Colony invasions, manned turrets and a new shop!

Running a colony is a bit too easy, right? All oyu have to do is do a few quests, arrange some houses and your tenants become automated resource farms.
The thing is, the dialogue of quite a few tenants would hint at them having enemies, and simply put, it is weird for a town in a galaxy with space pirate penguins, a human supremacist cult, a militaristic theocracy, a ruthless totalitarian regime which uses unwilling test subjects from it's own people and which seems to be willing to pursue dissidents anywhere, agressive plant people, etc... to remain peaceful.


Invasion spawn mechanics
(Note that this thread also uses the vehicles in my other main suggestion, so you should read it before the rest of the suggestion because the vehicles are both used by attackers and the various turrets include anti-vehicle weapons):

1 Invasions don't appear by default. In order to cause them to spawn in the first place, colonies need to attract some attention. This is done by placing a Signal beacon. Signal Beacons are obtained by buying them at Frogg Furnishing. They cause tenants to give higher-tier weapons, more seeds, and generally improves the income obtained from colonies.
2 Invasions happen periodically per colony, and they only really trigger once you arrive there (So there's no rush to go to the colony ASAP).
3 Invasions come in waves per invasion, each wave stronger than the previous and with a cooldown before each invasion wave. For example, if a Penguin Fleet attacks one of your colonies, they will come back every few days. In the first attempt at a raid (Or "wave"), they will bring weak troops, such as the penguins with guns seen in the Dreadwing mission. After repelling them, their next attack will also involve penguin tanks, and latter waves will progressively bring new enemies, such as penguins in fighter jets, bombers, etc...
4 The last wave will not be a large amount of hostile NPCs, but will instead be merely one or a few Boss NPCs (Following the Penguin example, it would be a UFO similar to Dreadwing's).
5 Some invasions only happen when you have specific tenants (For example, cultist attacks will only happen if you have non-human tenants) or go through a random check before they can happen (For example, the arrival of Apex tenants has a high chance for Miniknog invasions to be able to happen to the colony they arrived in). Those ones can be avoided by not having said tenants or, in the latter case, by getting rid of the specific tenant which passed the check before they give the player a gift.
6 There's several kinds of Invasion events:

-Raids: These are your typical invasion, similar to the Goblin/Pirate Invasion from Terraria. These are the most common, and also have the most variations, such as air raids, missile attacks, etc...
-Occupation: These are more complex, since they only attack AFTER they happen. First, a few NPCs spawn along with a basic structure on top of the terrain. The structure will grow daily, and it will spawn additional containers for any blocks or items (Such as vines, plants or trees) destroyed while the structure grows. After some time, it will stop growing, and launch the actual attack, which won't stop until a core part of the Occupation structure is destroyed, such as a shield generator, a banner, a signal repeater, teleporters, etc...
Occupation structures can have furniture in them, and some of the furniture may or may not be obtainable otherwise. The structures can also contain unique Codex entries.​

7 All of them require Colonies to have at least a minimum amount of total tenants before they can spawn. Weaker factions (Such as Cultists or Bandits) will attack smaller colonies.
8 Invasions can use ALL the vehicles from my previous suggestion, depending on the faction, with less powerful factions having lower-end vehicles.

Turrets.
Manned turrets must be crewed by one or more players or NPCs to work. NPCs can control them, including crew members and tenants.
In order to obtain them, you have 2 options:

1: Loot them from structures, such as fortresses.
2: Just buy them at the Outpost.​

They are bought at a new shop at the Outpost. The new shop is manned by an Apex vendor, who is designed to be a parody of the stereotypical action film arms dealer. Alternatively, the Penguin Bay could be used instead.

Turrets act similarily to the vehicle weapons from my vehicle suggestion in that, while they have pre-defined stats, it is possible to find modifiers while exploring which change their stats and can even give them entirely different behaviors. Unlike vehicle weapons, they DO use the gunner's Energy, which is used in larger amounts depending on damage per hit).
Turrets can be toggled so they only attack NPCs or creatures, and so they only attack flying or ground targets. Of course, this restriction only applies to NPC-manned turrets, and will be ignored by hostile NPCs who manage to hijack turrets; along with hostile NPCs in structures with pre-placed Turrets, such as Occupation bases.
They can be placed on Rail Platforms, allowing for moving turrets and dynamic weapon placements (For example, a wiring system could be used to switch the turrets depending on the invasion)
Turret types:

Anti-personnel weaponry:
Anti-personnel weaponry are turrets which perform badly against vehicles, but excel at annihilating large amounts of NPCs.

