, and faction PvP without forcing anyone to wake up in the middle of the night, sit around and do boring things for hours, or wait for the chance of interesting things coming to them.

It isn't a perfect system, but I've seen it work in other games to create interesting fights on a reasonable time schedule with minimal forced busywork/downtime and with as fair an outcome as possible.

 

[Cavilier210]

I address this earlier in the thread but weekly or daily window systems force defenders to log on and sit around at their station even if nobody is interested in attacking it. I think that's pretty boring when I have to do it in other games. The point of a declared siege system is that you only have to babysit your station if you know someone is interested in showing up to fight you over it. Otherwise, that's time better spent having fun in-game doing the other things you logged in to do today.

I'm getting incredibly annoyed at people not actually reading what I write.

The seige is what brings down the SZ, the station is only vulnerable for capture and damage in a small window chosen by the defenders. The defenders would have notice that someone is out to take their station. They don't have to sit there for days on end sitting on their hands with their thumbs up their butts.

Towing nonsense around to set this up is ridiculous, and adds needless and unfun complexity.

What's more is the more convuluted and arbitrary you make these mechanics, the less people will do them. The game is PvP. That PvP should be fun, engaging, and not filled with nonsense because someone wants to make what's essentially a king of the hill base capture system into CoD cookie cutter nonsense.

I personally want to have station fights. I want them to be fun. I want to be able to do them without a disgusting amount of investment beyond what an attacker already has to commit to the enterprise. An attacker has to make the journey, bring an ample amount of force, and be able to use it effectively without the general aid of logistics to take a station. Thats more than enough investment.

 

[Meetbolio]

Towing nonsense around to set this up is ridiculous, and adds needless and unfun complexity.

Now, you see, that's where you're wrong.

Why would the attackers be able to attack any base they want without having to invest money, resources, and tons upon tons of time to carefully plan an action, like the people who build the base had to?

I want to be able to do them without a disgusting amount of investment beyond what an attacker already has to commit to the enterprise. An attacker has to make the journey, bring an ample amount of force, and be able to use it effectively without the general aid of logistics to take a station. Thats more than enough investment.

And you're wrong again. To attack a base, an attacker needs an attacking force and a couple large buckets of fuel for each ship if they're from afar.

The defenders, however, have to construct the base, then also have a fleet there to defend it.

Recatek's solution is very well thought through, and although some adjustments can be made, if the game works as it is described in the OP, it'll be most fair and fun for everyone.

 

[Recatek]

I want to emphasize that my way is not the one and only right way™, it's just a starbase-adapted illustration of what I consider to be the more successful way other games have done it. No way is perfect, but I think some of them address common player frustrations better than others. What matters to me most isn't the specific mechanics, but the things those mechanics are there to "fix" and alleviate. With that in mind, I want to talk about some other common solutions and the frustrations I personally have with them.

1) No safe zones, open attacking 24/7.
This is a very popular model in smaller-scale survival games like Rust, where bases are quick to destroy and rebuild, and losing one isn't really consequential. It's not uncommon to log off one day and log back on the next and see everything you built is now gutted and destroyed. I would be frustrated if this happened in Starbase because, as I understand it, bases will represent weeks or months of work, and losing that overnight would be a massive setback. I would also be bored if I had to spend long periods of time sitting around guarding my base against the any-moment possibility that someone could attack it. This would impact my ability to enjoy other parts of the game in other parts of the game world.

2) Weekly or daily automatic vulnerability windows.
This is another popular model in some games, but usually in games where you don't build the objective in question (like castle wars in the Lineage series). This is good for systems where there are a fixed number of objectives and everyone wants one, so you have lots of natural pressure for people to fight over the limited resources available. If anyone can build a base, and there are lots of them out there, you have less of a guarantee that someone will attack yours in the next window. I would be frustrated if I had to log on to sit around and guard my base against the possibility of someone attacking it at any moment over the course of 2-3 hours, only to log off later, bored, because nobody showed up.

