The Catalogue System is Absolutely Broken and is Exploitable

[z1967]

I am Naval Architect (which is fancy for I design and build ships), that is my trade in this game. The catalog system is great for alpha as it allows the ability to test warships. Be it a fighter or a \"Titan\" it should e put through some trials before it is used in the field. This system is great for the alpha, but what would be nicer if or he beta and evantual final release, would be a shipwright-similar system called a dry dock. IRL, dry docks are used for below the water line repairs or modifications. What I am suggesting is a system where you have the Dry dock computer, the dry dock builder (a non-directional version of the enhancer to increase build speed), power supply, and finally the frame. Frame blocks are cheap, the rest should be balanced accordingly. Here is what you do.

The way you build a dry dock is you build the dimensions of the drydock\'s space +2 in either direction. An example would be that I want a fighter building sized dry dock, so it 22x22x22 so I can make. A 20x20x20 sized fighter. This could be expanded or contracted(?) to fit your needs. Bigger dry dock, bigger ship building capacity. But, to prevent insta build ships, the bigger the frame, the longer it takes without adding dry dock builders. And of course, a power supply of a bigger size is nessecary for bigger frames.

dry docks take, not blueprints, but schematics (which sounds infinitely cooler to me) which cost as much as the admin wants. The dry dock computer takes 1 min ( to load the .sment) and then gives you a material list of sorts. It tells you what you need to add to it and it will build as you add more materials. Again, this takes time. Once your ship is done being built, the dry dock will stop and \"shutdown\" which allows you to acess the ship. Once the process has begun, it cannot be stopped. Unless the dry dock comp is destroyed or the frame is severed at some point. Ship does not obey any law of physics until it is done or the comp is destroyed (frame damage just halts production. Once the ship is done and he computer is shut down, the ship remains docked as if it was docked normally.

well that was long, it\'s 0500 right now and my insomnia is probably gonna end up killing me. Will organize idea and provide model in morn

 

[Zovc]

hey! listen to my suggestion. Ok you make a blueprint for say, a small fighter. It costs 1mil. Now first thing is you have to buy a recipe. Which will cost you half. So 500k for the fighter currently. Now every shop should have a couple of ship yards on them, public. What you do is you put the recipe in the ship yard, wether its on the shop or your station you put it in there with all your blueprints. Now you pay the full price for your ship and it will begin constructing its self about 10m away from you if theres no ships or anything to stop it. There would be a 15 second cooldown after constuction is complete. Basically this SHOULD reduce lag because invisable robots are building the ship block by block really fast from the front back, therefore its not a full out spawn and huge lag. Bigger ships will cost alot more and be slow respawning but the sector you are in when you spawn a ship that has a mass of 10000.0 or more the sector will be auto protected to avoid people coming and destroying or damaging your ship while its being made. Plus you can buy new construction crews to place on your station (shops would have basic and cant be changed) that build faster, or have a Manager where you can lower the price so instead of full 1mil on that ship you might buy it for 600k at the lowest. But then you have to pay the construction crew and manager some credits for their work.

 

[Twinchicky]

Agreed...

Even not being able to spawn in multiple turrets within 15 seconds of each other is EXTREMELY annoying...

 

[Twinchicky]

See, I am always very frustrated when trying to build in \"legitimate\" vanilla multiplayer, because it takes the exploring of literally hundreds of sectors to find shops with all the materials I need. I am forced to fly about, harvesting every station I can find for its glass and power cells. Which brings me to another point - Glass sells for a fortune, it really shouldn\'t. The amount of glass contained in stations is pretty exploitable if harvested.

 

[E3ve3lution]

Personally, I have used this before. When rebuilding my ship with hardened hull took a very - very long time, so I just spawned the mats needed. This made my overall game experience more fun. I didn\'t have to worry about slaving away for hours, finding three wedges at a time each store. Truthfully, it is not a magic spawn solution, not the slightest. If you spawn a 900+ block spawn ship, that is ludicrous as you have to mine out the mats, so instead you make several 20 block ships. Takes longer with the 15 sec cool down, but saves time overall. Honestly, in the game currently, money is no object. It is really easy to obtain via normal ways, mining, etc.etc. why complaine about spawning cubes of glass (which the buy price is more than your sell) or strip mining something as simple as cacti. I mean seriously, a cactus sells for 1k+ and there are billions of them. back on topic, eh? Well...it is nothing to worry about.

