Stop Planet Harvesting

[Trinova]

One Problem that realy bothers me is the amount of planets that get crippled just by guys adding a build block on the planet, and then starting to devastate it via the 10x10x10 remove block tool. I mean: What the hell should i do with a Salvage Cannon? If i harvest a Planet via a build block i get ressources 1000 times faster.

My suggestion to stop this: if using the build mode, you don't get Mineral (and IceCrystal) or Plant blocks. They just vanish and don't land in your inventory. This would avoid the destruction of planets just because it's the fastest way to harvest ressources.

 

[Platinum_Altaria]

This is only alpha, and HUGE balancing is needed (particularly of the build block, since it\'s pretty much useless for actual building).

 

[Trinova]

Oh if this is alpha i won\'t point out broken things any more... oh wait this is exactly what public test phases are for: pointing out broken mechanics.

And buildblocks are nice if you want to build a station on a planet or capture a space station. How else would you do that?

 

[Planr]

This is not an issue of what\'s broken or not. Build Mode is designed to work this way. It\'s for use on planets so people can build structures easier. Or, they can harvest its materials that way. It\'s their choice. Having Build Mode not return minerals and valuables is ridiculous.

And it\'s perfectly fine to use build mode for harvesting resources. Besides, harvesting planets with salvage cannons doesn\'t take that long if you build a harvester strong enough to get the job done quickly. I\'ve done it before.



Here\'s my advice: If you keep coming across planets that have been harvested in this matter, just keep moving outward. There is an infinite number of planets in the universe. You\'re not going to run out of room. You\'d literally have to play the game for thousands of years for that to happen.

 

[Planr]

What are you talking about? The Build Block is NEEDED to build quickly and well on non-ship objects. Try building a large skyscraper on a planet\'s surface without a build block and tell me how easy it is to do in 5 minutes.

 

[Keon]

Costs way way less than 10000 salvage cannons. And yet you get much much more money for doing it. Somehow that needs to be balanced so that people playing with salvagers can play the game the way it\'s meant to be played and people using build blocks are balanced. Eventually, I\'d like to see build mode be a hologram of sorts, and then to update, you need to actually return to a shipyard/have constructor ships fly around doing stuff to it.

Want to remove the earth? Fine. Just build a giant constructor ship (Which might be slightly slower than a salvager). Want to build a skyscraper? Imagine helicopters spraying nanogoo on it, building it up. Updating your ship? Either have a constructor turret on it, or fly near your station that has a constructor dock with tons of AI turrets and ships. Balanced and easy.



(Yes, I know it\'s a bump)

 

[ne3zy]

^ And how do you do if you want to replace the earth you removed if you don\'t get the blocks ?

 

[lupoCani]

I agree that non-ship buildmode should work more in a load-edit-upload fashion than the current diect editing. I suggest the build block should only allow simulated work, which is then preformed in reality by a linked turret controlled by a \"builder AI\". This should need to be equipped with both salvage and repair canons, controlled by a multi-functional cpu compatible with both of them and that upgrades the latter into placing blocks as well. The speed would be decided by the quantity of the canons, as usual

 

[Limastra]

You can build ships instantly, why should you have to wait to build structures?

You shouldn\'t need to over complicate the game.

 

[Balduran]

OR, maybe you could just move out and let people play and built the way they want

 

[Limastra]

Instead of all this talk of having Ai controlled ships building and deconstructing, why not make the player pay to place a build block on the planet? The cost would be around 100,000 credits, which would stop newbies from just tearing up a planet the first time they would join a server, and then require the REMOVAL (Not placing) of blocks cost some energy. It wouldn\'t be much energy, but enough that you couldn\'t spam click away the world so quickly. If anyone put the effort into building a big enough energy generator to rapidly mine out the world, then good for them. They could have just built a harvesting ship and done it cheaper. Besides, it\'s much less work to build a good harvesting ship than it is to build a large battery and have to move it every time they harvest a planet.

 

[lupoCani]

Or perhaps somewhere in between? As in, build mode is virtual, real-world changes are not dependant on other turrets, but somewhat slower than in the simulation. This speed is increased the more build bloocks you have.

 

[Stene]

Just because one way is better then nother does not mean that the greater way should be nerfed. more that the not so good way maybe needs to be Boosted somehow, in beginning it\'s better and easier to take full asteroids in person then mining laser.


So I see more of a problem with Mining Laser being to insuficcient (wrongly spelled I know) of what it was ment to do than there being a problem mining by hand is more efficient.

 

[Axebane]

Planr, I honestly do not believe that Schema intends for the build block to be used for mass harvesting of entire planets in minutes. To say that it\'s designed for that is outrageous. Why are you always jumping in to defend the current state of the game and imply that everything is perfect and shouldn\'t be changed? As a tester, you should be able to see the flaws of the game in order to help make it better, don\'t you think?

