Can there be "Survival in starmade"?

[lilheartless]

PLEASE READ BEFORE WE GET STARTED

I realize this is an incredibly long read there is no tldr because without context the things i'm saying have no value.

If you don't want to read this I don't mind but i will ask that you don't try to add anything to the discussion without at least reading what has been written first, it devalues both the time i spent on this post and the possible discussion that is taking place so please and thank you in advance.

I realize that there are other threads about survival elements but without going through each and every one of them from months and months ago as well as the fact that there is alot covered in this I believe it is worth its own thread.

Finally This has been on my mind or a quite a while if you are here looking for answers this is the wrong thread for you i don't have any this whole thread is about problems that need to be overcome in order for there to be a viable survival mode and I don't have any answers to the topics here in the op.
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INTRO

this is something i've been thinking about recently as well, with the way the current state of resource acquisition is this game has absolutely 0 chance of having realistic "survival gameplay" mechanic.

I am going to relate a couple things to minecraft because its of a "similar style" and they do some things with their survival aspect very well as well as do some things fairly poorly with their survival aspect. I may also relate to both terraria and starbound which also both have fairly good "survival elements" as well as some poor "survival elements" although their gameplay isn't really relevant.

On a side note a "tier system" something no one is a fan of is also almost required for their to be actual "progression" because progression is indicative of using something to build up to something better and then for the most part discarding the tool, weapon, farm, building, design, food, etc you were using before.

Lets talk about first why this game (right now) has no chance of having a meaningful survival aspect.

Resource acquisition is both too easy and too fast, start a single player game sell ur starting cannons buy more salvagers find nearest asteroid mine it sell enough of the stuff to buy out all salvagers make some basic factories have them pump out more salvagers and more power do this till you have no materials left repeat on asteroids till you have about 20k salvagers takes roughly 15 - 30 minutes depending on how you manage your time. You now have enough salavagers to mine planets giving you virtually unlimited resources.

Because resource acquisition is so easy there is no way to add meaningful survival depth to the game in minecraft on your "first day" you are spending time cutting down trees for the wooden pickaxe you need to harvest enough stone to switch to "stone tier" tools (this leads to a sub point which will be discussed directly below this paragraph) and the first night you are hiding in your dirt house digging a small hole for stone "if you didn't manage to find coal on the first day" , in starmade as pointed out above you are literally "end game" harvesting 25 minutes into the game.

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WHAT IS TIERING REALLY?

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(for everyone talking about not wanting tier systems you literally can't have that without being in "creative mode" in a survival gameplay setting) For example in Minecraft in order to progress you need wood tools then stone tools then iron tools then diamond tools then you can go to the nether to gather blaze rods which you need to make eyes of ender which you need to go to the end where you kill the nether dragon and its GG survival mode "albeit a crappy one but" that is the progression.

In terraria you start out cut down some trees make 2 houses accumulate 50 silver get merchant buy shurikens cause all pre demonite crimtane weapons suck anyways kill eye of Cthulhu and (eater or brain of cthulhu) make enough demonite stuff for you to survive desert jungle pick a path (mage, melee, ranged) aquire stars health and a weapon skeletron, (optional dungeon for loot) mine hellstone wall of flesh - hardmode break alters with pow hammer mine crappy hardmode ore with hellstone pick or skip it and just start with the destroyer of worlds cause ez mode finish off 3 starter hardmode bosses hallowed gear underground jungle for plantera lizhard temple golem (optional boss fishron optional events pumpkin moon and whatever the winter one is) cultists then lunar boss GG each tier of armor, each boss you beat and get new loot from represents "progression" and since each boss is harder than the last you need better gear aka tiering up the reason tiering is a thing is because stuff is balanced around getting stronger (ala if enemies didn't get stronger you would never need new gear meaning you aren't actually (surviving as you start with all the tools you will ever need / get) or you don't get any stronger and the game continues to increase in difficulty meaning that bosses need to have mechanics that are abusable to beat them meaning that even if that game has combat its more akin to a puzzle / platform game than a survival game)

