Either Simplify or Expand Factories

[MacThule]

I'm not necessarily concerned with "noob-friendly". I'm just concerned about the "principle of least surprise", allowing players to be able to make the basics without getting too deep into complexity. With factory-construction being an "inconvenient" process for many players, they usually feel that they should just be able to make something functional with the basics. That's how I feel when I first break into a game. Maybe I can't make a ship with forcefields, charged circuits, polished granite tabletops, or a FTL drive, but with just a basic factory, I feel I should be able to produce something that can fly and shoot. I could do without being able to shoot if hostile NPCs and other hostile activities are prohibited in the starting areas. However, most players will want to shoot things right from the get-go.

The other thought I had would be to have better, more efficient recipes available for factories with better recipe chambers. These better, more efficient recipes could actually be less complex, allowing players with better factories to get the parts they need faster and easier. Effectively, this shifts complexity from the recipe side to the factory side. (Simple factories: more complex, resource-inefficient recipes; complex factories: simpler, faster recipes.)

Good point. This is possibly a factor in retaining a tiered factory system, if it gets some work, so that at the basic tier it is easy to produce basic hull, thrusters, salvagers, glass, etc., but in order to craft shields, weapons, jump drives, etc., you need to learn the complexities of an advanced factory. Or just buy the finished product from someone who is really into crafting and makes a lot of this stuff (or from NPC factions).

 

[Edymnion]

Edit:
I strongly suggest not requiring any chambers for basic ship systems. Armor, weapons, basic utilities (thrusters, scanners, gravity blocks, doors, basic rails), should all be available to basic factories without enhancers. Remember: New players need to be able to use this stuff with minimum tutorial hand-holding.

Well the point of using a chamber-like system is that it should function like chambers do now for ships.

Not that it enables you to do something, but that it makes it easier to do something, or makes the thing better.

You don't need a chamber to move your ship, but chambers let you move it faster and turn easier. You don't need chambers to have shields, but they make your shields stronger. Etc.

Same would apply here. You wouldn't need chamber support to make armor, but having it means you could make more and make it faster. Everybody should be able to make basically everything from the start. Just the people who invest in a particular area will be able to do it better.

 

[EricBlank]

If a basic factory block can construct anything from its hardcoded recipe without any additional blocks being necessary, then the issue of noob friendliness would largely be alleviated. A more complex, efficient, faster-working, higher-yield factory is a very good option for the next step, but for players that dont want to go that far and want to focus on other things, it at least lets you produce all of the things you want your way.

A cheap basic factory that cant be upgraded is a good option for one that can be placed and run on your ship, as well. Think a 3d printer, for the future. Cant stack up to what real industrial facilities are capable of, but can make a replacement that 3/4" to 7mm ratchet adapter you forgot to put back in the tool box before you left.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Okay, so we've got the three factory types, and some rudimentary production line capabilities.

Personally, I love Factorio, I can sit and play "build an automated system so that it plays itself" all freaking day long. The idea that I could play Starmade as a "Set up this ship to go mine, bring it's raw ore over here to have it processed, then load that into this place over here for storage, then have this place over here running a factory to make X that pulls cargo runs from storage" blah blah blah makes me happy. I could play "build an interstellar supply and demand infrastructure" and be happy.

Having multiple types of factories that used different numbers of inputs so that getting a final product produced automatically required a planned setup would be great.

Failing that, I'd rather see factories simplified so that its a glorified crafting station from Minecraft where basically the one factory can do everything.

Right now the basic/standard/advanced seems like just an arbitrary split along arbitrary rules. All the same thing, just with different recipes in them.

Frankly, its really just middle road enough to make me frustrated. Its just complicated enough to make me want to do much more with it, but still simple enough that I can't really do more with it unless I just pretend that it has limitations.

So yeah, for the Universe update, I'd personally like to see factories get a LOT more complicated, or a lot simpler. This middle ground approach is just kind of clunky, IMO.

I think it would be best to reduced to one basic factory block, but more specialization. Perhaps the logistics chamber could be expanded on so instead of power + tic rate = 100% RP which everyone puts on their HB and become exactly alike, I think there should be like 8 differant classes of systems that you can specialize in, each with 3 tiers of specialization. Each tier gives a tic rate bonus and increases output for the cost.

Example (Shield Generators)

-----------Rammit----Seritise----Tic Time
Tier 0 - 25 25 2sec.
Tier 1 - 20 20 1sec.
Tier 2 - 16 16 0.5sec
Tier 3 - 12 12 0.25sec

The kicker is that if you choose to generalize on your HB, you can only achieve tier 1 tech for everything. If you specialize, you can max out 2-3 tech types, but suck at everything else.

This has a few implications:
1. A specialized player can make a good profit by over-producing and selling to players with different specialties, even after trading fees are taken into account.
2. A player that spreads out and makes multiple bases could have Tier 3 everything, but have to leave a few factories exposed making it higher risk.
3. A new player's experience is simplified since he can make everything from 1 block just fine without needing chambers at all, but the reward of making logistics chambers is huge.

There is one Caveat here which is that most players would just hot swap their chambers as needed given the chance. To offset this, there needs to be some manner of really hard mechanic in play such as a very long warm up period on these chambers such that it might take a base hours to finish charging a logistics chamber after respeccing. In addition, perhaps you would need to actually use different chambers for different specialties such as Defense Chambers apply to Ferkin based blocks, FTL chambers apply to Macit based recipes, etc. That way, hot swapping isn't even an option to begin with without investing a ton of extra chambers into your base.
[doublepost=1532031615,1532030004][/doublepost]

I'm not sure about the factory parts of your idea, but this got me thinking about trace elements.
I like having the different ores and crystals, and being able to identify concentrations of them by color. But I also think it would be interesting to add trace element extraction to the refinery, so you can get a very small, perhaps random amount of one or two elements by refining the abundant rocks. Perhaps even using the color of the different rocks to hint at which elements might be more likely to result.
[doublepost=1531667658,1531667463][/doublepost]On a side note, I would really like to see recycling added into the game, where at least some materials can be reclaimed from all manufactured blocks.

