Not Garbage Resource Mechanics

[Nosajimiki]

The complexity that doesn't involve ship design is probably the biggest reason why the game is dead.

I disagree, yes, there are players that don't like it, but there are those that do. When that happens, it encourages more faction building. If the game is well balanced then some people will be predominantly system engineers, some aesthetic engineers, some logic system engineers, some pilots, some logistics officers, etc. Encouraging each potential "trade" by having them fully flushed out encourages faction building on survival servers. Think of it like playing an RPG and needed a healer on you team, you can play without one, but it makes things harder and more tedious. A lot of people don't like playing "support" roles, but those that do are valued assets.

Besides, if you don't like playing survival, then there's always Cake.

Personaly I quite liked the orginal system XD
Also we are still waiting for paint cans!!!!! Creating 20 Different FULL Sets of armour just so you can have different colours is a downright pain :/
Simply just integrate it into the toolbar/storage, you can select a colour, all hull blocks placed are that colour, changeable with 2 mouse clicks/hotkey etc.
That alone would simplify crafting by 20 times.

Here I totally agree. If I could just set block color on the fly, it would save a lot of aggravation on both the design and manufacturing end of things.

 

[The Judge]

I disagree, yes, there are players that don't like it, but there are those that do. When that happens, it encourages more faction building. If the game is well balanced then some people will be predominantly system engineers, some aesthetic engineers, some logic system engineers, some pilots, some logistics officers, etc. Encouraging each potential "trade" by having them fully flushed out encourages faction building on survival servers. Think of it like playing an RPG and needed a healer on you team, you can play without one, but it makes things harder and more tedious. A lot of people don't like playing "support" roles, but those that do are valued assets.

How does it encourage faction building if pretty much every faction is dead constantly? Mercdragon and Vaygr are the only exceptions to my knowledge and Vaygr just 'sploits resources.

 

[MacThule]

Besides, if you don't like playing survival, then there's always Cake.

Also, 'survival' is probably a bit of hyperbole here... You can stand around on an asteroid forever and not die; I've never played what I see as a proper survival game where the clock wasn't always ticking. There really isn't a 'survival' mode, just plain old sandbox mode.

And I agree with you, but there is a bit of a paradox. Resourcing and manufacturing can be tediously complex, and yet still does not actually seem to result in the sort of specialization one would expect. Although this may be in large part because I don't think that there has ever been an era in SM where the dominant clans didn't know how to exploit massive resources relatively quickly on the down-low, through trade network loopholes or other means when not using outright exploits, so there is never realistic economic pressure.

On the other hand, at this point in everyone's experience, I'm not sure a more realistic economic situation would even help, it might well just discourage a lot of people from even playing because the longstanding expectation of what SM is is that you will progress extremely quickly and without really sacrificing very much to specialization.

 

[Calhoun]

tedium =/= survival

 

[FlyingDebris]

tedium =/= survival

The main reason this game is so dead is the tedium involved in doing anything meaningful.

 

[Nosajimiki]

How does it encourage faction building if pretty much every faction is dead constantly? Mercdragon and Vaygr are the only exceptions to my knowledge and Vaygr just 'sploits resources.

Factions are dying because the playerbase is contracting. There are fewer logistical specialists than there are factions at this point, and most factions don't want to lose their identity by merging. Most factions don't have more than 2-3 ppl now because so many ppl have been chased away by the constantly looming power update. If the player base were to expand again, without redilly exploitable resources then noobs coming in would naturally become the workhorse of industry. Noobs will be able to establish themselves quickly via the resources they can bring in using the technology developed by the veteran leaders. This relationship will encourage the vets to share what they know with the noobs which alleviates a lot of the tedium of learning how to play the game though years of getting your ass kicked until you figure it all out.

Simplifying industry too much eliminates the need for noobs which inhibits faction growth and will lead to more of a monopolization of servers by the few most experienced players.
[doublepost=1514927809,1514927528][/doublepost]

The main reason this game is so dead is the tedium involved in doing anything meaningful.

Many things are actually way less tedious than they were years ago. The new editing tools makes ship building and refitting several times as fast. One block type for all shapes also removed a lot of tedium as did the volume based cargo update so that we aren't just stuck with a limited number of stacks distributed across 20 storage boxes. Logic based manufacturing is also much better documented in Youtube vids now making it easy to set that stuff up your self.

