Is that multiplicator ment for equipment that is basically the same and just has "station-" as prefix?
(Shield gens, generators, etc)

Or for qualitatively different modules that work in a different way?
(solar power taps, fortress shields, gas giant mining stations, space elevators)

because i'd prefer the second way, and the upscaled standard equipment just scaling as usual.
Maaybe with some hump in the scaling curve that does the same as the multiplier.
But a straight station equipment effectivity multiplier... eeh...

I think plant fortifications in space would be inherently weak due to their inability to maneuver. Large fleets would need them to retreat towards and base at, but they wouldn't allow for turtling. Space combat is based around the ability to move and maneuver. I think it's been said before, but any space station can be dropped by taking a metal object and accelerating to a speed that can't be stopped. Plant fortifications that can't maneuver or are in fixed orbits could be demolished from outside the range of their weapons.

If you guys read, I'd pick up "the lost fleet" series. It's my favorite Sci-Fi book series. In it, there is a human faction of corporations (the syndicates) that builds lots of space stations, not for defense, but to control planet side slave populations. Another faction rolls through and destroys them all using the above mentioned method.

For effective defense, they use fleets and relay stations like Josh outlined, supported by forge ships. The fleets stay out nearly indefinitely, supported by forge ships that passively mine and produce everything the fleet needs as it moves. Stations are either small and shielded so that they're almost invisible (relay stations), or not defensive in nature and therefore more worth conquering than destroying. Basically, in space, anything that can't move out of the way of a man made asteroid is doomed, as they can easily be produced by forge ships and repeatedly launched by the fleet into the stations path as it orbits.

In summary, turtling would be less about making plant defenses in your owned systems, and more about effectively patrolling the systems that surround you. If you can destroy the opponents forge ships and remove their ability to resupply, they may have to turn back.

I can't speak for Josh, but I suspect his comment about relative hull strengths was just a trivial example to show how numeric tweaking could help tip the balance slightly in favor of defense over offense.

But MyNameWuzTaken rightly points out that the primary advantage of an aggressor is not tactical firepower, but operational mobility:

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:Plant fortifications that can't maneuver or are in fixed orbits could be demolished from outside the range of their weapons.

Or simply bypassed as irrelevant tactical answers to what's actually an operational or strategic problem. As Gen. Patton is said to have put it, "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."

Basically, the aggressor -- who chooses the time and place of an attack -- is active, while the defender is reactive. This gives an enormous initial advantage to the aggressor, who then must effectively exploit that advantage.

An agile defense can mitigate this advantage somewhat. A defense-in-depth model hardens strategic resources while using a mobile "swarming" perimeter defense that detects force penetrations and mobilizes quickly to incursion sites.

But even this can fall victim to distractions and feints by a clever aggressor. One example of this is the Allies building mock forces in the north of England, leading Hitler (over the objections of his generals) to position his Continental defending forces closer to Pas de Calais than the actual intended assault site of the Normandy beaches. A more recent example was Operation Desert Storm, in which Gen. Schwarzkopf led with a Marine amphibious assault on Kuwait City and the beaches north of the city. As the Iraqi army in Kuwait fled northwest out of the city to try to regroup in Basra, the Coalition's actual main force -- the "Hail Mary" tank assault -- swooped in from the west and destroyed the defenders now strung out along the road to Basra.

The point of these examples is to show that offensive power and defensive strength aren't just located in gear -- or, at least, not in the simple numeric amount of gear. What matters more is the type of gear, not the amount. Adding thicker steel plating becomes less effective than switching to Chobham armor, to use an example from tanks.

And what matters more than that is tactics and operations and strategy. Mobility and control of information (to hide the massing of forces) provide a great initial benefit to the aggressor, who can act before the defender can react, or take advantage of hasty reactions.

How Josh might represent those in Limit Theory to yield a slight turtleverse, I leave to others.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:[stuff]

Has the universe you are referring to wormholes with fixed known locations which are the only form of interstellar travel?

