Regarding the blueprint revamp...

[Ithirahad]

When asked about what will happen to buy-with credits, the replies seemed to be a definite 'no.' To me, this seems ridiculous...

As the new system stands currently, sure, I could go mine tons of stuff to get the brown advanced armor, white lights, and black standard armor and ice crystal I use heavily on interiors or exteriors, not to mention go hunting for all the little bits I use for detailing, such as drain beams, supply beams (which aren't part of the actual set of weapons on the ship), rod lights, water, logic components, white standard armor (for beds), red standard armor, yellow lights, blue crystal armor, blue advanced armor, Mattise crystal, Varat charged circuits and wedges...

...Or, I could skip wasting all that time and just make a doomcube. It was bad enough already when we could buy with credits, especially since hull is more or less useless, but now, I fear that the amount of creative building that will occur in this game will take a bit of a nosedive. Even when having hull contributes to HP, people will probably just use whatever color of hull is easiest to get at the time, and cover everything in big flat sheets, the most efficient configuration.

And those that DO still use hull and whatnot will have to stick to one or two colors, and eliminate or reduce unique details, to make the crafting tolerable.

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In short, without a buy-blocks-with-credits "sub-option," this is one step forward in mechanics-wise immersion and economic improvement, and two steps back in creating a sandbox environment which encourages creativity rather than just cold, artless efficiency. Besides, spawning in a ship you already built shouldn't be too much of a chore - You already did the hard work building an excellent ship that incorporates tons of different materials, being penalized for this is counterproductive.

 

[Keptick]

You get all the likes.


Being able to purchase the materials that aren't filled in the blueprint item (at a higher price) with credits would be a very good thing. It would also mean that people could still buy ships entirely with credits, but the price paid would be whatever percentage increase penalty is set in the configs.

Trust me, this is an absolute must. Going shopping for an hour just to find those two fucking deco blocks that are missing is NOT going to be fun. Also strongly encourages dull monochromatic ships which is very, very bad.

 

[Comr4de]

On the other hand,

BWC currently buys the ship for the lowest credit cost possible. Since items have a range of prices it'll always pick the lowest ones. So if the shop you're at charges 25k for a weapons comp it'll only cost like, 5k to spawn one in with a BP.

I feel that it should be switched around so it charges the HIGHEST possible amount. I mean, if some dude came up to me and asked me to build his ship for him I'd charge him out the ass, not give him a bargain deal.

I'd also tack on a 10-15% service charge on top of that. So a ship BP that would've cost 1000000 would now cost 1100000

 

[Majorfatboy]

These restrictions are nothing more then an attempt at stopping the munchkins, but... You can't stop munchkins, They're munchkins. They're always going to grind like mad to get everything, or jump through whatever hoops just for the bragging rights of having the biggest or bestest. That's the real problem here, The devs keep trying to counter the players who work in large groups, farming like obsessed little nuts, coordinating, networking. You know, all the things that work in the real world. These players will get what They want, why try to stop Them?

Oh God, just the thought of having to set up a factory, or go pirate rolling, or trading, just for some decorative blocks on My 5000-mass light carrier... The display panels. The med cabinets.. The colored hulls for the painted bits. OH GOD THE PENTAS AND TETRAS.

What is so bad about just paying the fifty million credits and getting My ship spawned in? I still have to work for that, You know. Hell, I just did a clean re-install of the game, on the newest version. With large sectors, space is very big, and I can't find any shops anywhere, and pirate bases are a bit tougher now, so if I manage to save up the fifty mil' to buy My ship, I probably busted ass to earn it.
Meanwhile, the munchkins in the big factions online will be farming / manufacturing like all hell, and will still get Their fleet of death stars...

And in the end this only slows down those of us who just want to purchase in a ship We already went through the trouble of building.

Or what about the players who like to buy other people's ships? The entire point is that someone else designed it, You just have to cough up the money to fly it. I don't see a problem with that.
Imagine if You're some Star wars freak. you find out someone built and uploaded plans for a really sweet looking X-wing. "Cool beans! I gotta get Me some of that!" Oh whoops! Sorry! You need to gather all the parts first!

This is going to encourage strip mining like mad. Factions are going to have all Their players on mining duty, eating planets, pirate bases, asteroids, each other... Gonna get real empty out there. I guarantee You online play will suffer, as factions start eating every celestial body out there.

