Basics[]
Building combat is combat against the defence modules a player installs on his/her building, and possibly the owner if s/he is docked and guarding.
Repercussions[]
It is easily possible to die against sophisticated defence systems, such as those found on a military outpost.
Each round of combat is done individually, each taking 50 APs, much more than in PvP, or NPC Combat. However, there are no rep losses for attacking defences.
On the defender's side, building modules are expensive to replace, and any player docked and guarding a building will be like another module, and thus can be killed the same way a module can be destroyed.
If the attacker fails to destroy a module, it can be relatively-cheaply repaired.
Combat[]
When a player attempts to raid or destroy a building that has defences installed, s/he will instead be brought to the building screen with a report of combat against the buildings modules.
Each module fires its guns and possibly a missile at the player each round. Each module has a set spot in the order the modules fire. The player will, however, only fire at one random module; s/he will fire right before the module in question.
If a player defender is present at the building, s/he will fire his/her guns like a module. If the player is randomly chosen to fire at the player enough, that player will die, and it will appear in the news like a normal PvP encounter.
Tractor beams[]
Players can install tractor beams on their building. These tractor beams have a chance, depending on the player's ship's mass (see the Data->Formulas section of the manual; the larger the mass, the lesser the chance to tractor), of forcing the player to go another round with the building, spending APs normally. Unlike being stopped from retreating by an NPC, the rounds that a player is tractored happen immediately.
A tractor beam has a chance of "holding" the player for multiple rounds; if a tractor beam's chance of holding a player for one round is 50%, the chance of holding the player for two is 25%, third is 12.5%, and so on in a convergent geometric sequence. As heavily-defended buildings require many repairs to take down, holding a player for enough rounds can kill the player.
After the defences are down[]
There are two actions that can be performed on a building with no defences, and they are discussed here:
Raiding[]
A player can raid a building's commodities and stock, thus stealing them from the building and putting them in the player's hold. The rep loss for such a thing is serious, and doing it on your own faction under no Private Conflict will cause rank loss.
The raider can choose to raid only from commodities, stock, or both.
Raiding costs 50 APs each time. It takes many raids to steal everything from a building. The more things in a building, the more you will get from a raid.
Raiding does not appear in the news.
Destroying[]
Each building has a repairable condition of 100. After a building's defences have been destroyed, any player can do 1 point of damage to the building's condition for 50 APs and a small rep/rank loss. Once a building's condition is 0, it will be desttroyed.
Destroying a building appears in the news.