Now lets see how this relates to starmade I ask if all you people against tiering would like survival implemented how would it be done? maybe some materials are farther out guarded by harder pirates ( in this scenario you need a bigger ship and if you need a bigger ship to beat new harder pirates than guess what you just "tiered up" just because you didn't ugrade your silver ams to a gold ams doesn't mean there isn't a tier system)
Or maybe Like in Starbound there will be some resources you need special equipment to get to like a special breathing mask to go to a poison gas cloud planet news flash you just tiered up you got new equipment that allowed you to go to someplace you were previously blocked from going aka progression by tiering up.

The alternative to this is to have everything in one place or accessible without new tools or new gear aka not tiering up which like i stated before isn't actually survival.

Of course there are always the alternatives to the tier system not every fight is a slug fest that is only accomplished with the best of the best gear in a slug fest style of battle even if there were better pirates guarding specific "tiers" of resources chances are you could fit a smallish ship with tons and tons of pd turrets to counter their heavy missiles or anti punch through defense to counter their cannons and beat them with something that wasn't intended to actually be able to fight them just as you can skip all the pre boss ore armor in terraria and just use shurikens instead because once you know how something works you can create innovative solutions or easier workarounds to the "obstacle"

In the second example of starbound and needing specific items to go to specific places thats not actually tier gear so much as it is gated content but they fall under the same general principle and to be quite honest i'd rather have a well thought out tier system than a gated content system.

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"BIGGER IS BETTER" (how to survive with no limits)

Now lets discuss another issue preventing actual survival gameplay what is there to actually survive?

In terraria minecraft starbound no matter what class you pick how good the enchantment or how great ur rolls were you can still only have one weapon one piece of armor one pair of boots limited inventory space x amount of potions.
This is not the case in starmade the solution is always make more make it bigger 50 guns not enough to kill this pirate how bout 500? still no ok how bout 5000 still no omg shit why not 5000000 thats gotta be enough guns right and since weapons are made with mats that are harvestable there is no limit.

This brings me to my point without limits there is no real "survival aspect" imagine if in minecraft you could spend the first day harvesting dirt and you harvested 2000 and then you went to your crafting table and made a "dirt sword + 1000) and this dirt sword + 1000 did 1001 damage and had 1001 uses but all the mobs still only had 20 health even if they had 500 armor (haha not possible) you would still one shot them and it would completely remove any actual "survival" aspect of the game because of the way starmade works there isn't really any viable way to implement a true survival setting there are no limits in starmade and honestly i'm not sure how you could add in any limits and have them be impactful without crippling the basic gameplay. ( for all you survival enthusiasts this should scare you i have been racking my brain to come up with some kind of gameplay mechanic to limit people without being arbitrary you can only make ships of 50k blocks or less in "survival mode" and i can't you need to seriously think about how this would work and if you can't come up with something reasonable i think we are in trouble.)
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I have more but I think this is a long enough read and to spur on some discussion for now.

 

[Kij421]

I am curious as to whether you started typing this up before Bench posted the development plan in the Game News forum. This game is still in alpha, so it isn't nearly done yet. To use your examples, it's like Minecraft before they implemented the hunger bar.

I haven't gotten very far into the game, but I think there is the groundwork for a tier system like you've described. You can't build advanced armor blocks with an advanced factory until you build armor blocks with a standard factory, but you can't build armor blocks until you build hull blocks with a basic factory.

All that would need to be implemented to prevent you from immediately jumping to advanced armor like you're talking about is a research system. If you need to research how to build a standard factory before you can build one, you're stuck with hull blocks until then. If you then need to research how to make armor blocks, there's another step, and so on and so forth.

