Poll: Reconciling Ship Value Ideas: Heirlooms vs. Commodities

[XenoCow]

After a discussion on one of the alpha Discord channels, I have realized that there is a monster lurking around in the shadows of this game. This poll and discussion is aimed at bringing that monster to light so we can have a civil conversation about it and try to defeat it together.

TL;DR
Some players want cheap ships and some want expensive ones. How can we let both player types have fun? I suggest expensive ships that can have their cost absorbed by large factions so faction members don't have to worry about grinding or repairing their own ships but other players do.

--- The Monster ---
Starbase is at its core a game about space ships and community. This monster hides in the air between players when they think about their ships and what they mean to the players. Ships have a value, whether that is time spent to collect resources, money, faction rank, but they also can hold sentimental value. The monster is the different ways that players believe their ships to be valued and the tremendous implications that those differences make to gameplay. So far I have noticed two major camps on this issue.

--- The Camps ---
The two camps have various reasons for their feelings on value but here is my best shot at summarizing the sentiments:
Low value ships

• Ships being so core to gameplay should never be out of reach
• Losing a ship should only set you back a play session (1-3 hours)
• Since combat is so enjoyable, ships should be cheap enough for frequent battle
• High value ships will anger players when they are destroyed so much that players will leave the game for good
• Time is precious so time spent with out a ship or doing busywork to buy/build a ship is wasteful and/or boring
• Grinds for valuable things are not fun and favor players with more free time

High value ships

• Building and repairing ships is just as important as flying around in them
• Losing a ship should cost players several play sessions (5+?)
• Combat should have consequence to make combat more survivable and to make diplomacy a useful option
• Low value ships won't have any stories to tell from their past so will become generic feeling
• Starbase is meant to be lived in and the ships should feel lived in too
• Grinds and time spent repairing are relaxing and enjoyable but dissuade players with little time

If I left off any major (or minor) points from either of these two camps please feel free to mention it below.

--- My Suggested Solution ---
I think that there is a solution to this dilemma. It may not be the following suggestion, but I think it exists nonetheless.
I don't know how this value will be generated, but right now a player can earn enough money to buy the largest store-bought ship about 6.5 times or one player designed ship that is nearly as big as possible from one hour of mining. This value scheme makes replacing a destroyed ship cheaper (time wise) than repairing it and in some cases refueling also easier by means of replacement. What I think I and the other proponents of the "high value ship" camp would like is for this value scheme to not be what it is now.

Now, please imagine the game in the near future where, by some means unknown to me, ships have greater time value. Players that fly solo or in small groups sometimes hire escorts or are even escorts themselves. Faction members play as many roles from salvage collectors, to soldiers, and to repair engineers. The players in those large factions can lose a ship and not worry about paying a minute of their time to getting a new ship and getting back to work. Salvage crews can collect the old one, repair engineers can fix it up before it is needed again, and factories and trade infrastructure allow for the inexpensive production of new ships.

In this version of the game, players out on their own can experience the real danger of losing a ship and the real glory of destroying or taking the ships of others. At the same time large faction members can go wage wars nearly every play session without worrying about costs while creating opportunities for those less combat and more engineering/logistically inclined.

--- Final Thoughts ---
I know that even this goal may be a lofty one, but I don't want to lose any players (myself included) to lack of choice of gameplay or mechanics that are too or not forgiving enough. The more players that we can get to come to Starbase and stay here the more vibrant the universe will become, the more grand the stories will become, and the more dedication we will get from the developers we will earn. So, let's have some foresight, decorum, and patience as we defeat this monster before it gets too big.

 

[Recatek]

I don't think there's a way to make everyone happy here. If ships are too expensive you'll have people ragequit after losing one and never return. If ships are too cheap you'll have people who just feel no attachment to their ship or the game and leave for other things to play. The game will have to decide at some point and will lose people in the process, but it's too early to say where things will ultimately land. I would rather the game commit boldly to one of the two options rather than try to wishwash somewhere in the middle, even if it's the option I don't want and I ultimately see myself out the door.

 

[L9M2]

(Quote)

I agree, and we won't really know until early access. The closed alpha might shed some light in the matter of what would be better, but with it being this early in the games life there's too many unknowns. Personally, I think it depends on the situation and type of ship you're wanting to use. Like if you're wanting to just get somewhere, a small cheap ship is a way to go, but if you want to go out and bring in a good haul, a larger ship would probrably be a good idea. I myself might be the small speedy boi type of ship person, since I don't really want to do much combat.

