Can we PLEASE be able to paint every level of hull

[sayerulz]

It is the most annoying thing that, to get for instance grey standard armor, I need to make grey hull, then add parstun and macet. BUT to make blue, I need to paint grey hull blue, then add (varat?). Why can we not just make grey standard armor by adding certain materials to grey hull, and THEN paint it whatever color? The current system is a pain and encourages players to make their ships a certain color, since some resources are more valuable, and thus it makes no sense to turn them into hull when you can make hull that is just as good out of junk minerals.

 

[Valck]

It is the most annoying thing that, to get for instance grey standard armor, I need to make grey hull, then add parstun and macet. BUT to make blue, I need to paint grey hull blue, then add (varat?). Why can we not just make grey standard armor by adding certain materials to grey hull, and THEN paint it whatever color?

I half agree that it would be nice to recolour say red armour to green armour by adding the corresponding materials (on top of what it took to make that red armour in the first place), but at the same time I don't mind committing to a colour early in the production phase and having to stick with it. If I had rather made green armour, oh well, I'll stockpile that red until I have a use for it...

The current system is a pain and encourages players to make their ships a certain color, since some resources are more valuable, and thus it makes no sense to turn them into hull when you can make hull that is just as good out of junk minerals.

I like the fact that some colours are harder to come by than others, and don't mind if other players have grey ships for whatever reason, even the dreaded grey bricks of doom... their creative choice, their creative loss.
If my ships are painted grey on the outside, it's because I chose to, and I am a great fan of that brown standard/advanced armour for the structural elements of my ships, the parts that no one ever sees but are there nonetheless, and I couldn't care less how complicated or expensive it is to produce... it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction when it is finally done, and that's part of what makes the game enjoyable for me.

 

[Planr]

Agreed with OP 100%. Making hull blocks right now is a pain in the butt because of how lengthy and complicated the factory process is when dealing with colored blocks.

 

[Valck]

Agreed with OP 100%. Making hull blocks right now is a pain in the butt because of how lengthy and complicated the factory process is when dealing with colored blocks.

Something you set up once and are done with it. And on a multiplayer server, chances are somebody else already has a factory running...

 

[alterintel]

I like the idea of there only being one color for hull, armor, advanced armor etc... and then each of the sixish sides can be painted. almost like linking blocks. That way the outside of the ship can be grey, and the same block viewed from the interior could be white. Paint should be applied like in the real world. And it could potentially free up block IDs

 

[sayerulz]

"I like the fact that some colours are harder to come by than others, and don't mind if other players have grey ships for whatever reason, even the dreaded grey bricks of doom... their creative choice, their creative loss.
If my ships are painted grey on the outside, it's because I chose to, and I am a great fan of that brown standard/advanced armour for the structural elements of my ships, the parts that no one ever sees but are there nonetheless, and I couldn't care less how complicated or expensive it is to produce... it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction when it is finally done, and that's part of what makes the game enjoyable for me."

I don't see how some colors being harder to come by is a good thing. It limits creativity in a silly way. Is it really good to have a system that encourages players to all make their ships the same color?

 

[Valck]

I don't see how some colors being harder to come by is a good thing. It limits creativity in a silly way. Is it really good to have a system that encourages players to all make their ships the same color?

I can only speak for myself, but I don't feel limited in any way by the current system, I'm mostly playing in single player/small community survival meaning that I have to produce all and everything myself, and I enjoy it. And no, I don't just build 500-block ships... but it may well take me a month or longer until I have all the materials to launch a new vessel.

That said, I'm not opposed to additional options, like painting individual faces of blocks, but I strongly oppose equalizing everything. I very much like the fact that there are different, if similar, recipes for different variations of blocks, much the same as I like the fact that some resources are harder to come by than others, and would very much like to see more variety rather than less.

 

[Planr]

Something you set up once and are done with it. And on a multiplayer server, chances are somebody else already has a factory running...

This is all true, but the thing is that setting it up is still quite difficult, time-consuming, and can take much longer if you don't know exactly what to do (something that i'm betting turns off less-experienced players and makes them less likely to play online).

 

[Gristle]

My suggestion would be to implement painting (a new paint gun from NPC-A) and make higher tiers of hull harder to make, maybe having one or several intermediate materials needed. For example maybe standard armor requires hull+ armor plating+Yhole juice. Armor plating is made from hull + Nocx + lava. Yhole juie is extracted from Yhole at 10:1 ratio.

 

[davood]

I like the idea of there only being one color for hull, armor, advanced armor etc... and then each of the sixish sides can be painted. almost like linking blocks. That way the outside of the ship can be grey, and the same block viewed from the interior could be white. Paint should be applied like in the real world. And it could potentially free up block IDs

yeah so my understanding is that the block IDs are limited in order to minimize the RAM cost of each block to 3 bytes. if you start "painting" each face then all of the sudden the blocks will be x6 as large in memory, which means saving block IDs isn't a good reason to do it.

i personally like the painting idea, but its cheaper on memory to just have 2 layers of blocks than to multiply everything by x6 to make individual blocks have more properties