Please make partially constructed stations destructible - Improved in 2.60..

[Helken Mootyflops]

Hi egosoft,

Congratulations on the progress in 2.5 beta, as someone who had shelved the game I am thrilled to say I had an enjoyable x4 session yesterday, the changes you have made amount to real improvement, in my opinion. A step forward.

Anyway, presently if a station is under construction it doesn't seem to ever get destroyed when attacking it. I don't think this is unique to me as a search revealed other people mentioning it. As such I have Xenon defense platforms in place that should be dead, locked in an apparently indestructible state by partially constructed modules. I have even seen a nice explosion as if the station is toast, but when it's over, the target remains, I repeat target remains.

So my request is this: could the same algorithm that is used to generate a "health bar" for a station please be checked when a station is hit, along with has modules under construction, and past a certain point start cancelling the constructions, even if it is one by one? This would enable us to wipe these stations out, but leave the possibility of modules being completed when the attackers don't want them to be.

Thanks for the time spent reading this.

[Helken Mootyflops]

Ah, it appears I have my answer here, missed it in my searches due to generic wording and me not reading carefully enough. Thanks anyway:

It is indeed more complicated to find a solution for than it might appear, for gameplay rather than technical reasons, and needs more thought than we were able to put into it for this release.

[Artean]

Ah, it appears I have my answer here, missed it in my searches due to generic wording and me not reading carefully enough. Thanks anyway:

It is indeed more complicated to find a solution for than it might appear, for gameplay rather than technical reasons, and needs more thought than we were able to put into it for this release.

Hopefully this can get solved once and for all to 3.0. Earlier would surely be welcome, though!

[foxglow]

You can actually target partially constructed stations and destroy them, as I often do it, am currently playing version 2.21 and it always works for me, and the station then goes gray and eventually de-spawns .

You need to target it in a different way by going into map mode opening up the Stations menus and highlight the Question mark of the partly constructed module and press T then go back to ship view and you will have a triangle icon put all weapons on attack my target and they will fire at the Icon and eventually it will pop. But you do not get any indication of its health but it will pop.

Proof is in the pudding so here is one of my streams showing this function At Time Stamp 12.04 ish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9WfLHlCBKQ

[brekehan]

+1

[SPiDER]

this does cause the partially constructed station to disappear..however be warned the build storage dosent despawn afterwards which means with a xenon station everytime you come into its area the " Xenon " music starts playing and dosent stop ever......which of course means no audilble warning of enemies inbound. The good news is that this issue is on the radar to be fixed ( saw posted elsewhere )

[EmperorDragon]

Remnant build storages can be removed via savegame editing if you do not mind the *modified* tag. Move close to the build storage, note down it's "ABC-123" ID/tail number, search it in the save file and delete the build storage entry. Delete it only after the station wreckage has despawned.

But yes, it may be better to fortify our patience and wait for a proper fix.

[Helken Mootyflops]

You can actually target partially constructed stations and destroy them, as I often do it, am currently playing version 2.21 and it always works for me, and the station then goes gray and eventually de-spawns .

You need to target it in a different way by going into map mode opening up the Stations menus and highlight the Question mark of the partly constructed module and press T then go back to ship view and you will have a triangle icon put all weapons on attack my target and they will fire at the Icon and eventually it will pop. But you do not get any indication of its health but it will pop.

Proof is in the pudding so here is one of my streams showing this function At Time Stamp 12.04 ish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9WfLHlCBKQ

Thanks! I'll try this now.

[Faustov]

+1

You didn't mention this method only works for player ships and takes a long time even with SETA on.

[foxglow]

+1

You didn't mention this method only works for player ships and takes a long time even with SETA on.

Your not wrong Faustov and yes they take a bit of time to go down. LOL but time is what this game is all about eh, lots of it

But regarding the storage unit still standing after station has gone, it does not despawn straight away, but go back after the Xenon have built their next platform and the storage unit of the one you destroyed will be gone. That has been my experience so far albeit it does take a while to happen.

[Jean Pagette]

Just simply fly toward the construction area, fire till you hit the invisible structure. takes a bit with a destroyer but use the xenon storage as a farm for xenon kills since the S class ships will try to send materials. kill them get your different drops and the ore, silicon, energy cells.

