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- Mar 7, 2022
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- 40
In Article 2, we talked about designing ships. While building ships by hand or through Easy Build Mode grants you a ship, designing a ship through the Spaceship Design Workshop (SSC) only gives you the design. Right now, the only way to get a ship from that is to click “Buy custom spaceship” after optionally crafting some or all of the components for the spaceship. However, I argue that the details of this should change.
One Click to Print from the SSC detracts from game opportunities because it obviates the need for any sort of infrastructure for building ships. A brand new player could be handed enough credits and resources to build the Ultimate Ship ™ and build it immediately after downloading the game and start flying it. It also makes it impossible to escape from using credits to build ships. This makes sense for Origin stations, but when I use an SSC at my personal station and it charges me credits, who am I paying? I think that SSC behavior should be split depending on if you’re at a developer station (Origin, Arma, Markka, etc.) or a company/private station.
When at Developer stations, the current behavior should be kept, but with some changes. Developer stations should have limitations on the type and quantity of parts that could be printed from the SSC, and through this way FB can encourage players to start setting up their own infrastructure or working together with friends/company members to accomplish ship designs. If the SSC at Developer stations was unchanged in behavior but with limited parts, it could provide an easy point of entry for new players to learn how the designer works and to test out smaller ships. However, if they want to use T2 components or build bigger ships, then they have to invest in the infrastructure to fabricate them.
At Player stations (privately or corporately owned), the SSC can be “fully unlocked” as long as the requisite infrastructure is in place. As opposed to tying part crafting limitations to a player research tree, it could be tied to a station research tree. This also opens it up nicely to meshing with resource generation and processing on the station. A good example is the rail cannon barrel, which requires Exutium. Right now, Exutium can only be crafted by hand, but a station could instead be equipped with an Alloy Forge module that can process alloys in much larger quantities. If you don’t have this Alloy Forge module on your station, then your station’s SSC can’t print parts that require alloys, and you can’t build your shiny new rail cannon fighter.
Player stations could also have variable credit costs to use the SSC, and the credits would go to the owner of the station as opposed to disappearing into the void like they do now. This way, players and corporations can open up access to their stations with all the bells and whistles that can print everything, and can charge a fee for this access. They could offer discounts to company members or friends, and see who is paying how much. If you own your own station with the requisite infrastructure, you could print your ships for only the cost of resources without having to pay a single credit.
These changes maintain a low bar for entry to the SSC experience, but offer great rewards to players and companies willing to invest large quantities of resources into automated foundries of great scale. Expanding the infrastructure on your station opens up new parts and faster ship production. Depending on the graphical impact, FrozenByte could even have visible conveyor belts and machinery to create the same feel as Factorio or the droid factories on Geonosis.
Now that we’ve discussed the beginning of a ship’s life, it’s only fair that we discuss the end. Right now, when a ship is no longer used or usable, the only options are to either abandon it somewhere, disassemble the parts by hand and reuse them, or salvage the parts by hand and use the resultant ore. Even with the current limitations, salvaging offers a gameplay experience that appeals to many, and I think that this appeal should be preserved despite the new options. Therefore, I think that there should be three main “tiers” of salvaging: hand, ship, and station.
Hand Salvaging will remain largely the same as it is now, with players deconstructing or salvaging ships with hand tools. A minor quality of life and balancing change that could be made is that the hand tool could have its efficiency decreased but its speed increased. This makes it easier to salvage ships, but incentivizes using the other methods for the really optimal return. The current recycler tool returns about 75-80% of the ore originally put into a part. I suggest reducing this to around a 50% return, but decreasing the time to process to about one half to two thirds the current value.
Ship Salvaging will depend on the existing mining lasers and a new part(s) to collect and process ship chunks. The new part, with a working title of Recycler Furnace, would offer about a 60% return on the ores originally put into a part, and could process parts faster than manually using the Recycler Tool on them. However, it can only process so many parts at once. You’d have to use Mining Lasers, explosives, hand tools, or other means to slice up or deconstruct a ship into pieces small enough for the Recycler Furnace to suck them in and consume them. This way, you could have salvage ships that could fly around battlefields or moon graveyards, slice up wrecks with their mining lasers, and then convert them into ore to be placed in onboard cargo crates.
The final method is Station Salvaging. There would be two new modules, with the first possibly called the Station Recycler Furnace, and it would be able to process entire ships at once. It could work similarly to the Asteroid drop points at Origin stations where ships with Cargo Lock Frames can drop off asteroids. Instead of moving asteroids, ships with tow beams could drag wrecks into a certain (highlighted) field above the Station Recycler Furnace, and it would automatically delete the wreck and begin processing it into ore. Due to the additional flexibility of stations, it could have various tiers or submodules to increase speed or efficiency. Its efficiency would depend on what exactly was deposited in it, which is determined by how many materials is in a part. If a part is made of just one material, e.g. a plate made of bastium, it could reach 95% efficiency. If a part has a large number of materials, e.g. a MFC, efficiency would go down to about 70%. This creates a balancing act between maximum speed and maximum efficiency.
The second module for Station Salvaging would possibly be named the Ship Disassembler. This is a relatively simple module where if any parts are moved in its field of effect, it steadily removes bolts and weld cubes from those parts. This helps break down ships to prepare for salvaging by the Station Recycler Furnace or reusing the parts directly.
