Vorengard

I absolutely agree, this would be a good work-around for the mid-combat refit problem. But it doesn't solve the issue of people refitting ships in deep space, thus removing the need for specialized ship hulls. I think that would be a major mistake because it removes an awful lot of gameplay depth.
 
I would suggest adding a "completed" mode that disables all functions (shields, weapons, engines, etc) until the ship is fully built, but once a ship is complete you can no longer add blocks. In this model I would consider "repairing" to be a completely different process that only re-builds destroyed blocks.
 
I realize that idea has some issues, like having to build massive ships quickly because they're vulnerable the whole time they're being built, but I don't think that's necessarily bad gameplay; and I really fear the consequences of having ships that can be edited at any time anywhere.
 
Perhaps include a shipyard modual for space stations so that ships can only be edited at an established space station? In addition to being a way to balance combat and building, it would help justify the need for massive space stations. If each "Drydock" can only repair or build 1 ship at a time, then you'd need tons and tons of Drydocks for all the building and repairing that will be going on in this universe. Some of them would have to be truly huge as well if you wanted to make really big ships.

I wouldn't necessarily be worried about this, as vertical building is not only possible, but encouraged. I imagine the Ark-Zone quickly turning into a virtual favella of small houses, shacks, and factories all built on top of each other. That might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it would be very cool to see happen.
 
Or maybe there will be an incentive to build cheap skyscrapers newbros can rent out for their starter homes? I imagine if you need any kind of Item storage then having your own space close to the central market of the Arkship will be very valuable indeed. That seems like one of the best ways to encourage the large skyscrapers the Devs clearly want to see happen in this game. And I hope they manage it, because an actual player built city in an MMO would be such a cool thing to see.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't want theft to be a part of the game, because it absolutely should be. What I was trying to say was that it shouldn't be as easy as "buy a ship, change 1 block, re-sell at a lower price than the originator", because that would kill the building gameplay in 2 seconds, not to mention flooding the market with a thousand ship types that are nearly identical.

I don't know about
 
 
I don't know about "people not be able to". Certainly it should be really freakin hard to do, must be done "in game" (i.e - you must physically break into the secret lab and stealz the blueprint!) and be also quite hard to then dispose of to buyers etc (i.e. you shouldn't be able to just throw "illegal" items like stolen goods into the marketplace).
 
To me - there is just so much rich game play to be had with something like a blueprint in play! I mean - you wouldn't even have Star Wars Rogue One (let alone the original SW:IV Death Star mission) without stolen plans Blueprints are a plot device to be reckoned with!

How do you know about that court order?
 
Er... I mean - yes - I agree - practical limitations, resources, other words about something something early game limitations.
 

How about a combination of EVE Online (30 minutes server maintenance every day) with Landmark regeneration of world? Let's assume that the server this big will need frequent breaks (every day/two/three for example), so why not to use that break to restore some of the world that has been altered/destroyed/etc? Also some things could regenerate faster than others. Just a thought

withe the script system they plan i doubt people will stop at a ship. it will be one man fleets, that can be controlled purely with scripts you buy on market.

I like the way that you are looking at this, thinking about the game-play implications is important.
 
My solution would be to disable building while in combat, if you are "on" (touching or in a seat) a construct that has taken pvp damage you get a PVP flag set which disables the building tools until some time after a cool down period. This would prevent long drawn out battles where the winner is basically the person who can rebuild faster and brought the most resources.

I don't mean to interrupt you guys' interesting discussion on algorithms, but I think an equally important discussion to have isn't can we build on moving ships, but should we be able to build on moving ships?
 
Just off the top of my head I can think of several balance issues with this, specifically when it comes to combat. What's to stop people from running around on extra-large ships and replacing/adding weapons mid fight? Or adding armor, shields, thrusters, etc? Even if you disable building while engaged in combat, there's the ability to quickly re-design your ship as soon as you anticipate a fight, which I suppose would depend on the range you can see people, but still. Then you have to worry about transport ships re-tooling for combat right before the pirates show up and start killing them. On the one hand, that could be very interesting gameplay... but how on earth do you manage to balance something like that?
 
Additionally, imagine the economic impact of being able to edit fully functional ships. Why would you ever buy more than 1 ship (or why would there be more than one type of ship on the market) if you can just re-tool them to your specific situation? Without knowing any of the specifics on how ships will work exactly, if you could edit ships at any time, why not just carry around a ton of parts and replace them when you need them? I'd just fly around in my combat ship until I found some nice resources worth mining, and then I'd replace the guns with mining equipment or whatever. Same goes for any specialized ship equipment. If people can do such things, then there stops being a need for ship types that have specific capabilities. Everyone would just buy the most efficiently customizable ship possible and swap things around as needed.
 
Needless to say, I don't like the idea of being able to do this, as it sacrifices a lot in terms of game depth.

Lets say I make an awesome ship and I sell it on the market for a certain amount. What's to stop some guy from buying it, saving it as his own blueprint, then selling it and making tons more currency because he is able to get more attention drawn towards it? Also, whats to stop someone from just saving a ship or construct I'm working on as a blueprint?
 
I was thinking along the lines of constructs being owner specific, even if created from blueprints; so the first person to place a block for a construct permanently owns it and all copies of it. The only problem with that is, what if I take a piece of crap ship and make it 100 times better? Then I can't make a blueprint from it.
 
I was also thinking there could be an "ownership block", where whoever places it on a construct owns that construct permanently. But then that could simply be broken and replaced by someone else to call the ship theirs.

What do y'all think about the possibility of a traveling city. i envision a city where each house is vertical and pillar-like. a city of floating gems almost. what are your thoughts?

I hope this is the right place for this and that it hasnt been discussed in detail before...
 
it seems to be fixed that planets and ressources in general will not regenerate, so i would like to hear opinions and maybe feedback from the developers on the following problems i see:
 
1. the pretty looking environment  will very soon look very ugly once everybody starts digging everywhere (especially for players who join in later stages). i hope that plants and grass at least will regenerate....
 
2. if i understand it correctly ressources are limited and fuel for example will be consumed by aircraft, so this would mean that there will come a point where the fuel on a planet will be depleted and new players will have no way to leave the planet (or do anything besides the absolute basics. i  imagine this would greatle decourage new players)
 
3. in an interview i heard that caves and the likes will not collapse even if they are physically unstable. So as i miner will i be able to cave out the whole planet (in theory) ?
and to continue this question will the territory be a horizontal restriction or will it be spherical? so would it include a no fly zone (for what range), what happens if you dig underground and you leave the territory zone on the surface? what happens if i dig into a restricted territory from the outside? (in my opinion a spherical or hexagonal-cube would be the most logical solution....)