Planetary/Large Defense Systems

[Anasasi]

So say, you and a group become large enough to colonize a planet. You're also going to be big enough to notice, especially if your planet or territory falls strategically. 

I would enjoy seeing the ability to construct limited range shield 'domes' on planets, that protect you from external/orbital bombardment for a limited damage or duration. These generators would be fueled by 'x item'. If they run out of fuel, they go down. This does a couple of things over all. It allows people to have a comfort blanket above them for installations on a planetary surface and forces, possible ground assaults instead of flying assaults or orbital ones. It means fights would be more centralized. 

Now, the downside, I guess would have to be a restriction of how many within a specific area are allowed, so you have to protect your more important areas, spaceports, mining areas, living areas, whatever you deem important. Another downside would be possibly defense systems would have to be outside of the dome, thus making them 'vulnerable'. 

I'm not sure how the system with organisations is going to work, but hopefully there will some form of 'standings' systems between people so you can judge who has access to the shielded areas. 

I'll assume bunkers will be possible with the simple installation of a building underground, as it's all voxel based.

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However, on the ticket of standings, etc, seeing shield doors for docking bays on stations and capital ships that allow only selected people in and stop projectiles from straight penetrating into a docking bay would be a lovely addition. 

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As for anti-orbit weapons, I would like to see various systems that can be used to track hostiles in orbit or that you are allowed to possibly control, but that are quite large and require defense on the planet surface.

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On the line of defensive weaponry, 
how possible would point defense/anti-missile systems be? i.e, a system that tracks and has a chance to kill incoming missiles or smaller ships? 
I understand there is LUA, but I guess the speculation would be that maybe missiles and other projectiles would be almost impossible to kill on the fly. However, we are yet to see weapons, etc. 

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Keep in mind, this is all speculative, as there isn't much about the way standings and relations between organisations will be dealt with, whether there will be a war system like EvE or whether it will just be groups brawling it out and letting their intentions be known via projectiles. 

[caravaggio2000]

I am down with planetary and other large defense systems. Personally, I'd like to build a Dyson Shell and I'd hate to see it go undefended.

[Anasasi]

I am down with planetary and other large defense systems. Personally, I'd like to build a Dyson Shell and I'd hate to see it go undefended.

You're the reason we need large shields and point defenses.

[magnatron]

sorta sounds like the shields on the player own structures in EVE. witch i have to say i HATED dealing with those things in eve unless we where flying with 100's of other players it felt like you just sat there for hours shooting at a bubble in space. i don't think it should be mind blowingly easy to take things, but if no one comes to defend it shouldn't take hours of sitting there shooting a shield .

 

maybe a fuel requirement, and if no one is around to keep the fuel take topped off the shield will fail rather quickly. let say a shield has 1 million HP and 20 minutes worth of fuel. if there are players to defend they can keep the fuel tank topped off and the attackers will have to burn through a million HP while dealing with the defenders attacking them. if no players show up to defend the shield systems fails and falls offline after the fuel supply runs out after 20 minutes of heavy bombardment. also perhaps use the idea of reinforced mode from eve where once the attackers take the shield down the territory goes into reinforced mode for a set period of time, at witch point the system will notify the members of that organization what time they need to be at the base to defend. once reinforced mode ends the battle is on and the player will have the final fight to determine who will own that territory.

 

also allowing people to pick a time slot for what time of day reinforced mode would end could be a nice way to stop people from preying on those in different time zones. as its rather hard to defend when you need to be in bed sleeping for work the following day. this way a group can always be sure that they at least don't have to worry about people taking territory while they sleep, and it will be the burden of the attackers to play outside of their typical schedules.

 

as far as turrets and point defense, i say the more the merrier approaching a well defended territory that is hostile to you should be very dangerous in my opinion. but at the same time expensive on mats ammo and power, would be a nice trade off that way it take a lot of infrastructure to run a truly large array of static defensive weapons.

 

well i guess thats enough food for thought for the time being, i would like to point out these ideas have come from other games.

[Ripper]

Just remember...

 

You're building with 25cm blocks and planets are 100s of kilometers in size.

