perhaps to pace players from jumping into the deep end? I know if even I didn't have a grindy exp system I would still want to drip feed features to players over time so they understand things first and don't get confused. This comes from someone who likes overly complicated JRPG combat systems. I know my greatest fear is just being dumped into a game with no learning and guidance. I usually just pass on games that do things this way.
Research + Crafting Progression Values WAY too high
- Thread starter Atreties
- Start date
Personally I think that they could tune the grind down a little bit. So I think that if they want to encourage people to specialise, they should lock off sections of the tree if others are unlocked, meaning you will have to go to other people if you want higher tier stuff that you haven't specialised in.
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- Aug 1, 2021
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Your first sentence, fully agree. It's worked out great. I have about 4 or 5 friends playing and 3 of us just picked one tree. We've been able to EASILY progress. Even solo, it's not bad at all. You can have all the first tier ship building parts in 2 hours.
As far as locking it behind research, I don't agree with your comment. The game has very little progression of any kind, as is. It needed something. Every game I've ever played where it's just, make your thing, go fight, the end, fails quite quickly. This allows for people to dedicate themselves to research and crafting, which is a great investment that keeps people coming back. Obviously it needs to be tweaked and fleshed out but I'm 100% for a tiered research mechanic.
As far as locking it behind research, I don't agree with your comment. The game has very little progression of any kind, as is. It needed something. Every game I've ever played where it's just, make your thing, go fight, the end, fails quite quickly. This allows for people to dedicate themselves to research and crafting, which is a great investment that keeps people coming back. Obviously it needs to be tweaked and fleshed out but I'm 100% for a tiered research mechanic.
First, I'd like to offer my apology for poor balance with the research tree. We have now made one major balancing and a few minor fixes, and next update will introduce 3x faster crafting speed as well. And we definitely are not done, there will be smaller and larger balances and changes when needed.
It's also now clear to me that I made assumptions which did not work out, such as people using trading or ssc instead of going for completionist route. Also two massive bugs contributed to the initial failure of the research tree: the entire system was designed to work around players doing max size easy build ship (which is/was impossible with the bugs), and during that process establishing their own station. While station works, the factory halls did not.
The "easy" research plan was that players would establish station in the safe zone border, inside asteroid belt, and thus speed up the hauling process by 99,99%. Then with working factories they could produce not just the station parts (which give about 800 red points per 1 stack of valkite), but also all kinds of machinery which they could use to build asteroid mining factory, which would then again speed up the research process by automation.
But as you can see, that plan failed, and left us with a system which for many seems to be brute-force grind. However, I'd like to say that even my first plan didn't work out, some players have been using player stations in a clever way and have managed to reduce the grind a lot in a solo play. Also now when economy has a lot of ores in it, AH sure is one way to ease the grind.
Factory halls is getting soon one fix, which would hopefully open up the mess, and we keep fixing all other issues as well as balancing research & crafting. Eventually new features will also add depth to the system, which currently is very barebones. Automation is still our end goal with majority of Starbase features, and this is not exception to that.
It's also now clear to me that I made assumptions which did not work out, such as people using trading or ssc instead of going for completionist route. Also two massive bugs contributed to the initial failure of the research tree: the entire system was designed to work around players doing max size easy build ship (which is/was impossible with the bugs), and during that process establishing their own station. While station works, the factory halls did not.
The "easy" research plan was that players would establish station in the safe zone border, inside asteroid belt, and thus speed up the hauling process by 99,99%. Then with working factories they could produce not just the station parts (which give about 800 red points per 1 stack of valkite), but also all kinds of machinery which they could use to build asteroid mining factory, which would then again speed up the research process by automation.
But as you can see, that plan failed, and left us with a system which for many seems to be brute-force grind. However, I'd like to say that even my first plan didn't work out, some players have been using player stations in a clever way and have managed to reduce the grind a lot in a solo play. Also now when economy has a lot of ores in it, AH sure is one way to ease the grind.
Factory halls is getting soon one fix, which would hopefully open up the mess, and we keep fixing all other issues as well as balancing research & crafting. Eventually new features will also add depth to the system, which currently is very barebones. Automation is still our end goal with majority of Starbase features, and this is not exception to that.
