Save everything and lose interest

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#1
Dear developers, let me express my opinion about the latest updates.
In my opinion, the game is losing interest in itself due to the fact that you can save changes to the ship using the third monitor in the ship designer hangar. This removes everything that is associated with risk for the player and the ship. This removes a huge number of interesting scenarios and game tasks that you would have to prepare for in order to complete. It takes away the adrenaline in battle and turns it all into a counter-strike. Lost a ship - it's okay, press one button and you have a new one. Lost in space? it's okay, press the button and you're at the base and the ship too!
You kill the most important thing in the game. What's the point of developing all this and working on improvements if I'm not risking anything. That was the main point. To get to a safe place after the battle and patch up the armor, engines, check the wiring. I know my ship because I built and improved it myself and it was my advantage over others in battle. And you, with this auto repair on one button, took it away from me, killed a whole class of engineers who were able to repair ships quickly and efficiently and destroyed a lot of gameplay opportunities.

I hope that this opportunity will remain only on the PTU server, because the game in which the player does not risk anything is not worth the time. My opinion: if the game goes down the path of corruption, then it will fail, because there are a lot of competitors with such primitive gameplay, but with cooler graphics and elaborate plots.
 

Foraven

Veteran endo
Joined
Jun 25, 2021
Messages
139
#2
Most players wanted a way to repair their ships, many ships were next to impossible to repair once damaged. In many cases, players just abandoned their ships, it was too much work. Now we have means to fix them, might be too easy now but it's a plus for most players. Also, don't discount your acquired skills, they are still handy at patching ships so you can fly them home when deep in the belt.
 
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TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#3
Most players wanted a way to repair their ships, many ships were next to impossible to repair once damaged. In many cases, players just abandoned their ships, it was too much work. Now we have means to fix them, might be too easy now but it's a plus for most players. Also, don't discount your acquired skills, they are still handy at patching ships so you can fly them home when deep in the belt.
The fall of online is just the same due to the fact that developers are trying to please players everywhere and in everything. In fact, this is not quite the right approach. You need to listen to the players, but you can't do everything they want (especially at the alpha stage). Developers, first of all, should have their own concept of gameplay and it should not be betrayed in any case. In this case, the concept of the game was betrayed. Because such a solution removes the design studio or removes the crafting tables or removes the tool for repairing the ship. The ship has no value anymore. It is enough to save it and you can lose it as many times as you want. This possibility destroys the concept of the complexity of space travel in Starbase, the hardcore of search and reconnaissance operations. He died, restored the same ship and flew again... he died, and again. In all MMORPGs of the world, the player loses something for his mistakes. This or that thing may fall out. Unique ships created a balance in the anarchy of everything, because everyone was afraid to lose their ships (in some ways unique, because not everything is possible to provide in the design studio) and preferred a peaceful solution. And now the endless lawlessness and murder will have to be protected by security zones. 100% now there will be aligarchs who will create a bacchanal in the game for fun, taking advantage of the fact that they have a lot of resources and they do not feel sorry for their ship, since it is preserved. And there will be no cure for this except cheats. Saving ships is the way to the bottom.
The very process of developing and building the corral was similar to the actual construction of military equipment. First the drawing, then the first experimental technique, then the drawing board, the second experimental, and so on until everything is brought to the desired result. This was not a task for stupid bagatees with a bunch of resources who only know how to break and kill. Therefore, they were number 2, and we developers and engineers (for whom this game was made) were number 1. Now everything will change.
I will not play the game if everything changes there in a similar way towards simplification. And without an intelligent core, this game will die, because it was created for people like me, and only then for crushers and breakers.
 

