I'd like to start off by saying, I don't like the way we currently acquire paint. It just never felt right to me. Granted it works, but to me it never felt right. Here are the reason I take issue with it:
1. Sometimes the capsules you need for your paint, are better used for other needs.
2. You MUST color the gray hull block first. You cannot for example color a standard armor block. At least not as far as I am aware.
3. You cannot repaint a block. Say you painted it red and decided you want it black, or maybe white. You can't just repaint it with more paint.
4. The manufacturing process for colored hull/armor feels intuitive.
SO. What magical feature can fix this? I believe the solution is in the Flora/Fauna portion of the game.
How? glad you asked.
I suggest implementing Slime farming. You know those little smiles that are in many MMO's? Or maybe you know them from Slime Rancher? Well what if certain color of smiles could spawn on certain types of planets. You could ether murder them for a fast "Colored Slime" cash in. OR You could build a farm on the appropriate planet type, and gradually collect their slime for use in making paint.
Think of this idea as being similar to wool in MC. You could kill the sheep to get some wool, or you could setup a farm and get more long term results. Then add in the fact you would have to have in your control, at least a few planet types to provide for the smiles. With the 12 current colors (Excluding the standard Gray) and each type of world being able to sustain say 3 types of slime's. A player could in theory have every color if they had the right 4 planets claimed.
This is assuming that each color will have a separate slime. I guess for teal we could combine blue/white slime to get teal slime instead, and use that for teal paint. But it could be fun to have to breed blue and white slime's to get teal ones too. But it really doesn't matter all that much overall TBH.
One last thing players would need, would be a "Painting Factory" or whatever you want to call it. They would work similar to factory's except that you could chose the hull/armor you want to paint, and what color you want to paint it. So for example you could select White Tetra's and then select Orange for the color to paint them. Then as long as it has paint, and White Tetra's supplied to it, it will convert them. The "Painting Factory" should also be the tool that crafts paint from slime. The Painting Factory would be built from the basic factory.
Factories would produce whatever kind of hull/armor like normal, except they could use ANY color hull to produce an upgraded version of it. This being the case they likely would need to be able to select the proper blocks to use when upgrading hull to armor to advanced armor.
One added benefit of making smiles require specific planet types for long term survival, is that players would have to defend those planets. Other players could then try to disrupt the flow of paint, which would slow down the construction of blueprints that their enemies produce. Thus causing a way to attack a players infrastructure.
*This suggestion is dependent on the Flora/Fauna foundation that is supposed to be implemented into Starmade, which may or may not allow for this suggestion.
1. Sometimes the capsules you need for your paint, are better used for other needs.
2. You MUST color the gray hull block first. You cannot for example color a standard armor block. At least not as far as I am aware.
3. You cannot repaint a block. Say you painted it red and decided you want it black, or maybe white. You can't just repaint it with more paint.
4. The manufacturing process for colored hull/armor feels intuitive.
SO. What magical feature can fix this? I believe the solution is in the Flora/Fauna portion of the game.
How? glad you asked.
I suggest implementing Slime farming. You know those little smiles that are in many MMO's? Or maybe you know them from Slime Rancher? Well what if certain color of smiles could spawn on certain types of planets. You could ether murder them for a fast "Colored Slime" cash in. OR You could build a farm on the appropriate planet type, and gradually collect their slime for use in making paint.
Think of this idea as being similar to wool in MC. You could kill the sheep to get some wool, or you could setup a farm and get more long term results. Then add in the fact you would have to have in your control, at least a few planet types to provide for the smiles. With the 12 current colors (Excluding the standard Gray) and each type of world being able to sustain say 3 types of slime's. A player could in theory have every color if they had the right 4 planets claimed.
This is assuming that each color will have a separate slime. I guess for teal we could combine blue/white slime to get teal slime instead, and use that for teal paint. But it could be fun to have to breed blue and white slime's to get teal ones too. But it really doesn't matter all that much overall TBH.
One last thing players would need, would be a "Painting Factory" or whatever you want to call it. They would work similar to factory's except that you could chose the hull/armor you want to paint, and what color you want to paint it. So for example you could select White Tetra's and then select Orange for the color to paint them. Then as long as it has paint, and White Tetra's supplied to it, it will convert them. The "Painting Factory" should also be the tool that crafts paint from slime. The Painting Factory would be built from the basic factory.
Factories would produce whatever kind of hull/armor like normal, except they could use ANY color hull to produce an upgraded version of it. This being the case they likely would need to be able to select the proper blocks to use when upgrading hull to armor to advanced armor.
One added benefit of making smiles require specific planet types for long term survival, is that players would have to defend those planets. Other players could then try to disrupt the flow of paint, which would slow down the construction of blueprints that their enemies produce. Thus causing a way to attack a players infrastructure.
*This suggestion is dependent on the Flora/Fauna foundation that is supposed to be implemented into Starmade, which may or may not allow for this suggestion.