Player based economy and infrastructure

[<SCRIPTKITTY>]

I am not sure if i'm the only nerd that's thought of this or not but here we go.

I play starmade purely on multiplayer, yes I may hop on single player for a minuet to test something but since my computer is sadly not that great this doesn't happen often. And if I know anything I would be the first to tell you that starmade is very shooty shooty based. Now, don't get me wrong I love big warships just like everyone else I love taking out pirates and I love when an enemy shows up at my homebase and all the turrets point at them and I get in my ship to take them out. However, I have a lot of allies that attempt to be a trading faction or a mining faction and don't focus on pvp or pve ships but instead build fabulous mining vessels and cargo ships. Being a trade faction seems like a great idea lets face it I know a lot of people don't enjoy mining/factorizing as much as they do building ships(I don't) so instead they often buy from npc shops that are close by.

These npc shops make it hard for the trading factions to make any good money.

Other than the circle of allies those trading/mining factions don't really sell to anyone. Now I know its not like npc shops can be taken out of the game but if someone builds a shop station it's likely not many people will come across it. What I would like to see is players having the ability to buy shops from the trading guild.

You may be thinking "wait what?!" but hear me out..

The large quantity of npc shops means that if anyone makes a shop they have a crazy amount of competition and can't hope to get any real business. This makes making your own shop impractical. By buying a shop you..for lack of a better term..replace your competition making it more likely people will buy from you. If someone wanted to purchase a shop then they would either have to pay for the entire stock of the shop the blocks the shop is made of and have the money in the shop set to zero or buy the physical shop itself have the stock emptied and the money set to zero as if the trading guild packed up and left.(money is set to zero since there would be no point in including the contained credits in the price as you would get them back once you purchased it) First option would make it so that it required a crazy amount of cash to purchase a shop while the second is a little more manageable and since all npc shops are the same the price could be set in the config. (shops near spawn would not be able to be purchased for obvious reasons this could also be a config value in system/sector radius and shops already purchased by players can not by purchased also for obvious reasons.)

This would make it so that you owned the shop as if it were a non-homebase station which means it no longer calls for help from the trading guild if its shot at. (shop module acts like a faction module without the ability to claim system or make homebase. Shop modules could still be placed on previous stations so you could have your homebase be a shop as well.) Instead players must build onto these shops to give them shields and turrets. If the shop was attacked it would send out a faction distress signal, a faction news post that goes a little something like this: "Help! This is shop [shopname] at [shop cords]. We are under attack! Send reinforcements!" Then it is up to the faction members to jump over and protect the shop. If the shop module is destroyed then it vents its contents and credits into space for the looter to pick up.

This also gives us the chance to make those pesky pirates a little more piraty.

For instance the pirate AI could seek out stations with shop modules and attack them. However instead of always destroying the shop instead it could be possible that if the faction doesn't respond within a certain amount of time that the pirates somehow steal some of the shops credits or stock then leave.

Speaking of stock that's now the players responsibility isn't it. There would have to be a way to get items into shops easily without manually stocking them by hand, this is where cargo ships come in. A cargo ship would be a ship primarily for transport of goods. Shops could have specific docking ports that drain the connected ships storage and stock the connected shop or the ships could have a computer of some sort that they use to if the station they are docked to has a shop inject items into it. This would be a one way transaction to avoid exploiting so that only the shop owner can take stuffs out of the shop but anyone in the faction can stock it either that or ownership of a shop would become faction wide.

So if you set up a shop right you could be rolling in dough so there needs to be a way to collect said dough so that you don't have to carry all dat dough. One way this could be done is with a transaction computer and vault modules. Vault modules would hold a specific amount of credits so that to hold more credits you need more modules. say each could hold 100 million or something like that. The transaction computer when first access allows you to set a pin number this code is unique so that no two computers have the same code if you want you can set it or have one randomly created. This could also allow players to create banks and such for other players to hold their money and things like that. Transaction computers could also be placed on ships so that a ship docked to a station could draw money from the shop it was connected to and computers could place money in other computers when docked so that you could pay people or deposit your money at a bank or at a homebase(for this each computer could have a routing number/name). If vault modules were destroyed their contents would be vented into space. But you may say what if the computer gets destroyed but not the modules, no worries the computer is used for transactions and taking large amounts of money out of the modules. Each module can be accessed with the pin code set by the computer.

