Thoughts about stations

[Verbmaks]

Hi endos. First of all - excuse me for my english level. I'm part of russian community, but i feel a strong need to share my thoughts with someone, who still play in this game.

As one of heads of small, but very active company, i'm really not satisfied about stations mechanics. There're no company storages, no ship storages (spawn terminal now looks like red mess, and it's hard to understand which ship really destroyed and wich in station safezone). But I know, that these features already in development, but there some features, that i really want see at my stations:

• stations access. I really lack of company rights at stations. I need to give access to every new member of our company separatley. It's will be great to give access to stations like to ships, it will save a lot of time and i can forgot about situations when i forgot to give someone access and these someone spent a lot of time flying to my station only to see orange wall of safezone, and i'm offline at this moment.
  
  
• modular storages. It's very confusing when just a station block has an infinite individual storage and no collective storages. I suggest to use some modules of storage, contains a few thousands inventory cells. Sounds simmilar to crate storages in factory halls, but it can be just a huge block, which do not require a factory hall. First of all - it not only visualization of storage, but good motivation to expand your base. Also these modules can use collective access (or even free access for all, who has access to station). Of course you need to protect these modules to keep your resourses in safe whithin siege.
  
  
• module of market. It wil make game economy more interesting, if players can spent lot of credits and time to build their own marketplace, with their own taxes. This module can require a high station class, high amount of credits to "legalize" playermade market and automaticly enable public transponder of station. It means that players can create new points of interest in space (and real reazon to attack this station)
  
  
• propellant refill module. I really need this module for fast refill of my haulers. For now we can use only refills in factory halls (just a huge amount of tanks, which can easily "fall in bug", and propellant pumping very slow). Also we cannot use big tanks, cause our newbies cannot craft them. It would be great to build some module, with his own terminal and resourse bridge to instant refill. Of course, we still need to load lot of ice in its proccecing unit, to make propellant (that can also take a lot of time). But refill should be instant, like origin's refill stations.

If some of these features in development, please make me know about it. And I understand, that all my ideas could disscussed in past, but I still want to make some attention for these problems. Also I'll would be glad to hear opinion and other ideas from others players.

 

[Cavilier210]

Your English is better than some English speakers 😉

I like most if not all of these. Hopefully they all come to fruition.

 

[Verbmaks]

Your English is better than some English speakers 😉

Wow, thanks

Anyway, I want to make some attention to this case. In reason - balance. I understand, that all these features make game more comfortable (if not easy), so I really want to hear some side points about balance of these features.

 

[Askannon]

As far as I know the resource storage part is planned/in development and if I recall correctly everything you asked for should come in some form or another though I have to say, I hadn't found the post where this was talked about and it was a month or more back, so things might have changed:

Stations should no longer have a "private" storage for everyone (your inventory in not owned stations would be sent to you by mail)

Blocks to increase storage space


And LauriFB talked about trade hubs so some form of trade support should come.


Companywide station access is something I wish for too, as I found fiddling with just a handful of players too cumbersome.


Regarding your propellant troubles: One can hope, but until then you can set up a tank connected to only a resource bridge on the ship itself and refill that tank, connect the resouce bridge as you would with the factory refill to your main fuel system's resource bridge and repeat.
It is time consuming, but beats trying to rip out hidden tanks.

 

[Verbmaks]

Regarding your propellant troubles: One can hope, but until then you can set up a tank connected to only a resource bridge on the ship itself and refill that tank, connect the resouce bridge as you would with the factory refill to your main fuel system's resource bridge and repeat.
It is time consuming, but beats trying to rip out hidden tanks.

Yeah, I know about this, it's a good practice to install on ship a tank frame without tank and connect it to resource bridge only by tubes. It very useful in a long trips, but when our hauler comes to stations, we need to refill a dozen large propellant tanks, and it takes too much time, even if our refill station in factory hall prepared and fully loaded with propellant tanks. Just right now got idea to use multiple resource bridges to faster refill. I don't know how it will be work, so if someone already tested this, please reply

 

[CalenLoki]

Yeah, I know about this, it's a good practice to install on ship a tank frame without tank and connect it to resource bridge only by tubes. It very useful in a long trips, but when our hauler comes to stations, we need to refill a dozen large propellant tanks, and it takes too much time, even if our refill station in factory hall prepared and fully loaded with propellant tanks. Just right now got idea to use multiple resource bridges to faster refill. I don't know how it will be work, so if someone already tested this, please reply

You are limited to 1 resource bridge connection between 2 resource+power networks. So if you can separate networks on both ship and refuel station with physical switch (hinge with duct on it) you can connect more bridges for higher throughput.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

Each of those features looks like it has to be in game by default.
I hope we will see them soon.

 

[LauriFB]

Hi endos. First of all - excuse me for my english level. I'm part of russian community, but i feel a strong need to share my thoughts with someone, who still play in this game.

As one of heads of small, but very active company, i'm really not satisfied about stations mechanics. There're no company storages, no ship storages (spawn terminal now looks like red mess, and it's hard to understand which ship really destroyed and wich in station safezone). But I know, that these features already in development, but there some features, that i really want see at my stations:

• stations access. I really lack of company rights at stations. I need to give access to every new member of our company separatley. It's will be great to give access to stations like to ships, it will save a lot of time and i can forgot about situations when i forgot to give someone access and these someone spent a lot of time flying to my station only to see orange wall of safezone, and i'm offline at this moment.
  
