Makin' Blocks Better

[Asvarduil]

Foreword
A lot of talk involves making mining smoother, or enhancing exploration. These are good goals.

However, ships, stations, bases, whatever all take blocks. Right now, I have to be honest - the process of making blocks just isn't too good. It's time consuming, it's annoying...it gets in the way of what this game is all about: building stuff.

As someone who's played off-and-on for a while, here's the things we actually do:

1. Go to a location
2. Mine materials
3. Go to our base
4. Craft blocks
5. Build something with blocks
6. Go to #1

#4 is what this suggestion is all about.

Part 1: Factory Enhancers
The reason factory enhancers come first, is because they're a good idea that could be done better.

Right now, we have to use the C/V linking system to associate factory enhancers to a factory. Factory enhancers are built in the Standard Factory block.

The reason this isn't so good, is because it's inflexible. If I want to just craft a single block - perhaps an effect computer - I have to disassociate every single enhancer from the factory.

Also, factory enhancers - despite being the second tier factory block - is a very elementary recipe, requiring only Metal Meshes and Crystal Circuits, byproducts of refining materials in a Capsule Refinery.

So, proposals for Factory Enhancers are as follows:
1 - Reduce Factory Enhancers to the basic factory tier. They really have no business being in the Standard tier.
2 - Get rid of auto-crafting ticks. Have a craft button, which initiates a crafting 'cast bar'. The reason I suggest this, is simply that it's more intuitive to say, 'I've put a bunch of stuff in a factory and told it to craft N of those', than to say, 'I put a bunch of stuff in a factory, turned it on, and then eventually it crafted N of those.' It puts the player's actions at the forefront, which is the point of games.
3 - Make crafting blocks be able to use a variable number of enhancers, expressed in the UI as a Quantity field. Quantity can never exceed the number of Enhancers. We shouldn't need to C/V link very often.
4 - Speaking of C/V linking, why bother at all? Make factories be able to use any Enhancer attached to the structure (or planetary 'plate'). The structure would silently keep track of the number of Enhancers it has attached to it.

Part 2: Progressive Disclosure, and the Tech Tree
Something else to make the player have more fun, is simply not to throw every item in the game at the player at once. Add some (however illusionary) progression to get the player to build things and experiment with finding other blocks.

The way a game starts usually, is that the player has to go mining first, and to get materials. Exceptions - such as stealing an unsecured ship - exist, but based on how the game is structured, it's clearly intended that you find an asteroid, mine for a while, and refine basic items in your suit's microfactory.

As you create items, the game should let you know what you can create with those.

"You've crafted your first Alloyed Metal Mesh! These are the basic building block of most modern technology. You can use them to build Basic Factories, Hull blocks, and more! You can see what you can build in any Factory block."

As new blocks are revealed, it will show other blocks needed. Thus, the player is not only exploring space, but also what can be done with refined materials.

So, proposals for Progressive Disclose/Tech Tree systems:
1 - Hide most blocks in factories by default. To even create a Basic Factory, players have to refine an Alloyed Metal Mesh and a Crystal Circuit.
2 - As certain blocks get made, reveal blocks in factories. The specifics depend on what players find fun.
3 - There might be value to having chests periodically give up single block recipes...

Part 3 - Shipyards
Unlike the other two pieces, this is brief.

Basically, Shipyards need to also be in the basic tier, and need to not cost any special crystals. Building ships is the main mechanic of StarMade, and while anyone can build a ship by hand, a Shipyard is an invaluable tool in becoming basically competitive. It does not need to be gated behind special crystals or ores.

TL;DR
1 - Factory enhancers suck. They could be better if they weren't so annoying to build and use. Make Factory Enhancers great again!
2 - Why throw everything at us at once? Players have to build basic blocks to get awesome blocks. Make the crafting teach players as they go along. We can still build whatever we want.
3 - Shipyards shouldn't be any tier above basic, because the game revolves around building ships. You literally can't do anything without a ship. Don't gate them behind special materials or higher-grade factories.