The problem with a research system is how exactly would you implement something like that? Is that a time based thing? Is that a credit based thing? Is it both? Can you go to a shop and purchase the bill of materials needed "unlock" that item in your factory system? Maybe after the NPC factions are in place and robust, can you trade technologies with a faction? If research takes a really long time for some really advanced blocks, would you be able to decrease that time with a research enhancer block? Do factions get a bonus on research time? There's clearly a lot that goes into that.

The point is that the game isn't done. There wasn't any progression in Minecraft until the game was nearly finalized. Following that same pattern, there's still plenty of time for Schine to implement their plans and visions for the game.

 

[lilheartless]

I am curious as to whether you started typing this up before Bench posted the development plan in the Game News forum. This game is still in alpha, so it isn't nearly done yet. To use your examples, it's like Minecraft before they implemented the hunger bar.

snip.

I actually did start writing this up before that was posted and just read it now. I've been reading off and on peoples' desire to have a "survival mode" in starmade this post is more a question of can starmade with the way building and resource acquisition is actually have a legitimate survival setting.

hostile npcs and combat are not all that is required for a "survival setting" there has to be a legitimate at some level sense of fear or longing for security

In minecraft its those first couple days before you have a house and a bed where if you turn the wrong corner you lose everything its that you turn around and there is a creeper that you didn't notice and just manage to back away surviving the blast with half a heart that fear that anxiety that something like that could happen coupled with the need to gear up and feed yourself that creates a survival setting. The fact that at night until ur in all iron armor its a risk to be outside at night. I am fully aware that this game is in alpha its not nearly feature complete at least not according to the devs.

But my question remains does starmade actually have the potential to have a true "survival element" even if it can should it?

Edit: About tiering

My post about tiering was more an informational post i've read countless times people say "I Don't think starmade should have a tier system"

to this I could only think every time i read it "does this also mean you don't want starmade to have progression"

A tier system is indicative of progression, because the definition of progression is reaching a new level in gaming leveling up, reaching a new area, getting stronger, faster, higger jump, whatever that allows you to extend your area of influence and also gameplay.

Now there are multiple types of tier systems open tier systems like I foresee starmade having were there are enemies / elements that you need to have a certain strength to overcome these obstacles can be overcome in a multitude of ways but once you have enough resources, a big enough ship, or a creative workaround you can reach new heights (ala farther out in the galaxy to new planets and new events etc)

What i am not particularly fond of is "gated progression" things similar to the initial "LOL beta release of starbound" where you needed to get an iron pickaxe to mine the materials you needed to make X boss summoning item so that you could go to zone 2 where you needed to use the iron pickaxe to mine the tier 2 pickaxe so you could mine the materials you needed to make the tier 2 boss summoning item that is no fun from a gameplay perspective i mean it works in some games like rpgs where you need to beat x boss in the undergound military lab to get the submarine so you can cross the "deep ocean" and go to the west continent or whatever but in a "sandbox game this type of gating is terrible and ruins immersion.


Edit2: survival imo is also indicative of being able to eventually but through work overcome the environment that you were once afraid of through force of will, the building up of materials, etc and in starmade thats not what i think i'm doing honestly my first ship i build is one that is pretty much capable of mining planets and my second is capable of killing every hostile force in the game right now.

Assuming that the way we currently acquire resources doesn't change or isn't incredibly limited in some way this will never change i will always be able to build up a planet devouring monster and then build a ship capable of destroying any npc the can feasibly come up with which really eliminates the "anxiety" that i was referring to earlier.

 

[godmars]

PLEASE READ BEFORE WE GET STARTED
SNIP

You've basically hit the nail on the head IMO. Essentially, it's too easy to get resources. This leads to people building humongous super weapons that in turn go on to annihilate everything the game has to offer.

IMO, Survival could be done in Starmade, I just don't think it should be like Minecraft. You shouldn't start on a planet and have to build a ship to blast off into space, or any of that crap. I think the best way to go about it if the devs wanted to would be to push the 'space is a dangerous place' thing. Like...