Foraven

Veteran endo
Joined
Jun 25, 2021
Messages
139
#4
I don't really understand the problem you have there. We could already print ships as often as we wanted, now we can save changes we make to them so we can restore them if they get damaged... But in no way those saves are turned into blueprints, they are only useable for that current ship, if it's destroyed they are gone. The possibility to save changes we make to a ship only saves us from having to scrap a ship with minor damage or mistakes, it doesn`t make it any easier to replace it than it was before. Players sitting on mountain of ores and credits always had no problem replacing ships, the new mechanics didn't change anything for them.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#5
I don't really understand the problem you have there.
Knowing your ship and all its workings is devalued the more "click a button to repair" is added. This means less pride in your own ship, less value in having accessible ships, and less desire to do any manner of combat repair because "open tool, press button" is the repair process. A lot of intensity is lost. Just have the ship re-assemble itself. Kind of weird.

now we can save changes we make to them so we can restore them if they get damaged
This is a perfect example of a rabbit-hole solution to the initial problem. The initial problem is allowing players to create compact ship designs in the SSC so that it's impossible to disassemble and reassemble the ship by hand - too much breaks in the process. As more and more systems get layered upon this broken method of introducing ships into the game world, where hand-bolted ships were kind of the intention and promotion of the game, but where instead we get "printed" ships, you see the ever increasing problems that must be solved. That's the rabbit-hole. One problem leads to exponential more.

The "now we can save changes we make to them so we can restore them if they get damaged" stems from the gameplay which was gutted due to the proliferation of the SSC and the printing of ships. Ships are "so complex" where you now need this arbitrary "auto-fix" feature because players were given ways to bypass the limits of normal gameplay mechanics in the first place. Now the changes you make to a ship are saved for this auto-repair that stems from the complexity that was unnecessary. The universe would be much more dynamic if players had to craft ships using the limitations of the game mechanics, versus being able to place everything as compact as possible inside the SSC.

In short I think the complaint is that there's no (greatly reduced) reason to know your ship inside and out. You can print a new one at will, and, if you make changes, you can save and auto-repair any changes, so your increasing knowledge of the ship and its history is devalued more and more, forcing you to give up that kind of gameplay and feeling of pride in your work in favor of cookie-cutter printed ships that only have one-off usage because no one cares about their creation anymore.
 
Joined
Jan 21, 2022
Messages
18
#6
Dear developers, let me express my opinion about the latest updates.
In my opinion, the game is losing interest in itself due to the fact that you can save changes to the ship using the third monitor in the ship designer hangar. This removes everything that is associated with risk for the player and the ship. This removes a huge number of interesting scenarios and game tasks that you would have to prepare for in order to complete. It takes away the adrenaline in battle and turns it all into a counter-strike. Lost a ship - it's okay, press one button and you have a new one. Lost in space? it's okay, press the button and you're at the base and the ship too!
You kill the most important thing in the game. What's the point of developing all this and working on improvements if I'm not risking anything. That was the main point. To get to a safe place after the battle and patch up the armor, engines, check the wiring. I know my ship because I built and improved it myself and it was my advantage over others in battle. And you, with this auto repair on one button, took it away from me, killed a whole class of engineers who were able to repair ships quickly and efficiently and destroyed a lot of gameplay opportunities.

I hope that this opportunity will remain only on the PTU server, because the game in which the player does not risk anything is not worth the time. My opinion: if the game goes down the path of corruption, then it will fail, because there are a lot of competitors with such primitive gameplay, but with cooler graphics and elaborate plots.
really you don't make any logical sense when loss in is this game is crippling
 

shado20

Veteran endo
Joined
May 16, 2020
Messages
201
#7
i don't understand the problem here
if i can drag my ship back and get it into a repair hall and repair it grate...
or if i drag my ship back and salvage the ship for all the parts, then print out a new one, its like almost the same thing!
 

Foraven

Veteran endo
Joined
Jun 25, 2021
Messages
139
#8
Knowing your ship and all its workings is devalued the more "click a button to repair" is added. This means less pride in your own ship, less value in having accessible ships, and less desire to do any manner of combat repair because "open tool, press button" is the repair process. A lot of intensity is lost. Just have the ship re-assemble itself. Kind of weird.
I did both in space ship modifying and my own blueprints in the SSC. I know my ships inside and out. I don't feel any devaluation of my work because they can be easily fixed. While it is it's own fun to manage to find clever ways to repair or modify ships in space, it's very time consuming and not something I look forward doing all the time. Like many others, I don't have 40+ hours a week to play this game so time saving features is something I want. I'm not an hardcore player, I value my time more than pride.

