STANTON

[icycalm]

STANTON INTRODUCTION

So here are some real strategy thoughts. What does strategy entail in the current state of Star Citizen?

Strategy is about domination. And since currently there's only the Stanton system in the game, domination means Stanton domination.

How do you dominate a system? More specifically, how do you dominate Stanton?



Well, there's nothing you can do about the cities right now, since they're covered by armistice zones. And even when these zones are eventually removed, they'll be replaced by such heavy security forces that it'll be unrealistic to expect to be able to face them. (That's part of the game's awesome design, because you're not supposed to be able to dominate a city of 2 trillion with 50 players anyway. But I'll talk more about this in future chapters of my VGART essay/dissertation on the game.)

So domination basically boils down to PVP outside armistice zones. But since systems are so large, there's no fun in ruling over empty space or barren planetary/lunar surfaces. So in the end, you're left with what I call "hotspots". Dominate the hotspots, and you can be said to be dominating the system.

What are Stanton's hotspots? I'll list them in order of basically "coolness", which comprises how cool the location is, how complex the fight can get over it, its earning potential, etc.


STANTON HOTSPOTS

1. Ghost Hollow: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=8913
Super-cool wooded area with giant derelict Reclaimer and lots of shantytown structures around it. Very complex to hold it, need ground, air, and even space coverage. Quite lucrative with cheap buy-in (only 1k).



2. In the Wake of Disaster: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=9437
Not super-cool area, just a point in the middle of space. Medium complexity to hold it: basically need some sort of gunships and fighters/bombers. Quite lucrative to hold it, but steep 150k buy-in, and quite some work required to earn all the income it can give.



3. Security Post Kareah
Very cool space station, both indoors and outdoors. Quite complex to hold it, if you want to also dominate the space around it. You could also just hunker down inside. Not very lucrative to hold it as there's no automatic payout outside of the loot from security guards. You could sell their rare armors later, if you want to get into the trader profession, but it's way more work than the other hotspots. You could also clear peoples' CrimeStats for payment, as long as you hold the station. Again, too much of a hassle, but could be potentially lucrative if you hold the station long enough and get lucky with enough demand for your service.



These are the main hotspots, as far as I know. If you hold these three, you rule Stanton, in my book.

There are a couple of secondary hotspots if you want to throw more in your rotation for variety.

4. Boarding Action in Progress
The 890J is always fun to be on, the armors you get there are necessary for the way we'll do piracy, plus the mission payout is good, and I hear that sometimes pirates hang out around the mission to harass players. Moreover, if you bring along a Vulture or Reclaimer, you can salvage the 890J for a serious payout on top of everything else. So keeping this in your rotation sounds like a good idea.



5. The Orphanage
There's a drug lab at The Orphanage on Lyria that's a minor PVP hotspot. ysignal once jacked a bunch of cargo there. I'm asking him to give us more details to post here, but it sounds like a place with a regular payout.



6. Grim HEX
Grim HEX, as the headquarters of the Nine Tails, is a landing zone where you can have full PVP around it, in an asteroid field no less. But since there is no standard payout for "holding" it, players don't flock there to do battle. So you could be hanging out there for a while before you get to fight anyone, and during this time you won't even be making money. For these reasons, I recommend Grim HEX as a target only rarely, when you feel like you want a change from the main hotspots.



So this is what I have in terms of hotspots. Let me know if I missed any, and we can add more as they are added to the game (the first two were only added this year, which blows my mind really, and they're the best ones; can't wait to see more added, though they'd have to increase the server player cap in parallel so as to not spread out players too thinly).


STANTON SERVICE BEACONS

Also, another aspect of dominating a system is by dominating its service beacons. Currently there are 3 types of player-generated beacons in the game:

• Personal Transport: Destination, reputation requirements, payment offered.
• Combat Assistance: Reputation requirements, payment offered.
• Medical Assistance: Reputation requirements, payment offered.

