BASE DEFENSE & RAIDING

Every team’s survival comes down to one object: the Base Core. Defense is everything you build to protect it. Raiding is everything an enemy team uses to break in. There’s no scheduled “raid hour” and no formal declaration — a raid simply begins the moment a siege tool lands its first hit on your territory.

How It All Fits Together

• Base Core (placed via claims/) — the beacon that creates your team and holds its HP. Lose it and your team is disbanded.
• Defense — passive Shield, automated Sentries, Trap Pads, and tiered Defense Blocks you build to slow attackers down.
• Raiding — five siege tools plus hand-held Raid Pickaxes that attackers use to punch through your defenses and reach the Core.

There’s no formal “raid declaration” and no raid schedule — your base is fair game any time it isn’t shielded.

The Base Core

Placing a Base Core (a beacon item) is what creates your team in the first place. Each player can only have one Core.

Core HP by Level

Core Mechanics You Should Know

• Regeneration: Core HP regenerates 10 HP per minute on its own — but regen pauses entirely while your base is under an active raid (see Raid Windows below).
• Never fully destroyed by siege damage alone: siege tools only deal HP damage. The Core “dies” only when it hits 0 HP, which disbands the team.
• HP visibility is close-range only: the Core HP action bar is visible only to players within 8 blocks of it, refreshing once per second. Attackers have to push in close to know how much HP is left.
• New Core protection: a freshly placed Core has a 5-minute grace period (a “destroy lock”) before anyone can damage it.
• Shield immunity: if your Shield is active, your Core is completely immune to siege damage — every strike is absorbed.

Punching the Core (the Finisher)

Once your base is “contested” (a siege tool has hit it in the last 5 minutes, or a loot window is already open), any attacker can walk up and hit the Core directly with a sword, axe or pickaxe — any material, even wood. It’s hit like a mob, not mined: each swing that lands is a hit, dealing 2 damage per hit with a 1-second cooldown. It’s deliberately weak and slow: think of it as the finishing blow after siege tools have already done the heavy lifting, not a way to skip siege entirely.

Building Your Defenses

Defense Blocks

Reinforced building materials sold at the Defense Depot NPC shop. Each requires its own tech unlock, and each has a break-resistance tier — a siege tool can only break through if its piercing power matches or beats the block’s tier.

If a siege tool’s piercing power is too low, the strike simply bounces — you’ll see “Tool cannot pierce tier N block” in chat. Defense blocks never drop vanilla loot when broken (they’re custom items), and their current placeholder look is: Reinforced Wood = bamboo planks, Reinforced Stone = stone bricks, Reinforced Copper = waxed oxidized cut copper, Compacted Deepslate = a reinforced-deepslate skin. Proper custom models are planned for a future resource pack update.

Sentries

Automated turrets that guard your base around the clock. There are three tiers (a fourth “Swarm” tier existed once but has been retired and is no longer sold).

How sentries behave:

• They’re completely static — a sentry never moves from its post, but it will lock onto and shoot at any non-friendly player who enters its range. It never targets your own team or allies.
• A sentry shoots at the past — it leads its shot based on where you were about 1 second (20 ticks) ago. Standing still means getting hit dead center; moving and strafing is your best defense against one.
• Before it fires, a sentry telegraphs its lock-on: the targeted player hears a distinct sound cue, and a red particle marker shows exactly where the sentry is currently aiming (which trails the moving target).
• Sentries won’t burn in daylight.
• Each sentry gets its own persistent number within its team and variant (e.g. “Heavy Sentry #3”), so you can track which one is which.
• Sentries draw power from your team’s energy bus. A base packed with active sentries can brown out your other machines. Dead sentries draw no power, but while the grid is browned out, a dead sentry won’t respawn — though a live sentry is never force-killed just to balance the grid.
• Even if a raid is going badly for you, any sentries that are still alive keep fighting for the base throughout.

Trap Pads

Pressure-plate-style triggers from the Defense Depot, great for chokepoints. They only fire on intruders — your own team and allies walk over them safely.

Placeholder visuals: heavy weighted pressure plate = Sickness/Wither, light weighted = Slow, stone plate = Goo, polished blackstone = Jump.

The Shield — Total Base Immunity

The Shield is your strongest defensive tool: while it’s active, your base is completely immune to siege — every impact on a shielded chunk is absorbed (“Shield holds — strike absorbed”), no blocks break, and no Core damage lands.

Charging the Shield

Every online team member banks shield charge automatically, at a rate that diminishes as more members log in simultaneously:

• Charge is banked per-member and summed across the whole team.
• Maximum banked charge: 79,200 seconds (22 hours).

Activating It

• Requires Officer rank or higher.
• Minimum activation length: 7,200 seconds (2 hours).
• Drains 1 banked second per real second while active.
• Activation cost is configurable by the server but ships free by default.
• Commands: /shield status, /shield activate <hours>, /shield deactivate.

Shield protection is checked per chunk, block-by-block, based on which team owns that chunk — so a partially-shielded claim only protects the chunks actually covered.

Raid Windows — When Your Base Becomes Vulnerable

QuantumRift has no scheduled “raid window.” Instead, your base becomes contested dynamically:

A team is contested if it’s under siege (a siege tool made contact in the last 5 minutes) or it’s already inside an active post-destruction loot window.

Only while contested can attackers use the melee Core-punch finisher described above.

