Stations get obliterated

[RJS]

So I'm trying to establish a first station in my own sector closer to the center than midway. Just a resource refiner to start with, but it keeps getting blown up. By stuff that my regular ship can blast no problem, with nothing but a typical bank of weapons on the front.
I put turret bases all around, and guns all around, but it seems the base not being able to focus everything on one ship at a time like I can do manually just means I can't have a station unless it's in a crowded faction space, which also means I can't build any more without damaging relations?
What's the solution, just build an armored lump instead of a cool looking station like the npc's enjoy? And 40 hours into this game salvaging like crazy I still don't have enough turrets and only green and blue chips for extra turret slots. The couple of orange turret space subsystems I've gotten have gone into my single ship.
I can't hardly outfit more ships beyond the first one, now I'm loosing all my crap trying to build this station. The selection in equipment docks is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It took hours of salvaging in between checking equip. docks to put 6 xanion-level r salvagers on my ship. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Maybe I need to spend 80 hours shooting and salvaging?

Then another problem, I built a much larger founding ship (freighter) at the nearby shipyard, for half a million xanion and a ton of money, and the station apparently has ripped me off. It said 19 minutes and over an hour later, no ship. It's not like there's a way to check progress anyway, they just randomly appear when done with no progress dialog or anything, but this one is definitely not showing up. More game mechanics I can't trust?

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by RJS:

I put turret bases all around, and guns all around, but it seems the base not being able to focus everything on one ship at a time like I can do manually just means I can't have a station unless it's in a crowded faction space, which also means I can't build any more without damaging relations?
What's the solution, just build an armored lump instead of a cool looking station like the npc's enjoy?

Autoturret modules. Setting weapon groups to "autofire" gives them independent targeting, so your whole station isn't trying to shoot one enemy at a time (probably on the "wrong side" of the station).

Shield generators. No reason not to have millions of hp in shields on a station.

Bigger guns, with longer range. Railguns work nicely.

Fighter bays. A squadron or two of fighters should be able to bring the guns to the bad guys.

One last thing: Did you hire gunners for your station? Just a thought, but my troubleshooting brain won't let go of it.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by RJS:

Then another problem, I built a much larger founding ship (freighter) at the nearby shipyard, for half a million xanion and a ton of money, and the station apparently has ripped me off. It said 19 minutes and over an hour later, no ship. It's not like there's a way to check progress anyway, they just randomly appear when done with no progress dialog or anything, but this one is definitely not showing up. More game mechanics I can't trust?

That's an odd one; I've never had a shipyard not build a ship when I told it to.

Are you sure it's not just floating around somewhere in the area, for some reason? Press N to open the strategic/sector view and look in the list of ships to make sure you didn't somehow miss it.

If that fails, hit up a nearby repair dock and see if it's listed for towing; it's possible it was blown up by a pirate attack or something.

[RJS]

No ship. It just never appeared. And like I said there's just a giant blatant hole where should be any kind of dialog or progress meter with station, like it's on a pre-beta release dev's list of things to fill in before beta release for testers, on a professional paid game anyway. Oh wait.. we did pay for this.
Anyway, I'm going to try just getting a 'block' for next station founder so I can more easily develop it into station shape once I get it there. But mah ship....

On the gunners, I initially set the 40 or so original crew to auto-assign (I believe they train up their roles over time) but did transfer some higher ranking specific crew for engineers, mechanics and gunners later before it got blown up the second time. It did have guns, like I said all the guns I could find in 40 hours of playtime so I couldn't be picky, set to autofire.
And all the guns I could fit on it, like 6-7 mostly 2-slotters, because like I also said after hours and hours of playtime all I can find or buy are green and blue armed turret subsystems which are only adding 1-2 guns each.
It would be nice if after 40+ hours of play and shooting/salvaging/buying a wide path all the way to the main rift, someone could fit more than 1 ship well.

There's very limited mods available, I'm sick of hearing 'fix it with mods.', the few there arebesides the gagillion ship mods are often outdated and judging from comments are untrustworthy to even work right.

