Allow Shop Blocks On Ships

[Ithirahad]

It's not like having cargo space has any use either than pretending you're a pointless freighter in a non existent player economy.

Collecting pirate loot, moving stuff to shops for sale, carrying generic materials for whatever reason, delivering stuff to other players, mining...

 

[Snowtiger256]

As it's been said above, cargo space is not useless, it's an integral part of any operation needing a lot of storage, since storage blocks themselves don't have unlimited capacity anymore, and player inventory is likewise limited.

I have used storage and cargo modules as intermediate storage for exchanging goods with other players, I just create a small storage stockpile, loaded with the needed goods, slap a public access block next to the storage block and go from there.

To create a stable economy, we need a way to transfer credits outside a shop, without tossing it in front of other players to be picked up (this is problematic and insecure, due to the game's drop mechanic being unreliable in where the drop ends up (sometimes drops can appear within the blocks of structures (causing them to be irretrievable without digging them out), other times they spawn outside the structure instead of right in front of the dropping player) and anyone passing by could just walk away with the credits, because dropped stuff is visible to anyone nearby).

Some servers are rumored to have banking plugins installed, so you could transfer credits using chat commands, but these are not in widespread use, and aren't standard issue, so the server owners have to do all the work to find and install them, in order for them to be available to players.

 

[Jojomo]

The alternative is for everyone you visit with your mobile "shop" ship to have their own shop modules on their stations. Only one party needs a shop module...

 

[Ithirahad]

The alternative is for everyone you visit with your mobile "shop" ship to have their own shop modules on their stations. Only one party needs a shop module...

No, that's not an alternative, unless you are suggesting that a shop owner be able to pull materials from someone's storage at will in exchange for credits. And that's horrible, and probably not what you're saying. :P

 

[gamesaucer]

No, that's not an alternative, unless you are suggesting that a shop owner be able to pull materials from someone's storage at will in exchange for credits. And that's horrible, and probably not what you're saying. :P

I think he meant there's little need for this feature because selling ship-to-ship would be extremely rare, and in case you trade to a station the station can already have the shop module.
Why it would be extremely rare to actually want to trade with a ship? Several reasons:

1. You must randomly run into them since they're not on the map.
2. You must want to trade with them at the time you run into them.
3. You must have cargo space to carry what you would like to buy, which is not at all given, since your encounters are random.
   Alternatively, you must currently have the materials on you which you want to sell.
   The same here goes for the trade ship, since stations can be much bigger and thus stock more items.
4. You must have enough credits on you to buy what you want (I don't consider this as much of a problem, in my experience players tend to carry their money on them)
5. Stations are easier to defend since they only need systems dedicated power, shielding, production and storage and don't have to worry about TWR or turn rate.
6. Not only is it harder to find a ship, it's also way more convenient to just find a shop. Player shops may have warp gates, and a shop of which you know the location might be within jump range.
7. It's also easier to return to a place you've been before if you need to trade, instead of having to seek the shop out. This may play a role in where to settle as well, so people will settle nearer to existing shops where a trading ship is even less useful.
8. As a trader why risk transporting goods with no guarantee of safety or anyone to trade with when you can let the people come to you and let them worry about their goods?

Simply put: for all parties involved it's easier to have shops on stations. Therefore being able to use shop modules on ships seems pretty useless.

Of course, situations may occur in which it would be useful, but consider the following as well: Shop blocks function in the absence of a player. They're clearly tailored to stations. You don't just "abandon" a ship in the middle of nowhere and hope people trade with it.

I'd be in favour of letting people trade with others when they meet even without shop blocks and let the shop block be reserved as a method of automation. Only for stations, because that's the only time automating trade makes sense. In other words, we need a way to let players trade directly, not a way to slap shop modules onto ships. This would solve things like dropping credits into space or chucking items with no guarantee the other person has paid you enough for them. Even when you don't have a ship and are floating in deep space somewhere.

 

[DrTarDIS]

@ op: Yes. SHips should be allowed shop modules, BUT trade node and network access should be disabled (because physical shipments).

@ peaople who think shop-ships are redundant:
- A prime use case I can think of is an established faction putting a shop-ship near spawn and exchanging them as their inventory is depleted.
- Allowing a "bazaar" or multiple-shop area via docked/floating "ships" on one station. (Most servers would frown on allowing the necessary multiple-stations-per-sector this would require otherwise)
- simplifying fair-exchange practices between miners and producers(I'm buying fertikeen at this value. etc...)

