Crafting vs Buying

[Zadocfish]

... Okay, so I played Single a bit. Has anyone else noticed that crafting doesn't affect the value of the item? You know, like an item costs exactly as much as all of its components together. And many shops allow you to buy blocks for their basic value.

What, exactly, is the point of crafting in single-player? It seems to me like it has the same results but with several tedious intermediate steps more than just buying what you need.

Am I wrong about this, or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Pacific_Jim]

After you get a big enough mining ship and a decent factory set up for mass production you get blocks much quicker than if you were to buy them, since you don't have to contend with shops running out of stock.

 

[zigyzigy]

... Okay, so I played Single a bit. Has anyone else noticed that crafting doesn't affect the value of the item? You know, like an item costs exactly as much as all of its components together. And many shops allow you to buy blocks for their basic value.

What, exactly, is the point of crafting in single-player? It seems to me like it has the same results but with several tedious intermediate steps more than just buying what you need.

Am I wrong about this, or am I doing something wrong?

Hi Zadocfish, welcome to the forums. What pacific Jim said is true but it is also mainly because the economy in starmade is essentially the bare bones. It will be fleshed out much more in the future but that will take time. iirc then the crafting system will also be altered in the future - there will be rarer items and component ingredients that will require you to explore and harvest them to make the most advanced systems.


Until then the majority of people set up single player as a sandbox and spend most of their time building stuff with unlimited free supplies so that they can build crazy stuff without the hassle of crafting the ingredients.

 

[jaws2002]

You may very well be right about the total value of the block thing, but the limited supply and money of the shops still make crafting worthwhile. If your building a smallish ship to get around in, or early in the game, buying is far easier. Building a large ship gets very difficult when the shops are out of money and/or out of supply. Flying around looking for shops to get the parts you need seems to take far far longer. You have to do the mining either way. I kind of like it because it encourages you to have a base and build your ships near there where your factories are churning out blocks.
If they add missions and bounty hunting and things like that in the future, this may all change though. This is the fun thing about starmade, even right now in early versions of the game, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Edit: I guess I typed to slow. What those two ^^^^^^^^ said.

 

[Zadocfish]

AH, so it's mostly only a thing in early game. Thank you for your replies!