Incorporating an in-game Ship design element into the real-time MMO, and abolishing a separate Creative mode

[Morrgard]

Yeah that's kind of how I envisioned it too, give it slightly tron-esque holographic stuff around the edges. Though I think you should be given the option to make it a 'private' design so that rivals can't scope out exactly where you're putting your generator.

Yea exactly! I had envisioned it like faction access, a friend (selected access) or private.

So if you wanted to you could choose who can and can't interfere with your designs, or if they can just view it or not. It sounds like the most promising thing for me right now, it would be really cool to build these type of design dome rooms into stations ;P

 

[Eranok]

I think in the end it all comes down to presentation. As long as singleplayer is presented as the 'lesser' mode, then there won't be a huge player siphon away from the online experience. Plus, it allows you to advertise the game to a singleplayer market as well as the multiplayer market. You draw in an audience that wasn't there before, and potentially you bring them into the online experience to the betterment of the whole community.

On the identity part, I would totally agree with you if the game was well established, with a nice backlog of steam reviews and a strong identity, then expanding playerbase with alternative gameplays has a cost that can be mitigated. However, for an EA game, I think simplicity and a complete focus on what the game does best has the better outcome. There are plenty of server-based or singleplayer competitors. SB shines specifically on the large-scale MMO part.

If it was only for me, Everything would be online. That the player wants to prepare a ship design or learn the game with no PvP risk is then a matter of game balance more than game design

 

[Jetthetank]

In a way this is what I responded with just above, could be something like that if you had it integrated. But again I think it would be nice like the way me and Frey mentioned. Just a tiny world where you and a few friends can test things, a testing area rather than a singleplayer world

Oof, message out of line, I mean like not a seperate world, but maybe some sort of realtime ingame design tool.

 

[Morrgard]

complete focus on what the game does best has the better outcome. There are plenty of server-based or singleplayer competitors. SB shines specifically on the large-scale MMO part.

This I definitely agree with. But I still think there should be that testing bit, but it should come later. But I did grow fond of my dome like editor station part, that would be really cool to have for the multiplayer

 

[Morrgard]

Oof, message out of line, I mean like not a seperate world, but maybe some sort of realtime ingame design tool.

Yea the dome idea I had mentioned was for the multiplayer world as a design room so to speak, where you and others can look at a blueprint in the center of the room that you kinda zoom onto and build on the miniature, but for you being the builder(s) you would see it like you were there building it, and your actual character would be left stationary as you do.

 

[Eranok]

This I definitely agree with. But I still think there should be that testing bit, but it should come later. But I did grow fond of my dome like editor station part, that would be really cool to have for the multiplayer

The dome idea is excellent, Someone interested in your design idea could ask you stuff, or crew up with you. Or maybe an enemy could secretly spy on your next battleship model

 

[Jetthetank]

And maybe it wouldnt have to be completely physical, considering we are just consciousness controlling an exoskeleton from somewhere else, it could be a network station you "plug into" to create those simulations.

 

[Morrgard]

The dome idea is excellent, Someone interested in your design idea could ask you stuff, or crew up with you. Or maybe an enemy could secretly spy on your next battleship model

Yea! I think that would be really cool. But hopefully, you protect your station well enough not to be spied on!

I do like the idea of having a room where people can come together and work on a design or multiple in a larger dome-like room where blueprints show up in the center bits as miniature holograms. Your character standing by a control panel overlooking the blueprint as you keep on building like you're floating around it and stuff.

 

[Atreties]

That game was Ark. A game which also features a singleplayer gamemode that mostly exists for testing stuff out (as it has dev commands and stuff).

One thing to keep in mind about this discussion is that Starbase is different than other Survival-Crafting-MMOish games like Ark or Rust

In those games, the amount of benefit that's able to be gained by offline basebuilding is tiny compared to a game like Starbase.

