Can I raid ports? What do I get from them?

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Wonks
Quiet One
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2002 9:06 pm

Can I raid ports? What do I get from them?

Post by Wonks »

In a word, no. At least not till you have enough cash to afford a ship that can take the punishment a port can dish out. A lot of newbies raid ports (for some reason I could never figure out), die, and give up.

Suffice it to say that you want AT LEAST 1500 shields & armor before you attack even a level 1 port. And a level 9 port is about 9 times as deadly.

Every Port has 15 turrets that do 250 shield or armor damage. The accuracy of these turrets depends on the level of the port. In addition, each port has 1000 shields and armor per level, and 100 combat drones per level. So even a level 1 port can hit you with 5 turrets and 100 drones (each doing 1 damage currently) on a bad round. Thats 1100 damage depending on the layout of your defenses (a single turret will not hit both shields and armor in a single hit, but drones will). And if you are unlucky on just 1 shot it could hit you for a few more turrets. So even very large ships can die to a level 1 port. It just isn't as likely.

Now lets talk about the benefits of hitting a port. When you successfully raid a port, you get 1/4 of all cash traded there, and you can loot goods for free till it resets. You can also claim the port for your race so that races you are at war with can no longer trade there. But remember, a level 1 port isn't normally going to have much (if any) money because most people don't trade there. And claiming it isn't going to do much of anything either if no one wants to trade there.

Doing large amounts of damage to a port can cause it to lose a level (and also one of the high level goods it deals in), but unless you have a lot of ships you aren't going to do enough damage to downgrade it most of the time. The main reason that people attack ports is for alignment purposes. When you attack a port you are at war with you gain 4 alignment, and if you are at peace you lose 4 alignment. Also your personal relations will go down by 5 (for each round of combat) with the race's port that you attack. But remember, with any ship there is a chance, although it may be small, to die to even a level 1 port. So port raiding alone is always risky buisiness.
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