 

[gamesaucer]

@ peaople who think shop-ships are redundant:
- A prime use case I can think of is an established faction putting a shop-ship near spawn and exchanging them as their inventory is depleted.
- Allowing a "bazaar" or multiple-shop area via docked/floating "ships" on one station. (Most servers would frown on allowing the necessary multiple-stations-per-sector this would require otherwise)
- simplifying fair-exchange practices between miners and producers(I'm buying fertikeen at this value. etc...)

Your first point makes little sense since you could just sell your stuff to the trading guild instead of players, and let players buy from the guild, or if you really want to sell to players, just put a station a sector away where you send freighters now and again to replenish items. There's nothing about this idea that can't work with a station, and I'd say it's relatively inadvisable to leave ships around.

Your second point is better, and I almost agree, but there's a few catches here. First of all, it's easier to have one station be a sort of grand exchange in a sector rather than having to scour dozens of ships for what you need at the cheapest price. The idea is neat but not very practical. Even as a seller I'd rather just be able to dump my goods into the station and get a fair price rather than having to wait around for people to decide to buy. After all, it's a ship. It's meant to travel. It's a waste having it hang around an area when you don't really need it there.
On top of that, buying things would be even more troublesome since the current shop system doesn't allow you to see where you're buying your items. You may be right next to one ship, but maybe another ship nearby is just the slightest but closer and there's no indication that you're browsing the wrong store. This makes finding the right goods to buy even more of a hassle.

Your third point is completely unrelated to this discussion and I therefore don't need to discuss it. It offers no insight as to why ships are better than stations for trade.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Your first point makes little sense since you could just sell your stuff to the trading guild instead of players, and let players buy from the guild, or if you really want to sell to players, just put a station a sector away where you send freighters now and again to replenish items. There's nothing about this idea that can't work with a station, and I'd say it's relatively inadvisable to leave ships around.

Your second point is better, and I almost agree, but there's a few catches here. First of all, it's easier to have one station be a sort of grand exchange in a sector rather than having to scour dozens of ships for what you need at the cheapest price. The idea is neat but not very practical. Even as a seller I'd rather just be able to dump my goods into the station and get a fair price rather than having to wait around for people to decide to buy. After all, it's a ship. It's meant to travel. It's a waste having it hang around an area when you don't really need it there.
On top of that, buying things would be even more troublesome since the current shop system doesn't allow you to see where you're buying your items. You may be right next to one ship, but maybe another ship nearby is just the slightest but closer and there's no indication that you're browsing the wrong store. This makes finding the right goods to buy even more of a hassle.

Your third point is completely unrelated to this discussion and I therefore don't need to discuss it. It offers no insight as to why ships are better than stations for trade.

MMM the default 1-station-per-sector limit means that after the first 6 "closest adjoining" station-slots are taken...they re taken. the 20"relatively close" ones would also fill up quickly. So "nothing about this idea" is a bit needlessly extreme in it's expression. Try thinking in less absolutes(or being more aware of the actual absolutes), it'll reveal more intricacies to you.

I think you're coloring your thought-process with nomenclature. EG "After all, it's a ship." Well...it's a possibly-mobile entity, and stations are immobile entities. In either case they are "meant to do" what you design them to do, within their limitations. Just because I use an entity as a turret-base, doesn't mean I can't also use it as a "Space-bar-and-grill, with a great view of perpetual carnage."

On wastes and whatnot, i suspect you haven't reached the "late game" level where the usefulness of a shop-fleet you can send out to coordinates would be apparent to you.

The bit about not being able to tell which shop...since when was the shop owner hidden from the buyer? That's more an argument about how observant your average pleb is. Not to be TOO holier-than-thou, but I think you not making that mental-connection does highlight some of the GUI issues we got right now. That sounds like fodder for another "look at [my idea] devs!" thread. Get on that, I'll upvote it.

 

[gamesaucer]

MMM the default 1-station-per-sector limit means that after the first 6 "closest adjoining" station-slots are taken...they re taken. the 20"relatively close" ones would also fill up quickly. So "nothing about this idea" is a bit needlessly extreme in it's expression. Try thinking in less absolutes(or being more aware of the actual absolutes), it'll reveal more intricacies to you.

When you get to the point of 6 stations surrounding spawn you're already overwhelming the buyer with so much choice that it's hardly even worth setting up shop anymore. There's just too much competition. My argument about not being able to find what you need as a buyer applies.

