Read by Schine Mobile Shipyards (shipyards on ships)

[Keptick]

Part of the concern is that placing space station services onto a ship means the entire game can be played without owning a permanent base. Space stations should be a more efficient place to use factories, claim territory, and build ships. If shipyards, among other systems, are placed onto a ship there needs to be a balancing factor which is why they are not in yet.

Simple, a ship can die. A homebase can't. This is especially true on servers like Shattered skies with the "drop everything on death" penalty, you'd have to be pretty adventurous (or plain retarded) to carry everything on yourself and not stash precious things/ships on a homebase.

Besides, you'd still need a station based shipyard to produce that mothership :p (unless it's built on the spot, but the loss of that ship would hurt even more since you'd have no infrastructure to reproduce it).

 

[vernes]

OP should make a nice bullet -list of all the balancing factors mentioned here.
I've seen a couple of restrictions that would make a moving spacestation realistic.

I like the "can't dock" and the "can't be a home-base" ones.
It's a moving station and as such, should be top heavy because of it's entity type.
How that translate in thrust requirements and/or warp restrictions is a matter of opinion and coding possibilities.

 

[Mariux]

Part of the concern is that placing space station services onto a ship means the entire game can be played without owning a permanent base. Space stations should be a more efficient place to use factories, claim territory, and build ships. If shipyards, among other systems, are placed onto a ship there needs to be a balancing factor which is why they are not in yet.

Not only mobile shipyards wouldn't have homebase protection as aceface said, but if an enemy captures your mobile shipyard, he gains access to whatever blueprints you had stored on that ship.

 

[vernes]

Direct restrictions:

• No home-base protection
• Can't dock
• Greater mass (requires more thrust)
• Can't jump (perhaps only via warpgate?)
• Shipyards require more power or takes more time to build.
• more to come?

Indirect restrictions:

• All blueprints in shipyard can be stolen when ship is boarded/destroyed.
• All docked ships don't have protection if hangar doors remain open.
• more to come?

 

[max stripe]

Direct restrictions:

• No home-base protection
• Can't dock
• Greater mass (requires more thrust)
• Can't jump (perhaps only via warpgate?)
• Shipyards require more power or takes more time to build.
• more to come?

Indirect restrictions:

• All blueprints in shipyard can be stolen when ship is boarded/destroyed.
• All docked ships don't have protection if hangar doors remain open.
• more to come?

mobile bases if enabled now are already severialy disadvantaged
why is everyone trying to totaly kill them off by giving them even larger disadvantages than what they already got

 

[Blaza612]

Part of the concern is that placing space station services onto a ship means the entire game can be played without owning a permanent base. Space stations should be a more efficient place to use factories, claim territory, and build ships. If shipyards, among other systems, are placed onto a ship there needs to be a balancing factor which is why they are not in yet.

(Haven't read posts after this yet, so excuse me if this has been already said :p)

They should be more efficient, you answered the problem here. Things that are placed on stations should be more efficient, factories produce quicker for less energy, shipyards build quicker, etc.

But allow us to be space nomads! I would love to be able to have everything I need on a massive capital ship which is a shipyard, factory, clone bay (refer to my Mobile Factories, Shops and Respawning for info on that) rather than be confined to a stupid planet or station. If this is a sandbox game, then allow us to create different play styles, as that will immediately add more gameplay to the game.

 

[vernes]

mobile bases if enabled now are already severialy disadvantaged
why is everyone trying to totaly kill them off by giving them even larger disadvantages than what they already got

We have mobile bases now? That's odd.
So howmany shipyard modules does your mobile base have?
Does it have a warpgate ?

 

[max stripe]

We have mobile bases now? That's odd.
So howmany shipyard modules does your mobile base have?
Does it have a warpgate ?

FYI there was a bug an update ago that allowed you to dock a station to a ship... this docking allowed me to put a shop on a freighter and fly around...
it could also have a warpgate.
and had you read what i said... IF enabled now they would be severly disadvantaged
enabling them is as simple as allowing those blocks on ships

 

[vernes]

mobile bases if enabled now are already severialy disadvantaged

and had you read what i said... IF enabled now they would be severly disadvantaged

First statement you said: "are already" which was odd, since as far as I know, this feature does not exist, so how can a feature that does not exist be at an disadvantage already?
Next you correct me with an slightly different statement: "they would be".
This along with your explanation appended to your argument makes it more readable.

I read exactly what you said, and I am glad you decided to provide additional information.

Now back to your original statement

why is everyone trying to totaly kill them off by giving them even larger disadvantages than what they already got

Because of what Criss said here.
So we're trying to come up with disadvantages that would compensate the advantages a moving base would provide.
By actively coming up with disadvantages that compensate but still provide the fun-factor, we hope to convince the devs to consider adding this to the game.
Which is better than... not having a moving station.

