The Catalogue System is Absolutely Broken and is Exploitable

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    if you want to attempt to balance this game try this: i COMPLETELY disabled all blueprints and catalog use. I reduced the LvL 5 minerals SIGNIFICANTLY to 10,000 while lowering pirate loot ratio from .9 to .1.

    also i made build block to be an unplaceable block, because people can 10x10x10 mine planets and stations away super fast. i reduced the price of faction modules from 100,000 to 1,000
     
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    • Legacy Citizen 2
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    Lets have 2 main options

    a) Instant spawn of blueprinted ship (as it is now) BUT the blocks gets taken from player\'s inv hence only saving construction time cost. Still need creds for this service on top of your own resoruces for saving this \'time cost\"

    b) \'Construction and Shipping time\' added to the catalogue orders, For this option no items is taken from the shop or the player, but its not an insta spawn. Lets say, for ship size of 100 blocks takes 100 seconds to spawn, or whatever is balanced. Cuz its just stupid spawning instant capital ships.... And production of material, constructing the ship and actually bringing it to the shop requires time, so it falls in with the theme too.

    Also, there should be a limit to the number of blocks of the entity being ordered, so turrets and AI fighter ships can be ordered but a full mothership cant even be order.

    I think with a combination of these options, a general agreement can be reached amongst the community, cuz yea... blueprint is an amazing idea, but it lets you spawn insta ships and not hunt for materials is JUST like creative mode or worldedit in minecraft.

    Anyone who likes to play \'creative mode\' can go make their own (locla or dedicated)server and spawn as many blocks and ships as they want, but to have a balanced economy on a proper multiplayer server, the above 3 options should be taken into account.



    Hope someone actually reads it and criticize on my ideas apart from giving the \"AWW MAN! i likez spawning hazzing hooog shipps to pew pew other newbs on server so pplz think I haz 1337 skillz\" statement.
     
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    I like the ideas people were throwing around about shipyards.

    How about a shipyard block? I\'m thinking give it it\'s own storage, blueprint selection and \"docking area\" into which the ship would be built, using up blocks from the storage at a fixed rate. You could have upgrade blocks that\'ll allow the shipyard to produce the ship faster as well as blocks that allow it to produce larger ships. If the variety of blocks required for the ship is bigger than the storage you can come back later once it\'s emptied out some types of block and add those.
     
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    Lets start by dropping the ore prices to 1/100th of what they are now. See after that if blueprints are still something to worry about :p That said, i already dropped L5 ores down to 100k for test. Current price scaling goes:

    L1: 10
    L2: 100
    L3: 1000
    L4: 10000
    L5: 1000000 - see, there\'s 1 too many zero... but they still scale too fast imo.
     
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    See after that if blueprints are still something to worry about :P.


    They will be as long as you can spawn in a blueprint, disassemble it, and then resell the components for 3x what it cost you. I do agree that cutting costs across the board will be useful, but it won\'t solve the \"blueprints can be abused for profit\" issue, and in fact since everything will be cheaper it will mainly only help with the issue of megaships and players hitting the max credit cap so quickly.

    Edit: Successfully blanked the title.
     
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    As far as i understood, blueprint buying price is same as if you\'d buy separate blocks from shop for same price. You wouldn\'t make any profit with that.

    edit: Tested, seems that you can make profit with current version :( But do know that there is a cap on how much each shop will take in certain item. That cap was 9999 if i remember.

    Ship core + 100 white hard hulls. Blueprint price 151400.

    Shop buy and sell price for 100 white hard hulls 384900.
     
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    Shops have different prices for items. So the blueprint is buying from the base cost, while the shop is selling/buying for the raised price.



    If you go to three shops, each will have different prices for the same items.
     
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    Instead of paying for the cost of all materials maybe paying a single price for every blueprint? BUT, instead of the ship popping into existence it adds a \"blueprint\" item to your inventory with a bar somewhere on the icon that shows the progress of the blueprint.

    A second variation of this idea could be expressed by placing a \"shipyard\" block which has a slot for the blueprint, then you can feed blocks from factories or by inserting blocks into the \"shipyard\" inventory. I believe this eliminates the ability to exploit the catalog system while keeping everyone happy. :D
     
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    Correct. The highest I\'ve seen is 3.15x base value, and the highest I\'ve seen normally occuring for something that the store sells is 3.14x base value, but 3x is common when they have a shortage, and 2x when they don\'t.

