Planned Starmade as an Astronaut

[Valiant70]

Would this even be needed? Wouldn't the player jut need to deposit X primary weapon modules, Y secondary weapon modules, and maybe Z effect modules, then determine the output location(s)?

That depends on how involved we want gun design to be. If the blocks get grouping effects like some of the ones on ships, then actually placing blocks would be needed. If players don't seem to want their guns to be that involved, just throw stuff in there.

 

[Snowfox1337]

Persobally i vote customisation. Starmade is all about building a ship to fit your play style...so why not be able to do that with your personal weapins too? If you can build huge titan class ships able to lazer planets to death then you should be able to put together your own personal laser rifle built to your specifications to fit your play style aswell. If bothing else we could try the approach to it that "Loadout" uses. Select a base type of gun and start playing with the combinations. You can give it whatever range, fire rate, power, clip size, etc that you want. Of course each choice has a chance of effecting the others to make them less powerful. (ie higher damage barrel=lower rate or fire but higher accuracy)

After thought: After i wrote the above reply i went back and read the beginning of the thread and realised we could to the same for personal equipment if we wish to make the "this is how i play" aspect to be there even when weapons are put away...just imagine if you could build each piece of equipment you use yourself to suit the needs you have. Wouldnt that be great? for example. "You have had trouble getting over to ships? Heres the grapple you need. Too short you say? Well if you add more cord it gives you more range. But be careful it also takes it longer to real in if you do that." You could do it with everything from wrist blades, magnet boots, and deployable shields to wrist mounted tractor beams, jump boots, and jet packs. It all depends on the needs of the player.

 

[Snowfox1337]

...i was just thinking of this thread and perhaps we could build personal equipment the way we build ships...block groups to improve stats and thinking the whole system through can make it much more efficient. Maybe even use the same blocks on a micro sized 2D plane. Bigger piece of equipment gives a bigger area to play with. For example maybe gloves could be a 5×5, bracer could be a 5×10, breastplate gives 20×15 etc. How does that sound? And we could use existing ship modules aswell. Personalised blink drive anyone? Just place a bunch of power reactors in your breastplate with some jump drive modules and you can. Distance and charge time may very on stats. Need more shielding to be able to tank the lazers for your friends? Place power, shield chargers, and shield cappacitors in the grid. How about a melee weapon? Pulse weapons in the bracers for when you just need to punch someone with a fist full of high energy shockwaves. See where im going with this?

 

[Andem]

...i was just thinking of this thread and perhaps we could build personal equipment the way we build ships...block groups to improve stats and thinking the whole system through can make it much more efficient. Maybe even use the same blocks on a micro sized 2D plane. Bigger piece of equipment gives a bigger area to play with. For example maybe gloves could be a 5×5, bracer could be a 5×10, breastplate gives 20×15 etc. How does that sound? And we could use existing ship modules aswell. Personalised blink drive anyone? Just place a bunch of power reactors in your breastplate with some jump drive modules and you can. Distance and charge time may very on stats. Need more shielding to be able to tank the lazers for your friends? Place power, shield chargers, and shield cappacitors in the grid. How about a melee weapon? Pulse weapons in the bracers for when you just need to punch someone with a fist full of high energy shockwaves. See where im going with this?

I Absolutely love the idea. the only issue would be system strain trying to keep track of everybodies personalized equipment.

 

[kiraen]

According to Schema in the Q&A, Saber is the dev handling this end of things. So if you haven't read this thread yet, now would be a good time.

 

[Valiant70]

According to Schema in the Q&A, Saber is the dev handling this end of things. So if you haven't read this thread yet, now would be a good time.

I'm going to quote the most important post over here for reference's sake.

There were a few issues that led us away from letting people build their own weapons block by block. We agreed that it was definitely an intriguing idea, but some of the issues included the need for a new micro-block system, which would mean the game would be calculating even more individual blocks to render as more and more players entered the same area. Determining weapon output location, and how the weapon would be held, and how that would interact with the player model was another big issue.

Something else to consider is that we do obviously love focusing the game around building, however another aspect of the game hasn't been pushed a lot in the past, which is exploration. By using a modular system for weapons you are encouraged to go out into space and hunt for parts that will make your weapons stronger, faster, more efficient, etc. This system also aligns with our plan for fauna, going with a modular approach which will allow the game to create interesting combinations for the player, thus filling the universe with more interesting and diverse weapons, just as we'll have varied fauna, while keeping it very controllable from a back-end standpoint.

StarMade is all about freedom to the player, to play, build, and explore how they want. We understand that not using a block-by-block building mechanism removes some of that creative freedom, however we have to consider how such a system would be handled not only by the game, but by the players and their computers. Hopefully this gives some insight into the reason for the direction we're going. I'm personally very excited about it, as we (currently) aren't just planning "boring" modules like stocks, barrels, etc. but modules that may drastically change what, and how your weapon fires. Again this is all still very work in progress, so don't take any of this set in stone. That's just the current plan. Let me know if you have any further questions.

 

[Snowfox1337]

I Absolutely love the idea. the only issue would be system strain trying to keep track of everybodies personalized equipment.

I dont see it having to keep track of every block once you save it. Just its stats. Mostly the same things you see when you look to find the power regen on your ships.

According to Schema in the Q&A, Saber is the dev handling this end of things. So if you haven't read this thread yet, now would be a good time.

Yeah...i do see how microblocks would be a system issue. But if the equipment all looked the same on the astronauts (or maybe have a list of skins to choose from) that would solve the rendering issue. With personal armor you dont have to track each block...most weapons will hit a large enough section you could just say it hit the whole thing.

That said...i do like the devs plan...tbh...maybe as much as my own. Having to explore to get your weapons components is brilliant. Wish i thought of it first. I can see it being much more satisfying for the one making the gun too...would you rather say you put blocks together and made this high power plasma rifle....or you explored 30 planets, raided 15 pirate stations, blasted countless pirates to bits, and braved the terrible beasts inhabiting the abandoned stations of the gamma system to make this high powered plasma rifle?