An analysis of the relationship between planets, faction interactions and resource acquisition.

[Noc]

Where did you get planet-goo from? . Please read the thread, not just look at it for 2 seconds before typing a generic reply.

You want to make planets valuable through a resource pump. I disagree strongly. In fact, I believe the far simpler solution is just have resources less regenerative, not more.

 

[Keptick]

You want to make planets valuable through a resource pump. I disagree strongly. In fact, I believe the far simpler solution is just have resources less regenerative, not more.

Have you ever played on a server? If so, you'd know that there's absolutely nothing to do after establishing you base or whatever. You can't attack other people's homebases and they can't attack you. It's insanely stale. 99% of players that have spent a good amount of time on servers will tell you the same thing.

Btw, that's just a suggestion. The problems still stand. And making resources harder to acquire would just completely kill the game for most people.

 

[kupu]

Yep. You open with some valid problems and the idea tackles the issues pretty creatively, but i'd hope some of the issues could be solved via other methods.
Parts of your idea simply removes gameplay elements that cause problems. Starmade is pretty unique in that you can interact with planets from orbit. To remove this seems like a backwards step. Anyway, a quick personal (non official) breakdown on how we could address this.

• Planets are the best source of resources. They can provide many asteroids worth of resources with a single plate. Combined with the fact that they respawn (harvest one completely, kill it and reload the sector) this makes them the ideal source of resources for all factions and players out there.

Agreed. I think it should stay this way.

• Mining planets causes extreme server lag. (From personal experience, starting to mine a planet raises my ping, along with everyone else's, from 14 to a couple of hundreds on Elwyn Eternity, a very beefy server.)

Yes it does. However this is a known bug and Schema has a pretty good idea of what causes it. It should be fixed. (Does this perhaps fix a large portion of the issue you outline?)

• Incentives for factions and/or players to interact are practically null. Why would I go fight this other faction when there's absolutely no benefit to do so? Especially when I risk loosing a ship that I worked very hard to produce?

Yea... This i'm not sure on. I think i'll wait for more faction / quest developments to pass a judgement on it.

• Assumption: Mining is the equivalent to an MMO grind in that it is a very basic, repetitive and boring thing to do. Mining is NOT fun, a game should be played for fun.

Way too subjective to state this. Mining can be spiced up by in game events. Pirates and looters, trade guild policing quantities / substabces, territory breeches, alien life that lives on asteroids... the list could go on. The PvE portion of the game needs fleshing out. I think we should tackle the issue of "mining is not fun" by giving miners a variety of challenges to overcome rather than removing it from the game.

• Capturing and extending a territory has practically no use. Even an entire faction would have a hard time depleting the asteroid belts of an entire system before they respawn.

Territory and faction points will have a use. Schema has confirmed Faction Points will be used as currency for something.

• There is currently no fp penalty for loosing territory.

What if there was? I think there should be. I also think there should be *something* to prevent a 5x5 block station "controlling" a territory.

The miners must ABSOLUTELY keep on working even when the sector is unloaded.

I don't have enough knowledge on the code / engine side of things to say for sure... but a server with lots of factions all mining lots of planets and having to keep them permanently loaded? This seems like it could cause some performance issues? Create huge databases and eat lots of bandwith?

I also worry this mechanic will turn the gathering of minerals into something akin to "Cookie Clicker" or some idle generation of materials with very little micro management.

 

[Keptick]

Yep. You open with some valid problems and the idea tackles the issues pretty creatively, but i'd hope some of the issues could be solved via other methods.
Parts of your idea simply removes gameplay elements that cause problems. Starmade is pretty unique in that you can interact with planets from orbit. To remove this seems like a backwards step. Anyway, a quick personal (non official) breakdown on how we could address this.


Agreed. I think it should stay this way.


Yes it does. However this is a known bug and Schema has a pretty good idea of what causes it. It should be fixed. (Does this perhaps fix a large portion of the issue you outline?)