 

[KaRe]

I believe that the factory system is mostly fine. Only thing I dislike about it is how the pull system works, but I'll figure it out eventually. Anyways;
I agree that we should be able to choose how many blocks are crafted in a factory.
I believe they should stay in standard, since being able to mass produce early on will make it a lot harder to balance such mechanics in the future.
You could just stop the auto tick and adjust the resources to however you need.
I'm not sure your "quantity field" idea is how you want it to be. What you're suggesting sounds like if you need 1000 power reactors, you'll need 1000 enhancers, which encourages inflation, which encourages lag, which is not good. Also, it'd make all but player inventory factories practically useless until getting a factory enhancer, and even if you change factory enhancers to a basic level, you're still forced to buy one from a shop or you basically can't craft most blocks in the game.
I disagree with removing C/V linking, simply because to me it's easier and more intuitive to set something up than to have it simply accumulate.
Mayhaps the logbook could be used for something like an in-game wiki.
Eh.
Shipyards are used to mass produce ships. If anything, they should be made more expensive.

 

[Asvarduil]

I believe that the factory system is mostly fine. Only thing I dislike about it is how the pull system works, but I'll figure it out eventually. Anyways;
I agree that we should be able to choose how many blocks are crafted in a factory.
I believe they should stay in standard, since being able to mass produce early on will make it a lot harder to balance such mechanics in the future.
You could just stop the auto tick and adjust the resources to however you need.
I'm not sure your "quantity field" idea is how you want it to be. What you're suggesting sounds like if you need 1000 power reactors, you'll need 1000 enhancers, which encourages inflation, which encourages lag, which is not good. [1] Also, it'd make all but player inventory factories practically useless until getting a factory enhancer [2], and even if you change factory enhancers to a basic level, you're still forced to buy one from a shop or you basically can't craft most blocks in the game. [3]
I disagree with removing C/V linking, simply because to me it's easier and more intuitive to set something up than to have it simply accumulate. [4]
Mayhaps the logbook could be used for something like an in-game wiki. [5]
Eh.
Shipyards are used to mass produce ships. If anything, they should be made more expensive. [6]

I mean no offense. I strongly disagree with your core points, because they have serious problems with them.

[1]: Above and beyond the absurd leap in logic from 'encourages inflation' to 'encourages lag' - a leap in logic that I'm curious how it happened - this is how the game already works. Adding factory enhancers makes your factory require more power. I don't suggest that that change, and I don't see what you're getting worked up about in regards to that.

[2]: That's not true. Your suit's microfactory can only do the following things:
- Refine ore into Alloyed Metal Mesh
- Refine crystal into Crystal Circuits
- Build the Basic Factory
- (Your suit can also refine capsules to crystal circuits or ores, but this can be safely removed from the game, because why would you do that?)

Also, and building on the context of [1], I'm not sure you know how the game works (this isn't an insult, but rather an observation). Currently factories can produce one item at a time anyhow. That wouldn't change. Again - I don't see what you're getting worked up about, as up to and slightly beyond the point of having to craft a Basic Factory from your suit, there is no change to the game.

Though, you make a good point that maybe the whole 'suit microfactory' thing isn't a good way to start players with the crafting system. It's totally unintuitive, and I question how many players actually know you can do that, but that's a different suggestion I need to think on.

Also, that reminds me - that fourth thing your suit can do? They really ought to take that out, and make Capsule Refineries the only way to refine materials. There's no reason to waste capsules by refining ore or crystals without getting capsules, given how nearly all technologies in the Standard tier and above require capsules.

[3]: For the reasons stated in #2, not only is this not accurate, but being able to craft Factory Enahncers in a Basic Factory will help newer players be better-able to start building better ships ASAP, which is the entire point of this suggestion. I've re-rolled universes, and made characters on different servers, enough times to know that the early game in this game is hell. Early Enhancers won't make that go away, but will take some of the sting out of it.

[4]: So, you think we need to C/V link power reactors and power capacitors to planetary plates or stations or ship cores? 'It just accumulating' is already how some game systems actually work.

Generally speaking, I think your rebuttals to the suggestion come from a place of not really knowing how the game works. It's important to note, though - that's not your fault, and that's not intended as an insult. You just don't seem like you know. The game should be teaching you as you interact with it (thus the whole Progressive Disclosure part of my suggestion).

[5]: ...Huh, that's actually an awesome idea. I think you should make that a topic. Good job on that one.

[6]: In the early game, you don't have the resources to mass produce much of anything, even if you dearly need to. You're vaguely calling this a balance concern, when it really isn't.

I blame the game's crafting system being in a bad shape for this rather weak rebuttal, not you. It really needs work.

