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vylqun

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I'm not personally a big fan of the mass production idea. A wealthy corporation could just respawn an entire army with a factory unit in a small amount of time, this definitely reduces ships value. 

The only case I could support this, is by limiting the constructs built by a factory unit, in size, by a huge amount. In that case, to create a ship, you'd need to configure many factory units, each with a blueprint of a portion of the ship you want to create, and then you'll have to merge all those together (Or you could just create an entire but really small ship). This would require much more effort, and would still mantain playerbuilt ships convenient for a certain market.

 

Making a factory unit unconvenient by increasing the amount of resources or time needed to build a ship, wouldn't fix the problem in my opinion. 

 

 

I would have to disagree with you. It should take time but not limit the size (maybe a limit by power input?) If you limit by size building large ships will take far to long unless some other way of automating it can be created and large ship battles will probably never really happen as they will be far to expensive to loose for all but the largest of orgs.

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i don't see a problem with being able to recreate a whole fleet as long as the ressources are available. I would expect that factory units to have a production time depending on the size of the final product which limits the speed with which objects can be recreated. Thats how things work in real life too if you have a fully automated production line and its absolutely fine.

 

As vylqun said, large fleets really aren't a problem. In fact this one of the most exciting things about the game in my opinion. The only way will ever have the kind of large scale the battles the devs have been talking about is by having two powerful organizations go head to head. 

 

Don't like the big bad empire? Then become a pirate and pick off their supply lines. There will be imbalances in the universe, but I think that's where the fun begins ;)

 

And could you expand on why increasing factory unit building time wouldn't solve quick respawns of fleets? 

 

 

I'm not saying that large fleet are a problem. My concerns are about all the side effects that this may cause:

 

- Less variety of ships, people are just going to copy paste more, compared to a system were you have to build every single ship one by one. 

- Less work for builders, the hangars will feel empty, without life.

- There's no real "preparation" for a war, you don't "feel in the air" that it's coming, there's no people running around the base, organizing materials, building stuff, etc..., because it's all automated.

- After a war, you lose your fleet, it's fine. You can just 3dprint it easily as long as you have the materials. There are no stages, you don't just retreat to reassemble your stuff, you don't stop attacking, there's less politics, and so on...

- You have more resources? You're likely going to win the war. (not always , but still...)

 

Now suppose you want to limit this with time. Then you could just print way more ships than necessary, or create a huge factory with multiple factory units, and you'd still have the advantage.

Now suppose you want to limit this with resources. This doesn't solve any of the problems I already said. 

Now suppose you will limit the size of the parts that are going to be printed:

 

-You'll still need the manpower, builders to assemble things, engineers to develop a plan deciding how to section and assemble a ship.

-Before a war there'll be a lot of work to prepare it.

-You can't just endlessy attack, because you can print a fleet with a click of a button, at least you'll need to spend some time assembling the various parts.

-A builders corporation is not going to be made by just 2 guys, that just design and put their blueprint in a factory unit that will then do all the work for them. 

-The bigger the ship, the smaller the pieces that you can craft from a factory unit will feel. Building a huge ship is going to be way harder, rare and a real important moment for your entire organization. You don't just print 3 titans and suicide them into battle just because you can afford them. 

-Remember that this game is going to have some kind of plex, this means that players will be, to a certain degree, able to buy ingame credits with RL cash. If you spend 1k $ in plexes, you may be able to buy a fleet in game. It's going to be way harder, if you limit the "ship printing", by forcing a certain degree of manpower.

-A ship is precious because it's value it's not made just by materials, but by time and mapower. You're less likely going to lose it. It isn't just a number on your wallet, it's the results of the time and efforts you put into building it. 

 

This is supposed a voxel game, where building plays a big role. It just doesn't make sense to automatize that so much. I could add way more reasons to prove that being able to 3dprint anything, without limiting the size of it, is bad for the game.

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I'm not saying that large fleet are a problem. My concerns are about all the side effects that this may cause:

 

- Less variety of ships, people are just going to copy paste more, compared to a system were you have to build every single ship one by one. 

- Less work for builders, the hangars will feel empty, without life.

- There's no real "preparation" for a war, you don't "feel in the air" that it's coming, there's no people running around the base, organizing materials, building stuff, etc..., because it's all automated.

- After a war, you lose your fleet, it's fine. You can just 3dprint it easily as long as you have the materials. There are no stages, you don't just retreat to reassemble your stuff, you don't stop attacking, there's less politics, and so on...

