... It might be possible to have the mission to take a station appear only when the station owner is on. If the owner logs after the mission starts then too bad....We would need an exception for owners that are away for more then a few days.

Buying a station can always be an option but that not really a hostile act....

There should be a way for a single player to do this as well as groups. It should be very hard but possible even for 1 player. The mission needs to scale well but be a small bit harder for soloing. (10 on 1 for the first player and 5 more for each additional player perhaps?)

Thousands of bots.... no way! NOT fun.

Owner selection of the defenses is a good Idea IMO. Perhaps a basic setup for free and then have a way to purchase addition ships at a high price to augment them.

Why, exactly, do you think that it needs to be soloable? That's the stupidest thing I've heard yet today.

A single pilot showing up at an enemy player-owned station should work exactly like me showing up at a UIT station: they tell me to piss off, and launch a few guards. If I kill those, they keep sending more until I actually do piss off, likely while shooting Gauss uberturrets at me. I might be able to stick around for a minute and make a trader kill, but I'm certainly not going to conquer an entire station single-handedly.

Very much in agreement with you, ladron. Stations should force people to work together. If you're a lone wolf, you don't fight enemies this large. Why would you?

Because given enough time and skill, you can grind them down and burn their station.

Because there are those that are good enough to tackle very difficult missions and those who do not like to work with others...

I am only suggesting that solo should not be ruled out. Just very hard...

Lecter is right in a sense; players who like to see the world burn will be fighting such things anyway (and probably solo, since they're generally antisocial types).

What I question is why we would need to accommodate such pilots, seeing as they'd be throwing themselves against the bulwark no matter what you do. Station are, at their core, supposed to be end-game, team-building content; if a lone player can pull of, then kudos to them, but the design in general ought to reflect the need for multiple players. Frankly, lone players are probably going to find ways to worm around the deterrents no matter what we do, so, if anything, we ought to aim to make it even harder.

end-game, team-building content

Don't make the really retarded mistake--and even more so in a game with so few players--of thinking these two have to be linked.

I agree with vIsitor; stations ought to require a large group investment. The concept of a lone pilot owning or killing a space station is ludicrous. This is a FRIKKING SPACE STATION, not a bloody convoy that can be soloed by a single pilot. At the least a large gang of pilots should be needed to kill or capture a station.

concept of a lone pilot owning or killing a space station is ludicrous.

Last I checked, there's no upper limit on how much ore one pilot can gather, parts one pilot can haul, credits one pilot can have, or damage over time one pilot can inflict. Should it be hard? Duh. Should it be literally impossible due to game mechanics? No.

"This is a FRIKKING SPACE STATION"

Shlim, I am reminded of the attitude of the US navy in world war 2, which was "This is a FRIKKING AIRCRAFT CARRIER"

As I recall the Japanese showed them the error inherent in that thinking.

heh some of the same people suggestion stations be solo-able are the same people that get butthurt when others say capships should be solo-able

EVN had it right, roll out the fighters, carriers and destroyers. If you or your group beat them all, you get the station.

Yes, you could conquer stations in EVN. But it required a very good ship, a group of escort ships, and quite a bit of spare time. You didn't load up a civ viper with IR missiles and go solo a station (unless you were Qaanol).

Allow me to point to an already existing group event in VO; the levi hunt. This requires a large number of players, quite an amount of tactics and coordination and lots of firepower, for a dubiously useful reward, and yet no one complains about not being able to solo levis. Capturing or killing a station should be like going on a levi hunt, and if you can't get the people to help out, well, tough luck.

Besides, if people can easily solo an expensive, difficult to construct space station, no one will build them. This is not an ideal solution, because everyone wants their guild to have a cool space station, or even just their own personal fortress of solitude.

no one complains about not being able to solo levis

I do. Being able to solo levis back in the day was the shit. But as we say regarding whether SCOTUS got something right when was interpreting the Constitution back in the day: "It's OVAH!"

The dynamics for stations, however, are still very much up for debate. A large station, run by a very active guild, would probably be all but impossible to solo. A small station, run by a one to a few players, would be much easier.

Mainly, though, what cannot be allowed to spread are shields. Shields make things completely invulnerable to even the best solo pilot--which is really boring.

yea the sheilds cannot be allowed to spread beyond new capitol ships, and player caps should never be too hard to break solo, with something like a daul neutron rig lets say. I know that's kinda weak, but it's still enough to prevent accidental damage.

Looks like our little Levi hunting club is going to have some more things to do here pretty soon... :D