Ship Dealers

[Spartan-228]

So this idea uses the already existing shipyard anchor block and a new computer block. The idea being that you would dock the ship to the anchor and then set the price you were willing to sell the ship for in the new computer block. Some one could then come along and buy the ship. The ship would be unlocked and if a faction block is present on the ship, it would be assigned to that player.

Now a feature that would be nice if included with this, although not fully necessary for it to work. Would be the ability for the origanal creator or spawner of a ship, to disallow the ship being saved as a normal blueprint, thus preventing some one from taking your design after buying a ship from you. Of cours the buyer could make a blueprint that will alow them to put the ship in a shipyard and repair it, but not make more.

 

[MacThule]

Something like this is so necessary. My version of this would be to just allow shop owners to use the shop+trade network to sell any ship they own that's docked to the station the shop is on; even on plain rail dockers. Let potential buyers have the ability to 'test drive' the ship in a virtual sector (like shipyard uses) from anywhere on the trade network so they know if it's worth buying or some kind of scam.

And... why can we still not sell physical blueprints (empty or full) via trade network? That would be so amazing. I guess because eventually they want to eliminate BPs so it's not worth developing that UI?

I'm interested in what kind of 'designer protection' measures can be effectively taken with ship sales, but honestly don't think they're needed. At the point where there are 10+ manufacturers competing on a server, it's going to be more sensible for most players to just buy new ships when they need one rather than deal with the hassle of setting up an entire production line or wasting 20 minutes filling an unfamiliar blueprint. Sure - some players will act like Chinese state-sponsored tech companies and actively try to rip off your designs and use them to drive you out of the market you created, but hell... it happens IRL, so... eh. Main thing is make ship sales viable!!

 

[Sachys]

I like the idea of using the trade network above, limited blueprints and shipyards as stated in the OP - I think to purchase / sell a ship, you should have a trade network connected shop module, and a suitable shipyard (ie no buying a titan if your shipyard is a 15x15x15 sized thing).

I'd reckon this could require significant coding to ensure designs arent simply stolen and the system highly abused though.

Prices for example would have to reflect genuine values of blocks (something MacThule recently touched on in a thread I think), as well as design time - to prevent x faction selling y faction 5 titans for 5 credits.

Similarly, such sales should follow faction permissions, affiliation and shop rule settings. At war with that faction? - you cant buy, cannot even see those BPs. Personal enemy? Same. Too much of a low rank within your faction? Same again.

 

[NeonSturm]

It would not prevent duplication, only add grind-time to it.

Theoretically
one could make a 1-dimensional cannon-waffle that moves along a rail and cuts the ship at a layer to get a view on that layer and rebuild it by taking screenshots and have an external software figuring out block IDs. If he paints blocks black/white in custom textures that would be as easy as scanning QR-codes and if he understands basics of starmades data format it would take an hour to make a script putting it together from a list of blocks along each Z-line.

​

Today, it's not a big treat, but if someone manages to do it, all others feel cheated or think he is the original author when he publishes it in CC and the style-signature isn't easily recognizable for not being his.


It is better that the limit is implanted server-side as game rules rather than against ideological theft, or it may trigger for building templates like rooms and USD.
Like: Ships with "CopyRight" in name cannot be blueprinted or renamed.
(EDIT: the term "CopyRight" should be replaced to represent what the author wants: I prefer if some term is used which allows theft during faction-wars for RP-value. I also do not want to encourage CopyRight but highlight the problems that come with implementing such a feature. For me it was like saying: "You do same shit of the same level as CopyRight on WindowsXP")
[doublepost=1548623602,1548622945][/doublepost]

Let potential buyers have the ability to 'test drive' the ship in a virtual sector (like shipyard uses) from anywhere on the trade network so they know if it's worth buying or some kind of scam.

