Planned Stack Limits

[Zovc]

Now i saw this was planned on the map update thing, but i recently checked and it was removed. I would like to remind you guys why this would be useful for the game and incorperative gameplay.
One example would be for a large factions mining purposes.
You can always stick a bunch of containers on any ship, and yes, i relise that, but what happens when you have a large dedicated ship, with room to fit multiple of medium sized miners, comes in, with hundreds of containers? What happens if you can only carry 10000 blocks of a stack at once (IMO, each block is 1 cubic meter, each stack is 10 000 cubic meters, theres something like 35 inventory/hotbar slots, thats over 300 000 cubic meters that you carry on your back. Bit unrealistic, is it not?) So, 1000 containers, 10 000 items per stack, 30 stacks per container, That 1000 containers there will hold 3 billion resources.

Now imagine if there was a limit to those incredibly unrealistic containers too. And say, a new system came up where a new block (cargo container) holds 48 blocks of storage per container block. That certainly would be incentive to have dedicated cargo carriers, which also involves more teamwork.

Heres the fleet idea with this suggestion:
Flagship/Capital Ship
A few larger ships like battleships
An escort army of frigates/corvettes
A drone army of fighters (Improved ai for this)
Support ship (Shields and Power)
Cargo Carrier to hold all the loot and quickly bring it back safely to homebase after the fight
A mining ship to gather the loot (unless your going to toat half broken ships to keep XD)

This allows the gameplay to be more than just your offensive and the cleanup crew, but you need a carry crew as well.

I know many players dont like this idea, but if it was perhaps config options on the limits, it might reduce server lag from large stacks of items, and also allow combat servers to invoke more teamwork among members.

Oh, and you know how people kinda frown about eating planets 24/7? This will solve it unless you just stick a few thousand cargo containers on the back of the miner. But then, the miner still has a large limit, and if they want to keep on adding containers, they have to keep on adding thrusters and power to maintain a speed. If they have 2 players, 1 doing cargo runs and 1 doing the mining, you can have more efficient mining as well as teamwork between players.

 

[HolyCookie]

Now i saw this was planned on the map update thing, but i recently checked and it was removed. I would like to remind you guys why this would be useful for the game and incorperative gameplay.
One example would be for a large factions mining purposes.
You can always stick a bunch of containers on any ship, and yes, i relise that, but what happens when you have a large dedicated ship, with room to fit multiple of medium sized miners, comes in, with hundreds of containers? What happens if you can only carry 10000 blocks of a stack at once (IMO, each block is 1 cubic meter, each stack is 10 000 cubic meters, theres something like 35 inventory/hotbar slots, thats over 300 000 cubic meters that you carry on your back. Bit unrealistic, is it not?) So, 1000 containers, 10 000 items per stack, 30 stacks per container, That 1000 containers there will hold 3 billion resources.

Now imagine if there was a limit to those incredibly unrealistic containers too. And say, a new system came up where a new block (cargo container) holds 48 blocks of storage per container block. That certainly would be incentive to have dedicated cargo carriers, which also involves more teamwork.

Heres the fleet idea with this suggestion:
Flagship/Capital Ship
A few larger ships like battleships
An escort army of frigates/corvettes
A drone army of fighters (Improved ai for this)
Support ship (Shields and Power)
Cargo Carrier to hold all the loot and quickly bring it back safely to homebase after the fight
A mining ship to gather the loot (unless your going to toat half broken ships to keep XD)

This allows the gameplay to be more than just your offensive and the cleanup crew, but you need a carry crew as well.

I know many players dont like this idea, but if it was perhaps config options on the limits, it might reduce server lag from large stacks of items, and also allow combat servers to invoke more teamwork among members.

Oh, and you know how people kinda frown about eating planets 24/7? This will solve it unless you just stick a few thousand cargo containers on the back of the miner. But then, the miner still has a large limit, and if they want to keep on adding containers, they have to keep on adding thrusters and power to maintain a speed. If they have 2 players, 1 doing cargo runs and 1 doing the mining, you can have more efficient mining as well as teamwork between players.

bench told me a while ago they have plans for a storage system, one that makes you need convoy ships to transport goods.
not just limiting how much can go into a storageblock, but also it will take up space.
not sure how this will work, and if this is still the idea they are planning.

