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[Gothars]

Will it ever be possible (or moddable) to directly control a station?

I imagine if you're in a situation where your colony is under attack, and you have only a small fleet/flagship but a powerful station, you might end up as nothing but a spectator. Controlling the station directly would put you center stage again.

[Sutopia]

Will it ever be possible (or moddable) to directly control a station?

I imagine if you're in a situation where your colony is under attack, and you have only a small fleet/flagship but a powerful station, you might end up as nothing but a spectator. Controlling the station directly would put you center stage again.

I guess you'll be able to gun a single module but maybe not a whole station since station body itself got no gun at all.

[Chaos Blade]

A very interesting update.
I am a bit curious, though, how you will be handling the pirate factions, by your own posts, Alex, the pirates seem more like a shorthand designation for several groups of... less than legal nature (pirates, privateers, smugglers and even planetary rebels) it could be interesting to have them be not quite a faction but subfactions that behave differently and vary their equipment or tactics (because a pirate cares for loot, a privateer might care more for what the faction that issues the letter of marquee is providing and smugglers just want to go in and out, undetected)

I understand that going overly complex here could be detrimental, both from a coding perspective and from a computing power use, but I do like the idea of distinct subfactions, maybe influenced by the players standing with the faction (but hitting privateers is not the same as hitting pirates, for instance, or just because you wiped out pirate A;s band, doesn't mean pirate B is going to be more or less upset about it.

Though a special case could be made for privateers as they might belong to one of the bigger factions, hell, this could open up an interesting mission, say faction A wants to know if pirate band B is working for Faction C, or Faction C, who has issued a letter of marquee for Pirate Band B is suspecting that band is also hitting their shipping alongside faction A's, so they send you out, to collect evidence (maybe thru boarding a ship from band B, maybe by working some sort of rapport with band B, or maybe by pretending to be Faction C shipping) and, as a follow up mission, offer you an extermination mission for the selfsame pirates.
I like the idea of having to get some info

I'll admit some of this might be a tad too complex, but I like the idea of emerging gameplay and subfactions could be interesting for all the majors as well (I mean, no faction is really monolithic) hell, might even open up factions to change though the players actions (to limited degrees, but for instance might add or subtract items in the controlled list)

[Alex]

1. Will faction doctrine affect station tech level?
...
will differrent  factions have custom stations?

You choose the tech level of the station (low tech, midline, high tech) when you build it, so it's not tied to doctrine. What blueprints you have available and prioritized will determine the station's weapons loadout.

Each station tech level has 3 tiers - "orbital station", "battlestation", and "star fortress". The tech levels/tiers will be distributed among the core colonies as appropriate. Given that weapon/fighter availability and ship quality are factors, I'd imagine that the same tech type station may feel a good bit different when used by another faction.

2.Will we see things like pathers stations with SO modules?

Given the above: probably not? I haven't looked at it yet, though. For example the pirate bases are all using the "orbital station" tier but with a range of missing modules depending on how powerful that particular base is. May do the same thing for pathers, may do something different; will see. SO is so heavily movement-oriented, though, and its penalty doesn't make sense for stations which don't have peak time, so probably not that specifically, if anything.

3.speaking of pathers,  will they behave in a manner similar to pirates? They are basically just that.

I have some specific plans. Let's leave it at that for now

4. How will factions react to you installing ai cores in colonies? I reckon it would *** off the Ludds and Hegemony?

Where would the fun of using absurdly powerful AI cores be if I told you what, if anything, may or may not happen as a result?

Will it ever be possible (or moddable) to directly control a station?

I imagine if you're in a situation where your colony is under attack, and you have only a small fleet/flagship but a powerful station, you might end up as nothing but a spectator. Controlling the station directly would put you center stage again.

Well, in that situation, you're not actually obligated to participate in battle and could let it resolve itself in the campaign layer.

More specifically about controlling a station, though - no, for several reasons.

First off, it doesn't fall neatly into the current ship-controlling UI setup. A station has multiple modules, right, and they're mostly cruiser-to-battleship-and-beyond level of power. There's no existing mechanism for switching between these quickly, having a good overview of the status, etc.

Secondly, I think it'd be pretty boring. You don't get to maneuver, and the primary driver of the flow of a vs-station fight - the station's rotation - is fixed and not controllable. The actual impact player control would make would be very limited compared to them controlling a ship. The stations are just not something that's well suited to player control, by design, since the goal of their design is to create a specific flow, different for each station tech level, that gives each fight character.

<stuff about pirates>

I hear what you're saying! I think I mostly covered it a few pages back, and you also touch on it in your post as well - the complexity here is significant, and there's just no way I could see putting in the time to both do it initially and then maintain/deal with design issues on an ongoing basis without having very clear and specific reasons for doing it in the first place.

"Could be interesting" just doesn't cut it given what's involved, you know? I could see extracting new factions out of pirates if that became necessary story-wise (i.e. Charterists in Askonia), but not just breaking them out into a bunch of factions wholesale. If - and it's still an if - a change needed to be made, my inclination would be to make it simpler, not more complex. Hence the thought about *potentially* fixing their player rep at -50.

[Cyan Leader]

You choose the tech level of the station (low tech, midline, high tech) when you build it, so it's not tied to doctrine. What blueprints you have available and prioritized will determine the station's weapons loadout.

Hum.., so what are the positives and negatives of each? I mean, would money be the only thing stopping a player from going high tech all the time? What can a high tech station do that a low tech can't? (outside of combat)

[Tartiflette]

I hear what you're saying! I think I mostly covered it a few pages back, and you also touch on it in your post as well - the complexity here is significant, and there's just no way I could see putting in the time to both do it initially and then maintain/deal with design issues on an ongoing basis without having very clear and specific reasons for doing it in the first place.