You start out with a ship roughly Isanth-level or a certain number of credits, to get something around that level with minor space for crew, etc. The majority of pirates and lower-level rabble are around the same size, but there are things like killer space whales, or say pirate corvettes that could be surmounted with difficulty, but generally give the feeling of, ' I should run away'. As you do more work for the guild, or pirates, etc, get more resources, allowing you to build up your own small wing of ships, or a bigger flagship, and you can go further out and surmount those obstacles, and travel further, reach more 'valuable' resources that have a higher spawn rate the further you go out? I guess with the implication that civilization has long gotten all the good stuff closer to it.

As long as its nothing like what Starbound tried, like you said, 'gated progression', I think it could work

 

[lilheartless]

You've basically hit the nail on the head IMO.

snip

As long as its nothing like what Starbound tried, like you said, 'gated progression', I think it could work

One of the things that I personally feel needs to change is the way in which we acquire resources if mining stays in the game the way it its there will never be actual progression I think harvesting actual resources should be the alternate of minecraft where in minecraft you start out mining and eventually move up to trading with villagers and such i think trade with larger more organized factions as well as npcs should be the go to way to get resources early on you get x amount of credits to start with you can build a little cargo hauler or a smallish fight craft and you do work for the trade guild hauling their crap or investigating a distress beacon etc they pay you with credits that obviously you spend at their stores for blocks alternatively in mp you could join an already established faction they could come "save you" from the starting area to add another thinking pilot to their ranks and get you started so you can do more advanced missions for extra credits or just do work for your faction etc

I mean basically you are just some guy who happens to know how to pilot spaceships with the goal to eventually make enough money to get out there on your own with your own resource harvesting or join some large faction and be a part of something bigger.

i think planet mining should be done away with entirely and i think asteroids should actually net you less resources than they do now.

This BSS (big ship syndrome) has a direct correlation to the amount of resources we have gotten in the past if mining only ever gave 1/10th of what it gave now people would think ships that are 200 meters long are huge or if everything started costing 10x more would be the same thing

I mean people talk about "small ships" that are 200 meters most of the "battleships" in world war 2 some of the prides of the fleet were 200 meters long and could crew hundreds of soldiers.

This all ties into resource acquisition and because you get so much for so little work people have started thinking it is and should be "the norm" which i feel is wrong.

Idk this got kinda ranty now but it all leads up to not being able to actually have a survival setting.

Another thing that might help with ship size which would also help balance out the universe would be getting rid of docked reactors the power softcap is there to limit ship size and we should let it do its job.

 

[Kij421]

I dunno. When I play Minecraft, I don't bother with villagers or the End, really. I start a new world, immediately search for coal, start a quick base, work my way up to diamond mining quickly, get to the Nether and get other materials there all to make a nice house or structure or something. The mobs in Minecraft don't really threaten me too much after the first couple of in-game days.

I can tell you that with my never-played-before experience of StarMade, it's been a week of real-world time, and I don't feel like I'm anywhere near making safe from pirates if I venture too close to a station. I feel like I know what it will take to make me feel safe, but the resources are so scarce to me right now that all I can do is mine.

I heard the best way for me to improve my resource gathering game is to make a ginormous scavenger with hundreds, maybe thousands of salvage cannons that can chew through an entire asteroid in seconds. My current ship certainly can't do that, but I maybe have 30 salvage barrels on board. If your concern is that the game becomes too safe when you get a ginormous ship like I described, what if ship systems begin to experience diminishing returns the more you add to them after a certain point? You can still build ginormous ships, but the difference between it and a ship half its size wouldn't be as extreme.

Plus, then it creates an artificial speed limit on resource gathering. If you can't mine an entire asteroid in a few seconds, but it takes a few minutes instead, that may help limit the rate at which huge ships are spit out.

What what do I know?

 

[lilheartless]

I dunno. When I play Minecraft, I don't bother with villagers or the End, really. I start a new world, immediately search for coal, start a quick base, work my way up to diamond mining quickly, get to the Nether and get other materials there all to make a nice house or structure or something. The mobs in Minecraft don't really threaten me too much after the first couple of in-game days.