[Fairin the Drakitty]

i don't play with mods i consider game changing (i.e. turning shields clear, putting an overlay on the map)

i play on insane difficulty only.

use the energy suppression sat.

claim a mine, build it then save the rock as a custom ship. add this custom rock to your stations for free health and somewhat natural looking stations to build on.

always leave a least a guard (a trio of guards on insane) the guards subsytems don't have to be fantastic, i find a boss swoks artifact is just enough pre-barrier. eventually i'd farm enough of the artifacts to dole down some love to every ship.

i do feel you on people saying mods fix it, or use x ship. when the vast majority of those workshop ships apparently use glitches to powergame-munchkin their stats. (or require the mods themselves to function! who puts 100+ turrets on a ship? reee)




for the record i don't salvage anything unless im really bored. so i've never even considered scavving for turrets and systems. i tried it once or twice and never really got anything of value out of it. - and by trying it i mean sending 6+ 10 subsystem ships on an expo with a daredevil captain or scaving with a scav captain for 6 hours with as near to 100% in every catagory as possible. they're just not worth the time - considering i could have sent them mining, sold the ore then bought what i was needing in the first place.

its not terribly difficult to source systems off equipment docks. i usually have 2 ships perpetually docked at them and resource stations till i build my own (12mill best investment ever), these ships are just little fighter craft size and i check them every so often- like when travling longer distances or whatnot

to get more quality guns either build a turret factory (25million) or source an npc one, build it in the system you want the turrets to be made out of, or tow it to there and hit the reconfigure button to get updated turret blueprints.

its significantly cheaper to make your own turrets from your own factory.

you also don't even have to play the economy game (be set up with a hundred stations) i usually go with 6 miners with uncommon quality r-miners and r-mining fighters.

[Bobucles]

Stations don't need engines, so deck them out in thick walls of armor and stone. Yes, simple rock gives incredibly high defense for cheap.

OP kinda hit on the sour point of station building. Every station you own is subject to pirate raids, and those raids are scaled to the sector threat level. So every single station needs to be as powerful as your main flagship, or it'll just die. The costs add up extremely fast and vastly exceed the value of any simple factory station.

There are only a handful of stations that truly need to be built at the core. Research stations, weapon factories and markets are scaled exactly to the sector level, thus they do better work in high level zones. That's it. Every other player built facility belongs on the rim. Mines, factories, storage depots, all of it goes in the middle of nowhere where only rusted tin can lvl 1 pirates choose to fight.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by RJS:

It did have guns, like I said all the guns I could find in 40 hours of playtime so I couldn't be picky, set to autofire.
And all the guns I could fit on it, like 6-7 mostly 2-slotters, because like I also said after hours and hours of playtime all I can find or buy are green and blue armed turret subsystems which are only adding 1-2 guns each.
It would be nice if after 40+ hours of play and shooting/salvaging/buying a wide path all the way to the main rift, someone could fit more than 1 ship well.

Research Stations are your new jam. Trade 3 subsystems of one quality for 1 subsystem of the next quality level. You can guarantee the upgrade with 5, but the math has been worked out on other threads (on reddit, if I recall correctly) and 3 per "research" is the most advantageous.

You can do this with turrets, too... but in my opinion, it's best to use Turret Factories to build the biggest, nastiest turrets you can. They cost trade goods and money, and they're expensive, but you can upgrade the amount of materials used to increase the turrets' stats.

What I like to do with the "super-turrets" you can build at factories is:

• Make one absolutely maxed-out turret at a Turret Factory.
  
• Bring that turret to a Fighter Factory, and make the best fighter out of it that you can.
  In case it needs mentioning, you'll need a hangar on the ship that buys the fighter.
  
• Throw that fighter into a new squadron on a ship (or station) with production blocks.
  
• Print bazillion-credit fighters for a few thousand metal each.
  
• Pass some of those fighters to other ships/stations with production blocks to increase production speed.
  
• Print more bazillion-credit fighters for a few thousand metal each.
  
• Pass those fighters out to the rest of the fleet.
  
• Go melt stuff.

[Pino]

First thing to put in a station you don't want to lose is a big block of rich stone: cheap, no energy required and the station has instantly millions HP.
Then you have the time to read all the other suggestions.
For turret slots, kill Swoks, that's a module for +10 turret slots.
Best attack on stations are fighters, if you don't have those, put long range turrets (seeker launchers one of the best)

[RJS]

A LOT of good information here. Thanks yall.

[azhockeynut]

also, i have added even the poorest of Captains and set my stations to guard or attack enemies. This plus some good guns and at least 1 squad of fighters. bingo. not lost a mine or station. Loads of awesome station designs in the workshop too which can give you ideas for yours