Yea... This i'm not sure on. I think i'll wait for more faction / quest developments to pass a judgement on it.


Way too subjective to state this. Mining can be spiced up by in game events. Pirates and looters, trade guild policing quantities / substabces, territory breeches, alien life that lives on asteroids... the list could go on. The PvE portion of the game needs fleshing out. I think we should tackle the issue of "mining is not fun" by giving miners a variety of challenges to overcome rather than removing it from the game.


Territory and faction points will have a use. Schema has confirmed Faction Points will be used as currency for something.


What if there was? I think there should be. I also think there should be *something* to prevent a 5x5 block station "controlling" a territory.



I don't have enough knowledge on the code / engine side of things to say for sure... but a server with lots of factions all mining lots of planets and having to keep them unloaded? This seems like it could cause some performance issues?

I also worry this mechanic will turn the gathering of minerals into something akin to "Cookie Clicker" or some idle generation of materials with very little micro management.

Thanks a lot for your imput on this. I agree with your points, there really isn't anything that doesn't have flaws. At least I know that the dev team is now aware of the issues

How about ALL the things? My suggestion + the stuff you said. Wouldn't that be fun?

 

[RebelliousHive]

Tbh, I'd like to see "dead zones" from planets that don't respawn, encouraging expansion a bit more, and a reason to "defend", more or less, your planets from planet crackers & invasive mining.
For that though, I'd say AI needs to be improved for patrol routes (AI Guarding your regions!), Planet mining to cause less crippling lag, and a few other things. Planet cracking should leave a lasting and damaging effect, so that crackers will be met with hostility if they try expanding into the territory of others. This + Smaller inventory slots would make cargo space something you'd need for mass mining operations as well.

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Way too subjective to state this. Mining can be spiced up by in game events. Pirates and looters, trade guild policing quantities / substabces, territory breeches, alien life that lives on asteroids... the list could go on. The PvE portion of the game needs fleshing out. I think we should tackle the issue of "mining is not fun" by giving miners a variety of challenges to overcome rather than removing it from the game.

Illegal materials that the trade guild gets hostile at the sight of when.
I'd suggest that, along with much smaller amounts of material you can carry per "slot", (because 10mil is a bit much and makes storage really not a aspect of the game at all). That combined with a "transfer" input/output block for offloading and loading your materials would be nice and make cargo ships something that you might actually want to make.

That, combined with illicit stations & factions (ie pirates or smuggler faction. Smugglers are neutral by default, but won't give you any good deals if you're in good standing with the trade guild, being the black market traders that they are. Perhaps even Pirates could become "neutral" if you became "friendly" with smugglers, but hostile with the trade guild?) could make mining & cargo hauling a much different experience than it currently is.

Territory and faction points will have a use. Schema has confirmed Faction Points will be used as currency for something.

I'd say make fp generate slower, and systems cost more, with income being being divided by distance from the nearest faction controlled system (or relay station), so that they are a lot more "valuable" and harder to get, but getting major gains would require the risk of hostility via over expansion.

This doesn't really address them being "used" though, which is a problem.
Maybe they could be used to recruit NPC crewmembers as an alternate to currency, and we could have the crew be have much more complex "AI" than the Bobbys? Bobbys are nice and all, but they 'ought to remain used mostly in turrets and rely solely on scanner/radar detection.
An emphasis on some NPC crew would also sort of help people figure out ways of defending their stations, since in all honesty, you cannot always have somebody on in your faction to watch over your territories.

What if there was? I think there should be. I also think there should be *something* to prevent a 5x5 block station "controlling" a territory.

