The crafting system sucks

[aceface]

Seriously, the crafting system is really boring and tedious, and practically nobody uses it for one simple reason - you require so much for what you get.

I mean, you can so much easier buy stuff from a shop rather than spend 10 minutes to create a single power block. At least when you craft a power block have it give you 10 of them or something. I would change this if I knew how in the configs. Really survival is so boring, and I thought that this crafting system would make everything better! But it is just so hard to make anything that I would rather aimlessly roam around for shops rather than try to craft anything myself since it would be so much quicker.

Say I want to build a fighter. Would take me ages with the crafting system, let alone a fully fledged battleship.

Don't get me wrong. I love the way the crafting system works. It's just too hard!

Also if you are going to hit disagree then explain yourself.

EDIT: My friend BoB knows how to change the configs. He found the sweet spot to be that one ore/crystal yields 100 capsules. Now it doesn't take two hours to build a fighter - maybe 5-10 minutes.

Thus I propose that the vanilla amount of capsules from ore/crystal is 100.

 

[NeonSturm]

Just increase capsule count to 100...

Getting 6 metal grills out of 30 metal meshes out of 360 capsules out of 36 ores and supplying power for about 15 elements with your puny little power gun is awful in survival.

But I really appreciate a longer fabrication time and waste products.

Elementary logic could for example use waste products of computers, but not the other way around.


EDIT: Logic blocks should be a waste product of building computers - you need so many materials that there is nothing encouraging their use jet. Just a few per computer...

All computers should have an intermediate step (RAM, CPU, ...) which can be build from most things.
RAM may require 5 of A or 4 of B, while CPU may require 4 of A and 5 of B.



Using wrong materials can lead to a lower tech-level of your product. I have seen diminishing returns in many games:

• 500 credits = 10 dps + 13 mass
  
• 2000 credits = 15 dps + 18 mass

To compensate for space, mass, etc.



Hull blocks are not strictly required for everything but RP.
You can go Ork-style aka WH40K and make hull out of rocks or asteroids.

Thus they should be cheaper so you can get 5 from a single metal mesh, some Laminar-capsules and 10-20% waste-products from vital (especially thruster) production.



I especially like the cost of weapon barrels - blocks have so few hp and this should help balancing it.



For the crafting system overall I think it needs to be better fleshed out. How many, what, combo and thus
-> it requires time.
-> and it requires a fix of automatic recipe cost based on demand of blocks thus demand on resources.

 

[CyberTao]

So... what do you suggest? I haven't played Starmade in a while due to a broken mouse, so I don't know the crafting system. Sounds like that's something that may need a closer look, though I feel that factories were made with large production complexes in mind (Mid-late game, rather then early) if what you said is true.

But what do you suggest? The point of suggestions is to make a suggestion, exchanging opinions is something meant for General Discussion I think.

 

[Byamarro]

I like how it is now. And It's easy to salvage with salvages+AMC combo.

 

[NeonSturm]

I like how it is now. And It's easy to salvage with salvages+AMC combo.

Depends a lot if you think (RP is expensive) or not.

My 64 bit memory (4 bit in 16 slots) uses 9^3 space for logic blocks = about 600 of them.
And for it to be useful, you need it about 16 times = 9'600 logic blocks.

 

[AdmiralGialAckbar00]

Maybe instead of the word "sucks", you could say "vigorously inhales". It looks less offensive.

Sincerely,
AdmiralGialAckbar00
StarMade Dock Messenger
Alliance to Restore the Republic

 

[aceface]

Maybe instead of the word "sucks", you could say "vigorously inhales". It looks less offensive.

Sincerely,
AdmiralGialAckbar00
StarMade Dock Messenger
Alliance to Restore the Republic

i just used it to attract attention xD

 

[NeonSturm]

i just used it to attract attention xD

Aren't we feeding trolls then?
Even the

Is a common troll pic.

Maybe I should quit and forget this dupe-thread.

