Planned Stack Limits

[Knack]

The current system can hold 35 different stacks and that is probably just an arbitrary limit (That is, it could be changed in the code very easily.)

And that's the reason why we don't see any freighters flying around.
All possible items in the game will fit in about 19 plexstorages.

I have no problems with introducing a new storage controller for the storage areas and let the plexstorages with its 36 slots store metaitems only.

like realy all of this just screws over the solo players

What? How would that affect singleplayer other than multiplayer.

Why do you think the game shouldn't have stack limits?

I also don't see the point at ltmouves post.

Guys, have you even read the suggestion I linked to and than looked at my post?

You have a storage controller linked to a storage area. You can make that area as big as you want. For every linked storage area, you get an increase of storage capacity of 255 (or 256, depends on implementation)
If a storage area block is used, it shows the block stored in it and has mass. Item filtering and storage pulls would work as it does now.
The storage controller wouldn't even have to be where the storage area is.
You only would need some actual space to carry tons of blocks.

If you miner has a storage area of 40x20x10 it could store over 2 million blocks. That should be enough for a middle mining trip, just fly back to your station to unload.
If you don't want to fly back, build a big cargo-ship and dock your miner to it.

If you are worried about the capacity of your station, if it has a storage area of 100x100x100 (that's really not to big for a station), you are able to store 255 million blocks.

I agree that the personal inventory should be able to store enough for the early game. 100k blocks should do it, but that should be easy to change in a config file.

So I just looked at the technical side, maybe it's possible to save a max storage value of 16384 per storage area, than it also could be customized in a configfile within this boarders.

To the buildmode:
As I said, physical represented storage areas would need the shipyard update first. If we get that creative build mode on shipyards to design the ships, and the actual build process is done by the shipyard itself, which can and should have huge storage areas, that storage system would be totally doable.
Also it would bring much more depth to the game. We would need mining outposts, cargoships, and cargo transports between mining outposts and the shipyards.

 

[max stripe]

And that's the reason why we don't see any freighters flying around.
All possible items in the game will fit in about 19 plexstorages.

I have no problems with introducing a new storage controller for the storage areas and let the plexstorages with its 36 slots store metaitems only.


What? How would that affect singleplayer other than multiplayer.

Why do you think the game shouldn't have stack limits?

I also don't see the point at ltmouves post.

Guys, have you even read the suggestion I linked to and than looked at my post?

You have a storage controller linked to a storage area. You can make that area as big as you want. For every linked storage area, you get an increase of storage capacity of 255 (or 256, depends on implementation)
If a storage area block is used, it shows the block stored in it and has mass. Item filtering and storage pulls would work as it does now.
The storage controller wouldn't even have to be where the storage area is.
You only would need some actual space to carry tons of blocks.

If you miner has a storage area of 40x20x10 it could store over 2 million blocks. That should be enough for a middle mining trip, just fly back to your station to unload.
If you don't want to fly back, build a big cargo-ship and dock your miner to it.

If you are worried about the capacity of your station, if it has a storage area of 100x100x100 (that's really not to big for a station), you are able to store 255 million blocks.

I agree that the personal inventory should be able to store enough for the early game. 100k blocks should do it, but that should be easy to change in a config file.

So I just looked at the technical side, maybe it's possible to save a max storage value of 16384 per storage area, than it also could be customized in a configfile within this boarders.

To the buildmode:
As I said, physical represented storage areas would need the shipyard update first. If we get that creative build mode on shipyards to design the ships, and the actual build process is done by the shipyard itself, which can and should have huge storage areas, that storage system would be totally doable.
Also it would bring much more depth to the game. We would need mining outposts, cargoships, and cargo transports between mining outposts and the shipyards.

any player who plays in a solo faction on a server will have a harder time dealing with the storage than large factions since solo players will have to pilot both the cargo craft and the salavager

 

[Winterhome]

any player who plays in a solo faction on a server will have a harder time dealing with the storage than large factions since solo players will have to pilot both the cargo craft and the salavager

Who's to say the salvager won't be the cargo craft?

 

[max stripe]

Who's to say the salvager won't be the cargo craft?

well if the cargo craft gains mass as its cargo fills up that salavager is going to sink and crash onto the planet its trying to mine

 

[Winterhome]

well if the cargo craft gains mass as its cargo fills up that salavager is going to sink and crash onto the planet its trying to mine

...who said it would be mining planets?

 

[iceman6491]

well if the cargo craft gains mass as its cargo fills up that salavager is going to sink and crash onto the planet its trying to mine

Be careful that your own creativity does not becomes you limit*
If you want a salvager with sufficient thrust to deal with its cargo, then thats your constraints that you design your ship around. It might not be as powerful as two dedicated vessels, one to mine, one for cargo, but I personally dont think the right way to go is to promote playing alone.

