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- Nov 14, 2014
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So, technically, this is two suggestions in one, and they both involve obtaining renewable resources from planets. Right now, the most useful purpose of planets is stripping their crusts off for ore; so adding the ability to use planets as a steady source of renewable resources would make planets more valuable assets. And you'd be motivated to actually maintain control over multiple planets because of the benefits they give you, instead of just visiting to mine them.
First of all, CORE DRILLING:
No, this isn't about the age-old combat tactic to destroy ship cores. This is about planet cores, and a way to get renewable resources from them. The idea is this:
There would be a new block, called a "core drill" or "extraction node" or something. When placed directly on a planet core, this block will begin extracting one of the 24 mineral blocks, metal ores, or crystal shards, from the core, into a linked storage block. This would provide an alternative to asteroid mining that encourages building on planets. It wouldn't necessarily replace asteroid mining due to the fact that core drilling would provide resources very slowly, but it would supplement it, and be useful because it's a permanent source of the resource that can't run out.
Note that drills require a lot of power to function, but the more drill blocks are placed directly above the bottom drill, the less power it requires to extract ores, encouraging the building of large drill towers containing the supplementary drill blocks.
If you place more and more drill blocks on a face of a planet core, the rate at which individual drills extract ores will go down, until eventually you'll hit a soft cap that makes creating additional drills ineffective at extracting more resources. However, drills placed on different faces of the core ignore each other in this respect, so the most efficient way to extract resources is to build drills on all the plates of a planet, rather than just one, therefore encouraging planetwide building.
Which of the 24 resources is extracted from a planet's core is different for each planet. One planet may have sugil in its core, another may have firtikeen, another may have varat, and so on. This isn't connected to the type of planet, although it may have something to do with its distance from its star. So, you'd need to have drills on 24 different planets to have a consistent source of all the asteroid resources in the game. This would encourage players to explore and seek out planets with core resources that they need, and then establish drilling bases on those planets. And what happens if a neighboring faction has planet that's core contains a resource that your faction particularly needs? Well, you could ask for it politely. Or not so politely...
The second suggestion is PLANT FARMING.
So there's 25 kinds of plants in starmade if you count those small rocks on desert planets, and not counting trees and cacti and whatever the heck alien planets have on them. But, they don't actually do anything except serve as cool looking decorations. But what if there was more you could do with them?
First, methods of farming:
Mining a plant would yield the plant itself, as well as 2 seeds of the corresponding plants. These seeds would then be planted on the type of block the plant naturally grows on (grass for terran planet plants, sand for desert planet plants, etc.), and over time, grow through 4 different block states, from seedling, to partly grown, to mostly grown, to fully grown. Mining it in any state other than fully grown would simply yield the seed, but when fully grown, it yields the plant itself as well as 2 seeds. Yes, this includes the aforementioned rocks. I guess they could be renamed "pebble plants" or something. You can grow plants anywhere, including on ships and stations, but, they grow twice as fast when on their native planet type, encouraging players to build farms on planets. Also, there could be tree seeds and cactus seeds, which eventually grow into a full-grown block-based plant, like saplings in minecraft.
But what's the point, you ask? Well, what most immediately comes to mind is food. It's been proposed that when crew is implemented, they should require food. Food would be crafted with plants, with each type of plant getting turned into a different type of food. Different types of food could have different benefits, such as being more nutritious, or lasting longer. Different types of food could also give buffs to both players and NPCs, to things like damage resistance, health regeneration, movement speed, mining speed, etc. Since all the different types of plants would have different uses, players would want to have farms for each type of plant, preferably on the optimal planet types. Or if not, they could build a somewhat less effective, but very cool looking, farming station instead.
In conclusion, these new gameplay mechanics involving renewable resources and building on planets would provide players with an actual reason to build on planets, and also to explore to seek out planets with particular attributes, and to fight over control of particularly valuable planets, and maybe even buy planets from other factions if you need it more than they do.
First of all, CORE DRILLING:
No, this isn't about the age-old combat tactic to destroy ship cores. This is about planet cores, and a way to get renewable resources from them. The idea is this:
There would be a new block, called a "core drill" or "extraction node" or something. When placed directly on a planet core, this block will begin extracting one of the 24 mineral blocks, metal ores, or crystal shards, from the core, into a linked storage block. This would provide an alternative to asteroid mining that encourages building on planets. It wouldn't necessarily replace asteroid mining due to the fact that core drilling would provide resources very slowly, but it would supplement it, and be useful because it's a permanent source of the resource that can't run out.
Note that drills require a lot of power to function, but the more drill blocks are placed directly above the bottom drill, the less power it requires to extract ores, encouraging the building of large drill towers containing the supplementary drill blocks.
If you place more and more drill blocks on a face of a planet core, the rate at which individual drills extract ores will go down, until eventually you'll hit a soft cap that makes creating additional drills ineffective at extracting more resources. However, drills placed on different faces of the core ignore each other in this respect, so the most efficient way to extract resources is to build drills on all the plates of a planet, rather than just one, therefore encouraging planetwide building.
Which of the 24 resources is extracted from a planet's core is different for each planet. One planet may have sugil in its core, another may have firtikeen, another may have varat, and so on. This isn't connected to the type of planet, although it may have something to do with its distance from its star. So, you'd need to have drills on 24 different planets to have a consistent source of all the asteroid resources in the game. This would encourage players to explore and seek out planets with core resources that they need, and then establish drilling bases on those planets. And what happens if a neighboring faction has planet that's core contains a resource that your faction particularly needs? Well, you could ask for it politely. Or not so politely...
The second suggestion is PLANT FARMING.
So there's 25 kinds of plants in starmade if you count those small rocks on desert planets, and not counting trees and cacti and whatever the heck alien planets have on them. But, they don't actually do anything except serve as cool looking decorations. But what if there was more you could do with them?
First, methods of farming:
Mining a plant would yield the plant itself, as well as 2 seeds of the corresponding plants. These seeds would then be planted on the type of block the plant naturally grows on (grass for terran planet plants, sand for desert planet plants, etc.), and over time, grow through 4 different block states, from seedling, to partly grown, to mostly grown, to fully grown. Mining it in any state other than fully grown would simply yield the seed, but when fully grown, it yields the plant itself as well as 2 seeds. Yes, this includes the aforementioned rocks. I guess they could be renamed "pebble plants" or something. You can grow plants anywhere, including on ships and stations, but, they grow twice as fast when on their native planet type, encouraging players to build farms on planets. Also, there could be tree seeds and cactus seeds, which eventually grow into a full-grown block-based plant, like saplings in minecraft.
But what's the point, you ask? Well, what most immediately comes to mind is food. It's been proposed that when crew is implemented, they should require food. Food would be crafted with plants, with each type of plant getting turned into a different type of food. Different types of food could have different benefits, such as being more nutritious, or lasting longer. Different types of food could also give buffs to both players and NPCs, to things like damage resistance, health regeneration, movement speed, mining speed, etc. Since all the different types of plants would have different uses, players would want to have farms for each type of plant, preferably on the optimal planet types. Or if not, they could build a somewhat less effective, but very cool looking, farming station instead.
In conclusion, these new gameplay mechanics involving renewable resources and building on planets would provide players with an actual reason to build on planets, and also to explore to seek out planets with particular attributes, and to fight over control of particularly valuable planets, and maybe even buy planets from other factions if you need it more than they do.
