Starbase Progress Notes: Week 9 (2022) - Spaceship insight

[ElluFB]

Hello everyone, here are the progress notes of the week 9 of 2022!

This week's progress notes give insight into spaceships, for example selling and repairing them as well as other kinds of additions and upgrades. We hope you enjoy these snippets of the Starbase development!

You can find the latest extensive overview of all items in development, including spaceships, in last week's progress notes: Starbase Progress Notes: Week 8

Please note that the "Progress Notes" are different from the Starbase "Patch Notes". Progress Notes are snippets from the development team and what has been worked on during the previous week, and many of the features might not be present in the current or upcoming builds of the Starbase Early Access. Some features, especially in the design portion, can be subject to change as the development continues.

Starbase Progress Notes: Week 9 (2022) - Spaceship insight
February 28 - March 4

• ❌ = Not started
• 🟡 = In progress
• ✔️ = Completed
• ➖️ = Not applicable (work not required in this phase)

Selling, repairing and updating your ships

Feature	Description	Design	Art	Code
Ship Ownership Deed	The Ship Ownership Deed can be used to sell any despawned ships.	✔️	✔️	🟡
Salvage Deed	Salvage Deeds can be used to sell any spawned spaceships, including those abandoned in space that might still have some value.	✔️	✔️	🟡
Ship Repair terminal	An easy way to fix your ship by flying or spawning it in the Ship Designer and getting it automatically repaired with parts, ore, and some extra credits.	✔️	✔️	✔️
Repairing EBM ships	Allows fixing Easy Build Mode ships in the Repair terminal as well.	✔️	➖️	❌
Saving Blueprints outside of Ship Designer and EBM	Allows saving changes made to ship blueprints outside of the Ship Designer and the Easy Build Mode. Blueprints can be saved to three slots, and the updated blueprint can be used to repair the ship in the Repair terminal or with tools.	✔️	✔️	✔️
Improved field repairs	Ships can be repaired by hand by using the Build Tool or the Blueprint Filler option in the Universal Tool, which automatically attaches near-by parts to the ship blueprint. Planned improvements to the Blueprint Filler include support for automatically building the pipes and cables in the blueprint as well.	✔️	➖️	❌
Ship insurance	Accessible in the Origin stations, ship insurance makes it possible to recover some of the losses from a broken or lost ship. You get different kind of compensation depending on your ship parts and their level of damage. The old ship becomes decommissioned and can be claimed or looted by other players.	🟡	❌	❌

Ships in space

Feature	Description	Design	Art	Code
Spaceship Registration Deed	The Spaceship Registration Deed can be used to claim ownership of any spaceship that has been decommissioned and left without an owner in space.	✔️	✔️	✔️
Hacked Deed	Stealing spaceships with a new craftable item called a Hacked Deed, which allows temporarily claiming a spaceship outside the Safe Zone as long as the owner isn't present.	✔️	✔️	❌
Towing Beam	The Towing Beam device can be used to tow other ships. This makes it possible to carry discovered or broken down ships elsewhere for repairs or salvaging.	✔️	✔️	🟡
Ship handling and controls	Several input features are being refined and reworked on. For example, players can bind actions more reliably to key combinations and either short or long presses of individual keys. Also, players can use their mouse cursor as a virtual joystick to control their ship while in the pilot seat.	🟡	❌	❌
Transponder signals for company ships	When a ship is owned by a company, the company's name will show on the ship transponder.	✔️	➖️	🟡

Ship hangars

Feature	Description	Design	Art	Code
Constructing a Hangar Hall	A Hangar Hall can be constructed on your station or Capital Ship. Hangar Halls can be used for ship spawning and despawning, as well as other features that can be accessed by adding different terminal modules.	✔️	✔️	🟡
Spawning ships at the Hangar Hall	By adding a spawning terminal to your Hangar Hall, it can be used to spawn and despawn ships similarly to landing pads in the Origin stations and Moon City.	✔️	✔️	🟡
Ship Designer in the Hangar Hall	A Ship Designer terminal can be added to the Hangar Hall to enable using Ship Designer at your station.	✔️	✔️	❌
Ship Repair shop in the Hangar Hall	By adding a Repair shop terminal to your Hangar Hall you can easily repair your ships at your station.	✔️	✔️	❌
Hangar Hall access	The station owner can determine who has access and can use the Hangar Halls on their stations.	✔️	✔️	❌

Spaceship Designer

Feature	Description	Design	Art	Code
Object highlighting	More sophisticated object highlighting in Ship Designer: selecting an object from the scene highlights it in the Scene View List and selecting an object from the Scene View List highlights it from the scene.	✔️	✔️	✔️
Improved visual indication for module hierarchy	Numerical values will be added to modules to help players visualize the hierarchy better. The numerical value will tell the module's distance from the Root module, the value of which will always be 0. Modules directly connected to the Root are valued at 1, while the modules directly connected to 1's are valued at 2 and so forth. The numerical values will be shown on the scene itself and the scene view list.	✔️	➖️	❌
Casual Mode for Spaceship Designer	An option to toggle between the current Advanced Mode and a new Casual Mode, which is similar to building with modules like in the Build Mode. The casual mode will feature the option to use automated welding after snapping.	✔️	➖️	🟡

More for ships

Feature	Description	Design	Art	Code
Ship cargo crate access	When a ship has cargo crates bolted to it, only those with access to the ship can open them inside Safe Zones. This affects company ships, as well. However, if the ship is outside a Safe Zone, anyone can open them.	✔️	✔️	🟡
New heat mechanics	Updated mechanics for how various devices, ship weapons and thrusters generate heat and become overheated. All devices can transfer heat to radiators at a very limited rate and have a small heat storage. New heat sinks can be used for collecting all the heat from other devices and for faster transferring to radiators.	✔️	🟡	🟡
Recycler Tool	Equippable tool (previously known as the Salvage Tool) that can turn any object into nuggets of ore, which can then be salvaged into crates. Makes it effortless to make the most of e.g. abandoned ships while exploring the universe.	✔️	✔️	🟡

Gallery



Videos

Purchase Starbase Early Access now on Steam!

