StarMade News - November 9th 2015

[Mortiferum]

No longer can we carry an entire fleet of battleships in our pocket?



THE GODS HAVE FORSAKEN US!!
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Awesome changes :p

Dedicated cargo ships/ miners now have a cargo bay area while small "important cargo" carrier has a small safe at the back of a small shuttle.

 

[hzzzln]

YES YES YES
I am SO hyped for this
Fuck the haters
This game is getting better with every release

 

[Bench]

Spoiler

I'll be honest, I'm not sure about this, Bench . I'll be the voice of doubt, the dude with the other perspective.

Mining and processing the mined goods is already a tedious business, especially with the bigger sector sizes each server's taking (to make space spacious and avoid multi-sector structures)
I definitely think this system should ONLY be implemented strictly ALONG with the cargo transfer ability between entities. If I run around a system for 3 hours to find and scoop up some mineable rocks, the LAST damn thing I want to do is spend another 1 hour going back and forth between my ship and the processing station's storage with the limited stack sizes.

It's weird to see how the modding community of such a small scale game as Minecraft went to simplify and automate mining and storage (almost every single major mod has some sort of automated mining and improved, compact storage) while Starmade, being on an almost incomparably larger scale, is going the opposite route.
This concept, if implemented, will make the steep learning curve even steeper. A factory setup will be exponentially more complicated (and bigger) with cargo storages having to be added to every single damn factory block (and ESPECIALLY to the capsule refinery every other factory block pulls the resources from) in order to make it possible to produce the quantities of hulls, thrusters, power blocks and other such massively needed blocks to build a proper ship.
I am aware of the direction you guys have been trying to limit ship and station sizes in multiple ways: the softcap on power reactors, the diminishing returns on thrusters, the damage modifier on system HP, the scarcity of blue asteroids desperately needed for shield blocks, the "buy blueprints with blocks" thing...

And now you drop this? Limiting stack size to a couple thousand blocks?

Spoiler

Congrats. This'll force players to simplify their designs even more.
The "buy with blocks" update already made it difficult for players who were trying to use nicely built, good looking, detailed ships (both exterior and interior) in a survival environment, because they had to run around getting all the different blocks and items making them so detailed. Inventories already couldn't hold all the different block types regardless of stack size.
Now you want to limit inventory even more, thus building and filling designs or blueprints up in survival servers will be even more difficult.
Which brings me to the question, when was the last time any of you did anything outside admin mode/creative mode in your own game? I have only seen kupu ever play in survival, and I have a deep respect for him because of that.

Tread lightly, because gathering and manufacturing resources is already the most boring and inconvenient part of the game, and if you complicate the main creative aspect of it (building) even more, people will not even get to the other fun part (fighting) as they won't risk losing vessels they put several man-hours into building (in creative, most likely) and even more man-hours spawning in survival. At a point, you'll start losing more players than you gain, because new payers will just give up, being overwhelmed by the learning curve. I have seen it happen multiple times, despite our most sincere attempts to support those newbies (I never refused helping out a new player on a server with advice and even some resources). How complicated is overcomplicated? You have to ask yourselves that question.

If anything, you should do something similar to what Applied Energistics did to Minecraft in the ME storage system. Instead of limiting stack sizes, the storage capacity was limited by the number of different item types the storage unit would hold, and the maximum amount of items total it would hold. here, the limit should be the TOTAL amount of items you can fit into a storage, not the number of different item types. Let's say one cargo crate can hold 10K blocks total, in any combination. That could be 10K basic grey hull, or 2K grey, 2K black, 2K white, 2K glass and 2K red, or any other combination.
I could get behind that.

Thanks for taking the time to write that Matt. I've wrapped a couple things up as spoilers so I can respond to specific parts.

No one confirmed or denied a couple thousand blocks definitively as a stack limit. If anyone threw around numbers like that it was purely in a speculative sense.

I agree we have to be careful not to make it too complicated. But I guess that's what Alpha is for, trying out new ideas and giving it a go in the game, see how it goes with everyone and then adjust as appropriate. Our big thing is obviously customization, so we're devising ways that you could possibly manipulate the amount of spaces you have in a particular cargo area to the amount you can have per stack, purely through the way you construct your cargo area.

