While I'm knee deep in cleaning up the editors, this is the perfect time for me to finally take a crack at port hardening. I know a lot has already been said about it and I could do a lot of research to see what's required, but if you don't mind (Vid, mostly), can you give me an overview here?

Is this something that should be done automatically in Bigbang (maybe an option to do it), or should it be something that shows up in TEDIT under the Port editor, a "harden port" option, so it's done port-by-port?

The port-by-port option sounds good.

Port by port is one thing, but we also need a way to specify specifically for all the class 0s. The biggest problem with ports is that the class 0s are very easy to blow up in most gold games. This means that people can blow dock and deny access for however long the radiation delay is, which is usually not set correctly. If we could bump up the class 0s to blast 500k+ damage per shot and be able to take 1m+ damage, I don't think there'd be a problem.

Ok, so that sounds like a Bigbang option maybe. But also have a per-port hardening option in TEDIT.

Is the goal here to make the class 0 ports invincible, or just harder to kill?

Is hardening just beefing up the strength of the port? Or is there anything else involved in the process?

Either/or. Some people might want them invincible, others just might want them very expensive to kill.

And yeh, it's just beefing up the strength.

Ok, easy enough.

I could add a special "invincible class zero ports" option to go along with hardening options. That would add a new setting to track in the settings lists, though.

Usually when hardening class 0s , you blow one .. they are all hardened ..
So if I were to run the hardening script I bow the ports 7 times .. and that is a good start on the process of hardening.

As for invincible .. I don't think that is applicable .. since it was made to be part of the game .. just very painful and costly.

just my 2¢

Oh, ok, so I'll just hook into the game's normal hardening and give you some control over that in TEDIT and Bigbang. Should be easy enough.

I know a lot of Sysops have a no destroying of Class 0's or Dock rules, so invincible would be a nice option, saves headaches for the sysops. If working on those anyway

Just a stray thought here. I think maybe, if the ports are going to go to all the trouble to harden themselves, they probably are going to also upgrade their security systems. Therefore, although possibly sysop-configurable, imho the chance of being randomly busted should be higher at a hardened port than at a regular port.

Ok, port hardening currently only applies to class 0 and class 9 ports. They're the only ports that get stronger based on the number of times they've been destroyed. I don't want to change that, but I could just change the base strength of the ports. Should I limit that to just class 0 and class 9 ports, or should all ports have a configurable base strength so an op could strengthen any port he/she chooses?

only the class0 or 9's
they should follow the same setting ..
I think like * 7 or something like that .. is hard enough , and as for the other ports in the game ... well they are not important as far as hardening goes.

Probably a big bang setting only.
I don't think invincible should be an option because hardening * 7 to 10 will effectively do that for a SysOp ..

BTW Jaybird .. you dont rob/steal at class 0 or 9's so busts do not apply.