Shipbuilding Extremely Frustrating for new Players

[Elo]

I dont know if its just me but does shipbuilding feel really frustrating to you?

Every new thing takes ages to learn and is extremely unforgiving.

The first designs can be trashed until a new player learns how to fit all systems on a frame that works, having done that you figure out plating and notice nothing really fits easily. Snapping is annoying, mirroring objects has to be done by hand so you have to build everything twice. After connecting a pipe to a hardpoint nothing snaps to it anymore so you have to first connect your device and than pipe it.

When you finally overcome all the trouble and spawn your ship you cant go back, everything you want to change has to be Endo accessible since you cant load it back into the ship designer. Now if a pipe breaks/bugs and you cant reach it you have to break apart ship pieces until you can reach it.

I know by ship design 10+ you will take all this into consideration and design everything so it is accessible but that is my point: Its not newbie friendly. It takes days of game time to learn all of this.

Even something that is supposed to be as simple as adding a mining laser on your ship can take forever. Apparently you connect a weapon mount to your device hardpoint, as a new player you have no idea that the weapon mount has to be facing a certain way or it wont snap, there is no indication which way is front, after trying to snap on and off I couldnt even tell if its set to on or off now... so I placed a button to see if it snaps. If you unbolt the weapon mount to turn it around the pipes break so now you go back to piping. I didnt think adding a simple mining laser would take this long and if I didnt get help on the discord I would still think its a simple snapping issue.

Same with thrusters the only thing that fits in the box thruster case is the box thruster... why are there 2 items when we could just have the one?

Tldr: Everything takes way too long to learn and after buying the ship from shipbuilder everything has to be accessible by Endos to repair/upgrade. No indicators/info for new players regarding item direction snapping etc. Without help from others you are basically doomed.

 

[Cavilier210]

If you have any blender experience, its really not bad at all.

 

[Elo]

It works, its extremely rewarding once everything does finally work. I just fear that a lot of people wont be as stubborn as we are and keep going at it until it works. I think a lot of people would rage quit instead.
I think some quality of life changes could go a long way.

Free cam like bolting and pipe cabeling.
Indicators where stuff is supposed to snap to/on (eg a hologram of a weapon in the weapon mount)
Indicators on weapon mounts and similar devices that require facing a certain direction (like the computers have)
Being able to set snapping strength eg: strongest setting would turn the barrel the right way on the weapon mount

 

[XenoCow]

There is a simple building mode in the works that should probably bridge the gap between new and experienced builders. It should allow players to get their feet wet and feel accomplished before settling in for the long haul that is a proper ship build.

Hopefully that will be coming soon for alpha testers.

P.S. If someone else can remember where that new building system is mentioned that would be great.

 

[MyrddinE]

There are many frustrating features of the editor that should be improved; despite that, the editor is actually one of the most complete and well done parts of the game, and that means that many players get defensive about it.

• Plating could be improved by allowing users to generate any size of basic plate at a whim, and having the game auto-construct the requested size using welded collections of the existing plates.
• Lack of mirroring support is silly. Mirroring should be supported.
• Pipes and cables should not block object placement, since they can intersect with no issues. That said, there is a workaround: make pipes and cables non-interactable (lock icon) and you can place other objects over them as desired.
• Improved repairing tools (perhaps something like ship-mounted 'repair lasers') are expected to be added. That said, I like the 'endo-accessible' design restriction myself. In addition, it's possible that ships you hold the blueprint for may be able to return to the SSC at some point. This will never be possible when you don't own the blueprint.
• I agree that what connects to what is a serious issue of discoverability. I made a suggestion for adding a filter to the asset browser that only shows devices that have a valid connection point on the selected object.

Your last point is actually the only one I disagree with; several items, like thrusters, are composed of different parts even if the parts are useless separate. This is only a minor issue as there are pre-assembled modules. The separate parts allows them to be repaired in-situ more easily.

 

[CalenLoki]

Same with thrusters the only thing that fits in the box thruster case is the box thruster... why are there 2 items when we could just have the one?

There are many possible reasons for that:

Future modularity, with sub-parts that behave differently. I.e. thrust vectoring nozzle or more fuel efficient but slower converters.

Material differences make them have different value per mass (i.e. converters costing much more than the rest, despite being smaller). And may require different level of protection (i.e. only nozzle being resistant to external hazards and light gunfire)

 

[Cavilier210]

Pipes and cables should not block object placement, since they can intersect with no issues. That said, there is a workaround: make pipes and cables non-interactable (lock icon) and you can place other objects over them as desired.

This is so obvious, why didn't I think of that?!