Derelict/Abandoned Ships

[Zilvs]

Yesterday while I was doing nothing other than letting my mind race, I ended up thinking about starmade and that turned into me realizing that space is empty. Don't jump on me yet though, a lot of space should be empty but I feel like right now in starmade it's just a little too empty. I know schine has plans for this and I'm not sure if derelict ships fall into their plans.


I think it would help immersion and help to break the endless void of space by having the game drop a few abandoned ships occasionally. These ships would be ships from the blueprints, as players join a server and they upload a blueprint they can modify who has access to the blueprint. There would be a new category allowing the game a chance to spawn the ship abandoned in empty sectors. The closer you are to spawn, the higher chance of small ships being found. The farther out you go increases the chances of finding larger ships.

These abandoned ships would essentially be factionless ships with some sort tag identifying them as derelict. Maybe sometimes they would be damaged (I'll talk about that more in a sec). Or perfectly intact, making it appear that the crew mysteriously vanished. The abandoned ships could have two categories of their own.

1. Perfectly intact ships
2. Damaged ships.

The first type of ships has the chance of holding some cargo. This would encourage players to actually board the ships and investigate instead of using them as salvage. This first type could also hold the potential of being pirate bait. As soon as you get close to the ship or board it. A small fleet or pirates show up to attack you. The second type would be whats leftover from a battle. With the chance of the ships being found in space, the second type also be whats leftover from a battle. The overheated ships in starmade have that timer on them until they are gone forever. This system would remove that and instead have the destroyed ships floating around forever (or at least a much longer time).

This would cause server lag though so a way to fix the lag is unloading the ships like fleets are until they are within range of a player. So this leaves two types of derelict ships and two instances they would be used. I would love to hear the community's opinion of this idea and what everyone has to say

 

[Crashmaster]

The intact ships could have spiders instead of spawning pirates.

 

[Valck]

it would help immersion and help to break the endless void of space

These two are somewhat exclusive in my opinion.
Space should be endless void, except where civilisation has taken hold, ie. near stations and settled planets.

Finally Schine got rid of the gazillions of stations at least in the void sectors (which are still not empty enough for my taste, and nothing has changed for non-void systems), I wouldn't want to have their place taken over by abandoned ships instead.

I think the foremost problem I have with that kind of "just spawn one X per n sectors" type of "content" is its randomness. Those stations that are there don't have any reason for being where they are. The NPC factions have improved that a little, at least their stations make some kind of sense.
However especially pirate stations still don't have any rhyme or reason to them - they're neither hidden away, nor clustered around the outer fringes of civilised space, or even in void space where trade routes pass by.
That was fine for StarMade as it was before galaxies were a thing, with pizza planets, but doesn't cut it for what StarMade aspires to become.

Randomly spawning derelict ships wouldn't be anything different from what we have now with stations, so it wouldn't even advance the state of the game from a technical perspective.

I'd be okay with having derelict ships or even pirate-laid traps if there were sets of conditions that have to apply for spawning in things, other than a simple "if randomNumber>threshold". It doesn't have to be Dwarf Fortress-deep, but unless and until the universe generation gets a profound overhaul, I wouldn't want to see additional clutter just for clutter's sake.

TL;DR:
Random generation doesn't help immersion. Procedural generation can but requires planning and implementation. No random clutter please. Let's wait and see what the announced universe update brings.

 

[Zilvs]

I'd be okay with having derelict ships or even pirate-laid traps if there were sets of conditions that have to apply for spawning in things, other than a simple "if randomNumber>threshold". It doesn't have to be Dwarf Fortress-deep, but unless and until the universe generation gets a profound overhaul, I wouldn't want to see additional clutter just for clutter's sake.

Space should be empty, I agree with that and I also don't like how the current pirate stations just appear everywhere like they passively own the entire universe. The derelict ships would be rare, not every other sector and act as more of an event, for example. I should have cleared that up a little better in the first post.

 

[Valck]

Space should be empty, I agree with that and I also don't like how the current pirate stations just appear everywhere like they passively own the entire universe. The derelict ships would be rare, not every other sector and act as more of an event, for example.

My issue is not with the frequency (as long as it is within reason, and ideally configurable).

The issue I see is the lack of context - why is that derelict in that location? Why is it abandoned in the first place? If it is a pirate trap, where do the pirates come from, and what do they do in their spare time when they are not waiting for that one trap to be found in the vastness of void space? If aliens ate the crew, where do the aliens live, and what do they eat when there are no space ships passing through that utterly unpopulated region of space where nobody actually has any reason to go? Why did that ship go there regardless? If there was a battle, who fought it, over what, and why there of all places? Why did "Ishmael" go hunt that space whale and get lost? What did "The Flying Dutchman" do to deserve that curse...

