Career mode 2.0 - more station types

[timid galleon]

In my fourth idea entry for career mode 2.0, I would like to throw some ideas for different station types out there.

At the moment there are only arms depots and trade stations that you can encounter. Here are some more station types that I’ve come up with, and ideas on how to integrate them.

First, reduce regular stations per system to 3.
First off, to make “space” for the new station, every system should have three arms depots/trade stations instead of four. This will allow for more “room” for the safe zones of stations across a solar system.

Mining/factory stations
Sometimes appearing in the center of asteroid fields, these stations are equipped with a few mining lasers and trade ores and materials frequently with trader/miner ships. They offer exorbitant amounts of ores for purchase. Additionally, you can pay a small fee to have your ores refined by the station (like avorion’s refinery stations). This fee would be small enough that it would be a decent idea to have this done for players that don’t have factories.

Mission stations
Appearing further from the star of the system that most stations, mission stations would have special bounties for the entire faction that the player can take up. The difference is, these stations have bounties in other systems. The mission can be “returned” after completion by any station of the faction that set the bounty, so if you take up a bounty mission in another star system for the cabal of sol, you can go to any cabal station after the bounty is done to claim the reward. To make these bounty missions worth it, the reward yield would be much higher so the hyperjump could actually be worth it.

Faction specific stations
I’m not sure there use in the game’s mechanics, but a special station type for factions would be a cool sight to see. My ideas are:
A heavy factory station that ships deliver ores to to convert to materials, and makes lots of munitions
A church/ziggurat that cabal ships pay visits to and dock for a while
A large communications beacon that relays orders from the centauri star system
A huge, moving salvage station that goes around the system and salvages wreckage as it moves

[timid galleon]

Any thoughts on this, btw?

[daring crypt]

Other than the fact that a more dynamic map with more interactable tidbits is cool? c:

Yes, please- if other than suggestions for tweaks and additions to your specific ideas I’d love to see this, not to mention implementation probably wouldn’t be terribly hard for most of these

Another suggester mentioned ship graveyards should have cryptkeeper ships that drag unattended wrecks around after some time, maybe your fringe salvager station could be related to that idea. Having to compete with other civilian vessels for loot would be interesting, and add a layer of diplomacy other than “kill this for that mission and run/fight your way out, otherwise everything is chill”

[timid galleon]

good idea tbh

though the scraps would have to be worth fighting for. atm ship graveyards are composed of 95% metal

[solar frigate]

Heh, diplomacy? Argue with an npc over rocks in space?
People would just make a ship to push the competition into the sun. Unless you've got any ideas on how it'd work. :)
I also don't see why npcs would do that when their factions have whole planets to mine from.

[daring crypt]

I imagine they’d be independent contractors, for the most part, like you

And one idea for the diplomacy is just to hail them and say “get out” at the cost of reputation for whichever faction or station they run with

Or, you could extort them at the cost of reputation

Extort them at the cost of being wanted for a bit

Stuff like that, maybe they’d give you a small mission in exchange for a tiny amount of fame so you could hire a crewmate off of them

Interacting incidentally would give you piddly amounts of fame that would let you hire a few more crew here and there

[subtle sleet]

theres already only three regular stations and a couple arms depots for missions.

limiting regular ones to three wont change shit for how many trade stations you get

[timid galleon]

in my experience I've found mostly 4 stations, but it seems to vary

[thin prism]

Mission stations could look very rustic and beaten up, maybe with a bar module so it looks like it has a tavern in it.

I also suggest civilian stations that only have home modules with families in them, and maybe some point defense turrets.

[thin prism]

More competition with civilians would be lit. Miners are already planned, so civilian salvagers would be a cool addition. You might also find cutthroat types who hover nearby battles and then try to muscle in on your salvage.

[daring crypt]

just like how the player already does

hehe

[thin prism]

lmao

fr

[daring crypt]

Ye, it feels a little weird that we're the only ones actually working to make a buck rather than just drifting around in the system