Probably a stupid question....

[DaddyHoggy]

It's indestructible due to fundamental code requirements. It was made indestructible to keep "weird things" from happening, and no, not the good / fun kind of weird things. At least, that is how I understand things as to why it is set up so.

But as Eric Walch pointed out earlier in the thread there are several OXPs where destruction of the main station is a distinct possibility...

[Eric Walch]

But as Eric Walch pointed out earlier in the thread there are several OXPs where destruction of the main station is a distinct possibility...

I just noticed that I was wrong in that a destroyed station was stored in the save file. It only worked until Oolite 1.65. There you could set the station role of the mainStation to a non-existing role and no station was added. Little bear used it in the original version of asteroid storm by setting the station role to "none" after destruction. (It would add something if there existed a ship with role "none" so this method was not fool proof in hind sight.)

Somewhere in 1.69 or 1.70 the main station was made indestructible. Since than there is also a fail-save mechanism for the main station. It falls back to the default station roles if it can't find one in the given role. So the "none" trick stopped working.

I never realised it but Kaks already fixed this problem with Asteroid Storm in his 1.70 fix by just exploding all stations on system entry when there should not be one around.

Not having a main station gives all kind of problems. Most often it are scripts that don't anticipate on not having a main station.
e.g.

Code: Select all

vector_richman.js, line 108:
    		this.ship.target = this.goToStat;

has problems with its "goToStat"

I just loaded my old asteroidStorm - failed file. No main station at Leesdi after entering the system. However, after spawning a dredger, it became the new main station, including the right to save at that station. Even the buoy repair company helped me by noticing there was no buoy in front of the new main station and droped a new buoy in front of the dredger.

[Commander McLane]

Back in 1.65 and possibly earlier, it was possible to blow up the main station with a q-mine, provided you had a few ships around it when the bomb went off: Multiple cascade shockwaves would do the station in.

In recent versions it's not possible, the station would shrug off the attack - though you'd still be branded a fugitive for the failed attempt at terrorism.

I think that the Q-mine cascade would affect the ships that are docked in the station, so that the station would be hit by Q-explosions from outside and inside, and would utterly destroy the station.

In light of the above, I think that main stations in the next version should be able to be destroyed!

The usual line of thinking was that GalCop would be plain stupid if they wouldn't have some sort of shielding for each main station against the cascade. Because indeed, every main station contains a considerable amount of quirium (they sell the stuff) even disregarding the docked ships. So if there was no effective shield, every main station would be vulnerable to a single Q-mine explosion. As we don't see that happen, it becomes obvious that some effective shielding must exist.

[Commander McLane]

I think a Killit OXP weapon would be able to destroy a main station.

Indeed.

Albiet along with everything else.

Not necessarily so. A KillIt™ missile works effectively against a main station. But, as the other guys pointed out, in the same instant the closest non-main-station automagically becomes the main station, because as a general rule Oolite doesn't like systems without main stations (some exceptions notwithstanding, for instance if the system's sun went nova before).