And then there's the 800 pound gorilla in the room no one's talking about: What use is credits after that?
Think about it. We can build any block We want. Hell, We can set up fully automated factories to handle the entire fabrication process. We can set up Our own shops, for storing parts, credits, and spawning ships. what do We use credits for?
Buying parts from shops? Why? We can build the parts.
Buying the raw materials for the parts? Why? We can build those too, or cobble together a mining doomcube, or build block mine...
Buying parts from players? See above. And even still, in a system like this players wont need credits, We'll all be trading parts for parts.
Paying a player for services? Why? What are They going to spend it on? They (like You) can build anything They want, and need to, if They want to spawn in a ship.

Credits here become like emeralds in Minecraft: A pointless currency, as You can, and need to, build everything Yourself.

At least in SP, I can be a cheating bastard and just admin-up whatever ship I want, but online's gonna suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

 

[MossyStone48]

I think you guys are missing two very big and important points.
1) if buy with credits stays usable the new BP system will never get tested because we're too used to doing it that way
2) welcome to cal worthington's sector of ships! we got new ships, we got used ships and you're pre-approved for credit! that's right folks fork enough credits to my NPC salesman over then and he'll approve. he might even undock the ship so you can get it the **** off my lot! and if he doesn't i'll double check his math and shoot him in the face with my bear-launcher. hows that sound? come on down. we'll be glad to see ya and we always accept collect calls!

shipyards can exchange creds for unused parts just using a shop module. suddenly all your spare parts have a legit value. and if it's not possible to have a ship-shop with docks serve out ships for creds then we'll just have to catch the ship-lot owner when they're online and buy a ship direct. who knows the ship-lot owner might even take payments that get automatically deducted on a regular rate or something. there's a lot of possibility here. but it will NEVER get properly tested if the game leaves buy-with-credits on by default. i'm sure that option will be possible to enable later. after we get the kinks worked out of produce-with-blocks.

the fun that could be had with this feature. imagine watching blocks being teleported into place as ship is is BUILT in the dock. and you can hand extra copies of the BP to NPCs and repair drones to replace missing parts or roll a whole ship back to stock. link the BP to the dock and if the ship that was docked there gets destroyed the dock starts building a new one from blocks in storage. redocked ships can be repaired. how is this possibly a bad thing?

tl : dr; buy with creds will return even if it's just a mod. for now the inconvenience is worth it to make sure the system works.

 

[DivineEvil]

When asked about what will happen to buy-with credits, the replies seemed to be a definite 'no.' To me, this seems ridiculous...

To me it's not. Suddenly, having a second identical ship would require the same amount of resources as the first one. Makes perfect sense.

As the new system stands currently, sure, I could go mine tons of stuff to get the brown advanced armor, white lights, and black standard armor and ice crystal I use heavily on interiors or exteriors, not to mention go hunting for all the little bits I use for detailing, such as drain beams, supply beams (which aren't part of the actual set of weapons on the ship), rod lights, water, logic components, white standard armor (for beds), red standard armor, yellow lights, blue crystal armor, blue advanced armor, Mattise crystal, Varat charged circuits and wedges...

You can craft everything you need, or buy it in any shop. I don't seem to understand at which point it becomes harder than the first time you've done it.

...Or, I could skip wasting all that time and just make a doomcube. It was bad enough already when we could buy with credits, especially since hull is more or less useless, but now, I fear that the amount of creative building that will occur in this game will take a bit of a nosedive. Even when having hull contributes to HP, people will probably just use whatever color of hull is easiest to get at the time, and cover everything in big flat sheets, the most efficient configuration.

And those that DO still use hull and whatnot will have to stick to one or two colors, and eliminate or reduce unique details, to make the crafting tolerable.

Human's behavior is not within developers area of effect. One can always build doomcubes. The presence of resources is irrevelant - it comes from the simplicity to build the ship first. I'm wondering if you'd ever designed a ship on a multiplayer server or in SP only, to deliver arguments so weak. When you build a ship for the first time, you are bound to gather all the materials you want to use. You basically can say with some precision what are the resources you used to make those "fine details" by memory. Things you need less does not magically become harder to get. Whether you build a doom cube, simpler or more complex design is not a question of logistics - it's a question of your own creative capacity and will to see a specific ship flying in the game. I can hardly imagine a person, who's willing to replicate his intricate design, that would be stopped by a need to buy or produce some crystals or lightbulbs.

On the other hand, purchace with credits is a bone in a throat of the entire economy system of Starmade - with it presence, the economy exist only marginally. When you can replicate any amount of resources to build a ship, and then can also replicate that ship, entire resources management mechanic is thrown out of the window. There's no point to gather anything at all. You can buy whatever you want at a shop and replicate it indefinitely. And following argument about "lets increase the purchace delay"' or "let's add a price penalty to buy stuff" does not stand on any ground.