EDIT: I got so caught up in the ludicrous cactus industry I forgot what I was going to say XD. To double the price is unnecessary, face it, a small fighter might cost hundreds of thousands when honestly, they are cannon fodder. A way to curb the \'exploit\' but not escalate to a insane price for all ships is to add a very small price multiplier to it depening on the mass of the ship. So rather than a straight up x2 to all, the multiplier is smaller ( and server adjustable) on smaller ships.

Or you can be as simple as a building fee of 10-100+ credits per block used ( again up to the admins) added to the total price. What Evs, I dunno.

 

[Morrigi]

+1 to this.

 

[???]

wait you want to make ships more expensive BUT also make it harder to get money?



are you crazy if i have a faction of 20 people that want to do pvp they are going to be pissed (sorry but it is the best word to describe it) when i tell them they need to mine and be factory workers so that we can get the ships

 

[CorvusCorax]

Its also a question of realism versus fun.

having to work as miner or pirate for half a year or a year to be able to build a Titan (then loose it in 5 minutes in a massive battle - or worse in a server glitch) might be realistic, but it would make a titan forever out of reach for all but the most hardcore players. Much of the appeal of the game is that you can start designing the most grandiose of ships you can imagine.

Of course once one designer spent the effort of creating a 1:1 replica of the death-star, a lot of noobs are gonna try it out too. Making it hard for them to acquire it will also make it hard for the original designer though.

If we had massive multiplayer counts on a server (like Eve) we could make it all player based. We could have player run shops, player run trading between shops, player operated factories that supply the shops, and even player operated shipyards (and if necessary even players that build your ship according to blueprint block by block!!!)

on a server with

 

[Kilsonx]

One problem with the Catalog is that there is no limit to what you can have in your blue print. If all ores disabled from being produced by the catalog. That would help in keeping it from being abused so much.



Once they fix the roll around bug with money, it should cost 4 to 5 times the base block price. This could be lowered if the player has the blocks in inventory.

but I support the shipyard idea as the best soultion.

 

[Morrigi]

I was talking to a couple of people on the chat last night, and I had an idea which I have since refined. The core of it is simple.

Templates.

Constructions not necessarily required to be a ship, but would allow someone to create the contents of the template so long as they have the necessary blocks in their inventory. This would circumvent much of the issue with large numbers of block types on capital ships; you could just piece it together bit by bit without having to do it block by block so long as you have said blocks.

This could even be integrated into the shipyard idea with some slight modifications. Perhaps templates (independant of ships themselves) could be created in a shipyard or something similar. This would allow you to create, say, a fully functioning power plant and just stick it in your new ship or modify an existing ship with an inferior system with minimal issue.

Or maybe you need a hull or hull section, minus the internal components. That could be easily done as well. These new parts could be linked to a ship core and then dragged and dropped into position. In order for such components to function with the current system, a block similar to a build block (let\'s call it a construction block) would have to be attached to any template but could be removed once it is in place.

And if this is integrated into the shipyard mechanic then it would of course take time for these components to be built.



I believe that this system would allow increased modularity, improve the ability of players to share their designs, and allow others to customize third party designs to their own needs without having to systematically rip out and replace undesired ship systems block by block.

An example. Say you think the oh so famous Nexus looks great but too much of its interior is dedicated to pretty, but functionally useless space. What can you do?

With current mechanics, you would have to get in there and pull out every single block that\'s in your way, dodging around power systems and engines.

With templates, you could piece together the very hull itself. You could quickly and easily lengthen it to accomodate more systems. You could make a single power core and order twenty from the shipyard to be quickly installed wherever you like. Even turrets could (and might even be required) to work this way, given some rearrangement of the code.

 

[highwaystar]

Nobody actually builds ships in servers anyway. WE all make them in creative sandbox mode and move them to a server afterwards. If you\'re trying to build a ship on a server then you\'re doing it wrong.