Starmades's economic climate.

[Broomsage]

Starmade has infinite resources. Why is that not a big issue?

1.There is no real goal in starmade except to have fun. Its not competitive.
Mining is not fun, we don't want to do it. You wouldn't mine if you didn't have to.

2.Starmade has a relatively small amount of players.
A player needs a certain amount of space and resources.
. Macroeconomic theory really cant be applied to 15 people. 10-60 players on a server, 7 billion on earth. Everybody can be a space emperor because the empire is vacant

5.Recessions happen when a big market loses its value.
Resources in starmade have value, because they do not exist in a useable state. They have to be gathered and refined. And players usually take only what they need, because mining is not fun.

This is what the developers have to keep in mind when adding or balancing resource gathering tech.

Gathering resources either has to be difficult or boring.

I will probably cast some additional wide nets about game mechanics based on features that people in the forum people seem to want. This is just here so I can reference these ideas in future posts to keep 'em short
If you have something to add please do.

 

[KiloZulu]

I've never been a big fan of mining, but I've overcome the problem in a couple of ways:
1.) I built a very effective mining ship.
2.) I found players in my faction who love to mine. :D

More seriously, I feel that the game would be fine with the current economic model if it survives to launch. The frustration that I have with mining is that servers regularly reboot due to major development changes, causing me to start from scratch and do all the hard work leading up to the production of my effective mining ship (and all the other ships I would prefer not to rebuild.) With asteroids becoming more accessible after that last update, mining shouldn't be nearly the struggle it had become.

 

[TFlok]

Mining is indeed something that I too find boring and I only play in singleplayer just like in Minecraft and mining in Minecraft is quite relaxing to me. So why is it not the same with Starmade? It's the lack of feeling that you are mining something, you just aim the beam handheld or not and the block just disappears without any feedback, could really use a sound or two (mining beam sound and the sound of the block being absorbed) but then again in the vacuum of space you should only hear your own breathing and only hear the sound of the reactor/whatever muffled when you are touching it (near it ingame).

 

[timethatswasted]

Hopefully once anomalies and better AI are added mining and exploring should be a little more interesting.

What made mining fun in minecraft for me was you never knew what you were going to come across. Would I accidentally break into a massive cave network? Find a strong hold or haunted mine?

It would be fun to roll up on an asteroid field and find a mysterious abandoned ship full of loot.... And angry spiders. Or a space whale munching on an asteroid you want.

The other issue I see is that everyone has acces to all materials all the time. There are no blocks that are really that hard to aquire. There is no reason to trade, and nothing economic to fight over.

 

[terra mining corp.]

Hopefully once anomalies and better AI are added mining and exploring should be a little more interesting.

What made mining fun in minecraft for me was you never knew what you were going to come across. Would I accidentally break into a massive cave network? Find a strong hold or haunted mine?

It would be fun to roll up on an asteroid field and find a mysterious abandoned ship full of loot.... And angry spiders. Or a space whale munching on an asteroid you want.

The other issue I see is that everyone has acces to all materials all the time. There are no blocks that are really that hard to aquire. There is no reason to trade, and nothing economic to fight over.

I like the mining in single player mode , but I agree that it could be more fun with opposition and maybe make some elements system dependant.

 

[badmojo]

There's also the shops, that seem to have just about everything, and lots of it. The shops remove the need to even mine anything once you've done the whole routine of killing pirates and selling computers to make millions. Minecraft has villagers who trade, but they deal with the rarest thing in the game, not an easy to get credit system.

 

[Lecic]

And players usually take only what they need, because mining is not fun.

lol, what?

Most people end up with massive surpluses of certain materials, because they don't use them for anything in their designs. My faction uses a lot of shield tanking, so we mine until we have enough shield capacitor materials for our ships, but since we don't use a lot of, say, explosive weaponry, we have a ton of those materials left over.

 

[Blaza612]

in the vacuum of space you should only hear your own breathing and only hear the sound of the reactor/whatever muffled when you are touching it (near it ingame)

Fuck yo' realism boi. :p

Seriously, if the sound makes that big of a difference, then realism will get thrown out the window to add to atmosphere. It's always a good idea to sacrifice realism for gameplay, than the other way around.

 

[TFlok]

Fuck yo' realism boi. :p

Seriously, if the sound makes that big of a difference, then realism will get thrown out the window to add to atmosphere. It's always a good idea to sacrifice realism for gameplay, than the other way around.

Frankly I've grown really frelling tired of it when it comes to "space" games. As someone who yearns and needs futuristic space travel this is becoming insulting. Eh, don't mind me. I'm tired of life both virtual and real. Still that doesn't make my point less valid.

 

[Blaza612]

As someone who yearns and needs futuristic space travel this is becoming insulting

I hope for the same thing (Which BTW will be coming soon, if Trump doesn't end up president) yet I don't feel insulted for a game/movie choosing gameplay/atmosphere over realism. Unless a game's trying to be a simulator or is at least trying to be realistic, then it's just silly to choose realism over gameplay/atmosphere.

Still that doesn't make my point less valid

With your point being that it won't be realistic, indeed. :p