Suggestions for improving inventory (including the proposed "diablo" style one)

[KuramaFox]

I'll get straight to the point. There should be two types of inventory. I will just describe what I feel to be the ideal setup, and a reason or two for why I think this works better then the present system.



The first inventory is used to hold blocks. Unlike the current inventory, which can be compared with Minecraft's survival inventory, it would be more like the inventory that game has available in Creative Mode (but without the unlimited quantity aspect, naturally).

In other words, the player would have no limit to the number of different TYPES of blocks they have. They could have limits to how many of a specific block they can carry at once, however (this could tie into the second type of inventory and what you have equipped). Such limits would not exist or would be set very high until the other inventory type was worked out though. I'll cover some ideas for that after this.

With a suitable creative-style sorting mechanic in place, this would greatly free up players to be able to build what they want more easily. Additionally, should an option be added to have blueprinted ships be purchased with inventory-parts instead of credits (i.e. you can only "buy" a ship if you have all the parts needed to make it), then this type of inventory will allow players to buy ANY ship, and not just those that have fewer different parts in them than can be held at once in the current inventory (which is limited if you start looking into ships with multiple colors involved, or if item tiers were to ever be added).







The second type of inventory:

I recall hearing that Schema and/or another dev were considering a diablo-style inventory for non-blocks. So, for instance, this would be where you carry your equipment and unique items like logs or recipes, with different things taking up a different amount of space. I'll offer some basic ideas for this now.

First off, character equipment. Players would be able to equip different items, which may effect them in different ways. Some ideas here:

Spacesuit: basically, the all-purpose equivalent to armor. Would determine the amount of life and armor the player character has. Eventually, could also be required to survive in space, and may have a time limit to represent the amount of air it has (which could reset to max each time you entered a spaceship or a station/planet's gravity or something), but this isn't needed at present. Separate slots are NOT necessary. That is, it would only add further complexity if you had to worry about boots, gloves, chest, legs, head, etc. Instead, if equipment is modular or can otherwise be customized, variations can be put in on that level.

EVA system: Would alter how fast the player can move, and possibly give them a tiny amount of shielding. Even the best would be puny relative to a fighter-sized ship, mind you.

backpack/utility pack/rucksack/whatever: Would determine the size of the diablo-type inventory's grid. Better ones mean you can carry more items like unequipped items, logs, recipes, weapons, and so forth when equipped.

Material-pocket-system: If limits to the number of a single item you can have in the block inventory are added, this equipment would alter that limit. So if you can only carry 1000 of any given block by default, you could equip a pocket-system of some quality or another to increase that limit to 10,000, or 100,000. Which brings us to the next equipment slot:

Weapon/tool: This is where you would equip weapons or tools. Weapons are self-explanitory. But a building tool would replace the current out-of-ship building mechanic. In other words, with nothing equipped, you would not be able to put down blocks unless you get into build mode. You would need a building tool equipped in the slot to place blocks while out of building mode. Since weapons and other equipables would follow the same basic rules, this means that any weapon or two can have two uses, one for each mouse button (building tool would have one button be for place, and one button be for remove, naturally). Ideas for things other then weapons (which I'm sure have plenty of suggestions already) could include simple mining tools (basically, a short range personal salvage beam), a welding tool (short range personal repair beam), and an engineering tool (could let you tweak change the settings of some ship systems in some way).



Aside from that, there could be an "armor" equip too, if there seems to be any reason not to simply merge that with the "space suit" catagory (or to perhaps have it as a second item you can equip to change some parameters).

 

[MisterVec]

Inventory design, especially in a sandbox game, can get really, really complicated and obtuse if there is no clear vision of how it will support the gameplay mechanics.

Just as an example: The current game design has the purchase of ship blue prints being a simple credit exchange. As long as you have enough credits, the ship will spawn. This is low-fuss, easy to undertstand and works with the currently available systems.

Now, I am going to say that that\'s stupid and unrealistic and propose a change to it. Instead, I want the player to use a special shipyard block. I will propose that the shipyard block can be loaded up with several blue-prints so that the player can determine which ships it can produce. Once loaded with blue prints, the player can then feed the appropriate number of hull, energy, shield, and weapons blocks into it and activate it to spawn the desired ship. This sounds reasonable enough, right?

Though it sounds simple, it actually requires a large number of questions to be answered before it can be correctly implemented. Where does the ship spawn? Can the factory block be installed on a ship or is it station only? How does it interact with the faction system? Can the player obtain BPs only through designing the ships themselves or is there a mechanic by which he can obtain the BPs of ships\' he\'s beaten in combat or otherwise captured? Does one load the blocks into the factory block or do we force the factory block to be tied to some sort of resource dump that is, in turn, tied to some factory blocks? If we decide to limit player carryable inventory, how does one load up the factory block easily, then?

It might turn out that the straight-forward system I proposed means a whole lot of work without adding much to the game besides tedium for the player and the need to learn yet another game system. Make sense?

So the questions I have here in regards to you own suggestions are: How does limiting player inventory add to the game\'s depth? How does one move the resources required for factory production if not on one\'s person? Is there a way to transfer from ship to station easily? If so, how? Does adding player equipment add to the game\'s depth? How does one obtain player equipment if one does not start with it? Is it breakable, or, once made, does it last forever? Are there game systems in place that make using one\'s player inventory an interesting way to spend one\'s in-game time?