3) "Just click a button" declared sieges (with or without an advance notice period).
I think it stands to reason that if bringing down a safe zone is easy, people will do it more often. I would be frustrated if it was so easy that anyone could just do it and then not show up for the actual fight. I've been in situations where guilds used the "boy who cried wolf" effect to launch a series of "troll sieges", not show up, and then exploit how bored the other side was to show up later and win the fight against fewer numbers. On the surface this sounds brilliant and tactical, but from the perspective of a player playing a video game for fun, I would be frustrated if the prevailing tactic in a video game is to weaponize boredom and discourage others from playing.

4) Long-term 24-48 hour capture point systems.
If capturing a base required holding that area for 24-48 hours, I imagine long periods of downtime where one side or the other has gone to bed and there's nothing to do but sit on the "hill" and tick down a timer. Asking players to stay in one spot rules out a lot of other things they could be having fun doing in your game (exploring, trading, building, mining). Especially if you need to capture or destroy multiple enemy stations and can't do it all at once. I could see a multi-station "campaign" ballooning out into a consecutive week or more of what would mostly be sitting and waiting. I would be frustrated if a system like this forced me to sit and wait for something to happen for long periods of time, without always being able to give me something to do.

As you can probably tell, most of my frustrations come from downtime and boredom. I like to be engaged, I like to fight, and I like to have opportunities to take initiative and make decisions. For me the worst thing a game can do is chain me to a single spot and make me do nothing but wait for someone else to make a move. Or worse, put me in a situation where I'm just waiting for nothing and nobody even shows up. I can accept waiting if I can do other things and be other places while that time passes (like building ships and preparing for battle while the inhibitor counts down to the siege), but if there's a lot of "sit here and don't leave or do anything" then I'd rather play another game. I strongly believe that there must be some delay to allow the defenders time to muster a defense, but I wanted this system to illustrate how you can do it without chaining people to a spot during that preparation period.

 

[Burnside]

@Burnside I thought about the need to visit inhibitor/core only during battle, not during the waiting period. I would never suggest forcing anyone to do boring things for days.
And it doesn't need to blow up right away. Maybe it just speeds/slows down the timer? Or increase/decrease corrosive aura strength? So soft punishment, but still preventing blocking access.

Ah, okay, that's still 4 visits per hour for three hours to do a checkpoint objective to maintain optimal "siegeing-ness" Just applying the corrosion effect to the active module(s) and having the inhibitor construction give you the option to install heavy shielding to protect the inhibitor's other systems from the effect feels like enough of a system handicap. On top of that leaving it to auto-start a siege by not having someone present in its command module to switch it from wardec mode (invuln) over to siege mode ostensibly kicks the siege module into extra-corrosion for the whole fight- and once the siege module is destroyed the siege is effectively over since the safezone can no longer be suppressed.

What do you specifically think about the siege mode being able to trigger multiple times, and being able to move around in between anti-SZ-pulses, at the cost of the defenders having options to "recharge" the safezone? I think not only would it keep the space battle moving, but it would also give a certain impetus to the ground battle to prevent the... would the SZ recharge system be its own type of lot? to keep it from being manned by defenders, etc and allow the core to be capped or destroyed. I still don't see any good reason to have it automatically blow up at the end of a siege, it's a silly mechanic as far as I can see and the reasons for it aren't really persuasive it just creates even more work at the end of all the work to get a siege going.

EDIT: hey, what if the attacker station linked to the inhibitor also received corrosion while it was "beaming anti-SZ-energy" to the inhibitor and due to the safezone's effects the invading force would eventually want to disable the safezone on their station to remove/repair the corrosion before it destroyed their core? We could also say each time a Safezone is battered down by an inhibitor the energy wave applies a stack of corrosion to the defender's core- OR -having an inhibitor anchored over a station and suppressing its SZ continually applies corrosion to the target core. So even without the SZ recharge idea an invader that wanted to break the station core would have a reason to repeatedly activate their inhibitor or bring multiple inhibitors to the fight, etc, etc.