These beacons flash on your screen as you do other stuff, and if you accept them they can throw delightful curveballs in your sessions. ysignal showed me how fun they can be; we were running some other mission, and suddenly a medical beacon comes up, and he says let's take it. It ended up being in Grim HEX, like inside the actual station, and this spooked us, as it sounded like a trap. But we went, and it wasn't a trap, it was just a guy who had passed out naked inside Grim HEX due to lack of food or water or whatever, and we made a cool reward out of it, and the trip there was suspenseful too because we didn't know what to expect (in fact only ysignal made it there, I don't remember why I didn't, which made it even more suspenseful for him). Keep in mind that you're competing with the whole server to grab a beacon first, and once you grab it you have to hurry there because at any time it might get cancelled if the player thinks you're moving too slowly or he changes his mind (or perhaps a friend gets on and helps him). It's kind of like a Crazy Taxi minigame inside the main game, and it can add excitement to any session. Like you could be in Ghost Hollow, holding it down with your team, and suddenly you see a medical beacon, and you're like "Can you guys hold it down here while I speed across the system to help this dude out and grab us a cool reward?" Even the guys who aren't coming with you are getting an extra challenge, since they must now hold the fort without you, and it just ups the stakes, and the potential rewards, for everyone involved. So get used to grabbing beacons on top of everything else you're doing, unless you're in a real jam! It's definitely part of system domination in my book.


STANTON DYNAMIC EVENTS

And what about the Dynamic Events? There are 4 of them in Stanton currently, but I don't count them as hotspots because they are extremely infrequent. You only get them a handful of times a year, so they aren't useful for normal daily or even weekend sessions. To be sure, they do count towards what I term "system domination", and I want us to do as well as possible on all of them. We're already doing pretty good in half of them, and I am sure we'll be doing well in the other half too before the end of the year, if they come up again. I suppose I could list them here for the sake of completeness, along with our progress. In order in which they were added to the game:

1. XenoThreat: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=8895
Tried it only once, barely participated because we spent too long preparing for it, plus server issues. Also, we had no gunships or bombers back then, which are very useful for this mission, but now we do. So I expect us to do very well next time.



2. Nine Tails Lockdown: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=7807
We've successfully completed it several times, including the secondary objective of delivering medical supplies. Still need to utterly dominate it by bringing in bombers to take down the bigger ships, and large cargo haulers to max out medical supply pay out.



3. Jumptown 2.0/2.1: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=7828
We've dominated JT a couple times and made a bunch of money off it, but mostly because we got lucky during quiet server times. So we need to get more efficient at making money (by reducing preparation time, above all), and we need to have some luck with busier servers and fight more orgs over it.



4. Siege of Orison
We utterly suck at this, partly because we haven't been playing tactically, but above all because the event kills the servers and we end up dying due to bugs all over the place. We can't control the bugs, but we can control our tactics, and now with the Cult Spec we are ready for tactics in a way we never were before (before we didn't even know how to use the medguns, and just put them in our backpacks lol). So I see us making huge progress in our next run.




STANTON CONCLUSION

Playing Star Citizen with no goal can get stale, since the whole game is made as the ultimate sandbox. Your amount of fun will therefore depend on the amount and coolness of goals you set for yourself; if you do boring things, you'll have a boring time. So it's smart to set the biggest goal you can think of, and work towards getting closer to it. And no greater goal exists than system domination, which will be getting harder as more stuff is added to systems, and more players are added to servers. If we start working towards domination now, we'll get a lot of practice in, and it also gives us reason to scale up the org to cover all the hotspots, and face the increasing numbers of players as servers are scaled up.

With our current forces, we can't possibly hold all the hotspots simultaneously UNLESS we happen to have PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE online at the same time on some weekend or other. I think the absolute minimum to hold the main 3 hotspots is about 10 or so players, with 3-4 players per hotspot. That's if you get lucky and face no opposition or very limited opposition. To CONVINCINGLY hold all 3 hotspots simultaneously, I would say you'd need about 12-15 players. If you add the 3 secondary hotspots plus the service beacons, I think you could occupy 20-25 players or so, easily.

So that's a cool goal to aim for! And note that if you have that many players, you can also dominate Dynamic Events, so you're basically dominating the system! Now 20 players simultaneously means 40-50 players overall, so there's our medium-term goal.

