Commander McLane wrote:I wasn't thinking of destroying main stations. I am all for them to be indestructible. (But I can't speak for Switeck, of course.)
I'm ok with main stations being "relatively" indestructible. They are after all at least equal to tech level 15 if not 16, while all the other stations would be lower tech and thus much lower shielding.
Nuit Station in my mind is the next highest tech station...so high in fact we can't even complete it yet so its docking arms actually work.
Only keeping track of destroyed stations in 1 galaxy is perfectly good enough...the savegame's going to be huge as-is.
On to the whole point of this little endeavor:
The main reason for keeping secondary stations to a minimum in a single system is game balance. Each additional station that has a full commodities menu (meaning nothing for "sale" for 0 credits) means you get a shot at finding the most expensive station and the cheapest station for items and swap them. More stations = more profit. With just 1 station, whatever prices they are...you're stuck with them! Beyond the main station, if you don't like the prices/amounts at secondary stations...you can just save game and reload. Bingo -- new prices and fully restocked! And limited time change beyond the launching/docking/traveling time between the possibly very close stations. In theory, with enough stations you could afford the most expensive ship ever released as an OXP doing this...without ever leaving the system. In practice, each extra station probably represents about 1k profits...though unless you're in a Boa 2 or larger (and/or using HyperCargo) you'll likely need more than 1 round trip to do it.
While it's true the game revolves around trading, it originally only had trading between different star systems. This doesn't just make it quicker...it takes away much of the risk, especially when secondary stations are really near the main station. (Then again, bad docking was always my primary cause of death...probably why I like Superhub so much -- it only kills me about 1/4th as often.)
In-universe, there's usually not much NEED for there to be more than 1 secondary "general" station. Ships can dock pretty fast, and even the busiest system seems to not have new ships arriving faster than about 1 per minute. My testing of traders in my mod at least let me see the traffic jams that happen at the main station if there were huge numbers of traders arriving per hour. Ships were backed up so far at one point that a Q-bomb could chain react ships around the station for over 3 minutes straight...easily in excess of 200 ships.
Having a secondary station that gets traffic like the main one would alleviate that considerably, so ironically it could reduce total NPC ship counts some...but ONLY if NPC ships were smart enough to take advantage of it. Most are programmed to only go to the main station. This is one of the things I'm trying to change that in my mod. It's easy enough to tell some of them to instead dock with the "nearest" station...but then they're likely to dock at Your Ad Here Constores (which are rather near the witchpoint), or Black Monks Monasteries, Free Trade Zones, or Rock Hermits. But it even gets sillier than that! They might dock at hostile Pirate Coves, Renegade Stations, or any carrier ship that happens to come along...be it a Behemoth, Dredger, or Thargoid Carrier! About the one place they *WON'T* go...is a secondary station in orbit around the planet...because chances are there's at least 1 closer station of some kind (friendly or otherwise) for them to dock with instead.
The simplest solution I've seen is the suggestion of setting a role for all secondary stations so there's only 1 (or 0) per system. Then ai's in AI.plist files could choose to dock with whatever that role is, regardless of where it is...and even fall back to the main station or nearest station if not found.