You buy a small ship you enjoy and if it doesn't hold what the creator advertises in "a youtube video" (EDIT: or display block and testrun) you make him take ship back for sale price or declare him a personal enemy. (EDIT: One example would be unannounced invisible warheads built into reactors that explode when toggling logic more than 100 times)

There can be some tolerance if you got an awesome craft and the new one is a small-scale scam you probably won't do anything stupid, but discussing a settlement.
Perhaps the merchant was baited to selling scam or offers you something to not screw his reputation.

The only thing peoples shouldn't do is let those who sell scam get away without loss.
8-13% of your own reputation should be used like a bounty to flag scammers.
Every time you flag something, the system must balance it on all accounts you flagged, that's why the range of 8-13% is flexible (the system middles you on 10% when you reach one bound)

 

[Sachys]

Ships with "CopyRight" in name cannot be blueprinted or renamed.

Copyright already applies to anything you create in Starmade (which by default also constitues design software and not just as a game).

By uploading to a server or the dock, you consent that your design may be abused. However, copyright restrictions apply, and should that design be further abused (ie made into a 3d model and sold on) then you would have a good case to take to court.
Additionally, both server owners, admins and Schine themselves may be liable if complicit in such undertakings.

This, however, is not what is being discussed: instead we're merely talking about design theft limitation through an in game system - unlike the current system that often leaves BPs unprotected due to its utterly infuriating UI and occasional resets due to updates and so on.

 

[NeonSturm]

Prices for example would have to reflect genuine values of blocks (something MacThule recently touched on in a thread I think), as well as design time - to prevent x faction selling y faction 5 titans for 5 credits.

Similarly, such sales should follow faction permissions, affiliation and shop rule settings. At war with that faction? - you cant buy, cannot even see those BPs. Personal enemy? Same. Too much of a low rank within your faction? Same again.

DAFUG?
Some of your post is relatively good, but not the section I quote!

It's perfectly fine if one faction sells 5 titans for 5 credits as long as they confirm doing something "possibly stupid".
Even and especially if you not like them doing it.
Rather than forbidding add a server-wide message and personal rules that PM players on certain message contents.

The seller/buyer are then framed for doing so and players hunt them like if they have 100 titans as bounty on their heads.


Give factions an option to do that with simple logic (like requiring a personal password to access certain area of the homebase or certain outpost).
Do NOT put it on faction rank or you create Hierarchies again.

Promote independent peoples that have a group of followers rather than players to put themselves into the member-list of the biggest faction and being pushed to do something to climb the ladder.
(EDIT: Follower-list can work as faction too, but then even lower faction members have follower-lists and everything is more interconnected).

 

[Sachys]

Eh? O____o~

 

[MacThule]

You buy a small ship you enjoy and if it doesn't hold what the creator advertises in a youtube video you make him take ship back for sale price or declare him a personal enemy.

There can be some tolerance if you got an awesome craft and the new one is a small-scale scam you probably won't do anything stupid, but discussing a settlement.
Perhaps the merchant was baited to selling scam or offers you something to not screw his reputation.

The only thing peoples shouldn't do is let those who sell scam get away without loss.
8-13% of your own reputation should be used like a bounty to flag scammers.
Every time you flag something, the system must balance it on all accounts you flagged, that's why the range of 8-13% is flexible (the system middles you on 10% when you reach one bound)

Yeah, then they just spawn a new character with a new name, recruit it, promote it to faction leader, and let it take over. Troll paradise.

Flagging, refunds, YouTube vids... it's too complicated. You need to rely on a web browser and 3rd-party application just to buy ships? What if all the ads are 3 minutes long and I have to waste an hour ship shopping when I could asses a ship I controlled in about 30 seconds? It's just not elegant. Why not let the entire process be handled by the game itself?

The feature of checking out a ship in a virtual sector already exists in the shipyard. They can literally patch that feature into networked ship sales and save everyone a lot of trouble very, very easily.

EDIT:
Suggested Buyer Process -
1. Open trade network [SHIPS & STATIONS] panel
2. Search for kind of thing you want using filters
3. Click "test virtual model"
4. When you find 'the one,' buy the ship with 1 button + confirmation (changes ship faction to yours)
5. Fly out to where the ship is and pick it up.