 

[DemonOrca95]

Don't get me wrong, the new crafting system is beyond better and makes more sense vs the last one. The problem I will agree with is that it take a year just to get even fifty hull pieces. What would be a better solution is to increase the amount of capsules you receive from refining ores, and make it so metal meshes only require one refined ore capsule to make. Like one ore could give you 50 or more capsules from refining it, then you could actually get the required materials needed to build a decent ship or a large station. The best way to get mass amounts of hulls or glass is to scrap space stations or large abandoned ships. The crafting system just isn't practical unless it's changed to where you can actually mass produce urgently needed ship parts.

 

[Trollerbobman]

Don't get me wrong, the new crafting system is beyond better and makes more sense vs the last one. The problem I will agree with is that it take a year just to get even fifty hull pieces. What would be a better solution is to increase the amount of capsules you receive from refining ores, and make it so metal meshes only require one refined ore capsule to make. Like one ore could give you 50 or more capsules from refining it, then you could actually get the required materials needed to build a decent ship or a large station. The best way to get mass amounts of hulls or glass is to scrap space stations or large abandoned ships. The crafting system just isn't practical unless it's changed to where you can actually mass produce urgently needed ship parts.

A year? It only took me three days on Elwyn to get over 100 blue hard hull via factories.
Just make a small but fast mining salvager and have tons of capsule refinery's on standby to receive the rapid income of ore, shards and rock.

 

[MossyStone48]

Anyone with a basic starter set of blocks has a reactor strong enough to power 1 or two factories. You can add more to power more factories.
I played the game with nothing but the weapons and a helmet. No blocks, No credits. Even with goofing off it only took two hours to build a shipcore and t-minus the heck out of dodge.

That was with having no idea WTF I was doing.

 

[jstenholt]

Does two hours seem like a reasonable amount of time to reach space in this space-simulator building game?

If Schine wants survival to be taken seriously they will have to put in an enormous amount of effort into it over the next couple of years.

I'm willing to take the complaints in this thread a step further and say that not only is the yield on basic crafting FAR too small, but that the actual crafting chart itself, while super-creative and awesomely complex, is WAY too large for it's own good. I could go on and on about reasons this new system needs to be overhauled, so I think that I will.

My largest complaint is this: the base elements are just absurd. Not only are their way too many of the basic crafting elements, but those basic elements build into an even larger pool of nearly purposeless items which add nothing of value to the game. To elaborate, while we can plainly see a huge flowchart telling us what builds what, none of the elements involved are memorable enough to develop any real understanding about how this chart actually works.

There are easily a dozen methods of organizing the crafting chart that are simpler and more intuitive than the current system. Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll try to explain one of the ideas I had floating around my head the other day while really trying to get into the new system.

There are three basic elements that are available on every planet. From here on out, I will use placeholder names.

Basic Elements: available on all planets.
Metal: the absolute basic building material, crafts into the current metal mesh.
Blue Stuff: the redstone of Starmade, provides power, crafts into current power block
Green Stuff: basis of all electronics, crafts into the circuit board

So now we have three extremely basic components, Metal Mesh, Power Blocks and Circuit Boards (should be noted that you do not need very many of the base elements at all to craft these in large quantities.

Metal Mesh: the framework with which all blocks are crafted, combine them with other Metal Meshes to produce different types of hull. (For example, 5 MM for one piece of grey hull, 3 MM for one grey wedge, 50 MM for one hardened grey hull, 30 MM for one hardened grey wedge.) Color of hull could be changed by placing grey pieces into a factory with some sort of paint "recipe" that can be used an unlimited amount of times. (Because who wants to scour the galaxy just to give your ship a racing stripe?) Note: all types of hull can be constructed simply using different numbers of Metal Mesh.

Note: the other two basic components are highly dependent on one another, all electronic components, from decorative computers to cloakers will be crafted using some combination of Power Block and Circuit Boards. For instance, crafting a basic computer (which can then be crafted into any other weapon,effect,system computer) would require one power block and one circuit board. To turn that basic computer into a Cannon Computer, you would combine the basic computer with 8 power blocks and 4 circuit boards. To turn it into a missile computer, you would need 10 power blocks and 2 circuit boards, you get the idea.