*Generic you, not aimed personally

 

[friendofvampires]

I'm going to interject and say that I personally like the idea of the cargo cube. I have a salvage ship that I've only gotten about halfway done and there's a huge area in the bottom that could easily be a massive storage (though thrust is another issue), so its really that single players need to be more careful in their design, which isn't a bad thing, really. It also opens the market to attack freighters/salvagers to try and steal the raw material

 

[Knack]

any player who plays in a solo faction on a server will have a harder time dealing with the storage than large factions since solo players will have to pilot both the cargo craft and the salavager

Build a cargo ship, dock your miner onto it, change to the cockpit of the cargo ship, jump into the system where you want to mine undock your miner and mine asteroids/planets. Unload your miner from time to time at the cargo ship, when finished dock the miner again on the cargo ship and jump back to your base.

Do I really have to show you the way how to handle every problem how small it ever would be?
Use your imagination.

I don't think larger factions would use two pilots for mining, they just would build better more developed and specialized ships.
And if the players would try to mine in a group, that's the best that could happen to faction life.
Doing something together, how dare I to think about something.

But I see, you are one of these, flying around with their 100 mass salvager, loaded with the resources of two full planets.

 

[max stripe]

...who said it would be mining planets?

planets have the most resources. until that changes most people will mine planets whenever possible
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Build a cargo ship, dock your miner onto it, change to the cockpit of the cargo ship, jump into the system where you want to mine undock your miner and mine asteroids/planets. Unload your miner from time to time at the cargo ship, when finished dock the miner again on the cargo ship and jump back to your base.

Do I really have to show you the way how to handle every problem how small it ever would be?
Use your imagination.

I don't think larger factions would use two pilots for mining, they just would build better more developed and specialized ships.
And if the players would try to mine in a group, that's the best that could happen to faction life.
Doing something together, how dare I to think about something.

But I see, you are one of these, flying around with their 100 mass salvager, loaded with the resources of two full planets.

and accualy i dont mine. i pirate what i need off other players....

 

[hunterRAE]

I think that there should be mass based on stored items, because this would make ship movement different and make cargo vessels useful, making a small step for ships in general have different classes than the "overall rounded ship with everything class".

 

[ltmauve]

You have a storage controller linked to a storage area. You can make that area as big as you want. For every linked storage area, you get an increase of storage capacity of 255 (or 256, depends on implementation)

Why 255 or 256? Do not tell me it's because of the one bit thing - you actually would need 12 * 255 bits to manage that.

Also, different items need to take up different amounts - what kind of game discourages you from refining your raw resources by making them take up more space once you've refined them? Also, does it make any sense for 10 cannon computers and 10 cannon barrels to take up the same space? No. Barrels are cheaper and more of them are needed, so they should take up less space in storage.

 

[Knack]

Also, different items need to take up different amounts - what kind of game discourages you from refining your raw resources by making them take up more space once you've refined them? Also, does it make any sense for 10 cannon computers and 10 cannon barrels to take up the same space? No. Barrels are cheaper and more of them are needed, so they should take up less space in storage.

All blocks use the same size in Starmade up to now. And until the last update they had the same mass as well. I don't care if mass and/or size is considered to determine the max amount.

Some tech:

Spoiler

According to the starmade-wiki, there are 3 types how a block is saved.
http://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Blueprint_File_Formats#Block_Data
For the cargo area we would need a forth type, without orientation and only 3-bit hitpoints (7HP) and therefore the 10 free bits are used to save the ID of which block is stored there. (For the purpose to show the contained)
Maybe one additional byte could save the amount of conatined block (max 255).
It would also be possible to not show what is contained but only that something is contained, then type 1 is useable.

However, in the meantime I think it's better to determine the max cargo capacity by multiplying the amount of cargo areas with an configurable value (amount_per_cargo_area), and only show if the cargo area is used or free. (By changing the shown texture of the cargo area)
Than there would be a second config value (mass_per_used_cargo_area), that multiplies with the used cargo areas gives us the additional mass.
Storage_capacity = sum_cargo_area * amount_per_cargo_area;
cargo_mass = (amount_stored_blocks / amount_per_cargo_area) * mass_per_used_cargo_area;

We still could store different items at one cargo controller and it's fully configurable, you could set the cargo area capacity to a very high value and set the mass multiplier to zero, then you have the current system.

Now we could extend that system by not using the amount of stored blocks but the mass or the (to introduce) size. Then we would have mass_per_cargo_area instead of amount.

Better?

 

[ltmauve]

However, in the meantime I think it's better to determine the max cargo capacity by multiplying the amount of cargo areas with an configurable value (amount_per_cargo_area), and only show if the cargo area is used or free. (By changing the shown texture of the cargo area)
Than there would be a second config value (mass_per_used_cargo_area), that multiplies with the used cargo areas gives us the additional mass.
Storage_capacity = sum_cargo_area * amount_per_cargo_area;
cargo_mass = (amount_stored_blocks / amount_per_cargo_area) * mass_per_used_cargo_area;

Yeah that's pretty much about what I said.