Machine Gun (Crew: 1): It is a small weapon on a bipod (Think of 4*1 blocks). Depending on how it's placed, the gunner will take different stances: If placed on a 3-block collumn, the shooter will stand. If it's a 2-block colummn, the gunner will crouch, and the gunner will lay prone if the gun is directly on the floor. The hitbox will change accordingly. The firing arc is severely restricted (Only about 20 degrees), but the small hitbox makes them easy to conceal in order to give more cover to the shooter.
Stat-wise, it is more powerful than most Assault rifles in terms of damage per hit (Equivalent to slower-firing Assault Rifles) but will have a high fire rate comparable to the faster-firing guns (Think of about 10 shots per second).

Heavy Machine Gun (Crew: 1): It is the Machine Gun's bigger brother. This gun uses a tripod instead, taking a size of 6*3 blocks and giving it a better firing arc. It deals damage similar to the more powerful Sniper rifles (The ones that have a fire rate of about 0.7 or so) while still being able to keep up a respectable fire rate (4-5 shots per second).
It is worth noting that, even through it is an anti-personnel gun, it can also preform pretty well against lighter vehicles, so it could be considered to be multi-purpose.​

Anti-Vehicle Weaponry:
Anti-vehicle weaponry excels at taking vehicles down. While using them on NPCs WILL deal a lot of damage, they tend to be inefficient as, even through they deal a high DPS and DPH, they will often waste damage on overkill.

Autocannon Turret (Crew: 2): This is basically the Heavy Machine Gun's doping, Steroid-abusing twin older brothers. This gun has a proper turret rather than a mere bipod or tripod (It is 7*5 blocks large), which means that it can point at a 90 degrees (In fact, it goes to 135 over the horizontal axis, but only 15 beneath). It deals even more damage than the Heavy Machine Gun (Think of the 0.5 Fire Rate shotguns) and ALSO fires faster (In fact, it is slightly faster than the Machine Gun on account of having two guns), but this means that it is VERY Energy-hungry. It excels against lighter vehicles, such as Hoverbikes and low-flying Aircraft.

Heavy Cannon (Crew: 3): This is a weapon that fulfills a dual anti-armor and anti-aircraft role. While large (10*6 blocks), it is also very powerful. It's shots act differently depending on their target: They will only explode on contact with ground targets, dealing a lot of damage; and they will explode when passing close to aerial targets, essentially acting like a flak gun. In the latter case, it deals less damage.

SAM (Crew: 4): This weapon is a specialized anti-air defence turret. It has a comparatively long range (100 blocks horizontally, 1000 blocks vertically), but it will only fire on air attackers, such as Large Flyers or hostile Aircraft. It fires a destructible homing missile that deals massive damage, but it can only fire 4 times per minute. It is best used as a support turret which should be coupled with Autocannon turrets and Heavy Cannons in order to obtain an effective anti-air defence because of it's low fire rate.​

Offensive Weaponry:
Offensive Turrets are long-ranged, and their attacks can be called down anywhere as long as the target is in range. Rather than using Energy, they are unique in that they act as containers which need ammo items. The ammo can be bought at the same shop that sells the guns themselves along with the Artillery Spotter, which is used to call attacks from this kind of turrets. All offensive weapons have ammo which can break blocks and ammo which can't break them so they can be used against invasions, among other kinds of ammo. Blocks destroyed by Artillery always drop, unlike most not-tool means of breaking blocks, which don't give drops.
Upon calling an attack, each Offensive Turret that has the selected spot in range will fire a certain amount of times (Usually only once). The maximum range is NOT a fixed stat, and can be increased by placing the weapons in a higher position than their target (The listed range assumes that the target is at level ground with the weapon).

Artillery:
Artillery is your bread and butter, with varying fire rates and ranges, they are useful for anything from pushing back an Invasion to destroying the base of an Occupation, but they are rather inaccurate.