Again we can't comment until it's in place, as the game hasn't had anything like this before. And this is the first step towards a lot of other features we plan on adding. Obviously automation is a big thing you've highlighted; the tedium between mining and refining and moving your resources around. This is something we're aware of, and have been devising different aspects of the game that will allow you to be more engaged with it at the start as you learn the game, but as you get more established and start utilizing more advanced methods you'll be able to essentially move onto bigger things, setting up different levels in the process. We've already seen some of this through things like pulls in the factories from storage blocks, filtering etc. but we'll take it a lot further.

The learning curve is something I'm always thinking about, as is engaging both single and multi player. We'll get there, and everyone has their own opinion of where we should start; through all the planning etc though I think we'll end up with a pretty sweet game.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Thanks for the quick answer, Bench .

If you need a quick fix, shop modules will still have their own block storage for now, and will hold more than the stack limits. However this is only a temporary solution, as we’ll be transitioning shop modules as well though it will be staggered with the cargo update.

That definitely implies a stack limit of less than 50K blocks.

I do think that only specifying a max number of blocks a cargo crate can hold, and not how many different items, should keep it relatively simple - for players, at least.

Also... there's a big question: how will the update affect the personal inventory? Will its size be limited, or will a single cargo crate be able to hold exactly as much, more, or less, than an astronaut's personal inventory?

Boy I'm only starting to scratch the surface of how much math and tinkering is ahead of you guys.

 

[Thalanor]

So basically, storage blocks are now storage computers, and what they can fit is limited by how much physical space is allocated to them?
Awesome!

I hope we're getting a way to transfer cargo from docked entities indeed. It'd be extra neat if the cargo blocks would disappear on one entitiy and pop up on the other one after the other

So having giant hangar spaces or factory halls available now actually has an use?

 

[alterintel]

you should change the name of the storage block to a "Manifest Computer"

 

[Matt_Bradock]

A minor suggestion to the personal inventory: Turn a set of slots into a dedicated "utility belt" only able to store non-stackable metaitems (oh yea, those will be a pain, a single pistol holding the same slot as a full stack of advanced armor in storage?) like guns, logs, tools, blueprints etc.

 

[Bench]

Thanks for the quick answer, Bench .



That definitely implies a stack limit of less than 50K blocks.

I do think that only specifying a max number of blocks a cargo crate can hold, and not how many different items, should keep it relatively simple - for players, at least.

Also... there's a big question: how will the update affect the personal inventory? Will its size be limited, or will a single cargo crate be able to hold exactly as much, more, or less, than an astronaut's personal inventory?

Boy I'm only starting to scratch the surface of how much math and tinkering is ahead of you guys.

The shop module was purely a quick thought schema had when we were drafting the news post, we weren't looking specifically at the numbers surrounding the limiting.

Yeah there's definitely a lot to think about. Feels a bit like cutting a road through the jungle, gotta slash through the trees unsure where it'll necessarily take you beyond knowing the destination you're aiming for.



I'll say this though to everyone. I definitely feel the the weight of the burden bestowed upon me to direct creatively the direction of SM. I'll be honest, I've never done anything quite like this, and I don't take it lightly. So as we move forward and do releases and announcements of where we're going, know that our only intention is to make an incredible game that we all enjoy playing, and no one wants that more than me. So I'll carry this as long as I can, and I hope you'll trust me and come along for the ride, through the awesome feature times, and the game breaking balance-issues times. I won't ever give up on striving to make StarMade all it can be, so I hope you won't ever give up on us. I'm here until the end.
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So basically, storage blocks are now storage computers, and what they can fit is limited by how much physical space is allocated to them?
Awesome!

I hope we're getting a way to transfer cargo from docked entities indeed. It'd be extra neat if the cargo blocks would disappear on one entitiy and pop up on the other one after the other

So having giant hangar spaces or factory halls available now actually has an use?

Well storage blocks will still come with a degree of capacity on their own, cargo is just an extension.

And yeah when transferring cargo blocks will disappear in one cargo area and appear in another.

 

[ephla442]

Much awesomeness ahead! Keep up the great work Schine, and the rest of the team!

 

[StormWing0]

All I have to do is berry my station's gyro turret bases deep in it and or just move their bases as I make the cargo areas bigger. As for the miners, well this is going to be interesting to say the least.