The logic is simple: it prevents stockpiling tons of inhibitors for sudden use.

Personally I have nothing against newbies or trolls wrecking active ships (those that they pilot, or just crash into). Careful navigating within tight station "streets" is part of the gameplay that is completely absent ATM.
We're talking about stations designed, built, owned, run and policed by players. So they can do that in a way to prevent/lessen the chance of accidental crash and active griefing.
Starting safe zone (so the place where noob protection is necessary) would still prevent any all forms of damage. Also because players don't have much control there to actively prevent it.

@CalenLoki that's not really logic, that's more "justification" i mean more internally consistent reasoning that works inside the setting and also isn't obvious as a deliberate balancing mechanism. You want to be able to look at every mechanic and think "that was a neat choice, the way it works feels good" not "ah, that's a balance mechanism, they didn't even try to put a tarp over it"

You can prevent stockpiling in other ways, like the "unsafezone" idea I put up, allowing inhibs to be attacked during construction and well before deployment as well as any friendly structures they decide to park next to. As far as keeping them away from stations to prevent abuse of the mechanic, maybe once it leaves its home station/lot, entering any safezone boosts any active corrosion effects, so it'd be unwise to deploy them inside of a station's safezone, especially since it'd be vulnerable to attack until it got into position, the anchoring module and invuln field would eat themselves alive in the situation, and then the siege mode would as well once the battle started. I think technically the command module would also be always online and corroding itself.

A space station is something that should be available to anyone.
Locking such huge feature out of everyone except zergs is counterproductive.
Of course station functionality should be proportional to the amount of work put into it. And proportional to effort required to capture it.
But small company should be able to have small station, and should be assured that nobody will ride it while they're asleep.

Agreed, the fact that stations start out as a small collection of a few lots and can grow in an organic way into something truly enormous means they are for all players at all levels of play, provide scaling benefits, and even at their smallest represent an investment of time, effort, and resources that deserves a modicum of protection.

 

[AlexiyOne]

So just to clarify, a safezone is around a station when there are military ships around it, but, are they defended by the safezone and what is the true meaning of a military ship, a ship with one cannon, a ship with a torpedo, or a large ship with multiple guns?

 

[Recatek]

If you're asking about the original suggestion (post #1 in this thread), then under that system there's no distinction between civilian and military ships -- only friendly and enemy (based on the faction standing of the ship's owner).

While the safe zone is active, all friendly-owned ships and other objects in its radius are invulnerable

However, this is working under an assumption that the safe zone itself is on the smaller side, and only extends a little distance beyond the physical station itself.

 

[Burnside]

So just to clarify, a safezone is around a station when there are military ships around it, but, are they defended by the safezone and what is the true meaning of a military ship, a ship with one cannon, a ship with a torpedo, or a large ship with multiple guns?

Safezones prevent damage effects, impacts, and weapons fire within their zone of effect. Military ships, under dev statements, are ships with a military transponder, that's it, they don't need to have guns to be classed as military. Safezones never protect military ships from damage, friendly or enemy, and military ships can fire their weapons while in a safezone.

 

[CalenLoki]

The time has come. I put together my own siege system.
It connects some aspects of yours @Recatek and @Burnside. And I'd like to hear your feedback.
It's addressing the same issues Rec's idea (unnecessary waiting), while putting even more consequences into players actions.

1. Core.

-Core is built out of pairs of emitters aiming at each other. The core itself is created in-between them.
The more emitters aims at it, the bigger and more powerful it becomes. Each powered pair adds +1 to the core size.
Everything within certain radius of active core get corroded. Bigger core->bigger corrosion bubble.
Having multiple smaller cores are equally efficient to single large one, but easier to armour up.