 

[KaRe]

[1]: Above and beyond the absurd leap in logic from 'encourages inflation' to 'encourages lag' - a leap in logic that I'm curious how it happened - this is how the game already works. Adding factory enhancers makes your factory require more power. I don't suggest that that change, and I don't see what you're getting worked up about in regards to that.

What you suggested is that either each factory can basically only produce things one at a time without factory enhancers, or that no matter what factory enhancers are needed to produce except for in player factories. Factory enhancers right now increase the amount of Lines active, allowing for multiple of one thing to be made along with increasing their capacity per ticks. Your suggestion would make it so that capacity is only increased by one per factory enhancer, which would make structures bigger, and the larger a structure is the harder it is to load, and with your suggestion you would need absolutely massive factories to produce enough material for, say, Titan building, over flooding a market, or building a group of warships for a battle, along with severely increasing power consumption.

[2]: That's not true. Your suit's microfactory can only do the following things:
- Refine ore into Alloyed Metal Mesh
- Refine crystal into Crystal Circuits
- Build the Basic Factory
- (Your suit can also refine capsules to crystal circuits or ores, but this can be safely removed from the game, because why would you do that?)

Also, and building on the context of [1], I'm not sure you know how the game works (this isn't an insult, but rather an observation). Currently factories can produce one item at a time anyhow. That wouldn't change. Again - I don't see what you're getting worked up about, as up to having to craft a Basic Factory from your suit, there is no change to the game.

But again with that suggestion, you would either need a factory enhancer to produce at all or a lot of them to produce at an acceptable level. If you meant the latter, then yes what I said is basically gibberish that can be ignored, but if you meant the prior then you can really only craft the basic factory and stuff that goes into the basic factory, which wouldn't matter since if you aren't close to a shop or spawn was sold out, you're basically screwed until you find another shop or someone sells it to you.

Though, you make a good point that maybe the whole 'suit microfactory' thing isn't a good way to start players with the crafting system. It's totally unintuitive, and I question how many players actually know you can do that, but that's a different suggestion I need to think on.

I've never said that. In fact, what I said that how I'm interpreting your suggestion would make everything BUT the player factory practically useless UNTIL a factory enhancer is gained.

[3]: For the reasons stated in #2, not only is this not accurate, but being able to craft Factory Enahncers in a Basic Factory will help newer players be better-able to start building better ships ASAP, which is the entire point of this suggestion. I've re-rolled universes, and made characters on different servers, enough times to know that the early game in this game is hell. Early Enhancers won't make that go away, but will take some of the sting out of it.

Not only would such a thing be detrimental to establishing any sort of learning curve, it would allow advanced players to more easily pick on others, which I find pretty eh. Also, please describe what you mean by "hell". I've joined rather recently and was ABlE to produce medium sized warships within five hours on my first day. Got attacked by players and pirates, sure, but that didn't make it hell, just somewhat harder, seeing as there are easy ways to escape others.

[4]: So, you think we need to C/V link power reactors and power capacitors to planetary plates or stations or ship cores? 'It just accumulating' is already how some game systems actually work.

Straw man Fallacy. Just because I say I want factory to be C/V doesn't mean I want everything to be C/V.

Generally speaking, I think your rebuttals to the suggestion come from a place of not really knowing how the game works. It's important to note, though - that's not your fault, and that's not intended as an insult. You just don't seem like you know. The game should be teaching you as you interact with it (thus the whole Progressive Disclosure part of my suggestion).

I blame the game's crafting system being in a bad shape for this rather weak rebuttal, not you. It really needs work.

Don't pretend that that wasn't an insult. Whether that was directed at me or the game, it was an insult. And don't assume that because someone misinterprets something, that they know basically nothing about the game.

 

[Asvarduil]

It wasn't an insult. You don't know what you're talking about. Stating something that is based in fact, isn't how insults work. Not knowing what you're talking about undermines your rebuttals however.

You also don't know how a Straw Man Fallacy actually works either; I used your exact argument as stated. The argument technique I used is called reducto ad absurdum, which is to disprove something by taking it to its logical extreme...which in this case was admittedly not too far.

As for the other arguments, you're either willfully ignoring what I'm saying, or saying other things that are, variously, either how the game already works (flooded economies, large drone battlegroups, supertitans that are planet-killers) or not rooted in how anything in the game actually works (You need a factory enhancer to produce anything at all!), or are just not rooted in reality at all ('Putting Factory Enhancers lower on the tech tree will let more skilled players pick on less skilled players'!? Really!?)