Really informative and interesting post, thank you for taking the time given how intensely busy everything must be at the moment.
Even when design decisions don't go as planned it's really great to hear about them and what the original intentions/aims were. As one of my friend's mentioned regarding this post, "This is a top quality to have in a development team"
Below are a few thoughts on where the crafting system could go, based on what you're saying.
It currently forces players down routes they would not otherwise choose. So they are making hundreds of an item they will never use, nor other players will ever use. Furthermore, players have to choose between building cool stuff or building ships with their ore, or using it to build items they don't need but advance "research". I'm not sure this is a happy choice.
Some people are leaving their computers on overnight to handle crafting queues, or making "alt" accounts. Hopefully the change you mentioned will fix this, but also allowing manufacturing/research to continue while players are offline?
The actual benefits of research are very limited; once a handful of players have the research all the parts are available on the auction house and rapidly drop in price. Having the research allows you to build them out in space, but currently the only area to build ships from blueprints is the origin stations. Until players can actually manufacture ships from their own stations, ALL parts industry will by necessity happen at the origin stations.
As an additional complication, moving parts is much harder than moving ore. If you manufacture parts out in a player station they need to be transported to an origin station to be used in a ship build, or to be easily sold to other players.
So maybe two priority changes might be the offline industry, and then allowing players to build & spawn/despawn ships out at their own stations?
So rather than individually crafting the individual parts, they could click to craft an entire blueprint of parts for a ship. If they had all the necessary ore and research the station would start producing the parts, giving the player research points as it trundled along?
Even when design decisions don't go as planned it's really great to hear about them and what the original intentions/aims were. As one of my friend's mentioned regarding this post, "This is a top quality to have in a development team"
Below are a few thoughts on where the crafting system could go, based on what you're saying.
It currently forces players down routes they would not otherwise choose. So they are making hundreds of an item they will never use, nor other players will ever use. Furthermore, players have to choose between building cool stuff or building ships with their ore, or using it to build items they don't need but advance "research". I'm not sure this is a happy choice.
Some people are leaving their computers on overnight to handle crafting queues, or making "alt" accounts. Hopefully the change you mentioned will fix this, but also allowing manufacturing/research to continue while players are offline?
The actual benefits of research are very limited; once a handful of players have the research all the parts are available on the auction house and rapidly drop in price. Having the research allows you to build them out in space, but currently the only area to build ships from blueprints is the origin stations. Until players can actually manufacture ships from their own stations, ALL parts industry will by necessity happen at the origin stations.
As an additional complication, moving parts is much harder than moving ore. If you manufacture parts out in a player station they need to be transported to an origin station to be used in a ship build, or to be easily sold to other players.
So maybe two priority changes might be the offline industry, and then allowing players to build & spawn/despawn ships out at their own stations?
So rather than individually crafting the individual parts, they could click to craft an entire blueprint of parts for a ship. If they had all the necessary ore and research the station would start producing the parts, giving the player research points as it trundled along?
All of these are great points, and in fact many of them just missed the launch unfortunately. I'll list some of the things which have effect on research once completed:
- Offline crafting: we have basic offline production tech done, but it still lacks polish and supporting features
- SSC and easy build hall at player stations: planned feature, some core tech done, but still needs a lot of work
- Moving parts: new inventory system and item crates are in final configuration/polish phase
- Ship storage at stations: hangars are going to double as a ssc/easy build hangars and as a storage for ships
- Joined
- May 21, 2020
- Messages
- 2
Lauri, these are great replies thank you. I still have some concerns reading through your reply. It sounds like you plan to make crafting easier, which is great, but it still doesn't fix that we are/will be crafting thousands of items that we don't need. Items which nobody else needs because they, too, are spam crafting them for research. It seems like you want people to naturally progress through the research tree, but no matter what you do to make crafting easier, the scale is still off by an order of magnitude from what natural progression would be.
You also said you want to see people using the auction house. Honestly why would I use the auction house for parts, when I'm just giving up research points in doing so? The only reason I can see to use the economy at all other than buying ore for crafting is to leapfrog ahead and get a better mining ship to ease the research grind.
