Improved Shop System

[0Samuel0]

So currently shops are just boring, identical, invincible sticks. The only variation is that a single shop, at spawn, has an NPC, forcing you to travel there should you ever need hand weapons.

My suggestion is that shops improve with use, but also become more vulnerable. This shouldn't be too hard to do, as shops already spawn in the first place based on activity.

When shops first spawn, they would just be the invincible sticks that they are now, except that they would only have simple resources available, and very limited stock. So they might have power modules, ship cores, and thrusters, perhaps jump drives ( maybe ). The buy prices would be much higher than normal, and the sell prices would be much lower. If they let you sell things that they did not stock, then perhaps the sell prices would be so low that there would be no point, with the exception of raw resources.

As shops are used, they improve. The stock increases, the buy prices decrease, the sell prices increase, the things available become more diversified. They become less visually boring as well, branching outward with docking ports, later NPC's. However, the percentage of damage that is ignored decreases.

Mechanics for being attacked

When a shop is attacked, the level decrease based on how much damage is done. As shops become more advanced, have a lower and lower percentage of damage resistance. So you could still shoot a boring stick shop to get it to restock, and deal no damage, but the resources you get from it are pretty much useless. Attacking a larger shop would be more dangerous, because there would be more turrets, more defending ships, but would hurt the controlling faction more, by decreasing the amount and types of resources available to them. Thus a shop becomes something for a faction to defend, forcing them to do something other than camp their homebase. This would not hurt an inactive faction, because they wouldn't be able to get a shop advanced enough to be worth defending.
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Mechanics for Shipyards

Assuming parts of what was discussed here is implemented http://starmadedock.net/threads/design-mode-for-the-upcoming-shipyard-update.8601/#post-214452

A basic shop would have no shipyard, and you would not be able to build there. As shops got bigger, they would have larger and larger public use shipyards, and eventually, more of them. So at a medium sized shop you would perhaps be able to build a small frigate from scratch, whereas at a maxed out shop you could build ships with dimensions in the thousands. (Or perhaps dimensions of a single thousand, lets wait for a little optimization for bigger ones...)
This would help players who have just joined, because they would be able to build however big a jump ship that they need to get to whatever system they want to. Obviously you would have to pay a small fee to use the shop's shipyards, so it would still be worthwhile to build your own.
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Mechanics for Spawn

The shop at spawn would start at max level, and retain full invincibility. However, there would be a huge price increase for members of very active factions, motivating them to either get their own advanced shop, or to establish diplomatic relations with factions with advanced shops. Nonfactioned members would not have any such penalty, so new players could still get the resources they need.
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Will add more mechanic sections later...

 

[0Samuel0]

Also, if anyone knows anything about how the upcoming Quest system will be working, that would be nice to know so that I can add a section for that.

 

[Zaphord]

Shops upgrading based on activity, I like it. You could base the shop's growth on the profits it's brought in.

 

[0Samuel0]

Shops upgrading based on activity, I like it. You could base the shop's growth on the profits it's brought in.

Something like that would work.
It would help for more advanced and rare blocks to scale properly in price, but might hurt builders. I would think that buying a power reactor would be worth less points than buying a weapon computer, since you would need to use the shop a bit to get it to that point. Although actually, since blocks would have a price increase on lower level shops that decreases when the shop becomes more advanced, I suppose the more recently a block became available, the more it would have its price increased. The only issue is that that would still leave the most advanced blocks with a higher price than now in maxed out shops.
This would be offset by the lower stock of more recently added blocks, so even though a single weapons computer (this would be maybe 2 tiers up from initial or something like that, weapons computers available later than weapons themselves) would be worth more than the power reactors, buying out all of the stock on both would be worth about the same.

 

[HolyCookie]

new shops are already being made If my sources are right


but that will just be a better look

 

[HolyCookie]

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[srs008]

well diverse shops would be nice, as for levelling it up, why not just use the "traffic" to decide it's level. E.g... a shop that is frequently used would level up quickly, but if that traffic was STOPPED. say by PIRATES hitting anything in range of the shop...
it'll begin to deteriorate.. it's defences becoming less advanced... the stock of lower quality. or quantity.
a "stick" shop is invincible, as stated, it's unlikely to have anything worth a look.
as the "quality" of the shop increases, it keeps more stock, and of better quality.
which is indicated by more TRADE ships moving stock around shops...
the better the content, the better the station is generally.
now if it fails to hold it's quota, it goes into disrepair, turrets stop "working" (deactivate), then eventually disappear (dismantled for scrap)
the station itself begins to lose spec, as they attempt to keep the shop open, that means the material used for hull may change to inferior quality over time, the shields and power are the last things to be affected, but eventually, they are all that's left.
if a shop is NEARBY... then the station will eventually become a direlict.
please note, a shop UPGRADES, adding new areas...
it does NOT "downgrade"... it will remove weapons, system blocks of ANY description... and eventually, you'll be left with a old shell.
but the shop will not "revert" to a stick for example.

the reason behind the idea, is this way, pirate or players can raid the shop, or destroy the shop's income... if that shop is a part of a faction's station... that means they must "destroy" the shop... meaning they'll have to level it back up.
or hope for better.
this means the shop must also "upgrade" a player base's materials at certain points too. perhaps adding turret hardpoints and "shop turrets" somehow...
of course, we'd need a way to tell a "shop" where it can "upgrade" the stations power, and shielding... (perhaps a block placed in a "room" designates the room as usable?)
maybe the shop merely makes the materials available via the build mode to a faction leader...