Suggested Seller Process -
1. Spawn your BP docked to the station.
2. Open shop and find list of entities docked to the shop's station, select ship and click 'Sell'
3. Set price and availability (i.e. local or network)

 

[Sachys]

If you do not use "CopyRight" as term, what would you suggest?

"UseRight", "TheftRight", "MonopolyRight" what is the best alternative term?

I think as you are about 87 degrees off the mark once more, I shall simply have you set to "ignore" from now on.

Edit: - rather than face a slew of replies that seem to make no sense (at least to me).

 

[NeonSturm]

Yeah, then they just spawn a new character with a new name, recruit it, promote it to faction leader, and let it take over. Troll paradise.

Flagging, refunds, YouTube vids... it's too complicated. You need to rely on a web browser and 3rd-party application just to buy ships? What if all the ads are 3 minutes long and I have to waste an hour ship shopping when I could asses a ship I controlled in about 30 seconds? It's just not elegant. Why not let the entire process be handled by the game itself?

The feature of checking out a ship in a virtual sector already exists in the shipyard. They can literally patch that feature into networked ship sales and save everyone a lot of trouble very, very easily.

Nothing against it.

I just said that "scam" is "part of the game" and we should provide players a default way to deal with it which they also can apply to real life scam.
But if you want to frame scammers, you have to back it up or you get trolls framing honest peoples for scam.
And then you need a way to earn credits that makes you rethink who you want to frame.
Actually, 8-13% was the value that should be put on the dark side of the coin - less and it isn't effective and more and peoples gain too much power over newbies with just a few days of work.

But to be able to sell ships, you may have to earn reputation somehow.
If you do not do it by uploading ships for public use, you might as well do it by mining for some faction that voucher for you by some amount of in-game-currency.
This can happen by them offering a certain ship or resource-stack to the TG guild that acts as insurance and diminishes for both framer and framed one.
You shouldn't have to be afraid of losing 8-13% as long as you contribute in draining insurance-value from scammers. If many peoples do it, he finally loses.

EDIT NOTE:
What would you do with a perfect test-run but later when using that ship it explodes.
Why? Dunno.
Perhaps only I know that there were invisible warheads/logic in the reactor that only trigger after 10 alternations of jump and salvage array usage).

 

[MacThule]

Nothing against it.

I just said that "scam" is "part of the game" and we should provide players a default way to deal with it which they also can apply to real life scam.
But if you want to frame scammers, you have to back it up or you get trolls framing honest peoples for scam.
And then you need a way to earn credits that makes you rethink who you want to frame.
Actually, 8-13% was the value that should be put on the dark side of the coin - less and it isn't effective and more and peoples gain too much power over newbies with just a few days of work.

But to be able to sell ships, you may have to earn reputation somehow.
If you do not do it by uploading ships for public use, you might as well do it by mining for some faction that voucher for you by some amount of in-game-currency.
This can happen by them offering a certain ship or resource-stack to the TG guild that acts as insurance and diminishes for both framer and framed one.
You shouldn't have to be afraid of losing 8-13% as long as you contribute in draining insurance-value from scammers. If many peoples do it, he finally loses.

I can see scams as part of the game, at some level - they're part of every game, but... the function of a good ship/station marketplace is (I believe) of such fundamental importance that I think it should be basically reliable. Otherwise, noobs who know nothing try and market twice, get ripped off both times, still can't figure out how to build their own ship yet because it's becoming quite esoteric, and they quit, and our total prime-time, total MP server population continues to hover around 45.

Let the scammers work harder - it's way too easy to ensure that new players have good access to small & medium ships to consider skipping a preview option when we already have the feature in place for virtual previews? Skipping it is just leaving the door open for scams that mostly affect noobs and make them hate playing this game.

Let the scammers at least work for their money by letting buyers insure a ship IS what it says it is before shelling out 150M credits for it, instead of handing it to them.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

So this idea uses the already existing shipyard anchor block and a new computer block. The idea being that you would dock the ship to the anchor and then set the price you were willing to sell the ship for in the new computer block. Some one could then come along and buy the ship. The ship would be unlocked and if a faction block is present on the ship, it would be assigned to that player.