 

[The Judge]

Factions are dying because the playerbase is contracting. There are fewer logistical specialists than there are factions at this point, and most factions don't want to lose their identity by merging. Most factions don't have more than 2-3 ppl now because so many ppl have been chased away by the constantly looming power update. If the player base were to expand again, without redilly exploitable resources then noobs coming in would naturally become the workhorse of industry. Noobs will be able to establish themselves quickly via the resources they can bring in using the technology developed by the veteran leaders. This relationship will encourage the vets to share what they know with the noobs which alleviates a lot of the tedium of learning how to play the game though years of getting your ass kicked until you figure it all out.

Simplifying industry too much eliminates the need for noobs which inhibits faction growth and will lead to more of a monopolization of servers by the few most experienced players.
[doublepost=1514927809,1514927528][/doublepost]

Many things are actually way less tedious than they were years ago. The new editing tools makes ship building and refitting several times as fast. One block type for all shapes also removed a lot of tedium as did the volume based cargo update so that we aren't just stuck with a limited number of stacks distributed across 20 storage boxes. Logic based manufacturing is also much better documented in Youtube vids now making it easy to set that stuff up your self.

The game was already dead before the power update tho

 

[FlyingDebris]

Factions are dying because the playerbase is contracting. There are fewer logistical specialists than there are factions at this point, and most factions don't want to lose their identity by merging. Most factions don't have more than 2-3 ppl now because so many ppl have been chased away by the constantly looming power update. If the player base were to expand again, without redilly exploitable resources then noobs coming in would naturally become the workhorse of industry. Noobs will be able to establish themselves quickly via the resources they can bring in using the technology developed by the veteran leaders. This relationship will encourage the vets to share what they know with the noobs which alleviates a lot of the tedium of learning how to play the game though years of getting your ass kicked until you figure it all out.

Simplifying industry too much eliminates the need for noobs which inhibits faction growth and will lead to more of a monopolization of servers by the few most experienced players.
[doublepost=1514927809,1514927528][/doublepost]

Many things are actually way less tedious than they were years ago. The new editing tools makes ship building and refitting several times as fast. One block type for all shapes also removed a lot of tedium as did the volume based cargo update so that we aren't just stuck with a limited number of stacks distributed across 20 storage boxes. Logic based manufacturing is also much better documented in Youtube vids now making it easy to set that stuff up your self.

Shipbuilding is less of an issue yes, but I very fondly remember not having to get twenty billion bits of whatever and put them all into a BP to spawn a single ship. tbh I think that killed some of the creativity of the game too, since players want to shorten their BP lists and as such no longer use much decoration aside from a relatively small quantity of the same blocks in order to try and avoid some of the hours upon hours of filling BPs for use.

 

[NeonSturm]

Shipbuilding is less of an issue yes, but I very fondly remember not having to get twenty billion bits of whatever and put them all into a BP to spawn a single ship. tbh I think that killed some of the creativity of the game too, since players want to shorten their BP lists and as such no longer use much decoration aside from a relatively small quantity of the same blocks in order to try and avoid some of the hours upon hours of filling BPs for use.

Perhaps we should (be able to) link factories to shipyards and allow a ship size depending on factory enhancers for each type (bas, std, adv)

 

[MacThule]

Shipbuilding is less of an issue yes, but I very fondly remember not having to get twenty billion bits of whatever and put them all into a BP to spawn a single ship. tbh I think that killed some of the creativity of the game too, since players want to shorten their BP lists and as such no longer use much decoration aside from a relatively small quantity of the same blocks in order to try and avoid some of the hours upon hours of filling BPs for use.

Absolutely.

I have several entire ship lines designed to share with newer players. In these, first order is simplicity (then efficient function, then trying not to look hideous) because in training noobs on the servers you give them a BP, coach them through filling a few items, then send them out with cash in hand to finish the job.... and never see them in server again. Presumably because they did the time math and realized the tedium they faced to spawn in their first small frigate and went to go play Minecraft or DoTA for instant action. With my simplified ships that only required 15-20 different kinds of components, I actually saw several recruits spawning in copies of these and using them to facilitate grinding up into larger ships (ie staying on server and spending longer playing SM).

 

[Captain Fortius]

There are simply too many raw resources and resource refining is a really big headache.

So true!

Whole post, good idea.

There's absolutely no need for so many elements. I mean WTF.

My two cents would be to rename the remaining elements to existing real and common fantasy names, because memorizing what Iron and Adamantium is good for is way more comfortable than trying to make sense of the crazy schine-original names.

 

[NeonSturm]

My two cents would be to rename the remaining elements to existing real and common fantasy names, because memorizing what Iron and Adamantium is good for is way more comfortable than trying to make sense of the crazy schine-original names.

There could be comp-ore for computers ,powa-ore for reactors ,conductrum for shields and stronk for hull hardeners ...

But it wouldn't be hard to remember if you could select one and it shows what you can build out of it.

