Planned Respawn on ship

[Lecic]

The "Easy" answer is we really don't need on ship spawning. We don't need it because pilots rarely leave their ships anyway so going too all the problem to reprogramming ships so they can become spawn points is a waste of development time. These few instances of meeting other players "face" to "face" is pointless unless your one of those silly Roleplayers. The simple version is. Its too much trouble and adds too little to the game at present.

You do realize that all the code for spawning on ships was added when staying aligned to ships was added, and the only thing keeping spawning on ships from being in the vanilla game right now is balance issues, right?

 

[Jojomo]

I think this is a classic case of the "Easy" answer being the "Wrong" answer.

The "Easy" answer is we really don't need on ship spawning. We don't need it because pilots rarely leave their ships anyway so going too all the problem to reprogramming ships so they can become spawn points is a waste of development time. These few instances of meeting other players "face" to "face" is pointless unless your one of those silly Roleplayers. The simple version is. Its too much trouble and adds too little to the game at present.

However this is the "Wrong" answer, because its true.

Confused? Bare with me for just a little bit. Right this very second expanding the capabilities of ships to act as mobile spawn points is an example of too much investment for too little return. But tomorrow Starmade will not be the game it is today. In fact just the coming changes to NPC's is going to make it much more of a "game" that it is right now. When you start adding in flora and fauna that might be able to kill an astronaut, space whales, and mysterious space dragons, hidden tombs, and strange space phenomenon the odds of an astronaut getting killed outside their huge space cruiser becomes far more likely. At that point the need to spawn in deep space back on your safe mother ship becomes extremely important. It is also very likely we will need ship mounted shipyards about the same time for the exact same reasons.

This is to say nothing of the idea of using true carriers to launch swarms of fighters and space bombers at distant targets and then to lead the attack aboard your personal command fighter. Only to respawn on the carrier when that last second point defense splashes you out of existence.

Thus the right answer is we need to do it the "Hard" way. Spawning on ships will be a must in the future. The moment players "need" to leave the safety of their mining barges to pick "rare" items off a planets surface infested with player eating cannibals everyone is going to be screaming for ship spawning. Might as well get it out of the way and get the bugs worked out now before the pressure is on. Of course for hardcore purest a server options to disable ship spawning should be offered...

In ships that can travel vast distamnces, and are highly valuable to their owners, ship spawning (EDIT: I mean players respawning on ships) is essential.

I agree that "punishing" players for dying has it's merits - perhaps a 1 minute cooldown after death before ship respawn would do the trick - or perhaps not.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Alternatively, don't head into a potentially dangerous situation whilst leaving something valuable lying around unguarded. Do your exploring etc in smaller, cheaper ships and save your non-expendable ships for when you actually need them.

 

[Madman198237]

I would like to see respawning on ships, sooner, rather than later. Perhaps instituted as a sort of flagship system, as opposed to capital ship system. Flagship being, of course, the lead vessel of a fleet or even an entire navy. A flagship of this type can be spawned on at X cost or perhaps with X health debuff or what-have-you.

Adding this behavior will allow for the much-less-risky use of shuttles, fighters, scout craft, and everything else that can be launched from a self-sufficient lone gun's nomadic HQ.

 

[Jojomo]

Alternatively, don't head into a potentially dangerous situation whilst leaving something valuable lying around unguarded. Do your exploring etc in smaller, cheaper ships and save your non-expendable ships for when you actually need them.

I wasn't advocating ships being spawned if destroyed - if your ship is destoyed it should be gone for good.

The issue I was referring to is that this is a game, where people will die even if they minimise risks, and to lose a large undestroyed ship because it was too far from your spawn point when you died is too high a price to pay for dying (in my opinion, and I suspect in the opinions of most players).

And to be forced (not literally) to always leave expensive ships near spawn points, even when planning to travel to a location that (while dangerous for an astronaut) is not a risk to ship in question, is just no fun at all. And fun is the reason we play.

On the other hand I don't want to see stations become obsolete, so hopefully respawning on capital ships hits the sweet spot of compromise.

 

[Nickizzy]

Perhaps instituted as a sort of flagship system, as opposed to capital ship system. Flagship being, of course, the lead vessel of a fleet or even an entire navy. A flagship of this type can be spawned on at X cost or perhaps with X health debuff or what-have-you.

Like the flagship of any fleet?

I really like the Nomad idea. Having an incentive to have a hangar bay with a bunch of spare shuttles, like some of the more RP small ships I've seen, with a single power block, a couple of thrusters, and a storage maybe, with a really cool passenger interior. For everything noncombat. Maybe you have some lightly defended corvettes, with pd turrets to protect from assassination missile, and a shield or two, to protect from some scrapes and scratches.

Anyway. Enough RPG hopefulness. At least there should be some comparison weight or block limits on flagships. Like, as a fleet of little cargo vessels less than 500 blocks, I only need a ship around that size, but if I'm leading a frigate defense fleet, I need more than a dinky hunk of junk to command(and respawn off of). It wouldn't make sense that the flagship HAS to be bigger, but it should be on the same class(ok ok, ship size). Although I could add a bunch of different limits, which wouldn't be too hard to program I'll do it here*.

Although it draws this post dangerously off topic, the idea of respawn on ships is fundamentally tied with fleets and the ability to almost have spares, and in-the-field respawning and reusing. No matter if it's a faction member running out and acting as your fighter support, or if it's a Nomad respawning on their iron snowflake after not noticing the pirate station.



*To keep it less cluttered and stuff. Lets make some bullet points.
1. It needs to be either the largest ship or 80% of the mass/volume of the largest ship.
2. It should have a minimum size based on numbers. Your frigate can lead a fleet of 15 frigates, but one drone the same model or smaller then it's 99 other fleet-members.
3. Respawning should have a flat out min size. If through a need for power or simply a minimum ship size, a simple fighter squadron shouldn't allow a practical zerg rush. A frigate or a medical corvette, however, probably could.

 

[AndyP]

You do realize that all the code for spawning on ships was added when staying aligned to ships was added, and the only thing keeping spawning on ships from being in the vanilla game right now is balance issues, right?

Close but not 100% correct.

• We do not add it to the ships regular functionality right now,
  as it would then feel like a nerf when we introduce it as capital-ship only function.
• The spawn algorithm on login looks for the following things (assuming you were aligned to a ship on logout):

1. Is the ship still on the saved position? (not moved) - If yes, spawn and align to it
2. Is the ship somewhere else? (perform search) - If found, spawn there and align to it
3. If the ship cannot be found, spawn in logout sector (saved separately)
4. If that sector is unavailable (logout in tutorial sector/testsector) spawn at last used undeathinator
5. If that station where it was is unavailable, spawn in sector of the last used undeathinator

• As the last used undeathinator is the ultimate fallback for the respawn, (and depending on server settings you lost all your items,) you do NOT want to be dropped somewhere in deep space without any cover.
  As you will right now when logging out on a ship and the ship gets destroyed while you are offline, you get spawned then at the position you logged out.

And hitting "Respawn" should bring you to place that allows some sort of restart.
(So we need some additional undeathinator, like an altered spawn order, that would put a mobile undeathinator in the line of possible spawn targets but keep another safe one tracked too.)

So even from technical/code side its not just a config value to allow the undeathinator on ships.

- Andy

 

[Jojomo]

Respawning on ships will encourage/enable more use of shuttles etc.. You're more vulnerable in a smaller ship, but if you'll respawn back on your ship you won't be risking being separated from your ship by dying every time you jump in a shuttle..