Bomale,

There is allways Strategy in the every game. Even if the only winning strategy is to not play in the first place.

Currently a Captain can decide to

leave planet side modules undefended.
put weapons and marines on the planet with their other modules.
Put a station in orbit above the planet with only a little defence
Put a station in orbit bristling with weapons and shields.
Use a war ship to defend your planets and stations
not put down any planetside modules on the planet in the first place

These are all different strategies, and Ive seen pretty much all of them in use. No one specific one is intrinsically better than the other, it depends on the situation and where the planet is located.

Im pretty certain that you dont need to have any defence for any modules that you put down on a planet because you choose to opperate so far away from SOL. That was a strategic choice you choose to make.

I dont see how making modules costly to either capture or destroy makes the game any more strategic, it just changes the strategies that you would use.

Boy oh Boy, now that is what i call R&R, although there was much Rest if you know what i mean    the lads and I are in good spirits now. Just the other day we resumed our work on your behalf. We have, im sure to the relief of those opperating in the Sirius system, driven a serious menace from Zeta orbit. The warship 'The Avatar' operated by captain sirEmi has been driven from orbit.

Wraith attacks with Laser Cannon MK *** using standard mode.
Critical hit on target, doing ****** damage!
EMERGENCY JUMP!
The Avatar has retreated from the battlefield due to heavy damage!

Unfortunatly at this point in time we are unable to do anything about the continuing 'problem' at Epsilon, However with your continuing support in the form of 'charitable donations' to the cause, we will continue our important work on your behalf.

@Emi,

Any update on when/if this might be introduced?

Hate to admit it, but I feel a little bit guilty about raising someones settlement to the ground if this change is in the pipeworks and just around the corner.... Ofcourse if its been scrapped or is unlikely to make it 'Live' anytime soon then i can carry on with a clean concience.

Erm, stations and Planets already get a pretty decent fortification bonus.

Believe me if the staion is well defended it makes attacking it a real touch and go concern. Ive lost several battles recently against stations that on paper in terms of power i was clearly way ahead.

The first shot can be a deciding factor and in station/planet comabt thats a 50/50 toss up.

Then you have the massive variability in terms of damage that your weapons inflict, a few light shots and your in big trouble.

Well Yeah Mostly, Cause your not really a pirate if your not flying the [OX] skull and crossbones now are ya?

Were not really a tight knit Corp working together for the greater good, more a sort of loose affliliation of like minded Captains willing to engage in a little bit of information sharing.

Besides, we do have a catchy corp song ! and as much rum as you can steal.

Vallo seems pretty desperate to grow his corp.

Perhapes there could be couple of ways to achieve what he wants without showing ALL players online status.

There could be a page in the corp section called recruitment, That lists players currently under newbie protection, and if they are online or not (Or all players in the SOL corp)

He and anyone else could then use this page to drive their recruitment, and to open communication with new players, which might encourage more to keep at the game especially through the slower parts of the tutorial.

I think it is also worth saying that the automatic SOL corp membership with no tax rate and an unlimited size, with a larger number of people using its corp board discourages new players from leaving the SOL corp and joining another one, after all there is little immediate disadvantage to staying in it.

Perhapes something could be done here to encourage players to leave and set up their own corps. Placing a time limit on membership, or settign a 10% tax rate or something.

I have some that have been there for a week or more now. I think it might be if they got captured.

   I have at no time mentions removing the capture since it does not currently exist,

Um, yeah it does.

Advanced Cargo Bay Mk III scooped into cargo bay.
Science Lab Mk V was captured by the attacker.

   I submit that I was removing the module destruction and replace it by module DAMAGED (or any other named), so,
    the efficiency is lower may well be pillar, and making it capturable if the need is required by the attacker.

I guess i just dont see the difference. For a newish player, between someone coming in and destroying the modules, and someone coming in and attacking, damaging, then capturing them. The new player still has no modules at the end of it. There is NO difference for them.

But like i said right at the start, I think most of the idea is great, adding an option to be able to attack and loot a planet/station without actually being forced to destroy the modules is a good idea.

Yes, as someone who hasnt cashed in lots of QP to buy a bigger ship, or to fit it out. I am well aware that i am not now, or ever, am i likely to be the big fish, thats ok, small fish can have sharp teeth too.

Any new player willing to spash some cash around will easily be able to build a fleet larger and stronger that what most of the players that are building facilities are capable of defending against even after weeks or months of game play. This is just a fact of life when playing games like this that need to offer power-ups for real world cash to finance their development and ongoing operation.

