Hello,
One of the beautiful, easily overlooked and not-so-promoted aspects of Starbase is the persistence. Ships remain in the game world almost indefinitely; initially it was indefinite and now there is some time frame 7-30 days where a derelict ship remains in game. For an MMO, this is rare and wonderful; most developers opt for easy systems of UI and automated cleanup where Frozenbyte has taken the hard route of delivering a physical, persistent single universe for all Starbase players. This allows for extremely fun emergent gameplay as players encounter other ships - working or wrecks - in nearly any part of the game world. One of the most successful emergent gameplay behaviors stemmed from players encountering gravity at the first moon players are easily able to travel to - Elysium. As pilots either ignored the presence of gravity on the moon, or otherwise crashed into the surface while underestimating the pull of gravity on the moon, their ships fell to their demise under the fast travel warp gate, falling apart due to the impact against the surface, creating a "ship graveyard" for players to scrap and fight over. Large haulers, small fighters and everything in-between were dashed upon the moon's surface, just below the warp gate and a short distance from Moon City.
Note: I found a derelict ship near Ghost Station Relicta; it is possible to salvage - the progress bar for the tool begins, and the part highlights in green.
Note: This owned ship cannot be salvaged; the part turns red if I attempt to salvage it. Outside the safe zone, I could however un-bolt this part and then salvage it.
Fighting over those wrecks is genuinely fun emergent gameplay that no one expected. It spawned new ship designs as players tried to figure out better ways to haul materials back to station or otherwise defend their ground operations. Players got to experience first-person-shooter combat along with the dynamics of Starbase - a destructible game environment, including the ability to dig foxholes into the dirt of the moon surface to avoid patrolling fighter ships above. Soon, the devs introduced the Recycler Tool, which, with a little power from a Power Pack, can convert any object in the game into 75% of its base resources. This was a massive change to the game, allowing wrecks to be valued not just by rare parts, but the resources making up each ship could be targeted for the most lucrative ores.
Although ship ownership was an issue before the Recycler Tool, the presence of the tool made the problem of ship ownership much more visible.
Ship ownership prevents enemy players from salvaging your ship, even outside the safe zone. Although players can unbolt the parts first, and then salvage those parts, the ability to directly salvage off a part is not possible. This behavior of being denied the ability to salvage parts off a ship is not seen on "derelict" ships which are unowned - the owning player has at some point selected "Decommission" from the Ship menu's right-click menu on that ship. This removes the ship from their list of ships, and the ship becomes unowned, where any other player can now operate the ship as they wish.
The current way Ship Ownership is handled prevents players from truly capitalizing on a found, stolen or wrecked ship in a few ways.
First, it prevents players from salvaging a ship easily - since ownership prevents the Recycler Tool from functioning on an owned ship, even if it is a wrecked ship out in the middle of nowhere, players must first un-bolt or un-weld parts off a ship to then be able to recycle them. A large owned ship wreck loses a lot of value as players cannot easily recover the resources from the ship without spending a vast amount of time un-bolting all the parts off the ship.
Second, there is no way to "steal" an owned ship in Starbase or otherwise make an abandoned ship "your own." The inability to take ownership of an abandoned or stolen "owned" ship severely reduces gameplay. In the normal gameplay environment, as players cannot properly steal a ship and operate it for themselves, there's little else to do but to destroy another player's ship with no regard to any other option. If ships were able to be "stolen" then pirating would be a more valid option, such as utilizing the ship yourself, ransoming the ship back to the player, or dealing with the ship in any other way except destroying it, as it is too much of a bother to recycle the ship into usable materials. In the salvage/wreck gameplay environment, players are disincentivized to recover a ship, either through repair or recycling, because there's no way to put that to ship to proper use due to it being "owned." You could come across an abandoned ship which you determine has run out of propellant or fuel, and looks like a viable ship you may want to use, but after finding out it is an "owned" ship, taking the ship yields little to no value as you have no expectation of being able to use that ship properly, as it is still "owned." Additional work-around behaviors must be used to utilize a stolen or recovered "owned" ship if you want to continue to use the ship, such as ensuring that you don't fly that ship into any safe zone. If you do fly an "owned" ship into any safe zone, including a safe zone of your own around your own station, you are ejected from the "owned" ship and can not modify, damage, recycle or otherwise interact with that "owned" ship; again, even if it is within your own safe zone.
Third, Material Crates which have resources within them cannot be recycled with the Recycler Tool. It seems valid to be able to retrieve 75% of the stored material through the Recycler Tool, but instead players are simply denied that ability. Recovering resources from crates requires hooking up a Resource Bridge and wiring/piping to then be able to extract the materials from the crate - as pointed out in another issue, players cannot build a Resource Bridge from their own inventory, this makes the issue difficult to tackle and disincentivizes actually salvaging the material.
