The Catalogue System is Absolutely Broken and is Exploitable

[polkunus]

Players can simply make a "thing" out of the blocks they want to buy, make it into a catalogue system, and buy the blueprint over and over again, harvesting the materials from the thing they spawned making a "psuedo-dupe" system for themselves.

One challenge in starmade is to find the materials. What's the point of expanding and having an economy and supply and demand when you can endlessly spawn materials by purchasing them without the seller having an inventory.

 

[swifthands]

I didnt test it yet, but i think the cost of the ship in the catalogue matches the cost of the materials if you would purchase them from the shop directly, basically saving you the process of only building the ship.

the thing is, and i agree on this part, that you will be able to build the ship based on the materials cost regardless of their availability in that said shop.



it could be interesting having the blueprint actually buy the materials from the shop instead, and have them in your inventory, and then going to another shop, when purchasing the blueprint again, it will purchase the delta of the materials missing compared to what you have in your inventory,

and only when all the materials exist in your inventory, it will actually construct the ship when \"purchasing\" the blueprint.

but i believe its going to complicate the code quite a bit, another point of failiur i can already see, is ships having more material variaty than you can hold in one inventory, preventing you from ever being able to construct it etc



you raised a good point imo, but it needs a more in depth look on how to properly mitigate it.

 

[shadowman615]

While I agree that the catalogue system is extremely exploitable at the moment, I really like the feature and hope that it can simply be balanced better. I also believe much of the imbalance in the game right now stems from the ease of making money. Assuming methods of making credits are balanced appropriately, so players are not instantly rolling in cash, steps could be taken to balance the catalogue feature.



What do you think about the following method? First, make the purchasing of a ship from the catalogue much more expensive than buying or making the blocks individually. However, purchasing from the catalogue uses up as many needed blocks as possible from your inventory, lowing the total purchase cost accordingly. Assuming players are not rolling in dough, this would incentivize purchasing from shops or building factories to produce materials more cost efficiently.

 

[Tomino_sama]

Vote up for Doubling Cost of buying a Blueprint.



too easy to go on Private server, Give Cash, make a hull Cube ship, a shield Cube Ship, then import to public server and buy then salvage. Makes the factory pointless.



Double the Cost and then when Loot is Nerfed it will be harder to earn the money to exploit this way. Maybe add a variable to the server.cfg to allow admins to adjust the cost even higher if they wish.



Will reduce Lag with less noobs spawning in Downloaded Epic Sculpture Ships :D

 

[swifthands]

I like the idea of increasing cost,

we can look at it as the added cost of:

1. material purchasing.

2. construction service.

so a big ship will also have a higher construction cost, and having the actual materials will lower the need to \"purchase\" them and adding to the total cost...

it will also prevent people from spawning these massive kill everything ships they downloaded 5 minutes ago from the website without playing the game for more than 10 minutes.

but as you said, for this idea to work, money will need to be balanced heavily, its too exploitable at the moment, but considering its still in alpha, it is also expected, i am sure they have good things in store for us

 

[Planr]

Players can simply make a \"thing\" out of the blocks they want to buy, make it into a catalogue system, and buy the blueprint over and over again, harvesting the materials from the thing they spawned making a \"psuedo-dupe\" system for themselves.

One challenge in starmade is to find the materials. What\'s the point of expanding and having an economy and supply and demand when you can endlessly spawn materials by purchasing them without the seller having an inventory.


There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever. Having resource blueprints is a great idea for people who have alot of money and not alot of resources. It\'s a win-win.

The claim that one can \"endlessly spawn materials\" is bogus because they cannot endlessly spawn them (sellback exploits excluded). They will run out of money.

Please also remember that entropy is not an issue here. The value of blueprints is based on the cost of the items comprising the blueprint. It\'s perfectly fair and no \'extra\' blocks are being gained through this method.

Any such claim that players are destroying the economy by doing this is not true. Furthermore, the economy system on a server is relative to how credits are acquired in the first place. The g1real server disables pirate loot and high-value ruin/pirate station drops so that the economy is more stable and factory usage is emphasized. Players there have to actually earn their credits through hard salvaging work, not looting a pirate station for hundreds of l5 minerals. If they want to blow their hard-earned cash on resource blueprints, that is their right. Credits are harder to come by and therefore it is more difficult to buy alot of resource drop blueprints at one time.

It seems to me that you don\'t dislike players fairly buying supply blueprints from shops as much as you have a problem with people buying blueprints in the first place. Please remember that using blueprints as supplies is one advantage of the catalog system. It is not broken, nor is it being exploited here in any way. I can buy blueprints of my own ship and salvage the materials for myself as useable blocks for building. Ships themselves are alone a flying supply source.

 

[Soulsoda]

Factories are not pointless just not as useful for getting the part you desire always. Its better for making money than building. Which isn\'t a terrible thing.



There\'s no need to get up in arms and tear people down for using this feature. Loot isn\'t OP, it can be nerfed by the Server Admin if they wish.

As far as forcing blueprints to run off shop inventory or blueprint fees, that should be a server choice ( if it even got implented).