Just by adding this to the game players could focus on economic conquest and growth just as much as military conquest and growth. It would bring greater depth to gameplay since some faction members could work on maintaining shops some could focus on manufacturing things to stock the shops with some could focus on building ships in shipyards and some could focus on piloting those ships. Its all about building up infrastructure to help factions succeed. Factions with a large network of shops and infrastructure will flourish and be much more powerful than factions that don't. This also means that factions can target another factions shops as a way of taking them down by knocking out their supporting infrastructure. This means if factions want to invest in shops they will need to have enough ships/turrets to defend them, thus making them balanced. Player owned shops would also add an extra social aspect to the game. Large trade stations could have full interiors for people to hang out in and many public docking ports. Overall ading more depth to gameplay as a whole.

Thanks for reading :p I know it was long. I hope you consider my suggestions.

TL;DR?
Players can buy shops and use them to build up infrastructure however it would be up to them to stock them and facilitate them various new elements could be added to create specific cargo ships that stock them and player can create vaults for bank stations or carrying large amounts of money on cargo ships. Other players and pirates could raid these shops meaning they must be well protected, making them balanced and shops overall adding more depth to the game including various social aspects.

 

[lilheartless]

I think the biggest issue is more about location and advertisement the trading guild does a terrible job of restocking their shops with any kind of relevant stock i think if there was an easier way to direct people to your fully stocked shop it would help with business.

On a side note right now there is no way to make credits besides selling to npc shops they are the only place money comes from.

As a shop "desire'er" as well i think a huge problem is no one has any source of income but selling to shops if a player doesn't stock his store all the way and someone comes along and unloads all of their stuff and takes all that players credits then that player is then forced to go to a npc shop and sell stuff in order to replenish their credit supply hence perpetuating those npc stores having money.

Its been talked about that pirates will eventually stop dropping loot and just give you credits instead. If/Once this happens player shops will see much more use because once the people hunting pirates just get money instead of crap to replenish the npc stores stock with they will have no choice but to seek out player shops filled to the brim with fresh crafted cannons missiles and shield modules.

 

[<SCRIPTKITTY>]

I think the biggest issue is more about location and advertisement the trading guild does a terrible job of restocking their shops with any kind of relevant stock i think if there was an easier way to direct people to your fully stocked shop it would help with business.

On a side note right now there is no way to make credits besides selling to npc shops they are the only place money comes from.

As a shop "desire'er" as well i think a huge problem is no one has any source of income but selling to shops if a player doesn't stock his store all the way and someone comes along and unloads all of their stuff and takes all that players credits then that player is then forced to go to a npc shop and sell stuff in order to replenish their credit supply hence perpetuating those npc stores having money.

Its been talked about that pirates will eventually stop dropping loot and just give you credits instead. If/Once this happens player shops will see much more use because once the people hunting pirates just get money instead of crap to replenish the npc stores stock with they will have no choice but to seek out player shops filled to the brim with fresh crafted cannons missiles and shield modules.

You have a point here. ~But again it is up to the players to defend their shops from such pirates/players~ I read that wrong. I see what you mean but this also means that other players can come by and purchase that stuff as well and with more people having shops and not as much npc shops then that is more likely, servers by now have some other way of getting credits than selling to npc shops (such as "vote rewards") However there is that issue of what someone does when there shops are destroyed. Maybe someone other than me has an idea for protecting shops better.

I think the pirates drop money is a great idea myself and would indeed support player based shops.

 

[lilheartless]

You have a point here. ~But again it is up to the players to defend their shops from such pirates/players~ I read that wrong. I see what you mean but this also means that other players can come by and purchase that stuff as well and with more people having shops and not as much npc shops then that is more likely, servers by now have some other way of getting credits than selling to npc shops (such as "vote rewards") However there is that issue of what someone does when there shops are destroyed. Maybe someone other than me has an idea for protecting shops better.

I think the pirates drop money is a great idea myself and would indeed support player based shops.

the shops don't really work right right now and don't correctly display the buy and sell values but i'm assuming that when they get another pass you will be able to set up player shops that people can't sell too specifically outpost shops or non homebase shops near the starting area of a server. these shops you would remove the option to sell to aka you fill the shop up with x amount of goods for y price and then just leave it people won't be able to sell to you (and honestly if you are producing goods why would you want people selling to you anyways) and you just roll by with a supply ship once every couple of days to restock your inventory and take out all the credits if the shop gets destroyed you don't keep it full so its not a huge loss.

Honestly what i'd really like to see is the ability to "lock" blueprints in a shipyard and then hook that shipyard up to a shop and then have people come and buy ships from you I think that would be awesome.

 

[Amadeus]

I believe somewhere in the twitch stream the devs said that they would be redoing a lot of shop and space station things soon.