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Defending your base
If you wish to live in a single location for an extended period of time, automated defenses are incredibly important. Without them, your base would easily be raided and destroyed. There are several ways to protect your base from unwanted visitors, even when you are not online.
Offense
The offensive capabilities of your base are essential to its survival; even an incredibly well protected base will eventually fall to an attacker if it can not fight back. Remember though that offense and defense go hand-in-hand and complement each other; you should not ignore either as they are both important.
Turrets
Turrets are essential to the offensive capabilities of your base; they are by far the most effective to defend your base from unwanted visitors. They come in different shapes and sizes; from small turrets designed to kill players, to large railguns designed for taking down ships from far away. Once you understand a basic turret's design though, you should be able to make them all.
Constructing a basic turret
To begin, you'll want to understand the principle of the basic turret design. The graphic attached below outlines all the parts of a minimal gyro design, without any weapons attached;
A basic turret only requires two degrees of freedom; it must be able to rotate around the X and Z axes. You can choose to include an additional hinge to give it a third degree of freedom, though this won't really do much as it'll just allow the turret to roll. To allow the turret to rotate around axes, you should use hinges or motors. They're both comparable and don't really have many benefits over one another, so its advised to just use hinges as they can be placed on any part making them less expensive.
When building a turret, you should also make sure that everything that enough space to rotate about by ensuring your support is long enough, that the gyro is centered (you can achieve this by placing a block on the Z axis hinge and resizing it until the gyro is centered when attached to it). It's also good practice to configure your gyro's MaxTorque; this prevents it from randomly breaking and flinging the turret.
You can attach anything you'd really like to this base; lights, guns, lasers, or even a microcontroller which will control the gyro, allowing you to make more accurate turrets.
Protecting your base with turrets
It is not enough to simply make a turret; you must also know how to place them, and what types you should make.
For defending against players, utilize small gun, cannon or EnergyGun turrets. They should make quick work of any unsuspecting players. You should have these on the ground surrounding your base, as well near your resources and other locations which need to be secured from enemy players. As these turrets should be fairly precise, its a good idea to use microcontrollers with movement prediction code to aim the gyro. You could probably get away with just setting its seek property to allExcept [yourUsername], though. Setting Min and Max also isn't a bad idea (to use these simply put Min [n] Max [m] into the seek property) as to have the turrets only fire when they are at an effective range.
As for defending against ships or other vehicles, use a combination of guns, AutomaticLasers, PlasmaCannons and railguns. These turrets don't have to be as precise as anti-players ones, but should instead focus on sheer damage. Utilize guns to shred through armor, AutomaticLasers and PlasmaCannons to destroy sensitive components like PowerCells as well as to kill players, and railguns to pick off ships at long distances. Build multiple of these turrets all around your base as in strategic positions like mountains. The more; the better. An option is to also have them mounted on floating platforms scattered around your planet. These should target enemy players as well, as gyros using Radar (as of 23/Jun./2023) can't distinguish between parts placed by you and other players.
Missiles
Missiles are an incredibly effective way of defending your base from enemy ships. They are ineffective against players, but absolutely obliterate ships. If you already have turrets set up, you should construct a missile defense system next. As with turrets, we'll cover a basic missile design;
As seen above, a basic missile has 3 essential parts;
- The payload, this is what will damage the target. In this case, it is an explosive.
- The Gyro, this is what will steer the missile and detonate it once it is close enough.
- Propulsion; this is what will move the missile to the target. In the example graphic it is an IonRocket.
Although the design above would technically work, it would have to be activated manually and getting the gyro to detonate the explosive by using Min and Max at the right time could be difficult. By using polysilicon and TouchSensors, however, you can create a simple missile design which requires no microcontrollers.
Simply attach a TouchSensor to the payload (and make sure to separate the payload from the gyro using a physical barrier like a piece of iron), configure the gyro and set TriggerOnSeek to true, then put a switch between your propulsion and the gyro. Place a piece of activating polysilicon on the gyro in such a way so it touches both the gyro and the switch. On the other side, you'd have your antenna powering the gyro and propulsion.
More advanced designs are, of course, possible; this however requires microcontrollers.
Defense
A good base not only has strong offenses, but good defenses too. Without defenses, your offensive measures would prove insufficient as an attacker could easily disable them and destroy your base. Defenses are a lot easier to set up than offenses; most of the defensive measures here only really come down to powering a part and configuring it to your liking.
Hide your base
Best defense is to hide your base so enemy wont find it. Its recommended to hide in mountains and make your base look like part of mountain.
Put vehicle seats into bins so they wont find you on radar.
EnergyShields
EnergyShields are a great way of defending your base against energy-based weapons and warheads. An active EnergyShield will block incoming projectiles and warhead explosions, preventing damage to your parts. A good EnergyShield setup will make your base nearly alien-proof as they only use energy-based weapons. However, explosives, blades, cannons or guns which can be used by players will not be blocked. These pair nicely with other defensive and offensive strategies.
Physical defenses
Physical defenses encompass everything from walls to building your base deep in the mountains, making it harder to hit. These are effective against all types of weapons, but must be repaired. They're a good addition to your base, but will require constant maintenance.
StasisFields
StasisFields are a good way of protecting your base from most if not all would-be griefers on foot. Remember that players can still spawn even if their ship is destroyed (or teleport in) and wreak havoc on your base.
Securing your resources
It is important to not give griefers access to your resources. If resources from your bins are able to be used, a griefer could easily craft and detonate explosives. This can be done by setting CanBeCraftedFrom on all your bins to false if you are not online. This can be done automatically by hooking them up to a microcontroller which checks if you are online (you could use a LifeSensor or gyros for this).
Another option is setting up physical defenses around your bins. This will prevent griefers from getting close enough to be able to craft from them.
Hiding your base
Your base cannot be attacked if it is not found beforehand. Hiding it away in mountains or in tree canopies should provide protection from basic visual detection. More thorough protection can be achieved by hiding far away from the planet's center or in deep water, and by using SoundMufflers for machinery. Additionally, putting away VehicleSeats is advisable as it will guard against Radar detection.
Great care should also be taken when setting up offensive structures while employing hiding. If not set up properly they may alert otherwise unsuspecting attackers.
Inhospitable conditions and inconspicuous coordinates
Having your base on an inhospitable planet is a good way to ward off any griefers. The hotter; the better. Cold temperatures are fine too, but hot planets will generally work better as they'll set any unprepared griefer's ship on fire. Along with temperature, look for an unbreathable atmosphere, this will make sure anyone without an AirSupply quickly suffocates; this, along with temperature, will make griefing on foot downright impossible. Another option is to just have a space base located at some random coordinates.
You also generally shouldn't build a base in (or around) neutron or black hole systems, or ones with a beacon. Griefers tend to fully explore those types of systems. If possible, avoid ones with an EarthLike planet as well, as they may become a starter system at some point. Remember; the best defense is not being found in the first place.