"Could be interesting" just doesn't cut it given what's involved, you know? I could see extracting new factions out of pirates if that became necessary story-wise (i.e. Charterists in Askonia), but not just breaking them out into a bunch of factions wholesale. If - and it's still an if - a change needed to be made, my inclination would be to make it simpler, not more complex. Hence the thought about *potentially* fixing their player rep at -50.

"Underground" post 1.0 DLC when it won't require any maintenance afterward?

[Megas]

Hum.., so what are the positives and negatives of each? I mean, would money be the only thing stopping a player from going high tech all the time? What can a high tech station do that a low tech can't? (outside of combat)

It would be nice to see the differences.  For me, the question would be why would I want to use high-tech if it cannot use ballistics?  If the lower tech can use Mjolnirs, Gauss, and Tachyon Lances, and high-tech cannot use ballistics, why would I want high-tech?

[Cyan Leader]

There is also the fact that if the player isn't prompted to do many defensive battles then the station config itself might not even matter since the battles would be auto-resolved.

[Megas]

True, if you do not bother fighting the battle, then it does not matter what it has, just that its has its OP spent to function at full capacity.  I often use captured ships armed with junk weapons (like thumpers and spare missile racks) and slower than the enemy ships to auto-resolve pursuits, and they kill more than half of the enemy survivors.  It is great since my main fleet does not need to deploy.  Could be applied to your battlestation if they auto-resolve.

[Sarissofoi]

If - and it's still an if - a change needed to be made, my inclination would be to make it simpler, not more complex. Hence the thought about *potentially* fixing their player rep at -50.

It make sense in case of vanilla where pirates are just target practice essentially and do not have any special goodies for them but I personally enjoyed grinding rep for pirates when playing as smuggler/explorer/delivery space truck.
With Underworld mod that add plenty of pirate tech ships it change as high rep mean access to pirate military markets. It actually pay off in that case.

BTW What about deserters making a separate(and hostile) sub-factions to their main factions? With their own separate from pirates  bases and raiding forces).

I think it would make sense to lock rep anyway if player could grind local rep(as with station/port master) to get access to some perks and military market.
Local rep being more influential and having effect on global faction rep would be pretty neat.
>having bad rep in one system(as a smuggler so suspicious and patrols look at you) but in other you are fairly unknown and treated as others.

Also it black market could use some changes. I mean high tech/big ships would probably be more pricey than on open market(even with no taxes) as you need add risk cost and still you would need some local or global connections to get one.  Having some fighting ships on civilian market(not strict military but escorts and exploration vessels) would be cool too(if player want to play a Legal Campaign).

Question about pirate station and raiding.
How easily mod-able it would be? I mean as a faction function?
Is this gonna be easily mod-able(like in faction file with commissions/bounties/tariffs) or its separate function and you need to know how to code(and cast spells)?


Anyway playing vanilla run with few(QoL) mods and its actually good. I miss some ships or weapons but it  feel complete and definitely more wholesome than with dozen+  mods.

Small question. Alex are you gonna make fighters dock when in transit? They still accompany ships like in previous builds(on global map).

[Alex]

Hum.., so what are the positives and negatives of each? I mean, would money be the only thing stopping a player from going high tech all the time? What can a high tech station do that a low tech can't? (outside of combat)

The only differences are tactical, in the combat layer. I want the choice of tech type to be stylistic rather than strategic - strategic considerations change over time, and I don't want "re-building a different station type to match current situation" to be something the player needs to seriously consider.

BTW What about deserters making a separate(and hostile) sub-factions to their main factions? With their own separate from pirates  bases and raiding forces).

... but, why? Making them "pirates" already does the job, and is entirely within the purview of the pirate faction representing a wide range of situations. This sounds like exactly the sort of complication that would arise from splitting out pirates; you do it for a few things, and all of a sudden it "makes sense" for other things as well. It's not a road I have any interest in going down - just added complexity w/o a reason, you know?

Question about pirate station and raiding.
How easily mod-able it would be? I mean as a faction function?
Is this gonna be easily mod-able(like in faction file with commissions/bounties/tariffs) or its separate function and you need to know how to code(and cast spells)?

Moddable but with code etc. It's absolutely not suited to being a faction file toggle.

Small question. Alex are you gonna make fighters dock when in transit? They still accompany ships like in previous builds(on global map).

I did already, actually, but purely for performance reasons.

[Cyan Leader]

I have a hard time imagining anyone picking low tech unless they are roleplaying pirates or something. If their types are purely for combat then can we expect the player to engage with their station often? I mean, I can only see serious fleets endangering a station if they are anywhere near the power of Remnant ones so I imagined a lot of auto-resolving would happen.

[Sarissofoi]

Fine point.
Thanks for answering.

[Mr. Sterling]

think you missed the point


if i become friends with the pirates then a random event happens and the pirates attack my outpost now im an enemy for defending what is mine.

when accept trade mission and get attacked by pirates waiting out side the jump point for me because i accepted the trade mission when my rep says im friends with them now im automatically switched to enemy again because i defended my ships and cargo wtf

easiest fix would b make the events, trade and kill missions so they don't affect rep.


i know the pirate ships are not that good ultimately i want to b able to create my own faction and sell them better ships have my own base where pirates (or a any other faction) can come get ships and out fit them from me.

[Sabaton]

Will all of these changes be applied to redacted too? Minefields, comm relays, nav points,etc.