Starbase's Top Issues #9: The Death of a Dream - The SSC

[MajGenRelativity]

Honestly, I don't think it's worth continuing this conversation. I say that a lot of people don't test for dozens of hours, and you just say 'wrong'. Obviously there's going to be hyper-optimized ships with loads of testing behind them, and this is true for hand built ships too. There's just nothing worth talking about anymore because you don't seem to consider anything other than your preconceived notions of how people use the SSC, like how people never play the game, just the SSC.

 

[Lingontuva]

As much as i absolutely love the ship designer, in some ways i do agree that we would be better off without it.
It doesn't really neatly integrate with the gameplay, and it doesn't really make sense from a design standpoint either as you are able to make designs in the ssc that you never would be able to in universe, which is a double-edged sword.

There is a real disconnect between the game world and the ssc, almost like if you were to make the model in blender and then just import it into the game to fly it. As someone who does nothing but designing i'd honestly rather have the ssc removed for the benefit of designing everything ingame more akin to space engineers or even this developer video for starbase:

The only thing that is really holding me back from designing ingame is well, the preoblems with the parts leaving small gaps and requiring very odd angles like when slanting a plate alongside the angle of a triangle plate, but that could definitely be changed for the better with some more clever programming to get better in-game snapping.

As long as you can then save the blueprint to make more.

maybe even having a sort of "creative box" where you can experiment with parts that you don't have yet, similar to the ssc library.

 

[XenoCow]

I disagree that a person who will quit due to the removal of the SSC has something to offer the game. Imagine a person playing for a few minutes and saying, "Oh, I don't have a custom-instanced 3D CAD editor program to create unlimited ship designs using all the in-game assets to my heart's abandon and even test-pilot these designs endlessly with no impact on the larger game world, so I will quit the game."

They don't exist. All that exists now are people addicted to the one fun thing about the "game" and that is the fact that Starbase is your medium for interacting with your drug of choice - the cheat-mode feel-good-chemical-producing game of the SSC. If the SSC existed as a separate program, you wouldn't even load up the game of Starbase, and I think that fact explains my point perfectly and I shall not harp on it any longer.

I think you and I agree to some extent on this point then. I too don't think that players who would leave the game exactly because of there being no SSC or the SSC being removed exist, or are at least very few. More likely those players would appreciate Starbase if there was more game and stay or at least consider staying, if the overall experience allowed for more fun. In that regard, players that intimately understand the systems of the game are valuable to have around since they can add depth to the overall experience. I don't think that giving them a home has to come at the cost of the general playerbase.

This game has the potential to allow for all types of players to enjoy it. And while I agree that the current implementation of the SSC should not be part of the future path, dismissing players because of their complaints runs the risk of running out of players. You yourself said that PC gaming is niche, and space games are a niche within a niche. For an MMO to function, it needs to allow many niches to enjoy it or else risk imbalance and falling apart for reasons that are unclear until a post-mortum. So, please think about how to welcome those players in rather than say they are pointless to the game. It may be that their opinion on what can make the game run best is wrong, but sometimes it takes patience to show people how your idea is better.

maybe even having a sort of "creative box" where you can experiment with parts that you don't have yet, similar to the ssc library.

I have been thinking about something exactly along these lines. I plan on posting a full write-up about my version of this soon-ish.

 

[Vexus]

I say that a lot of people don't test for dozens of hours, and you just say 'wrong'.

I'm pretty sure I gave ample evidence to prove you're wrong - I didn't just say it.

It's not really a point to get into, because the problem goes away with the SSC going away. My reason for bringing it up is that those hours spent testing are hours not playing the game, not interacting with other players, and not getting into random gameplay shenanigans that cause you and others to become immersed in the game and want to play it every day. There's no memory of, "Remember that one time I spent 20 hours perfecting the YOLOL on my ship in the SSC before I printed it and decided to scrap the whole project?" No one cares. No gameplay happened. No one made a new friend. No one made a new enemy. Everyone thus went to other games for their fun.

Obviously there's going to be hyper-optimized ships with loads of testing behind them, and this is true for hand built ships too.

Well, no, not until hand-built is the only option. Then yes, there would be time spent. But you'd see your company member working on something and be able to chat and assist and "see them in the game world" and have some kind of interaction with them, versus them being away in a separate game.

In other MMOs with similar mechanics, seeing your teammates or even enemies doing something is pretty cool. Your teammate could be building a wall in Rust, fixing up a structure in Palworld, or hovering over a baby dino in Ark - it is fun to interact with people. That is what gaming is supposed to deliver - a way to interact with other people. When you fly by a station in Starbase, there could be someone there, but he's likely in his station's SSC, and that means you think the station is abandoned and will never come back. There was a great video on Discord of someone finding a player on a distant moon and through patience and planning, was able to confiscate one of the ships from the moon-dweller. The point is the presence of players in the visible game world is part of the secret sauce that makes an MMO work.

There's just nothing worth talking about anymore

I sort of agree; the SSC needs to go, or the game will continue to suffer. Not much else needs to be said. But the great part of being right about something is all other arguments fall to the wayside. I appreciate your contribution.

like how people never play the game, just the SSC.