Is there anything to stop someone joining the game and griefing by just destroying everything... no not really. Even if they cant destroy stuff and just 'capture' it the same problem exists, a more powerfull player can simply move in and take everything from a newer or less powerfull player. So to 'protect' the less powerfull you would need to ban both destroy and capture options.

But if you remove the ability to destroy/capture modules then the game is radically different. Instead of slowly expanding a well defended set of places, you will see people in a mad scramble to put something down on every valuable spot they can find as fast as they can buy/build modules and get them out somewhere. since no one can do anything about it once you have a module there. The game becomes a simple race to reserve as much teritory as possible.

My thoughts about adding an option to loot is that it is potentially more lucrative in the long run for BOTH sides. the pirate can generate an income and get at resources that he might not otherwise be able too although at significant risk to his ships integrity. The miner is less likely to have their whole facilites wipped out, and only need to keep unloading it and resupplying the defenders to generate reasonable profits.

I reckon you should have a go at attacking a few planets with that big beastly ship you have... find out how it really is for yourself ;) Sure you can clean the boards on most of the smaller operations, but id bet a few of the better defended places would give you a run for your money.

Actually,

Bassed on a few recent battles the fortification bonus makes it very unpredictable wether you will actually win even if ship power rating is significantly higher than  defender.

a 5 times fortification bonus if the attacker is trying to destroy you increases defenders chance of winning significantly. Even current 3 times bonus makes it very hard... ( no im not crying here, just stating opinion )

I terms of predictability the battles from ship to station/planet are very unpredictable. if weapons do minor hits you going to loose no matter who you are. If much weaker opponent gets first shot and does a critical or major hit even with a single laser you loose in a ship. unless you are not just 4-5 times as powerfull but are many more factors more powerfull, and full of armour. of course if you did get first shot and do normal damage then your likely to win.

I think you need to actually have done a good number of fights to get a feeling for it. Easy to overlook how unpredictable it is otherwise.

Depends If you have a few weapons and get good hits in you should do quite a lot of damage and will likely destroy them.

However if your unlucky you might find your wepons do a series of minor hits. And then your going to be toast when they do a boarding attack.

Personally i do think Civs do way too much damage. I also cant help wonder how they all manage to board my ship. First off i would assume that it doesnt have thousands of air locks, or that i forgot to turn off the 'open from the outside' controlls. secondly im not sure why this d**n attack computer insists that we land right next to them after the first volley from my guns. I think i prefer to soften them up a bit more before getting close. but i guess we have to live with these things. d**n computers.

@Bomale, For an example of a well defended settlement take a look at what outerposse has done at Eta GJ 674... No way ill be messing with that any time soon, even if looting is enabled, that station is packing too much fire power.

ofcourse leaving just a few modules undefended on a planet is asking to have them looted.

@emi Id not recomend allowing the alt so that you have access to sol corp chat. Its asking to be abused. Not having access to sol corp chat board is just the price you pay for leaving sol corp to set up your own.

With the new Earth Orbit Hail channel you will be able to recruit and chat with other players online. Note also that once opened, if you dont change the page in that tab you can still use it when your no longer in earth orbit.

I for one DO NOT want people to know when im online unless i specifically decide to let them know.

And for a real pirate, heck who cares if the target is online or not, if they are online then they may even make things a bit more interesting by turning up to defend their stuff, unless your scared that is.

Yeah been thinking about this. I actually wonder if it didnt occur when i moved the CAB's about on my ship.

My cargo must have been very close to being full at that time. If you try and un-equip a CAB and put it into cargo you need at least 200m of free space, more if its been upgraded.

I cant help wondering if the new shuffle modules in your ship script doesnt do something like unequip and reequip but without a check for cargo.... that could perhapesexplain cargo dissapearing and Aluminium is also the first mineral type alphabetically...

And when alls said and done i could have imagined it...but im 99% sure i didnt. I will pay more attention next time im transfering stuff around though.

I think there is still a problem here.

I just transfered 5 modules from the cargo bay in one ship to the cargo bay in another.

Ill eat my hat but im pretty sure, i had over 100 aluminium in the target ship prior to the transfer and now theres only 15 .

Im 99% certain about this because i was planning on upgrading some science modules with it. thank heavens the gold is still there. but perhapes is should go count it. again.

note i also un-installed some cargo bays on the target ship (all without warning that there wasnt enough cvargo space available) and i used that new module organising function to shift some SLB's and some Cargo pods around. could potentially have happened then as well.