Without fixed, unavoidable choke points stationary defenses dont make sense, yeah.

But wheres the practical difference between a fortress and a fleet that already has to stay at a wormhole to defend it from intruders from the other side?

Also, no station is really stationary, not even the ISS is "immobile", and thats a primitive heap of scrap

High velocity projectiles need distance and strong drives, long distance means much time to react.
That means time to avoid the incoming projectile.
Powerful drives mean easy detection over really long distances. Means mong time to avoid as well.
Decreasing flight time means increasing drive power means easier detection and countermeasures.

Your scenario also doesnt include active countermeasures, for example missles with nukes against the impeding rocks.
Or simply more rocks on a retrograde course.
as stations are generally pretty small compared to planets, exploding asteroids works much better for them than for planets.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:[stuff]

[More Stuff]

I'm assuming that jumps between systems can be made as long as ships are far enough outside of the range of a star that it's gravitational pull won't interfere with the ships jump.

And countermeasures aren't so useful if an object can be propelled faster than a missile can be mobilized against it. Also, I was speaking about stations as immobile by comparison to ships. I don't know how you we define the two, but I'd say a station that is mobile enough to avoid projectiles is just a big ship. I was assuming stations are fixed within an orbit or have just enough thrust capacity to slightly alter their orbit or remain in a semi stationary position.

But if we are assuming they move, then we can just launch MORE rocks in a net pattern. It can't chase and it can't run. We keep shooting until we hit. I can manufacture lumps of metal faster than you can make missiles, even if the missiles are advanced enough to hit rocks that were launched at high speeds already when the missile is launched, at a range great enough that the nuke doesn't damage the station.

If systems use gates to connect to each other, we just launch rocks through the gate. If the station is in the path of the gates opening, then we hit it and it has less time to react with countermeasures. If it's hidden outside of the fire range of the gate, then we hit the gate at a fast enough speed that we are out of range by the time the station "reacts", and we bypass it.

The point is that stationary defenses have the fatal weakness of being predictable. Put all the guns you want on it. A mobile force will win out eventually because it can adjust its strategy. The fortress station can't. It just sits there until someone comes up with an idea of how to kill it while taking limited losses. Turtling with expensive stations is less effective than building that $ amount of ships and creating a buffer zone around the system you want to protect, plus the ships give you alternate offensive capabilities.

I still think that the best way to handle stations (Defensive/Military) ones anyway is to make them especially hardened to assault. At the end of the day you're going to find that a station's offensive power will never truly match up against a siege fleets. So the best way to handle it is to make that thing as difficult to take down as possible. With the provided concept that its very existence is what provides your respective presence. In Sins of a Solar Empire the defensive stations can research a tech of auxiliary government which prevented the loss of control of the system through bombardment on the planet. So while I believe it was Cornflakes who said something like "They could just bypass the station all together" the very presence of the station would have to be dealt with to truly take hold of the system. I'm not really sure how Josh has the zone/system control system setup but I would hope that at the very least if you have enough of a presence to own a zone or system then the assets you have contribute towards that control. Stations should naturally count for more than ships. And a difficult to destroy defensive station isn't really intended to fight off a fleet by itself so much as provide a presence in the system until a defensive fleet can arrive.

Imo a station with fleet busting offensive power is overpowered. A station that has little offensive (not none, but little) but significant defensive power isn't meant to take down the fleet. It is just meant to hold out until your help can arrive. In my opinion any dedicated siege fleet will almost always have a massive advantage over structures simply due to range. Siege ships in most games are designed with powerful long range weapons. Meaning they can literally just sit outside the stations offensive range and fire away. So why bother building too much offensive power into the station?