I can tell you that with my never-played-before experience of StarMade, it's been a week of real-world time, and I don't feel like I'm anywhere near making safe from pirates if I venture too close to a station. I feel like I know what it will take to make me feel safe, but the resources are so scarce to me right now that all I can do is mine.

I heard the best way for me to improve my resource gathering game is to make a ginormous scavenger with hundreds, maybe thousands of salvage cannons that can chew through an entire asteroid in seconds. My current ship certainly can't do that, but I maybe have 30 salvage barrels on board. If your concern is that the game becomes too safe when you get a ginormous ship like I described, what if ship systems begin to experience diminishing returns the more you add to them after a certain point? You can still build ginormous ships, but the difference between it and a ship half its size wouldn't be as extreme.

Plus, then it creates an artificial speed limit on resource gathering. If you can't mine an entire asteroid in a few seconds, but it takes a few minutes instead, that may help limit the rate at which huge ships are spit out.

What what do I know?

if you had read my first post all the way through i specifically stated that optimally you can make a 20k salavager in less than 30 minutes with this you can get enough resources from 1 planet to make a ship that can DESTROY any pirate base and any "reasonable" amount of pirates at one time 20 - 25 and do you know why it takes that long? because refining and flying take more time than harvesting.

Edit: Its actually in the Intro section so not even very far in.

 

[StormWing0]

Mainly what I do when I first start out in Starmade is I first make sure I have a starter faction setup and a faction block, than find a planet and hide deep inside the thing mining until I get ready to lead while under Home Base Protection, next setup a small starter factory to get construction going of blocks, than build some turrets if I've got what I need. After that my base is normally safe from attacks without much need to worry even without Home base protection.

As for what I do on a server only a few of the steps change, I'll either join an existing faction or make my own. If I join one I hide in their HQ until I'm ready to leave and not get blown to kingdomcome.


Now as for progression in Starmade I've got no clue how to set that up but the general idea should be something around what resources do we need to gather and what do we need to build to guard the area we're operating out of?

 

[godmars]

I can tell you that with my never-played-before experience of StarMade, it's been a week of real-world time, and I don't feel like I'm anywhere near making safe from pirates if I venture too close to a station. I feel like I know what it will take to make me feel safe, but the resources are so scarce to me right now that all I can do is mine.

I heard the best way for me to improve my resource gathering game is to make a ginormous scavenger with hundreds, maybe thousands of salvage cannons that can chew through an entire asteroid in seconds. My current ship certainly can't do that, but I maybe have 30 salvage barrels on board. If your concern is that the game becomes too safe when you get a ginormous ship like I described, what if ship systems begin to experience diminishing returns the more you add to them after a certain point? You can still build ginormous ships, but the difference between it and a ship half its size wouldn't be as extreme.

Plus, then it creates an artificial speed limit on resource gathering. If you can't mine an entire asteroid in a few seconds, but it takes a few minutes instead, that may help limit the rate at which huge ships are spit out.

What what do I know?

I've mostly been screwing around in creative lately, so I may be wrong now, but from my experience, most players just attack a pirate station to spawn enemies, then kill those guys. The loot cloud(s) can be used as an alternative to mining to gather resources and build a bigger ship like a battle miner, which can eat asteroids/planets and simultaneously obliterate pirate stations.

It's not really that it's too easy WHEN you get a bigger ship. The game isn't really balanced around the massive ships people build so it makes sense that it'd be a cakewalk once you hit a certain threshold. But it'd be far easier to balance things if it was significantly harder to produce vessels of a certain size is what OP is getting at (i think)

 

[Kij421]

if you had read my first post all the way through...

-snip-

Sorry, I read it while I was at work, and was distracted a few times while reading. When I wrote my last reply, I was remembering a post I had read today that referenced tens of thousands of salvagers; turns out that post was actually your intro! So yes, you did say that, and through my forgetfulness, I was totally referring to what you said.

