Boarding Ships (Version 1 Beta Preview B)

The player and other factions can now use "Boarding Ships" to attempt to board stations belonging to hostile factions (including player-owned stations!). Although since NPC stations do not need CVs, if they capture a player station, they will attempt to destroy attached CVs. The player can also use Boarding Ships to perform Boarding Ops against other capital ships. The player cannot use Skunk-based Marines to board second targets in parallel , and there is a possibility to lose trained Marines by accident  (see below).

Things to note about the existing beta implementation of Boarding Ships:

1. Currently, station and capital ship defences do not attack boarding pods in low attention (~OOS).
2. Although friendly capitals will not attack stations the player is boarding, friendly fighters will at the moment.
3. A Boarding Op with a Boarding Ship can be cancelled through the Active Missions menu (Return-3-1).
4. Marine pods are fragile and may be launched from distance but travel at 64 m/s so consider Boarding Ship location.
5. You can put more than the Skunk's limit of 50 Marines to work on a Boarding Ship (helps with difficult targets).
6. You can use more than one Boarding Ship against the same station target (capital ship targets too ).
   1. If recalling >50 Marines after an Op, the best 50 will work on the Skunk and spares will deploy to squad ships or the reserve .
7. Although your Marine Officer remains on the Skunk after creating a Boarding Ship, (s)he participates on the Op.
   1. As a result of the above:
      1. The Skunk cannot order Skunk-based Marines to help.
      2. Although new Marines and Marine Officer may be hired while Op is underway:
         1. Second Boarding Ops cannot be started while first is active.
         2. If you recall your MO after the Op completes, your trained Marines are lost
8. If a Boarding Ship's DO is set to Attack, it will do so (be careful with slow torpedoes that could kill the ship after capture ).

Management is arranged via talking with your Marine Officer ("Move Troops..." order):

1. "from Skunk" moves Marines working on the Skunk to a capital in the Skunk's squad (creates a Boarding Ship).
2. "Reserve to fleet" puts reserve Marines to work on a ship in the Skunk's squad (see 3 below).
3. "Store Marines" moves Marines working on the Skunk to the Skunk's reserve force.
4. "to Skunk" makes Marines working on a selectable Boarding Ships work instead on the Skunk.
5. "Reserve to Skunk" puts reserve Marines to work on the Skunk.

Process for boarding a ship/station with a Boarding Ship:

1. Comm the Captain of the Boarding Ship and select boarding order (Comm-2-4-6).
2. Select a target via the map (target may be a station or capital ship).
   
3. After selecting a target, missions options may be offered:
   1. "Disable Engines/Jumpdrive".
   2. "Launch Pods".
   3. "Abort" (see above; aborting is also possible elsewhere).
   4. "Disable Weapons".
   5. "Scan Ship first".
4. If preparatory options are picked, Boarding Ship adopts "Follow Skunk" to close range on target.
5. After completing a mission, another may be selected until eventually picking "Launch Pods".

Zone Capture

In order for the player to claim an unowned zone, or capture a zone from a Faction, certain prerequisites must be met:

1. An owning faction must have no ships or stations in the zone (zones can be bigger than Skunk radar or visible ranges).
2. No other faction may have a military capital ship in the zone.
3. You must have an owned capital ship in the zone.
4. You must build within the zone either a regular station or have enough credits (10-20 million) to order an outpost CV, which are fast and convenient but takes up a build spot (The outpost is called by bringing up the universe map. Then pick a zone and hit plot course. The option is there to build an outpost along with other things).
5. Outpost CV's use up a build spot so be warned! Even when an NPC builds one!

CM_config.xml file

This file can be edited and controls several features in the game. Look through the file to customize your experience. Everything is explained in the file with detailed instructions.

Retaliation Fleets

These can be controlled via the CM_Config file. If an enemy station is destroyed, there is a chance that a retaliation fleet or fleets will spawn and jump directly into the zone. Be careful when invading into enemy territory. These fleets are different from normal enemy fleets.

Jobs.xml

This file handles almost all of the invasion and defense fleets. This file can be edited to customize your experience as much as you want. There are plenty of notes in there to get things working as you like but it might take a little studying to figure out all of the features. This file handles what ships spawn, how many, at what interval, at what location and also specifies where they will travel.

Shipyards

Shipyards of varying types can be built by the player. Some of these can be built through CV's purchased at faction shipyards. Some can only be built by capturing unique CV's that travel throughout the galaxy in various places.

Shipyards require significant amounts of resources in order to function well but will provide a very lucrative income source. When you order a ship at your shipyard it will appear to be asking you for money to build the ship but this is only

for show. The shipyard will only appear to take your money but it will not take your money. You still need to have the credits in your bank account, though, in order to build the ship. This is an unfortunate limitation but there is no way known to get

around this. Once you build a ship, you can sell the ship to your own shipyard dealers for a profit markup of 50% of the base cost. When you go to sell your ship, it will only initially show the base cost of selling the ship without taking account

of the extra 50% income. However, once sold, you will receive the base cost plus 50% of the base cost into your bank account. The same goes for small shipyards.

Ships built at NPC shipyards will actually have a purpose now. Military ships will go on patrol, trade ships will go on to trade and mining ships will go on to mine. If you sell a ship to a faction shipyard, it will also be used by that faction and could help them in their wars. 