I visualize it as... a hostile wants to come in and take your colony/zone/system so they bring a fleet. They are greeted with this semi-large defensive structure. They engage it, they start taking hits and naturally being a defensive station it has significant point defense so the fighters are dropping so they pull the fleet back. They aren't going to crack this nut with brute force as none of their ships are capable of making a significant dent in its shields. So they bring in heavy ships intended for the job. A few destroyers capable of taking what little offensive power the station has and a few long range siege cruisers to sit outside its firing range and pound away at it. Even so it will take a good 5-10 minutes of pounding before that station will drop. Meanwhile the owners interception fleet is en route. It just needs time to get there. The station's sole purpose is to provide that time. It isn't meant to be a force. It's just meant to act as a wall between them and control of the area. Not a literal wall because short of shielding the whole area that isn't possible in space. But without destroying that station the enemy will not be able to take or maintain control over the area.

So my view of turtling isn't strictly building indestructible fortresses. It's having the capacity to prolong the holding of your territory with strong defensive capability. The main thing with turtling is having and keeping your territory. Many games simply do not allow this in the face of opposition. Due to the intended mechanics they force the game to favor mobility and offense. That is fine except most games do it by limiting or even not giving the option for defensive fortification. Because most (At least in the context of RTS games) are so afraid of prolonging a game to "boring" territory due to potential stalemate, they give a massive advantage to offensive capabilities to the point that defense is only done through offense. It is only done through mobile forces. The key word here being ONLY. I agree that if you really want to protect your territory you should do so with a mobile fleet or in the context of other games a mobile force. But when your territory gets overrun before you've had a chance to get your force there to defend it then it stands to reason that defense simply isn't a viable option. Forget turtling entirely. Turtling is a perfectly viable play style imo. Should it be so potent that attackers can't ever hope to succeed? No. But the capacity should be that you can make it very very difficult to break through.

I would suggest that if a person wants to put ALL of their resources into turtling then so be it. Those who would do them harm should have to put in at least half that effort into siege breaking to break through. Maybe not in that context. The point is that siege mechanics are amazingly great fun. For both parties. More so a turtle player, but aggressive/offensive players only get upset when they feel that they cannot break through at all. That should never ever ever be the case. In fact that shouldn't be the case no matter what for any play style. No play style should be the end all be all of everything with absolutely no way of countering it. But if you wanna put all your resources into it then so be it. The more you pour into it, the harder you make it to break your fortress. But the downside to that could be that it also becomes extremely hard to expand as you've put all your resources into defending your little area. And if siege warfare has ever taught us anything is that there are very potent methods of breaking a siege without actually besieging a fortress. Simply blockade and deny resources. Eventually their capacity to sustain their fortress will subside. Their capacity to rebuild weak elements will subside. Then you can pound away at that single weak point and they'll have spent a crap ton of their resources trying to defend their territory where only one weak point brings the whole thing crashing down. For the turtles investment in defense means they weren't investing in offense to tackle the mobile enemy once that enemy breaks through the defenses.

TGS wrote:Many games simply do not allow this in the face of opposition. Due to the intended mechanics they force the game to favor mobility and offense. That is fine except most games do it by limiting or even not giving the option for defensive fortification. Because most (At least in the context of RTS games) are so afraid of prolonging a game to "boring" territory due to potential stalemate, they give a massive advantage to offensive capabilities to the point that defense is only done through offense.

Yet another reason why RTSs aren't actually strategy games.

But let's look at "turtling" a little more closely. Some of the discussion here has focused on that behavior as if it's always a continuous style of play. Sometimes, for some people, it probably is... but it doesn't have to be.

Turtling can also be a temporary stratagem. First, you spend some time and resources to visibly harden up your defenses. Then, while opponents either attack without real effect or (better) don't attack at all, you can spend time and resources on other strategic interests, such as building exploration ships, or production facilities, or trade networks, or research stations, or even your own offensive fleets. Maybe even in that order, so that after long enough behind your protective shell, you can expand your empire in all directions in a massive burst... and then return to turtling. Repeat as desired.

In that light, "turtling" isn't a behavior to be prevented -- it's an important component in a rational plan for growth.