• They don't have multiple metal types or damage types
• They don't have a substantial Z axis
• Building is largely based on huge triangles and squares
• They don't have an in-game programming language system for automation
• They don't have complex power distrubution systems
• The bases don't move or have any of the complex requirements of inertial force put on them
• Angles of attack are much more predictable due to lack of voxel tech
• All players involved are largely grounded to a 2d plane

In those games, the portion of total gameplay dedicated to creative research, 'science', testing is fairly small for the average player. In starbase, a huge amount of your time will be dedicated to these tasks. Ship design will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can test a new design idea. YOLOL tweaking and expansion will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can make more chips.

If you put all of this as available to do offline with infinite resources, you take an absolutely enormous chunk of the gameplay potential out of the shared, alive world, and put it into a sterile, empty, meaningless void.

Maybe eventually it will make sense to have an offline creative mode for the game once community-created resources and knowledgebases are super fleshed out, but that time will not be anywhere near EA launch. That would cause serious damage to the game's health.

 

[Morrgard]

One thing to keep in mind about this discussion is that Starbase is different than other Survival-Crafting-MMOish games like Ark or Rust

In those games, the amount of benefit that's able to be gained by offline basebuilding is tiny compared to a game like Starbase.

• They don't have multiple metal types or damage types
• They don't have a substantial Z axis
• Building is largely based on huge triangles and squares
• They don't have an in-game programming language system for automation
• They don't have complex power distrubution systems
• The bases don't move or have any of the complex requirements of inertial force put on them
• Angles of attack are much more predictable due to lack of voxel tech
• All players involved are largely grounded to a 2d plane

In those games, the portion of total gameplay dedicated to creative research, 'science', testing is fairly small for the average player. In starbase, a huge amount of your time will be dedicated to these tasks. Ship design will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can test a new design idea. YOLOL tweaking and expansion will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can make more chips.

If you put all of this as available to do offline with infinite resources, you take an absolutely enormous chunk of the gameplay potential out of the shared, alive world, and put it into a sterile, empty, meaningless void.

Maybe eventually it will make sense to have an offline creative mode for the game once community-created resources and knowledgebases are super fleshed out, but that time will not be anywhere near EA launch. That would cause serious damage to the game's health.

I'm pretty sure they are not really adequate to compare in such ways. Whilst I see your point I believe it's better to learn from the side from those games did or did not do to become successful or not. But I dont think the comparisons should be so in-depth whilst Starbase is taking things further and in a more complex manner than all of these games did.

That aside, I don't think the majority of the player base would still spend that much time on doing this as you make it seem like, many times you want to be in the multiplayer world just to hang out with the people there, inspect a station, fly your ships, explore, patrol or seek out a fight so you can test your combat capabilities with your ship. There's a lot more to it than just designing your ship, and not everyone will even be wanting to make one, they just want to be a part of the grander play. Some want to be merchants and just run a store, some want to be a miner and just hop on a mining vessel not necessarily built by them and just cruise off and chop some asteroids up with a pickaxe.

As for YOLOL and such, I'm hoping all of these are things you can blueprint and patent so to speak so that all transactions for blueprints and blueprint rights exist in the game. So each ship would have some sort of barcode where if you built it you own it unless you sell the rights to someone else for instance, and you could sell different rights, building rights or distribution rights or ownership rights.

That went a bit off the topic but it sticks to my point, that there are a lot of things to do that arent related directly to the designing of your ships. And even so to tackle that you could just do what I had suggested earlier in the thread with an in-game blueprint editor inside of a station part.

That way you get a nice little mini world to build inside like a blueprint editor whilst keeping all things in the main game still.

 

[DirtyBoyFrey]

One thing to keep in mind about this discussion is that Starbase is different than other Survival-Crafting-MMOish games like Ark or Rust

In those games, the amount of benefit that's able to be gained by offline basebuilding is tiny compared to a game like Starbase.