The other reason that research right now feels so bad is that I'm not even using it half the time. I need it for station parts, and I need it for crafting ammo and fuel, but actual ships don't use research. Easy Build is such a mess and manual building so incredibly finnicky that every ship is just bought with resources and money.
To be perfectly honest a point-based research system seems very out of place and just add a double progression barrier: You need to go out and get the resources to craft stuff with, but then you also need to pass an arbitrary point number to be able to craft it. I play with a group of 10 or so people who love sandbox building games like this, and every one of them hates leveling systems like this and most of them I can't get to play any game that has it. Please reconsider and just reward people for their time immediately instead of adding a pointless obstacle at the start of the game that they need to pass before they start playing the game for real.
You also said you want to see people using the auction house. Honestly why would I use the auction house for parts, when I'm just giving up research points in doing so? The only reason I can see to use the economy at all other than buying ore for crafting is to leapfrog ahead and get a better mining ship to ease the research grind.
The other reason that research right now feels so bad is that I'm not even using it half the time. I need it for station parts, and I need it for crafting ammo and fuel, but actual ships don't use research. Easy Build is such a mess and manual building so incredibly finnicky that every ship is just bought with resources and money.
To be perfectly honest a point-based research system seems very out of place and just add a double progression barrier: You need to go out and get the resources to craft stuff with, but then you also need to pass an arbitrary point number to be able to craft it. I play with a group of 10 or so people who love sandbox building games like this, and every one of them hates leveling systems like this and most of them I can't get to play any game that has it. Please reconsider and just reward people for their time immediately instead of adding a pointless obstacle at the start of the game that they need to pass before they start playing the game for real.
Another really interesting reply, thank you. Looking forward to having those features once they're fully coded; I imagine there's a lot of different priorities at the moment!
Also agree with VexingRaven on the system being out of place.
One thought that struck me is that, compared to almost all the other systems in-game, the research system is very detached / abstract. To explain; almost all other systems are coherent within the world the game has created, even down to your character physically pulling controls to operate the ship.
When you die, you're reassembled. You get credits from the faction/origin stations for giving them ore and parts, you can they pay those same people to craft ships for you.
But why does crafting 428 chairs let you craft the next part of the tech tree? Where is this knowledge / right coming from? What does a cube or a shield even represent?
Surely the research system should be tied to the game world in some way.
Instead; why not let player buy the right/blueprint technology from a faction to craft an object (a BPO in EVE). This could be something physical you could insert into your ship, station, or factory.
That would also mean they can be traded or trade between other players.
You could then also have some technology restricted so you have to actually do things for the faction to make them like you. They need ore & parts too!
This could then add differentiation between stations and factions within the world. Different stations and factions would let you craft different items using their facilities. The starter stations could be far more lenient with crafting & giving access to lower tech items.
This gives far more verisimilitude to the crafting process. You buy, trade, or steal the technology that allows you to craft on your own terms. It's something you can hold and see within the game world.
Also agree with VexingRaven on the system being out of place.
One thought that struck me is that, compared to almost all the other systems in-game, the research system is very detached / abstract. To explain; almost all other systems are coherent within the world the game has created, even down to your character physically pulling controls to operate the ship.
When you die, you're reassembled. You get credits from the faction/origin stations for giving them ore and parts, you can they pay those same people to craft ships for you.
But why does crafting 428 chairs let you craft the next part of the tech tree? Where is this knowledge / right coming from? What does a cube or a shield even represent?
Surely the research system should be tied to the game world in some way.
Instead; why not let player buy the right/blueprint technology from a faction to craft an object (a BPO in EVE). This could be something physical you could insert into your ship, station, or factory.
That would also mean they can be traded or trade between other players.
You could then also have some technology restricted so you have to actually do things for the faction to make them like you. They need ore & parts too!
This could then add differentiation between stations and factions within the world. Different stations and factions would let you craft different items using their facilities. The starter stations could be far more lenient with crafting & giving access to lower tech items.