Spawning behavior 

This mod doesn't change the spawning behavior much. What that means is, most ships are spawned just like in vanilla with some major differences. First, ships for a faction are only spawned in certain zones considered home zones or base zones. If you conquer those zones. That will stop the ships from spawning for the most part but you must hold the home or base zone for a period of time (depends on when the job suppression script is read which could be as little as 1 minute or as much as 2 hours). Weakening a faction by conquering its' zones (either by you or another faction) will also limit its power and it may spawn less ships (be careful though because they will spawn fleets in other places to try and take back their lost territory). 

Shipyard resource consumption and ships sold to/produced by a shipyard 

Some ships that spawn will drain resources from a shipyard but not all. Ships built at a shipyard will have a job to do. Military ships will patrol and can help a faction turn the tide of battle. Ships you self to a faction shipyard will also be used by that faction. Trade ships will trade and miners will mine. The shipyard will still produce ships at the same pace as it does in vanilla.

With all that being said, a war of attrition is possible but it is done by controlling zones rather than destroying an economy. Of course stopping a shipyard from producing ships will also help your war cause but it isn't a huge impact since most fleets are spawned by zone ownership. This could be changed, we have the code in place and capability to flesh this system out in a more complex fashion but that is not a goal at this time.

HyperDrive Feature!

This is how the new HyperDrive works!!

You must buy HyperDrive Crystals from traders. I think the engineering trader has them. They are very expensive!!! With these, you can use the X4-Spy Probes to jump fleets directly into a zone!!! In order to jump a fleet in, you must have a HyperDrive crystal in your inventory equal to the number of ships you want to jump and also 1 extra for the skunk (even if skunk isn't jumping). These crystals are consumed on hyperdrive jump! They are expensive and will be consumed but this is very useful for Fleet tactics once you can afford them. (I think 400k or so per HyperDrive Crystal).

Fleets will jump together and in formation! They will keep to the formation of how you assigned your ships. (Fighters do not require HyperDrive Crystals as they will be "caught up" in the jump and jump with their lead ships in the fleet).

To initiate the HyperDrive jump, you must open the universe map and choose a zone and hit plot course. When you do this, you will see a radial menu with several options, two of these are for HyperDrive Jump. All capital ships must have working jump drives and you must have enough HyperDrive Crystals for all ships plus the skunk and you can only jump to a X4-Probe or a Jump Beacon!!. The Skunk must physically go to a zone to drop the beacon beforehand. If all requirements are met, the option to HyperDrive Jump will be selectable! Otherwise, it will be greyed out!

One further warning, if you do not have enough HyperDrive Crystals for all your Capital ships to jump, the HyperDrive may be initiated, however, not all your ships will jump! You may end up in an enemy territory with only a part of your fleet and be in a dangerous situation. Make sure to plan accordingly!

NPC STATION CONSTRUCTION (NEW CONSTRUCTION OF STATIONS)

The way it works in simple terms, there are a bunch of calculations and such which I wont get into but every couple of hours or so, a faction may build a new station! I kept this pretty much to the lore of each Corporation. Only Corporations will build new stations (except for Plutarch which is considered a major faction, meaning Plutarch will not take part in new station construction).

So, in HOL, both Terracorp and the Toride colonists may build new stations. However, Toride will only try to build in either Cold Star or Toride, they will not build in Home of Light. Terracorp can build in any of these clusters.

Teladi build in fields of opportunity but there are only two types of stations they build. They rely on the Albion corporations to support their economy.

Albion Corporations (Wholesome foods, Albion energy, Ledda industrial, no limits, etc.) These guys can build anywhere in Albion, Fields of Opportunity, or most areas of Devries except for Glaring Truth.

Omicron Corporations build in Maelstrom, Omicron and Barren heart or Molten Archon in Devries.

There are all kinds of restrictions and variables involved here. Corporations only build the stations that their companies deal in

So, for example, Albion Energy will only build things like Cell Fabs or Energy arrays. Each faction is limited in what they can build to what their corporation's products are for the most part. Some factions deal in everything.

No new shipyards of any kind will be built with the new construction.

Corporations will look for zones where there is no enemy presence and they will also look at the value of the zone (these values are determined as part of our code based on several factors) and one corporation will be chosen to build one type of the stations that they can build in a zone they find valuable to them every couple of hours.

The first stage of the station will build without the need for resources. All stages after this require resources and they will only build if the CV is able to require the necessary resources.

STATION REBUILDING

In order to keep the economy from falling apart, stations which get destroyed must have a way to be repopulated in a quick and clean way. When a station is destroyed, it will eventually get rebuilt by either the faction that originally owned the station or a new faction depending on who controls the zones (Corporations will always rebuild their own stations).

These stations do not require resources to be rebuilt and completely relies on zone control and ownership to determine who will build what and where. This is completely different from new construction.

NEW COMMAND OVERWATCH STATION

We have implemented a sophisticated new way of building these very powerful stations. There are several important restrictions involved with their construction but ultimately factions will build these Command Overwatch stations in important zones. Factions calculate the value of zones when determining where to build these massive stations.

INVASIONS

Not yet Implemented, Stay tuned for this very cool feature!