 

[Edymnion]

That would be quite high. I don't think it has been determined yet but based on what I am seeing it may be as little as a few thousand per stack.

Oh dear God no, please not that low.

You have to realize on my server station I have over 200 million metallic mesh alone sitting in storage. I have raw mats like Mattise crystal in storage in the 10-20 million range each.

Even 50k per block is going to make it a nightmare to try and convert my stores over into cargo!

 

[Nauvran]

Oh dear God no, please not that low.

You have to realize on my server station I have over 200 million metallic mesh alone sitting in storage. I have raw mats like Mattise crystal in storage in the 10-20 million range each.

Even 50k per block is going to make it a nightmare to try and convert my stores over into cargo!

build smaller then, or make larger freighters

 

[Edymnion]

build smaller then, or make larger freighters

No you don't understand. Right now I can likely surpass 500 million blocks total storage requirements.

Has nothing to do with building smaller from now on, or making bigger freighters. It has everything to do with planetary sized cargo stations. And I know I'm not alone in that, several other people on my server have comparable stores as well.

Anyone thats been on the same server for more than a month or two likely counts their total stocks in the hundreds of millions. Do you have any idea how big a cargo area we're going to need just to hold what we've got, much less for future expansion?

 

[FatCobra]

I'm hoping the devs will take into acount blocks like rock and lava which end up in the 9 digits fast.

 

[Bench]

Again seeing a fair few comments about cargo sizes etc and concerns over size and capacity, just to reiterate...

No one confirmed or denied a couple thousand blocks definitively as a stack limit. If anyone threw around numbers like that it was purely in a speculative sense.

I'll say now one stack doesn't equal one cargo crate. The capacity of each cargo crate will be more per crate than a storage block on its own. We'll obviously balance it appropriately so that both have value without being too OP but regardless of the specific numbers the amount of stacks you can store in a cargo crate will always be greater than with a storage block.

 

[Edymnion]

I'm hoping the devs will take into acount blocks like rock and lava which end up in the 9 digits fast.

Seriously.

That or we're going to have to have some better way to process asteroids to super-condense the junk rock into a more storable form.

 

[RODLON]

I really like how you are going to handle all the cargo thing! It's very realistic.

 

[Ithirahad]

Do you have any idea how big a cargo area we're going to need just to hold what we've got, much less for future expansion?

No, and neither do you, nor Bench, nor - probably - even Schema at this point. In any case it's clear that they're going ahead with this change, so wait and see, and complain later if the system sucks.

 

[FatCobra]

I think the new cargo system from what I've heard will be cool. That being said it will probably take some tweaking to get things right.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

One storage block per cargo area. If you want your cargo areas to look consolidated you can place multiple cargo areas next to each other and connect to their equivalent storage blocks but you can't connect one cargo area to multiple storage blocks.

So if I have a sorting system using a dozen storage modules each of those storage modules will need it's own separate cargo area defined? That's really going to make the entire system really complicated, you have to plan ahead of time knowing how many of each block you will have in each storage modules so you can set aside enough cargo space for that specific module. I really was much more hoping for being able to define a cargo area and link my storage modules into that and it will store the blocks as it needs to. Each linked chest would only display it's specific sorted item but they would all use a single "cargo bay" to store materials.

I definitely think this system should ONLY be implemented strictly ALONG with the cargo transfer ability between entities. If I run around a system for 3 hours to find and scoop up some mineable rocks, the LAST damn thing I want to do is spend another 1 hour going back and forth between my ship and the processing station's storage with the limited stack sizes.

With a shipyard you can kind of do this already. Repairing a ship will put all it's cargo into the shipyards storage.

If anything, you should do something similar to what Applied Energistics did to Minecraft in the ME storage system. Instead of limiting stack sizes, the storage capacity was limited by the number of different item types the storage unit would hold, and the maximum amount of items total it would hold. here, the limit should be the TOTAL amount of items you can fit into a storage, not the number of different item types. Let's say one cargo crate can hold 10K blocks total, in any combination. That could be 10K basic grey hull, or 2K grey, 2K black, 2K white, 2K glass and 2K red, or any other combination.
I could get behind that.

Yeah I hope this is the case, otherwise small cargo ships will be impossible. You would only be able to carry a few types of blocks instead of small amounts of many different blocks.