Stations, Systems, Conquests

[Igiss]

This is going to be a long post. But I'll start with one brief comment. Everything that was proposed by Dab is very complicated. How will it work? It's not easy to tell before we try, so my pessimism or optimism about certain things should be understood as theoretical.

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.

Choice between more members - and bases, cheaper capships and generated money? Well, first of all, why more members is an alternative? Next, about cheaper capships. Right now in Discovery there's only one place where each capships is sold. Each base can have only 3 ships on it.

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.

The idea all by itself sounds good. However, it's too complicated. Someone stupid will respawn on defenders' base after it was captured, and all the battle would stop because of cheating? Or the troops - oxygen, well, few places sell oxygen. Where are you going to get it? Theoretically, to ensure this works I should add 'troops' for sale on each station, which won't be very realistic. Although I admit that system battles are interesting and might spice things up alot, we need slightly (or completely) different solution.

Which can be a whole system away even. Leaving the defenders to spawn much more.

Might be even more than 1 system. No?

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.

I've skipped a larger part here. What about 2 billion if character cannot have more than 1 billion? This is also a question of balance. Giving billion advantages to any factions - new, old, having 100 bases or having none - is a bad idea. It is possible, again, theoretically, that bases could generate profit. But certainly not much profit. If it exceeds 100 mil per faction per 2 weeks, I'm mostly against cause it's unfair advantage that all faction members, and especially leaders, will exploit.

Now, the most complicated part. Mod editing to track all those changes. I'll sum up my thoughts in a list.

1) There won't be two mod versions - for our server and for everyone. Should be obvious that I'll never do that.

Expansion packs featuring bases is a possibility. However, to ensure that this pack is installed by everyone you need to change exe number version, thus increasing pack size. More, many people don't visit forums and basically don't want to install any expansions because of lazyness and FLMM that will popup error messages.

Therefore, the whole concept of building bases might be more complicated then fun.

2) Changing existing station reputations. This won't be done. If AW capture Leeds, planet becomes a Zoner planet? If SF captires freeport, it becomes Bretonian? Unbelievable.

3) New bases. All stations in FL are carefully and logically placed... well, most of them. I'm sure that for defensive purposes - and just for fun - factions would wish to build up in rather unsuitable places. This will spoil atmosphere that this mod tries to secure.

Basically, a base would require editing/adding several files even if done with IFSO, plus adding infocards, plus adding exclusion zones (if it's in some asteroid field or nebula), plus adding trade lanes if it's lawful... easy? Too far from it.