Also, the whole dying text random colors. Are you trying to make it harder to read your posts and have honest discussions? That's really annoying. See? If we're going to disagree, can we not do it in default text, just so that we can appreciate each others' arguments properly? Your post did have some good ideas in it, or at least caused me to have some. Maybe if your text wasn't trying to kill my eyes, I'd see more good ideas.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

I agree with all of this suggestion, except the tech tree part (Part 2).

1 - Hide most blocks in factories by default. To even create a Basic Factory, players have to refine an Alloyed Metal Mesh and a Crystal Circuit.
2 - As certain blocks get made, reveal blocks in factories. The specifics depend on what players find fun.
3 - There might be value to having chests periodically give up single block recipes...

You mention that part of this suggestion is to minimize the tedium and boredom from early-game:

Right now, I have to be honest - the process of making blocks just isn't too good. It's time consuming, it's annoying...it gets in the way of what this game is all about: building stuff.

That Part 2 suggestion completely contradicts this, instead making it harder and slower for new players to progress and limiting the time that players can spend building, which as you have correctly stated is one of the biggest draws to the game.

 

[Asvarduil]

I disagree, but you make really strong points. I'm curious - how do you see that crafting blocks to reveal new blocks is boring or tedious? This is no different than what players do in MineCraft (punch tree to get wood, craft wood into crafting table, build pickaxe, mine cobble, craft cobble into furnace, etc. ...)

Also, the point of Part 2 is education. Right now, this game does a terrible job of teaching you how to play, and I don't count The Wiki™ as being acceptable in that regard.

 

[Snowtiger256]

Also, the point of Part 2 is education. Right now, this game does a terrible job of teaching you how to play, and I don't count The Wiki™ as being acceptable in that regard.

Even if you don't count the Wiki as acceptable, there are more than enough YouTube videos teaching you how to do stuff, and the game also has built-in video tutorials for the basic stuff. I however think that the best way to lear to play this game is to just getting busy with actually learning how stuff works in-game, by picking up stuff and actually trying it out and asking for advice in-game. SM is not a game you can just pick up and play casually, it needs a bit of effort to get going, but once you get a little experience under your belt, it will reward you.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

I disagree, but you make really strong points. I'm curious - how do you see that crafting blocks to reveal new blocks is boring or tedious? This is no different than what players do in MineCraft (punch tree to get wood, craft wood into crafting table, build pickaxe, mine cobble, craft cobble into furnace, etc. ...)

Also, the point of Part 2 is education. Right now, this game does a terrible job of teaching you how to play, and I don't count The Wiki™ as being acceptable in that regard.

I see it as tedious, and a waste of precious starter resources, since with this system players will have to craft many, many different blocks they don't want nor need before reaching the block/s they need. This takes time (obviously; factory time as well as mining time) as well as diverting precious starter resources away from improving their ships or defences.

Snowtiger256 is correct that many YouTube videos exist including built-in video tutorials and the wonderful logic tutorials created by Bench, for instance. I do agree however that the video tutorials need to be ramped up a bit.

 

[jayman38]

1. YouTube videos are an unreliable source of information. There is insufficient information to know if any given video is current with the current game. I distinctly remember when I started and kept running across crap videos that might have been useful 5 or 6 versions prior, but were worthless for the then-current build. Those out-of-date videos are even more out-of-date now, years later. They are still out there.

2. Different people learn in different ways. Expecting them to either search for Youtube videos and hope they hit a goldmine of recent ones, or expecting them just to pick it up is not a universally good tutorial system. AAA games have tutorial "levels" and "walkthroughs" for a reason. Yeah, its kind of like just picking it up and playing with it, but in a guided format. Personally, when searching for YouTube videos failed, I did start picking the game up by simply playing with it. However, most gamers don't have my level of patience. Further, self-guided learning frequently fails to teach specific details that the player simply doesn't know about. Perfect example: power block layouts. Intuition would (and in my case, did) normally lead to the conclusion that large, mass groups of power blocks laid down in advanced build mode would create better efficiency, not lines.

The tutorial station was an awesome "guided tour" idea. It just needed to be made functional by forcing the NPCs to rez in -after- all chunks of the station were loaded, so that they wouldn't fall out of the station before the player can talk to them. Forced-rezzing logic may ultimately be a function of crew stations or some-such game subsystem. The other solution to holding npcs in place where they need to be would be to literally lock their position, and scan the surrounding chunks every few seconds, checking for complete loading before "releasing" the npcs to run around on their own.