- You have more resources? You're likely going to win the war. (not always , but still...)

 

Now suppose you want to limit this with time. Then you could just print way more ships than necessary, or create a huge factory with multiple factory units, and you'd still have the advantage.

Now suppose you want to limit this with resources. This doesn't solve any of the problems I already said. 

Now suppose you will limit the size of the parts that are going to be printed:

 

-You'll still need the manpower, builders to assemble things, engineers to develop a plan deciding how to section and assemble a ship.

-Before a war there'll be a lot of work to prepare it.

-You can't just endlessy attack, because you can print a fleet with a click of a button, at least you'll need to spend some time assembling the various parts.

-A builders corporation is not going to be made by just 2 guys, that just design and put their blueprint in a factory unit that will then do all the work for them. 

-The bigger the ship, the smaller the pieces that you can craft from a factory unit will feel. Building a huge ship is going to be way harder, rare and a real important moment for your entire organization. You don't just print 3 titans and suicide them into battle just because you can afford them. 

-Remember that this game is going to have some kind of plex, this means that players will be, to a certain degree, able to buy ingame credits with RL cash. If you spend 1k $ in plexes, you may be able to buy a fleet in game. It's going to be way harder, if you limit the "ship printing", by forcing a certain degree of manpower.

-A ship is precious because it's value it's not made just by materials, but by time and mapower. You're less likely going to lose it. It isn't just a number on your wallet, it's the results of the time and efforts you put into building it. 

 

This is supposed a voxel game, where building plays a big role. It just doesn't make sense to automatize that so much. I could add way more reasons to prove that being able to 3dprint anything, without limiting the size of it, is bad for the game.

 

Each ship should start out as a basic common ship and depending on how a company sells the ship .

 

Builders will have plenty to do outfitting ships for others and customizing basic designs. the easier a ship can be customized the more popular the base design will most likely be as the vast majority of the work for the ship is already done and they can easily modify it

 

This depends on the amount of time (days or more possibly) it takes for the foundry to build the ship. It could be an extremely expensive in terms of power. If its slow enough it won't have any real effect on the game. You also seem to think i just order a ship and POOF i get a new ship printed as long as I have resources. I think its going to work more like I order a ship and the foundry starts building it but it takes a large amount of time but based on the size of the ship and the number of voxels in it. So if I have a solid cube it will take longer to print than a hollow one.

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Each ship should start out as a basic common ship and depending on how a company sells the ship .

 

Builders will have plenty to do outfitting ships for others and customizing basic designs. the easier a ship can be customized the more popular the base design will most likely be as the vast majority of the work for the ship is already done and they can easily modify it

 

This depends on the amount of time (days or more possibly) it takes for the foundry to build the ship. It could be an extremely expensive in terms of power. If its slow enough it won't have any real effect on the game. You also seem to think i just order a ship and POOF i get a new ship printed as long as I have resources. I think its going to work more like I order a ship and the foundry starts building it but it takes a large amount of time but based on the size of the ship and the number of voxels in it. So if I have a solid cube it will take longer to print than a hollow one.

 

You can bypass time by stacking factory units. Maybe they're expensive, but one day a strong corporation may become invincible, just because they stacked enough.

Other than that, you're likely not going to stay in war every single day, and when you're not into, you can just stack ships and accumulate resources that way. So, imho, a timelimit is not enough.

 

I'm not saying that you press a button and poof, a ship appears, even if that's still a possibility this feature could be implemented. I'm even saying that resources or time are not enough to limit the bad stuff from happening. 

 

Then, what do you mean by saying that the factory unit could just  "print a basic version of a ship"? I suppose that you'd ban elements from being printed, because otherwise there's no real reason to print a basic version, but just the final one. In case you limit elements from being printed, you force builders to do a portion of the work, so it's similar to what I've already suggested (but worse, since there's problems regarding elements hiding inside walls and hard to place, they will have to build only elements  and ho hull so it's more repetitive, there isn't the "assemble gameplay" part that in my opinion could be really fun, ...)

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You can bypass time by stacking factory units. Maybe they're expensive, but one day a strong corporation may become invincible, just because they stacked enough.

Other than that, you're likely not going to stay in war every single day, and when you're not into, you can just stack ships and accumulate resources that way. So, imho, a timelimit is not enough.

