Skill based technology path for enhancing equipment.

[GRHayes]

By either allowing players to choose or assigning players a technology path in which equipment listed on it can be enhanced beyond the normal output and possibly finding resources related to crafting at a higher rate this would encourage trading and combat both.

Make enhanced technology capturable by capturing a ship or location. This way they can't produce it themselves but either need to steal it or buy it from another player.

 

[jayman38]

I disagree with this suggestion.

I think it boosts the power of established factions, leaving new or lesser factions with weaker technology, providing only a mild gameplay-encouragement mechanic that merely encourages piracy to capture the improved system blocks until other factions can catch up on the tech tree.

Furthermore, the game mechanic encourages all the factions to "catch up", eventually placing absolutely everyone to the level of the enhanced blocks. After this plateau is reached, it is simply a game with enhanced block configs. I prefer to think that Starmade, as it is, represents this rather higher-but-stagnant level of technology, already available to everyone, without the tedious tech research.

How would this be addressed as far as factories? Would the recipies be available only to factions that have reached the technology "node", or could new players "discover" new technology by trying different recipies that aren't currently available to view?

 

[Nxn]

What if it was just something as basic as a faction specialization to provide a bonus to a combination of block/slave? Would just be an option from the faction menu that could be changed at will. Would be a bandaid for some weapon combos, like if you wanted to have a faction centered around using pulse/cannon/explosion to create sword melee ships.

 

[Sachys]

What if it was just something as basic as a faction specialization to provide a bonus to a combination of block/slave? Would just be an option from the faction menu that could be changed at will. Would be a bandaid for some weapon combos, like if you wanted to have a faction centered around using pulse/cannon/explosion to create sword melee ships.

Really, I think what you and the OP are talking about already exists within the playerbase itself. Many people dont make truly functional miners, but give them a bunch of cannon and slave blocks and they can turn a ship into scrap. Quite a few factions online have a "logic guy" or the person who just focuses on building the HB. Some factions are set on only using certain weapon types for the main body of their fleet - and use them well.

While theres potential for something like this to spice up the singleplayer experience, I don't see the need to add another layer to that in the base game and offset online play, though I'm sure it could be a popular mod / custom server setup for some.

 

[Edymnion]

I'll agree that the playerbase already segregates itself pretty efficiently.

Odd as it is, it seems most players don't bother to set up factories at all, or only set up very basic ones. Seems that relatively few people actually bother to make factory lines that can churn out 1000x capacity or more per tic.

I've been on more than one server where I got filthy stinking rich by having my shop set up to buy raw materials and sell finished goods in vast quantities.

To the point I once had specialty factories set up to automatically produce goods on demand while I was offline. You sell a bunch of rammet to my shop for example, the factory auto-pulls it from the shop inventory, turns it into shields, which get auto-pulled back into the shop inventory.

 

[Nxn]

I'll admit that I have no idea of what the multiplayer meta is right now, but from weapon reviews that I read there seem to be combos that are lacking (and combos that I think are terrible too). Cannon/missile and beam/missile both seem practically useless in my mind, it's particularly sad with cannon/missile because it can't even be used effectively as missile flak because of the huge spread.

Outside of that, I was mostly supporting the idea out of personal love for customization. As a single player person I do feel like there are useless weapons for sure, ones that need a boost to get them up to missile/laser cannon/laser levels of viability.