-Station-mounted core it is used to create safezone or declare siege.
Each 23:30 to 24:30h (station owner's choice) it has potential siege window. So you can gradually change the vulnerability hour.
Core can cost between 5 and 10% of the station material cost. If it's less, it can't create safezone. If it's more, you're exchanging extra power usage for more redundancy.
Siege window is public knowledge.

-Mounted on a ship it is used to suppress safezone. It becomes siege ship.

-When core is active, it's indestructible. You need to cut power from both sides of each pair to deactivate them. Easiest done on foot, but can be destroyed at range as well.


2. Siege declaration is done by pressing a button on one station, to challenge another station.

-Target station can be max 2x bigger than declaring station.

-Declaration range is limited. The range is based on sum of sizes of both attacking and target stations.

-While it doesn't require any physical action (like towing inhibitor), declaring side puts their own station in danger if they loose the siege.


3. After declaration, there is warning time to make sure defenders can come online.
It's minimum 12h, but get's bigger the bigger the target station is.

The first siege window after warning period the battle starts.

Upon start, all siege ships within battle zone activate their cores. Siege ships that enter battle zone after that don't count.
Battle zone radius is based on target station size, minimum 5km for smallest stations.


4. During battle attackers try to cut power of defenders cores. Once there is less cores active than is required to keep the safe zone (5% of station value), all cores get deactivated. Re-activating them take several hours.

Defenders try to de-activate siege ships. Once there is less siege ship cores than active station cores, the siege is over.
Safe-zone comes back online and declaring station core overloads and blows up. Thus opening declaring station to an attack until new cores get activated.

To make sure sieges aren't dragged too long, because of both sides staying defensive, there is soft time limit.
Each of siege ship cores emit more and more corrosion the longer they stay in battle, and the closer it is to the border of battle zone.
Thus attackers should try to push close and fast, to finish the battle before siege ship melt down.
The more siege ship cores get disabled, the more corrosion remaining ones emit, thus rewarding defenders for each little victory.
Opposite occurs the more station cores get disabled.
Big station sieges will take longer, as attackers can keep siege ships further from the battle zone border.


Reason behind all that complexity:
All actions have consequences. Declare siege and don't show up? Pay for new cores and accept counter-assault. You risk something valuable (at least half the size of attacked station) and nearby (max declaration range).

Requires invading forces to fight at their own border, and gradually progress into enemy territory, due to declaration range limit.

Allows station to control neighbourhood, as they can see a list of all stations within siege declaration range. Especially large stations with long range.

Battle tactics can vary a lot, due to core placement flexibility. Single huge flagship with large core? Multiple small cores on a single ship? Multiple siege ships? Single or multiple station cores? Attack core on foot? Bomb it from afar? heavily armour siege ship? Or make it fast but fragile?
All possible.

Contains battle within specific size and time limits, but without hard borders. Attackers can trade time to keep siege ships further from harm.

Rewards both sides for small victories by increasing/decreasing battle time.

Displays time limit to players as gradual, physical siege ship destruction, rather than GUI.
Same when getting closer to battle zone limits: visual core effect or yolol signal.

 

[Burnside]

Oooh, you're even incorporating elements of my old stronghold idea, I very like this. The only potential gripes I can see is that small defenders get the shaft, so their vulnerability to sieges depends on how expensive a core is- meaning how valuable/vulnerable a siege ship is (can we call them onagers or something for ease on the tongue?).

Second, I'd like to go back to one of your earlier ideas and link each siege ship core to a station core and destruction of one means destruction of the other- the idea being the siege ship cores are drawing power from their twin on a station and disruption of the feed or reaching the overload time limit is what makes them go boom. So each siege core taken offline would penalize the attacker with one of their station cores getting blown, meaning an attacker could win a siege but wind up with a very Pyrrhic victory if they lose too many siege ships.