I think you're coloring your thought-process with nomenclature. EG "After all, it's a ship." Well...it's a possibly-mobile entity, and stations are immobile entities. In either case they are "meant to do" what you design them to do, within their limitations. Just because I use an entity as a turret-base, doesn't mean I can't also use it as a "Space-bar-and-grill, with a great view of perpetual carnage."

If you build a station but save it as a ship it won't function well. It needs thrust and systems. If you build a ship but save it as a station it also won't work well. It needs to maneuver to do its job. If you leave a ship lying around, people can bump into it to move it or use push/pull systems, meaning a ship is more vulnerable, on top of the vulnerabilities it gains from needing to be able to maneuver it (taking up space that could be dedicated to shields for example, as well as liming the effective size because you'll need more and more thrust to move it).

On wastes and whatnot, i suspect you haven't reached the "late game" level where the usefulness of a shop-fleet you can send out to coordinates would be apparent to you.

The "waste" is not "sending out ships". It's leaving them around to be able to get a chance for their wares to sell. As explained before, ships are more vulnerable than stations.
Also, your argument about sending a fleet out to certain coordinates makes no sense at all. As I said before, you need to KNOW where to sell your goods, meaning that there needs to be a STATION there for you to be able to tell that it's worth sending a fleet there at all. And what can a station have on it that a ship can't? Correct, a shop module.

The bit about not being able to tell which shop...since when was the shop owner hidden from the buyer? That's more an argument about how observant your average pleb is. Not to be TOO holier-than-thou, but I think you not making that mental-connection does highlight some of the GUI issues we got right now. That sounds like fodder for another "look at [my idea] devs!" thread. Get on that, I'll upvote it.

This is not really what I meant. What I meant is that you can't see, from where you're standing, without having opened the GUI, which shop would be closest to you. This is inconvenient. With the current system you may be able to view who exactly you're buying from, I've never noticed, but that still doesn't take away the fact that being able to buy from the shop you want to buy from is inconvenient, and with many shops cluttering a single sector, NOTHING, yes, absolutely nothing can change that. It's why in real life stores specialise. If you only had stores that sold everything both the shops and the customers would be inconvenienced. And since there's: 1. no good way to set up or advertise a brand, 2. profit margins don't exist when you can produce everything yourself and 3. Starmade provides only a minuscule economy, this is currently pretty much impossible to do without jumping through many more hoops than is necessary to simply line your pockets.

 

[Jojomo]

@ op: Yes. SHips should be allowed shop modules, BUT trade node and network access should be disabled (because physical shipments).

@ peaople who think shop-ships are redundant:
1. A prime use case I can think of is an established faction putting a shop-ship near spawn and exchanging them as their inventory is depleted.
2. Allowing a "bazaar" or multiple-shop area via docked/floating "ships" on one station. (Most servers would frown on allowing the necessary multiple-stations-per-sector this would require otherwise)
3. simplifying fair-exchange practices between miners and producers(I'm buying fertikeen at this value. etc...)

I'm not against the idea, I just don't currently really feel that there's a pressing reason to worry about implementing it. Station shops pretty much have it all covered.

(I've numbered your points in the quote DrTardis)

1. This seems a very narrow and specific use, I don't feel like it swings the argument much either way
2. This is potentially a good point, except I don't really think a bazaar is feasible in SM anyway. There aren't enough different products, and if you're selling the "same" thing as your neighbour, unlike in the real world there’ll be absolutely no differentiation between your products and theirs, at all. They'll be digitally, perfectly, identical.
3. I'm not sure how simplification happens? In any exchange both parties have to accept what's on offer anyway, and there are no laws or regulations that restrict trade in SM, so everyone is always free to deal with an alternative supplier/buyer.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Spoiler: :LOL:

Spoiler: teh hijack

When you get to the point of 6 stations surrounding spawn you're already overwhelming the buyer with so much choice that it's hardly even worth setting up shop anymore. There's just too much competition. My argument about not being able to find what you need as a buyer applies.

You're assuming that the "first six" are all "active and in abundance" throughout the entire lifetime of the server. My experience on established servers, and in games in general, is that this is rarely the case. Depreciation not really being a thing in most vanilla configs and all, and it's hard for the new blood to set up shop when dead-old-husks literally prevent them from moving in. I can conceive of situations where your argument is valid, but I can ALSO conceive of situations where it is not. Again. Try less absolute thought processes. I mean, if six possible shops is "overwhelming choice" I need to catch more people breaking down with choice anxiety at walmart when they have to chose between a dozen or more cashiers.

