StarMade 0.1851 Hotfixes and More Mining

[Criss]

There are two options for this whole hull issue that I see currently. One option is already here.

The game has changed. It is obviously still quite hard to acquire the resources to build certain systems. MrFurb gave a good presentation on how long one can expect to be mining to finish a decent sized ship. It was ridiculous. HOWEVER. People also need to realize that they are building ships that worked with the old versions of the game. Those ships were practical to build back then. Not anymore. The cost and time needed to get a ship is much higher if you build them they way you had before.

How does this solve hull problems? Well shielding as far as I know is hella expensive. Therefore Hull is granted some value. Even with this increase in mining yield, the price for these blocks has stayed the same. We will be getting everything a lot faster now. But the ratio of how much we get is going to stay the same until those values or the crafting of those items changes. Before I got 10 Hull and 1 shield. Now I get 100 hull and 10 shields. See what I'm saying. The value for armor is already there, more so if weapons cost just as much time to make.

The second option is to have shields simply mitigate damage instead of completely block it. Ships would take damage even with shields up. I have no idea how the math for something like this would work. Perhaps a percentage of damage is blocked based on how much of a percentage of you ship is comprised of shield blocks. Similar to Jump drives. I think it would be interesting. Hell we could even have 2 separate shield systems. One that simply mitigates damage for less power and the one that we have now that blocks it completely. Idk. It's a strange system that I haven't seen proposed yet. Even so. I've seen plenty of sci-f- where a ship still took damage even with shields online.

I've already posted a video demonstrating armor tanking. Skip to 8 minutes to see the results. I am in no way saying this is what we need. But it is possible and we should all realize that :D

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I'm can't help but think how well the current system will work if we have drones that can salvage asteroids and planets. It would be very cool to bring in a carrier filled sith mining drones. But to do that we first need to be able to give ai and/or NPC crew tasks other than "fire at this", obviously including the ability to let them salvage things without using their weapons to destroy the asteroid or planet.

And yes, I'm just daydreaming out loud now (and that sentence makes no sense, so my task is accomplished).

But seriously though, we need salvage drones.

 

[K10wN]

I will agree that the new system is harder to gain the parts you need, especially shielding and advanced armour. I'm not seeing this as a bad thing though. The server has a few tweaks of the server.cfg to adjust loot drops slightly higher for pirate ships, lower for pirate stations, the new default 0.01 shop spawn rate, otherwise it's vanilla settings. I've had little trouble building a ship in the manner that I could build them before the BwB became default (when you could spawn in huge part lumps magically if needed). The other thing that's changed on the server is some custom pirate ships.

This ship is the first major ship I've complete since the galaxy update. It's all advanced armour. Has 20,000 shield capacitor and 20,000 shield generators. 181m long, 121m wide, 45m high (to fit the hangers at the faction home base). It also has 100% overdrive and full warp drive, 850x12 salvage beams (100% cannon support), and enough weapons to deal with the pirates when they appear. Being mostly white and grey advanced armour, the Parstun seemed to be the resource I was constantly searching for.

Even after building this ship, I still have enough parts left over to be well on the way to building my next ship (1/2 finished already). Faction has nine members, three active, four part time, two beginners. Five of the faction members have ships similar size, if not larger than mine.

On top of this I've built a 1.7 million block station from scratch with the resources collected. It took me less than hour after the universe reset (galaxy update) to be well on my way to a decent salvage ship and then kept building onto it as I gained more resources. We've used BwB since the reset.

These changes have turned it into a game instead of an online creative mode where you build the biggest ship you can, and show it off to your mates, then build another without any effort at all (besides the building).

Oh another note. The server's economy is working well. Players sell their excess parts to the default shops. New players buy them and the cycle repeats. Money is still useful. You don't have as much, but you have enough for what you need (pay for that decayed station).

 

[Izikiel]

Ah, these changes will definitely help out, thanks for listening guys!

Out of curiosity, are we able to break down blocks into the raw parts? I might just be missing something obvious, but wasn't sure.

 

[KiloZulu]

I have always assumed that there will be a variety of game modes for StarMade, with "Creative" being one choice, and something like "Sandbox" being another. Given that, wouldn't the economy changes be best incorporated with a different game mode than the creative mode that simply allows for unlimited building? These economy changes are great for the creation of the actual game, imho. They add depth and motive for doing stuff in the game. I have yet to touch the crafting system in this game because I was able to simply sell salvaged loot for credits and buy whatever I needed by saving parts in the catalog. That's because I haven't been playing a space sandbox game, I've been playing the alpha build that lets me shortcut to build ships. This shows evolution.