But that does only make sense if the game you're playing looks like a long-term, large-area 4X game, not a RTS game in which the game world is broken up into short, operational-sized pieces.

This is why I like Sins of a Solar Empire so much, while it is an RTS, it is also part 4x. My usual plan in that is to expand rapidly, then when I find some choke points with high defensive possibilities I put out a starbase and a ton of defenses, which can usually keep a planet secure from moderate attacks without help from the fleet. I then start the phase of researching a ton of tech and building up my forces to go take more territory and repeat the process.

I imagine I will end up doing the same in LT when it arrives. Start my own faction, secure my starting sector, beef up defenses, build up a decent fleet and research tech, then assault the neighboring systems when I have enough forces to. This turtling then expanding then turtling again tactic is also good for retreats if you get pushed back. If someone takes my forward base, I have time before they get to my previous defense line and breach it to build up more forces again.

So yes, I am a major static defense turtler, and I find it works very well in games with defensive options, but I can attempt to cope with having to pay a bunch of NPCs to fly the ships I paid to be built to patrol and respond to any threats. (not the ideal way, but it can work)

Also, I would assume there would be an option to make defense fleets patrol an area and another command to have another specific fleet to jump to any of your ships being fired upon in the sector? I mean, say you have 4 fleets, and you set 3 of them to patrol the entrances to your sector, but an enemy ship or small fleet manages to slip through. Will there be a way to have a fleet just kinda sitting around and when a friendly ship in their sector is under attack to jump to its location to drive off the raiders? It would kinda be tedious to have to micro all of that while you are out exploring or once your empire gets to a certain gigantic size.

If I can't have static defenses, I would just like to imagine my sectors being like the Space Marine HQ in Dawn of War: Soulstorm

A very nice description of the typical process, MrPerson.

MrPerson wrote:I am a major turtler, and I find it works very well in games with defensive options.

So how do you feel about the proposed idea of wormhole endpoints randomly appearing inside star systems?

How can system-sized factions be effective enough defensively to be functionally stable for a while if the laws of physics allow anyone to show up inside their defensive perimeter at any time?

Flatfingers wrote:A very nice description of the typical process, MrPerson.

MrPerson wrote:I am a major turtler, and I find it works very well in games with defensive options.

So how do you feel about the proposed idea of wormhole endpoints randomly appearing inside star systems?

How can system-sized factions be effective enough defensively to be functionally stable for a while if the laws of physics allow anyone to show up inside their defensive perimeter at any time?

sorry I kinda went back and added a lot to my previous post give it a re-read, sorry

but I don't like the prospect, but if my above question is a yes, I don't think it will be too big of a deal. Plus, I would hope (or have it be an option) on how often wormholes open up and how long they stay open, and how many ships can pass through before they collapse

IMHO I think Cornflakes hit the nail on the head. Just bypass the station go after the resources. Depending on the resource respawn time you can effectively shut down large systems with a relatively small fleet with strong tactics. All these things require energy and denying a turtle energy means he has to come out of his shell. And when he does .... think oil supplies in modern warfare no oil no moving and defense systems start shutting down without electricity. Guerrila warfare in space...

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:The point is that stationary defenses have the fatal weakness of being predictable. Put all the guns you want on it. A mobile force will win out eventually because it can adjust its strategy. The fortress station can't. It just sits there until someone comes up with an idea of how to kill it while taking limited losses. Turtling with expensive stations is less effective than building that $ amount of ships and creating a buffer zone around the system you want to protect, plus the ships give you alternate offensive capabilities.

Please don't tell this to all the guys - from antiquity to modern times - that used resources to built forts, medieval dungeons and other concrete bunkers. Had they knew, they would have been smarter and saved the effort.
Unless....

...perhaps there are reasons?