Fundamentally, the whole idea of creating blocks out of nowhere does not make sense. Rather than mining asteroids, you are encouraged to farm shops, so rather than using shops to buy block you need, you sell scraps to get those magic credits first. Buying stuff makes credits disappear out of the game completely, while crafting is entirely abandoned for the lack of need to manage factories. In case you didn't knew, the entire economy on the top Starmade servers is maintained on vote rewards, and that's it. There's no player groups trade interactions, only their interaction with a shop they have on a home base instead of shipyard. Anyone who's still vigilantly builds with blocks present already uses the colors and types readily available, since nobody is producing blocks he would prefer to use. If that situation is not apparent to you, you should spend more time in multiplayer, rather than basing your view on fluffy single player building with unlimited blocks.

For one, that mechanic will encourage a specific building style using a predefined set of hull colors and decorative blocks and light sources, which would make ships more sophisticated from the design perspective and for a player to acquire some form of design philosophy and. visual standards. And it is better, than a system, which doesn't give a damn about what you've built whatsoever as long as you have credits to buy it.

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In short, without a buy-blocks-with-credits "sub-option," this is one step forward in mechanics-wise immersion and economic improvement, and two steps back in creating a sandbox environment which encourages creativity rather than just cold, artless efficiency. Besides, spawning in a ship you already built shouldn't be too much of a chore - You already did the hard work building an excellent ship that incorporates tons of different materials, being penalized for this is counterproductive.

I don't see a penalty. Where is it? Is any arbitrary challenge in a game now considered a penalty?

 

[Criss]

Can you not already just buy blocks from a shop, then spawn your ship with said blocks? Seems a little flawed to say that we are entirely without getting our hands on resources.

Buying a ship for a steeper cost would be nice. I don't mind that. I have heard players complain about having to mine resources, and yet Tomino_sama already has proven multiple times that in an hour or so with a decent salvager you can get literally thousands of hull blocks.

There is also some flawed logic in the fact that, "I've created a blueprint, so now I should be able to spawn in a ship with monies where ever I want."

Really? Just because you made a blueprint, rp wise, it is now available to every star system/shop/shipyard etc? Also, if you are building a ship, I doubt it will take less than a second to get it. I'd suggest putting a timer on ships that you BUY that scales with the mass of the ship. You only get it once it's been built. Easy solution that makes sense. Spawning ships instantly from solely from money is dumb.

 

[Mr.Steam]

Why does the Trading Guild exist if not to satisfy the needs of the customer? If I was a Trading Guild member I would be willing to round up all needed parts for my customers (players), for a price. Perhaps when shipyards are included in the game you could order a ship from a blueprint and watch as trading guild ships travel back and forth from an interstellar warehouse with the necessary parts to build your ship. Cost could be dependent on distance away from the warehouses. The trade off of buying entirely with credits would be 1) it takes time to build 2) They charge more for the ship. If you want it built even quicker they will charge even more (rush order premium). This could also open up non combat missions for the trade guild such as transporting parts for a new ship. It would also open up opportunities for Player Pirates to intercept these shipments.

 

[молоток]

I am in favor of the idea of "uploading" your blueprint to the trade guild shop, and "ordering" that ship, at the current parts prices in that shop, assuming the parts are in stock. There could even be a new, third kind of "shipyard" shop that would ONLY do it this way, and have very large stocks of parts. It might make a fun aspect to the game to have the ship you ordered spawn several sectors away, and have to fly to you, perhaps being assailed by pirates.

 

[Comr4de]

This is going to encourage strip mining like mad. Factions are going to have all Their players on mining duty, eating planets, pirate bases, asteroids, each other... Gonna get real empty out there. I guarantee You online play will suffer, as factions start eating every celestial body out there.

 

[Mariux]

Why does the Trading Guild exist if not to satisfy the needs of the customer? If I was a Trading Guild member I would be willing to round up all needed parts for my customers (players), for a price. Perhaps when shipyards are included in the game you could order a ship from a blueprint and watch as trading guild ships travel back and forth from an interstellar warehouse with the necessary parts to build your ship. Cost could be dependent on distance away from the warehouses. The trade off of buying entirely with credits would be 1) it takes time to build 2) They charge more for the ship. If you want it built even quicker they will charge even more (rush order premium). This could also open up non combat missions for the trade guild such as transporting parts for a new ship. It would also open up opportunities for Player Pirates to intercept these shipments.