In practical terms, let's give an example of how this "domination" gameplan can be applied, on a typical say weekend session. So you're in the voice channel alone, minding your own business, running a solo mission or whatever. And then suddenly another player jumps in the channel. Maybe you banter for a bit, maybe you ask for his help, or you go meet him to help him with something. Maybe you even try a slightly tougher mission like a higher-level bounty, now that there's two of you. And then a third player enters the channel. This is the point where you could get more serious, if you feel like it. You could do a quick fly-by Ghost Hollow just in case it's empty or can be easily taken over. Or you could try the Reclaimer mission, if you have a Reclaimer with you, or a couple of Vultures. Or you could drop by Kareah. If the session ends up lengthy, you could keep jumping between those goals, all the while interspersing them with bounties and bunkers, service beacons and industrial ops, for variety. But if the group keeps snowballing, and a little later you have 4 or 5 or 6 players, that's when you should be trying to take things to the next level by holding down TWO or more hotspots SIMULTANEOUSLY. So let's say Ghost Hollow gave you a bit of a fight, but now you have secured it, with say 5 people. Try leaving 1 or 2 people there to hold the fort (and keep making money), and take everyone else to another hotspot. See how long you can hold 2 hotspots, all the while shuffling players and vehicles/gear back and forth between them, as needed. Figuring out exactly which players and which vehicles and gear, and which tactical approaches to take for each hotspot or mission type is a tremendous thinking exercise that will add a lot to everyone's enjoyment of the game, and give you the kind of thrill most Star Citizen players will never feel, let alone players of other games. So embrace the challenge, and make it part of your bigger sessions! Officers especially should be aiming for this when I am not online. It's your responsibility to 1) Make sure the org is trying out cool objectives and is always being challenged, and 2) Everyone has fun.

So with all the above details, you now have a cool general plan for what to do when you have several players online. If you're alone, you can chase down all sorts of smaller missions, from package deliveries up to the smaller bounties, but when you have a team, you need more challenging goals, and though bunkers and bounties are always fun, if you're only doing those, people will get bored, and will be less likely to jump in again, when they see others playing. So by all means, keep running bunkers and bounties with people, but mix them up with coordinated assaults on hotspots, as well as service beacons, and why not also large industrial operations now and then? In short, try to run a good mix of the following, during multiplayer sessions:

1. Main hotspots (Ghost Hollow, In the Wake of Disaster, Security Post Kareah)
2. Secondary hotspots (Boarding Action in Progress, The Orphanage, Grim HEX)
3. Service beacons (Personal Transport, Combat Assistance, Medical Assistance)
4. Bunkers & bounties
5. Large industrial operations

That's not all you can do in the game. You can also race for example, but I don't see how racing can be tied to system domination, or how it can be especially enjoyable in a large group. Maybe we could set up a high-score board per race location, and compete between us? Or you can go low flying, river flying, explore, etc. But I wouldn't recommend any of these activities when you have say 4-5 people on. Except maybe buggy racing as a relaxation.

And what about piracy?

We haven't gotten into piracy yet, so I won't speak to that for the moment. It's definitely part of system domination though, but a different kind of domination. I wouldn't mix it with our legitimate activities above. My advice is to forget about piracy until I am ready to launch the whole org into piracy for a couple months, moving our HQ to Grim HEX, stocking up on pirate armor and pirate paints, and playing 24/7 with CrimeStat 5. But that'll be another thread.

In the long run, once Pyro comes in, my goal will be to set one Commander for each system, and there will be a Pyro Domination thread with completely different hotspots to dominate and objectives to achieve. This seems like a great way for me to allow multiple players to try out the strategic dimension of the game, which will be getting more and more complex as more features are added in, all the way up to RTS-like base-building. But there will be requirements for the Commander rank such as strong rigs, multiboxing, cash-bought gear and skins, and even cashmoney ships. And of course, some semblance of strategic skills and community-building efforts.

Traveling between systems will be an issue, time-wise, so I expect the more dedicated among us will run multiple accounts so we can play in multiple systems, depending on where cool stuff is happening, or where our org is seeing action at any given time. The $45 per account is a pittance compared to what we'll be getting in return, and since Star Citizen will have replaced most games by that point. Plus, it will allow people to play multiple ranks, from strategist and tactician, all the way down to basic grunt kicking down doors and stealthing his way into compounds. Of course with a clone account you won't have access to your fleet, but that will make the game more complex, and vehicle acquisition more meaningful. I expect the Commander and officers in every system to have access to the biggest fleet, and the mostly clones that follow them to be depended on them for vehicles, which will also encourage taking earnings in the game more seriously and developing efficient vehicle-acquisition rankings/build orders.