Also, the SSC is not just about making super compact ships. I can balance my ship to a high degree as well, something that cannot be done in-space. I take great pride in making ships that can reach 99+% propellant efficiency due to how well balanced they are. My ships are super efficient by also handle very well. Ships built in-space are very clunky and inefficient.
 

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#9
really you don't make any logical sense when loss in is this game is crippling
I did both in space ship modifying and my own blueprints in the SSC. I know my ships inside and out. I don't feel any devaluation of my work because they can be easily fixed. While it is it's own fun to manage to find clever ways to repair or modify ships in space, it's very time consuming and not something I look forward doing all the time. Like many others, I don't have 40+ hours a week to play this game so time saving features is something I want. I'm not an hardcore player, I value my time more than pride.

Also, the SSC is not just about making super compact ships. I can balance my ship to a high degree as well, something that cannot be done in-space. I take great pride in making ships that can reach 99+% propellant efficiency due to how well balanced they are. My ships are super efficient by also handle very well. Ships built in-space are very clunky and inefficient.
It's not about you. Well done.
It's about other players who, once they get your ship, can save it with all the changes and they don't need to figure anything out and for this (for example, if something breaks or is destroyed), they can just go and press the button and everything will MAGICALLY get better. This destroys an entire dimension in the player's strength, because even the dumbest player can now get any of the most difficult ships and press the magic repair button, if anything. Another counter-strike is the result of this mechanics.
Before that, it was also possible to simply repair the ship with a special tool, but for this you had to have a drawing of the ship and you lost all the additions and updates that were not taken into account in the drawing, and if the player does not know how to design or is a beginner, then he will not be able to fix the drawing normally himself. It was a huge difference in skill between the players, which is no longer there.
I believe that this feature should be disabled, because it harms the gameplay and discriminates against the intellectual part of the players, who primarily wins due to their knowledge.
 

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#10
Knowing your ship and all its workings is devalued the more "click a button to repair" is added. This means less pride in your own ship, less value in having accessible ships, and less desire to do any manner of combat repair because "open tool, press button" is the repair process. A lot of intensity is lost. Just have the ship re-assemble itself. Kind of weird.



This is a perfect example of a rabbit-hole solution to the initial problem. The initial problem is allowing players to create compact ship designs in the SSC so that it's impossible to disassemble and reassemble the ship by hand - too much breaks in the process. As more and more systems get layered upon this broken method of introducing ships into the game world, where hand-bolted ships were kind of the intention and promotion of the game, but where instead we get "printed" ships, you see the ever increasing problems that must be solved. That's the rabbit-hole. One problem leads to exponential more.

The "now we can save changes we make to them so we can restore them if they get damaged" stems from the gameplay which was gutted due to the proliferation of the SSC and the printing of ships. Ships are "so complex" where you now need this arbitrary "auto-fix" feature because players were given ways to bypass the limits of normal gameplay mechanics in the first place. Now the changes you make to a ship are saved for this auto-repair that stems from the complexity that was unnecessary. The universe would be much more dynamic if players had to craft ships using the limitations of the game mechanics, versus being able to place everything as compact as possible inside the SSC.

In short I think the complaint is that there's no (greatly reduced) reason to know your ship inside and out. You can print a new one at will, and, if you make changes, you can save and auto-repair any changes, so your increasing knowledge of the ship and its history is devalued more and more, forcing you to give up that kind of gameplay and feeling of pride in your work in favor of cookie-cutter printed ships that only have one-off usage because no one cares about their creation anymore.
absolutely agree
 

DivineEvil

Well-known endo
Joined
Nov 9, 2020
Messages
67
#12
You of course have a right to your opinion as we all do, but your argument sounds like complete nonsense, and the propositions in support of that argument basically reflect an elitism towards the general player base and gamers taken generally. I don't want to turn this into an elaborate Wall of China built from text, so I'll try to limit my response to a few thesis lines:
- The risk in flying a ship out of the safe zone is in losing the ship. It has nothing to do with repairing the ship.