 

That doesn't even consider  the power requirements to setup defenses.

[Anasasi]

sorta sounds like the shields on the player own structures in EVE. witch i have to say i HATED dealing with those things in eve unless we where flying with 100's of other players it felt like you just sat there for hours shooting at a bubble in space. i don't think it should be mind blowingly easy to take things, but if no one comes to defend it shouldn't take hours of sitting there shooting a shield .

 

maybe a fuel requirement, and if no one is around to keep the fuel take topped off the shield will fail rather quickly. let say a shield has 1 million HP and 20 minutes worth of fuel. if there are players to defend they can keep the fuel tank topped off and the attackers will have to burn through a million HP while dealing with the defenders attacking them. if no players show up to defend the shield systems fails and falls offline after the fuel supply runs out after 20 minutes of heavy bombardment. also perhaps use the idea of reinforced mode from eve where once the attackers take the shield down the territory goes into reinforced mode for a set period of time, at witch point the system will notify the members of that organization what time they need to be at the base to defend. once reinforced mode ends the battle is on and the player will have the final fight to determine who will own that territory.

 

also allowing people to pick a time slot for what time of day reinforced mode would end could be a nice way to stop people from preying on those in different time zones. as its rather hard to defend when you need to be in bed sleeping for work the following day. this way a group can always be sure that they at least don't have to worry about people taking territory while they sleep, and it will be the burden of the attackers to play outside of their typical schedules.

 

as far as turrets and point defense, i say the more the merrier approaching a well defended territory that is hostile to you should be very dangerous in my opinion. but at the same time expensive on mats ammo and power, would be a nice trade off that way it take a lot of infrastructure to run a truly large array of static defensive weapons.

 

well i guess thats enough food for thought for the time being, i would like to point out these ideas have come from other games.

 

Ah, the good ol' POS bubbles. 

Hated that.

 

I do like some of the points made though.

Essentially you'd like to see the shield have specific requirements for fuel with a damage overload point if there are no players to keep feeding it fuel and keep it running, that way you avoid the hour long grind. Which makes the game less padded and allows players to go do other things if they have limited play time, etc. 

 

The reinforcement idea is a nice sentiment, but EvE sure does have the whole multiple time zone system down quite pat. That's something that will have to be looked at quite closely for something like this. Fair enough if they make it whenever, but giving the defenders a chance to setup a time when they know they'll for sure be on is always nice. 

 

I don't know if you've seen the recent Citadel timers, but it allows you to pick 'x amount' of hours per week that you can choose to spread over any day, say the timer has to be 10 hours total, you can have an hour vulnerability each day during the week with 3 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday or 5 on two days of the week. 

 

As for weapon systems, I presume there will be quite a hefty toll on larger and larger systems already with varying arrays of ammunition types (I hope), so we'll see where that goes.

 

Definitely some interesting food for thought, thanks for the input.  

[Goemoe]

Just remember...

 

You're building with 25cm blocks and planets are 100s of kilometers in size.

 

That doesn't even consider  the power requirements to setup defenses.

The planet example in the blogs has a radius of 30 km. But I agree, a dyson shell around even a 60 km planet would be quite a task. But hey, you only know how long it takes, if you try!

[caravaggio2000]

The planet example in the blogs has a radius of 30 km. But I agree, a dyson shell around even a 60 km planet would be quite a task. But hey, you only know how long it takes, if you try!

Well, once my self-replicating assembly drones are up and running it should just be a matter of making sure they don't turn the whole universe into grey goo.

[Anasasi]

Just remember...

 

You're building with 25cm blocks and planets are 100s of kilometers in size.

 

That doesn't even consider  the power requirements to setup defenses.

This is true, however this is all stipulation based on the possible requirements and sizes of a potential outpost. 

I mean, we could be looking at ridiculous amounts of power per building/ship or we could be looking at manageable amounts. The reason the idea came about is because if you are working in a large enough group, you could possibly run it if it was quite power hungry. 

 

As for the building size of 25cm³ blocks, I understand that building areas aren't going to be Huge but a city could benefit from this, if it ever reaches this point. Or I guess a rather large spaceport installation.