 

I'm not saying that you press a button and poof, a ship appears, even if that's still a possibility this feature could be implemented. I'm even saying that resources or time are not enough to limit the bad stuff from happening. 

 

Then, what do you mean by saying that the factory unit could just  "print a basic version of a ship"? I suppose that you'd ban elements from being printed, because otherwise there's no real reason to print a basic version, but just the final one. In case you limit elements from being printed, you force builders to do a portion of the work, so it's similar to what I've already suggested (but worse, since there's problems regarding elements hiding inside walls and hard to place, they will have to build only elements  and ho hull so it's more repetitive, there isn't the "assemble gameplay" part that in my opinion could be really fun, ...)

 

Unless you make your blueprints so that the ship is printed in parts I doubt multiple foundries are going to speed eachother up and a timelimit is actually exactly what you seem to be suggesting as that all it would really add if builders had to do it by hand. A timelimit and resource limit is also what limits real life so them doing it that way makes sense.

 

I mean the blueprint itself is just the basic ship. the bells and wisiles are added in after it is printed so the ship will be able to fly but if you want weapons on it or a different color or the inside redone a builder would do that for you and then sell it to you or you could do it. the cabels and hidden things would already be placed as much as possable though because you are right and those are a pain to do latter most of the time.

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Unless you make your blueprints so that the ship is printed in parts I doubt multiple foundries are going to speed eachother up and a timelimit is actually exactly what you seem to be suggesting as that all it would really add if builders had to do it by hand. A timelimit and resource limit is also what limits real life so them doing it that way makes sense.

 

I mean the blueprint itself is just the basic ship. the bells and wisiles are added in after it is printed so the ship will be able to fly but if you want weapons on it or a different color or the inside redone a builder would do that for you and then sell it to you or you could do it. the cabels and hidden things would already be placed as much as possable though because you are right and those are a pain to do latter most of the time.

 

Blueprints of parts of the ship, could have a market too in this case. 

Having to build it by hand isn't just a timesink. First of all it requires you to have the manpower to do this. A small organization will never be able to build a fleet easily, as it should be (they wouldn't even have the people to drive it!!). 

Building just an "incomplete version" wouldn't be different from what I'm suggesting. In both cases there's need for human interaction, and that's what I think the factory unit needs to be balanced. And to be honest, I think that being able to craft different parts of the ship, and then merging them together with something like a merge block, would add a lot to the game. You may even want to craft, let's say, the cockpit on a planet (maybe selling a contract to a private organization), the wings on another one, organizing transport ships to carry those different parts to a third planet for the final assemble. That's actually how it works IRL.

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Blueprints of parts of the ship, could have a market too in this case. 

Having to build it by hand isn't just a timesink. First of all it requires you to have the manpower to do this. A small organization will never be able to build a fleet easily, as it should be (they wouldn't even have the people to drive it!!). 

Building just an "incomplete version" wouldn't be different from what I'm suggesting. In both cases there's need for human interaction, and that's what I think the factory unit needs to be balanced. And to be honest, I think that being able to craft different parts of the ship, and then merging them together with something like a merge block, would add a lot to the game. You may even want to craft, let's say, the cockpit on a planet (maybe selling a contract to a private organization), the wings on another one, organizing transport ships to carry those different parts to a third planet for the final assemble. That's actually how it works IRL.

depends on how much we can do with scripting so I might be able to be a one man army with all my ships flying themselves. A small organization would be able to build the ships and as I said before possably pilot them it would just take more time for them to do so. and depending on other things I could make drones to make the process faster if it works like you are suggesting but that all depends on scripts.

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I'm not saying that large fleet are a problem. My concerns are about all the side effects that this may cause:

 

- Less variety of ships, people are just going to copy paste more, compared to a system were you have to build every single ship one by one. 

- Less work for builders, the hangars will feel empty, without life.

- There's no real "preparation" for a war, you don't "feel in the air" that it's coming, there's no people running around the base, organizing materials, building stuff, etc..., because it's all automated.

- After a war, you lose your fleet, it's fine. You can just 3dprint it easily as long as you have the materials. There are no stages, you don't just retreat to reassemble your stuff, you don't stop attacking, there's less politics, and so on...

- You have more resources? You're likely going to win the war. (not always , but still...)

 

 

1) the variety of ships comes with the advantages and disadvantages of the designs as well as the improvements. It would be pretty annoying if every ship woul dhave to be built by hand.

