I love the idea of building an MCR (Mobile Construction Robot) that you drive/glide to the area you like.

I would also love to see a RTS view introduced with PBS. Drive the MCR to the area you wish to claim and deploy. This switches you to an RTS view and allow you to see what the terrain around the area is like for "Smoothness" Green tiles = Available, Red Tiles = Blocked.

The MCR should then deploy and open once you confirm the location, the driver of the MCR will be back in a robot (Perhaps of the players choice OR a Construction robot). The MCR must then be 'Secured' or 'Constructed'.

The original concept of PBS was modular buildings connected by pipes. Pipes being easily destroyed or intercepted while the main buildings would be massively resistive.

Terraforming should allow you to make more tile "Available" by making them at the same height as the deployed MCR and a near flat slope. Placing a building could cause the terrain to flatten underneath it as long as all times are at the same height and whatever an acceptable slope is.

TL;DR - Perpetuum does not suit static buildings are long periods of time. I would like to see a base where the main cost is placed on a control centre and modular buildings can be pipelined together for a low cost. This means that a base can be abandoned or left when minerals dry up or taken over by the enemy destroying the control centre and placing their own there.

Some thoughts on PBS’s

PBS’s should be constructed in a modular fashion, for example

Terminal: when a player Corp wants to build an terminal they can construct the terminal ( no facilities at this point) all they get is docking, market, personal and Corp hanger access.

Refinery & facilities: All facilities will be able to be accessed from the main terminal once constructed just like the current system for terminals. When a player Corp wants to have the capability to refine recourses they will need to build a refinery, this is a separate structure that must be constructed within ~500 m to ~750m of the main terminal. This structure will have separate attributes from the main terminal and will be able to be destroyed by opposing players. All facilities must be destroyed in order for the main terminal to be destroyed. Each additional facility that is added to the main terminal adds to the maximum shield HP of the main terminal. Once all of the facilities for the main terminal are destroyed and its shield removed the opposing players may either completely  destroy the terminal or salvage it.

Salvaging: salvaging terminals produces the items that were stored inside the terminals hangers. Salvaging is a process similar to the current active sap capture where players will need salvaging modules equipped and search through the wreckage. You will only be able to salvage items that will fit into your cargo, (of course )…. (scarab)so bring a hauler. The players who had items in the terminal when it was destroyed / salvaged will loose these items.

Construction : PBS’s can be constructed on the new Gama islands. The construction process will take ~4 hours to complete during this time the player Corp constructing the terminal will be required to Deposit large amounts of building materials into the construction “crane” in order for the crane to complete the construction. The construction crane is an item that can be bought from NPC sell orders on the market for 500m Nic. The construction materials for the terminal could consist of ~10K U Titan Ore, ~10K U Sterm, ~2K U Alligore etc.. the facilities would be about 20% of the cost of the main terminal. But constructed in the same way. Terminals must be completed before facilities can start construction.

Destruction: PBS’s will be vulnerable to attack for a period of 1 Hour every day this will coincide with the original construction start time (this is for the shields to cycle on the facilities and the terminal). Each structure will have its own individual timer (so if you want them to all come up at the same time make sure to start them all at the same time of day for your forces to defend). Terminals HP should be about ~1M HP while facilities should be about 250K HP.. ..

At work .. bbl later with more

You may be correct I haven’t played that game in years but I suggested this because if your Corp is going for high security you may place all but one of your structures in your prime time, so that your main opponent will not be able to take all of your structures in one go unless they have large forces in all the different time zones. Also many Corps want to be able to have control over the vulnerability of their PBS’s so this makes sense I think.

No not really..... Having a PBS open for an hour a day is the identical principle to our previous version of intrusions. The only time you actually had to be present or bother to defend it was when the intrusion went active.. at a prearranged time... This will cause the same issues as before. The only time people will be around is for that hour a day.

PBS mechanics should be even more dependant on an actual presence in your controlled area then our current intrusion mechanics (which has totally encouraged more PVP at random times and a bigger presence on beta). I  think the PBS should have insane HP and be able to be attacked at any time. If your corp has the resources (should be a large requirement for PBS) to build a PBS then you should have a member base that can properly defend it at all times. Don't risk what you can't afford to lose!

Kaldenines-- I agree with you. We need to know what role the Devs have in mind for PBS before we start talking mechanics.