 

[MacThule]

I don't find the resource system or refining process horrible at all. On its own. Manufacturing is the worst part for me. I used to have great automated factories, but I got tired of reworking them to accommodate constant changes.

The fact that one of the most basic components in the game (armor) is also the most difficult and tedious to produce seems counterintuitive. Solid alloyed plates involve a complex, multistage refining, production, dying, and enhancement process.... but near-magical, electromechanical devices like force fields, FTL drives, and cloaking devices are simple, one-stage deals involving only two components. That makes no sense.

Whatever. I just want to mine or trade, then mass-dump my resources into my factory and start making ships in my shipyard. If I don't have enough tuffshitium, just let me know and I will source some more.

On the other hand.... I would be fine with even more complex manufacturing than we have now IF I could actually buy/sell ships somehow other than an informal, back-ally handoff! Because then players in MP could specialize and most would never need to bother with the tedium of production, and those good with designing flexible factory arrays to fill those BPs would see reward for their grind and never need to touch a miner or refinery. NPC guilds could sell whole ships in SP to compensate for lack of specialist players.

But right now it is just waaay too much. The grind of mining ain't bad. The grind of refining and manufacturing ain't bad. The grind of filling BPs, well, that sucks completely unless you have a very flush stockpile. The grind of constantly modding ships in response to "updates" has gotten kinda old, but it's fun sometimes. Now put all that grind together... Just thinking about it makes me want to start tapping [ESC]!!

So yeah, with janky shipyards, constant changes to ship function, and no ability to actually buy or sell ships in-game, I would love to see resources simplified! They probably never should have made them so complex before getting to a playability stage where every single player didn't have to be a Jack-of-All-Trades. What we did not need simplified was the fun part of unlimited flexibility in ship system ratios, which is entirely what the focus has been on all last year.

 

[JinM]

I don't find the resource system or refining process horrible at all. On its own. Manufacturing is the worst part for me. I used to have great automated factories, but I got tired of reworking them to accommodate constant changes.

The fact that one of the most basic components in the game (armor) is also the most difficult and tedious to produce seems counterintuitive. Solid alloyed plates involve a complex, multistage refining, production, dying, and enhancement process.... but near-magical, electromechanical devices like force fields, FTL drives, and cloaking devices are simple, one-stage deals involving only two components. That makes no sense.

Yeah, true. Colored blocks should be manufactured easier. Maybe only one block in grey for the hull and armor types, that can get color selected for the whole spectrum via a menue.

 

[MacThule]

Yeah, true. Colored blocks should be manufactured easier. Maybe only one block in grey for the hull and armor types, that can get color selected for the whole spectrum via a menue.

And for consistency, if AA is a 3-stage craft, why aren't shields? It's not like AA is somehow superior to shields in practice... It just isn't sensible.

I think it should all be simplified until/unless profitable specialization is a viable option.

 

[Etc_Guy]

I agree, the resource manufacturing is in dire need of a revamp. It's not fun gathering 20+ different ores and crystals and have to build 10 or more factories to mass produce starships.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think there should be a basic-shield-generator which is cap and regen in one and less efficient.
(EDIT: would be counted as regen for shield bubble size)

I also think that overdrive should be linkable to shields and drain more power while active, to make inefficient systems more common for their ability to use power more versatile.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Perhaps we should (be able to) link factories to shipyards and allow a ship size depending on factory enhancers for each type (bas, std, adv)

This would be a better compromise I think than just going strait ore to ship. At the very least it forces you to build up your industrial abilities such that if you are coming from raw ore, a weak factory might still take a good chunk of time to spit out a ship without being tedious. That said, I would like to see some sort of system where intelligent design equals efficiency more so than just more blocks = better.
[doublepost=1515080519,1515080383][/doublepost]

I agree, the resource manufacturing is in dire need of a revamp. It's not fun gathering 20+ different ores and crystals and have to build 10 or more factories to mass produce starships.

I disagree, having to plan where to go to get what you need is the only part of mining that feels like an actual game.

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps factories should switch production to what is pulled.
With the new pull limit to x amount, factories would be a lot more useful this way.

You would no longer need idle enhancer chunks just because they are tied to 1 product (if you use them purely with logic)

 

[GDPR 302420]

I think this is honesty a necessity, the current factory system is complex simply for the sake of being complex, this complexity adds nothing but frustration and bore to the game.

It is evident that this artificial complexity is not like by at least a significant portion of the games playerbase, as shown by the large drop off in players when buy with credits was replaced with the BP system awhile back.

Currently, doing anything meaningful with ships feels like a chore because resources are such a bore to mine and process, the current system is unnecessarily complex and tedious. This system is a step in the right direction.