Large "arrays" for territory control, with the control only extending a radius around said "array", or as a relay between stations. ie one "faction" block on a station/area controller could "control" up to a 8x8x8 section of your current system at max?
They'd basically broadcast "Hey, You. This is our territory. I'll shit in your cheerios if you try anything funny".
If you want to really control an entire system, You would have to have multiple stations of a similiar size, space out throughout space, and you'd "control" the area within those? You could even, with this, make it so that factions could contest for control of a system, making "border skirmishes" more of a possibility.
These "Control arrays" would be under a very real threat of being damaged and would cause you to lose territory, giving people incentive to also form "alliances" or to have very strong defenses on border control stations, Or they're going to be really vulnerable to hit & run attacks
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I would suggest a few changes
I want certain materials acquired from certain places.
Examples:
- More important/powerful modules require rarer resources.
- Hull color should be based on more than just one rock. Seems like there would then need to be a high demand for one plain asteroid.
- Medical blocks should require certain plants
- If fuel is ever added I want to see it come from gas giants stars nebulas or dust clouds, all of which is not an option yet, but still. That could happen.
Asteroids and planets should both contribute their own ways to crafting. It should not be entirely equal or entirely divided.

More "rare" stuff would be nice to see, but you've also got to take into account that by adding more rare items into the game, you're putting even more of a gap between newbies and well established factions.
Hull colour, however, is frustrating. Brown blocks shouldn't take a fuckload of resources to make, guys. But they do.
Pls fix.

Different planet types could specialize in particular ores. I understand that a planet needs to be capable of accommodating any player so they can get started with a basic ship. Let's reduce the crafting recipes for reactors, thrusters and cores to a small set of resources, one that every planet has. Then the other 80% of the resources on a planet could be specific. A few ores/crystals, but not more than 6 or so. Lava planets generate the red/orange crystals and ores. Ice planets get the blue ones. It doesn't have to be that way. But you get the idea. Unique planets with geography and compositions that leads to a differences in their resources is a must for me.

Rarer resources should be found in more dangerous space. The core can be abundant in basic resources. It should also give us less in extraction rates. You want more resources faster? Then fly out into unclaimed pirate infested space and extract the resources that nobody has touched. The further from the core, the more there should be to to extract.

This though, sounds like it would be a nice idea. I think that we'd need to have better AI for ventures out into those "dangerous territories" to actually be dangerous, though.
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Great idea, Keptick.

Here's the thing, though: An auto-miner sounds more boring than our current system. Star Made needs a time sink, something to do when you aren't traveling or fighting, and mining, however boring, covers that. I've been pushing my crewability thing a little far, but being able to directly access and edit the planetside miner to improve it's efficiency would be great.

The answer to a lot of things I'm thinking is better AI. Well that, and much better Armour, so that shields are less of a must early game (Because even a paper spitball can destroy half a station in one blow)
Pirates, with improved AI, could send out raiding parties to your station, and either force you to give them resources/credits, or could attack you (Whilst trying to stay in the positive of their station's own respective resource pool).
Higher armour values could make early game/fighter game play a lot funner of a time sink as well, and fighting with low to no shields wouldn't be as much of a "one shot and ded lol" type of experience, because your fighter's surrounding hull could actually take a few shots without causing a catastrophic failure.

The only thing I have to add to this is instead of centralized systems providing more resources, and arm ones providing less, it should be randomized. You'd scan a system to see its resource composition or whatever. And for making a point to gather more systems, well, simply make it so you get credits for each system you own. Also, the trading guild would provide you with blocks and stuff to pass through/mine your system.

Trading guild hub -> Sends ships to resupply/redistribution -> Pirates/Players can intercept for embargoes or profit.



longest post ever

 

[Criss]

More "rare" stuff would be nice to see, but you've also got to take into account that by adding more rare items into the game, you're putting even more of a gap between newbies and well established factions.

I feel like that isn't as valid a reason when we consider this is generally how it works in any progression based game. Battlefield and CoD players get new weapons and gear as they play. Older MMO characters are high levels and have legendary gear and a wider variety of abilities. Why should older players not be rewarded for playing longer. I would like to see some progression.