Third, I can see a lot of people who are going to hate having to bring all those extra siege ships to ensure the fight doesn't end after one loss, but given each siege ship that gets tanked makes the others corrode faster there's going to be a golden mean on how many extra to bring into any given fight.

Last question, is this a siege system where the safezone drops at the start of the fight or one where the safezone still needs to be dropped during?

Actual last question, how do we know how many cores a station has? And why wouldn't an owner keep a bunch of cores offlined until they get beseiged and then start them up during the Rally Phase?

 

[AlexiyOne]

Safezones prevent damage effects, impacts, and weapons fire within their zone of effect. Military ships, under dev statements, are ships with a military transponder, that's it, they don't need to have guns to be classed as military. Safezones never protect military ships from damage, friendly or enemy, and military ships can fire their weapons while in a safezone.

So what's the point of putting in a military transponder? Couldn't everyone just put in a transponder and act like their ship isn't military?

 

[Burnside]

Military transponders making a ship "military" is what lets them do safezone things like sieges.

 

[CalenLoki]

I incorporated a lot of different ideas.

I prefer to use self describing names, rather than creating new ones. Easier for the reader.

Linking siege ships with station cores would prevent third party from joining with their own siege ships. Thus you could use one station to protect other station by declaring and loosing sieges.
It's also simpler this way. Declare siege, than just show up there at specific time with enough siege ships.

Each extra siege ship costs a lot, and if the siege takes too long, also gets destroyed by corrosion.
If you bring 10x more than needed, you're putting on stakes similar value to besieged station.
Bringing more also requires more people to fly them (even if it's just the pilots) and spreads your forces to defend all of them.
So the system gives option to do it, but is it really worth it?

SZ drops at the start. I hate using magic shields in actual combat. It feels gamey to duck in and out of invulnerable cover.

Station cores would detect all the other stations within range, together with amount of cores and siege windows.
Once the siege is declared, no new core can be activated, or siege window changed.

Also having more cores than 10% of station value doesn't increase it's siege declaration range, safe zone size, or amount of siege ships needed to keep the siege going. Just increase the amount of cores that needs to be deactivated before defence fails.
And maybe over-coring still increase battle zone size?
So the same as with bringing too many siege ships. Yes you can, but it's usually not worth it.

 

[Burnside]

Linking siege ships with station cores would prevent third party from joining with their own siege ships. Thus you could use one station to protect other station by declaring and loosing sieges.

Nothing in your model suggests a third party couldn't add their own siege ships to the mix, they'd just need their own station cores to support them as collateral. I'm also considering the idea that a station could declare against a bigger station, thus not having enough linkable station cores to support the minimum necessary number of siege ships, so they could also ante up cores on a sister station to supply the extra links needed. It's kind of like a poker game now, which is a high-skill interaction with lots of room for bluffing.

Third part, just thought of this while writing, what if not having enough siege ships to counter the target station cores just means the defender safezone has a reduced "safezone timer" to drop via the dev-mode siege rule. If your siege ships meet or beat the defender's cores then the siege starts with the SZ offline. And if you lose too many cores, the defender could reactivate some of theirs- a nice recovery mechanic, though we'd need to explore it a bit more to work any kinks out. Of course, that would mean you could also declare a siege and not bring any siege ships, but it would be the attacker's choice. this would also solve the problem of storing "inactive cores" as a defender safeguard instead of locking out bringing cores online.

I like the idea that overcoring to defend against a siege makes the battlespace bigger, meaning siege ships corrode less quickly, that's a nice balance mechanism. I think we should look at my above suggestions for dealing with core disparity issues to make battlespace size variables a more prevalent game element.