By examining the complete lifecycle of a ship, it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunities to expand on the game and introduce new loops and resource sinks. It also encourages people to move beyond the Origin stations and work on their own infrastructure and offer services to other people. Lastly, it promotes recycling and new gameplay opportunities. Those recycling ships could be tasty targets for pirates. After all, someone did just go to all that trouble of converting those dead ships back into ore ready for you to use…
One Click to Print from the SSC detracts from game opportunities because it obviates the need for any sort of infrastructure for building ships. A brand new player could be handed enough credits and resources to build the Ultimate Ship ™ and build it immediately after downloading the game and start flying it. It also makes it impossible to escape from using credits to build ships. This makes sense for Origin stations, but when I use an SSC at my personal station and it charges me credits, who am I paying? I think that SSC behavior should be split depending on if you’re at a developer station (Origin, Arma, Markka, etc.) or a company/private station.
When at Developer stations, the current behavior should be kept, but with some changes. Developer stations should have limitations on the type and quantity of parts that could be printed from the SSC, and through this way FB can encourage players to start setting up their own infrastructure or working together with friends/company members to accomplish ship designs. If the SSC at Developer stations was unchanged in behavior but with limited parts, it could provide an easy point of entry for new players to learn how the designer works and to test out smaller ships. However, if they want to use T2 components or build bigger ships, then they have to invest in the infrastructure to fabricate them.
At Player stations (privately or corporately owned), the SSC can be “fully unlocked” as long as the requisite infrastructure is in place. As opposed to tying part crafting limitations to a player research tree, it could be tied to a station research tree. This also opens it up nicely to meshing with resource generation and processing on the station. A good example is the rail cannon barrel, which requires Exutium. Right now, Exutium can only be crafted by hand, but a station could instead be equipped with an Alloy Forge module that can process alloys in much larger quantities. If you don’t have this Alloy Forge module on your station, then your station’s SSC can’t print parts that require alloys, and you can’t build your shiny new rail cannon fighter.
Player stations could also have variable credit costs to use the SSC, and the credits would go to the owner of the station as opposed to disappearing into the void like they do now. This way, players and corporations can open up access to their stations with all the bells and whistles that can print everything, and can charge a fee for this access. They could offer discounts to company members or friends, and see who is paying how much. If you own your own station with the requisite infrastructure, you could print your ships for only the cost of resources without having to pay a single credit.
These changes maintain a low bar for entry to the SSC experience, but offer great rewards to players and companies willing to invest large quantities of resources into automated foundries of great scale. Expanding the infrastructure on your station opens up new parts and faster ship production. Depending on the graphical impact, FrozenByte could even have visible conveyor belts and machinery to create the same feel as Factorio or the droid factories on Geonosis.
Now that we’ve discussed the beginning of a ship’s life, it’s only fair that we discuss the end. Right now, when a ship is no longer used or usable, the only options are to either abandon it somewhere, disassemble the parts by hand and reuse them, or salvage the parts by hand and use the resultant ore. Even with the current limitations, salvaging offers a gameplay experience that appeals to many, and I think that this appeal should be preserved despite the new options. Therefore, I think that there should be three main “tiers” of salvaging: hand, ship, and station.
Hand Salvaging will remain largely the same as it is now, with players deconstructing or salvaging ships with hand tools. A minor quality of life and balancing change that could be made is that the hand tool could have its efficiency decreased but its speed increased. This makes it easier to salvage ships, but incentivizes using the other methods for the really optimal return. The current recycler tool returns about 75-80% of the ore originally put into a part. I suggest reducing this to around a 50% return, but decreasing the time to process to about one half to two thirds the current value.
Ship Salvaging will depend on the existing mining lasers and a new part(s) to collect and process ship chunks. The new part, with a working title of Recycler Furnace, would offer about a 60% return on the ores originally put into a part, and could process parts faster than manually using the Recycler Tool on them. However, it can only process so many parts at once. You’d have to use Mining Lasers, explosives, hand tools, or other means to slice up or deconstruct a ship into pieces small enough for the Recycler Furnace to suck them in and consume them. This way, you could have salvage ships that could fly around battlefields or moon graveyards, slice up wrecks with their mining lasers, and then convert them into ore to be placed in onboard cargo crates.
The final method is Station Salvaging. There would be two new modules, with the first possibly called the Station Recycler Furnace, and it would be able to process entire ships at once. It could work similarly to the Asteroid drop points at Origin stations where ships with Cargo Lock Frames can drop off asteroids. Instead of moving asteroids, ships with tow beams could drag wrecks into a certain (highlighted) field above the Station Recycler Furnace, and it would automatically delete the wreck and begin processing it into ore. Due to the additional flexibility of stations, it could have various tiers or submodules to increase speed or efficiency. Its efficiency would depend on what exactly was deposited in it, which is determined by how many materials is in a part. If a part is made of just one material, e.g. a plate made of bastium, it could reach 95% efficiency. If a part has a large number of materials, e.g. a MFC, efficiency would go down to about 70%. This creates a balancing act between maximum speed and maximum efficiency.
The second module for Station Salvaging would possibly be named the Ship Disassembler. This is a relatively simple module where if any parts are moved in its field of effect, it steadily removes bolts and weld cubes from those parts. This helps break down ships to prepare for salvaging by the Station Recycler Furnace or reusing the parts directly.
By examining the complete lifecycle of a ship, it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunities to expand on the game and introduce new loops and resource sinks. It also encourages people to move beyond the Origin stations and work on their own infrastructure and offer services to other people. Lastly, it promotes recycling and new gameplay opportunities. Those recycling ships could be tasty targets for pirates. After all, someone did just go to all that trouble of converting those dead ships back into ore ready for you to use…