 

[RebelliousHive]

I feel like that isn't as valid a reason when we consider this is generally how it works in any progression based game. Battlefield and CoD players get new weapons and gear as they play. Older MMO characters are high levels and have legendary gear and a wider variety of abilities. Why should older players not be rewarded for playing longer. I would like to see some progression.

Oh, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'm saying that it's just something that has to be taken into account.
How essential would these rare items be for actual meaningful progression in a player's space fleet? How much of a lasting impact would lacking these resources or items cause?
Right now, because of the paper thin Armour we currently have, combined with the exponential gains weapon systems get, lacking the resources to create shields can be somewhat crippling when it comes to creating combat worthy ships, and thus limits expansion based mostly on how lucky you're getting with resource distribution in your sector. Would these "rare" resources cause a situation like this, or would they add a thought out dynamic to the game?

 

[Keptick]

Progression ingame isn't through game items, it's through what you make with them. Think of it this way:
starter ship = starter gear
Super mega titan of doom = ze best legendary equipment.

There already is progression ingame, it's just not super evident ^_^

 

[EricBlank]

I love the idea of using some basic resources you can get anywhere for basic ship components. That way we don't need a specific environment to get started.

However, on top of planets having resources unique to their geology (and I would love to see more in-depth thinking for planet geology than colored rocky planets), we should also be able to acquire resources from their biosphere and atmosphere - and these are things that would be heavily impacted if you took a salvager array and vacuumed up the planet's crust. Therefore, although I think salvaging the entirety of the crust should be a legitimate way to get huge amounts of common resources and rare ores rapidly, I think an automated resource acquisition system, like on-planet bases and linked orbital facilities, would be a great way to let us get at and exploit the biosphere and atmosphere of a planet over extended periods.
From the biosphere we could get resources for improving medical facilities, such as bacteria cultures, and sources of gene mods to add to the player and NPC crew as benefits (lost when you die), things like reduced vulnerability to alien creature attacks and pheromones that cause normally a hostile creatures to treat us as a member of their species, which would make capturing them easier. And perhaps a %chance to survive ship core destruction and be dumped in space, not showing up on radar when outside a core etc. Factions who control a planet would then have a monopoly on unique gene mods other factions would want unless sweet serendipity let's someone else find a planet with similar resources. You orbital research facility could have a chance to capture live animals if they have big enough containers (save the container size when offloading), and next time you load the sector the game chooses an unoccupied container to put the critter in, for breeding or whatever...
The atmosphere I have no specific ideas for. Perhaps using gases extracted to produce effect blocks and FTL systems? Of course not all planets have an atmosphere, and atmosphere content differs.
Also, I'd say go for it and allow ground based mining operations that produce a very small amount of the resources unique to the planet's geology over a long period of time, automatically shipped up to an orbital facility for pickup if you have one. Certainly couldn't compete with a strip mining operation, but maybe enough to build a shuttle in a pinch.

Kupu is right that keeping planet sectors loaded is a terrible idea, but the game doesn't need to have the sector loaded to give you x amount of resources per y time frame and dump them in a storage cache associated with a planetary facility, does it? Hopefully that would produce less lag.

 

[Ithirahad]

*Bump.* This is an issue that really needs to be addressed. While Kupu does make valid points, the fact that planets outclass asteroids with no drawbacks just dooms us to a galaxy (or at least, galactic core area) full of mined-out planets, and seems ridiculous to me. Even if performance isn't in fact an issue and the lag is just another server bug, planets should be continually valuable points to fight over, not just massive balls of resources to rip apart and abandon.

...And there's nothing fun about mining; adding challenges to it just sounds annoying. Personally, I'd rather see it turn into something passive (Kind of like in large-scale strategy games; resource-generation buildings just slowly make materials. AI crew may be required to man the core miners.) so players can worry about other things. Unless someone comes to take over your core miner, of course.