People can\'t get infinite resources... they still have to work for money.

 

[Kanuben]

Why dont they just put a limit on how many ships you can spawn in an hour or day?

 

[Charlie_]

If it were to use shop ressources, I don\'t think any shop could ever spawn the bigger creations (some shops have 3 wedges sometimes. Yes, only 3.)

So then... there\'d be no more point in saving those super-impressive builds you spend hours/days on. And I think those are definately the ones you want to save and showcase in other servers the most :I

 

[KuramaFox]

I presume that the potential for exploiting the system will be considered and dealt with as the game developes.

 

[Uristqwerty]

What happens if you use the catalogue to spawn in a ship made of ore, harvest it, feed it into a factory, then sell the results?

Easy profit, since you are no longer limited by the store\'s ore stock...

 

[Tephan]

i like the shop inventory idea, add the ability to make wedges with a factory to the game and it can work just fine. any materials the shop doesnt have it will be your job to go find and sell to it, that combined with the construction fee and it seems like a great solution. or

maybe expand the facotries to include shipyards wich could work like this

1. you have to make the shipyard frame wider, taller and longer than the ship you want to make in it

2. you press R on the shipyard and you are promted to select a blueprint from the list

3. it will tell you how much stuff you need and wait for input

3. once it has everything it will take time to put it together, no money cause you already bought/made all the blocks

since they way this works takes time on top of needing all the blocks for it, this will also solve the \"stupid noob spamming galacticas at spawn\" problem

i am taking most of this idea from another topic i saw about bluprints, but i still think the shipyard idea is the best solution so far (on top of being awesome)

 

[Comr4de]

Absolutely nothing, since you\'d be paying for the amount of ore in the first place.

 

[Visitor]

In all honesty, I am against the price of having to manually buy blocks for blueprints or doubling the blueprint price. Sure, some token, additional fee could - and possibly should be added to the costs - it could be thought of as convenience tax but I agree - the main, if not only problem lies in how easy one can acquire money.

Balance this one thing and there will be no real exploitation of the system. Arguably, the system isn\'t even explotable now - you have to pay for what you get and what you get can be found commonly anyway.

Don\'t try to fix what isn\'t broken.

 

[polkunus]

See the thing is even increasing the cost of blueprints doesn\'t balance the system.

There are a limited amount of items in shops, in order for a person to find a specific item he must venture out to distant space, thus incentivizing space expansion. If players can just sit in one area and not move there\'s no reason to continue to expand outwards to further space. This is a massive issue in multiplayer, people are clumped up into 20 sectors.



Without the need to find more resources you\'re destroying the expanding game mechanic. The natural expansion of factions into their own space is crucial to galactic warfare in later game. The fight for sectors and space adds rivalry, and rivalry adds flavour. Its not like the resources will ever run out; promote space expansion for grander gameplay



I understand that right now, its terribly difficult to naturally find the materials you need, but it shouldn\'t be as easy as the catalogue system. Big ships should hold more value, megaldons and collosal ships should be an endgame thing, something someone has spent a good amount of their time on. Without a \"grinding\"/gratification system there\'s no socioeconomic gap and without a socioeconomic gap there\'s less diverse and fulfilling gameplay.



Bonus: It would also be great to see unique \"rare\" shops that specifically stock a certain item heavily(like 10 million of an item) so factions can fight over valuable stores sectors and attempt to control them.

 

[polkunus]

You\'re simply not understanding the layer of complexity a supply & demand system can add to the game that would make the game much more interesting. The blue print system completely debases that.



ie a faction that has a mandatory requirement to have all ships painted red will require more red hull than other factions, thus increasing the demand of red hulls in areas of said faction\'s controlled sectors.

There are probably more interesting and better examples than this, but I hope I got my point across.

Credits shouldn\'t be the only deducting factor in obtaining goods, it should also be the need of finding said items. It promotes healthier and dynamic gameplay

 

[Planr]

You\'re simply not understanding the layer of complexity a supply & demand system can add to the game that would make the game much more interesting. The blue print system completely debases that.


I understand the complexity of the system perfectly. If you\'re going to call me out as misunderstanding, keep in mind that this supply and demand system you are speaking of is a player-upheld idea, assuming of course you are referring to player-to-player resource trading (it would help if you were to clarify on that). It does not actually exist in the game currently because players do not trust each other enough to trade as one does with goods in real life. Granted, I have seen some players \"trading\" items with each other on rare occasions as one would in a real \"supply and demand\" system but other than that, the idea you are speaking of currently does not exist in StarMade.


ie a faction that has a mandatory requirement to have all ships painted red will require more red hull than other factions, thus increasing the demand of red hulls in areas of said faction\'s controlled sectors.


Then they can go and buy more red hulls as supply blueprints at a shop. 1 minute of traveling and 5 seconds of safe buying.

Or, they can toil for several hours to get the resources needed to feed through a factory, and then wait another hour for the machines to properly process all of the needed materials.

