Ideas for Renewable Resources

[Loadout]

There are a billion and one ways to implement renewable resources so take your pick!

So after reading perhaps hundreds of ideas on this subject I thought I would make a single thread to start combining all these ideas into one easier to read place. As mentioned 'a new one comes every week', well lets just merge them all here.... Note, I take little to no credit on virtually all of these ideas, I'm simply making it easier to find them and offer conjecture in a neater more organized manner.

Asteroid Ideas;

• Comets, Free floaters, and randomly moving space junk - Essentially object A enters a system from some random side/area and then moves with some predetermined velocity towards an asteroid belt. Once it hits the nearest sector, A then becomes an asteroid in that sector. This replenishes burnt out asteroid sectors on occasion in a relatively realistic way.
• Wells, Spawners and figity doo-dads - Rather than wait for a random event, why not make one? This method involves some sector specific cosmic event, either player made or natural, which results in a slowly built bouncing baby asteroid.
• Old system+ -fix the previous respawn so it cannot create wacky asteroids consisting of game breaking block counts and instead add some sort of timer to re-balance the distribution.
• Continuous belts - Asteroids float about endlessly spawning at one end and de-spawning at another. Similar I suppose to free floaters, but with a more predictable flight pattern.

Planet Ideas;

• Mantle Miners, drainers, producers, oh my! - Add a block system, similar in nature to factory ticks, which will draw out resources slow over time. These resources can either be random or fixed per planet(type, distance, rarity, config file, however you see fit).
• Critters and Trees, they're the bees knees! - Have creatures grow on planets in "habitats" where they can be farmed(killed) for ores. Likewise 'crystal farms' can grow crystals(type/planet specific) for collection over time.
• Space chickens! (same page as above but further down) - Planets can slowly regenerate their plates up to their original size(?). Blocks could potentially be added to allow specific growths, more caves, more ores, more crystals, etc.
• "Terraforming" - A planet only, block system that can manually regenerate a planets plates for a certain cost (FP maybe?). Perhaps has a side effect of spawning alternate planet type plates, such as mars or alien on an ice planet (Player Controllable?).

Gas Giants -

• Ice giants! -Presumably, the gas condenses into crystals to form a semi-solid core for the gas giant, this would regenerate every so often.
• Gas Cans! - Or the giant could have its gas harvested by a beam or module for "gas capsules" which offer some sort of alternative currency for construction methods?

Misc Ideas;

• Vampire salvage beams - This is my own idea(far as I can tell nobody's mentioned anything quite in this vein), but is somewhat similar in a way to Mantle miners, the idea is fairly simple in it's premise. When firing a salvage beam at an object you no longer remove specific blocks. Instead you remove a numeric value from the entity, that value(mineral, ore, crystal, other) is added in capsule or block form in your cargo/inventory system.
• Worms, holes and vagabonds - Asteroids can be randomly spewed out(generated) by obnoxiously useful wormholes. I'm assuming here they can enter some sort of collection belt around the wormhole.
• What have you done for me lately/Investors - Contracts with the trading guild or other players could result in resource based rewards for players to take advantage of. This could come in the form of a random quest system such as deliveries, bounties/kill counts, bear asses, or some other meta.
• System abandonment- Leave a system unclaimed and it will eventually replenish itself over time. Said time being subject to tweaking of course.

In regards to my idea: Effectively asteroids are no longer 'eaten' but drained. Over time they regain these numeric values slowly and no longer need to worry about being destroyed. This gives players both an opportunity to regain rarer resources but allow all players to fight over who gets them.

Fluff wise you can say that they collect cosmic dust or particles as they float about with their own minor gravity, which replenishes their stock. This may be a bit "game-y" but certainly is easy to implement(3 ints/floats per asteroid, and a simple simulation tick reference).This may serve as a temporary intermediary to more impressive complex systems, such as mantle miners, which could use a stationary more powerful version of this method with similar but better passive results(as opposed to less powerful active ones).


Any other ideas you folks have? Feel free to post them and I'll add em to the list of running ideas.

 

[Zaphord]

Don't forget gas giants, it would be pretty much impossible using the tech on Starmade to strip mine a gas giant.

 

[AnthonyAnderson]

How about terraformers? Once a planet has been stripped completely the player(s) could initiate a lengthy timed process to regenerate the planet of their choosing.