Your argument about "not being able to find what you need" DOES indeed apply....but I see it more as a bunch of ships(entities) in a smaller location(like 1 sector) is roughly equivalent to a shopping mall, where a bunch of shops force-spaced by 1 full sector is more like a different corner-store every couple city-blocks of the suburbs. One is CERTAINLY more convenient to shop in and hunt for deals. Density has a quality all of it's own.

If you build a station but save it as a ship it won't function well. It needs thrust and systems. If you build a ship but save it as a station it also won't work well. It needs to maneuver to do its job.

~So derelict Eta isn't a thing, eh?~

If you leave a ship lying around, people can bump into it to move it or use push/pull systems, meaning a ship is more vulnerable, on top of the vulnerabilities it gains from needing to be able to maneuver it (taking up space that could be dedicated to shields for example, as well as liming the effective size because you'll need more and more thrust to move it).

Engineering requirements of the different base-types of entities aside, I say this isn't exactly an argument for/against shops-on-ships. Now put away your ego. here's your "i'm rite" trophy. Now please keep it to the thread topic.

The "waste" is not "sending out ships". It's leaving them around to be able to get a chance for their wares to sell. As explained before, ships are more vulnerable than stations.
Also, your argument about sending a fleet out to certain coordinates makes no sense at all. As I said before, you need to KNOW where to sell your goods, meaning that there needs to be a STATION there for you to be able to tell that it's worth sending a fleet there at all. And what can a station have on it that a ship can't? Correct, a shop module.

Don't assume everyone is so attached to their blocks they can't send out some to "see what happens." Yeah, they're theoretically vulnerable, more so than homebase for sure. Arguably far less than a station when they have AI, regardless of thrust value. You seem to be equating "I wouldn't do it" with "it's not something people should be allowed to do." You don't like to take "it's vulnerable!" risk. good for you. I'd like the OPTION to be there.
Your lack of imagination disturbs me. There are plenty of situations where I would like the option to "send a shop" somewhere, regardless of it's station content.

This is not really what I meant. What I meant is that you can't see, from where you're standing, without having opened the GUI, which shop would be closest to you. This is inconvenient. With the current system you may be able to view who exactly you're buying from, I've never noticed, but that still doesn't take away the fact that being able to buy from the shop you want to buy from is inconvenient, and with many shops cluttering a single sector, NOTHING, yes, absolutely nothing can change that. It's why in real life stores specialise. If you only had stores that sold everything both the shops and the customers would be inconvenienced. And since there's: 1. no good way to set up or advertise a brand, 2. profit margins don't exist when you can produce everything yourself and 3. Starmade provides only a minuscule economy, this is currently pretty much impossible to do without jumping through many more hoops than is necessary to simply line your pockets.

Eh I can somewhat agree with you on the first part. but I challenge you to go in your single player, allow multiple shops per sector(or admin-load to bypass limit) and experiment with say a 9^3 "box shop". repeat-spawn it a couple times and notice how far the "can buy" bubble actually is for each. I think your argument relates to "overlapping shops" like if you build a homebase right-next to a shop-stick?

As for stores that sell everything...just look at the vending machines you see around you. I'm betting there's a "coke" and a "pepsi" (or equivalent) major brands, but looking at both they each sell an iced-tea, a brown-pop, a clear-pop, a fruit juice, a water, etc.. the only real diff being the label. Real life seems to indicate there is an economy to false-choice.

Hell, box-stores wouldn't be able to operate anywhere near each other if that held a glimmer of truth. That's what DRIVES an enconomy: multiple retailers, consumers, supply, demand.
[doublepost=1484379181,1484378359][/doublepost]

3. I'm not sure how simplification happens? In any exchange both parties have to accept what's on offer anyway, and there are no laws or regulations that restrict trade in SM, so everyone is always free to deal with an alternative supplier/buyer.

first scenario that comes to mind is "your average joe" starting their first miner, working away at an asteroid field. All chat saying how I wants the fertikeen, them responding their mining it right now, and me sending a shop-ship to their location to do the trade in-absentee while i'm doing my own glorious non-plebian works elsewhere. bonus if they use some of the acquired creds to buy blocks they need to advance them past scrub-mining stage from that same ship-shop.

hard to swap credits in the middle of asteroid fields(pesky shop modules), blocks a little less so. cut out the middle-man of finding a nearby stick-shop to arrange the trade, or forcing said faceless newbie miner to travel long distances themselves. certainly better than spending station-spawn money for a shop-location of minimal or transient use.