Or they could wait ~10 minutes for a \"merchant\" player to come to their sector claming to have the items they need, only to get annihilated by said \"merchant\" who is really in a large battleship. The supply and demand system you are talking about does not work in StarMade because there is nothing preventing one side of the trade from being \"voided\" and one player destroying the other for fun/more materials. This is not TF2, where you trade strange items for hats, etc. Players can literally destroy each other\'s vessels. Supply and demand in trading does not work.

Keep in mind what I said in my previous post:


the economy system on a server is relative to how credits are acquired in the first place. The g1real server disables pirate loot and high-value ruin/pirate station drops so that the economy is more stable and factory usage is emphasized. Players there have to actually earn their credits through hard salvaging work, not looting a pirate station for hundreds of l5 minerals. If they want to blow their hard-earned cash on resource blueprints, that is their right. Credits are harder to come by and therefore it is more difficult to buy alot of resource drop blueprints at one time.



Credits shouldn\'t be the only deducting factor in obtaining goods, it should also be the need of finding said items. It promotes healthier and dynamic gameplay


The problem with this statement is that Credits are not the only factor in obtaining goods. You can harvest the materials to feed through machines if you want, but buying blueprints of the ships from shops is fair and square and takes much less time. This \"healthier and dynamic gameplay\" that you speak of- I have yet to see any sign of this as being an issue in my two months of playing this game.

What you essentially are complaining about is players using blueprints entirely. This is a feature that is at the heart of StarMade and it is not going away. It prevents people\'s ships from being griefed to oblivion (they can buy it back from shops!) and it allows players who need resources that shops and harvesting cannot easily provide to buy the supplies they need in an instant. The system may change in some ways, but it will always be here.

I believe that all server hosts have the right to decide how they want the economy to work on their server. That said, it is not your decision what system works best for the game, so please do not try to assert your opinions that the catalog is \"Absolutely Broken and is Exploitable\" as fact; That is ultimately up to the server hosts to decide on.

The way players play on a server is that they either join a faction or play on their own. They harvest their own resources and gather their own supplies, and accumuolate their own cash. Or in the faction they share it. They don\'t really care about any \"economy\" nonsense, they care about playing the game.

 

[Tephan]

yes, this is why i like the shipyard idea because it makes you work for that titan and you have to explore to find the resources for it.

its like the diference with creative and survival in minecraft, you could just sit there and spawn in everything you need, but thats no fun.

the catalog is a great feature, but as it is it just doesnt fit well. we create these ships in single player and just spawn them in in multiplayer to show them off and then the game is practically over (and it doesnt help that combat is almost impossible becuase of lag in multiplayer, but thats a diferent topic)

edit: maybe add a gamemode option so if people just want to show off their creations they still can

 

[Greiger]

Way I understand it shops are going to eventually be charging more and buying higher for stuff they are low stock in.

Although I love the cataloge system the whole buying resource block thing seems a little off if that will be the case, especially if shops are going to be paying more for stuff they are out of. Oh look, a shop that\'s out of salvage beams, time to spawn my 1000 salvage beams \'ship\' and sell them to the shop for twice what it cost to build!

So why not just have the ship price reflect the price as if that shop was selling the blocks?

If the shop is completely out of grey hull for example and willing to buy it at 2X normal price because of that, why not just have the shop charge double for every grey block the ship contains? Then you aren\'t able to buy a cube of salvage cannons at a shop out of salvage cannons for massive profit. But you can still quickly build a ship with salvage cannons from any shop, long as you have the cash.

Could also throw in a variable percentage builders fee sent to the person who origonally designed the ship as long as the ship was origonally built on the server. But that\'s another suggestion entirely.

 

[Visitor]

If players can just sit in one area and not move there\'s no reason to continue to expand outwards to further space. This is a massive issue in multiplayer, people are clumped up into 20 sectors.


And it\'s actually fine, if there\'s just a few players per sector. They sit in those sectors because their biggest reason for joining the server in the first place is social factor and interaction with others. It may be a matter of how the game\'s world is seen, too. I personally prefer a world where space travel is common, people buy spaceships like they\'d buy cars IRL and consumerism is quite rampant (though I\'d still argue for balance of ship sizes/classes and prices), this idea would rather benefit one where everyone but the most daring, rich or powerful fly thrusters-engine assemblies cobbled together and held with saliva and good hopes.


Without a \"grinding\"/gratification system there\'s no socioeconomic gap and without a socioeconomic gap there\'s less diverse and fulfilling gameplay.


You make it sound like you infer that thus grinding is necessary for diverse and fulfilling gameplay. I wholeheartedly disagree. Socioeconomic gap lies mostly in the ease of acquireent of resources. By balancing prices and rarity of them we balance price of final blueprints as well as ease of acquiring cash necessary to buy them. I am not fond of the ease people construct leviathans on some servers, but the challenge should be there - during the construction of their ship. Don\'t punish the players after they do so and are ready to spawn another ship - if they have enough cash it means they have already earned it.

Buying ship function is much required convenience and I am willing to bet a few bucks that if some of the suggestions like gathering resources, having to buy shipyard lattices etc would get in, you\'d get dozen of threads of angry critique.

Rare shops selling more valuable items and barely ever restocking would be nice, possibly.