Speaking of which, please hurry up with those space stations - I don't have a game to play beyond ship building until they are added. We have to avoid any exploration of the new galaxy so as not to lock the old stations into place by loading them.

 

[Skamos]

Honestly I have never needed to join this forum before now, is it just me who finds shields the hardest thing to get a large quantity of now? I know there is a bonus to mining, however i cant find these crystals anywhere and when i do it is in such small quantities. Seeing as Shields are the most common ship item I think it would only be natural for them to be easier to make. Yes I know the benefits pof owning sectors, and mining asteroids not planets, as well as how to make factories. Its just that I have spent 3 hours playing and ive only got enough resources to make 1000 shield blocks .2% to my medium sized ship.

EDIT: In order to get a large ship I would need 1000000000 credits alone to buy shields

 

[therimmer96]

Hey Schema, you know what would be great, if you made hotfixes actually "hot", rather than differently named patches

 

[jath]

I think everyone thinks that bigger ships are mandatory in this game. In reality, we really should consider a 200 meter ship huge. I know it's not 1to1, but this game is based on ships built from many blocks. In other games, yeah, the ships ate supposedly huge, but they are polygons. They don't crash your game when you look at them, much less move or fight with them. I understand wanting to build cool stuff that's huge, but in a multi player universe where we want to do pvp with these ships, there gets to a point where the sizes most of you consider the norm are unreasonable. Size is relative anyway. I'm tired of this arms race everyone is having getting more and more massive. We need to scale it back and build small. You'll spend less time building and more time pvping. I know a lot of you don't want to pvp unless you know you'll win, so you'll spend weeks building and 1 day a month maybe fighting. This isn't what most people want. They want to fight more often and not murder thier computer. Smaller ships on pvp servers guys. I know you don't get the detail, but you ARE building your ships out of giant pixels. What do you expect?

 

[Lancake]

Thanks for the answer.

;_;

I checked in game and found 3 big larimar asteroids after my second asteroid belt so yeah, it feels fixed.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I checked in game and found 3 big larimar asteroids after my second asteroid belt so yeah, it feels fixed.

They are near the first shop, but I couldn't find any after that. Any suggestions as to where I should look?

 

[Lancake]

They are near the first shop, but I couldn't find any after that. Any suggestions as to where I should look?

It was in that first system, tried out 4 random asteroid sectors, found 5 larimar asteroids in total, maybe i just got very lucky?

 

[FunnyBunny14]

It was in that first system, tried out 4 random asteroid sectors, found 5 larimar asteroids in total, maybe i just got very lucky?

You probably did. The asteroids should be distributed based on temperature/distance to sun, and that system still doesn't work that well.

 

[crazyf22raptor]

there is now a 10% chance of any asteroid spawning anywhere to combat the problem with rare asteroids

awww asteroids spawning eney where that's useful when can we use build blocks on them?:p
it wold be cool to use them as stations:D

 

[jath]

awww asteroids spawning eney where that's useful when can we use build blocks on them?:p
it wold be cool to use them as stations:D

I think they said never. However, there's a way around it. Blow up a planet. Mine the plates down to nothing but an asteroid sized chunk. You'll get a mobile base that you can push around, and it'll have built in gravity.

 

[jorgekorke]

Unfortunately, I think the blue asteroids spawn only on brand-new explored areas. Since eating planets are still more reliable, I'll have to jump to another galaxy in order to do so without regret.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Unfortunately, I think the blue asteroids spawn only on brand-new explored areas. Since eating planets are still more reliable, I'll have to jump to another galaxy in order to do so without regret.

Yeah, they are rare. way too rare, actually. It also is a reported bug, so I guess we'll just have to wait.

 

[DivineEvil]

Yeah, they are rare. way to rare, actually. It also is a reported bug, so I guess we'll just have to wait.

Yeah. They can be found in abundance, but they only spawn at sectors with asteroid belt crossing an egde (not faces, edges) and further to corners. Somehow it even feels intentional, but even if found they are still cannot be mined for significant value, so terribly laggy and annoying planet mining is more viable.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Yeah. They can be found in abundance, but they only spawn at sectors with asteroid belt crossing an egde (not faces, edges) and further to corners. Somehow it even feels intentional, but even if found they are still cannot be mined for significant value, so terribly laggy and annoying planet mining is more viable.

I can't even find them there... The only time I see them is at the very first time I enter a new world.

 

[Jananton]

We're talking Larimar aren't we. Saw one in the previous universe.
In the latest build with a new created world none to date.

Also noticed that planets seem small to very small in the latest build.

Greets,

Jan

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Yeah, Larimar... It's sad, really. Larimar is by far the most beautiful mineral.