For the cargo area we would need a forth type, without orientation and only 3-bit hitpoints (7HP) and therefore the 10 free bits are used to save the ID of which block is stored there. (For the purpose to show the contained)

We just need the 11 bits of blockID. The HP of each block when placed is determined elsewhere.

I don't care if mass and/or size is considered to determine the max amount.

A separate value for size is probably better for balancing reasons.

Speaking of which, do we want to come up with preliminary values for packing size?

Spoiler: I'll start anyway

• Raw ore/crystal = 70
• Capsule = 5
• Metal Mesh/Crystal = 2 (10 capsules + 5 mesh/circuit = 60)
• Thrusters = 40
• Power(R/C) = 40
• Shield(R/C) = 225
• Weapon Computer = 1000
• Weapon module = 100
• Effect Computer = 1250
• Effect module = 125
• Salvage computer = 200
• Salvage module = 40
• Support computer = 750
• Support module = 75
• Hull = 30
• S. Armor = 40
• A. Armor = 50
• Ship core = 750

 

[Ithirahad]

well if the cargo craft gains mass as its cargo fills up that salavager is going to sink and crash onto the planet its trying to mine

That's why:
You can just give it an awesome thrust/mass ratio; sacrifice some shields or something, maybe throw in a little stop effect if it's planets you're worried about. Besides, planet salvaging has a lot of gameplay- and performance-wise issues and at the moment it should probably be disabled altogether in favor of a higher asteroid resource mining multiplier anyway.
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• Raw ore/crystal = 70
• Capsule = 5
• Metal Mesh/Crystal = 2 (10 capsules + 5 mesh/circuit = 60)
• Thrusters = 40
• Power(R/C) = 40
• Shield(R/C) = 225
• Weapon Computer = 1000
• Weapon module = 100
• Effect Computer = 1250
• Effect module = 125
• Salvage computer = 200
• Salvage module = 40
• Support computer = 750
• Support module = 75
• Hull = 30
• S. Armor = 40
• A. Armor = 50
• Ship core = 750

750 space for a ship core? What...? The things are a dime a dozen, cheap to make, cheap to use, easy to throw out... They should probably have a value like... IDK, 20-30. Otherwise, that mostly makes sense.

Also, there was an old PlexDoor texture in the Default pack at one point, had hazard stripes on the side of it and stuff... That might make for a good "Cargo box placeholder" texture.

 

[ltmauve]

750 space for a ship core? What...? The things are a dime a dozen, cheap to make, cheap to use, easy to throw out... They should probably have a value like... IDK, 20-30

Keep in mind that a reactor is 40. But yeah, I suppose it should be lower. 100-200?
Also keep in mind that the default storage size will be probably 100,000 - 10,000,000.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Why not have items in storage add mass to the ship? It does not make any sense that you mine out an asteroid, and your ships mass stays the same.

Having like 300 asteroids in cargo, should slow the ship down, and having the entire crust of a planet in cargo, should also slow the ship down too.

speaking of the entire planet crust.... Its rather annoying having only one ranment rich asteroid in a system. i should not have to mine an entire planet just to get a few ranment shards to make shield generators, especially since there are plenty of other more abundant crystals that do not seem to have that many uses now.

perhaps introduce grades of shield generators?

 

[ltmauve]

Why not have items in storage add mass to the ship? It does not make any sense that you mine out an asteroid, and your ships mass stays the same.

First, off, read the other thread about the cargo area idea. Gives that effect in a nice way.
Second a few other questions:
Should the mass of the cargo be added anyway?
Should it be a fraction of the added mass, or based off the percentage of the cargo space taken up?

 

[friendofvampires]

I think the idea would work better if the stored items added the cargo crates, and each of those added mass. Each crate could hold one item stack, so lots of different types, or lots of any one item would mean lots of mass, so organizing and being picky with what you're grabbing would be a thing

 

[ltmauve]

I think the idea would work better if the stored items added the cargo crates, and each of those added mass. Each crate could hold one item stack, so lots of different types, or lots of any one item would mean lots of mass, so organizing and being picky with what you're grabbing would be a thing

Err... No. Perhaps the cargo should have fewer stack slots than the normal plexstorage, but whether I have 100 in one slot or 10 in 10 slots shouldn't be different.

 

[friendofvampires]

Err... No. Perhaps the cargo should have fewer stack slots than the normal plexstorage, but whether I have 100 in one slot or 10 in 10 slots shouldn't be different.

No, you use the cargo are definer thing, it auto sorts into crates. each item stack takes a crate. so 10 stacks of ore weighs the same and one of each type of ten ores, so you focusing on one type is more efficient