  
• modular storages. It's very confusing when just a station block has an infinite individual storage and no collective storages. I suggest to use some modules of storage, contains a few thousands inventory cells. Sounds simmilar to crate storages in factory halls, but it can be just a huge block, which do not require a factory hall. First of all - it not only visualization of storage, but good motivation to expand your base. Also these modules can use collective access (or even free access for all, who has access to station). Of course you need to protect these modules to keep your resourses in safe whithin siege.
  
  
• module of market. It wil make game economy more interesting, if players can spent lot of credits and time to build their own marketplace, with their own taxes. This module can require a high station class, high amount of credits to "legalize" playermade market and automaticly enable public transponder of station. It means that players can create new points of interest in space (and real reazon to attack this station)
  
  
• propellant refill module. I really need this module for fast refill of my haulers. For now we can use only refills in factory halls (just a huge amount of tanks, which can easily "fall in bug", and propellant pumping very slow). Also we cannot use big tanks, cause our newbies cannot craft them. It would be great to build some module, with his own terminal and resourse bridge to instant refill. Of course, we still need to load lot of ice in its proccecing unit, to make propellant (that can also take a lot of time). But refill should be instant, like origin's refill stations.

If some of these features in development, please make me know about it. And I understand, that all my ideas could disscussed in past, but I still want to make some attention for these problems. Also I'll would be glad to hear opinion and other ideas from others players.

Brief comments:

• Hangars for player stations and capital ships are under work. Hangars will allow storing ships, and later will include ssc access and repair hall.
• Station access rights, both personal and company level, will be improved a lot over time
• Company Storages will come in form of storage crates. These also include access for others, if they have rights for that. This storage is expanded physically.
• Player-made market/shops are also coming to stations
• We have a few different remedies coming for refilling, first being the refill tool being able to use materials from any inventory, and later even larger transfer methods from huge station storages

 

[Verbmaks]

There's a some additional question, maybe someone know current status of this feature. Company station

Brief comments:

• Hangars for player stations and capital ships are under work. Hangars will allow storing ships, and later will include ssc access and repair hall.
• Station access rights, both personal and company level, will be improved a lot over time
• Company Storages will come in form of storage crates. These also include access for others, if they have rights for that. This storage is expanded physically.
• Player-made market/shops are also coming to stations
• We have a few different remedies coming for refilling, first being the refill tool being able to use materials from any inventory, and later even larger transfer methods from huge station storages

That a great news, thanks! Just need to wait a little, i hope

And blitz question (anyway, only developer can provide confident info): what about transfer to player stations? It's not a critical moment (for now), but yesterday me and my team disscussed it. Our station network builded with interval 120-160 km. It would be usefull to be able respawn after death at nearest station, if you so unlucky and met pirates at 1200 km (and we already got this situations, lol). We thinked about reconstruction machines, but, as I understood, you can link to only one machine in same time. So, if someone will come to another station and forgot to link in machine, he will should to fly minimum 2 hours to station in case death.

I understand, that it very hard to balance to prevent fast travel to farest sites abusing transfer mechanics, but is there some ideas in development for transfer to players stations, or reconstruction machines will still only way for respawn at players stations?

 

[LauriFB]

And blitz question (anyway, only developer can provide confident info): what about transfer to player stations? It's not a critical moment (for now), but yesterday me and my team disscussed it. Our station network builded with interval 120-160 km. It would be usefull to be able respawn after death at nearest station, if you so unlucky and met pirates at 1200 km (and we already got this situations, lol). We thinked about reconstruction machines, but, as I understood, you can link to only one machine in same time. So, if someone will come to another station and forgot to link in machine, he will should to fly minimum 2 hours to station in case death.

I understand, that it very hard to balance to prevent fast travel to farest sites abusing transfer mechanics, but is there some ideas in development for transfer to players stations, or reconstruction machines will still only way for respawn at players stations?

There's coming a longer range reconstruction machine for stations. In addition we'll most likely add support for binding to at least a few reconstuction machines. The chaining could work without breaking the game, as your inventory doesn't transfer with you. In the future if you transfer from your own reconstruction machine to other, the endo kit and the inventory is stored at the location you left from, but you always need new endo kit and new inventory at the location you are going.

 

[Verbmaks]

There's coming a longer range reconstruction machine for stations. In addition we'll most likely add support for binding to at least a few reconstuction machines. The chaining could work without breaking the game, as your inventory doesn't transfer with you. In the future if you transfer from your own reconstruction machine to other, the endo kit and the inventory is stored at the location you left from, but you always need new endo kit and new inventory at the location you are going.

Sounds interesting, but, as i think, most precious things are ships at stations, not inventory. Just my experience (I can be wrong) but main purpose why we want to use chaining travel to farest stations - transfer pilots of mining ships. For now we use transport ships to move a couple of people to mining stations, then, when miners loads fully haulers, they can make transfer to Origin. And then I move to logistic station on main transport hauler and collect ore from staions haulers (they used like company storage and ore transponters within mining and logistic stations). This chainig will make mining more easy and faster.