Yeah, you could have a choice between trading stations that generate money, military stations that are very strong and can do enough damage to enemy ships that it can drive of attacks, given the defender the advantage it is supposed to have. Shipyards that you can pick on battleship, cruiser, and gunboat, that maybe can be sold for less, because your faction is building it. These would only be available to factions with home systems, finally giving us a good real reason to get a home system, instead of all these new factions that decide not to, because they can have more members and not be losing anything. But if we do this, it'll be a choice between more members, or bases, cheaper capships, and generated money. The generated money won't make as much as normal trading will, but will make enough to be able to outfit fighters for everyone and new recruits, and for their ammo. Maybe gunboats too. BSs and cruisers would require saving up that money or trading manually. The money could the be given to a faction at the end of ever 2 weeks, amount based on the trading stations they have.
Then there are different types of stations. Small ones, making an okay amount of money, medium sized ones, making decent amounts, and large ones (that take awhile to create, and therefor cost alot more) that make good amounts of money. And then you can buy addons that increase its profit, or buy new stations, making multiple ones, so you can have one per system. BSs for stations would require the same amount of money as, say 4 player BSs. Those BSs will be as strong as stock BSs, which can easily aid players in defense around the area of it.
Then we can get some better versions of system conquering going that works with these things and makes it more doable, rather than the, you fly in and kill everyone and you win. You must, say, nueutralize all the bases or something, or bases have a certain troop amount on them, and the attackers must land more troops than that (the troops would just be cargo room, so a train could hold 4,000 troops). So space battle would be; attackers push the defenders back, and make a safe run for troop transports. Once enough troops have been brought to the station you own the station, and the defenders must either drop more troops or retreat. We could have oxygen be the troops, so people can't just say they made two runs when they didn't they must drop the cargo and come out empty. We would have a spectator being the referee, to make sure no cheating happens. Defenders can keep respawning at the base until the enemy troops take control. Then the defenders have no more spawns and must win the space fight with whatever they have left only, and once the area is secure they can bring in reinforcements and drop troops to retake it. Attackers can spawn however many times they want, but it must be from one of their NPC alignment's bases. Which can be a whole system away even. Leaving the defenders to spawn much more.
That way, the space battle is more about getting troops down in the first stage, preventing defender spawns, and then getting rid of space forces after doing that.
You would have to do this for every base and planet in the system to capture the system. NPC ownership would not change when the station is captured, the attackers would just be in control of it, not own it. Only exception is faction bought stations. They could be captured and turned to the attackers alignment in the next mod release. If they get a trading station, the first 2 weeks would not generate money since it is changing ownership. But afterward it would generate money until taken.
So for example;
SF attacks AW (hey it happens, history doesn't lie :P) and SF attacks, lets say the Freeport in Tau-37 (they like to attack that system) and they capture it. Since it is a NPC base that wasn't player constructed, they do not own it, or get anything from it, except that it helps them project their control on the system. Now lets say they captured an AW constructed base. It would be a Zoner aligned base, as its our alignment. If they captured it, then it would be changed to Bretonia Armed Forces alignment in the next version. And if it were a trading station they'd get money 4 weeks from getting it. which is faster than constructing a base for the next version.
Pirate bases DO NOT participate in system control. Only pirate PLANETS do. Like Malta and Gamma. So if someone captured those, they'd control the entire system, if we did not have a constructed base there. Pirate factions cannot buy system control bases, they can make bases, but if they are 30K or more from a dockable planet they do not count. Anything within 30K is taken when the planet is. Whoever is adding in the new bases decides where pirate bases go, so pirates can't just buy one right next to an enemy and use it like that. Pirates cannot have shipyards or trade stations. Corsair Osiris' are only buyable for Gamma and Delta. Molly Huggys and Outcast huggys are okay for anywhere. Everything else for pirates are outposts and bases like Kyoto and Buffalo. Not a full blown military station like a house government. Legal factions can get military bases however.
'Control' of a system is the same as having a zone of influence. You don't actually OWN that system. Only your home system do you OWN. Like now. But those systems you have TOTAL control of (all bases that are not pirate are controlled by you) you can build new stations. However once you buy it its there, so if the system is completely taken by someone else before the new version, then you lose the station to them as well. Battleships taken are changed. Say AW takes an SF BS (not normal NPC one that came with game, just constructed ones) it is changed from a Bret BS (to simulate the Bret BS' destruction and the Osiris new position there), to a an Osiris or Battlstar Advance, whatever we decide is the main BS for AW. Not sure about that one yet. Because though FP11 isn't in our zone of influence we do not control it, but it is a zoner base selling battlestars, same with Gran Canaria. Or Osiris because Corsairs own them and they are in our zone of influence.
Also, it would no longer be needed to have zone of influence's touching to take a system. Because you can only respawn from a base you control you have to fly ALL the way back if you die, where the defenders do not. Fixes the times when the enemy docks at a station in the system and respawns again and again (everyone in the Tau-37 battle can admit, it was a bad idea...)
This would add a whole new dimension to the server. I can do all of the base creation and editing, and just do a few less systems in each version while Angel does all systems. We would keep a list here of what is control but who. and edit it appropriately. Then one of the server admins would have the job of giving out the money made by trading stations to that faction's bank char. Then there should be a limit on the total profit every two weeks. So really old factions with lots of bases cannot get tons of trading stations and make 2 billion creds every 2 weeks.
If we distribute the jobs in a good manner we can make this work, easily, with not too much work. I can keep track of base ownerships and creation and editing of those bases when necessary. One of the admins keeps track of profits made by each faction and distributes the money. And then at the finish of each version Igiss adds the edited parts into the version being used by OUR server. so we have the normal version, and the server version. It wouldn't take too much work. and I think we can make this work fairly easily.
Suggestions please :) And sorry about the huge post...
Edited by Igiss - split first paragraph into parts, too damn hard to read, but good post Dab.
![[Image: DFinal.png]](http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b328/Luciaden/DFinal.png)