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I was searching the forum for posts dealing with plex storage or transports, but i haven't found any, so here is my idea:
So far freighters had no reasons to exist in starmade, other than purely aesthetic, because moving cargo can be done with little perma cloak ship with few plex storage blocks. I haven't made exact calculations and i haven't found an info how many unique blocks are in starmade*, but if we assume there are 300 of them (every unique blocks - weapons, computers, hulls, wedges, minerals, etc.) and plex storage can contain 35 unique blocks with infinite number of the same blocks then we can move EVERY unique block at ANY amount with ONLY 10 plex storages. Of course there might be more then 300 different blocks but still, about 15 plex storages should do the work.
My idea is to limit number of blocks which could be placed in plex storage.
Here i will use numbers so it will be easier to illustrate my idea but we don't need to stick to them. I think every server should have the option to change them.
Firstly change plex storages from bottomless sacks to containers where we could place altogether 100k blocks. Storages still can have 35 spaces to place different blocks, but number of all blocks in one storage combined should not exceed 100k.
e.g. we could store in one storage 100k red hulls OR 30k red hulls and 70k black hulls (100k combined)
Secondly, as no one like having hundreds of plex storages on their ships, new block should be implemented - storage enhancer. Each enhancer connected to plex storage (or factory input) would increase the number that specific block could hold by 50k. They wouldn't need any energy.
e.g. after connecting 2 enhancers to plex storage we could store 200k (2x50k + 100k) blocks in that block
Lastly, there is personal inventory. 100k block limit would be a big pain in the ass, so 500k or 1 mil capacity would be enough.
With these changes if we were about to mine, we would make sure our ship has enough storage capacity to hold our blocks and if we would like to trade, we would have to make bigger freighter, so we won't need to make few runs to sell all the rock blocks we've gathered.
To move 2 mil blocks we would need 1 plex storage (100k) and 38 enhancers (1.9 mil), but if we change the numbers to 10k capacity for storage and 5k to enhancer, then we would use 1 storage and 398 enhancers.
Now the problems.
The thing is that this idea would make the game harder. Right now mining and robbing pirates with few plex storages can be problematic as usually we find more then 45 unique blocks (different minerals lvls, colored hulls, etc.) so we need to put everything from our inventory to ships storages. And as we would have limited number of storages on our ship, there would be a need for inventory management. It would be the best if there was an option to choose rather we want specific block automatically be placed with another blocks of the same type in ships storage or in our inventory. But so far option like this does not exist.
The other problem (smaller one in my opinion) is while building ship/station we would have limited resources, but making a little resuplly run after placing 500k blocks shouldn't be a big pain.
Oh, and unfortunatelly this would cause the need to upgrade older ships, so they could store more blocks, but I think this would be a change for the better.
I really would like to see something similiar to this in game, so there would be more freighters and trading ships. Maybe even some convoys :D I apologize for any spelling mistakes, did my best to make my post legible as I could and i hope You would like my idea and give some support
*- i don't know if highest id number of block is the number of different blocks in game and it would take too much time to confirm that
So far freighters had no reasons to exist in starmade, other than purely aesthetic, because moving cargo can be done with little perma cloak ship with few plex storage blocks. I haven't made exact calculations and i haven't found an info how many unique blocks are in starmade*, but if we assume there are 300 of them (every unique blocks - weapons, computers, hulls, wedges, minerals, etc.) and plex storage can contain 35 unique blocks with infinite number of the same blocks then we can move EVERY unique block at ANY amount with ONLY 10 plex storages. Of course there might be more then 300 different blocks but still, about 15 plex storages should do the work.
My idea is to limit number of blocks which could be placed in plex storage.
Here i will use numbers so it will be easier to illustrate my idea but we don't need to stick to them. I think every server should have the option to change them.
Firstly change plex storages from bottomless sacks to containers where we could place altogether 100k blocks. Storages still can have 35 spaces to place different blocks, but number of all blocks in one storage combined should not exceed 100k.
e.g. we could store in one storage 100k red hulls OR 30k red hulls and 70k black hulls (100k combined)
Secondly, as no one like having hundreds of plex storages on their ships, new block should be implemented - storage enhancer. Each enhancer connected to plex storage (or factory input) would increase the number that specific block could hold by 50k. They wouldn't need any energy.
e.g. after connecting 2 enhancers to plex storage we could store 200k (2x50k + 100k) blocks in that block
Lastly, there is personal inventory. 100k block limit would be a big pain in the ass, so 500k or 1 mil capacity would be enough.
With these changes if we were about to mine, we would make sure our ship has enough storage capacity to hold our blocks and if we would like to trade, we would have to make bigger freighter, so we won't need to make few runs to sell all the rock blocks we've gathered.
To move 2 mil blocks we would need 1 plex storage (100k) and 38 enhancers (1.9 mil), but if we change the numbers to 10k capacity for storage and 5k to enhancer, then we would use 1 storage and 398 enhancers.
Now the problems.
The thing is that this idea would make the game harder. Right now mining and robbing pirates with few plex storages can be problematic as usually we find more then 45 unique blocks (different minerals lvls, colored hulls, etc.) so we need to put everything from our inventory to ships storages. And as we would have limited number of storages on our ship, there would be a need for inventory management. It would be the best if there was an option to choose rather we want specific block automatically be placed with another blocks of the same type in ships storage or in our inventory. But so far option like this does not exist.
The other problem (smaller one in my opinion) is while building ship/station we would have limited resources, but making a little resuplly run after placing 500k blocks shouldn't be a big pain.
Oh, and unfortunatelly this would cause the need to upgrade older ships, so they could store more blocks, but I think this would be a change for the better.
I really would like to see something similiar to this in game, so there would be more freighters and trading ships. Maybe even some convoys :D I apologize for any spelling mistakes, did my best to make my post legible as I could and i hope You would like my idea and give some support
*- i don't know if highest id number of block is the number of different blocks in game and it would take too much time to confirm that