Just to clear the air, I'm not attacking you. I like your ideas and what you're trying to accomplish through discussion. I'm still new to the game, so I'm just contributing my thoughts from a completely new player perspective, as opposed to someone who has played for a long time. I'm sorry if that hasn't come through over text.

 

[lilheartless]

I've mostly been screwing around in creative lately, so I may be wrong now, but from my experience, most players just attack a pirate station to spawn enemies, then kill those guys. The loot cloud(s) can be used as an alternative to mining to gather resources and build a bigger ship like a battle miner, which can eat asteroids/planets and simultaneously obliterate pirate stations.

It's not really that it's too easy WHEN you get a bigger ship. The game isn't really balanced around the massive ships people build so it makes sense that it'd be a cakewalk once you hit a certain threshold. But it'd be far easier to balance things if it was significantly harder to produce vessels of a certain size is what OP is getting at (i think)

This is exactly what i meant Its not that you should not be able to build 2k block long ships only that it should take more be harder or generally be a pain in the ass to do so much so in fact that smallerish ships would be preferable about 200 blocks long if this were the case then the game would be easier to balance around

 

[MacThule]

You've basically hit the nail on the head IMO. Essentially, it's too easy to get resources. This leads to people building humongous super weapons that in turn go on to annihilate everything the game has to offer.

jumping in right here - this effect is compounded by servads wanting their server to have "PvE Appeal" and pumping the pirates. this mandates a larger minimum ship, but can never actually provide the kind of PvE experience MMOs like WoW do. i think even trying to do so is futile and only ups the server load without actually making play more fun; until there is some sort of questing system, PvP is the real action, PvE is just "build your ship gigantic enough that the pirates can't wreck it."

 

[lilheartless]

jumping in right here - this effect is compounded by servads wanting their server to have "PvE Appeal" and pumping the pirates. this mandates a larger minimum ship, but can never actually provide the kind of PvE experience MMOs like WoW do. i think even trying to do so is futile and only ups the server load without actually making play more fun; until there is some sort of questing system, PvP is the real action, PvE is just "build your ship gigantic enough that the pirates can't wreck it."

well another large portion of the problem is again there are not limits i'll go to minecraft again even in full enchanted diamond armor with a fully enchanted diamond sword you are still killable if you get into a Really Really bad situation in starmade I can make a ship that has enough shields to tank 10000 isanths which would never under any circumstances actually spawn and since there is no limit to the build size (again not saying this is good or bad) there will never be truly balanced pve.

However If they made blocks cost more and made truely mineable materials much less frequent / scarce the pve ships could still be a steping stone aka with questing and random encounter to provide some challenges to a player in the early and mid game up until the point that they get set up with a renewable resource system like planet mining or gas giants or whatever the renewable resources might be that allows the to build some truely pvp worthy ships that should ofcourse dominate the pve content except maybe in special "pve Events" where you battle an ai controlled titan or special fleet that could provide more of a challenge.
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Sorry, I read it while I was at work, and was distracted a few times while reading. When I wrote my last reply, I was remembering a post I had read today that referenced tens of thousands of salvagers; turns out that post was actually your intro! So yes, you did say that, and through my forgetfulness, I was totally referring to what you said.

Just to clear the air, I'm not attacking you. I like your ideas and what you're trying to accomplish through discussion. I'm still new to the game, so I'm just contributing my thoughts from a completely new player perspective, as opposed to someone who has played for a long time. I'm sorry if that hasn't come through over text.

and i wasn't being defensive at least not really just indicating that in my post i actually fully discussed the thing you were talking about

 

[lilheartless]

No one has anything also to add any more questions any ideas on ways to solve some of the current barriers preventing actual survival mechanics.