You can certainly think up a few interesting stories, but without proper integration with the game mechanics, once you have found "Ishmael" for the second or third time, the 'eventness' factor gets lost quick.
"Let's have a background story contest then": Just consider what the station contest did for diversity - great, now we have fifteen variants instead of two, but their presence makes no more sense than it did with just two, and once you've seen them, the 'new' is gone. They are a nightmare to keep updated (when did the rail update happen again?), and on top of that, there wasn't even a hint of a coherent background. We have original content next to Minmatar pirates next to abandoned Warhammer40k citadels.

At least that update added the ability to assign blueprints to be spawned as stations - but the functionality is in the game now, and nothing stops us from adding another few "abandoned ship" stations into the mix. Granted, from a technical perspective it would be a station, but it can still be designed to look like a ship, and it can already be done with what we have.


EDIT: Come to think of it, I haven't ever actually tried to see what happens when you add ship blueprints to blueprints-stations...

 

[Lone_Puppy]

This has been discussed here before and I do like your method of using the servers catalog to spawn ships of a particular category. Perhaps using the same engine that spawns stations. I also like the idea of making the category based spawning a thing across the board, with a server admin control panel to determine what spawns, how often it spawns, whether it spawns with pirate support or not etc.

However I would like the void to remain as it is, but I do want the occasional spawned item as it is now. The variety would be greater than just stations by having it be a ship instead.

The universe of a server would not lag or be hindered in any way more that it is now. All objects remain non-physical until a player enters the area the object is located. Only at that point it then has a physical presence on the server. This can also be cleaned up by server admins if they wish.

More on the admin spawn console I suggested;

• Blueprint select for any blueprint on the server
• Tick boxes for additional configuration around the spawned entity
  • Damaged - use the sun damage engine to inflict random damage
  • Spiders - maybe have a counter to limit the number that spawn so you can clean them out
  • Cargo - maybe counter also for limits
  • Faction Support - drop-down select for a different faction to spawn - not limited to pirates
  • Spawn Type - Dropdown to choose whether its' "Derelict", "Unfactioned", "Factioned" (NPC) or "Overheating"

Hope these make sense.

 

[DrTarDIS]

current workaround: save a "station" blueprint that auto-launches docked ships and possibly self-destructs.
->if a "derelict station" spawned like this you get "derelict" applied to the undocking ship(s)
->funny possibility if your faction is at war with neutrals and the "derelict" ships attack.

 

[Dire Venom]

One memorable moment in Starmade for me was when I found a giant player built ship orbiting near a star.
It was crafted like some celestial white ark with biodomes and the alike encircling it :D
It seems a player had jumped to close to the star and died before he could jump out an was unable to retrive his ship.
Thus, I then proceeded to ram blocks of thrusters into it (while dieing and respawning quite a lot) before using a pull beam to winch it away from the star XD

I would love if moments like this could be captured in vanilla game-play.

 

[Valck]

I would love if moments like this could be captured in vanilla game-play.

...but that's exactly what it was, vanilla gameplay.

 

[Dire Venom]

...but that's exactly what it was, vanilla gameplay.

Apologies, I meant to imply encountering these situations off player servers e.g the game spawning derelict ships, sometimes in dangerous locations for players to find. Not having to rely on the rare chance that a player would actually leave ships lying about for it to happen.
I would love to see some spawn in orbit around wormholes/stars/hostile structures etc.

 

[Ixalite]

I've been hoping for this addition for a VERY long time: still waiting, but you know. Low priority.

The ships need a "Decayed" tag, like "decayed" stations. In this way, they should require being "bought" back in to make them functional. I do think they should be able to use docking though, that way you can tow them.

They should have a chance to spawn dangerous fauna.

I think best case would be for servers to have a separate folder for "derelict" ships, that way server owners can use this feature for world building. The frequency of the ships should be configurable through a GUI, similar to how faction ship spawning might work (with fleets etc.)
Also in this way, server owners can design booby-trapped ships as derelicts, or make an "abandoned" faction all derelict.

 

[Valck]

Apologies, I meant to imply encountering these situations off player servers e.g the game spawning derelict ships, sometimes in dangerous locations for players to find. Not having to rely on the rare chance that a player would actually leave ships lying about for it to happen.
I would love to see some spawn in orbit around wormholes/stars/hostile structures etc.

Of course. I still think it's precisely the fact that it was such a rare and unpredictable event that made it special.

To produce content as thinly spread out would require a lot of effort for only a few players to chance upon it. On the other hand, if it were more common, it would quickly lose its sense of wonder and discovery.
As an analogy to Minecraft, such an encounter would be like a desert or jungle temple, an ocean monument, or a nether fortress. The first time you chance upon it, it's exciting and new, but by the tenth time, it's all just the same old. Starmade already has cities and pyramids on planets, and it's just the same here -- the first time you find one, it's fun and memorable, but the sense of wonder gets lost with the second or third.

I think stations as ships, or stations that spawn ships and destroy themselves, is a feasible workaround for the time being that doesn't require additional development time currently better spent elsewhere.
In the long run, I'm certain Schine have planned stuff like this anyway.