• strategic positions that make defense especially effective and bypassing said defense not practicable. Typically a choke point on a strategic route - in LT, probably jump points,
• limited (human) ressources: while a castle can be beaten by a large enough army, it is not always practicable to get enough people there - they miss somewhere else. The fort is very effective in "strength per individuals" as you can hold a position with very few people
• logistics: bringing your huge fleet to this position is inconvenient, it costs fuel, time.... At a time where ressources are strained (during a conflict) The fort can be built in peace time when ressources are abundent using local material
• ....

So I guess I'll keep building some forteress.

Now there is a point with "throwing stones" in a space game - and this is usually solved with effective point defense, and/or massive shields. And finally with a mobile troop quartered in the base that can harass any enemy that is spending time in the system to prepara a huge collection of synchronised accelerated asteroids. This mobile troop, as it has a home base, is much cheaper than the ships of the attacking fraction that must function alone. Thus any ship "exchange" (loss on both sides) is a huge gain for the defense.
Euhhh - actually same thing with medieval castels and throwing rocks: defense is thck walls, but walls will break eventually when beaten by "cheap" rocks. But rocks are thrown using expensive machines like trebuchets. And these can be destroyed by a quick sortie of a mounted troop.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote: I'm assuming that jumps between systems can be made as long as ships are far enough outside of the range of a star that it's gravitational pull won't interfere with the ships jump.

If there are no choke points then you cant fortify those, of course drops the usefulness of fortifications to something approaching zero under that conditions.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote: And countermeasures aren't so useful if an object can be propelled faster than a missile can be mobilized against it.

I wonder how that should work in a universe wheres an absolute speed limit.
On ranges where a pd missle cant be launched, offensive lasers rip you apart, and stations have a big advantage for laser ranges as laser ranges increase with the size of the focusing element.

Anything further needs minutes, hours, days, months to reach the target which is more than enough time to engage counter measures.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote: I can manufacture lumps of metal faster than you can make missiles, even if the missiles are advanced enough to hit rocks that were launched at high speeds already when the missile is launched, at a range great enough that the nuke doesn't damage the station.

Nothing prevents the station from just accelerating scrap metal in the flight path of your lumps, the lumps have the most predictable route as they have to intersect the station.
They are more predictable for the defenders than the station is for the attackers!
Nukes in space are basically impact charges, their effective explosion radius is very very low.
A chemical missle can do that in the 20 second range.
And if you launch at ranges where you have less than that to intercept an object, you are in laser range.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote: If systems use gates to connect to each other, we just launch rocks through the gate. If the station is in the path of the gates opening, then we hit it and it has less time to react with countermeasures. If it's hidden outside of the fire range of the gate, then we hit the gate at a fast enough speed that we are out of range by the time the station "reacts", and we bypass it.

If the gate has a predictable emergence path, the station wouldnt be in line with that in the first place, but to the side of it. Obviously stupid placement is stupid

A military emplacement that is built in a universe where targetted attacks are possible through gates, the station would be hardened against such attacks, for example with heavy point defense.
And missle racks designed to attack targets through the gate.
If you are outside the range for the missle racks, a small forward observer ship would be sent through the gate warning the station defenses of kinetic attacks.
If you are inside the missle rack range you cant really mount high energy kinetic attacks as you are too close to build the momentum.

Huh.

Second World War pretty much showed the uselessness of the fixed defences. Maginot line, Western Wall, Atlantic Wall, etc... highly mobile, concentrated armoured formations always broke through them, nullifying their importance. So that's it for defensive lines. Now, in the same WWII there were a lot of examples where highly concentrated defences - even makeshift ones - proved highly problematic to attacking forces, even for heavy tanks and artillery (German invasion of the Soviet Union is full of them).

How does it all translate into space and peculiar speed-limited LT space?

It simply doesn't.

As I can see from the terminology, MyNameWuzTaken is under impression of the Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series. That's not how space works. That's not how space works in LT, either.

First, LT space has no orbital mechanics nor Newtonian physics.. Stuff doesn't have orbits. We just pretend it has if we want to. A station is as stationary as it can get. Speed ramps up to its limit and stays there. With no engines working friction slows you down.

