- Joined
- Oct 13, 2013
- Messages
- 109
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- 81
I am of the opinion that one of the low-hanging fruits in StarMade's future development, the ability to add stations to a catalogue and buy them for money/blocks like ships, is absolutely required for the game to take the shape that virtually everybody wants it to, and will solve one of the bigger frustrations of the game.
Here's the current situation:
Every faction has exactly one station, their faction home. Some factions put a ton of work into their faction home stations, building giant, beautiful stations that are really a sight to see. Most factions do not, and their faction homes are either big cubes of grey hull in which to hide their ships, or they're simply planets/NPC stations captured with a faction block.
The reason that everyone only ever has one station is fourfold:
1. You need a station to craft,
2. You need a station to keep your ships safe when you sign out,
3. Stations take a lot of time and work to build, and
4. Non-faction home stations can easily be destroyed while the factions players are offline.
Thus, you need a station, but you don't need more than one. Because of the massive time investment that goes into a station, nobody is willing to risk their destruction at the hands of pirates or hostile players.
Spaceships are notably different. Every time a ship leaves its faction base, it's being risked--but people do it all the time, even if the ship is too expensive to be replaced by that faction. Why? Because replacing it is simply a question of acquiring the materials/money, and not of completely rebuilding it by hand. And that's great. We want people to risk ships, because if they didn't, there'd be no game. The fact that losing your ship doesn't mean you need to spend weeks redecorating a new one is what makes space battles fun and viable.
But none of that applies to stations. If we could simply buy stations from a catalogue, here is the result I predict:
1. Most factions and some go-it-alone players would have a standard, beautiful faction home blueprint that they buy once they acquire the means. Each faction home would only need to be built once, and perhaps gradually improved over time. Overall quality of faction homes would go up, though there would still be a lot of big grey hull cubes and jacked NPC stations. But that's another problem for another feature to fix.
2. Faction homes would remain the crafting/storage hub, and also the place where expensive capital ships are docked.
3. Factions and some go-it-alone players would have secondary stations, likely with light-to-medium defensive capacities and docking areas, scattered around where strategically viable. For example, they could build defensive turrets around their favorite nearby shop, or on the route they take to spawn to prevent them from being followed by aggressors. These stations would be destructible, and nobody would cry real tears if they were destroyed, as they could be bought back, resources notwithstanding.
Obviously, a lot of the balance here (switching real-world time as the main station cost to in-game resources as the main station cost) hinges on the existence of a functional in-game economy, but with the new crafting system, perhaps we're on the way to having that.
Anyway. Most of you probably already wanted purchasable stations, but I just thought I would show you why they are so important to the game, and not simply an ease-of-life/ancillary feature.
EDIT: Purchasable stations is arguably even more important with the up-coming jump gate feature, to keep people's jump gates from looking like, well, crap, and taking forever to build.
Here's the current situation:
Every faction has exactly one station, their faction home. Some factions put a ton of work into their faction home stations, building giant, beautiful stations that are really a sight to see. Most factions do not, and their faction homes are either big cubes of grey hull in which to hide their ships, or they're simply planets/NPC stations captured with a faction block.
The reason that everyone only ever has one station is fourfold:
1. You need a station to craft,
2. You need a station to keep your ships safe when you sign out,
3. Stations take a lot of time and work to build, and
4. Non-faction home stations can easily be destroyed while the factions players are offline.
Thus, you need a station, but you don't need more than one. Because of the massive time investment that goes into a station, nobody is willing to risk their destruction at the hands of pirates or hostile players.
Spaceships are notably different. Every time a ship leaves its faction base, it's being risked--but people do it all the time, even if the ship is too expensive to be replaced by that faction. Why? Because replacing it is simply a question of acquiring the materials/money, and not of completely rebuilding it by hand. And that's great. We want people to risk ships, because if they didn't, there'd be no game. The fact that losing your ship doesn't mean you need to spend weeks redecorating a new one is what makes space battles fun and viable.
But none of that applies to stations. If we could simply buy stations from a catalogue, here is the result I predict:
1. Most factions and some go-it-alone players would have a standard, beautiful faction home blueprint that they buy once they acquire the means. Each faction home would only need to be built once, and perhaps gradually improved over time. Overall quality of faction homes would go up, though there would still be a lot of big grey hull cubes and jacked NPC stations. But that's another problem for another feature to fix.
2. Faction homes would remain the crafting/storage hub, and also the place where expensive capital ships are docked.
3. Factions and some go-it-alone players would have secondary stations, likely with light-to-medium defensive capacities and docking areas, scattered around where strategically viable. For example, they could build defensive turrets around their favorite nearby shop, or on the route they take to spawn to prevent them from being followed by aggressors. These stations would be destructible, and nobody would cry real tears if they were destroyed, as they could be bought back, resources notwithstanding.
Obviously, a lot of the balance here (switching real-world time as the main station cost to in-game resources as the main station cost) hinges on the existence of a functional in-game economy, but with the new crafting system, perhaps we're on the way to having that.
Anyway. Most of you probably already wanted purchasable stations, but I just thought I would show you why they are so important to the game, and not simply an ease-of-life/ancillary feature.
EDIT: Purchasable stations is arguably even more important with the up-coming jump gate feature, to keep people's jump gates from looking like, well, crap, and taking forever to build.
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