Once every last block has been salvaged (or maybe over xx% has been salvaged for practicality), a ship fitted with a terraforming module and blocks can be docked directly onto the exposed core of the planet. Once latched, it would start consuming a new item (Terraforming Cores) and begin working. If blocks are leftover, it first dissolves them at maybe 250/minute. Once done, it begins creating the new planet on top of the core.

Perhaps different Terraforming cores could be programmed to generate appropriate fauna (coming soon) and resources specific to that planet type. An "outpost" module could be placed on the terraformer and linked to it, and once everything has been created it'll auto-generate the outpost, complete with factories and other uses.

I'm throwing lots of 2cents around lately.

Edit: To clarify, this would be a player-flown ship with a docking-like-beam to latch onto stations. I imagine the ship would need xx power generation/capacity, 6x "Terraformer Grapple Pads" (which is what is used to secure the terraformer onto the core), 1x Terraforming Control Console (Holds/uses terraforming cores, determines what kind of outpost is made, and what kind of planet is created), then of course shielding and defensive turrets (lest you get attacked by another player faction/rogue player/your guns misfire) and you lose both your terraformer and the planet altogether.


Back to your idea, though:

Continuous belts - A player would need only to find the spawning point and set up a salvaging station ( I assume stations can be built and fitted with logic-based salvage beams) and nearly immediately have an endless amount of any resource, set up dozens of factories that'll automatically produce nearly every mass-used block, etc.

Comets, Free floaters, and randomly moving space junk - I actually really like this. What about a gravity-well station that could be used to more or less increase the chance of free-floating asteroids to be deposited in a nearby sector?

 

[Loadout]

How about terraformers? Once a planet has been stripped completely the player(s) could initiate a lengthy timed process to regenerate the planet of their choosing.

Once every last block has been salvaged (or maybe over xx% has been salvaged for practicality), a ship fitted with a terraforming module and blocks can be docked directly onto the exposed core of the planet. Once latched, it would start consuming a new item (Terraforming Cores) and begin working. If blocks are leftover, it first dissolves them at maybe 250/minute. Once done, it begins creating the new planet on top of the core.

Perhaps different Terraforming cores could be programmed to generate appropriate fauna (coming soon) and resources specific to that planet type. An "outpost" module could be placed on the terraformer and linked to it, and once everything has been created it'll auto-generate the outpost, complete with factories and other uses.

I'm throwing lots of 2cents around lately.



Back to your idea, though:

Continuous belts - A player would need only to find the spawning point and set up a salvaging station ( I assume stations can be built and fitted with logic-based salvage beams) and nearly immediately have an endless amount of any resource, set up dozens of factories that'll automatically produce nearly every mass-used block, etc.

Comets, Free floaters, and randomly moving space junk - I actually really like this. What about a gravity-well station that could be used to more or less increase the chance of free-floating asteroids to be deposited in a nearby sector?

adding this one to the list!

Actually, neither of those are my ideas.

On the belts note I would imagine it's either at the very edge of a system or somewhere offscreen, so finding the actual spawn would be nearly impossible. Although a station to slowly catch them would be cool regardless of where it is.

@comets and things - a well block for stations would be pretty awesome for a player made version of this. Charge up a massive power supply and then suck in some comets from deep space!

Don't forget gas giants, it would be pretty much impossible using the tech on Starmade to strip mine a gas giant.

Adding to list now

Any thoughts on what the idea there was specifically? looked around for it but forgot to add it cause I couldn't get even a brief description of how that would work.

 

[Zaphord]

Mining gas giants using either the salvage beam or through some new gas collector module would yield gas capsules, which could be used to produce other things like fuels or to enhance existing modules.

Condesing the gas into crystals is a new idea, which would work too.

There are a few threads around that detail how harvesting gas giants would work.

 

[AnthonyAnderson]

Sorry, just came up with another idea for terraforming - could it be plausible to restructure only one plate at a time? Have a planet with multiple terrains on it? Lava on one bit, ice next to it, forrest/grass in another?

Who says planets have to conform to society's standards. Doesn't have to be one or the other!

 

[Loadout]

Sorry, just came up with another idea for terraforming - could it be plausible to restructure only one plate at a time? Have a planet with multiple terrains on it? Lava on one bit, ice next to it, forrest/grass in another?

Who says planets have to conform to society's standards. Doesn't have to be one or the other!

That'd be pretty cool, having an old ice planet spawn in some mars or some alien plates. I think it'd be better as a randomly occurring woopsy! event though. Otherwise it might get a little too complicated for new folk to understand. In any event, updating the main post with more info on this idea!