 

[Jojomo]

Spoiler: :LOL:

Spoiler: teh hijack

You're assuming that the "first six" are all "active and in abundance" throughout the entire lifetime of the server. My experience on established servers, and in games in general, is that this is rarely the case. Depreciation not really being a thing in most vanilla configs and all, and it's hard for the new blood to set up shop when dead-old-husks literally prevent them from moving in. I can conceive of situations where your argument is valid, but I can ALSO conceive of situations where it is not. Again. Try less absolute thought processes. I mean, if six possible shops is "overwhelming choice" I need to catch more people breaking down with choice anxiety at walmart when they have to chose between a dozen or more cashiers.

Your argument about "not being able to find what you need" DOES indeed apply....but I see it more as a bunch of ships(entities) in a smaller location(like 1 sector) is roughly equivalent to a shopping mall, where a bunch of shops force-spaced by 1 full sector is more like a different corner-store every couple city-blocks of the suburbs. One is CERTAINLY more convenient to shop in and hunt for deals. Density has a quality all of it's own.



~So derelict Eta isn't a thing, eh?~

Engineering requirements of the different base-types of entities aside, I say this isn't exactly an argument for/against shops-on-ships. Now put away your ego. here's your "i'm rite" trophy. Now please keep it to the thread topic.




Don't assume everyone is so attached to their blocks they can't send out some to "see what happens." Yeah, they're theoretically vulnerable, more so than homebase for sure. Arguably far less than a station when they have AI, regardless of thrust value. You seem to be equating "I wouldn't do it" with "it's not something people should be allowed to do." You don't like to take "it's vulnerable!" risk. good for you. I'd like the OPTION to be there.
Your lack of imagination disturbs me. There are plenty of situations where I would like the option to "send a shop" somewhere, regardless of it's station content.




Eh I can somewhat agree with you on the first part. but I challenge you to go in your single player, allow multiple shops per sector(or admin-load to bypass limit) and experiment with say a 9^3 "box shop". repeat-spawn it a couple times and notice how far the "can buy" bubble actually is for each. I think your argument relates to "overlapping shops" like if you build a homebase right-next to a shop-stick?

As for stores that sell everything...just look at the vending machines you see around you. I'm betting there's a "coke" and a "pepsi" (or equivalent) major brands, but looking at both they each sell an iced-tea, a brown-pop, a clear-pop, a fruit juice, a water, etc.. the only real diff being the label. Real life seems to indicate there is an economy to false-choice.

Hell, box-stores wouldn't be able to operate anywhere near each other if that held a glimmer of truth. That's what DRIVES an enconomy: multiple retailers, consumers, supply, demand.
[doublepost=1484379181,1484378359][/doublepost]

first scenario that comes to mind is "your average joe" starting their first miner, working away at an asteroid field. All chat saying how I wants the fertikeen, them responding their mining it right now, and me sending a shop-ship to their location to do the trade in-absentee while i'm doing my own glorious non-plebian works elsewhere. bonus if they use some of the acquired creds to buy blocks they need to advance them past scrub-mining stage from that same ship-shop.

hard to swap credits in the middle of asteroid fields(pesky shop modules), blocks a little less so. cut out the middle-man of finding a nearby stick-shop to arrange the trade, or forcing said faceless newbie miner to travel long distances themselves. certainly better than spending station-spawn money for a shop-location of minimal or transient use.

So you mean the advantage is that you can have fleets do your selling for you? That does sound like a nice benefit.

 

[gamesaucer]

You're assuming that the "first six" are all "active and in abundance" throughout the entire lifetime of the server. My experience on established servers, and in games in general, is that this is rarely the case. Depreciation not really being a thing in most vanilla configs and all, and it's hard for the new blood to set up shop when dead-old-husks literally prevent them from moving in. I can conceive of situations where your argument is valid, but I can ALSO conceive of situations where it is not. Again. Try less absolute thought processes. I mean, if six possible shops is "overwhelming choice" I need to catch more people breaking down with choice anxiety at walmart when they have to chose between a dozen or more cashiers.

Your argument about "not being able to find what you need" DOES indeed apply....but I see it more as a bunch of ships(entities) in a smaller location(like 1 sector) is roughly equivalent to a shopping mall, where a bunch of shops force-spaced by 1 full sector is more like a different corner-store every couple city-blocks of the suburbs. One is CERTAINLY more convenient to shop in and hunt for deals. Density has a quality all of it's own.

Your Walmart analogy falls apart easily. Each cashier doesn't offer a slightly different amount and selection of items at a slightly different price.