P.S. Once there are multiple systems, I'll make a subforum titled "Cult Strategy", and there will be "domination" threads for every system. Cult Spec discussion will also move there, with separate specs per system, since the amount of equipment in the game will explode, and different systems will have different gear requirements for success. Plus the specs will be set by the regional Commanders. But for the time being, I am just putting this Stanton Domination thread in the main forum with all the other stickies.

[icycalm]

The ultimate goal, if it wasn't already clear from the above, is to have the entire system on lockdown, so that nothing important/interesting happens without your say-so.

That's by no means an impossible goal, and I am sure the larger orgs can already do this whenever they want. That's the point where you start thinking about contacting them to get into some arranged org v org battles.

Of course, as the servers get bigger, it'll get harder to lock down systems, so you'll need to build a bigger and better org.

[ysignal]

There's a drug lab at The Orphanage on Lyria that's a minor PVP hotspot. I once jacked a bunch of cargo there.

[icycalm]

First off, I added images to all hotspots, Dynamic Events, etc., plus the most updated map of the Stanton system available. The post looks amazing now, check it out.

Second, for the 890J mission (which I retitled with its official name, Boarding Action in Progress) I used an image that reminded me that some people bring along a Vulture or Reclaimer to salvage the 890J, which massively increases the payout, so I added this in my overview. P.S. I used to advise against redoing the same missions over and over as a cheap and anti-immersive tactic. I remember you advocating specifically for the 890J mission, and me rebuffing you with this reasoning. But there are so few hotspots in Stanton right now, that every additional one greatly improves variety in the rotation, and this mission is quite multifaceted now that salvage has been added to the game, on top of its EVA and FPS and potentially space dogfight action. So this is certainly the best of the secondary hotspots for us now, and everyone can forget my earlier misgivings over replaying it frequently.

Third, I added the Orphanage but I'd like some more details from you. How complex do you think would be holding this place? And can this site generate a payout somehow? Are you supposed to pick up drugs from there, or deliver them there? If you pick them up from there, where do you deliver them, and if you deliver them there, where do you pick them up?

Fourth, I reranked the secondary hotspots by earning potential, putting the 890J mission at the top due the salvage opportunity, followed by the Orphanage, and finally Grim HEX.

Fifth, I've heard fights break out over salvage yards, because they don't have armistice zones. Maybe that's something we should look into. I haven't added anything to the list yet, but there are apparently 4 such places to check out: https://starcitizen.tools/Category:Salvage_yards



Image is from Devlin Scrap & Salvage. They all look unique. I'll make a thread and post all locations and their images once we've checked them out and figured out what they're about.

All hotspots will get threads eventually. Currently we have threads for most of them, but are still missing a couple. Tactics for each hotspot will be discussed in their individual threads, the present thread is for our overall Stanton strategy.

[icycalm]

Another potential dimension of Stanton domination are the various competitions held by in-game organizations, the most famous of which are ATMO's: the Daymar Rally, Hurston Hurt Locker, Fight or Flight, and Stanton7. There are also races by Extreme G Racing (XGR), and other misc. organizations and events. Here's the top 2 sites to look into that stuff:

https://www.atmo.gg
https://racexgr.com

We almost took part last year in Hurston Hurt Locker but ended up staying out because of the amount of paperwork needed to file, which turned us off. We had several teams planned, even. But this year I am thinking to really do it, especially if there's no major content drop around the holidays. It seems to take place late-October/early-November, so we have plenty of time until then. And if we do manage to get over the papework hump this time, it should set us up nicely for taking part in the rest of the events next year. They are nicely spaced out so that you have approximately one event per quarter, which isn't too much of a hassle or commitment. And besides, we only really need to field one team per event, it doesn't have to be all our players, though of course the more teams we field the better.

Check out the HHL trailer, if you haven't seen it already:

Hurston Hurt Locker 2951 - StarCitizen Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwB9ruCNdLs

As you can see, it's a very cool location and very cool action. All the events are like that, and if you add these events to all the Stanton hotspots and activities outlined above, Stanton starts to become SERIOUSLY RICH in content. Moreoever, it'll be easy to track our level of domination in these events, since all we'll have to do is try to climb higher in the rankings.