 

[Venombrew]

everyone keeps forgetting this function when game comes out:

Spaceship insurance
Spaceships have automatic mandatory insurance.
The insurance cost of spaceships is determined from several different factors:

• The distance of the damaged ship to the insurance station
• The level of the ship's damage
• How dangerous area the ship was left in
• Some stations might have a fixed fee for spaceship insurance

this here should make pretty much everyone happy. you love your ship and hate to lose it, dont worry its insured. love to pvp and fight other ships but scared to lose your ship, its ok its insured. there is already a solution they will be using, this here makes it amazingly easy to deal with lost and destroyed ships, quite literally is an easy to fix to get you back into the game.

Summary
Insurance is used throughout the galaxy as a means of protecting financial loss in the case of stolen, lost or destroyed property or decommissioned endoskeletons.
Most commonly insured objects are ships, stations and endoskeletons.
Insurance terminals can also be used as a means of transportation, as it is possible to activate another endoskeleton at a different location.

i do not understand everyone's reason to worry when a feature like this will pretty much give you your stuff back. if this feature can't satisfy all parties, then nothing will.

EDIT: People should take the time and go through https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index.php/Main_Page

 

[XenoCow]

i do not understand everyone's reason to worry when a feature like this will pretty much give you your stuff back. if this feature can't satisfy all parties, then nothing will.

Thank you (and the others') responses so far.

For me, I want to feel a sting that goes beyond the monetary value of a ship if I lose it. I may be alone in that feeling so perhaps I am blowing this problem out of proportion. I just worry that insurance is just a slap on the wrist for what could be a big disaster that could be overcome with ingenuity and community help. I know that fixing a ship that is almost worth more as scrap is not everyone's cup of tea. That's why I suggested that repair parts of factions have a large role (so that those who do like fixing can do that work for those who just want to fly).

Insurance sounds like a great fit for CA and maybe even EA when there isn't much of a player run economy yet. It may be wishful thinking, but I hope that ship insurance can be replaced eventually with player run businesses.

 

[Chewy]

Personally, I'd like to see a system where ships get less expensive the more they are mass produced. The most a ship would ever cost is when it is first built from scratch and then converted into a blueprint at a shipyard. When the shipyard uses a blueprint to produce a ship, it gets more efficient, consuming less resources each subsequent time it uses that blueprint again. This could be used in tandem with the insurance system to make replacing a lost ship easier, and reward shipwrights for producing robust standardized designs.

 

[five]

Here is my idea: There will alway be throwaway vehicles, vehicles that are partially only meant to work once. These will be so cheap that you can buy them after farming for 1 to 2 hours. But if you are interested in grinding, grind your way to a better ship. A more expensive fighter will in an honest 1 v 1, face to face probably win, because it has armour, better components, more weapons and is generally more designed to be a fighter rather than a flying generator with thrusters, guns, and a pilot seat strapped to it. You cannot eliminate the option of this existing, but this kind of design is able to do less in comparison to a well designed, more expensive fighter. Also the economy will sooner or later be run by the players. The players will then build ships for various purposes with different prices. So if you are solo, buying a cheap fighter gives you a large disadvantage. Here is the point I want to emphasise. If more expensive fighters handle better then cheap ones then solo players will grind to have them and maybe even build a relationship towards their vehicle. If a pilot has a bond with his vehicle he is more likely to keep on repairing it. We shouldn't ask the question: Do we need to restrict players that want to grind less? It should be more: What can I do as a hardcore-grind person to have the upper hand against a "cheap" enemy. For example: my hauler/cargo carrier/freighter concept Comet will be faster then a cheap af ship and it will have more range. I agree with Chewy, that there should be a dynamic market, with price and demand varying together. To the players that do not have as much free time: There are ways you can make money while being offline. Rent a lot and build something that not only pays for the rent itself, but also gives you money. Although this would have to have the right balance, since we do not want players that are inactive to make more money then players who are active. Personally I do not like grind games that much: I couldn't get myself to grind planes in WarThunder, in LoL I always bought the champs that were the cheapest (with some exceptions) and I generally do not like "wasting" time on farming a current, used to buy stuff. But with this game it is different, because there is no other way to get a cool ship, other than to grind. Also the problem with factions giving their own ships to members cheaper: First of all it's the factions free will to sell ships cheaper to their employees, but you as a faction have the ability to decide how to regulate this for you members. Example: I wanna have a mercenary company in my industrial faction. During combat training u gonna get shot and your ship gonna get damaged. If you are the pilot on the receiving end you repair your ship yourself and the ship of the guy that won. If you crash your ship in some dumb accident, you gonna tow and rebuild it yourself. If your ship is destroyed in combat you can choose: Do you want to recover and repair it because you like that exact fighter or do you say: "f*ck it gimme a new one".

 

[Venombrew]

Insurance sounds like a great fit for CA and maybe even EA when there isn't much of a player run economy yet. It may be wishful thinking, but I hope that ship insurance can be replaced eventually with player run businesses.

did you ever play worlds adrift? man it was a pretty cool game, but in that game you suffered so badly when you lost your ship. the frame was the only thing that saved in the ship editor. The rest of your ship, style, build, all that, was lost the moment you lost your ship. I played 2 years of that shit while it was out and if it wasn't for my love of this kind of game id walked away from it much much earlier, so i can see why players not as into that game as me would of bailed even sooner. Now were also going to have player built stations(in the future), and its just another word for a base to me, which is something World's Adrift didn't have.