As for the dead husks, this makes some sense. I concede this point to you. However, I would also like you to consider that even dead trading posts can be traded to and from and in times of scarcity or abundance may be useful, for they will offer better prices when buying from them and selling to them respectively. On top of this, server owners can guard against this kind of thing and remove structures that affect the players negatively. Even if that doesn't happen, though, the stations can still be conquered and removed, unless they're home bases.

~So derelict Eta isn't a thing, eh?~

That it's a thing doesn't mean that it's in any way a good station. Right now NPC stations are mostly cosmetic. I'd want to build my own, better station if it comes to me picking between building my own or taking residence in an Eta, or at least stripping out the useless systems to replace them with better ones. You're calling the Eta "good" on different criteria than I target in my argument.

Engineering requirements of the different base-types of entities aside, I say this isn't exactly an argument for/against shops-on-ships. Now put away your ego. here's your "i'm rite" trophy. Now please keep it to the thread topic.

I say that is a pretty strong argument against ship shops though. If you can disable a competitor's shop by dragging it off somewhere I'd call that a pretty strong deterrent from using a ship. On top of this, bigger stations are more defensible, which again, makes them safer to store goods in (and giving them more room to do so). My argument is that ship become inconvenient to use at this size, even when sacrificing on the defensibility and/or cargo space.

Don't assume everyone is so attached to their blocks they can't send out some to "see what happens." Yeah, they're theoretically vulnerable, more so than homebase for sure. Arguably far less than a station when they have AI, regardless of thrust value. You seem to be equating "I wouldn't do it" with "it's not something people should be allowed to do." You don't like to take "it's vulnerable!" risk. good for you. I'd like the OPTION to be there.
Your lack of imagination disturbs me. There are plenty of situations where I would like the option to "send a shop" somewhere, regardless of it's station content.

They can send out their freighters to stations, as mentioned before. There's no merit to leaving fleets hanging around. The way you're arguing makes it possible to add anything to the game that players would like to try once or twice, regardless of merit. I can tell you that such an attitude towards adding features to a game will make the game a worse experience. The more features you add to a game that don't have merit beyond their novelty value, the more likely it is that people will choose a course of action to their detriment and end up being frustrated over the result.

Also, you mention stations being more vulnerable than ships or fleets I don't think I agree. A station can defend itself using much larger turrets than would be practical on a ship.

As for the argument that you'd like the option to be there, I can't really say much against that. But I don't think it should be counted as an argument in favour of this feature either. Game-design wise, the philosophy of giving people "the option" to do certain things comes with all sorts of negative consequences. If you want to I could go deeper into this, but I'd like to leave that as a remark that doesn't swing the argument either way.

Eh I can somewhat agree with you on the first part. but I challenge you to go in your single player, allow multiple shops per sector(or admin-load to bypass limit) and experiment with say a 9^3 "box shop". repeat-spawn it a couple times and notice how far the "can buy" bubble actually is for each. I think your argument relates to "overlapping shops" like if you build a homebase right-next to a shop-stick?

Hmm, interesting. I might do so because I'm curious about this now. Yes, my argument does relate to overlapping shops, but also to needing to navigate around and trying to find the best deals. Barring a "RED HULL AT 10C A PIECE" type of billboard I think it's going to be hard to find what you want.

As for stores that sell everything...just look at the vending machines you see around you. I'm betting there's a "coke" and a "pepsi" (or equivalent) major brands, but looking at both they each sell an iced-tea, a brown-pop, a clear-pop, a fruit juice, a water, etc.. the only real diff being the label. Real life seems to indicate there is an economy to false-choice.

Hell, box-stores wouldn't be able to operate anywhere near each other if that held a glimmer of truth. That's what DRIVES an enconomy: multiple retailers, consumers, supply, demand.

This false choice that you advocate is once again an incomplete analogy. As Jojomo mentioned, every block is identical in the game. The only thing that could differ is the price it's sold at, which will make people clearly sway one way or the other, lacking any kind of identity or difference between the products. Equivalent vs. Identical. Big difference.

Also, I think you misunderstand why shops that compete tend to group up close together. I recommend this video.

first scenario that comes to mind is "your average joe" starting their first miner, working away at an asteroid field. All chat saying how I wants the fertikeen, them responding their mining it right now, and me sending a shop-ship to their location to do the trade in-absentee while i'm doing my own glorious non-plebian works elsewhere. bonus if they use some of the acquired creds to buy blocks they need to advance them past scrub-mining stage from that same ship-shop.

hard to swap credits in the middle of asteroid fields(pesky shop modules), blocks a little less so. cut out the middle-man of finding a nearby stick-shop to arrange the trade, or forcing said faceless newbie miner to travel long distances themselves. certainly better than spending station-spawn money for a shop-location of minimal or transient use.

