They should probably have a few more ships, or call for help when in distress. I don't particularly like unlimited reinforcements, but they need something beyond the initial handful of gunships. The singular destroyer some of them spawn with is good, though.

the_shrike 24 Oct 2017:

The lumiere destroyer is an exceptional ship when in the right conditions. I do agree that the defenses are a bit iffy when it doesn't show up. Maybe they need a third size of ship, static defenses, or just spawn more autons?

johnbwatson 24 Oct 2017:

They're a faction with many enemies, which relies on a static number of small ships for protection. This means a lot of their bases will have no guards when the player finds them.

This is the issue I'm thinking we need to build around. A system that's both very quick to implement and reasonably unique is to start Strongholds off with a small stack autons in their loot tables, and have them deploy one against attackers every 5 - 10 seconds while under attack(check if autons in inventory, remove one and spawn the ship with orders to attack-->guard station if so). This could make them less trivial when encountered after a skirmish with nearby hostiles, as they'd at least have a means of fielding ships against the player in that scenario. That's a way of spawning more autons and getting around the issue, and adds a reliable source of endgame drones for constellation players willing to use expensive ammo to kill strongholds before they deploy all of their autons.

On top of this, as you say, there's a large gap between the destroyer and the autons. While I don't think most minor factions can have more than 3 ships without stretching dev time(orders of magnitude quicker to write a cool/unique script than to make a quality 3D model), I do like the idea of giving them more than two weapons. Adding an APA - like weapon that runs off of a rare ammo found only on these stations could provide a reasonably unique mechanic, given that only the Urak use station - based howitzers right now.

Ultimately, however, what I'd like to see is an improvement of the reinforcement and convoy mechanics. Right now, reinforcements know exactly when they're needed and spawn in instantly, and convoys don't do anything except gate in and gate out. I'd like to combine the two. Have periodic convoys that 'check in' on the stations they dock at, and stay to protect them if their defenses are below a certain level.

nms 24 Oct 2017:

Nice ideas.

They already have a high-powered ammo weapon in the Thera cannon.

Battle autons are actually pretty nasty.

The easiest way to deploy an auton is probably:

(rpgDeployAutonFromItem source (itmGetStaticData item 'autonShipClass) item)

Thanks to a change I made, you can also have them return using (shipOrder auton 'gate object)

Of course, their shields will be down when they deploy, but I could change the auton base class so they'll be up, or at the same level as before, when deploying from a station.

Also, their armor won't be automatically repaired, but this could be done with an event.

johnbwatson 24 Oct 2017:

That's some good info on autons - definitely could be used to do some cool things.

The Thera cannon doesn't seem to have the range to hit back against a howitzer user, though this may just be the range glitch acting up. I think static objects with large radii need an extra bit of range in their weaponry - they're very easy to hit from out of range. To quote the dev of Starfarer/Starsector:

"Stations also need extreme weapon range so that they don’t get stuck in a place that rewards long-range player ship builds plus tedious combat grinding. So: the player must close with the station. There are still degrees to which range comes into play, but you’re (almost) never going to be able to kite/snipe a station battle."

Any station weapon intended for use against a player that has access to long range weaponry needs to have more effective range than an equivalent ship - based weapon. This can be balanced with drawbacks, like heavy ammo usage or extra slot requirements.

nms 25 Oct 2017:

Range balance really deserves its own topic. There are a couple reasons why stations probably can't outrange howitzers unless they're nerfed. One possible change is for AI to be able to use secondary weapons as point defense. But this might render howitzers nearly useless against stations, and the set of weapons which are practical against stations is already pretty limited. At any rate, it's a problem for lots of station types, so I wouldn't try to fix it for just one sovereign.

the_shrike 25 Oct 2017:

It is worth noting that George has recently made changes to make stations use weapons at long range. I do not know whether these have gone live in the public builds yet. If not, then the balance will change from what it is now in the not too distant future.