Now a feature that would be nice if included with this, although not fully necessary for it to work. Would be the ability for the origanal creator or spawner of a ship, to disallow the ship being saved as a normal blueprint, thus preventing some one from taking your design after buying a ship from you. Of cours the buyer could make a blueprint that will alow them to put the ship in a shipyard and repair it, but not make more.

Why the hell is this NOT a thing!?
[doublepost=1548631498,1548630495][/doublepost]I've been asking for this to be implemented for nearly 3 years. Glad to see that others still feel the same way.

Over all, the minimum requirements for this system should be...

- Seller can select a docked entity set it to "for sale" and set a price for it; either in credits or specific resources. Advertise however you want.

- Buyer should be able to test drive the ship before purchase; including weapons/chambers to make sure they know what they're buying.

- When a sale is complete, the buyer can have the ship repaired at a shipyard but repair and disassembly are the only options; no designs or blueprints can be saved.

- To prevent unauthorized duplication, the buyer should be completely blocked from saving a design or blueprint of the ship. Sure; copy/paste and visual approximation are still possible but it forces potential design plagiarizers to do the work.

 

[happahappa]

I like the idea of using the shipyard anchor to sell ships directly. But this whole "just prevent the ships from being duplicated by prohibiting the generation of blueprints" goes into a very wrong direction, in my opinion. It would require some kind of digital rights management to be implemented and hence forces some strange copyright protection on ships, that could not be further modified AND saved as such by anyone, who acquired ownership by buying it, because as owner you would still be able to completely deconstruct or modify it to any extend, and limiting this ability, would go against the spirit of this game.

If you argue in regard to economics, namely that you would allow players to create markets by selling original products, then i would argue, that there is still a market in this sense, just that the creator is not selling products themselves, but its ability to create those products. You could still order any kind of original work in exchange for credits/blocks, you just don't get the kind of mass reproduction, where you earn money without doing anything but respawning your same design. But I don't see any of those markets to be of significant size, because in Starmade, most people really want to create something original by themselves.

Maybe we can have other in-game tools then copyright protection to allow players to engage in more meaningful economic relations.

 

[Alphajim]

Suggested Buyer Process -
1. Open trade network [SHIPS & STATIONS] panel
2. Search for kind of thing you want using filters
3. Click "test virtual model"
4. When you find 'the one,' buy the ship with 1 button + confirmation (changes ship faction to yours)
5. Fly out to where the ship is and pick it up.

Suggested Seller Process -
1. Spawn your BP docked to the station.
2. Open shop and find list of entities docked to the shop's station, select ship and click 'Sell'
3. Set price and availability (i.e. local or network)

I would add a refund button while the ship is still docked / on the station's bounding box, to prevent buying ships intentionally blocked into the station. Or maybe a simple command like /unstuck_bought_ship [name]. All of that being limited to some time after having bought the ship, to prevent abuse from this side too.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I like this idea, but would prefer it to be part of the rail system, so you could have all sorts of functions.

• Production line where the next ship or other product would be in line to roll into place after the product is sold.
• The product when released could be directed with rails and then undocked with either simple button or shoot out rails.

Why I asked a while ago if Schine/schema could change the way Shipyards anchor and use rails instead. This allows for a whole ton of useful features.

 

[MilitantCollective]

schema please make a part of universe update. Selling designs would be very intricate to balancing the PVP for beginners. It would allow new players to be on par with expert PVPers. While encouraging economy and limiting design theft.

 

[JinM]

limiting design theft.

This idea again.

Look, its really easy. If you include blueprint protection mechanisms people will:
1. Not buy it, if they can instead use another blueprint from the CC (propperly rated and in most cases better explained than with small ingame text descriptions).
2. Find a way to copy it anyway.
3. Have less fun because it just makes everything more complicated without adding new meaningfull gameplay.
4. Encourage people to get even more beanpicking about "this is my design this is his design you copied it boho".
5. Loose even more about the general idea of sharing knowledge about better building by limitting access to a structure.