    You can easily make all the credits you want by duplicating L5 (or lower, which would take more effort) minerals with blueprints, once you have a few to start with (which you can get from mining, or pirates).

    There\'s also the bug which causes purchase prices to wrap around and become negative if the (base item value * cost multiplier * item amount to buy) is high enough to exceed 2^31-1, which can take you from 25k credits to 2+ billion instantly if you find a shop with the right conditions to enable that bug to be exploited (or maneuver one into having the right conditions).
     
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    no no no no no no no

    doubling would be the fking worst thing ever, so say i built a huge mothership with maybe a mass of 13k and the cost of the ship was 500mil, why am i going to pay 1bil of my money to buy my mothership if i failed a mothership battle?! and the supply thing is just no, say im a noob to a server and my only core got destroyed and theres no shop in the navigator, the fact you can buy ships in the middile of nowhere is nice but i hate that suggestion

    sorry if im rude its just how i think of it, but to compensate your idea, there should be a sensor that if your ship consists of the core and a bunch of 1 blocks the blue print shouldnt be able to be bought, so a ship with 1k plex doors would be removed after first person buys it, but then again if people put 1k plex doors and 1 thruster then it bypasses the sensor...
     
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    How about making blueprints meta items like the recipes?

    The recipe blueprint would list every blocks needed to build the ship, and you\'d need to have all the materials to make it spawn. Would only work next to a shop (for now, I guess with the idea of shipyards that would be possible there too then).

    If you go for the credits way, then it should cost creds equal to how much it costs at this particular shop )or the closest to the shipyard)

    If this was posted before, sorry :( , it\'s late and I randomly jumped in this thread XD
     
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    I noticed that the amount of the item doesn\'t make a difference at all, each shop has a multiplier applied to it for ALL items. So there are \"Cheap\" and \"Expensive\" shops.
     
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    Because that\'s the only right way to make ships as a valuable commodity.

    It will require two additional blocks that works just like the docking modules. You place Shipyard Terminal that works as an index for construction zone, and connect Shipyard Expanders to it, in order to build bigger ship and do it one block faster. Exapnders would work just like Dock Enchancers - you place first one to initiate the cluster and add up to it to expand the zone in particular dimensions, though you can also stack them without expanding cluster dimensions, simply to increase the rate at which ship is reproduced.

    Then, you coming to the shop and instead of buying the ship itself, you\'re purchacing a Ship Blueprint meta-item for a portion of ship\'s total base value. By itself that item only contains basic data on name, mass, size, stats and amount of slave-objects docked to the ship. You need to access the Shipyard terminal directly, which opens the shipyard dialog window. There, you place the Blueprint in, which triggers data loading, and would recieve a list of all required blocks to build the ship, starting from most numerous to least required, and there you can also specify the custom name for the ship. Each point of that list also has the typical inventory slot, which you need to drop materials into. When all required materials are provided, ship construction can be initiated after a confirmation promt (with time requirement specified) accepted. Shipyard will then start to gradually add blocks starting from the Core. Process can be paused and continued, and will pause itself automatically if sector it is located in has been unloaded or if any number of deposited blocks is changed either way. Ship can be undocked from it prior to process completion, but in that case any consideration for the blocks missing and process stage are lost indefinitely.

    Such system would not only allow for more sustained material-based ship construction, but would also allow to use both ships and ship blueprints as feasible commodity. Prior to that, logically, several other has to be added first. Crafting system concept must be finalized, and entire economy must be based from crafting, rather than endless shop sweeping trough the entire star systems. Server owners has to start actually do something, like changing goddamn item blueprint purchace value at least down to 3k, so that factories start working practically. Credit earning methods has to change desperately and secure trading dialog has to be implemented, etc. All of that follows the way to the actual non-sandbox gameplay. Until we being kept in sandbox mode, nothing of afomentioned makes sense.

    For starters, server admins has to get a possibility to limit all stats for blueprints usage - frequency of ordering, maximum mass, maximum price. Simply to avoid people ruining server performance with their unlimited urge to be \"the coolest\". Even if just mass limit is set, player can abuse block-package purchaces, but they still would have to build ships manually above the given limit.
     
