Making smaller ships more useful

[Captainredfox]

Personally, I find it irritating that some players in starmade can simply make enough money and buy a supercarrier from thin aether. Then they proceed to use said carrier to destroy other people without mercy, with no gains for themselves. I believe that this is due to large ships being so ridiculously easy to purchase. My hypothesis is that there in a missing a currency.

Time is one solution and I think is the least problematic. When you purchase a vessel, the game calculates a set amount between when you purchase the ship and when it actually appears. This time would very greatly and increase in a linear fashion to avoid ridiculous wait times. I would say 5 minutes for every 100,000 blocks would be fair; however that is just me. Perhaps under 2,000 blocks the time is instant. This would promote more careful use of expensive ships. As a whole I think it would be much more fun to meet up with someone and offer trading instead of opening fire every single time. It would make the game less predictable and more "space trading simulatory." Of course the time could be edited or disabled in the server config.

Assembly Cores as I like to call the idea could be another way to control titan buying. They would be a set of items that would be collected from pirate stations, pirates and maybe even certain asteroids. Along with the credits, ships would also cost these tokens once they are over about 10k mass. This way starting out doesn't mean having to fight pirates in ships without shields. They could also be craftable and since they would be items they would be tradable. If they came from asteroids as well, this would make mining vessels more useful. Especially since asteroids respawn whereas pirate stations and pirates do not once they are destroyed.

Thanks for reading, constructive criticism is welcome.

 

[Comr4de]

sigh

Small ships /are/ useful. With the advent of point defense systems, support frigates (point defense turrets to screen missiles, shield supply beam) are actually a decent idea. Protip: the strength in small ships are their numbers. Small ships will never be able to solo a battleship. But a frigate that's supporting a cruiser has a decent chance to seriously hurt a battleship.

If you don't like capital ship spam, find a server where blueprint purchase with blocks is enabled. It really shakes up the metagame and I'd say brings large ships back into balance.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

Personally, I find it irritating that some players in starmade can simply make enough money and buy a supercarrier from thin aether.

There is a solution already...
This is not a problem on servers that don't use the bogus credit system for buying blueprints

 

[FunnyBunny14]

And that's why we are going to get shipyards (sometime)

 

[Leanson]

I got an idea for make long small ships useful, and limit large ships. Have ships use and take fuel, different types some craftable, some only found around planet cores, and good fuel expensive to make. Have ship reactors so they resemble reactors as in having to be build a certain way and not all st right lines the whole length of the ship. The more power the reactor puts out, the more fuel it takes to run it. Awww shitttttttt

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I got an idea for make long small ships useful, and limit large ships. Have ships use and take fuel, different types some craftable, some only found around planet cores, and good fuel expensive to make. Have ship reactors so they resemble reactors as in having to be build a certain way and not all st right lines the whole length of the ship. The more power the reactor puts out, the more fuel it takes to run it. Awww shitttttttt

And this is why we had a disagree button.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

And that's why we are going to get shipyards (sometime)

I can't wait for that day. I would love seeing ships automatically constructed over time instead of poofing into space.

 

[Ithirahad]

There is a solution already...
This is not a problem on servers that don't use the bogus credit system for buying blueprints

That raises so many other problems, though. What if someone's ship uses more blocks than the inventory can hold - which is fairly common? This setting is great in principle, but with so many block types it just becomes an even larger issue.

 

[starhaiden]

so when you make something using a shipyard it uses the blocks you put in the plex storages? Also blocks use less room in inventory did you see the cal leaks

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Yep, I saw his leaks, and yes, the shipyards (once implemented) should use blocks from storages.

 

[Ghent96]

If you don't like capital ship spam, find a server where blueprint purchase with blocks is enabled. It really shakes up the metagame and I'd say brings large ships back into balance.

This option is terrible, because you can't purchase a ship with 100,000 blocks just because you lack 1 red standard corner or 1 light rod. That's incredibly bad gameplay. Block buying would be much more useful if buying a ship gave you core and a ghosted blueprint in non-physical blocks. You enter the core, enter build mode, and get a bounding box in red surrounding your ghosted ship. Whatever programming solution is easiest, should be implemented... but... basically you dump all your blocks to build the ship from your inventory into the core (or go about building the ship manually). You can log off, while the ship auto builds, (as long as the sector is active in memory, just like factories), or finish it faster by building it manually. Manual building off this ghosted-blueprint should be easier, tho, like the inverse of "Remove mode" with a block filter.

This combines blocks, and time, and money, in spawning in a ship, and would also provide a game engine foundation for a better ship repair game mechanic.

 

[Comr4de]

This option is terrible, because you can't purchase a ship with 100,000 blocks just because you lack 1 red standard corner or 1 light rod.

Well aren't you in luck! Every time you try to buy a blueprint and you don't have enough blocks, it'll tell you how much of what block you need to finish! Isn't that great.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Well aren't you in luck! Every time you try to buy a blueprint and you don't have enough blocks, it'll tell you how much of what block you need to finish! Isn't that great.

That's great until you have a ship with more unique block types than you have inventory slots. What happens then? It still doesn't address the fact that ships should not just *poof* into existence, it kind of breaks any immersion this game might have.

 

[Comr4de]

That's great until you have a ship with more unique block types than you have inventory slots. What happens then? It still doesn't address the fact that ships should not just *poof* into existence, it kind of breaks any immersion this game might have.

riparoonie

IIRC cal mentioned that you'll be able to *poof* them in if you're in a ship whose container blocks contain the necessary blocks, but that's not implemented yet.

 

[Zeno9141]

riparoonie

IIRC cal mentioned that you'll be able to *poof* them in if you're in a ship whose container blocks contain the necessary blocks, but that's not implemented yet.

Holyshit.

That's exactly how I imagined it to happen.