This is a proposal for adding station defense to Rogue Fleet stations. In previous versions, Rogue Fleet stations have either a TeV 9 blaster or a star cannon for defense. For 1.9, we propose that they have outrigger static defenders with weapons appropriate to their surroundings.

The following outriggers are defined:

LEVEL WEAPON                        ARMOR                HP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 6    TeV 9 blaster                 Blast plate          90
 6    SAR/10 cannon                 Advanced plasteel    90

 7    Dual TeV 9 blasters           Heavy blast plate    120
 7    NM900 missile pod             P150 Hexphase        120
 7    Dual SAR/10 cannons           P150 Hexphase        120
 7    Katana star cannon            Heavy blast plate    120

 8    Fusionfire howitzer           P450 Hexphase        160
 8    Dual Katana star cannons      Medium ithalium      160
the_shrike 16 days ago:

The NM900, as a missile weapon, may overperform for level 7 (especially if you use the Britannia reload code). High DPS tracking weaponry is difficult for players to counter (and encourages sniping from range rather than getting in and fighting where the AI can retaliate), so limiting the number of these weapons on individual stations (or finding a substitute) is probably a good idea.

digarw 5 days ago:

What about mine field like Sapiens do? They also uses mine launcher in CSC Mission and work best on higher level. Better remove NM900 and put mine launcher in level 8 because as Shrike said, it overperform for their level yet they never seen have been used it.

EDIT: Since Britannia is said to be a new models to displace Centurion/X for Commonwealth Fleet, I think the NM900 is also come along with the ship. So it's a bit unreasonable Rogue Fleet have that disposable launcher as they need constant supplies for it.

the_shrike 4 days ago:

Having tested mine launchers for the CRM100, it does require some tweaks to the virtual item to make it work (spawning a mine with syscreateweaponfire prevents it from proximity-detonating, so it needs a fragmentMinRadius set), but otherwise it works really well.

I'll poke you on discord but I have functioning code that can be poked and prodded into something suitable.

the_shrike 4 days ago:

Okay, notes from my own experiments with CRM100-based minefields around fleet bases (which use the rogue fleet stations as templates) and booby-trapped 'shipwrecks':

  • Use of the basic code from the Sapiens minelayer works, but a direct copy does not because the CRM100 is a much more powerful weapon.
  • The CRM100 has friendly fire capability when it detonates. Thus, it has to be quite some distance from the spawning station when it's live. The Sapiens spawn radius will reliably kill the firing station every single time.
  • Rogue fleet stations I believe can have other factions visiting them that we don't want to immediately kill with mines. Thus the station must/ have NoFriendlyFire enabled.
  • To avoid a mine blowing up right next to the station the projectile requires a failsafe. Usually I go for 120 because that's very safe indeed.
    • Removing the canHitSource would also help with this but that's no fun. Leaving it on and using other methods allows blowing up enemies in their own mines, but only if you work for it.
  • Mines created with sysCreateWeaponFire do not proximity-detonate. For a high-radius minefield this is a problem: setting fragmentMinRadius to 2 or so gets around it to a degree.
  • The base CRM100 does in fact detonate when it times out. We should probably fix that, but if it hasn't been fixed and you want to use it, that's a problem.
    • Because of all these, you can't use the base CRM100 item in sysCreateWeaponFire to create a properly-functioning minefield: you need to make a virtual clone of it, then tune that for station use (and leave the stock one as the item that actually turns up in wreckage)
  • Minefields and patrols should not overlap (if they do a well-armored enemy can detonate them and destroy the guards a little too easily)
    • But they can be close to each other to tempt players. Sometimes they'll pull it off.
  • Randomising the speed of sysCreateWeaponFire slightly makes a high-radius minefield look a lot better, since the mines spread out more.