 

[kiraen]

Frankly, I don't understand the Schine position on this. Ships can't claim territory, therefore no faction mining bonuses, etc. And if I want to play nomad style, why can't I? It is sandbox, right?

Easy enough fix. Duh. Make it a config option. Those that want it, can. Those that don't, don't.

 

[Bench]

Expect shipyards to be available in some capacity as an option for capital ships; so in the future you won't be entirely restricted to just space stations for your ship construction. But you'll need to work your way towards the construction of a capital ship. Other additional features will be available only to capital ships, (i.e. FTL) but the exact implementation of what makes capital ships a worthwhile investment vs the difficulty in working your way to constructing one is all still yet to be fully fleshed out.

 

[kiddan]

If we get shipyards on ships why not have them cost faction points to construct ships, but not if the shipyard is on a station?

 

[Bench]

If we get shipyards on ships why not have them cost faction points to construct ships, but not if the shipyard is on a station?

The issue with that is that it results in blocks being spawned out of nowhere, once the economy is all sorted something like that could throw it out of balance.

 

[Colt556]

Personally I don't see why we need to balance stations vs ships to begin with. I mean what's a space station, logically? A ship that doesn't really move much. Why does it matter if you want a big shipyard in orbit of your planet or a shipyard inside a titan that flies around? Who cares? Either way you have to gather resources. Either way it takes time to build new ships. I don't see why being nomadic should be punished or limited.

But even then, there's already inherent restrictions such as stations getting invulnerability and the like. I, personally, like mothership type space ships, the ones that can do everything and are entirely self-sufficient. I love those types of ships and that's why I work on one. So it's good to see shipyard functionality will be added to capital ships, because there's really no reason not to.

The only balancing act we need is stations can be made invulnerable, ships can't. End of. You sacrifice homebase defense for mobility, it's now 100% perfectly balanced and both mobile shipyards and stationary shipyards would be used.

 

[Valck]

If we get shipyards on ships why not have them cost faction points to construct ships, but not if the shipyard is on a station?

The issue with that is that it results in blocks being spawned out of nowhere, once the economy is all sorted something like that could throw it out of balance.

I think the idea was faction points in addition to blocks...?

 

[Ithirahad]

Other additional features will be available only to capital ships, (i.e. FTL)

I know this is off topic, but as for this particular example, why? Jump drive is, mechanically, really annoying and generally not fun. Why shouldn't continuous FTL be available to all ships?

 

[Keptick]

The issue with that is that it results in blocks being spawned out of nowhere, once the economy is all sorted something like that could throw it out of balance.

Pretty sure that he meant FP cost for running the shipyard. As in you'd need block AND FP to use a ship mounted shipyard.

Tbh I see no reason for imposed disadvantages, ship mounted shipyards already have disadvantages such as vulnerability, which is pretty major. Like, I wouldn't fly around in a full fledged cruiser making mobile shipyard because of the risks of losing it (and all the materials it'd contain in storages). The most I'd go is probably frigate/corvette, and that'd be on a heavily shielded/armored titan.

I can mostly see mobile shipyards being useful for drones, fighters, shuttles and small utility ships tbh (the kind that is anoying to manually replace when they get destroyed). No point in risking ressources on anything bigger when it can be done safely on a station.

 

[kiddan]

Pretty sure that he meant FP cost for running the shipyard. As in you'd need block AND FP to use a ship mounted shipyard.

Yea, I might have made that kinda unclear, I did mean that.
And why not have ship get locked into a position when building ships. Shutting AI's, weapons, and shields down until the ship is built or you are under fire? This way you wouldn't end up with half-built ship parts and stuff everywhere as easily.

 

[Keptick]

Yea, I might have made that kinda unclear, I did mean that.
And why not have ship get locked into a position when building ships. Shutting AI's, weapons, and shields down until the ship is built or you are under fire? This way you wouldn't end up with half-built ship parts and stuff everywhere as easily.

But why would you do that? What's wrong with being able to have a ship mounted shipyard? Like.... we've been able to spawn ships everywhere since the game existed, idk why it would be so bad.

 

[Goblin]

I would agree with the longer build times and heavy mass as suggested bevor. The biggest disadvantage seems to be the abusage in battle for building a lots of drones on the fly - which would be contered by a slower movement and lesser defencability by less energy. The moving part should be balanced by the vulnurabilty and the energy costs which resolute in less weapons which is far more important on ships (which could also be made higher for ships).

I could also life with longer ftl charging times.