 

[OdraNoel]

its funny, because just the other day i started writing up a post like this on a text file but haven't gotten around to finishing it. so ill just detail my survival ideas here. some of them are mine some are from other posts iv seen come and go over the forums this past year.

so as you guys said there isn't a true survival experience in SM because of the current method of acquiring resources is both too easy and too hard. too easy because as mentioned above you can easily scale up a huge salvager and strip mine planets in a matter of hours. and too hard because to make any decent sized ships you need to strip mine entire planets. this ends up filling galaxies with stripped planet cores, constant planet detonations (for mining of course) and worst of all, is absolutely devastating to servers in terms of performance.

for me the best solution to this is to make salvage beams unable to penetrate planetary atmospheres. which would leave salvage beams only usable in vacuum. (salvaging asteroids, dead ships, stations ECT) and in order to access the vast hoards of resources in a planet, you would need to land on it and build some sort of mining/quarry equipment.and heres where things would get interesting. a planetary mining/quarry system should NOT mine on a block by block basis slowly strip mining the planet (then it would be the same as salvage beams).

instead it should simply extract the resources from the rocks without removing the blocks, or maybe drill down into the core and start pumping out resources from the core(its the freakin future). either method would allow access to planetary resources, without endlessly strip mining solar system after solar system leaving an empty barren galaxy.it should also be rather difficult and costly at first to get one of these mining systems up and running. thus providing a form of tech tree that you have to work towards and maintain in order to progress. planets should also be limited to say two or three types of resources per planet, regardless of which plate your on. and with the new difficulty of maintaining this system it should provide you with many more times the resources it would give you currently if you just salvaged the whole thing. this would make planets actually a thing you would want to settle on and defend, rather then just strip mine it from space...

now these changes alone wouldn't fix the other problem with resources. and that is (with the exception of blue asteroids being hard to find, which is a bug BTW) that all the resources are distributed in equal amounts. there are no rare resources or high/low levels of tech. there are 16 diff resources (8 metals 8 crystals) and 8 colors/paints (but well focus on the metals and crystals).these are all found randomly through the galaxies but in equal amounts. for there to truly be survival game play its not enough to change the way you acquire the resources, but what you do with them. this requires that the entire crafting system be revamped. and the uses and rarity of each resource needs to also be revamped.

like for example, we don't need 8 different metals for 8 different hull colors. thats what the paints are for. instead there should be maybe just 2 or 3 resources used to craft hulls. (and each progressive hull type would require more advanced processing/combining of those resources, think turning iron into steel in minecraft) and these resources used for hull should then become one of the most common resources (because hull is your basic building material)

then you could have more scarce resources (rare asteroids, rarer then normal ore density/population) used for making more advanced systems (like maybe shields and higher tier weapons) and this resource "rarity" could be extended to planets as well. combined with the mining/quarry method i mentioned above imagine how valuable a planet that is rich in resources for making something important like shields would be?

im sure you guys have more to add and and other/better suggestions. but iv been thinking about this for a while now and i think these things i mentioned would go along way to bringing survival to SM.

 

[lilheartless]

its funny, because just the other day i started writing up a post like this on a text file but haven't gotten around to finishing it. so ill just detail my survival ideas here. some of them are mine some are from other posts iv seen come and go over the forums this past year.

SNIP

im sure you guys have more to add and and other/better suggestions. but iv been thinking about this for a while now and i think these things i mentioned would go along way to bringing survival to SM.

I pretty much agree with this resource scarcity is something that def needs to be improved upon other than haha blue asteroids don't spawn cause fuck u lol

but in all seriousness it might even be wise to have certain resources a certain "distance" out from wherever the center point you start at is so that you can get basic stuff hull maybe 1 kind of weapon block and some other stuff right away but you need to Explore deeper into what will hopefully be more dangerous pirate (possibly alien) infested or controlled territory to get those resources you really need to take your ship making to the "next level"

I also completely agree that all armor should be painted grey armor.
This leads to a problem however the armor variants that take specific resources are for some of the ores etc the only blocks worth making I mean astro tech beams really? New blocks need to be added or other old recipes will need another change for this to be possible.