This gives far more verisimilitude to the crafting process. You buy, trade, or steal the technology that allows you to craft on your own terms. It's something you can hold and see within the game world.
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Given the ship designer ignores the research system. you unlock everything automatically on day 1 without using the research system (exept for the stations, but this will change soon once material support is in for the dev shops like XConstructs, Arke's weapons and MAG). as for "grinding points" many people kept selling their 100 crafting benches on the dev stre for credits so they can pay for their death fees and towing.
Keep in mind that there are things you cannot create in the ship designer. Tools and stations specifically are tech trees that absolutely must be "unlocked".
Imho, that's not quite correct. The game starts right away when you can unlock a few basic modules. At this point I have maybe 30% of the first tree, and 60% of the station tree and there is still a lot I can do. To say my game "hasn't started yet" seems highly disingenuous.
Imho, that's not quite correct. The game starts right away when you can unlock a few basic modules. At this point I have maybe 30% of the first tree, and 60% of the station tree and there is still a lot I can do. To say my game "hasn't started yet" seems highly disingenuous.
yep, thats why i talked about the material support portion of the marketplace itself. its where the terminals return to their stores but instead of just paying with credits you pay with ores with it. so the tools and stations can be bought just from those stores without research them. an example is Bolt Corperation's tools like the bolt tool and its mags. XConstructs with the reconstruction machines, robotic arms and other station-industry equipment. Arke's weapons for handheld guns.
But building a station without modules is extremely time consuming. Not to mention that you can only hold like 16 items at the moment and that would mean dropping tools. Also station parts are the best way to get red science and crafting them at your station (instead of buying them) is extremely time efficient. So unless they change these systems researching stations is 100% the way to go (if you actually want to build stations).
well we are getting Universal Crates that can hold them. so isint much of an issue when they are in. not like we can cargo lock stuff due to them adding the building budget. personally i find researching them worth it if i really want to go to the moons. or the abyss belt per sey. but atleast its tech cost is going lower and lower. less and less grind. yet more tech added over time.
These 2 replies are wonderful, thank you. I appreciate your openness about mistakes and what's being done to resolve issues. I honestly can't think of a better EA launch... Not in terms of bugs or smoothness, but in terms of how well a dev team has communicated about problems and worked quickly to solve them. It's clear your team is very passionate and competent. I'm extremely excited to see the quoted features enter the game, and to see the game become what you've envisioned!
IMO:
Research (or skill trees) fit well into single player games such as Civilization or Simcity.
There ruling how simulated civs do their research jobs or develop new skills is part of the game.
How ever in MMOs like Starbase...
Research tree is 100% grinding, mining etc. , then just clicks clicks clicks , isolated from game itself. No real unique and new discoveries what real research is all about. It is just artificial barrier.
Real need for in-game Research is already there in its best form.
We need to research:
- how to build working ship
- how to make it flyable and how to optimize its operation
- how to make it strong against pvp aggression
- how to make it effective fighter
- how to make best pvp ship or best mining ship
- same about stations, moon bases, industry, gas cloud harvesting, and all those really interesting features we will see
Those are real research goals if implemented as challenging and with deep game play features.
Current so called "Research" system only limits real research game play, which is included in all game features in a natural and challenging way already.
Is it time to forget this artificial research point system?
Research (or skill trees) fit well into single player games such as Civilization or Simcity.
There ruling how simulated civs do their research jobs or develop new skills is part of the game.
How ever in MMOs like Starbase...
Research tree is 100% grinding, mining etc. , then just clicks clicks clicks , isolated from game itself. No real unique and new discoveries what real research is all about. It is just artificial barrier.
Real need for in-game Research is already there in its best form.
We need to research:
- how to build working ship
- how to make it flyable and how to optimize its operation
- how to make it strong against pvp aggression
- how to make it effective fighter
- how to make best pvp ship or best mining ship
- same about stations, moon bases, industry, gas cloud harvesting, and all those really interesting features we will see
Those are real research goals if implemented as challenging and with deep game play features.
Current so called "Research" system only limits real research game play, which is included in all game features in a natural and challenging way already.
Is it time to forget this artificial research point system?