For now, I am not adding these to the OP, but if we manage to take part in Hurston Hurt Locker this year, I'll add all the major events, which will nicely pad out our Stanton map, and we'll take our domination to the next level.


P.S. The Cult has a storied past in high-IQ competitive gaming. Our finest hour is the following, if you've never seen it. It's interesting and hilarious to watch thanks to my revolutionary strategy employed (THE MEGABASE), and the two excellent presenters. Highly recommended.

Clan Wars S1:E7 | The Cult Vs Team Burning [Home] | Planetary Annihilation Gameplay 276
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmdobXqmUQc

[shubn]

Salvage yards are the main buyers of drugs and stolen goods, which is why they are often hot zones. They're good places to steal someone's cargo right before they sell it.

Drug sellers are outlaw outposts and drug labs. I believe the most lucrative drug is SLAM, and that it's only sold at The Orphanage (Lyria, ArcCorp), PRIVATE PROPERTY (Cellin, Crusader), and Jumptown (Yela, Crusader). There are a bunch more places selling other drugs as well. Let me know if I should ask my information broker for a more comprehensive list.

[icycalm]

Yes, I would appreciate a "Profession: Drug Dealing" thread so I can then integrate that information in the OP here.

[ysignal]

Regarding The Orphanage specifically, you can buy SLAM there for 12,000 aUEC (per SCU) and sell it at Samson & Son's on Wala for 16,875 aUEC. It's possible to find about 50 SCU there, but I've only seen up to around 15. Still, if you caught someone having just bought a bunch of SLAM, it's quite possible you could make more than 200k if you manage to rob them. There's only one way in and out of the lab, and it's an airlock, so it's easy to get the drop on them as they exit. I doubt anyone would normally bring more than a few people to this site, and if you're well set up you have a good chance to solo it, though you might need cover while moving the cargo into your own ship. Similarly, if you're buying your own SLAM, you need someone to watch the ship while you do the buying to protect against thieves.

In terms of holding the site outright, it's difficult to secure with infantry alone as the outside area offers little cover and you have to leave the lab to get the drugs out, so you need to bring a combat ship or AA platform at a minimum. However, the SLAM only replenishes at 1 SCU per minute, and you can't get it reliably because the SLAM is shared across all servers, so it might be better to hold these labs more loosely by patrolling between the different labs or setting up traps and robbing other players.

[icycalm]

Found a cool and fairly reliable play loop to use at Grim HEX: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... /salvaging

So I just bought a vulture, love the scrap gameplay loop, but I find it really hard to reliably find scrap anywhere but around grim hex. Which half the time seems to be surrounded by people who just kill on sight. Do you guys know of any better spots that aren't extremely far from a place looking to buy scrap for decent money?

So we take a couple salvaging ships and a couple fighters, we go to Grim HEX, kill everyone hanging around there, and we salvage both existing wrecks and the ones we created, all the while the fighters protect the salvagers. The more enemies show up, the more fun our fighters have, and the more the salvagers get to salvage. We could even throw a cargo hauler in there to keep the operation going indefinitely. So basically a cheaper version of the Wake of Disaster mission, since there's no buy-in, plus it takes place near/around an asteroid field, for variety.

Just make sure the pilots are good, because the guys at Grim HEX aren't jokers.

[icycalm]

A couple of fully-crewed Scorpiuses or one Hammerhead should do the job. And you can probably load the cargo hauler with missiles so that your ships can periodically rearm.

Another possibility is a Carrack loaded with Furys, and tons of missiles to rearm them. If you bring a dozen Furys, and the pilots set their spawn to the Carrack, you could bring some serious firepower to bear. Or perhaps even better set your respawn to Grim HEX and move your entire fleet there. The Furys could take off right from Grim HEX since they wouldn't need to QT.

[icycalm]

I just realized how you can incorporate the racetracks into Stanton Domination.

Kill all the racers lmao. What are they gonna do? Their ships don't have weapons lol. Most they can do is run away. "Go race in Arena Commander fags! Go play your little vidyageams, Stanton is REAL LIFE for REAL MEN with BIG GUNS!"

And while you have a track locked down, your friends can race without having to worry about crashing into someone. And if outsiders want a permit, they can pay for it.

Obviously none of this is a priority, there are cooler places to PVP, but if you reach a high number of in-game members, like say 40 or something, you should have enough to lock down absolutely everything, including racetracks.