Fourth, which deserves its own issue, is the economy. As it does deserve its own issue, I won't go into detail here, however the main point is that recovering resources from a ship - owned or not - is generally not profitable as the game's economy is flooded with credits and relatively cheap resources. Stealing, recovering, pirating, salvaging; all are diminished in viability when blowing up the other ship/wreck and moving on yields more value to the player.
Hot tub or Furnace: you decide.
Fifth, there is no large-scale way to recycle a ship. During the tutorial, the ship disassembly task shows ship parts being sucked in somewhere and "removed" - the intention is that the parts are recycled. Players have no such option in-game, and it is tedious to take a ship, even one you own, and recycle it back into the base resources to then use elsewhere. If players had this option, they would recycle old ships they don't use, or ships that are outdated or broken* beyond reasonable repair. It would be better in many situations to recycle a ship, however without an easy option to do so, players leave their ship list cluttered with unused ships because there's really nothing else to do with them. Players should have an option for an object such as a furnace to recycle large chunks of ships at a time. Recycling a ship completely should also remove the ship from the game world completely, including on player ship menus and authorized user lists to ensure it's fully removed from the game world.
Problem: Ship Ownership presents many edge case situations which are frustrating for players to navigate as they interact with other ships in the game world. With little to no workaround, players are disincentivized from interacting with other ships as it is inefficient and unprofitable to recycle another ship, especially if the ship is "owned." Salvage and recycling operations are also hindered by their own hurdles surrounding ship ownership which disincentivizes interaction.
Solution: Implement a tool, method, or process by which "owned" ships can be claimed by another player that does not require input from the initial "owner." The operation should be possible out in the live game world. Examples would be a "hacking tool" which removes ownership after a duration of activating the tool upon a ship, binding ownership to a ship device like the Transponder, or a special YOLOL-style chip that when inserted into a ship's network causes the ship ownership to be nullified while the chip is inserted. The later option would greatly enhance gameplay, for example allowing ships to be reported to original owning players as "Stolen" on their ship menu where they can hope to recover it one day by finding and removing the chip or otherwise Decommissioning the ship and forgetting about it.
One of the beautiful, easily overlooked and not-so-promoted aspects of Starbase is the persistence. Ships remain in the game world almost indefinitely; initially it was indefinite and now there is some time frame 7-30 days where a derelict ship remains in game. For an MMO, this is rare and wonderful; most developers opt for easy systems of UI and automated cleanup where Frozenbyte has taken the hard route of delivering a physical, persistent single universe for all Starbase players. This allows for extremely fun emergent gameplay as players encounter other ships - working or wrecks - in nearly any part of the game world. One of the most successful emergent gameplay behaviors stemmed from players encountering gravity at the first moon players are easily able to travel to - Elysium. As pilots either ignored the presence of gravity on the moon, or otherwise crashed into the surface while underestimating the pull of gravity on the moon, their ships fell to their demise under the fast travel warp gate, falling apart due to the impact against the surface, creating a "ship graveyard" for players to scrap and fight over. Large haulers, small fighters and everything in-between were dashed upon the moon's surface, just below the warp gate and a short distance from Moon City.
Note: I found a derelict ship near Ghost Station Relicta; it is possible to salvage - the progress bar for the tool begins, and the part highlights in green.
Note: This owned ship cannot be salvaged; the part turns red if I attempt to salvage it. Outside the safe zone, I could however un-bolt this part and then salvage it.
Fighting over those wrecks is genuinely fun emergent gameplay that no one expected. It spawned new ship designs as players tried to figure out better ways to haul materials back to station or otherwise defend their ground operations. Players got to experience first-person-shooter combat along with the dynamics of Starbase - a destructible game environment, including the ability to dig foxholes into the dirt of the moon surface to avoid patrolling fighter ships above. Soon, the devs introduced the Recycler Tool, which, with a little power from a Power Pack, can convert any object in the game into 75% of its base resources. This was a massive change to the game, allowing wrecks to be valued not just by rare parts, but the resources making up each ship could be targeted for the most lucrative ores.
Although ship ownership was an issue before the Recycler Tool, the presence of the tool made the problem of ship ownership much more visible.
Ship ownership prevents enemy players from salvaging your ship, even outside the safe zone. Although players can unbolt the parts first, and then salvage those parts, the ability to directly salvage off a part is not possible. This behavior of being denied the ability to salvage parts off a ship is not seen on "derelict" ships which are unowned - the owning player has at some point selected "Decommission" from the Ship menu's right-click menu on that ship. This removes the ship from their list of ships, and the ship becomes unowned, where any other player can now operate the ship as they wish.
