- Joined
- Aug 6, 2013
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Started playing this awesome game a few days ago, and while most of it was great the factory/recepie system was... underwhelming to say the least. The two main problems with the current system are: 1) Recepies are impossible to obtain without a large amount of the item you want to make. While this works adequately for easily obtainable items such as hull blocks, for rarer blocks such as corners or ship componants it's extremely tedious to gather the required number for the recepie. Worse, when you craft the recepie you loose all those componants that you just spent so much effort to gather. 2) Recepie inputs are random, and may be something you do not have and requires substantial effort to obtain. While some recepies may be awesome, there's a darn good chance that the recepie you do get will be useless since you don't have the inputs.
The solution is to reverse the system of obtaining recepies. Instead of paying 5000 of the output to generate a recepie with random inputs, you should pay 5000 inputs to get a recepie for a random (or ideally semi-random) output. For example, after mining an asteroid or two in the early game I have 5000 rock. I can then use that rock to buy a recepie, which let's say turns out to be 50rock + 1LiAwesomite -> 1Hull. Ideally, the recepies should follow certain archetypes, such as rock -> hull, ore -> chips, chips + hull -> ship parts, with higher level or multiple inputs producing higher level outputs. For example, if I tried to create a recepie from 5000hull and 5000processors, it'd have a higher chance of becoming a recepie for power or shields instead of an input of 5000rock. There'd still be a small chance of getting a recepie for rock -> thrusters, but typically you'd only get something slighly more useful than the input.
The advantage of this system is that it scales up from naturally obtainable resources. This gives mining a purpose again, as early game would consist of obtaining enough rock and ores to make recepies for hulls and computer chips, then using the outputs of those recepies to make more advanced ship parts, then finally building ships. This way, a player can build industry from the ground up without spamming trade posts for advanced componants or grinding pirates. Furthermore, since the inputs will be somehting the player has a lot of, the recepies created will be useful to the player. From a gaming perspective this system would be far more satisfying; instead of thinking "give up an obscene number of valuable componants to get an uncertain way to make more," the player will view it as "find out what I can make with the resources I've gathered." Coding wise this should be pretty simple to implement, as it merely reverses what you pay to get the recepie.
Thoughts?
The solution is to reverse the system of obtaining recepies. Instead of paying 5000 of the output to generate a recepie with random inputs, you should pay 5000 inputs to get a recepie for a random (or ideally semi-random) output. For example, after mining an asteroid or two in the early game I have 5000 rock. I can then use that rock to buy a recepie, which let's say turns out to be 50rock + 1LiAwesomite -> 1Hull. Ideally, the recepies should follow certain archetypes, such as rock -> hull, ore -> chips, chips + hull -> ship parts, with higher level or multiple inputs producing higher level outputs. For example, if I tried to create a recepie from 5000hull and 5000processors, it'd have a higher chance of becoming a recepie for power or shields instead of an input of 5000rock. There'd still be a small chance of getting a recepie for rock -> thrusters, but typically you'd only get something slighly more useful than the input.
The advantage of this system is that it scales up from naturally obtainable resources. This gives mining a purpose again, as early game would consist of obtaining enough rock and ores to make recepies for hulls and computer chips, then using the outputs of those recepies to make more advanced ship parts, then finally building ships. This way, a player can build industry from the ground up without spamming trade posts for advanced componants or grinding pirates. Furthermore, since the inputs will be somehting the player has a lot of, the recepies created will be useful to the player. From a gaming perspective this system would be far more satisfying; instead of thinking "give up an obscene number of valuable componants to get an uncertain way to make more," the player will view it as "find out what I can make with the resources I've gathered." Coding wise this should be pretty simple to implement, as it merely reverses what you pay to get the recepie.
Thoughts?