• They don't have multiple metal types or damage types
• They don't have a substantial Z axis
• Building is largely based on huge triangles and squares
• They don't have an in-game programming language system for automation
• They don't have complex power distrubution systems
• The bases don't move or have any of the complex requirements of inertial force put on them
• Angles of attack are much more predictable due to lack of voxel tech
• All players involved are largely grounded to a 2d plane

In those games, the portion of total gameplay dedicated to creative research, 'science', testing is fairly small for the average player. In starbase, a huge amount of your time will be dedicated to these tasks. Ship design will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can test a new design idea. YOLOL tweaking and expansion will be a constant task. You'll spend time gathering specifically so you can make more chips.

If you put all of this as available to do offline with infinite resources, you take an absolutely enormous chunk of the gameplay potential out of the shared, alive world, and put it into a sterile, empty, meaningless void.

Maybe eventually it will make sense to have an offline creative mode for the game once community-created resources and knowledgebases are super fleshed out, but that time will not be anywhere near EA launch. That would cause serious damage to the game's health.

Well, in a game like Ark, much of the complexity came from stuff like optimal base designs, optimal setups for leveling dinos and stuff, figuring out what the best path for blueprints/engrams were. No, Ark doesn't have programming or complicated power distribution, but those are just more features added. Ark still had complexity that many people messed around with in singleplayer to figure certain gameplay aspects out before heading online where the commitment is much higher.

And, again, I don't want players to have access to literally the entire game 'but singleplayer.' I stated a few posts back that ideally they would be given a very limited testing ground so that they could check the essentials of their ship's functionality and the bare minimum of combat capabilities, but not be able to do detailed material tests, since they could only fire at stationary targets with a set armor type and not actually be shot at themselves. The idea that Jet suggested about R&D stations ended up leading to a great compromise to all of this, which is to say a normally online testing bay on a station that other players could be a part of that has the option of allowing for offline play if desired.

And also, for YOLOL? Oh man, you better believe I'm going to be very sweaty offline messing around with that for the most part, because it is not exactly a shortform process that always allows for easy collaboration-- at least not how I work with code. Having to constantly adjust values online potentially dealing with slight latency and other players messing around with my tech would be frustrating when I just want to write the script.

 

[YakkoForever]

players will optimize the fun out of the game. I cannot emphasize this enough. if the most efficient way to design ships is to play offline then port them online then people will do it.

I like the compromise idea of a testing bay where you can make sure your ship can fly and that you can control it.

 

[Vexus]

And also, for YOLOL? Oh man, you better believe I'm going to be very sweaty offline messing around with that for the most part

Although lots of prototyping will be done offline, it's much more interesting when you're making slight changes to code on a live universe and people are walking by your ship seeing you tweaking the performance of gun turret rotation - because you can't test and see how it works anywhere else - and doing all sorts of little things to your ship. The scale of interaction grows exponentially. Maybe you hit a hard problem and at that moment some random person asks you if you need help since they know a thing or two about YOLOL. If you're just offline mode figuring it all out, we lose all your value in the main universe during that time, and we'd love to just have you in game doing all these same things, for the chance interactions that can occur.

Since YOLOL is run on your client machine, there won't be any lag, and you won't have any lag in messing with your ship - everything will feel as instant as being offline, even if people from some far away country are walking by.

 

[Morrgard]

Although lots of prototyping will be done offline, it's much more interesting when you're making slight changes to code on a live universe and people are walking by your ship seeing you tweaking the performance of gun turret rotation and doing all sorts of little things to your ship. The scale of interaction grows exponentially. Maybe you hit a hard problem and at that moment some random person asks you if you need help since they know a thing or two about YOLOL. If you're just offline mode figuring it all out, we lose all your value in the main universe during that time, and we'd love to just have you in game doing all these same things, for the chance interactions that can occur.

Since YOLOL is run on your client machine, there won't be any lag, and you won't have any lag in messing with your ship - everything will feel as instant as being offline, even if people from some far away country are walking by.