If the Core Falls

If your Core’s HP hits 0, the outcome is serious:

• Your team is disbanded immediately.
• A 1-hour raid window opens over every chunk of the former claim:
  • Container-public looting: every chest, barrel, and container in the fallen base becomes openable by anyone — free-for-all.
  • Placement cooldown: nobody can place a new Base Core on those chunks for 1 hour.
• Both windows survive a server restart.
• The attacking team gets a chat message: “Your team has felled an enemy Core. 1h loot window open.”
• The team treasury is paid out directly to the former leader — attackers don’t loot the treasury itself, only the physical loot window.

There is currently no dedicated raid reward beyond that 1-hour loot window and whatever the siege blast physically spills.

Checking Raid History

• /raid history — the last 10 raids on your own base: who attacked, when, and window status.
• /raid attacks — the last 10 raids your team carried out.

Every raid is logged with a timestamp, the attacking and defending teams, and when the loot window closes.

Siege Tools — How Attackers Break In

Five tools (plus Raid Pickaxes for hand-mining) let an attacking team punch through your walls and reach your Core. Each requires its own tech unlock, and each has a maximum resistance tier it can pierce.

Siege Bull Details

The Siege Bull deserves a special mention: it’s a rideable mob you summon and drive into an enemy wall, biting every 2 seconds while ridden. It has 80 HP (roughly 3 seconds of focused defender fire — about 10 netherite-sword swings or 9 charged-bow shots kills it), does zero contact damage to players, and parks in place (but stays fully damageable) if you dismount. It despawns after 600 seconds, if you wander more than 64 blocks away, or if you log off. It also moves at roughly 3.45 blocks/second — slower than both a walking player (4.3) and the cheapest mount (4.6), so escorting one in is deliberately risky.

Raid Pickaxes

Regular tools are refused inside enemy claims outright — you need a Raid Pickaxe to hand-mine ordinary, non-reinforced blocks there. Mining speed is intentionally slower than vanilla, so raiding always takes real effort.

Raid Pickaxes cannot damage defense blocks, the Core, or any shielded chunk.

Fuel & Ammo

• Portable Battery (Drill fuel): each fresh battery holds 5 charges; the Drill won’t start without one loaded, and a battery is consumed once it’s empty.
• Cannonballs: a stackable consumable (a Fire Charge item), 2 cr each at the shop, one consumed per shot — no per-item charge tracking needed.

Core Damage Per Hit

Every successful siege impact that reaches the Core deals 100 HP of damage — so against a 500–2,000 HP Core, expect roughly 5 to 20 well-placed hits to bring one down. The Siege Bull bites faster than that (every 2 seconds), so its Core damage is separately throttled to once per 30 seconds to keep it from melting a Core in seconds flat.

How a Siege Strike Resolves

1. An attacker charges a Ram/Drill swing, fires the Cannon, primes Explosives, or drives the Siege Bull into a wall.
2. The game checks ownership — you cannot damage your own base or an allied team’s.
3. If a Shield is active on that chunk, the entire strike is absorbed. Nothing happens.
4. The tool’s piercing power is compared against the targeted block’s resistance tier. Too weak, and it bounces with a clear chat message.
5. If it passes, every block inside the blast area is checked individually for ownership, shield status, and resistance — so a blast straddling a friendly and an enemy chunk only damages the enemy side.
6. Broken blocks drop their contents properly onto the ground — containers are never voided, so attackers can loot what they break.
7. If the blast reaches the Core, it takes its (throttled) HP hit, and the base becomes contested for the next 5 minutes.
8. The attacker gets a summary message: “X strike: N block(s) broken — Core hit for 100 HP.” (The Siege Bull uses the action bar instead of chat since it fires so frequently.)

Quick Reference: Attacker Flow

1. Research the relevant tech — the attack.* line (Battering Ram → Drill → Cannon → Explosives), the Raid Pickaxe line, or the Siege Bull.
2. Craft or buy your tool, plus fuel if needed (Portable Battery for the Drill, Cannonballs for the Cannon).
3. Approach the target base. If its Shield is up, wait it out or catch it mid-drain — nothing works until it drops.
4. Break through defense blocks whose resistance your tool can beat.
5. Reach and strike the Core repeatedly (100 HP per hit). This marks siege contact, opening a 5-minute contested window where teammates can melee-finish the Core.
6. If the Core hits 0 HP: the enemy team disbands, a 1-hour free-for-all loot window opens across the whole former claim, and nobody can re-place a Core there for an hour.
7. Check /raid attacks afterward to review your raid log.

Quick Reference: Defender Flow

1. Build up layered Reinforced/Compacted defense blocks around your Core, gated behind their techs.
2. Place Sentries up to your cap — remember they lead their shots by 1 second, so movement is what saves you (or what beats a raider who stands still).
3. Lay Trap Pads at chokepoints to slow, debuff, or launch intruders.
4. Bank Shield charge from your team’s online time, and activate it (Officer rank or higher) before or during an assault. A fully shielded base cannot be breached by any siege tool.
5. Watch your Core regenerate 10 HP/min when it’s not under active raid — but remember regen pauses the instant your base becomes contested.
6. Check /raid history regularly to see who’s been testing your defenses.
7. If your Core falls, your team is disbanded and the base is lost outright — there’s no relocation or rebuild-in-place mechanic. Starting over is the only option.

Good to Know

• There’s no scheduled or declared raid window — your base can be sieged at any time it isn’t shielded.
• There’s no cooldown limiting how often an attacker can raid.
• There’s no bounty or credit reward for raiding beyond the loot window itself.
• The Siege Bull is purely a battering tool — it deals zero damage to players.
• A bounced attack always tells the attacker why it failed (“cannot pierce tier N”), so nobody is left guessing.