 

[ltmauve]

I'd say straight up stack count limits aren't the best idea, but finite storage is absolutely necessary.
I'd rather each type of block has a "packing volume" and each inventory (plexstorages, astronaut inventory, whatever mass storage thing they come up with,) has it's own "cargo volume." And when the packing volume of the items in an inventory will go over the cargo volume of an inventory, you can't add any more.
The reason I don't like a straight up inventory stack limit is because for example when you refine crystal&ore you wind up with more items, which means you need more storage space to handle that, which doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective. It means that things you don't need a lot of of (like computers, cores, etc.) can take up more space which makes sense.

 

[Valiant70]

Stack limits are a minecraft cliche. Do something else.

 

[Jh]

What valiant said.
Another thing is how about the people on sandbox who have GINORMAS admin commanded in stacks of items to build their ships.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

I think the best way to approach inventory limit is too have a maximum mass you can carry in items, instead of having several stacks of the same item.

 

[ltmauve]

I think the best way to approach inventory limit is too have a maximum mass you can carry in items, instead of having several stacks of the same item.

You don't want this mass to be the same as the placement mass (mass a block contributes to a ship) because then you wind up with capsules taking up more cargo space than the ore or crystal you refined them from.

 

[Bench]

Storage will get an overhaul, it will include things like fixing up all the filtering for storages so that it's a lot more easily managed. Whether in the same update or a future one, storage will be revisited and some form of limitation will be placed in, requiring more prudent management of storage rather than the "I can fit as much as i want wherever I want" method. I'm not saying that this is in the form of stack limits, or inventory limits, or how that will look, but that at some point there will be a form of restriction that will make you want to think out your storage solutions a lot more.

The fun things that come with that though is that probably in the same update we'll see an implementation of some form of inter-entity storage transferring; I hope.

 

[ltmauve]

the filtering for storages so that it's a lot more easily managed.

Yay!

The fun things that come with that though is that probably in the same update we'll see an implementation of some form of inter-entity storage transferring; I hope.

While you're listening, I'm going to point out that the wireless logic method of dealing with inter-ship actions (binding two specific blocks on different ships) will probably not work as well for cargo, both for immersion and balance reasons.
First, considering the game has no teleportation, the teleportation of cargo would be something that doesn't mesh as well.
Second, it means that mining vessels will not need to store the ore they mine. A mining vessel wouldn't need to have cargo space, it could just teleport it all directly to the base. This also means a physical blockade of a station would be completely useless against a prepared faction because they would just use the wireless cargo to bypass it completely.
I'm of the opinion the best way to do this involves linking the storages to the rail basics/rail dockers, and using that. It'll allow easy swapping of cargo pods, it keeps immersion, it's not imbalanced.
Just my two cents.

 

[Bench]

Yay!

While you're listening, I'm going to point out that the wireless logic method of dealing with inter-ship actions (binding two specific blocks on different ships) will probably not work as well for cargo, both for immersion and balance reasons.
First, considering the game has no teleportation, the teleportation of cargo would be something that doesn't mesh as well.
Second, it means that mining vessels will not need to store the ore they mine. A mining vessel wouldn't need to have cargo space, it could just teleport it all directly to the base. This also means a physical blockade of a station would be completely useless against a prepared faction because they would just use the wireless cargo to bypass it completely.
I'm of the opinion the best way to do this involves linking the storages to the rail basics/rail dockers, and using that. It'll allow easy swapping of cargo pods, it keeps immersion, it's not imbalanced.
Just my two cents.

yeah it wasn't going to be the same as the wireless logic; it'll be more contextual.

 

[Knack]

Storage will get an overhaul

I hope it gets an complete overhaul and becomes this
http://starmadedock.net/threads/new-cargo-system.719/
Storages should only be the controllers, not the actual storage.
This thread has already a recognized-flag, I hope it wasn't forgotten.

I think it would need the "creative build mode" in shipyards to work properly, because then you could also limit the stacksize
in the personal inventory.

 

[Magirik3]

Personal Inventory:
Personal inventory stacks rarely need to exceed 10-20k ~ blocks. Perhaps simple Grey Hull does, but other blocks not so often.
--- Perhaps a max total inventory space? 20-100k?

Even when playing on my creative world where I build stuff about the 1k dimensions, this applies. This is single-player-admin-mode next to a shop with the nearest pirate station some 8 sectors away. Building huge stuff with that amount of blocks on you would make prime target on any multiplayer server..


Storage Inventory Limit:
If a player inventory stack is about 10k, my opinion is that Storage should be about the same amount stack-wise. Would promote more volume of ship designated for cargo.
--- Perhaps a max total inventory space for Storages as well? 50-100k?