EDIT: In-Siege Core Recovery: thinking about this idea more, since it takes hours under your system to online a core that isn't being deactivated by a siege ship, it'd need some kind of recharge acceleration mechanic to be viable in a siege that also balances out and prevents a weird stalemate of the Safezone bouncing up and down and unnecessarily drawing out the fight. What if you could "burn out" two cores to boost another core's recharge rate by +100% and each additional two only provide 3/4 bonus of the previous pair (i.e. +100%, +75%, +56.25%, +42.19%, +31.64%, etc, etc)- having to pay two cores for a geometrically decreasing boost prevents even stockpilers from cheesing cores back online, even after blowing up siege ships and freeing up their cores. So, hypohetically speaking we'd go from say a 6-hour onlining window for a core down to six cores burned out to get a 1hr:48min recharge, which feels like a decent expense-curve for the advantage. To eval any further we'd need to decide on how fast a military ship could offline a 1-core Safezone via dev-mode mechanics. So, I'll leave that to you whether you want to explore this idea any further or if you'll reject it from the model outright.


EDIT2: we can also balance being able to bring in siege ships linked to stations other than the declaring station by adding a range-dependent cost to the link and the corrosion factor siege ships experience- that feels like a nice soft limit on long-range sieges

EDIT3: another thought, by switching a station core into siege mode to power a siege ship's core, what if that station core no longer counted towards SZ mechanics? Under your system, I've noticed there's no real reason for a station under siege not to also declare a siege in return- OR- if siege mode locks out mutual declares (I don't think it should), a sister station could declare against the attacking station or whatever, putting up its own cores to back the counter-siege. So, you could have a situation where a besieged station declares a countersiege back against the attacker because both are within each other's wardec range and the defender was on when the wardec occurred allowing an immediate response, both are reducing their cores allocated to their safezones to support their siege ships, and thus both have fewer siege ships they'd need to bring and protect, a smaller, tighter battlespace, and the split forces on either battlespace wouldn't be quite so inconvenienced- any kind of miscalculation from either side could result in both stations switching hands or the sieges being staggered, etc.

 

[CalenLoki]

Finally have time to reply.

Multiple stations against one sounds good. It prevents situation where faction keep all their peripheral stations too small to declare siege on the local capital. So invading forces can conquer the whole sector "villages" first, then use their combined cores.

I'm always against using safezones during battle. Either you fight, and no magic is protecting anyone, or you don't have to be there. Safezones are there to prevent griefing and night riding, not to be directly weaponized.
Also the idea of registering ship as civilian/military (Lauri's idea) or counting their numbers is just screaming "cheese me".
So until someone describes it with enough details to prevent all the obvious exploits, I'll stay with my "it just can't work" statement.

I'm ok with reinforcing existing cores (which require taking them back from attackers). i.e. if core is build of multiple components, and at least some are still operational.
But activating completely new ones sounds unfair. After all attackers can't bring any more siege ships once the battle start, and they have limited time.

I like the idea for soft range limit by increasing/decreasing corrosion. That makes it much easier to besiege close neighbour than someone at the very edge of the range.
Although hard limit is still needed - after all stations can sense other stations, and we don't want to list the entire universe.

While theoretically you can counter-siege, there is no need to do that. The attackers station is on stakes from the moment the siege is declared. If they fail to capture your stations, theirs is wide open for several hours until their SZ is back online. And if they succeed, your siege declaration is cancelled.
The only reason for that could be if their station is much smaller, and their siege window is before yours. This way you could bring the battle to their station and avoid collateral damage to civilian parts of your station. At cost of loosing advantage of friendly fortifications.

So I think allocating cores is unnecessary over-complication. And it rewards hoarding cores and big stations too much.

 

[Burnside]

Well, since the core reinforcement and recharge works in tandem with variable safezone drop-strength, if one doesn't pass muster both fail, so... yeah, until I can persuade you that having the safezone drop able to be included into the siege, it's kind of defunct. I always envisioned it as a point during the fight when the airspace(voidspace?) Around the station is in turmoil so ground operations are difficult and bombardments aren't viable in the general melee- but then we don't really need an abstract representation when the ships and troops are doing the dance themselves, so you're right, it is just an artifact of devmode sieges that doesn't really serve the evolution of this system now.