 

[Greebo]

Hi I'm NOT Kenetor

 

[Drstarke]

cant wait to have my own personal hangar

 

[MajGenRelativity]

These all look like some key features that I'm really looking forward to

 

[Cavilier210]

I am surprised it's been 30 minutes and there's no Kenetor post!

 

[fr4me01]

.

 

[Senkii]

Ooh, is that a station editor I see?

 

[Zarenno]

I cant wait until "New heat mechanics" description involves using that dissipated heat in a tracking system aboard ships. Since, it is still nigh impossible to find someone in space organically.

Here is to hoping its sometime soon. The game is so shallow with pvp only reliably seen around the arma station and moon gate.

 

[SubaruSama]

I cant wait until "New heat mechanics" description involves using that dissipated heat in a tracking system aboard ships. Since, it is still nigh impossible to find someone in space organically.

me: making a full solar ship to avoid having to deal with getting located by others^^

 

[kiiyo]

Someone call Kenetor this is seriously worrying

 

[DivineEvil]

Ongoing progress with the Hangar Halls is certainly appreciated. Stations badly needs them.

Will it be possible to use a Recycler Tool on your owned station's modules to reclaim used materials? I have a station that I want to resign and move to another location, but it already have a massive Factory Hall that I'd hate to abandon, so I hesitate...

 

[Drstarke]

Ongoing progress with the Hangar Halls is certainly appreciated. Stations badly needs them.

Will it be possible to use a Recycler Tool on your owned station's modules to reclaim used materials? I have a station that I want to resign and move to another location, but it already have a massive Factory Hall that I'd hate to abandon, so I hesitate...

i just remove all the factory hall parts and move them in a lock frame ship

 

[MoonSet416]

"All devices can transfer heat to radiators at a very limited rate and have a small heat storage. "
Why is this part necessary? The heatsinks will work just fine without you deliberately ruining old designs and existing ships that players have already spent hundreds of hours on.
I'm all for clearer and more readable heat mechanics, but it doesn't have to come at any cost at all. Just add a heat storage device (like you are doing now), more datafields to show where and how much heat is flowing, and that's it. If anything an artificial limit on heat transfer rate only complicates things and makes the heat system less readable.

 

[MAXD]

over 99% of ships need to be update according to the new heat
GOOD JOB

 

[ZombieMouse]

Adding new parts to ship designs is to be expected. They cannot design the game around existing ship designs. It is up to us to update designs around the game as it develops.

There is a lot of interesting stuff in these notes. The ability to update blueprints for existing ships will make updating existing ships much easier, as they will not have to necessarily be deconstructed and rebuilt from ship designer blueprint.

Also, the combination of updating blueprints with ship insurance could massively reduce the costs and risks for players who worried about leaving the safe zone with a ships that took months to make.

 

[Kenetor]

Someone call Kenetor this is seriously worrying

can you not imagine Starbase without me? I'm not that important lol

 

[kiiyo]

can you not imagine Starbase without me? I'm not that important lol

:^) but your vids are fun

 

[Kenetor]

:^) but your vids are fun

given the clear downward trend of the weekly vids, you will be the only one watching before long

 

[ZombieMouse]

Ship cargo crate access - When a ship has cargo crates bolted to it, only those with access to the ship can open them inside Safe Zones. This affects company ships, as well. However, if the ship is outside a Safe Zone, anyone can open them.

If you guys are doing permissions for crates, is it possible to also add permissions for chairs sometime in the near future? I know this is something a lot of players would really, really like.

 

[MoonSet416]

Adding new parts to ship designs is to be expected. They cannot design the game around existing ship designs. It is up to us to update designs around the game as it develops.

There is a lot of interesting stuff in these notes. The ability to update blueprints for existing ships will make updating existing ships much easier, as they will not have to necessarily be deconstructed and rebuilt from ship designer blueprint.

Also, the combination of updating blueprints with ship insurance could massively reduce the costs and risks for players who worried about leaving the safe zone with a ships that took months to make.

The problem here is that the new mechanics didn't have to mess with the existing designs. Remove the entire sentence about heat transfer rate and the new heat sinks will still work as heat storage devices, which is exactly what the name heat sink means. If anything, the current description means that heat sinks not only store heat but also unlock cooling rate potential by allowing more heat to be transferred. Even from a pure gameplay design perspective why would anyone couple things like this?

"They cannot design the game around existing ship designs." Except they can, all they need to do is to not change the existing parts and keep adding new ones with different functions. You want more heat capacitance? Sure, get heat sinks. But those who don't need more heat capacitance aren't forced to add new parts just to get the same cooling as before.