- The ability to repair the ship automatically simply eliminates the tedium - one that is equal for everyone, including the players flying their own ships.

- The ability to update a blueprint does not transfer to other ships. If you've lost your ship, then all the changes you've made to it are lost as well, unless you somehow manage to recover it. The only thing you can reproduce is the original stock model - all upgrades, additions, YOLOL systems, cargo and the paintjob are gone.

- There were never an "original problem" of the SSC. SSC was one of the earliest game features being developed to allow players to design the ship without building it. If the players were limited in repairing and building their ships to do it manually, then Starbase would never had any chance in the first place.

- In "all MMORPGs of the World" player loses something, and so he does in Starbase - he loses the ship. Not design of the ship, but the ship itself, and all the modifications made to the design. If you compare it to other MMORPGs then you realize that almost none of them had the audacity to implement a full-loot mechanic. Outside of the MMORPG renge, all the games that provide design features to their players have automated repairs, replacement, and insurance mechanics.

- In my opinion, the problem of ship value has nothing to do with how difficult or easy it is to modify and repair. The problem originates from the mean value of the materials required for production of the ship in the first place. Every single component of the ship is as valuable as the raw ores it is made from. Ore refining and part manufacturing is a missing link in the production process, which makes auction-sale of complete parts highly questionable. Salvaging is meaningless because it takes more time, preparation, and happenstance compared to mining the raw materials of equal value. Presence of refining mechanics would highly differentiate the people who are just busy hauling ores for sale, those who would bring those ores on their bases or stations for processing more of the useful materials with help of catalysts and power-intensive machinery, and those who would use the same stations for production of advanced parts or building entire ships. This mechanic of the added value is what's missing here.

- Giving the players an ability to repair their ship with additional costs for replacement and attachment of missing/damaged parts in no way discriminates against people, who may not but always can use the same feature to their benefit.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#13
I can balance my ship to a high degree as well, something that cannot be done in-space.
Yes, because you spent hundreds of hours in the SSC - just like everyone else - without actually playing the game. You were sort of forced into this instead of being tempted to pirate someone else's ship, vs. just blowing it up, because maybe their ship looks better than yours.

I take great pride in making ships that can reach 99+% propellant efficiency due to how well balanced they are. My ships are super efficient by also handle very well.
Yes, because you spent hundreds of hours in the SSC - just like everyone else - without actually playing the game. You were lured into this because if you did not do this same unnecessary task to make perfect ships, every other ship would outperform yours and be infinitely better because others got to test and perfect their designs to maximum efficiency while you did not. You were kind of forced, if you wanted to remain "competitive" in ship design.

Ships built in-space are very clunky and inefficient.
Which would lead to amazing, interesting gameplay, with livable ships built around player experience, instead of hundreds of hours spent perfecting something in the SSC. You'd throw a simple ship together and get out and do stuff. Your clunky ship would improve over time, and eventually you'd either pirate something better or sit down and find efficiencies based upon the limitations of the game mechanics. Your real ship would have true value, since you know it inside and out - and no one else does. You would have a natural size limit to ships, instead of people pushing max-crate ships, due to the natural limitations of a players' time in the game - but when someone does make a huge ship, their efforts have value because no one else can just mass-print the massive ship. So they gain some renown for their efforts, and are more incentivized to play and perform tasks with their huge hauler for example.