Field Gun (Crew: 3): They are your basic weapons. They are inaccurate and their shots have a pronounced arcing, so they can obliterate groups but are bad at destroying walls and ceilings, and also have fast firing speeds (Comparatively speaking. It has 10 seconds of delay between each shot). They also are the smallest pieces of artillery (5*3 blocks), but have the shortest range (250 blocks)
Medium Artillery (Crew: 4): They are more powerful and have more range, but they don't fire as quickly, are more expensive and are bigger (Same size as the Heavy Cannon). They can shoot once every 20 seconds. They have an average amount of range (750 blocks)
Heavy Artillery (Crew: 6): They are huge (20*17) guns with shells comparable to Meteorites in terms of power, however, they can only fire once per minute. They have the most range (1000 blocks)​

Missiles:
They are more advanced than Artillery. They aremore accurate and just as powerful, but they can be intercepted. All of them have long ranges. They can only shoot again after their missiles hit their target or are destroyed.

Cruise Missile (Crew: 5): They are very powerful, but the missiles are comparatively slow, so anti-aircraft weapons and most aircraft can destroy them. They have a huge range (All the planet).
Ballistic Missile( Crew: 5): They are similar to balistic missiles. They are faster than Cruise Missiles, but are less powerful. They are fast enough that the only aircraft which can intercept them reliabily are Interceptors, which are somewhat faster. They have a long range, but Artillery is more powerful (Range: 1500 blocks)
Inter-Planetary Missile (Crew: 20): They are apparently simply less powerful Cruise Missiles, but they are the only Offensive Weapon that can attack targets without being in the same planet as the target. However, they still have to be in the same Solar System, and the missiles first need 30 seconds to spawn before actually appearing.
​

Possible invaders:
As I hinted before, Invasions can be done by different factions, rather than only using a single one. Each faction has different vehicles (Some may not have vehicles while others may be willing to throw Heavy Tanks), NPCs (For example, a Miniknog invasion would mostly have high-tech weapons, while a bandit raid would be only a bunch of guys with guns), and conditions for them to spawn.

Factions:
Bandits: They are your most basic attackers. They can attack once your colony has at least 4 tenants. They only perform Raids. They are, as said before, just a bunch of guys with guns, and not all of them have guns, so some are melee fighters. They have no vehicles.

Occasus: They're still pretty weak, but they're stronger than Bandits.
They are the weakest faction that could be considered to be a serious threat.
They spawn if at least 20% of your colony isn't human (This counts NPCs which are technically humans in costumes). and it has at least 10 tenants.
They mostly perform raids, but they can also perform Occupations, which mostly consist of huts with unique Occasus-themed furniture (Think of purple banners with the Eye symbol, purple tables, etc...). Their NPCs are mostly normal hostile NPCs, but some of them spawn wearing the Armored Cultist Set.
The latter act as stronger NPCs for the most part, but they are notable in that they can spawn using randomly-generated staves, and in that they also have unique attacks, such as eye beams.
They are also the weakest faction to use vehicles: They can use Hoverbikes and Light vehicles (Tanks and Mechs). They're notable in that they're the only faction that uses Monsters in their attacks: They can bring Tentacle Gnats and Tentacle Bombs.

​

Floran Hunting Parties: They begin to spawn if the colony has at least 10 Guards and 15 Tenants (They're counted separately, so they'll attack a colony with 15 tenants if 10 of them are Guards).
Their Occupation buildings tend to resemble Floran villages, and as such they can be used to obtain Floran Artifact clues.
Their NPCs are mostly melee-oriented, but some carry guns and wands. Their vehicles are mostly Hoverbikes and Light/Medium Mechs, along with some Jet Fighters (Which are slower and more fragile than the player version, but more agile and with more guns).

Penguins: They are notable in that, althrough their infantry (NPCs) is pretty lackluster, their real power comes from vehicles.
These feathered troublemakers only spawn if your colony has at least 20 Tenants.
Their Occupation missions involve small buildings that grow in size, starting out as small ramshackle buildings and ending in medium-sized buildings. They also contain unique Penguin-themed furniture, which can be used to attract Penguin tenants.
Their NPCs are the same penguins found in the Dreadwing Mission, along with new NPCs, such as Penguin Officers, which can buff their subordinates.
Their vehicles are mostly Hoverbikes, Fighter Jets, and both Light and Medium Tanks and Mechs. They also have UFOs as unique vehicles. The UFOs hover as if they were helicopters. They are fragile, but they're faster than Fighter Jets in Hover Mode (120% Current Hoverbike Speed), are very agile because they are hovering aircraft, and their weapons can fire in a 360-degree angle, so they have no blind spots.

