At one point you could definitely shoot them, it was years ago however. This is dumb mainly because of how powerful the weapons are, and now also the offline protection means you need to park a ship in orbit either for eternity or until the dude finally logs. This just to get a chance to shoot the bases, which practically speaking will never happen if the crew refuses to shoot at it (even with a missile weapon that could actually burrow down to it easily as you say).
Waiting until you are online at the same time does eventually happen but is in my opinion impractical. It’s already dumb that you are stuck with a warship parked in orbit for presumably months if they just never log in again.
Waiting until you are online at the same time does eventually happen but is in my opinion impractical. It’s already dumb that you are stuck with a warship parked in orbit for presumably months if they just never log in again.