In short, the entire issue is that everything can be done perfectly before you even play the game. So much is lost, there. Efficiency is bad in a game - it doesn't promote gameplay. It promotes anti-gameplay. It means you're always up against another enemy ship who has perfected their offense and defense, versus them having some critical flaw in their design that you spot and are able to exploit because their design was built based upon the game mechanics available to us in the game world. So unless you spent an equal amount of time perfecting your offense and your defense, you're disincentivized to "try and get lucky" taking out a potentially superior ship which you're not sure if it's even superior. In the current game, you know every ship is basically a superior, multi-hundred-hours of ship-design experience ship. So if you know you're sub-par, you just avoid combat altogether. If every ship was clunky and inefficient, this would motivate you to engage other ships, knowing they're at the same disadvantage as everyone else, with the long-shot that maybe as a whole, their ship is an upgrade from yours and worth keeping or modifying further.

There were never an "original problem" of the SSC.
It is just my opinion, as elaborated above, that it is a problem, forcing nearly everyone to become 3D editors/modelers instead of players in the game. The original gameplay, through all the early videos, was not of spending 100's of hours in a ship editor, but working on building, repairing and upgrading ships with our friends. What we got, however, was all our friends going off into solo-SSC instances and spending 100's of hours perfecting ships - very non-interactive. I contend the SSC is a major problem as it removes players from having to interact with each other for a great amount of their "play time."

Outside of the MMORPG renge, all the games that provide design features to their players have automated repairs, replacement, and insurance mechanics.
Automated repairs, yes - automated replacement, no - insurance, yes. Repairs are actually fine for the most part; the current system is kind of ok in the sense that it's not doable in combat and you need to have materials and other things on hand to make the repair parts - or have a broken ship nearby to take parts from. Insurance would be fine if you could pay 25% (random number here) of your total ship credit cost in insurance and then get 75% (again just random) of the ship cost back if you lose the ship. In this way, due to losing 50% value, you're unlikely to abuse the mechanic, and you still have to interact with the economy to make up the lost credits - but at least you didn't lose everything.

Replacement is where things kind of mess up. This is "printing a new ship" which again points towards the SSC issue. Replacement in Starbase is just printing a new one from the SSC; in fact it's almost like insurance since there's a credit-cost to re-print. But it's not insurance because you actually have to pay for all the materials, along with the assembly, and whatever else, versus insurance which if it were a thing, should make the cost "less" than what you initially spent.

The reason replacement isn't good here is that you're incentivized to go back into the SSC and redesign your ship because it failed in some way where you just lost it. Insurance would work, because it'd give you the same ship back as it was when you "insured" it. The SSC means "replacement" doesn't ever really become replacement. It just means much more time in the SSC making improvements and test flying and so on. More time spent not playing.

The gameplay would benefit much more from an initial ship you buy or make, which you then insure at it's current blueprint, which you then upgrade over time and so on and fly it and use it and play the game with it; and then return at some point, pay new insurance to save the new upgraded blueprint, and so on. If you lose it, you've sunk good money into the insurance, so you're much more likely to continue using that same ship, "replaced" through insurance, versus going into an editor and remaking something totally new (because it wouldn't exist). This means more and more dynamic, livable ships, without compact or extreme designs - unless of course someone takes the in-game time to do that.

It also means lots of people would be creating template ships that are good for all manner of things; cheap frame/engine/basics that people will buy and modify to their liking. Right now, you can just print a 12-autocannon, perfectly designed and armored fighter, over, and over, and over, and over... This devalues so much that is part of the game. You go from Level 1, to Level 100, instantly.

It's kind of irrelevant to discuss, but eh, something to do when waiting to exit the warp gate...
 