 

[Criss]

Other parts of the game are being worked on right now. Calbiri already stated his opinions on ship to planet mining (he doesnt seem to like it). If that has any influence on this then I am sure we will see planets take the focus of a major update.

 

[Ravenskysong]

deep core miner sounds really, really cool.
harvesting a planet with a ship is just silly, just that I can get close enough to a planet with my giant clunky ship is silly.
also i saw someone mention asteroid respawns. I like to think that the asteroids we see are just samples of the much larger belts. I pretend the rest of the asteroid belt isn't 'loaded' and that after I mine out all the asteroids the rotation of the belts moves more into position. when we get asteroid build blocks back I intend to hollow out asteroids and make them bigger around my base, so I can get a fake star wars asteroid field xD

 

[aceface]

uff, imagine, your orbital miner mining stuff from the orbit of a planet, or your planet extractor mining stuff from a planet, your drone transporter or your own piloted transporter goes to pick the items up, and imagine if the stack size was limited to like 100-200, your transporter would be huge, you would have to go to homebase to drop the goods off, and suddenly a pirate attacks you. srsly we need stack size or some other kind of storage system and everything you suggested keptick

 

[Ithirahad]

uff, imagine, your orbital miner mining stuff from the orbit of a planet, or your planet extractor mining stuff from a planet, your drone transporter or your own piloted transporter goes to pick the items up, and imagine if the stack size was limited to like 100-200, your transporter would be huge, you would have to go to homebase to drop the goods off, and suddenly a pirate attacks you. srsly we need stack size or some other kind of storage system and everything you suggested keptick

Let's not forget this: http://starmadedock.net/threads/une...-and-density-getting-the-wheels-turning.6425/
If this suggestion I just linked was added, then it would become important to have resource extractors in many systems spread out, creating more of an incentive to hold larger amounts of territory.

 

[aceface]

Let's not forget this: http://starmadedock.net/threads/une...-and-density-getting-the-wheels-turning.6425/
If this suggestion I just linked was added, then it would become important to have resource extractors in many systems spread out, creating more of an incentive to hold larger amounts of territory.

yeah... would give a reason to actually claim systems. faction points mean nothing to me. they could literally be taken out of the game and i wouldn't notice, since i only need 1 system and don't want to waste resources on getting another one for the lols xD

 

[Keptick]

Let's not forget this: http://starmadedock.net/threads/une...-and-density-getting-the-wheels-turning.6425/
If this suggestion I just linked was added, then it would become important to have resource extractors in many systems spread out, creating more of an incentive to hold larger amounts of territory.

I'll add this link to the main post.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I generally disagree with the OP's solutions while agreeing that we need changes to help foster economy and interfaction rivalry. I do think the "Deep Core Miner" concept has some merit. I like the idea if it produces a slow but steady supply of the resources on the planet face it's built upon, even when no one is around. Obviously you'd have to fly from planet-to-planet and periodically pick up the mined resources, hopefully before someone else raids it .

However I think such a permanent mining structure needs to be very slow. Slower than taking a decent salvage ship out and mining by yourself. It will provide some nice resource boosts while you're offline, but if you're online you can do a much better job yourself. Not playing the game should never be an advantage over playing the game. Otherwise the game will become one of those dumb cell phone city games (like Star Wars Commander which I briefly played) where you log in once a week to gather your resources and that's it.

If planets and asteroids currently respawn (I have not tested this) then I think this simply needs to be fixed. We have a huge universe of multiple galaxies. When systems get consumed, there is plenty of space to spread out for more resources. As a server progresses, factions will naturally come into conflict over the remaining systems of a galaxy, each striving to get the resources needed to migrate to the next galaxy.

 

[Keptick]

"Deep core mining should gather resources at a slower rate than active asteroid mining. Think of it as a slow and constant trickle of resources while asteroid mining is like opening a floodgate for short amounts of time."

Added this to the OP. Kinda what I meant from the start, so it's added for clarity.