 

[Lecic]

2 - Get rid of auto-crafting ticks. Have a craft button, which initiates a crafting 'cast bar'. The reason I suggest this, is simply that it's more intuitive to say, 'I've put a bunch of stuff in a factory and told it to craft N of those', than to say, 'I put a bunch of stuff in a factory, turned it on, and then eventually it crafted N of those.' It puts the player's actions at the forefront, which is the point of games.

Ok, sure, but I should also have an option to set it to just craft until it runs out of materials, ESPECIALLY with the capsule refinery.

4 - Speaking of C/V linking, why bother at all? Make factories be able to use any Enhancer attached to the structure (or planetary 'plate'). The structure would silently keep track of the number of Enhancers it has attached to it.

Sounds fine, but you need to make sure factories can't use the same enhancer at the same time.

Part 3 - Shipyards
Unlike the other two pieces, this is brief.

Basically, Shipyards need to also be in the basic tier, and need to not cost any special crystals. Building ships is the main mechanic of StarMade, and while anyone can build a ship by hand, a Shipyard is an invaluable tool in becoming basically competitive. It does not need to be gated behind special crystals or ores.

Definitely agree. This will be especially important when the old blueprint system is finally phased out and we can no longer spawn ships with blueprint meta items.

I disagree, but you make really strong points. I'm curious - how do you see that crafting blocks to reveal new blocks is boring or tedious? This is no different than what players do in MineCraft (punch tree to get wood, craft wood into crafting table, build pickaxe, mine cobble, craft cobble into furnace, etc. ...)

Minecraft's crafting system is completely different, but imagine if Minecraft forced you to craft every lower tier before you were allowed to craft the next tier of item. It'd be pretty annoying to be forced to go wood - stone - iron - gold - diamond for every single tool. Adding fake "progression" that really just tricks new players into crafting a bunch of garbage they don't need is a terrible idea.

Also, the point of Part 2 is education. Right now, this game does a terrible job of teaching you how to play, and I don't count The Wiki™ as being acceptable in that regard.

Forcing new players to waste their extremely limited resources is not "teaching them how to play."

 

[Asvarduil]

Forcing new players to waste their extremely limited resources is not "teaching them how to play."

Ok; the argument against my suggestion is that it forces crafting of useless things. I would argue against that, because my suggestion does not address the shape of the tech tree - a badly designed tech tree would include crafting of useless items (much like happens in Dragon Quest Builders). There's no guarantee that Schine would make an effective tech tree that lacks any useless crafting. I have ideas on what that shape might look like, but I'm just smart enough to not press an argument that pretty much has an audience against it on principle.

In that spirit - what would a better way of teaching players to play be?

For my part, I think that KaRe had a good suggestion with making the "Logbook" be an in-game encyclopedia - I find that very similar to the Thaumonomicon in the MineCraft mod Thaumcraft. As you do things, the Logbook gets more information. That'd be pretty useful!

Additionally, in the Botania mod, there's a hybrid encyclopedia/video thing in the Lexica Botania - one of the first pages is a link to a YouTube video from the mod's author detailing how to get started with that mod. So, maybe there's a place of official video guides, though they have to be updated.

 

[Lecic]

Ok; the argument against my suggestion is that it forces crafting of useless things. I would argue against that

But hiding recipes until you've crafted the things beneath them forces players to craft things they do not want or need to learn how to craft what they do want and need. That's just inherent in the system you are proposing, and I don't like that.

In that spirit - what would a better way of teaching players to play be?

How about just improving the in game tutorials system that already exists?

 

[Deserea]

Is this game all that complicated so start off playing in? Perhaps its changed dramatically since i first started when it pretty much came out, but this game seems more straight forward to me than minecraft is, personally dont have to spend much time on the wiki when im crafting in this game compared to minecraft...

And the factories in game are *WAY* better than the ovens/whatever they are called, in minecraft, least i dont have to wait for 64 things to finish before i can make the next batch >.>

Its also not to hard to set up a decent factory right out of the gate, with the starting credits used to purchase the bare minimum of things.

Shipyards...Shipyards in general need *alot* of work as it is. Right now, i dont even have a station built in my SP survival, for a few reasons.

I agree with lecic here, the in game tutorial would be more served by being upgraded, than making a bunch of system changes.