DivineEvil

Well-known endo
Joined
Nov 9, 2020
Messages
67
#14
It is just my opinion, as elaborated above, that it is a problem, forcing nearly everyone to become 3D editors/modelers instead of players in the game. The original gameplay, through all the early videos, was not of spending 100's of hours in a ship editor, but working on building, repairing and upgrading ships with our friends. What we got, however, was all our friends going off into solo-SSC instances and spending 100's of hours perfecting ships - very non-interactive. I contend the SSC is a major problem as it removes players from having to interact with each other for a great amount of their "play time."
Every person makes the decision to spend their time in the Ship Designer volunteerily. This is not a necessity. There's literally hundreds of different ship designs available to buy. EBM as much as it riddled with problem is enough to build a ship to earn enough resources for a cheap pre-built miner. Nowhere in that process there's a strict necessity to invoke Ship Designer meaning, that every such friend of yours gets there because its his interest in that part of the game. Most of all, this is a way from players to cooperate in a group by collecting resources together, while their more creative members can design original ships for the party, and doing the same with for the station or a moon base.

Speaking from my experience as a dedicated lonewolf, I can never get stuck in the Ship Designer for long before going on a mining run, station management, and moon base construction for a change of pace. I doubt that it would be all that hard to convince a friend or two to get a break from Ship Designer either.
Automated repairs, yes - automated replacement, no - insurance, yes. Repairs are actually fine for the most part; the current system is kind of ok in the sense that it's not doable in combat and you need to have materials and other things on hand to make the repair parts - or have a broken ship nearby to take parts from. Insurance would be fine if you could pay 25% (random number here) of your total ship credit cost in insurance and then get 75% (again just random) of the ship cost back if you lose the ship. In this way, due to losing 50% value, you're unlikely to abuse the mechanic, and you still have to interact with the economy to make up the lost credits - but at least you didn't lose everything.

Replacement is where things kind of mess up. This is "printing a new ship" which again points towards the SSC issue. Replacement in Starbase is just printing a new one from the SSC; in fact it's almost like insurance since there's a credit-cost to re-print. But it's not insurance because you actually have to pay for all the materials, along with the assembly, and whatever else, versus insurance which if it were a thing, should make the cost "less" than what you initially spent.
You're basically saying here that you have a problem with the ship replacement, and then immediately advocating for the system with specific number that allows you to replace the ship for less than its full price. This is a self-contradicting position. The whole point of replacement, is that you have to possess the entire value of the ship in one form or another and are paying an additional premium for each and every ship part you have not manufactured yourself. So by itself the system is not pulling any punches nor provide compensations. And it only works with your own designs.
The reason replacement isn't good here is that you're incentivized to go back into the SSC and redesign your ship because it failed in some way where you just lost it. Insurance would work, because it'd give you the same ship back as it was when you "insured" it. The SSC means "replacement" doesn't ever really become replacement. It just means much more time in the SSC making improvements and test flying and so on. More time spent not playing.
So uh... basically you stand against people improving upon their designs? I mean, if you build you own ship, you naturally would want to improve upon it. Even if they'd use insurance for their current ships to restore them to their most recent blueprint update, how does that would stand in the way for a designer to improve the design and build ships with more adjustments? Why do you think its fair to penalize people for their creativity?

Hell, I can now just lose my ship to some accident or PvP, and pay the full premium for the same design version I had before, because a more updated version is not ready to be built.
The gameplay would benefit much more from an initial ship you buy or make, which you then insure at it's current blueprint, which you then upgrade over time and so on and fly it and use it and play the game with it; and then return at some point, pay new insurance to save the new upgraded blueprint, and so on. If you lose it, you've sunk good money into the insurance, so you're much more likely to continue using that same ship, "replaced" through insurance, versus going into an editor and remaking something totally new (because it wouldn't exist). This means more and more dynamic, livable ships, without compact or extreme designs - unless of course someone takes the in-game time to do that.
If you somehow prevent players from updating their designs in the Ship Designer, then they would instead spend even more time making those upgrades manually.
Early in my participation in Starbase CA, I had a moment where I've designed a large ship, but misjudged the amount of main thrusters needed for its mass. I then spend about 18 hours manually replacing the thruster array near the Origin Market - a completely new beam framework, wiring, hardpoints and an array of 64 triangle thrusters assembled manually.

