Better shops, mining/salvaging and factories

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    You shouldn't be able to buy everything from shops, nor should you be able to sell everything to them. Basically: make crafting/factorisation a necessity, because it is way to easy to just salvage a spacestation and completely empty the money resources of a couple of shops (default is 10 million credits in a shop, do the math and conclude: it is overpowered). After you sold everything, you just travel to a couple of shops, buy rediculous amounts of weapons and build a ship that can't be destroyed by pirates. With default sector sizes and shop spawning, this should take about 2 hours. And that is even in the new update, where ores no longer can be sold (not that they were may main source of income in, well, forever).

    My ideas:
    1. Make blocks for ships more expensive to buy and lose money when selling them again. (Example: you would pay 10.000 to buy an overdrive module, and only get a little more than the minimum price of resources needed to create that block in a factory when you sell it). Also make the weapons rarer to find in shops.
    2. Make it so that you are unable to sell common blocks in objects (like hulls, glass and lights), but not sand and other really cheap blocks, since you don't make that much by selling them.
    3. Don't use ice crystals in the cities on planets, it is to easy to sell those and get a huge profit.
    4. For a stronger effect than the second point: make it so that you are unable to salvage space stations, because it still is to easy to get a lot of resources from them. Instead make them less likely to spawn and put a chest (or chests) with a few basic materials, like ores, hulls, glass and lights (my preference goes to this option).
    5. Make cities less likely to spawn.
    6. Make it easier and more profitable to mine/salvage by hand, and add certain advantages, because planets don't stand a chance against huge salvaging ships (by huge I mean 625 salvage beams in a 25x25 checkerboard, and that isn't even the biggest you could make). This could be done by adding a block which has to be mined by hand with a specific, hard to get tool. This block would be spawned naturally on planets in a certain layer, and underneath would be some special ores or other blocks. Also add some tools for mining and cave systems.
    7. Reduce the max amount of a certain block in shops, also add a cap for the total amount of blocks (calculated using mass, and items, like capsules, would take up less storage space than regular blocks).
    8. Drastically cap the stacking limit, it currently is a whopping 999.999!!!! Weapons other other blocks that don't have to be used en masse in ship should have a lower stacking limit than blocks like hulls and energy related blocks, and items like capsules should also have higher stacking limits than actual blocks like hulls. This idea should also be based on the mass, since the mass for non-ship blocks will be less in the next update.
    9. In case these ideas will outbalance the current system for recipes, but even if it doesn't, the recipe system should be rebalanced to create a progressive system.
    10. Make the default sector size at least twice as big, traveling is way to easy (so: 'Yay, a space station!' and then a minute later 'Yay, a space station!'.
    11. Make shops spawn less often by default.
    12. Make cities spawn less often. Right now just about every 'green' planet has one. (Haven't checked spawning with desert temples yet, maybe someone could have a look?)
    13. To make this system work, the ability to link salvage computers to plex storages should be implemented (and I know this has already been mentioned a couple of times on this forum, but I had to list it here, because otherwise mynidea would have a serious flaw).
    14. Probably the most import point (although it isn't really a point) to all the people on this forum:
    a) Don't get mad and/or upset when these some or all of these ideas have already been mentioned. Please kindly tell me, and I will edit this post accordingly. It was late and I was tired when I typed this, so I didn't do any research on previous posts.
    b) I believe this is an important point that has to be looked at, and if you don't agree, please kindly tell me and if a valid reason why this wouldn't work, and not a reason in which you basically state that you want this game to be easy and that salvaging space stations and cities to get extremely rich extremely fast is your one and only mission in life.
     
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    instead of making them rarer you could make so they are protected by al and you have to kill there faction block to start mining it but if you attack there base their turrets will start attacking you
     
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    I'm assuming you are talking about the space stations. In that case, brace yourself for polite criticism:
    Space stations are way to overpowered. I am really, really, really against them not being made rarer. I did mention an alternative: instead of you being allowed to salvage them, because they just give way to much blocks, I proposed them having chests inside instead. I believe that should qualify as a good alternative. And if you still are against not being able to salvage space stations (really harsh criticism alert!!!!) you just are lazy.

    So, that cleared the air for me and I reread your post and.... you basically described a pirate station. Go post your nonsense somewhere else, please, or here, but please let it make sense, because if there is one thing that I truly hate, it is illogical criticism.
     
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    Most of your problems could be solved easier by making it default to pay blocks for blueprints instead of money. This way money is far less important. If you additionally stop players from beeing able to use a build block to mine planets and space stations, you already have a quite decent progression curve.
    People won't be able to buy themselfs a huge scavanging ship, since they first have to travel from shop to shop to even get enough parts for them (as they need to do with every blocktype). It takes a long time untill they will be able to gather enough material to get a decent factory up and running to finally be able to build big and expensive ships.