It\'s called a build block, not a harvest block. It\'s meant to assist in building non-ship objects, not to completely circumvent the entire salvaging mechanic and break the game.

Clearly something needs to be done about this exploit, but I\'m not sure what the best solution is.

 

[CoolGamrSms]

The simplest solution (in my eyes) would be to add a 1-bit tag to each block as either natural or player-placed. If the player breaks a player-placed block, give it to them; if they break a natural block in build mode, don\'t give it to them. Simple and effective.

 

[Keon]

\"Nano Goo...


You can build ships instantly, why should you have to wait to build structures?

You shouldn\'t need to over complicate the game.\" -- previous post

Under this idea, you could not build ships instantly. That\'s a different proposal of mine, though, so I\'ll sum it up with this; you make a design, plug in the materials, various blocks (Mounted on a station, or on a ship/turret) will build it for you. As for overcomplicating the game? I want complex, if it boosts the gameplay. For example, you could just have a game with little spaceships shooting at eachother. Why add voxels? Too complex, man! BECAUSE IT ADDS TO THE FUN. Now, how does removing build-block planet eating help? It allows players to be on more even footing as they play the game, and feels less cheaty. It allows a new industry to develop, of shipyards. Etc.

\"OR, maybe you could just move out and let people play and built the way they want\" --other person

That\'s stupid. Maybe I should just butt out and let people playing Dota use giant space-lasers too, while we are at it. Would TF2 be good if there was a command, say /godmode, that let you become a giant zombie and consume the other players? No. New players would get beaten every time, and experienced matches would be a bunch of giant zombies eating eachother. That\'s not a way you can play. What if Zerg got a new thing; Drones could mine at 40 times that of a probe? Would I still play Protoss (This is Starcraft.)? No. And would I watch exciting starcraft matches? No. And there is potential here for a game that clans could play, working together to mine and refine and create a giant fleet and meet in glorious combat.



What\'s stopping that, we need to ask ourselves. For me, there\'s maybe 3 things, and one is quite easy to change. For one, pirate bases give you infinite money, for most purposes. Easy to change, it\'s an alpha, that\'s easy. Second: Ships spawned out of thin air. That\'s discussed in another topic. Third, this. Now, when I started, I found I needed to get a salvage laser. Simple enough, yes? Oh wait. Instead of 200 salvage lasers I should have bought 1 build block, went to a asteroid, and set my symetry, and carved out 8000 blocks in a click.

If you can\'t see the problem, you clearly are deluded. This isn\'t fair, and it needs to be balanced. Now, I don\'t care how it\'s done.

 

[Axebane]

\"The simplest solution (in my eyes) would be to add a 1-bit tag to each block as either natural or player-placed. If the player breaks a player-placed block, give it to them; if they break a natural block in build mode, don\'t give it to them. Simple and effective.\" -CoolGamrSms

Wow, that is an excellent solution. Then the build block would be used for what it\'s intended to: building. The experience of building a station/city/whatever would be exactly the same as it is now, but the block could no longer be used to harvest thousands of world-genned blocks with no effort. I think Schema should try this fix!

 

[Keon]

Well, it sounds like it will work, but it still doesn\'t solve this:

Say two factions are at war, call them the Tribe and the Empire. So empire has this factory planet that does all their refining. Tribe could: A) assault them in a costly assault to the planet and then bomb them, fighting a full battle, or B) send one ship to the underside of the world, place 1 build block, and then completely eat up all of Empire\'s planet. They don\'t care if they get the dirt and stuff, they care about the fact that Empire\'s main manufacturing planet just vanished.

 

[Limastra]

I don\'t know if you have ever played a game called \"Minecraft,\" but it was one of the big inspirations for Starmade. It was quite simple, but you could make complicated things in it. That\'s what made it fun. You weren\'t forced to learn how to create redstone contraptions, but you could choose what you wanted to do. You could be a builder, a pvper, a roleplayer, redstoner, map maker, whatever you liked. If you have played Minecraft, then you have probably played one of the modpacks for it like Feed The Beast, or Tekkit. They made things more complicated, adding new recipes and factories that required power from any one variety of energy sources. It was complicated. It was boring to me. At times I would understand something, and then most of the time I had no clue what I was doing. But the beauty in that was that I wasn\'t forced to learn all of this technical stuff. I could play my way on Vanilla. It was friendly to the new player.



I like CoolGamrSms\'s idea because it is simple and effective.

 

[Limastra]

You can place a faction module on a planet to protect it from people not in your faction.