This makes sense. However, this still requires some sort of trust between the traders, as the miner will need to give away the position of their, most likely poorly defended, ship to the other players rather than being able to drop it off somewhere, and the buyer of the ore needs to be able to trust that they're not sending their shop ship into an ambush.
That said, this might come in handy barring the introduction of being able to remotely send fleets that can automatically trade with station shops. In that case, the mining player could attach a small craft to their miner to drop off the ores at the other party's nearest trading station.

 

[Spoolooni]

Collecting pirate loot, moving stuff to shops for sale, carrying generic materials for whatever reason, delivering stuff to other players, mining...

Mmmmm....the whole abusing the block for mining ships is more convincing then what you've mentioned. Though I am quite conflicted as well as I want people to be able to roleplay being a freighter.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Consider hiding the tangent-talk under spoilers like I am. This IS turning into a hijack, with the multy-quote forcing wall-o-text. And the use of multy-quote shows you CAN do some BBCode.

Spoiler: unrelated IMHO

Your Walmart analogy falls apart easily. Each cashier doesn't offer a slightly different amount and selection of items at a slightly different price.

I think you go to different stores. Most of the cashiers do have different "impulse buy" or "dash" products. an overall homogeneity of dash sure, but where one will have little LED pen-lights with a neat magnet tip, another will have candybars and magazines. Regardless, that doesn't directly apply to, or even give a basis for, shop-ships. That focus broseph, eye on the ball.

As for the dead husks, this makes some sense. I concede this point to you. However, I would also like you to consider that even dead trading posts can be traded to and from and in times of scarcity or abundance may be useful, for they will offer better prices when buying from them and selling to them respectively. On top of this, server owners can guard against this kind of thing and remove structures that affect the players negatively. Even if that doesn't happen, though, the stations can still be conquered and removed, unless they're home bases.

Sooo...same argument as ship-shops, but IMHO easier to clear out clutter of ship-shops.
I think the difference in perspectives is that I would prefer to have the risk, reaction, and responsibility in my own (and potentially altruistically-hostile players) hands.
You seem to lean towards "let the admins handle it!" and/or "defer to authority figure"

I unsure exactly how this is against-or-for shop-ships. But it certainly looks at some possible evolved gameplay.

Spoiler: more unrelated

That it's a thing doesn't mean that it's in any way a good station. Right now NPC stations are mostly cosmetic. I'd want to build my own, better station if it comes to me picking between building my own or taking residence in an Eta, or at least stripping out the useless systems to replace them with better ones. You're calling the Eta "good" on different criteria than I target in my argument.

Just pointing out that the "rule of cool" has it's place too. Also that just because "person A/L&N" wouldn't do/use something, is not an argument against implementation if "person B" would.
Grok me?

I say that is a pretty strong argument against ship shops though. If you can disable a competitor's shop by dragging it off somewhere I'd call that a pretty strong deterrent from using a ship. On top of this, bigger stations are more defensible, which again, makes them safer to store goods in (and giving them more room to do so). My argument is that ship become inconvenient to use at this size, even when sacrificing on the defensibility and/or cargo space.

I think there is only an argument against "ship-only-shops." Even then I don't view it as a strong one as you can dock to an immobile entity to hard-counter. You seem to be coming from a "my way is the only right way" thought process here, specifically on risk/reward assessment.

Spoiler: semi-related economics

They can send out their freighters to stations, as mentioned before. There's no merit to leaving fleets hanging around. The way you're arguing makes it possible to add anything to the game that players would like to try once or twice, regardless of merit. I can tell you that such an attitude towards adding features to a game will make the game a worse experience. The more features you add to a game that don't have merit beyond their novelty value, the more likely it is that people will choose a course of action to their detriment and end up being frustrated over the result.

Also, you mention stations being more vulnerable than ships or fleets I don't think I agree. A station can defend itself using much larger turrets than would be practical on a ship.

As for the argument that you'd like the option to be there, I can't really say much against that. But I don't think it should be counted as an argument in favour of this feature either. Game-design wise, the philosophy of giving people "the option" to do certain things comes with all sorts of negative consequences. If you want to I could go deeper into this, but I'd like to leave that as a remark that doesn't swing the argument either way.