Dark Glitch: They are the opposite of Penguins: Instead of having weak NPCs and strong vehicles, their
vehicles are lackluster but their NPCs are strong.
They spawn if your settlement has at least 20 tenants.
Their Occupation buildings look like watchtowers and outposts, and can become fortresses once they're complete.
Their NPCs are mostly melee fighters, but they often carry either 2-handed weapons, or 1-handed weapons with shields or thrown weapons, which can be either Throwing Daggers, Axes, Javelins, or Molotov Cocktails.
They also have Archers (Which are ranged support NPCs), Crossbowers (They act like snipers), Wizards (Which use Staves or dual Wands).
Their vehicles are Balistae, Aerial Screws (Both of them are the same found in the Baron's Keep mission, but the latter use a different sprite), Catapults (Which are like Medium Tanks), Siege Towers (Similar to Heavy Tanks. Rarely spawns), and Glitch Horses (Comparable to Hoverbikes in terms of speed, but can't hover).

Avian sacrificial Party: They are all-rounders which mostly rely on aircraft and infantry. They spawn if your colony has at least 30 Tenants.
Their Occupation buildings mostly resemble small houses which are also used as shrines. As they grow, they become more similar to large fortress-temples.
Except for Mechs, Bombers, and Interceptors, they can use pretty much all vehicles, including Heavy Tanks.
Their ground vehicles tend to be somewhat faster and more fragile than Player versions, but often carry more guns and spawn with force fields that give them a Shield-like ability, while their aircraft tend to be as fast as Player versions, but more agile and with different weapons:
Strafers instead shoot red energy bolts that explode on contact similarily to bombs. Additionally, they always carry an Energy Destroyer that fires downwards. Their rear gunners shoot energy balls with a flak-like effect, which means that attacking them from behind is difficult.
Fighters have comparatively weak guns which fire red laser bolts (Equivalent to Dual MGs), along with a random non-Dual MG weapon equivalent.

Miniknog Invasion:
They are easily the strongest invaders. They spawn if your colony has at least 40 Tenants and at least 15 of them are Apex.
Their Occupation buildings look like pre-built modular futuristic military outposts and prisons with cages and mobile labs (This implies that the invasion party is trying to abduct your tenants to experiment on them). If let to fully expand, their buildings will turn into a bunker similar to the Miniknog Stonghold.
Their NPCs almost exclusively use guns as their main weapons. Said guns tend to be Uncommon guns, so they usually use elemental weapons which also fire laser bolts, adding to their ultra-futuristic design.
Apart from your normal hostile NPCs, they can also bring in unique mobs, such as:

-Apex Mutants. They are found in Occupation structures.
-Apex Super-Soldiers: They are inbetween normal NPCs and vehicles. They are relatively rare. They look like unusually tall and wide Apex (Think 6*3-blocks). They are completely covered in armor that makes them initially inmune to melee weapons and most guns. The armor itself can take damage, so it must be destroyed (Think of it as if it were a permanent shield that can't regenerate). It is possible to bypass their armor and directly damage them (The armor still takes damage) by using elemental effects, Piercing Shot, Turrets, or Vehicle guns.
Apart from being able to take a lot of damage, they can also deal a lot of damage,since they can either dual-wield 2-handed weapons (They're 1-handed to them) or use either Machine Guns or Heavy Machine Guns as if they were hand-held weapons. (Both the MG and the HMG take an accuracy penalty when used by Super-Soldiers, with the latter also causing them to be slower). They are slightly slower than normal NPCs, and become faster upon losing their armor.​