For me point 5 is the worst of it all. People should help each other by sharing stuff as much as possible. As soon as there is a protection system they will maybe still share it, but then its less likely that people will even aim to get the ship. They allready know "hey this kiddo is maybe going to flag it for protected anyway why should I even ask for the ship its likely I have even less benefit from it".

And then there are specialists who claim that a protection would encourage people to share their blueprints if they knew that they are going to be protected. - I tell you what, listen: People didn't want to share their blueprints for pvp in a lot of cases in the past, and wont do so in the future as well. Because they don't want to share their secrets. And a protected blueprint will still allow to share this secrets about how they build it.

 

[MilitantCollective]

Build servers are for learning. Someone can gift you a blueprint. This is for server options. Not your preferred gameplay. Just because you may not like it doesn't mean server owners can't use it.

The OPs suggestion is an option not game dictation. It's this exact mentality that has kept the game depth from progressing.
[doublepost=1548680003,1548679687][/doublepost]In a sandbox with an economy, you have no rights to dictating gameplay unless you are the server owner. Your attempt at shunting an idea because it does follow the way YOU want the game to be is both immature and naive. Rather the options should be there should a person WANT to sell their ship, and another WANT to buy a ship.

 

[JinM]

It's this exact mentality that has kept the game depth from progressing.

I don't see progression if blueprints get flagged as protected. But that's just my opinion. If you think that this is a childish point of view, you can ofcourse do so. This wont help understanding each other better, but maybe you feel better after all, if you talk to me like that.

And please learn the difference between passionate talking and calling your opponents opinion stupid. You cross the line really fast where its not fun to talk anymore.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

happahappa. DRM is not required in this idea. For this proposal, the game itself would flag a sold ship to disable design/blueprint creation.
Also, what company do you know that stays in business by selling ideas (rather than actual products) to other companies? How feasible is that in an economy?


JinM. Once again you oppose this idea for your own personal reasons that ignore the rights and desires of the designers and other players.

- Regarding refusal to buy and instead going to CC: That is your right. No one is forcing you to buy a ship under these rules.

- Regarding finding a way to copy a ship: If you want to spend hours, days or weeks trying to copy/paste and manually "eyeball" the general appearance of a ship only to still lack the knowledge needed to properly (or even effectively) reproduce its use of logic, rails, chambers, weapon balancing, etc. then be my guest. There's nothing stopping you but your own understanding of design or the lack thereof.

- Regarding "less fun": Less fun for who? You? Obviously, some people here do think it would be fun to be able to sell ships in game. Quite a few in fact. Why do you feel qualified and entitled to tell people what they can and cannot do with their own ship designs?

- Regarding "bean picking". More likely, they'll dismiss your copied ship as a knockoff and you will develop a reputation for dealing in "illegal goods". This may prompt players to...
a) avoid you or any server you are on.
b) buy ships from dealers and come to you for product "analysis and duplication services" (Like the Chinese)
c) Attack your ship on sight for "intergalactic copyright infringement" . This is probably the least likely. Although, it would be an interesting twist.

- Regarding "sharing and knowledge building": Want to know how to get people to share? ...Make friends and stop acting entitled to the benefits of other people's work. Want to know how to build knowledge? ...Make friends with people who will teach you their tricks; both in aesthetics and engineering. We have shipyard threads and community content entries galore. Did you ever consider talking to someone whose designs you liked and asking them "How'd you do that"? ...or in your case; "can I have a copy of that ship"?

All of your fears stem from your own self-interest and a lack of concern for others. In both this thread and the others, it has been primarily (if not solely) you who has been opposing this idea. You're so concerned that blueprint copy-flagging will stop people from sharing their designs (with you) when...
1) You're not requesting the specific knowledge you seek from other players.
2) You seem unaware that some players (whose designs do not appear on CC) actually avoid multi-player due to risk of unwanted design release.
3) You have a whopping three whole entries of your own on community content.