I disagree with most of this. The design-philosophy is just that. IMHO a ship with 0.05 T:M and onboard weapons is better than a station of the same mass in a combat environment simply by it's ability to rotate. Arms-to-bear, silhouette, etc... are the factors my design philosophy uses to lead to that conclusion. Not saying yours is wrong.

I am saying that it's a subjective matter with a LOT of variables I doubt either of us is fully consciously aware of. I think my mental framework has more "atomosomania" and less risk-adversity. I think because of that very difference extra options like this are indeed a "good thing" with "merit" for a sandbox game like starmade.The option doesn't detract from your camp, but does enhance mine.

You can't actually use "There's no merit to leaving fleets hanging around" as an argument man. That's straight strawman. You yourself said ships are supposed to move. Slapping a shop module on your theoretical freighter removes the need for the station drop-off point in one use case, and can be mounted to a station in another. IMHO it only adds to fun, and has the option to remove tedious steps in a process/interaction.

Hmm, interesting. I might do so because I'm curious about this now. Yes, my argument does relate to overlapping shops, but also to needing to navigate around and trying to find the best deals. Barring a "RED HULL AT 10C A PIECE" type of billboard I think it's going to be hard to find what you want.

This false choice that you advocate is once again an incomplete analogy. As Jojomo mentioned, every block is identical in the game. The only thing that could differ is the price it's sold at, which will make people clearly sway one way or the other, lacking any kind of identity or difference between the products. Equivalent vs. Identical. Big difference.

Also, I think you misunderstand why shops that compete tend to group up close together. I recommend this video.

Nice TED talk. Do yourself a favor and contemplate why two shops selling the same products have different owners and why they set up on the same beach. Also, consider that it's a relative as the competition in this example. It gives a good overview of a part of economics, but doesn't delve into the logistics of true competition. You touch on more of it with the billboard thing. I like to think that when you give a group of people tools, they will gleefully find strange-but-effective ways to use them.

EG: Nav-markers(the ship is named "~~!!CHEAP HULL!UY!UY!!UY!!" vs a ship named "__BUYING___MINERALS") Eye-candy("what is THAT!?!?! wait.. i can BUY here! LOL selling my dolom, sucker!"), actual deals, reputation, alignment, etc.

This makes sense. However, this still requires some sort of trust between the traders, as the miner will need to give away the position of their, most likely poorly defended, ship to the other players rather than being able to drop it off somewhere, and the buyer of the ore needs to be able to trust that they're not sending their shop ship into an ambush.
That said, this might come in handy barring the introduction of being able to remotely send fleets that can automatically trade with station shops. In that case, the mining player could attach a small craft to their miner to drop off the ores at the other party's nearest trading station.

More "risk-adversement" vs "~I like explode!~" ideology crash here. Don't think either is right or wrong, but don't think either should chain the other(Although ~~I *AM* more right, nyah nyah. Me so great~~ ).

I'm glad that you came up with yet another usage-case (an established miner with a pod). That right there is productive use of the flip-side mentalities. Certainly something I'd like to see in fleet controls. I think it's a more involved programming task and lesser investment:payoff than just moving shop-blocks to the general category, though.

 

[splatthecat]

I will reiterate what I said before, shops should be the domain of space stations. By all means develop a better way of trading with other players face to face rather than chucking money and goods at each other.

 

[Wolverines527]

I would say yes but only for stuff like plants and basic hull and other basic stuff

So nothing like advanced armor or standard armor or weapons or effects or even shields

 

[max stripe]

I would say yes but only for stuff like plants and basic hull and other basic stuff

So nothing like advanced armor or standard armor or weapons or effects or even shields

any particular reasoning for making them useless?

 

[splatthecat]

What if you was in range of a station shop AND a ship shop? None of this makes any sense.

Now a "trading" block could be carried on a ship, placed on a planet or a station. Players could access their trading hub inventories remotely and offer other players items for sale. These purchases could be then transported via a cargo ship to the recipients hub or even personal inventory or ships cargo space.

This block could also facilitate the transfer of credits from one player to another instead of simply throwing them at their feet. Maybe even being able to set up regular payments for services rendered, such as providing defensive ships for mining fleets, escorts for cargo fleets and so on. It could be along the lines of "pay x Credits to y every z faction turns".

These blocks could form a kind of ATM and be found at stations. Players could even deposit money into a personal account so they were not carrying them about their person all the time.

I would rather something like this than a "stop me and buy one" style mobile shop.

 

[Nickizzy]

What if you was in range of a station shop AND a ship shop? None of this makes any sense.

that's really a UI problem and not an arguement, but for immediate implantation I get your point.