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    I would see it best to change the blueprint/catalog system into requiring a dedicated Shipyard/Wharf to construct ships straight from a blueprint. These can be (or possibly must be) player-constructed. The idea is the added cost of the shipyard or wharf would be an added balancing or risk factor involved in loading blueprints.

    I\'d also be open to the idea for blueprints to have the required items.
     
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    Make the player have all of the blocks in their inventory to build the ship :|
     
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    ... would make blueprint entirely useless, because there\'s no way to tell what blocks you need or missing.
     
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    Add a foundry block that requires the parts, and when you buy blueprints, you actually get *gasp* a blueprint, which you put into the foundry block, which then works like a factory constructing your ship. Yes, you can\'t absuse the catalog to get infinite resources (then what\'s the point of shops? Really? Just skip the bull and say you want infinte items all time - you all know that\'s what repeatedly buying from the catalog amounts to). Yes, you can\'t instantly spawn in your super-titan-dreadnough-5000 the instant you have the money for it... but why don\'t you save up x million dollars, go a local shipwright, and demand a brand new Washington-class Carrier and see how long it takes to get one. I\'m betting it\'d be more than a day, and certianly longer than, \"Sure, we have spare parked right over!\"
     
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    I believe that the ability to \"dupe\" is actually game freindly, but not because of how it is used. I think the idea of duping is clever, because being able to buy resources en-mass for bulk prices would be a logical part of the economy. Now, that being said, the current system is still exploitable, but this is not the fault of the shop economy; the reason duping is prevalent is due to how easy it is to reach max credits. The real problem lies in the salvaging system- particualrly the salvage of pirate stations. The loot from such stations should cap out at around 12 million credits. This is a decent amount, as it is really only enough to buy maybe a medium sized ship, instead of making some 750 MILLION-odd credits whih could buy you a few fleets of destroyers. If loot from stations were tweaked duping would siply become the \"Cost-co\" method of buying resources for those plyers who had worked hard to make credits.
     
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    If I see one more \"in real life the *insert organization/military/whatever here* wouldn\'t go to local shops to buy everything they need to make *insert product here*. You\'re right, they wouldn\'t. They\'d go to a supplier of *material x*, and the supplier would be like, oh shit, we don\'t have 10000000 reinforced grey hull for your *product x*. The supplier then has two options: buy the missing product from another supplier (they probably aren\'t inclined to do that) OR they\'d go to whoever procures the resources to make their grey hull and tell them how much more they need to make the amount of grey hull. Starmade at current has no resource procurer. The supplier goes, oh shit, we don\'t have your 10000000 reinforced grey hull, let me pull it out of our collective store ass. Whether or not the player pays for it doesn\'t matter. You shouldn\'t be able to easily replace your gargantuan capital ship. Using the catalogue to spawn in a 10x10x10 block of resources is an extremely cheap use of the catalogue system. You don\'t want to have to spend time to get what you need to build your super awesome capital ship? Sucks for you, buy the materials from someone or a shop or don\'t build it. You don\'t want to have to rebuild you capital ship? Use it wisely.
     
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    I\'m sure some of these ideas have been mentioned but I don\'t have time to read through the whole thread so here\'s my few cents.



    I do like the idea of the blueprints. In Minecraft I see it as a game for constructing and showing off your awesome builds. Since I see \"display\" as the main draw I\'m all for the grief protection on most servers.

    Starmade on the other hand the goal appears to be to build fleets and combat other factions. In essence your \"build\" will be griefed. The blueprint system will be a great way to help a player to get quickly back in to the game. Of couse server admins could place restrictions on blueprint use. I completely agree that the game is currently unbalanced and it\'s way too easy to earn cash. Since the game is still in Alpha stage I have no qualms currently. The excess of money easily allows players to get in to the game and find bugs which need to be ironed out. Right now I see this being more important then balancing the in game economy.

    Ideas for the future:

    - Atomated ship yards. Build your shipyard frame and have an automated drone buld your ship from a blueprint.

    - Some sort of token system for purchasing \"instant\" ships. Players earn tokens based on their active playtime in the server (sitting afk does not count). Ships are given a token value based on their cost which players will be required to spend in addition to the credits. This should prevent new players from instantly purchasing massive ships, even if another player gives them the money to do so.



    Edit: To prevent unfair spawning of materials in bulk maybe server admins could be given the ability to approve uploaded blueprints before they go live to the catalogue. As I said previous, this is economy balancing. Right now there should be more important things to worry about.