+9001

 

[Ithirahad]

I'm not going to spend time breaking down Divine's extremely long post (don't have it right now), but...

Can you not already just buy blocks from a shop, then spawn your ship with said blocks? Seems a little flawed to say that we are entirely without getting our hands on resources.

A bit hard with shops usually only having somewhere between 50 and 2000 of an item (And only having a capacity of 10,000, which is silly, but that's another issue)

Buying a ship for a steeper cost would be nice. I don't mind that. I have heard players complain about having to mine resources, and yet Tomino_sama already has proven multiple times that in an hour or so with a decent salvager you can get literally thousands of hull blocks.

If hull blocks and systems were the only issue I wouldn't mind. It's all the other stuff...

There is also some flawed logic in the fact that, "I've created a blueprint, so now I should be able to spawn in a ship with monies where ever I want."

Really? Just because you made a blueprint, rp wise, it is now available to every star system/shop/shipyard etc? Also, if you are building a ship, I doubt it will take less than a second to get it. I'd suggest putting a timer on ships that you BUY that scales with the mass of the ship. You only get it once it's been built. Easy solution that makes sense. Spawning ships instantly from solely from money is dumb.

I agree with this entire thing. Shipyards should be required to construct blueprints, and it should take time. Nothing wrong with that; it works and isn't annoying. However, I shouldn't have to gather ALL the resources first. Maybe most of the major blocks, to save credits, but every little decorative screen, Terran Planet flower, and bit of carved Larimar? NO.

 

[jorgekorke]

Taking off the possibility of using "Buy with Credits" will be a genocide to the game population. I don't mind if they become like 50% more expensive, as long as I have the freedom to make it happen. Put your credits in the shipward, the ship construction will begin (could even make it in a way that takes more time with credits then blocks).

As if ship smooth decoration isn't punished already with the stat disadvantage, now it is going to be a headache for spawning one. And them, a new doom cube/brick era will be born.

Quick edit -> Also, I'm not sure if asteroids re-spawns, but the scenario will be of factions eating multiple galaxies, and thus forcing the game servers to generate even more galaxies, making most of them lag like hell and force some resets. In a close future this will render servers seeking to set limit of the size in the "playarea" ; of only one single galaxy.

 

[marcus87]

I think the main problem is the blocks out of thin air aspect of the buy with money system. That could be solved with the following steps

1. make a mining npc faction which harvests asteroids
2. make a factory npc faction which produces all the blocks
3. let the trade guild by these blocks
4. give the trade stations bigger storage and let ships only spawn if the needed blocks are in storage

This the galaxy would be more lively and blocks would not spawn out of nowere. And if players can take the role of mining and factory factions we get some cool additions to the game. It should be possible for the player to buy with just money, but then he is restricted to the amount of blocks the trade guild has on storage (or maybe a shipyard npc faction?). Buy with blocks should be a secound possebility, you go with the needed blocks to the trade guild and get your ship for a reduced price. Maybe you can even charge a fee depending on the mass of the ship and if you need blocks you dont own buy these from the shop for the lokal price.

 

[Thalanor]

There is a fundamental problem with starmade ship construction right now:

It punishes everything deviating from the doomcube norm.

This was bearable when we could afford the "luxury" of design elements by spending a little more wealth. But to be frank, my motivation suffers heavily to design decent looking ships if 80% of all mining and crafting efforts go towards the decoration!

Be very honest here: Is it fun for you to have to craft 80 different blocks when you could have had the same functionality on your ship with 10 different blocks, as well as lower mass and better turn rate due to it being a doomcube?

This would be my ship design pipeline if there was crafting only and I need to be competivive:
0. Change my advanced build mode size constraints to 500x500x500. Should accomodate a big enough cube for all cases.
1. Choose a hull color. Let it be grey. Doesn't require any other steps, that is why.
2. Forego wedges and other shapes. A cube does not really need them anyways. If I feel fancy, it can be a sphere. Wedgeless, of course.
3. Have a streamlined factory plant that produces grey advanced armor, power cap+regen, shield cap+regen, thrust, jump drive+computer, and the weapon systems I want to use.
4. Spam cubes in the same fashion I would now spam decent ships.
5. Profit from other people's nice looking ships (because I see them when doing combat), while I fly my doomcube that I don't see during combat.
6. Have a hangar with ready-to-use cubes on a server, leave it and design stuff in single player until I am no longer punished for trying to add some design to ships for the joy of other players. Decorating your ship is primarily done for the enjoyment of other players, so I see no reason to accept punishment for creating a nicer screen view for my opponent during battle.