Right now any development going slower than usual due to that scriptkiddy IMO. However, that doesn't mean that we can throw any ideas - when all this circus ends, DEVs will have nice shiny ideas base

I think (and someone already mentioned it here) that buildings construction should be performed with special bots as a constructors and as a construction material. Like in Dune, you can construct MCV (or MCB) that should be expensive enough. Then you send terraforming bots first to prepare a place - to make flat ground and maybe to deploy concrete slabs. When the place is big and flat enough, you bring your MCB there and deploy - it becames a base for new station. Then construction bots work on it (says, lock and use special modules), building different parts of station - like energy plant, entrance teleporter, storage bay or sorta, or just several different points to perform an action with. Ah yes, and after MCB deployment, it's pilot appears around with arkhe - we don't need him to be captured by construction process. After the end - voila! - a new big shiny station completed. Let's call it a Main Building.

So right after construction, Main Building have just storages, and thats it. Then you need to buildd facilities and aura generator, and there is 2 ways to do it. First one can be similar to Main Building construction I've already described. Second one - you just bring enough materials on your Main Building, press a button and wait till the construction ends.

Should they be fully destroyable? There is several possible ways I see. First one - everything can be destroyed fully - no pain, no gain. Will cause alots of drama all over the game tho Second one - all but Main Building - after attackers are left, you still have something to start it again with. Third one - all the buildings can be wrecked hard making them inoperable but no full destruction - repair them back when it's all ends, or give someone else to do it - then they will own your lil townie. And fourth one - everything but Main Building can be destroyed, and Main Building can be wrecked only.

What else do we need? Walls - they already will be introduced soon, and if they will be exactly how I've heard, they are fine. Highways - build a road (concrete slabs), build a Speed Generators to turn it in a highway, build an energy plant to fill it with power.

Outposts, or radar stations - some kind of detection probes but a building version - you will see everything that moves in a radius so you may need to build several outposts to get an actual picture whats going on around.

Mining Towers - you should be able to build them all over the continent actually. Destruction rules can be same as for other buildings.

And at last, but not at least - an Energy Transferers - still remember why are we here on Nia?

+1337
Really well thought out, a massive project to make it come true, but totally amazing idea

Player interaction FTW IMO. Noralghis style construction is boring. Special bots with special modules and extensions should perform such actions.

Great Ideas Line +1

Heres my thoughts if attackers destroy every thing... Main building goes in to emergency defense mode and boosts the sheilds up to some crazy # how ever this will only last 12 hours and gets a % weaker every hour. Lets say for ballancing reasons as of right now Mk2 heavys are the best we got... Make 10 Mk2 heavys pound on an main building around 2 hours before sheilds fail when sheilds =100-90%. (I don't know of any corps right now that could field 10 mk2 heavys or the support that would be needed for a fleet like that.) This would mean that the attackers would need 1 mk2 heavy and some mechs 12 hours after they killed all outter lying buildings. Plenty of time for you to arrange a counter strike or new power source.

Also I think we should have power grids and generators placed near the mainbuilding with good HP but low cost (player built)once these are hit lights out in your main building, after 3-4 hours of back up power you lose options to recycle, refine, start factory, ect.

Tl;DR
Generators to supply power to PBS high, HP low cost and player manufactured.

YES, leave timers to outposts.
PBS should be 24/7 assault-able BUT then limit the random destruction that can be done. Destroy the pipes but not the buildings. Buildings should require time and planning or multiple attacks over a number of days.

Here is an alternative idea. Original idea was taken from Mech Warrior books series.

Corp/alliance A decides to attack Corp B's station. They initiate a trade - declare their forces (details level can be optional) they are plan to use on this intrusion, specify a date and time. Corp B can accept their bet or set their own bet, higher or lower than the Corp A one. When both sides find the bets acceptable, they are making a deal. That means, than in specified date/time, specified station will generate 5km aura similar to that one we had on tournament - for everyone who not specified in attackers/defenders list. Intrusion lasts says for 1 hour, and in that time and only in that, all the station buildings are vulnerable.

So to conquer the station, Corp A should destroy all the defending forces and wreck all the buildings (or just Main Building only).

As a result, we are free from those damnit night fights - you can't reject the trade, but you can change the time (not the date) to find that one that will be suitable for both sides. Also we get some protection of any ran around-saw-destroyed stuff.

Then there should be some kind of defensive structures - fortresses, force-field generators, etc. Destroy first one to get a possibility to attack second one. Also there should be cooldown between structure attacks to make it more complexive and harder to capture/destroy a station - I don't think we need expensive paper towns.

Annihilator had asked the devs to be more clear on their outline and had also asked the community to post THEIR ideas. I see no reason to call him a failure. Annihilator has also taken part in PVP events, all be it in a limited capacity.

The reason people don't want to fight over the patches of dirt you call outposts have been made very clear. They're content for the sake of content and take massive amounts of time that most people are willing to give.

Annihilator clearly pointed out that past efforts by the devs have been met by a lot of whining FROM pvpers due to poor concept design or concept rules.

So off.