Now lets imagine how many of those creative friends and company's creative members that busy designing ships would do these operations manually?
It also means lots of people would be creating template ships that are good for all manner of things; cheap frame/engine/basics that people will buy and modify to their liking. Right now, you can just print a 12-autocannon, perfectly designed and armored fighter, over, and over, and over, and over... This devalues so much that is part of the game. You go from Level 1, to Level 100, instantly.
If you can afford it, sure. Why not? The only problem I have with that, is that the author of this design earns nothing from me buying that ship. And there's of course cheap frame/engine/basics ships to buy. If you want to buy a basic miner and convert it gradually into a light fighter, you can do it right now. Where's the hiccup?
It's kind of irrelevant to discuss, but eh, something to do when waiting to exit the warp gate...
Well yeah, because you're essentially saying that designing new ship frames and improving them is bad, and instead people should be stuck relying on the same ship and replacing it over and over all the same way, except for paying less for the procedure... losing less, risking less, improving less.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#15
Every person makes the decision to spend their time in the Ship Designer volunteerily. This is not a necessity.
In a competitive game, voluntarily often is a necessity to remain competitive. Pro FPS players might not have to invest an hour per day in Aimlab training their aim, but if they don't, someone else is, and they will lose. So even though there are ships to buy, you're heavily incentivized to spend a lot of time in the SSC to learn ship design and so on - you're almost required to know how to use the minigame known as the SSC, which removes you from the game universe and any player interaction, in order to figure out ship design. If instead the game were more about upgrading and patching up your ship with friends in the live game world, you'd have more longevity with people trying to make the best out of what they have, versus the SSC, where you make the best of the best, and then scrap it the moment it loses any part you don't have an immediate replacement for.

ou're basically saying here that you have a problem with the ship replacement, and then immediately advocating for the system with specific number that allows you to replace the ship for less than its full price. This is a self-contradicting position.
It's not, but I understand it's confusion. Replacement is what we have currently: print new ship with everything on it. You pay maybe 120% of the total ship cost based on material cost and assembly (I don't know the exact amount).

Insurance would be paying some amount, say 25% in my example, to insure a ship "as it currently exists in the game" for replacement. This means every time you make a significant upgrade, you pay the insurance cost. You would buy a standard frame of a ship, then slap on whatever kind of weapons you liked, and then insure it. Upon "loss" you then spend another 25% of the total cost (in addition to material cost) to recover the ship as it was when you insured it. In this way, you've lost at least 50% of the value - losing more value than the SSC printing - but only kept the ship as it was when you assembled it in the live game world. Meaning... if you had autocannons on your ship when you insured it, but found someone's ship with lasers, and refitted your ship with lasers, but didn't insure it, your "replacement" would have autocannons. However, if you went back to a station and paid another 25% of the total value, you could insure the new "blueprint" as-is. It sinks more money out of the system because each time you want to "save" your blueprint there is a credit cost to it and a game mechanic to it (insurance).

Now, I don't like insurance at all, and the numbers or costs and so on are irrelevant; the approach is simply to turn the "SSC save-blueprint" thing into a credit-cost in the game world that does away with the SSC. I'm pointing out how it's more viable and playable (fun) than printing a new, fully operational, perfectly designed, perfectly efficient, fully armed, full-ammo ship over and over again. Why buy ammo when you can just print off ammo, for example? Why have a tech tree when you can just go into the SSC and print off parts you need? It devalues so much to have everything so easily accessible.

So uh... basically you stand against people improving upon their designs? I mean, if you build you own ship, you naturally would want to improve upon it. Even if they'd use insurance for their current ships to restore them to their most recent blueprint update, how does that would stand in the way for a designer to improve the design and build ships with more adjustments? Why do you think its fair to penalize people for their creativity?
No, just that the way designs are improved are in a 3D editor which bypasses 90% of the game mechanics found in the game world. You can put parts so tightly together that you cannot ever access anything from your player character. So if something breaks, you just print a new ship - no use in trying to repair. Without the SSC, people would need hallways, access hatches, crawlspaces and much more to make a ship viable, because you'd have to route power and fuel through accessible places, by hand. You can improve your design all you want, but doing so within the limits of the game world. This would lead to dynamic and interesting ships, versus "perfectly designed and balanced and efficient" ships as is currently the case in the SSC. Players would be working on their ship's design over time during gameplay instead of being bored with nothing to do if you're not the pilot because it's easier to just go into the SSC and mess with a ship design (which again, takes that player out of the game world).

