Read by Schine RTS elements, and Shipyard Efficiency

    Winterhome

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    To go with the upcoming NPC factions, crews, etc. (and, hopefully, supply lines and passive resource generation), I propose a system by which to encourage players and factions to think VERY carefully about their planned resource usage, and discourage them from making drastic changes to their fleet lineups in serious warfare.

    At the moment, Starmade combat and warfare is basically a case of putting all of your faction members in the biggest ships you can and sending them all out. RTS style warfare and supply lines with individual patrols and fleets would encourage players to use their resources and spread them out to prevent, say, NPC pirates from encroaching upon their territory and stealing their resources.

    To go with this RTS-style warfare and territory management, I suggest that Shipyards that passively produce ships and fleets should have an Efficiency Rating. With every ship of a single design type produced, the Shipyard's efficiency increases - eventually, after a thousand or so ship spawns, the resource consumption to produce that specific kind of ship is at, say, 20% or some other low number (ie: you can make five ships or more with the same amount of resources). This would encourage players to utilize smaller blueprints at smaller shipyards, as larger ships take longer to build and take more resources, thus reducing how easily the design can be trained.

    I also suggest that, when changing blueprints at a shipyard, the shipyard loses efficiency based on the percentage of difference between the old and new blueprint. A totally new ship design would completely reset the shipyard's efficiency to 0%, but a lightly retrofitted ship design would drop efficiency by a much smaller amount.

    tl;dr: the more a shipyard makes of a single ship design, the less materials it takes to do it, thus encouraging specific fleet lineups and resource management planning.
     

    Lecic

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    I would suggest that there be some sort of counter to people simply making a ship and then scrapping it repeatedly to build up Shipyard Efficiency. Maybe a loss of blocks when scrapping a ship?
     
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    Winterhome

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    I would suggest that there be some sort of counter to people simply making a ship and then scrapping it repeatedly to build up Shipyard Efficiency. Maybe a loss of blocks when scrapping a ship?
    Hm, yeah. I'd be in favor of that.
     

    Master_Artificer

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    why would I not use a shipyard with a 50^3'ed of expensive blocks that I would just salvage beam or build-mode delete to get all the extra resources?
     

    Winterhome

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    why would I not use a shipyard with a 50^3'ed of expensive blocks that I would just salvage beam or build-mode delete to get all the extra resources?
    I would suggest that there be some sort of counter to people simply making a ship and then scrapping it repeatedly to build up Shipyard Efficiency. Maybe a loss of blocks when scrapping a ship?
     
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    I agree 100% with the part about RTS elements. Securing supply lines, defending territory, and making factions want to put thought in before retooling shipyards. I am a bit skeptical of this particular solution though. For the following reasons:

    I imagine the guy that scraps his titan enough, and farms enough to get it down to 20%. SO for the cost of 1 titan he can produce 5 of them. I know the example is extreme, but you always have players that will go to the extreme to min/max and be OP.

    The other issue I see with the shipyard bit, is that a faction or player could, if they wanted to put in some extra work, just build lots of shipyards on their station. All with specific blueprints. Thus bypassing the changing out of blueprints. You just setup a new shipyard for any new ships you come up with that are worth building.

    Also, even if you make scrapping give you less resources, will it give you less based on how good that shipyard is with that ship? If so you could just scrap in a diff shipyard. If not then would all scrapping only give say 15% of the materials that you put into your ship? If that is the case then it removes almost any reason to scrap things. This is of course not even mentioning removing things with advanced build mode.

    I like the direction your going with your idea, I'm just not sure if it can overcome those issues.
     
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    I'm deeply hoping that they're moving to up the RTS aspects of this game. It has a lot of potential in that direction.
     

    Lecic

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    The other issue I see with the shipyard bit, is that a faction or player could, if they wanted to put in some extra work, just build lots of shipyards on their station. All with specific blueprints. Thus bypassing the changing out of blueprints. You just setup a new shipyard for any new ships you come up with that are worth building.
    What? Changing out a blueprint doesn't reset the efficiency thing. Efficiency is based on that blueprint (or something very close to that blueprint) in that shipyard, and would go back to normal if you used the shipyard to produce a different ship for a single time and then switched back.
     
