Starbase Progress Notes: Week 50 (2021)

[ElluFB]

Hello everyone, here are the progress notes of the week 50 of 2021!

This week's progress notes show all the major the features, additions and improvements currently in the works. The features have been roughly divided into categories and in the beginning, we list both new and recently completed items from the past two weeks. We hope that you enjoy these snippets of the Starbase development!

With the holidays right ahead of us, a large number of our developers will be on their breaks for the next few weeks and the development notes for Starbase will be slowing down. The Progress Notes are taking their own holiday break until mid-January, when we'll be back to start a new year of notes!

Please note that the "Progress Notes" are different from the Starbase "Patch Notes". Progress Notes are snippets from the development team and what has been worked on during the previous week, and many of the features might not be present in the current or upcoming builds of the Starbase Early Access. Some features, especially in the design portion, can be subject to change as the development continues.

Starbase Progress Notes: Week 50 (2021)
December 13th - 16th

Below we have listed the different states, and an explanation of what that state means in terms of development process.

Design: first phase of development
Art: done after designing of the feature, but can be done either before, after or at same time with programming.
Programming: programmer implements the feature based on design
Configuration: feature is technically done but a designer needs to configure it
QA: feature is technically done but needs testing. May happen before or after configuration.

The weeks marked in the "Time in development" column show only the active development weeks during which the feature has been worked on and include all phases of development. The time is rounded up to weeks, so in other words, if one day has been spent on a feature during the week, it still counts. Therefore, please treat the week counter as a rough estimate only.

Completed in the past two weeks

In Progress

New

Moons

Capital Ships

Siege

Spaceships

Stations and Build Mode

Devices, machines and tools

Combat

Other

Gallery

Purchase Starbase Early Access now on Steam!

 

[Kenetor]

Last notes of the year! Enjoy your well earned time off devs!

 

[mikan]

So which of these is the earliest to be implemented?

 

[wyattmoon]

So which of these is the earliest to be implemented?

if i had to guess the capitol ship dock size thing , the paint stuff , and maybe the newest feature would be blueprint chips for ships

 

[CalenLoki]

Could we please get those in SSC too?
And in general, it wouldn't hurt to have all EBM parts in SSC (i.e station plates). They can already be bolted to ships after leaving SSC, so it's just pure QOL addition.

 

[Kodey]

Yikes, seems like the SSC is being left to the dust. Really hope the SSC isn’t phased out, considering that the SSC is what drew me to Starbase.

 

[IronGremlin]

Yikes, seems like the SSC is being left to the dust. Really hope the SSC isn’t phased out, considering that the SSC is what drew me to Starbase.

It's the only chunk of the game that mostly works as is, save perhaps for mining asteroids.

Everything else is either buggy as hell or a total placeholder for a real mechanic.

If I were FB I would also be putting my energy elsewhere for a bit.

 

[HardworkingSlacker]

While it is nice to see that the game is making progress I, like many others, am disappointed that EBM is a priority still.
I find it really staggering that you are to this day investing so much time and effort in the (Easy) Build Mode Concept.
Honestly, it is on the verge of being absurd.

I have seen nobody and I actually mean NOBODY bar the Kutonium Guide guy on Steam who actually used Easy Build Mode with any kind of seriousness other than maybe pimping his labourer module in the tutorial.
Yes, people tried it at launch and we all know what kind of a miserable experience that was (even you guys admitted that) but what I really don't understand is how such an idea could make it through the design phase in the first place.
It makes ZERO sence to implement something that is basically already there (it is called SSC). Yes, it's a bit more "faancee" and looks like Minecraft and Space Engineers which is supposed to create a familiar experience, I get it.

However, you already have a well working in the form of SSC which is also well established and widely (dare I say, solely) used by anyone who is serious on building a ship that doesn't look and behaves like a janky junktruck made from parts of your local scrapyard. Why not capitalize on that? Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel when you already have one that works pretty damn well?

Also, there is simply no demand for EBM. At least none that is obvious to me. To me actually, it seems like a poorly designed way to cater to people who are unable or unwilling to use the real thing which admittedly is intimidating with its sheer complexity.
However, people who cannot be bothered to put in the time to learn how to build ships in SSC will not get any real satisfactory results anyways, with or without EBM. They can't use SSC and compared to professionally designed ships their EBM trashcan will just pale in comparison.

Designing ships and making them work (at least right now and in the future too, imo) should be reserved for those who really put in the time to learn how to do it. More casually oriented players do not need their own design anyways, they can simply buy whatever other people made that appeals to them.
This is also what actually happens. People don't need to design their own Worker Ant/TriFin/Amphitrite, they simply buy the product that already exists.
Just like in real life. You certainly don't design your own car and nor should you if this is not your profession. You simply buy the one you like most or serves your needs best.

Frozenbyte, we don't need yet another easy, casual, stale 08-15 online game feature .

We need a compelling and interesting game with powerful and complex tools and mechanics and a steep learning curve and sophisticated gameplay loops and meaningful p2p and pvp interactions and a good portion of unpredictability that prevents it from becoming stale.
Many of these things are slowly but surely coming to life and I am glad that they do. EBM however isn't one of these.

Ok, to end it off nicely: I really like the new ore textures, they look very sleek.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

Yay! Priority snap points! I hope they work good for the YOLOL-racks.