Just wondering is all.

 

[KuramaFox]

But that only fixes the \"issue\" of using inventory to buy ships instead of credits. The downside is that you then need to worry about the prospect of the SHIPYARD\'s blocks, and whatever inventory is involved in THAT.

To that end, I do have an idea: the shipyard you propose uses blocks from a shop, since those can already hold all item types. Do note however that you WOULD need to improve shops (specifically, you would need to allow a shop\'s inventory to hold more then just a puny 10,000 of any given block before getting \"fed up\").

Since player shops have been added, one can simply place a shop on the station that is to be used as a shipyard. Buying a ship from that shipyard-station would deplete its shop\'s items. Add a few options to allow faction members to buy the ships for free if you want, and you are good (it would require credits from non-faction members who want to buy a ship there, but it will still be dependant on whether the shipyard\'s player shop has enough in stock or not).



The reason I brought up Minecraft\'s Creative Mode though was because its set up in a reasonably straight-forward manner with some categories and tabs and such, which makes it pretty simple to quickly find the block type you want. So it is the best design I can think of for an inventory that allows you to carry every type of block at once without making it an utter pain to find anything. The current inventory is basically like Minecraft\'s Survival Mode, which is a whole different ball game (they really are quite different last I checked).



As for blueprints and shipyards, you could simply upload a blueprint like you do now. Blueprints do need to be changed such that when uploaded, they default to all sharing options being OFF, however, so players don\'t need to go into an uploaded design\'s description and info to turn it off (this REALLY clutters up the public catalog and makes it almost useless on many servers, because most people just upload and use it). Also, it would be nice if the description were part of the blueprint file itself, so it is already there when you upload it. Because again people just don\'t bother re-typing a ship description every time they upload a ship somewhere new.

There could be a server option that toggles between \"easy buy\" (i.e. the current ship buying system) and a mode where attempting to buy a ship will instead give you a blueprint item. This toggle could be rank-specific too, so that admins or users of different ranks may be able to use different systems. This item would basically point to the blueprint file name. If the file in the folder is deleted, there would need to be a check that either deletes the blueprints connected to it, or is otherwise able to handle blueprints of \"nothing.\" That aside, once a player buys a blueprint of and uploaded ship, they then would take it to the shipyard you mentioned, and use it to tell the shipyard what ship they want a copy of. Or, it would simply add that ship design to the shipyard\'s catalog (which would basically be a plex-container full of blueprints connected to the shipyard, or perhaps the shipyard itself would have an inventory like a chest does for this purpose).

 

[KuramaFox]

For reference.



As you can see, blocks of different catagories are put in different tabs. This setup would work well with starmade, not the least because equipment and tools would be deligated to the diablo-type inventory anyway (thus it would not need any tabs in Starmade). There could be a hulls tab, a weapons tab, a systems tab, a natural blocks tab, an ores tab, a manufacturing components tab... you get the point. Blocks you have none of at the time could be grayed out or something if need be.

 

[Morhe]

Personally, I always have and probably always will feel that Starmade should be using an \"RPG\" inventory instead of a \"Minecraft\" inventory. Namely, where the inventory is a list of items with a scroll-bar with a limited total block count, instead of a grid with a limit on block type.

It becomes extremely difficult to contain all the different hull colors/wedges, modules, controllers, and decorations in a single inventory, even for a modestly sized ship that you simply want to add a lot of surface detail to. Meanwhile, if all you want to build is a giant borg cube with one color of square hull and basic modules, you never get close to the inventory limitations even if you\'re using hundreds of times as many total blocks. The way the inventory works now inconveniences detailed design.

 

[KuramaFox]

With the new \"buy with blocks\" option being tested out, the issue of complex ships is now real.



This means that we do have to start considering the fact that it may render some ships \"unbuyable\" with current limits to the number of different blocks you can hold.

 

[KuramaFox]

One would basically be Minecraft\'s creative mode with numbers. This would ONLY be for blocks you use to build with. Again, look at how Minecraft\'s creative mode splits things up in the image I posted. All the hull blocks, wedges, and corners could be in one tab. Assuming you copy MC\'s look entirely, that leaves you with 9 tabs to put the rest of the stuff.



The other (which is ONLY used for equipment like space suits, recipes, guns, and other character-related objects), would be the diablo-style one. Or alternatively, would assign each object that can be put in it a \"weight,\" with you having a maximum weight you can carry. This second variation would be similar to the RPG system you are talking about, and could potentially work too. I went with diablo-style since I recall schema specifically mentioning something to that effect at one point is all.

 

[Xylomain]

For the \"shipyard block\" mentioned above, that\'s a great idea. But I would like to keep the credit option. I see them like a car, if you can afford it you can buy it. But it shouldn\'t be instant. The \"shipyard\" could spawn a simple \"space dock\" type structure, and the ship will be \"built\" before your eyes. If you\'ve ever played a game called Sins of a Solar Empire, it works kinda like that. You build the \"factory\" that then \"reintegrate(opposite of disentigrate)\" the ship kind of like it was being downloaded in(I forget what specific race it was that built that way). That would add a time factor which makes the credit option a bit more reasonable.