Their vehicles are Hoverbikes, all Mechs, and all aircraft, but Interceptors only spawn near Occupation structures (This means that Interceptors won't be used to attack colonies). Apex aircraft are notable in that they are all faster than their obtainable counterparts, but have entirely different weapon arragements:
Fighters and Interceptors don't have guns at all, and mostly rely on firing homing missiles at the player, which can be destroyed. They are also less agile and accelerate more slowly than their playable counterparts, making them bad at close-ranged combat (In other words, force them into a dogfight in order to shoot them down, althrough the fighters themselves are still slower than playable Interceptors). Their strafers have more health, but use mostly unguided rockets instead of guns. Finally, bombers are almost as fast as their Strafers, but they only have the tail and nose turrets.
Aesthetically, their vehicles follow the ultra-futuristic Apex aesthetic, with their mechs looking more humanoid; and their aircraft being either tailless aircraft (Fighters and bombers) or lifting bodies (Strafers and Interceptors).​

 

Colonies coming under attack by simple bandits every now and then would be okay, I guess, but this is way overboard.

 

I went for the large-scale approach because I simply don't like how quite a few other games basically use invasions that way, which causes them to stop being little more than free resources pretty quickly.

 

The big thing is that it if they add invasions it might become a total chore. Like you have to babysit your colonies or lose them, which would be annoying.

 

You don't really have to babysit them, as Invasions won't actually activate unless the player arrives at the attacked colony (So, as long as you don't have to go there, they're safe anyways), Tenants are able to control manned turrets (Which means that they can fight Invasions off properly as long as their fortifications aren't merely a few walls), Invasions normally can't damage blocks (Except for Occupations, which do alter the terrain when their bases spawn; and they store anything they broke in additional containers, so it is possible to clean their bases up so that almost no traces are left, except for the vines and possibily ores they mined for the player), so they normally don't really leave any lasting damage but some dead NPCs while still allowing invasions to be a threat (Or an opportunity to get a lot of pixels rich and get a lot of possible loot from killed hostile NPCs).

 

That goes right back to how overboard manned turrets would be. Not to mention they'd clash with most types of settlements, and this is coming from a guy who makes high-tech science labs and the like.

 

They wouldn't clash any more than normal turrets, assuming you know how to place them properly. Alternatively, instead of making a large colony in a planet, it is also possible to avoid Invasions by having a lot of small colonies that aren't large enough to cause them.
EDIT: I specified I was referring to the in-game automated turrets.

 

Also the people who wouldn't want this feature would have it forced on them. They visit their settlement, they don't wanna deal with any bull but bandits show up and now they gotta waste their time killing them.

 

Well, that would happen with Invasions, no matter how they're done; and at least the game warns the player if there's an Invasion.

 

I think this would be a seriously amazing mod if someone could do it, but a terrible 'official' addition. I love building, I love colonies and exploring, but combat is nothing but an irritation for me. Colonies offer a way for players who are bored by combat to still enjoy the game.

 

Modified the Crew numbers.
Added ideas for possible invaders (Most of that section is bugged and all the lines have empty rows between them, and I don't know how to fix it).

 

The whole invasion thing is a good idea, except maybe instead of being colony associated, They could be part of the Baron's questline.
So, after you beat the ruin, and have repaired your broken broadsword, he will give you a quest to defend a glitch castle that is under attack from dark glitch. This mission works like the Baron's Keep, except more complex and difficult. You will actually have to hold off waves of more than just 4 types of enemy. Also, the leader of every missin of the questline, in the this case the king, serves as a turret shop, where you can buy infantry/turrets. Since the missions would be racial, each mission would have their own dubloon, so in this case, you would be getting glitch doubloons from enemies you defeat. These dubloon a can be used to purchase infantry, which can be placed anywhere on the place you are defending.


Attackers:
Wave 1: Dark Glitch Knight
Wave 2: Dark Glitch Knight, Dark Glitch Archer
Wave 3: Ballistae, Dark Glitch Knight, Dark Glitch Archer
Wave 4: Glitch Flying Screw, Glitch Shieldman, Dark Glitch Knight, Ballistae, Dark Glitch Archer
Wave 5 Dark Glitch Chariot, Glitch Shieldman, Ballista, Glitch Flying Screw, Dark Glitch Knight
Boss Wave: Dark Glitch Knight, Ballista, Glitch Flying Screw, Dark Glitch Chariot.
Dark Glitch Knight: Basic Infantry. Dark Glitch Archer: Archer Unit. Ballista, Glitch Flying Screw(the annoying flying things from barons keep)

Turret: Glitch Archer, Glitch Wizard, Glitch Knight
Boss: Doom Lord:
Dark Glitch Gladiator Champion, Fight similar to Asra Nox. Abilities:
Flip Slash: Just like the sword ability
Pogo Sword: Just like the sword ability
Axe Throw: throw a barrage of throwing axes at the player.
Spin Slash Dash: Like the spin slash sword ability, but it makes him rush across the bottom of the arena.