The insurance feature was always brought out in knowledge to us since they put up their wiki site for the game and it is going to kick ass. Because you will lose your ship in this game, not one player who will legitmately plays this game will ever keep the original ship. Same for space stations, they will get fucked up by players, there are people who will buy this game to do just that, trust me they will. So the insurance really helps the playing field. Right now the way it works explained by devs awhile back with the endoskeleton insurance is this: you get it, you pay for it and you can respawn with all your armor and junk, if you don't have full amount for the fee no big deal, they said it will added as debt that will go away as you gain credits. This way you can jump back into the game as long as you setup your Endo's insurance. So the way they explained it will be the same i would assume for ships and stations, you will enter a debt that will be paid off as you gain credits if you can't cover the cost at the time. Which is if you think about the penalty added like time respawners that gain longer time the more you die, where as this will add up a debt on you the more you keep running in and just dying. So say you die like 10 times, just you not your ship, the debt you would gain as penalties(again if you don't have the credits) could easily be worked off in 10-15 mins of safezone jobs. There are several games out there that uses this very same system, the game Hunt which is so fucking cool btw i recommend all check it out, uses this same method minus the insurance. The more you keep dying in that game the more it gets costly, but you make enough all along the way to compensate for the loss.

Ships will get insurance on them automatically before going on unlike the endoskeletons, so in a way, it will never cost you near as much in credits or time to get back your original stuff, to me that is a very fair compensation that satisfies farmers, merchants, pvpers, business factions of all type. It won't leave you out of the game and won't force a massive rebuilt in cost and time like Worlds Adrift did.

EDIT: another good example is, your defending your player station with 30 of your members against near the same numbers. You die you will respawn back at your station as long as the respawners are there. This way you can keep helping maintain and protect your base through this process over and over, so that no ones stations get wiped out so easily or quickly during a real fight. Even if you lose your ship at the station you still keep respawning to keep on fighting, just grab some rocket launchers and take out their ships flying over from the ground. Enemie ships won't respawn at your base but you and yours will, so take out their ships force them to ground and they will have to respawn either on ships near by or at their most recent station that obviously isn't yours. and thats how yo will defend and win back your stations.

 

[Recatek]

Insurance is just a sideways route to get back to having ships lean on the cheaper end. I'm not sure, fundamentally, what the difference is between making ships cheap to begin with, and giving you money to buy replacement ships when you lose one. Maybe there's a difference in upfront cost, but once you're in the loop of die>replace>die>replace, the money values would be the same between the two.

 

[Venombrew]

@Recatek that is where penalty costs come into play. if you die and when get your stuff back your gonna lose some credits that you will regain quickly by heading back out to mine if that is what you do. Even if it has to be credited to you cause a lack of funds you get it paid off rather quickly without having to go and farm out the ass just to get the ship back. you basically be working to pay off the debt you gained if you didn't have the credits right than and there. At least that is how a dev explained it. So now your not working to rebuild your ship but rather to pay off a debt or gain back some loss funds while having your ship back already. I think that is nice because it allows you to jump right back into the game, you get your stuff back and go right back to what you were doing at a credit cost or possible debt.

Now for pvp that is where the penalty can becomes a ***** if your constantly dying and you run out of credits so now your stacking a debt in a way. Which btw that debt has to be worked off first before you can start keeping your credits you earn(now i dont know if be a set percent so you can make credits while paying back, again this his how a devs explained it.). But i think its a solid feature, allows you to jump back in the game, you don't lose your stuff for good and brings a descent balance to pvp, specially over stations. Enemies will mostly spawn either on ships without their own ships or back at a space station that could be 40 minutes away, giving the defenders who spawn at their station a better chance of survival.

 

[Polar]

In my opinion, the value of ships should be in their design, not their material costs. Designing takes weeks or even months depending on how much you optimize. Assembling that ship should only take about a play session or so, a couple of hours. Stations should be what takes resource grind, not ships.

 

[Venombrew]

In my opinion, the value of ships should be in their design, not their material costs. Designing takes weeks or even months depending on how much you optimize. Assembling that ship should only take about a play session or so, a couple of hours.

i totally agree with you there. rare materials aren't always a problem, but a ship design that can make you untouchable in a fire fight and is extremely unique is gonna be expensive. even if the materials are cheap its the design your really buying.

 

[eldari77]

You could possibly introduce a tiered equipment system, where you could make expensive powerful ships, or design cheaper disposable ships for certain uses, ie boarding, mining, fighters