2. Planetary systems are connected either by natural wormholes or by gates; it's a bit fuzzy at the moment, but if we go with Freelancer model gates are faction-controlled and their use can be denied at any moment. When you drop out of wormhole/gate, you are motionless.

3. Stations are not only of the 'fixed defences' type. They are important re-supply and logistics centres. Your mobile forces are stationed there. Police has its stations; navy has its stations and shipyards and whatnot. Those are important strategic objects; any commander who's worth anything at all will try to hit them and destroy them, since it'll basically deny services to the enemy mobile forces stationed in the area, and with no supplies/reinforcement/repairs they'll have to withdraw or be supplied by convoys which is slower and vulnerable to enemy raids.

4. Stations are big, and can have a massive power source with some really impressive weaponry; since they don't have to move they can have really impressive armour. Combined with the lack of relativistic weaponry they'll be pretty formidable against anything short of a full-scale attack by several capital ships. Such stations can be placed very, very close to important jump points. With enough range on station's weaponry, they can effectively control access to the wormhole/gate. There's no doubt that ships with thick enough armour would be able to just run past such stations, but it'll be cutting all the re-supply and leaving a fortress with its mobile forces free to inflict pain on your lesser combatants.

Okay, I'm on my phone now so I won't be able to quote people.

To CSE and the post about all the people throughout history that have built fortresses and castles. You notice that no one has built a castle in a few hundred? It's because logistics and long range warfare have evolved to the point where you don't have to assault the fortifications directly to protect supply lines or even use troops if you do choose to assault them. You just launch a missile at it. If static defenses are falling out of favor here, you really think they'd make a comeback in space? Now I get that there are military bases, but they aren't structured as defensive fortifications. They're staging points for offense and defensive forces, as I suggested stations be.

To cornflakes, sorry I've been gone man! Missed the discussions. Good points as always. I guess it's hard to translate this in the LT universe as I'm not up to speed on what the final decisions for game design are and I never played freelancer. I really think it's a cost benefit analysis at this point. Would you rather spend an equivalent amount of cash building a huge station, or funding a fleet with offensive and defensive capabilities beyond sitting near a warp gate? I think it makes more sense to place the station further from the warp in point where it can't be immediately attacked, base a fleet there, and just monitor the outside systems for potential attacks. Then you can meet them at the place of your choosing. Hell, why not just build a ship the size of a station and have it sit outside of the jump gate to your system, where it can make a tactical retreat? Don't know much about the hard caps on the size of ships and stations yet I guess. Basically, I can try and play at being a General right now but we don't have defined parameters yet for game mechanics or economics so I guess I spoke too soon, and with too much reliance on Jack Campbell's universe.

Also, I believe somewhere on the forums there was a discussion about having Capitol ships with the ability to generate temporary wormholes for moving fleets? A mechanic like that would make or break the usefulness of static defenses, but I don't know if that was fan hype or supported by Josh. Or maybe I'm just thinking about Eve online. Haha

Outlander4, thanks for the reminder that LT is not Jack Campbell's universe. I was using the wrong mechanics for my assumptions. I agree with you on all your points.

I guess the actual feasibility of superstations will be reliant on the size of systems, how they will be entered and exited, economy, etc. Really, the question as to whether turtle play styles will be supported is very complex.

Personally though, I'm a greedy player. I'll be reliant on mobile and adaptive fleets so that I can take new systems without having to take the time to build new stations at the entrance to every jump gate in my territory. If I can add a Capitol ship and all of its supporting Hierarchy for the cost of one superstation, that makes more sense to me.

On a semi-related note, how will faction loyalty be addressed? It seems to me that the contract system of employment would mean that you could just buy out the contracts of all your opponents defending AI. Do we know how this will be avoided? Wasn't there something about having two kinds of AI, one that was intelligent and another that was essentially just a pilot? It's been a while since that discussion.