This was just for the Glitch part of the questline. I could go on and on about missions like this for each race, but I gotta go.

 

Ok, I'll do it again, but for the Florans:
So, after you beat the glitch invasion, the other ark npcs have invasion quests, starting with Nuru.
So, Nuru tells you she's going to a party to celebrate her victory in the caverns. However, Nuru is suspicious about this, but she decides to go anyway. Her spear is broken, so she took it to someone to fix it for the day. So she brings you there, and as Nuru suspected, the Floran there want vengeance on her, so they start attacking her. The boss at the end is Greenfinger Maku Tabibi.

Attackers:
Wave 1: Floran Hunter
Wave 2:Floran Sniper, Floran Hunter
Wave 3:Floran Cannibal, Floran Sniper, Floran Hunter
Wave 4:Ixoling Tamer, Floran Shaman, Floran Cannibal, Floran Hunter, Floran Sniper
Wave 5:Young Ixodoom Rider, Ixoling Tamer, Floran Shaman, Floran Sniper, Floran Cannibal
Boss Wave: Young Ixodoom Rider, Ixoling Tamer, Floran Shaman, Floran Cannibal
Floran Hunter:Basic Infantry. Floran Sniper:From the hunting caverns. Floran Cannibal: Like Hunter except uses dagger instead of spear, can also use a shield. Ixoling Tamer: Attacks by throwing creature capture pods that have Ixolings inside. Floran Shaman: Wields a wand, casts a homing poison ball that explodes on hit or when attacked. Young Ixodoom Rider: Floran Huntee riding a young adult Ixodoom. The Ixodoom is pretty tough, It can lunge at the player like an Ixoling, and also spits acid.

Turret: Loyal Sniper

Boss:Maku Tababi
First Stage(works like Kluex avatar):
Attacks:
Snapdragon: Grows a giant plant that can be killed. It attacks by shooting a barrage of acid. It will continue to do so until killed, and Greenfinger can't be damaged until it's killed
Flying Flytraps: shoots flying flytaps that behave similar to big apes fist barrage attack.
Second Stage: Greenfinger becomes enraged, and his attacks become faster. He uses more attacks, too
Attacks:
Attacks from the first stage, except they are much faster
New Attacks:
Plant Orbs: Summons green orbs aroune him that set off in order and fire projectiles, similar to Kluex Staff. He teleports to the middle of the arena to do so
Poison Pool: Kinda like Kluex Avatars lava attack, Greenfinfer spawns vines that you can grab onto. Then, Greenfinger drops poison to the floor , which will keep rising until it fills the area halfway. Then the poison is drained and the vines are destroyed.
After, Nuru confesses that she was very Gullible, and that she is sorry for taking you there.

 

The Baron's Keep misison already uses the mass invasion format, and it would generally feel repetitive. If anything, I would expect further story NPC quests to be the opposite and involve attacking fortresses in a way that is similar to Invasions if the player were attacking instead of defending.

 

I fully support. It must be a cruel and dangerous universe. Residents have to fight for their home.

 

Option for weaklings: Invasion occurs only if the colony has a special flag. The presence of the flag gives a bonuses for the colony. For example, a large income, or special residents or parcels with things for the victory.

 

The invasions themselves would already drop a lot of pixels, but adding a way to prevent them from happening in the first place would be a good idea, since most detractors seem to think it would be annoying for people who just want to build.
Of course, that means that it feels like a ripoff to make players have to pay to avoid invasions, so it would make sense for the risk to be offset by additional rewards.

 

This is a fee for the risk.

 

In fact, there is another problem: the abuse of players in the construction.

 

What if instead of occupation building there are hostile space fleet on planet''s orbit? When (hope never dies) space battles will be added, this would be awesome to make them as main goal to stop occupation.