The current way Ship Ownership is handled prevents players from truly capitalizing on a found, stolen or wrecked ship in a few ways.
First, it prevents players from salvaging a ship easily - since ownership prevents the Recycler Tool from functioning on an owned ship, even if it is a wrecked ship out in the middle of nowhere, players must first un-bolt or un-weld parts off a ship to then be able to recycle them. A large owned ship wreck loses a lot of value as players cannot easily recover the resources from the ship without spending a vast amount of time un-bolting all the parts off the ship.
Second, there is no way to "steal" an owned ship in Starbase or otherwise make an abandoned ship "your own." The inability to take ownership of an abandoned or stolen "owned" ship severely reduces gameplay. In the normal gameplay environment, as players cannot properly steal a ship and operate it for themselves, there's little else to do but to destroy another player's ship with no regard to any other option. If ships were able to be "stolen" then pirating would be a more valid option, such as utilizing the ship yourself, ransoming the ship back to the player, or dealing with the ship in any other way except destroying it, as it is too much of a bother to recycle the ship into usable materials. In the salvage/wreck gameplay environment, players are disincentivized to recover a ship, either through repair or recycling, because there's no way to put that to ship to proper use due to it being "owned." You could come across an abandoned ship which you determine has run out of propellant or fuel, and looks like a viable ship you may want to use, but after finding out it is an "owned" ship, taking the ship yields little to no value as you have no expectation of being able to use that ship properly, as it is still "owned." Additional work-around behaviors must be used to utilize a stolen or recovered "owned" ship if you want to continue to use the ship, such as ensuring that you don't fly that ship into any safe zone. If you do fly an "owned" ship into any safe zone, including a safe zone of your own around your own station, you are ejected from the "owned" ship and can not modify, damage, recycle or otherwise interact with that "owned" ship; again, even if it is within your own safe zone.
Third, Material Crates which have resources within them cannot be recycled with the Recycler Tool. It seems valid to be able to retrieve 75% of the stored material through the Recycler Tool, but instead players are simply denied that ability. Recovering resources from crates requires hooking up a Resource Bridge and wiring/piping to then be able to extract the materials from the crate - as pointed out in another issue, players cannot build a Resource Bridge from their own inventory, this makes the issue difficult to tackle and disincentivizes actually salvaging the material.
Fourth, which deserves its own issue, is the economy. As it does deserve its own issue, I won't go into detail here, however the main point is that recovering resources from a ship - owned or not - is generally not profitable as the game's economy is flooded with credits and relatively cheap resources. Stealing, recovering, pirating, salvaging; all are diminished in viability when blowing up the other ship/wreck and moving on yields more value to the player.
Hot tub or Furnace: you decide.
Fifth, there is no large-scale way to recycle a ship. During the tutorial, the ship disassembly task shows ship parts being sucked in somewhere and "removed" - the intention is that the parts are recycled. Players have no such option in-game, and it is tedious to take a ship, even one you own, and recycle it back into the base resources to then use elsewhere. If players had this option, they would recycle old ships they don't use, or ships that are outdated or broken* beyond reasonable repair. It would be better in many situations to recycle a ship, however without an easy option to do so, players leave their ship list cluttered with unused ships because there's really nothing else to do with them. Players should have an option for an object such as a furnace to recycle large chunks of ships at a time. Recycling a ship completely should also remove the ship from the game world completely, including on player ship menus and authorized user lists to ensure it's fully removed from the game world.
Problem: Ship Ownership presents many edge case situations which are frustrating for players to navigate as they interact with other ships in the game world. With little to no workaround, players are disincentivized from interacting with other ships as it is inefficient and unprofitable to recycle another ship, especially if the ship is "owned." Salvage and recycling operations are also hindered by their own hurdles surrounding ship ownership which disincentivizes interaction.
Solution: Implement a tool, method, or process by which "owned" ships can be claimed by another player that does not require input from the initial "owner." The operation should be possible out in the live game world. Examples would be a "hacking tool" which removes ownership after a duration of activating the tool upon a ship, binding ownership to a ship device like the Transponder, or a special YOLOL-style chip that when inserted into a ship's network causes the ship ownership to be nullified while the chip is inserted. The later option would greatly enhance gameplay, for example allowing ships to be reported to original owning players as "Stolen" on their ship menu where they can hope to recover it one day by finding and removing the chip or otherwise Decommissioning the ship and forgetting about it.
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The cockpit can fly, I think at max speed, even if the entire cargo gets broken off. Making a breakaway system would be pretty cool for this kind of situation, and lead to more modular designs of ships instead of big crate blocks.