If your ship was "piece-meal" built from other scrapped ships, you're much more likely to want friends around to help you salvage, scrap, pull apart other ships, and then use that stuff to upgrade your own, as each person lightens the work effort for the team in getting things done. How it stands now, the "SSC designer guy" who made the ship is going to just go off and work on the design and your friends sit around useless waiting for the next iteration, for example. And then those friends go into the SSC and get locked into their own design and no one is playing the game.

Now lets imagine how many of those creative friends and company's creative members that busy designing ships would do these operations manually?
Perfect example of why the SSC is bad - thanks for sharing! If you didn't have the SSC to go beyond your means, you wouldn't have had that problem in the first place. You wouldn't have a 64 triangle thruster array to work with. You'd want to play the game and get out and do things and settle with "good enough" for an 8-engine ship, or maybe make a fleet with friends of 3-4, 8-engine ships, to do the same work. But instead you went off and made something that took 18 hours to re-do because you initially made a design that does not work within the game world - it works super efficient and flawless in the SSC but the moment any issue arises, it's not a quick fix. Without the SSC, since every part would have to be placed by hand, it can come off by hand, and replaced simply and easily, as was seemingly 'promised' to us in the trailer videos.

If you want to buy a basic miner and convert it gradually into a light fighter, you can do it right now. Where's the hiccup?
You're much better off not doing conversion, because you can just print a fighter when you want a fighter, and a miner when you need a miner, and have no reason to hybridize your designs, or work with parts you find in the wild. Better to just print what you need. Since you currently have the better option easily accessible to you - just hop into the SSC, load up someone else's fighter, and print it off - there's zero reason you'd ever convert your miner to a fighter.

you're essentially saying that designing new ship frames and improving them is bad
I'm saying the way it's done is bad, not the act itself. The SSC forces all ship changes to go through it for the most part (blueprint system currently available is a small exception but even then, a good ship designer is going to go into the SSC because blueprints are not permanent, so it's better to just edit the base blueprint for anything major, again... forcing people out of the game and into the SSC constantly).

If instead, after doing some major in-game-world ship design and improvement, I want to 'save' this for later, going to pay some premium for insuring it "as-is" is a good step towards removing people from the SSC. The cost is more, not less (I mean, it could be more, or less, since it's just a number, but... should be more, not less), and because you don't get to "edit" the insured ship before you get the replacement, you get it back as it was and have to do whatever changes you want to do after that. It would be like saving your ship when it hits "Level 50" and then playing until it hits "Level 60" but then it gets killed, so you get back the "Level 50" version and have to continue pushing its limits again, with new knowledge of how that ship frame works to get you back to where you were faster. But it's still a setback, still means something, and cheap-skate players or those who never plan to leave the safe zone can avoid insurance altogether and so on.

The starter ship experience at the release of Early Access was super good. You had a small little ship that you upgraded over time. This was fun, and you sort of worked with friends on this, but not by bolting and assembling (more, they just helped provide resources). Then, you got enough credits, where instead of upgrading or making a new frame or anything of the sort, you hopped into the SSC, avoided all players for days and days, made a decent ship, tested it in the SSC test mode, and then came out with a massive fully functional very efficient ship that devalued any step between starter ship and end-game ship. 0 to 100. Anyone who did not go 0-100 was punished due to the market getting flooded with cheap resources, where a top-end miner could haul back millions per run, but a starter ship could only haul back a few hundred thousand worth at best.
 
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