Some Random Thoughts on Resource Management

[Valiant70]

Those of us who only like to design ships should always have that option. Hopefully the "large creative ship construction" referenced here means nothing will be able to get in their way (not even mining for capacitor materials). On the other hand, (this may seem odd) I miss the energy management and fuel from Tekkit. OK let me back up. I used to play several different Minecraft mod packs, including one called Tekkit. I enjoyed the challenge of seeking out and crafting ever-more-efficient technology, stronger power sources, and better tools. There was a technology "tree" far more diverse than anything we've seen thus far in Starmade. Much of this was driven by fuel economy, and the rest by varying levels and branches of technology. Different power sources offered different advantages, disadvantages, costs, and some even brought one's ingenuity and creativity into the picture by building large multi-block reactor structures with several components. One mod (BigReactors) even had a reactor that could interface with lua computers from another mod (ComputerCraft).

There was something interesting about managing all my resources, energy needs, and machinery that is somehow lacking in starmade. I know Starmade is in its infancy so this is to be expected to some degree, but the crafting system (functional though it is) is just bland, and so is the mining experience. After the big update to ships and shipyards (which will make ships and ship-related content far better overall), I think the Schine team needs to consider the other side of the game for a while.

First of all, crafting needs another rework. We have a functional system now, which is great as it provides a basis for moving forward. We have basic materials and a basic crafting tree, but nothing besides hull has more than two steps (refine raw materials, turn into finished product). A variety of intermediate products would be interesting, and they might even be useful by themselves in some ways.

Second, resource acquisition could use some work. There is one way we get raw materials: mining. Mining isn't bad, in fact it's very good in theory, and in practice it's off to a good start. However, nothing but mining is very bad. There are a lot of other possibilities, like growing plants and crystals and refining ordinary substances into extraordinary forms with tricky (but rewarding) machines. Perhaps in the future Starmade will have tree farms where a salvage beam mounted on a rail system moves to collect fully-grown trees automatically when they're finished.

Thirdly, I think some sort of fuel is in order, with its level of necessity (from nonexistent to beyond critical) configurable per server/world. Multiple power sources would make this all the better, although in my opinion ships should run on one type of manufactured synthetic fuel created by several possible (and mutually balanced) means on bases and capital ships or purchased from the trading guild. Other survival resources like food, water, and oxygen could be added as options for those interested in such gameplay, and perhaps as buffs for the rest.

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

Adding growing to the game could add some interesting new resource management styles, and I loved tekkit (especially big reactors) myself, but I do see one major flaw that would need to be worked out, and that is resource abundance.

In the current system, you can get such an incredible number of resources that simply adding more steps in the process would do nothing but add tedium and bore the player. If you applied starmade's resource recovery systems to minecraft, able to bore 50x50 chunks of land to bedrock in seconds, and auto-sort all of the mats out of that, then you'd have an inexhaustible supply of diamonds and ores, right from the start.

With this supply, there seems little need to work your way up from a wind generator, through solar, to eventually massive multiblock reactors. You would even be more willing to process things in a less efficient manner for a longer period of time just to get the processed ores out, because your supply is so large and easy to obtain that the time it would take to eek out that extra few percent of efficiency doesnt seem worth it. The time would be better spent just mining more ores and taking an efficiency loss. It worked in minecraft because even if you had a hammer, you were mining a 3x3 spot every few seconds (with a quarry you could get close to starmade levels, but it took far more work), and in starmade, it doesnt take long at all to start building an exponentially large mining vessel with every 5 minute mining run doubling the number of salvage beams you have.

Dont get me wrong, I love the idea of evolving tech trees, new blocks, useful bits, etc, but it would have to be managed properly, and would likely require a complete overhaul of power systems, or fuel, or some base-level game mechanic in order to generate the NEED to use the new tech tree and work your way up.

 

[Valiant70]

Adding growing to the game could add some interesting new resource management styles, and I loved tekkit (especially big reactors) myself, but I do see one major flaw that would need to be worked out, and that is resource abundance.

In the current system, you can get such an incredible number of resources that simply adding more steps in the process would do nothing but add tedium and bore the player. If you applied starmade's resource recovery systems to minecraft, able to bore 50x50 chunks of land to bedrock in seconds, and auto-sort all of the mats out of that, then you'd have an inexhaustible supply of diamonds and ores, right from the start.

With this supply, there seems little need to work your way up from a wind generator, through solar, to eventually massive multiblock reactors. You would even be more willing to process things in a less efficient manner for a longer period of time just to get the processed ores out, because your supply is so large and easy to obtain that the time it would take to eek out that extra few percent of efficiency doesnt seem worth it. The time would be better spent just mining more ores and taking an efficiency loss. It worked in minecraft because even if you had a hammer, you were mining a 3x3 spot every few seconds (with a quarry you could get close to starmade levels, but it took far more work), and in starmade, it doesnt take long at all to start building an exponentially large mining vessel with every 5 minute mining run doubling the number of salvage beams you have.

Dont get me wrong, I love the idea of evolving tech trees, new blocks, useful bits, etc, but it would have to be managed properly, and would likely require a complete overhaul of power systems, or fuel, or some base-level game mechanic in order to generate the NEED to use the new tech tree and work your way up.