Yes on the recycling. As for trace elements, why not just make it so that everytime you mine a block of ore, in addition to the 5-20 ore or whatever your server setting is, you also get 1-3 random ores. That way, when you take of a larimar asteroid, you actually come home with a little bit of everything, but mostly the larimar asteroid stuff.

 

[MacThule]

I think it would be best to reduced to one basic factory block, but more specialization. Perhaps the logistics chamber could be expanded on so instead of power + tic rate = 100% RP which everyone puts on their HB and become exactly alike, I think there should be like 8 differant classes of systems that you can specialize in, each with 3 tiers of specialization. Each tier gives a tic rate bonus and increases output for the cost.

Example (Shield Generators)

-----------Rammit----Seritise----Tic Time
Tier 0 - 25 25 2sec.
Tier 1 - 20 20 1sec.
Tier 2 - 16 16 0.5sec
Tier 3 - 12 12 0.25sec

The kicker is that if you choose to generalize on your HB, you can only achieve tier 1 tech for everything. If you specialize, you can max out 2-3 tech types, but suck at everything else.

This has a few implications:
1. A specialized player can make a good profit by over-producing and selling to players with different specialties, even after trading fees are taken into account.
2. A player that spreads out and makes multiple bases could have Tier 3 everything, but have to leave a few factories exposed making it higher risk.
3. A new player's experience is simplified since he can make everything from 1 block just fine without needing chambers at all, but the reward of making logistics chambers is huge.

There is one Caveat here which is that most players would just hot swap their chambers as needed given the chance. To offset this, there needs to be some manner of really hard mechanic in play such as a very long warm up period on these chambers such that it might take a base hours to finish charging a logistics chamber after respeccing. In addition, perhaps you would need to actually use different chambers for different specialties such as Defense Chambers apply to Ferkin based blocks, FTL chambers apply to Macit based recipes, etc. That way, hot swapping isn't even an option to begin with without investing a ton of extra chambers into your base.
[doublepost=1532031615,1532030004][/doublepost]

Yes on the recycling. As for trace elements, why not just make it so that everytime you mine a block of ore, in addition to the 5-20 ore or whatever your server setting is, you also get 1-3 random ores. That way, when you take of a larimar asteroid, you actually come home with a little bit of everything, but mostly the larimar asteroid stuff.

Awesome. Those reductions (time, materials) seem a bit much at first glance, but I assume they were rough examples, plus it's hard to say without some playtest first. Something along those lines could be a very nice enhancement to crafting.

I love the idea of a small % chance to pull in a random extra ore or crystal block when mining other ore.

 

[EricBlank]

Maybe we should keep actual reactor chambers in the logistics tree generic, where they still affect all factories on the station equally. We've got, what, reduced cycle time and reduced power costs at the moment. We could like add "resource efficiency" to produce 10% more for the same input or something and "Factory storage management" that multiplies storage space in each factory block. But those are still generic, affecting all factories equally, because that's linked to the station's reactor.

Factory enhancers already act like a reactor chamber for factory blocks. What if a cluster of adjacent factory blocks at first behave as one factory, just like a reactor. You can just reuse the reactor chamber blocks, linking them to the factory itself instead, and when linked to a factory instead of a reactor, offer different options in specialization trees, like replace the defense reactor trees with shield and armor manufacturing factory trees etc. Changing the product output/recipe of the factory acts like switching reactors does, requiring the factory and all its chambers reboot, and of course that you'd have to respec for something more appropriate to the new block to be produced.

Manufacturing trees could be things like reduced power consumption and reagent use per cycle for that block category. The size of the factory itself in blocks determines the base output quantity and other attributes of the factory. this way, we don't need any new blocks, we might actually be able to drop the "factory enhancer" block. Just reusing the same reactor chamber blocks, with different properties depending on context (attached to a reactor vs a factory.)

 

[-PR-Sandbag]

Perhaps chamber complexity could allow for the use of other materials at a greater cost, or even disassembling blocks to the constituent components or ores for later use or in the current recipe?

In order to force specialisation, what if the number of factory blocks per station was capped? Forcing either expansion, for more factory stations, or trade with other factories?

 

[MacThule]

Perhaps chamber complexity could allow for the use of other materials at a greater cost, or even disassembling blocks to the constituent components or ores for later use or in the current recipe?

In order to force specialisation, what if the number of factory blocks per station was capped? Forcing either expansion, for more factory stations, or trade with other factories?

Allowing more variation in recipes and breaking things down sounds great. Not sure if a factory block cap makes sense; it seems kind of artificial. I think having a soft-cap or making factories a trade-off might be best. I wonder if it would make sense to have factories use a portion of our actual Reactor Capacity, a portion based on factory level. So a basic factory or refinery might only use 1% or 2.5% or 5% RC, but an advanced factory might demand 50% (thus demanding a very specialized production facility to manufacture advanced components, the same way warp gate stations now need to be fairly specialized because one of the main chamber upgrades for warp gates requires 50% RC).

 

[-PR-Sandbag]

I wonder if it would make sense to have factories use a portion of our actual Reactor Capacity, a portion based on factory level. So a basic factory or refinery might only use 1% or 2.5% or 5% RC, but an advanced factory might demand 50% (thus demanding a very specialized production facility to manufacture advanced components, the same way warp gate stations now need to be fairly specialized because one of the main chamber upgrades for warp gates requires 50% RC).

oo yeah that does sound like a good idea. would give more thumbs if I could.