Storage Balancing:
I agree on the physical representation. Let the salvaged blocks keep their mass.
--- Should not affect Astronaut Mode. Perhaps only jump height in gravity/aligned to ship if anything. Movement here is slow enough already.

--- Blocks in Storage and in Personal Inventory add to the total mass of the ship currently piloted.
This would mean that any decent Mining Ship would require Thrusters. Lots of them.
Smaller Miners would not be able to eat a couple asteroids and then dart away.
Larger ones would need the requested Support to protect their oversized engines, lest they'll be crippled and looted beyond recognition.

Edit:
Stack and Inventory sizes open for revision, and hopefully adjustable in options.

 

[ltmauve]

Storage Balancing:
I agree on the physical representation. Let the salvaged blocks keep their mass.
--- Should not affect Astronaut Mode. Perhaps only jump height in gravity/aligned to ship if anything. Movement here is slow enough already.

Nope nope nope nope nope. Totally imbalanced. A miner the size of an asteroid would be totally unmanageable after eating just two or three, and this would make mining a lot less fun if your ship got super sluggish before you got enough resources to build another one like it. This thread, which got commented on by the skooma, has a very nice mechanic for bulk cargo that does add some mass to cargo, but doesn't mean you wind up with a miner that can't move under one asteroid.

--- Perhaps a max total inventory space? 20-100k?

Obviously this would be server configurable (with -1 being unlimited for your own personal build server.) for both astronaut inventory and all the different kinds of inventory that show up.

 

[Magirik3]

The prickly response about asteroids: Size matters.

A more serious response:
Read that thread. Sure. Some 2k Storage Blocks in some well sized Cargo Bay is one way to go about it.
The balance there is between Loot / Cargo Bay Volume * 1k-size Storage Blocks. Could work.

My suggestion is balance between Loot / Mass. This is like building any other ship.
Getting full of loot? Add more thrusters!

On your note about an asteroid-sized Miner vs Asteroid:
If real physics applied here, the asteroid simply would not fit for quite obvious reasons.
But since it's a game we're only dealing with numbers.
Half the mass of the loot? A quarter?

Either way, both suggestions promote the same goal, and could work together.
Since a somewhat realistic limit on storing resources was requested, we've ended up with both mass and volumetric solutions.
Good job Starmade forum!

 

[Zovc]

For the physical representation, what if some magic vodoo system "condensed" the volume and weight of the supplies, to maybe 1/100 or 1/50th the weight, and have them represented like I saw in another thread, 1000 blocks represented in 1 "cargo" block.

 

[ltmauve]

I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of extra mass added for a full plexstorage. Though I'm iffy about having it be based on the mass of the items stuffed in; it might be better just it based on the fractions of items stored. That way you know what your maximum mass is when fully loaded, without having to worry about different things having different volumes and masses.

 

[Magirik3]

As mentioned in this and skoomas thread, balancing should be up to admins in server options.
Since we since a few updates already have the mass of different block types already in the game, the maths should be simple to implement anyways.

Suppose what we can do now is patiently wait, or make up another rad suggestion.

 

[Knack]

If we get the physical representation, as described in the thread I linked to, I would set two additions:
First, every physical block should store up to 255 blocks (One byte, very optimized)
Second every of this blocks should have 0.25 mass if used. (would be the same mass as advanced armor has)

Means a 10x10x10 Cargo-area could store 255.000 blocks and has 250 mass.

 

[ltmauve]

If we get the physical representation, as described in the thread I linked to, I would set two additions:
First, every physical block should store up to 255 blocks (One byte, very optimized)
Second every of this blocks should have 0.25 mass if used. (would be the same mass as advanced armor has)

Means a 10x10x10 Cargo-area could store 255.000 blocks and has 250 mass.

Umm....
What?
The current system can hold 35 different stacks and that is probably just an arbitrary limit (That is, it could be changed in the code very easily.)
255 blocks is a huge step backwards. Plus the metaitems won't fit in it either (like blueprints and guns)
Not to mention that seems to be a pitiful value. If a storage system doesn't have much capacity in comparison to everything else, it's not going to get used at all. If a player can only hold 255 (or a comparable magnitude) items, building and mining will be a royal pain. And if plexstorages are that small as well...
And finally, pretty much every single value will be exposed to the config.

 

[max stripe]

and thus we get minecraft style trash on a game that shouldnt have inv stack limits....
like realy all of this just screws over the solo players