    Let them have 10 billion credits, it won't help them at all if there are not enough blocks in stock buy.
    I have a server running with these settings (and the none-buildblock-rule) and you really feel like you have accomplished something if you are able to build something bigger. Plus pirate hunting is finally worth your while since it is the best way to gather good amounts of blocks.
     
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    Not really. It took me just over 2 hours in the new update to get 625 salvaging beams and 625 cannons. It would have taken me only about 20 minutes to build that ship then, but I wanted to put some armament and shields on, and those took the longest to find (actually, it was the energy blocks).
     
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    Sigh... Played 30 minutes of starmade today, and if you want to know why I only played 30 mimutes, here's why:
    So I started a new world, gathered some resources (read: cheated, I wanted to do some more testing), built a medium salvaging ship with some shields and effect beams. I discovered two things:
    1. The defensive use of overdrive modules currently shouldn't be used, because stop modules do the same for a lot less energy, and they are also cheaper and easier to find than overdrive modules and you need less of them.
    2. Ion effect is bugged, you only need a couple to get invulnerability when it is activated.
     
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    Now, about why I posted this:
    Everybody knows that this game has to be rebalanced, I hope that this thread and my posts and how ridiculously easy it is to get an invulnerable, super fast salvaging, infinitely money supplying (when you give it some time), incredibly cheap, extremely powerful (weapon wise) ship.

    EDIT: add extremely fast to that list (two times server limit).

    Developers, I'm desperate. This game needs to be challenging and it should take a while to get a good ship. Right now, this game is neither. Don't get me wrong, it is extremely fun to blow a pirate station to oblivion and back, but if that only takes a minute, and you have only been playing for two hours before that, the fun will soon wear off. Regardless, I still play this game, and I'm looking forward to the new crafting system so I can check that out, and I maybe will start paying more attention to style, but right now, plain survival just is to short and it gets boring quite soon.
    To conclude, this game is well on its way, but will need some tuning here and there (mainly on the shop systems, but the weapon systems will need to be less overpowered too) to make survival actually be about survival, and not just about salvaging space stations.
     
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    It's alpha, most of the balancing your suggesting is in the works, but won't be put in until beta probably.

    we want big ships right now. We want the server-busters and lag machines because they test the game's limits and allow to schema to address core issues.

    Don't worry too much about it yet

    Edit: on your point about sector size... you can change it. Like i run mine on 50k size instead of the standard. the command is /sector_size #

    edit #2: We are meant to get big ships quickly, once again, don't worry about it
     
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    I know, I already changed it, but mainly for the looks. Space seemed to be to crowded before, now it's more space and less objects, but travel times to sectors still are about the same (I doubled the sector size, and with it, the speed limit). And if you want to test the game's limits, just use the commands. It is a lot easier. I just want to be able to do some survival stuff right now, because all the balancing issues, well, lets just say that this game is not hard (and then really not hard, about as hard as a bug when you stand on it.)
     
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    I just significantly increased sector size but kept speed limit to like 200. And I agree that the game is not hard, but that's not a problem at this stage of development
     
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    To those of you watching this thread: in the new update (0.158) shields aren't necessary! Apparently just having 100% ion defense effect gives you an invincible ship. So: don't waste credits on shields, spend everything on weapons (and a few ion modules). It's kind off fun to have overpowered things, but I took out three pirate stations with nothing more than a core, engines, ion effect modules and a couple of damage beams with 50% cannon slaves. (So no additional shield capacitors or regenerators, just the 55 shield capacity with 5.5 shield regen that comes with every core). Now that does have to be fixed in the next update, because right now, shields, well, they just are a waste of space and mass. (When using this, just be sure not to accidentally switch the ion effect module off, otherwise you're doomed)
     
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    If you want survival singleplayer, limit yourself. Not everything has to be done by developers. Want a station that fights back? Make one, and respawn it. Dont make a small salvaging ship like your talking about. 625 isnt alot, ive built some with over 100k and didnt perfect it.
    All of the shop limits will ruin creative servers. I use an infinite shop for building supplies, does that mean I cant sell back extra hulls? Or have to make several stations to be able to buy any material I need?
     
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    Uhh... the last post was from, like, june. That's half a year ago!
    Plus, this was meant as a gamemode besides the current sandbox mode (so for sp). Servers can use admins to remove shops. I'm currently already playing something like this on a server, so this thread is kind of unnecessary right now.
    And please don't reply again... It's from, like, half a year ago. I never get how people come across such old threads...