If your not big on doing your own kills ...fine.... use friend foe mines in extreme mass number all around the building storage and along the very predictable flight path they will take.

[Helken Mootyflops]

Yeah, you made a good point in your video - this didn't seem to work at all with my ships which do indeed use lots of beams, which have great effective burst DPS vs moving targets, but poor sustained DPS vs stationary ones. I have commissioned a plasma boat so ill try with that once I've got the bubble wrap off. Thanks again.

[foxglow]

Yeah, you made a good point in your video - this didn't seem to work at all with my ships which do indeed use lots of beams, which have great effective burst DPS vs moving targets, but poor sustained DPS vs stationary ones. I have commissioned a plasma boat so ill try with that once I've got the bubble wrap off. Thanks again.

Thanks, I love the Plasma & Pulse mix Odysseus great ship, just have to be mindfull of friendly fire. Have fun

[Helken Mootyflops]

So in the end I decided I wanted to know if my "Beam"oth Vanguard could do it, for science.

Not sure what I or anyone else would do with this information, but after a paltry 54 minutes I discovered it could, it actually surprised me when it happened, which says something very sad about me

Thanks again for the help everyone.

[Imperial Good]

The problem is that a module must be at least partially constructed in order for turrets to target it. Without turrets your DPS is trash as you only have your guns.

[Helken Mootyflops]

The problem is that a module must be at least partially constructed in order for turrets to target it. Without turrets your DPS is trash as you only have your guns.

Yeah, doing exactly as foxglow suggests leads to turrets targeting and firing on the target, but not with 100% consistency - which is to say you might have to re-target the partially constructed module and toggle fire on my target a few times if they don't.

Even beam turrets don't hit from every turret when you do this, either, which I guess detracts further from their already dodgy sustain.

[SPiDER]

If money is no object use torpedos and swarm missiles..the light show is quite spectacular and it will need approx 5 loads with a nemesis/pulsar ( thats for invisible dock module that your turrets wont be able to target)

[Faustov]

There MUST BE another way. Here's why:

I did the following:
1. Instruct ships to go after a K which managed to escape somehow.
2. They finish the task and go back to the position they were supposed to protect
3. On the path there is an unfinished defence station
4. 2 ships out of many "noticed" it and started shooting it, so far they destroyed 1 module, they're shooting another now.
5. Telling any other ship to help destroy this station results in failure and message "awaiting orders"

So somehow, these 2 ships know how to destroy an unfinished station...

Anyway, the right thing to do is to fix this bug properly.

[Helken Mootyflops]

There must be.

I am not having luck with the kindly offered advice above, always working.

The official fix for the bug, it seems, is difficult because of gameplay concerns.

I mean fair enough, but a majority of time spent in combat gameplay for me at the moment is trying to target a weird glitchy non-item on a station and shooting it over, and over (and over, and over, and over, and over...) again, and sometimes discovering it won't work anyway. So overall watching the sectors where I do business fill up with borked Xenon stations without being able to stop it through gameplay. This feels like a bit of a gameplay concern in itself to me.

I briefly considered spending modding time to periodically check for things that have been brought down to 0% hull and remove them from the game, and had to laugh at that concept.

[Imperial Good]

Yeah, doing exactly as foxglow suggests leads to turrets targeting and firing on the target, but not with 100% consistency - which is to say you might have to re-target the partially constructed module and toggle fire on my target a few times if they don't.

Even beam turrets don't hit from every turret when you do this, either, which I guess detracts further from their already dodgy sustain.

With some Xenon stations I have not even been able to get any turrets to fire at them. Some they even started off firing but then stopped half way and refused to fire ever since. The consistency is very poor and they should be firing at the module without explicit target orders anyway.

If money is no object use torpedos and swarm missiles..the light show is quite spectacular and it will need approx 5 loads with a nemesis/pulsar ( thats for invisible dock module that your turrets wont be able to target)

It is still a lot of effort to do something that should not need to be done as your huge Destroyer fleet should mince it in a a minute.

The Xenon should abandon defence station construction when they lose control of the area around it and so remove the plot themselves. This should apply to all factions. That way when they launch an attack they might plonk a station down but soon after when their attack is repelled they remove their incomplete station and wait for the next attack.