Defence platforms... A good way to help an empire while making money? + Question about new economy

[Herasteane]

Hey there folks.

I'm returning to the game on the 16, to play as a terran after a long break.
I'm planning on playing relatively normally for the beginning, massing a little fleet of traders, miners and what so ever to boost the TER economy and help get them rolling nicely.

I was curious about one thing : The Terran only have 1 point of entrance. The Asteroid Belt, and to a lesser extent, through the minor "explorer" faction to their south.

Since there's only 2 chokepoints, I was curious if my first investment should be in a defence platform. I'm thinking of it as a way to keep XEN and other factions from entering, thing is... Would it bring me money by doing so?

I'm planning on building a massive space-defence station... Enough to take down capital ships by itself, so about 10-15 millions, split in two different stations around the gates.
If my station takes down enemy ships, would I get profitssssss, from it?
Will the TER NPC give me bounties, just as if I were to use a normal ship?

Asking this because, if not, I'd definitely spent much less on it, and just invest more into trading ships and stations and, when I have the dough, built a task force of combat ships and station them over there... Even if I don't get the money, I'd be able to call them to help me in fights or invade territories.


That's it for the first part of the question. My second question is : How's the economy in the Beta? Have you experimented with flooding the market with minerals, gas, traders, and seen a real change? Do NPC build more and more stations to process all of that? Is it worth it to only invest in ships, or to help a faction, is it better to build stations and leave the NPCs to get the ships?

Thanks alot!

[Troll]

Only speaking with memory from months ago, I'm pretty sure you don't get bounties from kills by non piloted ships. Only kills by you when you pilot the ship (that is, maybe not even you are aboard) will count.

Huge defense stations are great though. I made lots of those to safeguard my assets and allies in my last endgame. No fleet could get through.

[Draco Militis]

also, other than the above, a Xenon I or U can solo stations below 100 mill, they're pretty brutal

[luisedgm]

If you use the mod "better kill credit" it might work, but only if near an allied station or ship, and due to the danger of friendly fire, it might end up being detrimental

[Herasteane]

Originally posted by Draco Militis:

also, other than the above, a Xenon I or U can solo stations below 100 mill, they're pretty brutal

Holy crap... Never thought it'd cost that much... I'll have to rethink my plan then.

Originally posted by luisedgm:

If you use the mod "better kill credit" it might work, but only if near an allied station or ship, and due to the danger of friendly fire, it might end up being detrimental

I have that mod, I'll have to give it a try then, might work... With some luck.

Thanks for all the input so far!

[Belteguesian]

Also take in mind that resource levels are seriously nerfed in V4.0 and that Terran economy is different than the rest of the factions.
I'd suggest start exploring the Terran sectors first before deciding what to do...

[[NOPE] Sigvar]

Seems hit or miss what will kill Xenon caps in my game. A claytronics station with some defense platforms killed 2 K and an I in minutes in Hatikvah. Later the station succumbed to a handful of Ps. I am a fan of plas/flack setup myself. Beams have always seemed pretty useless damage wise so I don't use them.

[Bullpup]

Originally posted by Draco Militis:

also, other than the above, a Xenon I or U can solo stations below 100 mill, they're pretty brutal

100m worth of pure defence? One of the content creators showed how 4 simple platforms in a + shape around a dock killed 3 K's with no damage and 4 K's with some damage back. Though that might have been before the Xenon buff.

[Troll]

In my former Xenon sectors, I've used square shaped defences the size of an E dock with a cross and the admin center in the middle. 3 of such stations at different positions and heights per station plot.

I've never seen them damaged even during Xenon migrations.

[Draco Militis]

Originally posted by Bullpup:

Originally posted by Draco Militis:

also, other than the above, a Xenon I or U can solo stations below 100 mill, they're pretty brutal

100m worth of pure defence? One of the content creators showed how 4 simple platforms in a + shape around a dock killed 3 K's with no damage and 4 K's with some damage back. Though that might have been before the Xenon buff.

I do forget sometimes I use mods to buff all the factions and economy, so, differences. Xenon in my games tend to be pretty brutal until I can get very high end stations up, base game is different, but you should really be able to put a lot of capital into defensive stations before planning on using them, a fleet of ships it probably a better solution as losing one ship doesn't make you go broke, where one station can.

Also, it very much depends on his game state itself, if the Xenon get rolling over other factions, you need way more to throw at them.

[Valhalla Awaits]

Part of what you wrote confused me. "I'm planning on building a massive space-defence station... Enough to take down capital ships by itself,"

You know that the game works the other way around right? Defense stations absolutely wipe the floor with capital ships with ease. You need a massive fleet of capitals to even fight stations. I've seen 8x xenon destroyers (The most powerful destroyer class in the game by a wide margin.) lose to a fairly small defense platform with only a few destroyed sections.

[Herasteane]

I'm using plenty of mods, so I'll have to see for my own game... How aggressive and powerful my enemies will be.

As for the way defence stations works... I must admit that in all of my hours in this game, I never got to attack a proper defence platform, nor see one attacked, so I have no idea how well they fare in combat. I've only been attacking production stations or seen the very same attacked ,and they usually went down super fast against "proper" fleets.

So I'm guessing that spending less to get a "minimal" station for defence until a fleet arrives would do good.

I used to pack some beams weapons as my turrets all the time, except for L turrets, just because having 90% of my shots missing or hitting a friendly was tiresome....

Ontop of that, I'll have to check the TER weapons. Seems like they have much less choice, so I'll just figure out what to mount.

Thanks again all of you for your input.

[Zalzany]

A good one can repel a large force easy but they are not cheap to build, but not every one is a good build I seen some AI ones that were meh and they crumbled pretty good to xenon. As far as attacking them most players will try to stay outside of max distance and whittle away at them since they are dangours up close.

[Draco Militis]

at the same time, most of the time, the xenon only throws K's at ya, which are easy enough to kill, if not stronger than any other destroyers... but they have I and U class which are way more difficult to kill. All depends on how the xenon economy is doing.

Also, the Terran have the Asgard with it's special weapon, which can one tap just about every ship.

[[NOPE] Sigvar]

It can only one shot that which is dumb enough to get in front of it. It can barely turn so unless you are as slow moving as a station you can avoid that big gun. Sit on the asgards ass and chew it to death.

[Draco Militis]

Originally posted by NOPE Sigvar:

It can only one shot that which is dumb enough to get in front of it. It can barely turn so unless you are as slow moving as a station you can avoid that big gun. Sit on the asgards ass and chew it to death.

I mean, most capital ships can't turn that fast, and it can one shot most xl ships, so, yeah. Also they added dmg if you sit right behind a ship's engines for the small ship sitting on something's engines.