- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
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- 40
Last time, we talked about the balance between focusing on solo and cooperative players in Starbase. In this article, I’ll be focusing on one of the biggest selling points of Starbase, the ship design. With the Ship Design Workshop (SSC) as its crown jewel, ship design in Starbase is highly detailed and offers more variety than almost any other spaceship game out there. I feel that Frozenbyte should recognize this value and work to enhance it even further. Here are some ideas that I feel could enhance ship design in Starbase.
None of these changes address the current shipbuilding experience with Easy Build Mode though, and that could use a bit of a facelift. EBM suffers from the same disadvantages that “fully manual” building does versus the SSC and EBM ships cannot compete against SSC designed ships in terms of optimization due to the limitation of modules. This is why I think that EBM should be focused more around introducing new players to the concepts behind shipbuilding. With EBM, it’s theoretically easy to stick a few modules together to build a working ship and fly it around. If EBM was combined with an improved tutorial system, it could be a viable way to introduce players to what parts are necessary for a working ship and guide them to the SSC if they want to explore shipbuilding further.
With the three methods of building ships present in game, Frozenbyte has the opportunity to enhance and tune all three to mutually support each other and enable players to experiment. Rather than removing one of the modes or limiting designs further, each should be specialized to help players get introduced to one of the most prominent and powerful aspects of the game. This way, new players can learn more about how to design a ship or what to look for in designs made by others.
- Improved angle support: Right now, the auto-snapping system only works on 15 degree increments. If you want to place a beam with a 10 degree slope, nothing will snap to it properly when dragged up against it in the SSC. Adjusting this behavior will allow for easier design of ships with smoother slopes.
- Plate welding/combining: Larger plates offer a greater variety of attachment plates for bolts and a greater HP value for absorbing incoming projectiles. However, larger plates obviously cannot fit everywhere that smaller plates can. If it was possible to weld or combine adjacent plates with each other to have the game treat them as an irregularly shaped larger plate, this would increase the variety of options for ship designs in and out of combat. This way, smaller plates could be used to fill in gaps in the design without finding or making something to attach them to. In order to prevent people from welding their entire exterior together, a maximum size for welding could be specified or maximum angle difference could be specified so that plates must be aligned either completely or within a specified angle.
- World-Fixed Rotation Angles: Barkhan mentioned this suggestion and I agree with it. Currently, x, y, and z rotations are based on the part’s rotational axes and these can change based on how the part is rotated. However, these axes are not exposed to the player and can easily lead to unwanted behavior if the player isn’t aware of them. If the rotation buttons were changed to rotate parts around the world’s rotation angles instead of the part’s, they would be completely consistent and easy to understand.
- Hiding part(s): The ability to select a part or group of parts, and then hiding them. Right now, only entire types of parts can be hidden, but being able to hide just one or a few parts would add a lot of utility for working in cramped corners of ship designs where you still want to be able to see some parts of the same type that you want hidden.
- Mirror Mode: Suggested by Arkhonus, PinkGoo, and just about every ship designer that I’ve spoken with, the ability to mirror part placement and movement around a central axis would be nice to aid in creating symmetrical designs.
- Custom Autobolt: Suggested by PinkGoo, this would allow you to select a collection of parts and have autobolt bolt only them together. This way, bolts would only go where you want them to go, as opposed to right now where it sometimes puts bolts anywhere they can go as opposed to just through beams.
- Connectivity Overlay: Suggested by Arkhonus, this would add an overlay similar to “Show Detached Objects” but would target parts that support a cable or pipe connection but do not have one.
- Tier Upgrade/Downgrade: Suggested by Arkhonus, this would be a tool to upgrade or downgrade tiered parts “in place”. This way, Tier 2 Thruster parts could be replaced with Tier 1 or 3 parts without having to disassemble everything, bolt the new part into place, rename device fields, etc.
None of these changes address the current shipbuilding experience with Easy Build Mode though, and that could use a bit of a facelift. EBM suffers from the same disadvantages that “fully manual” building does versus the SSC and EBM ships cannot compete against SSC designed ships in terms of optimization due to the limitation of modules. This is why I think that EBM should be focused more around introducing new players to the concepts behind shipbuilding. With EBM, it’s theoretically easy to stick a few modules together to build a working ship and fly it around. If EBM was combined with an improved tutorial system, it could be a viable way to introduce players to what parts are necessary for a working ship and guide them to the SSC if they want to explore shipbuilding further.
With the three methods of building ships present in game, Frozenbyte has the opportunity to enhance and tune all three to mutually support each other and enable players to experiment. Rather than removing one of the modes or limiting designs further, each should be specialized to help players get introduced to one of the most prominent and powerful aspects of the game. This way, new players can learn more about how to design a ship or what to look for in designs made by others.