Power Block: place-able blocks, extremely fragile, functions identically to the current power block, but now they are used as a basic crafting ingredient.

Circuit Board: place-able blocks, extremely fragile, used as a basic crafting ingredient.


Obviously none of these numbers are rooted anywhere in reality, and I have just outlined the basics of what would, in my opinion, make a much more intuitive, fun crafting system.

If anybody thinks I'm onto something here, I'd be willing to expound on this further in a separate thread.

 

[NeonSturm]

@jstenholt What would you do with the 8 different types of shards and ore we have? just refine them to 3 types?

Wtih 2 or 3 tech levels, you could always craft tech level 1, tech level 2 would require the correct base materials and tech 3 would require the shiniest crystals, the most rarest ore, ... you get the point

 

[jstenholt]

Just get rid of them.
Or maybe use them for something non-critical, like the current crystals or maybe a toilet, or perhaps you need to collect them in order to get the recipe for paint.

 

[NeonSturm]

Would simplify it too much. -- but a simplified crafting system could be an option.

My opinnion

You should just get all essential parts (core, energy, thruster, hulls) out of everything.
You should not get everything out of everything and have it performing at the highest tech level.​

 

[FunnyBunny14]

36 shards/ore isn't a lot. I can get that in astronaut mode on a planet in about 5-10 minutes. With a proper salvage ship you can reduce that time to a couple of seconds.

That being said, with 10 power reactor modules I would be able to power about 14 factories (I think they use 100 e/s each). But you really only need 3 to start with.

Conclusion: I like the crafting system. But some things were too expensive, mainly hull and glass, so I changed the config so they each only required 72 capsules in total (1 metal mesh and 60 crystal capsules for glass or 60 rock capsules in total for hull), because glass was too hard to make and grey hull only used 60, while coloured hull used 120, so I thought that they all should only use 60.

The dynamic prices also should balance it a bit more.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

I don't think Ace is trolling here guys. The crafting system is a bit...lax...

Allow me to explain, I can understand that it is probably supposed to be boring, the crafting in MC is boring and I don't think that could be improved. So yes, there is a few good points to the system in this game.

But my gripe is that there is, so far, no point to it. Because the economy is so unbalanced, why bother waiting 30 minutes to create glass and blocks when you can just buildblock a station for hull and glass, or block a planet to get rich? What is the point?

Also, like Bunny above said, some blocks are stupid expensive for what they're worth or how often you'll use them. A few minor tweaks and a fixed economy and you'll have a solid system on your hands.

 

[Forge_Meiser]

Indeed, the current system is a bit ridiculous, but only as ridiculous as the amount of blocks in Starmade. think about it, Starmade (as far as I know) has ALOT of blocks. (example: the hull section). For all that, you need a simple crafting system, but it can be very hard if there are more blocks. More and more, games are streamlining their economy systems, and that leads me to conclude that this is what might be missing from Starmade's point of view. As for in-game prices, streamlining may or may not effect the situation. Also to note is the fact that less economy blocks means less memory and therefore more room for improved performance (something Starmade could always use.)

 

[jstenholt]

Would simplify it too much. -- but a simplified crafting system could be an option.

My opinnion

You should just get all essential parts (core, energy, thruster, hulls) out of everything.
You should not get everything out of everything and have it performing at the highest tech level.​

An alternate idea would be for the basic, always-attainable resources to craft most everything, while the super high tech-tree stuff (cloakers, jammers, effects) would require some of the random shards and things in addition to the basic crafting components.

 

[aceface]

@Trollerbobman soooo.... two days for one hundred hulls, i could get that in 10 minutes by selling rock and buying hull with the default salvager!

My friend BoB knows how to change the configs. He found the sweet spot to be that one ore/crystal yields 100 capsules. Now it doesn't take two hours to build a fighter - maybe 5-10 minutes.

Thus I propose that the vanilla amount of capsules from ore/crystal is 100.

But @ToyotaSupra , in minecraft you can still build a default wooden house from nothing in a relatively little amount of time. A little fighter which would be equivalent "early game stuff" would take waaaay longer with the current crafting system.[/QUOTE]