You've pretty well described what starmade is missing right now. I'm thinking resource gathering needs to be slowed, but not in a way that requires more grinding to get stuff. The quarries from Tekkit are a prime example. They were slow, but high-yield, low-labor and a heck of a lot of fun to watch.

 

[PartyAlarm]

What sounds cool on paper doesn't necessarily translate into good gameplay, and what is fun to you may not be fun to a large segment of the population. Mods like Tekkit are kinda niche, I know a lot of people that hate mods like that. Not saying that crafting can't be improved! I just think adding too much complexity can be a mistake. As it stands, I have a hard time getting some people I know to play Starmade because they are overwhelmed by all the things they need to learn. When/if modding gets expanded in the future, they should be able to cater to everyone.

"Stock" gameplay needs to be newb friendly imo.

There is some fun to be had with setting up factories currently, if you like working with logic. Autofactories are pretty neato.


Maybe the best answer would involve a more diverse economy around the same time. It's hard not to think of EVE - plenty of different ways to earn currency to buy ships, with crafting being its own specialized niche with plenty of complexity and varied resource distribution over the game area.


All I want is a way to set up storage pulls by item category!

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

I agree that changing the core crafting by too much could cause upset, and I definitely dont think that we need to change power mechanics, and fuel has always been a touchy subject. I also slightly agree that tekkit, while fun for some, was also highly tedious, and this caused an issue if, god forbid, a creeper took out all of your advanced factories. Seeing as starmade totes itself with lots of hope for PVP, making getting back on your feet after dying needs to be a priority (in other words, noob friendly).

In reference to economy, this CERTAINLY can make things different and scale smoothly. One thing I suggested is the ability to fill out and sell blueprints. Having a ship on a display dock, with a "FOR SALE" sign above it, and the ability to purchase it from the shop it's docked at, would do wonders for the starting economy, and new players. Legitimate competition to "Sell the coolest newbie friendly salvager" would give builders a REASON to make better ships, instead of the odd competition held by servers or forum members. Players could make real money from eachother, selling various warships and salvage vessels to new and veteran players alike. Dont want to fill out your blueprint, scared of PvP? Buy your ships instead!

 

[Valiant70]

What sounds cool on paper doesn't necessarily translate into good gameplay, and what is fun to you may not be fun to a large segment of the population. Mods like Tekkit are kinda niche, I know a lot of people that hate mods like that. Not saying that crafting can't be improved! I just think adding too much complexity can be a mistake. As it stands, I have a hard time getting some people I know to play Starmade because they are overwhelmed by all the things they need to learn. When/if modding gets expanded in the future, they should be able to cater to everyone.

"Stock" gameplay needs to be newb friendly imo.

There is some fun to be had with setting up factories currently, if you like working with logic. Autofactories are pretty neato.


Maybe the best answer would involve a more diverse economy around the same time. It's hard not to think of EVE - plenty of different ways to earn currency to buy ships, with crafting being its own specialized niche with plenty of complexity and varied resource distribution over the game area.


All I want is a way to set up storage pulls by item category!

I agree that changing the core crafting by too much could cause upset, and I definitely dont think that we need to change power mechanics, and fuel has always been a touchy subject. I also slightly agree that tekkit, while fun for some, was also highly tedious, and this caused an issue if, god forbid, a creeper took out all of your advanced factories. Seeing as starmade totes itself with lots of hope for PVP, making getting back on your feet after dying needs to be a priority (in other words, noob friendly).

Tekkit is admittedly tedious, but still fun in a lot of ways. The machines are a pain in the aft to craft, but once you get several built, it's more fun to set up a system and use it than it is in starmade. Starmade has one boring refinery and one, uninspiring kind of crafting machine: a factory. It comes in three colors that each make different things with no particular logic behind any of it. In Tekkit, one can enjoy routing various kinds of conduits and pipes to meet the needs of particular machines. Starmade's machines are all hooked up with "point, click, point, click" which is boring as all get-out.

 

[PartyAlarm]

I agree that changing the core crafting by too much could cause upset, and I definitely dont think that we need to change power mechanics, and fuel has always been a touchy subject. I also slightly agree that tekkit, while fun for some, was also highly tedious, and this caused an issue if, god forbid, a creeper took out all of your advanced factories. Seeing as starmade totes itself with lots of hope for PVP, making getting back on your feet after dying needs to be a priority (in other words, noob friendly).

In reference to economy, this CERTAINLY can make things different and scale smoothly. One thing I suggested is the ability to fill out and sell blueprints. Having a ship on a display dock, with a "FOR SALE" sign above it, and the ability to purchase it from the shop it's docked at, would do wonders for the starting economy, and new players. Legitimate competition to "Sell the coolest newbie friendly salvager" would give builders a REASON to make better ships, instead of the odd competition held by servers or forum members. Players could make real money from eachother, selling various warships and salvage vessels to new and veteran players alike. Dont want to fill out your blueprint, scared of PvP? Buy your ships instead!

EVE had a good thing with blueprints - BPCs and BPOs. Copies and originals. Copies only allowed a limited run specified by the industrialist - as low as 1 unit before the blueprint is consumed. Originals had infinite use and were very valueable. Also need to make it so ships created from BPCs cannot be saved into catalog ever to prevent people from stealing designs outright.