2) believe me, building the same ship over and over would be much more boring for builders^^

3) there is a lot of preparation for wars, gathering ressources, loading ammonition and fuel, manning the freshly printed ships etc. having an army of people build the same ships for a week doesn't really add athmosphere, will most likely make wars less likely and more boring because most builders wouldn't want to be stuck with the same thing.

4) you can only rebuild ur fleet as long as you have ressources and energy, reparing not to heavily damaged ships is probably far more ressource-friendly, thus still the prefered way. 

5) ofc ressources play a very important part in wars, that's always the case. But at the same time the quality of the tech and ship-designs can influence a lot too. Its pretty realistic this way.

 

I dunno if you would like to be someone who is stuck within the factory of your guild building the same ships for weeks just to prepare a war. If you are then i'm sure you're one of very very few who would do that, if you aren't then you shouldn't force other people to have to do it :P

Most builders get their enjoyment by designing and building something new, not by dozens recreations of the same stuff.

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Q&A 10: Tuesday 12th July 2016

 

Quote

Can we get devblog about how Stargates are going to be built? Will players be able to fly for months to their stargate destination instead of sending probes?

 

We will make a devblog when we have finalized all the details. The preferred method will probably be to use SG probes, but you could very well travel to the destination directly with your ship or your colony. However, it's likely going to be very hard to get there and survive. Think about energy, fuel, and all these elements that will be difficult to acquire on the way. But it could be a hell of a journey, yes!

 

A journey worthy of being considered a real pilgrimage, maybe to searching for salvation among the stars... :P

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We'll probably have some sub-sets of Builders:

Designers get a lot of enjoyment out of designing new objects.

Crafters get enjoyment from the crafting and reproduction aspects.

Harvesters enjoy gathering resources.

 

Designers will keep tweaking the designs of their blueprints - really has nothing to do whether ships are destroyed.

We will be manufacturing ships from blueprints in any case - regardless of whether we're mass-producing.

But, as vylqun suggests, mass-production will still require construction materials and other resources, like fuel.

Gathering all the materials will still be time-consuming. Gathering the fuel will be as well. And then the ships still have to travel.

Just because a bunch of ships are created in a matter of minutes doesn't mean they will all be ready for battle or ready to voyage the same day or even the same week.

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This is supposed a voxel game, where building plays a big role. It just doesn't make sense to automatize that so much. I could add way more reasons to prove that being able to 3dprint anything, without limiting the size of it, is bad for the game.

 

Yes it is a builder game, but it's also an MMO. My hope is that there is specialization, such that many player's will simply buy ships off the markets rather than designing them themselves. This is why the game could have a wide range of play styles. In my experience, a large subset of players will not have the time and patience to learn the complexities of the building system. And that's a good thing because they will be the ones actually flying the ships.

 

As for keeping builders occupied, I think the most excitement will come from building new blueprints, not tediously replicating ship designs by hand. This is exactly the shortcoming of Space Engineers for large scale production (disregarding the performance issues).

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Well, i'm not saying that the factory unit should be banned completely. I know that building the same ship over and over again would be boring, my idea was about litmiting the size of the stuff that the factory unit can build. This way builders will still save a lot of time, while assembling those smaller pieces may require some manpower, or in some situation it could even be fully automated with a way more complex system including mechanical elements and ai. Spawning an army from a single element is kinda basic, casual, not a deep or interesting gameplay feature. I don't mind the factory unit to save time for builders, but I'd like to build my own factory, not just to craft a single element, that does all the job. Everyone could do that.

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Building area will probably be the limiting factor rather than the size of the stuff a factory can build.

You can create a factory building if you want to, but the devs are going to want to control the code that dictates how quickly objects can be built.

If you want to piece together modular objects to make a large one, you will be able to do so.

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Great, so now we can have gamecenters :D

 

 

Someone will probably build a casinò ship (various games, tons of lights las vegas style, ...), moving it around the most populated solar system, asking for bets to play and getting rich that way xD Actually I've seen this in games where there wasn't Lua or much support to this kind of things, so in DU would be insane.

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Hi everyone!

 

The daily answer will restart today.

There has been a lot of activity on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube these last two days, after the first gameplay video release ;)

 

Best regards,

Nyzaltar.

 

Yeee, I was kinda joking thought, the gameplay video after all answered a few questions already :D

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