 

[Meetbolio]

But then again, this system pretty much forces the defenders to log on during the vulnerable times, no matter how good the rest of the system is that's a big flaw, as explained by Rec's last post.

 

[XenoCow]

I wonder if the same outcome of these rules can be established in a more emergent behavior, lore based, kind of way.

Perhaps a new, faction, or council between Empire and Kingdom, call it the "War and Peace Council" for now. Administrates raiding and wars between factions. And perhaps instead of the Inhibitor idea, there is something that this council wants built for them, or a rare resource collected for them (something for factions to try to fight over) that is the cost of declaring a raid on a station.

However, unsanctioned raids would force the council to put either some sort of trade sanctions on members of that guilty faction, or, in the case of a lone player acting out, a bounty on his or her head to be taken by bounty hunter players (introducing a new role for individual players). In this way, players still have the freedom to be jerks and attack whenever, but if they do so, there will be consequences that will last. Maybe all stations of a faction become fair game if they raid without permission, that would open them up to any passersby to steal, not a wise move.

Much like real life, people would have to act with integrity and honor not because of rituals they must perform, but because of the consequences of not performing them.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

If you have a large megastation then you almost certainly have a very large faction now given that even if there are no safezones then its very unlikely that anyone would challenge you unless they are a faction of a similar size as such if they did attack you and nobody could get online quick enough to defend the station and you lost it then you can always prepare a retaliatory strike at one of their stations because even if they thought you were all offline they would still bring a large fleet to assault the station as such they would leave their stations less defended and you could launch a counter attack from one of your factions smaller stations which if your a large faction you probably would have.

Personally I think it would be better if instead of station safezones (outside of the starting safezone of course) there was some system that could trigger a message to Steam or something then the faction has a chance to get on an defend and if you're worried about being attacked and you're in an asteroid field its likely you have a minefield that would delay the attackers. Furthermore a "siege" mechanic would take away the fluidity of large scale combat such as raids or blockades on a station however I could see a "war" mechanic be implemented whereby stations of a faction would be safe unless declared war on by another faction however this would not allow random players to enter a station and steal stuff which some would say is good but others would say takes away the fluidity of a game especially since a single ship would not have enough space to steal a lot and you can always build hidden saferooms for valuables.

At the end of the day the if you're really worried about being attacked then its likely that you will be able to build in the starting safezone. The devs put the more valuable resources outside the safezone for a reason and whilst I understand that you wouldn't want a station which represents a lot of work destroyed or damaged a megastation would have to be built by either a very large faction or multiple factions and as such is unlikely to be attacked as the aftermath of an attack would be very undesirable and would possibly result in a war where a lot more than even a single megastation would be destroyed or heavily damaged and where a "siege" mechanic would slow down the gameplay and waste everyone's time as well as prolonging the conflict as instead of both sides attacking a few stations and large fleet battles there would be lots of raids while everyone waits to attack a station, also such a large structure would be incredibly hard to destroy.

I would say the risk comes more for the smaller stations as the factions that built them could still start a war it would be considerably smaller unless other factions they have pacts with join in, regardless small stations would be more likely targeted as they would not require as much resources to attack but at the same time can also be more easily hidden in asteroids or built in deep space they could also be easier to defend compared to a megastation as inbuilt turrets would have a larger degree of fire.

Overall I think a "siege" mechanic would reduce gameplay opportunities as a megastation that requires a lot of effort to build would be incredibly hard if not impossible to destroy or even severely damage, and most damage would be superficial and even deeper damage would still be able to be repaired. Also a smaller faction that is in danger of being attacked has probably also formed a mutual defence pact with other similar smaller factions that would provide a large force that even a very large faction would hesitate to anger. I think a lot of this discussion has mentioned the mechanics of attacking a spacestation but no one seems to have mentioned the overall effect that would have and why even if the game just allowed any station to be boarded or attacked at any time it would still be a bad idea.