 

[Dragleones]

I completly agree with OP's solution.

Currently factions get a salvage bonus in their own territory to motivate them to claim a planet before mining it. But this doesn't result in them trying to establish a permanent base...

Why?
Simply because the ressource deposits (->planets) are far too small and dismantled in no time, which means that players will just move on.
Should salvaging be nerfed so players need more time to mine a planet, so they are more likely to establish a base?
Hell no... Starmade is not a damn mining simulation. Its a game. (...atleast in my understanding)

And OP's idea is the direct solution to this:

1. To get a ressource income Players need to build deep core miners on a planet.
   
   
2. In order to run them they need power generators and a storage system.
   
   
3. To protect it from pirate/player-attacks they need shields, hull-structures and turrets.
   
   
4. And BAM: If a Player want to maximize his are needs to build, establish and keep a mining base.

__________________________________________________________________

Few things to add to OPs idea:

• Make planets more unique. Not only in terms on which ressources they provide, but also in terms of the amount of ressources they provide. So some planets are more suitable for mining colonys than others, since they have different ressource-regeneration-rate.
  
  
• Make the harvest rate provided by additional deepcoreminer-modules grow limited.
  (don't know the right english term for that type of function, but something in the lines like this: r = R - e^(-n), where r is the harvest rate, R the planet dependant resource-regeneration-rate and n the number of modules)
  That means that the first modules give the most ressource-income, while adding more and more provides noticeably less additional income, but you can never reach a harvest rate equal to the resource-regeneration-rate of the planet.
  
  
• Let planets remain salvageable.
  Why not?
  The player can decide himself if he wants an instant ressource-boost or a slow constant income.
  
  
• Do we actually even need a new block for it? Why not make it that if you hit the planetcore with a salvagebeam you get ressource.
  To make automatic "deepcoreminers" you could just connect salvage beams on the planet surface to a logic clock.

___________________________________________________________________

The term infinite:
I think the problem is that people usually tend to overrate the term: "infinite" as it sounds like players have access to infinite ressources thus disliking this idea.
But the ressources available per time are still limited by the resource-regeneration-rates of the planets themselves.
Theoretically speaking: The ressource income provided by salvaging is unlimited, as you can always increase the amount of salvage modules to increase you salvage rate. Since asteroids respawn you also have a constant income there.

Is a passive constant ressource income a poor design choice?
In the end it would depend merely on the exact values, but generally speaking: imo not at all.
It wouldn't make the manual ressource acquisition (-> salvaging) obsolete, as the player would get more ressources by using both methods at the same time. The passive income would be more like an additional income and would also implement interesting strategic gameplayelements for faction wars (like crippling you enemys economy, etc.).


More thoughs on this:
In many other strategy games inexperienced players tend to overrate slow infinite ressource deposits, while underestimating ressource boosts for a short amount of time.
A moderate/bigger but limited deposit is usually economically speaking much more efficient.
It just "feels" worse.

One of the reasons is that players think that having more ressources later is better than having just a portion of these ressources now. They forget that you can immediatly spend new ly obtained ressources to increase your income now instead of later.


______________________________________________________________________

Balancing concerns:

The main intention of this feature should be to encourage players to build, establish and hold permanent bases.
This would also add a strategic element to faction wars as they would compete over different objectives rather than just one homebase.

The thing to keep in mind when implementing this should be to make deep-core-miners worth, without rendering manual salvaging useless.
However this should be achievable by tweaking a few settings, like:

• the resource-regeneration-rate
• the growth of the harvest rate with multiple modules
• the requirements to run the deepcoreminers (if they require a huge setup of powergens, etc. they are only viable for longterm strategys)
• the credit/crafting-cost of deepcoreminers vs harvest rate

Edit: made it nicer to read/ more clearly arranged

 

[Keptick]

aaaa... AAAAAAA TCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAbump *snirf*