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    Not what I meant Lecic. I meant, that you could build a new shipyard for EVERY blueprint your faction uses regularly. Every time you make a new model or a new ship altogether, you just build it a separate shipyard.

    Doing that would mean you never switch out which blueprints you use. Basically 1 blueprint = 1 shipyard. And likely a few shipyards for any random stuff that is not related to the ships the faction fly's as a whole.
     

    Lecic

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    Not what I meant Lecic. I meant, that you could build a new shipyard for EVERY blueprint your faction uses regularly. Every time you make a new model or a new ship altogether, you just build it a separate shipyard.

    Doing that would mean you never switch out which blueprints you use. Basically 1 blueprint = 1 shipyard. And likely a few shipyards for any random stuff that is not related to the ships the faction fly's as a whole.
    Ok? How is that a negative?
     
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    It circumvents what seems to be the purpose of the system. Which I saw as "Make factions think a bit harder about when they use different ships". Why think hard about changing the ships you use, when you can make them all, and just as effectively given enough time?
     
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    Maybe a loss of blocks when scrapping a ship?
    I've always felt that salvaging a ship shouldn't give you 100% return. I would like to see this change to salvaging irrespective of any shipyard manufacturing bonuses. Perhaps, a 10-20% chance of a block becoming scrap when salvaged with a ship, and 5% chance of scrap when salvaged with Shipyard.
     

    Winterhome

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    It circumvents what seems to be the purpose of the system. Which I saw as "Make factions think a bit harder about when they use different ships". Why think hard about changing the ships you use, when you can make them all, and just as effectively given enough time?
    Takes significant extra time and resources to do so.
     
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    Why think hard about changing the ships you use, when you can make them all, and just as effectively given enough time?
    Having several large scale shipyards and the requisite resources to keep them all churning out ships means that faction has reached a level where they don't really have to worry about resources. They're now one of those Evil Corporations that throws away more advanced armor than you'll ever see in you lifetime.
     
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    Takes significant extra time and resources to do so.
    Also binds you to that specific shipyard's location. If you produce in a makeshift shipyard close to the front lines, you may not be as efficient as building half a galaxy away.

    That said, I think the 1-to-5 ratio is a bit much, but the exact balance didn't seem the focus of the suggestion, and should be tweakable per server anyway.
     

    Winterhome

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    Also binds you to that specific shipyard's location. If you produce in a makeshift shipyard close to the front lines, you may not be as efficient as building half a galaxy away.

    That said, I think the 1-to-5 ratio is a bit much, but the exact balance didn't seem the focus of the suggestion, and should be tweakable per server anyway.
    Yeah, pretty much.


    Perhaps to help out with the balancing, it should be impossible to get Efficiency Bonuses on homebase shipyards...?
     
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    Master_Artificer

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    hell even a 10% decrease is substantial cap, and you increase it by .1% each hull you make or something. maybe it is mass depended, drones you need to make a lot of them, but only a few dozen caps for the same 10% efficiency bonus.
     
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    Winterhome

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    hell even a 10% decrease is substantial cap, and you increase it by .1% each hull you make or something. maybe it is mass depended, drones you need to make a lot of them, but only a few dozen caps for the same 10% efficiency bonus.
    It would need to be high enough at maximum potential for people to really, really want to train their shipyard efficiency, I feel.
     

    Master_Artificer

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    It would need to be high enough at maximum potential for people to really, really want to train their shipyard efficiency, I feel.
    hey if I only needed 8-9 million blocks for a 10 million block ship, that is a significant decrease.

    I still think investing resources in planets in order to get resources out of them is a better RTS aspect though, but I do like the idea of the shipyards. Maybe also for crew, having a academy for training specifically destroyer or gunboat crews for example, would provide buffs for the ship or something. Kinda like training crew in WOT or something?