I mean it would be pretty cool seeing a team of robots tweaking a constructed ship in a hangar, fixing YOLOL maybe seeing some welding flares that's always a nice addition, although I don't think we will have that, but seeing a team of robots just going about on the ship seeing turrets moving as you mentioned, that would be really cool indeed. Add more dynamic to it as well.

As long as you have a place to create your ship though so that you can have your own blueprint library. Again like I mentioned in previous posts

 

[Eranok]

EA starting areas might turn into true cities blossoming with life

 

[Nolfinkol]

I think regardless of a sandbox or not, people are going to spend a lot of time offline or avoiding player interaction in the MMO if they wanna learn to build ships primarily.

Without a sandbox mode to quickly test out ideas before committing to them with time, energy, and resources, a player's options are:

1. Seek alternatives to learning shipbuilding offline (YouTube and community made tutorials) ruining the time they could be in-game
2. Rent a vacant lot of space inside a station and spend a lot of their game time prototyping while the world beyond the station is going on (i.e. a lot less social interaction for longer periods of time) unless they have factions to build ships with
3. Avoid putting in the effort of building ships altogether due to high time requirements vs small reward of having a functioning ship and lose out on a fun aspect of the game

The biggest thing a sandbox mode does is speed up the learning process and make shipbuilding a lot more engaging because it's hands-on without consequences. You can then take that knowledge and share it with others in the MMO which fosters a stronger community.

Sidenote: A sandbox mode also helps the shipbuilding economy for those who have all sorts of ideas for ships of every shape and size but don't want to waste hours of their life painstakingly testing out their many ideas before finally being able to sell a single blueprint to someone.

TL;DR:
No sandbox = Slow, tedious in-game grind / out-of-game learning just to learn to build a single functioning ship.
Sandbox = Faster, engaging in-game learning that can lead to players getting into the MMO sooner and make the ship economy boom.

 

[Nolfinkol]

if they're teleporting around, testing the scale, testing the edges of the game world and so on... they're not spending that time in the main universe. They're not impacting some other player. They're not thinking of "how do I get to the moon" as a problem that needs solving. They just teleport there.

I don't believe the devs would ever allow a sandbox mode to give players the ability to warp around the entire playable area at will. The FAQ strictly says in sandbox mode you can't "progress". Their description hints that they intend to make the mode unlike an actual game to play and is very limited in what you can do.

By that description alone I'm confident people won't be spending all of their time in sandbox mode because half the fun is building but the other half is the online interaction.

 

[Kenetor]

Oof, message out of line, I mean like not a seperate world, but maybe some sort of realtime ingame design tool.

if they could get it in game without having to do sandbox mode i would approve, we also need to know more of scrapping an old ship, how fast can that be, how easy is it to remodel a blueprint as well.
Lots of unknowns im looking forward to learning about.

 

[YakkoForever]

I would add to this discussion the concept that players should not be designing their very first ship they fly. most players should start by building/buying a generic ship. by the time a player starts to design and build their own ships they should know all the basic parts a ship need to work. they way the system works in game as long as you have the basics any ship will fly. the flight computer make almost anything fly so there is no real worry about new players sinking a bunch of resource and getting something that cannot fly. People who are designing there first ship might not make something good.

people will start by buying a baseline ship, then they will modify it and once they understand how it works, then they will build their own.

 

[Nolfinkol]

I want to add that if there was a very limited sandbox mode strictly for building ships and possibly testing them (maybe that would be too much for those who are worried it'd keep people out of the MMO), maybe it'd be beneficial for everyone if such a mode existed before the game released so that way people could get their builder fix on and have ships ready for when the game does come out and they can get to work immediately on resource gathering to put into their blueprints.

You both solve the problem of people spending less time in-game because they've spent all the time before the game was even playable learning shipbuilding and you immediately have a huge incentive to dive into the world because those ships are going to need lots of resources thus everyone has similar goals starting out and a big community race starts to get their ships made.

It sounds like a pre-game sandbox mode won't be possible though since it was mentioned to be post-EA. Maybe some limited part assembler mode that doesn't even allow testing of physics?