 

[der_scheme]

Seriously. If I'm not mistaken, this feature is in the dev versions since yesterday. Know what the FTL update looked like at this point? Hint: Only one pair of gates per universe was supported.

You guys should keep in mind that there is always a bigger picture, here is mine (this is no official statement regarding what's to become of the game):
The way we build ships will fundamentally change. We'd design them using some kind of designer tool (offering advanced build mode and stuff) without the requirement to possess any of the blocks needed, and when we were satisfied we'd save our efforts to a blueprint item. This item could be put into a shipyard which would automatically construct the ship, drawing blocks from factories, storages and shop modules.
A shop module could be set to make public offers with player-set prices and would be automatically visited by the trading guild, who, if they found the prices offered acceptable, would buy/sell whatever is offered. Maybe a shipyard could even be configured to do this automatically, always bidding 10% above average or whatever. That way we wouldn't have to care at all and could even decide to never mine and get our money in other ways (i.e. as a bounty hunter).
In consequence, factions could specialize. Currently there's not much point in a ship builder faction. There are some, but they do it more for the lulz than as part of game mechanics. Such factions could not only sell blueprints, but also maintain huge or specialized shipyards, which they could use to take a construction contract, submitting someone else's blueprint to their shipyard. For a fee, of course. Even a respective NPC faction could be added.
What would a faction do with money? Expand. Spend it on mercenaries that protect territories, offer bounties…

Traders, builders, haulers, mercenaries, pirates, buccaneers, smugglers, … Yay!

 

[SchnellBier]

Wow... people complain that the game will be a game and not an editor...

Maybe awesome ships should be harder to produce? Maybe you can buy these blocks from other players who specialize in selling decoration? If you can´t buy blueprints even doomcubes are hard to build because of the high number of systems.

There are always two kind of gamers in voxel games. The ones that live in a pile of dirt and the ones who build themself a castle. The game just needs the dirt but everyone playing it wants the castle.

 

[Thalanor]

SchnellBier there is the friction, I think. I do not think awesome looking ships should be harder to produce except for the design work.

By putting in three months to design a large and nice looking ship, you have done tons of overhead work just for the sake of a more pleasant appearance. I would expect to be able to use this ship without further penalties then (there even are already penalties in the form of mass, dimensions and so on if your ship has decent visuals).

Doomcubes are not really hard to build with the crafting system: 99% of their blocks are the same 10-15 vital system blocks you could just mass produce in a streamlined factory that feeds your CubeShipyards for the production of various size doomcubes. Now if only even 1% of blocks could be bought with credits per blueprint at the very least, that doomcube shipyard just became a proper shipyard without too much hassle.



Noone is going to specialize in selling decoration.
-First, there is not much profit to get your hands on if someone wishes to meet with you to buy 12 charged varat circuits and four of each light rod color.
-Second, you'd have to be crazy to create a factory that produces all deco blocks available just so someone else could meet up with you to buy 12 charged varat circuits and four of each light rod color.

 

[SchnellBier]

Noone is going to specialize in selling decoration.
-First, there is not much profit to get your hands on if someone wishes to meet with you to buy 12 charged varat circuits and four of each light rod color.
-Second, you'd have to be crazy to create a factory that produces all deco blocks available just so someone else could meet up with you to buy 12 charged varat circuits and four of each light rod color.

You are definitly wrong! If people are too lazy to do it they will pay someone a massive amount of credits to do it even if it´s not that much of work. Why? Because this is how economie works. They also don´t need to produce everything they just need to have a reasonable stock to provide enough. You send them your list and they deliver.

 

[timethatswasted]

Wow all this raging is worse then the crying over the ratio change (which I had felt was a good idea)

Buy with blocks is the way the game should be. Schema made it clear back in the very first developer interview that's how he wants the game to be. Let him finish and flush out this system before y'all start bitching about it for the love of god.

Using the excuse "it will inspire doom cubes" is a weak and lazy excuse at best. Builders are gunna build, doom-cubers are gunna cube regardless of what system is in place.

I've have always played on a"buy with block" servers and I can say my creativity has never been stifled nor have I ever been reduced to building a doom cube.

Allowing shops to have a larger base stock such as 100000 of something rather then 10000 would go a long way in making this hurt less. That would keep even the laziest of people from having to go very far to get all the blocks they need.

As stated already, this will add a lot of different levels to starmade's game play, I am personally very excited about this new feature.