HappyTrigger42 is one of the very few people still streaming Starbase. Here is his recent video list. Outside of EOS CON - a rare moment the very few left in the community decide to play the actual game of Starbase and not the game of the SSC, nearly every video he has is him messing with ship designs. Consider the market; the streamer wants to create interesting content for viewers. The most interesting content is designing ships in a game that is not Starbase - it is the game of the SSC that is being streamed most of the time.

https://www.twitch.tv/happytrigger42/videos

Not to mention, EOS CON is mostly people showing off the ship designs they spent dozens of hours in the SSC making. Starbase becomes the sad middle-man where people show off their "Game of the SSC" creations, because it's too cumbersome to have everyone join into your SSC-editor instance otherwise.

or even this developer video for starbase:

This is what baffled me, because the devs for the longest time showed us a world we would interact with, and then threw dev-tools and cheat-modes at us afterwards which invalidated so much of what they showed us. Why show us a ship breakdown, if no one would ever even attempt it? A side note: out of almost nostalgia or... hope and faith for the game to be what was initially promised, nearly if not all of my ship designs can be hand-built and have all their vitals accessed should it ever be necessary. I just enjoy working with that in mind in the SSC, though I'd be hard-pressed to accomplish the same 99.9% thrust efficiency ratios I get inside the SSC if I hand-built the thing outside. But, it'd be a lot of activity for my crew watching me test over and over, or ask for their help on readouts and so on, versus the many hours spent testing inside the game of the SSC alone. Thanks for your feedback; I forgot about this video.

 

[LauriFB]

I must say I didn't read it all, but what I understood the SSC is the issue. I'd like to offer alternative perspective.

SSC currently hoards most of the the dozen players, as it's the only well-done part of Starbase. However, those who use it, are truly hardcore players - a regular space MMO enjoyer would never touch it.

If we were able to get healthy playerbase by having a living universume full of things to do and full on interactions outside of SSC, we would most likely see a situation where SSC holds the elite shipdesigners, which would be like a couple percentage of the players. Vast majority of players would be outside enjoying the actual game - if one would exist.

So instead of limiting SSC, I'd go for building the actual game and actual universe outside of it. Once that's working, the ship designer are crucial part in providing more ships to those roaming the outsides, but who will never touch the SSC.

 

[Tris]

I must say I didn't read it all, but what I understood the SSC is the issue. I'd like to offer alternative perspective.

In my opinion, the SSC needs to be developed even further, e.g. has better tools to be able to build strength and gravity symmetrically.

The SSC also needs a much better test mode, so that you can test situations much better with it, e.g. Interaction with asteroids or moons. This means that the urge for PTU for ship developers would also diminish.

Or setting values for several marked objects at the same time

 

[Erador]

All the early ships shown in Starbase videos were made "by hand"

- I don't want spend my whole lifetime to build a single ship with 400 crates in the most tedious and painful way. If you enjoy building the ships by hand, please do but do not force other people to go your way.

On Discord, when I brought this up, people told me that the SSC is the only thing they really enjoy in Starbase. I have tried to point out that the reason the SSC is the only thing they enjoy is because the game itself has been killed off due to the presence of the SSC. Unfortunately, it seems this is an issue many people are unable to see the consequences of, as they are too fond of the ease of creation.

- It's a nonsense, so I hope the people of Discord have already tried to explain why.

The SSC is itself a separate game from Starbase. It is a 3D Computer Aided Drafting program with limitations.

- You need to understand, that the modules in the game are not brick like. It's not LEGO, so the experience of such like games are not suited here (SE, Imperion, etc). The more detailed/sophisticated abilities you bring the more sophisticated the process gets to utilize those abilities. That's why there is the SSC, that's why building by hand is not a solution, that's why EBM ships are not optimal/efficient/META.
^ Yes, there can be some ways to bring QoL to the SCC and make it more handy, but not by REMOVING SCC (which idea is just crazy)

Unfortunately, when paired with the MMO vision of Starbase, the SSC does immense damage to the game of Starbase by competing with players. As players withdraw out of the game of Starbase into the game of the SSC, they are removed from the game world, with no incentive to work with other players. Instead, they are incentivized to spend hours upon hours of solo-playtime refining a ship that they could not practically create in the game of Starbase without the aid of the game of the SSC's unique ability to work on a ship from any direction, to bolt parts from the back-side, to affix parts in strange positions otherwise made impossible and so on

- Yes, SSC is a standalone part of the game. Although, it's still a part of the game and very important one.

Well, let's imagine we have a low player number and there is not enough players to fulfill every direction of the game. And now, the PvP players are asking to remove Ore and Mining because there is now enough players to do battles, Industrialists are asking to remove PvP because no one is mining the resources for the Industry, Miners are asking to keep everything as it is because they can mine safely and there is not that much competition on the ore market.
^ All of these problems and solutions are examples of wish to solve the problem right now without any planning/thinking about consequences and thinking only about their kind of gameplay ignoring the other sides/gameplays of the game. I see your quote above not that different from my examples.

As such, mixing to the two creates many problems for the devs, for players, and again, destroys the playerbase who are trying to play the game of the SSC to improve their success in the game of Starbase

"destroys the playerbase" are strong words but not suited the reality. If there is something really kill the playerbase, it's not SSC for sure

They could be the ones producing high-efficiency ships that cause players to buy those ships instead of hand-making their own.

Keep in mind:
- Pro players will always build better than usual players, even by hand.
- In real life, to build sophisticated things you need sophisticated tools. You can't build modern top tier CPU just by soldering couple wires at home.
- Not all the players wants to build their ships, they prefer to buy one.
- There will be always META ships

Instead, players skipped all that (which wasn't available anyway) and instead immediately went into the SSC to produce highly specialized, impossible to make in the live game world ships that disregarded everything the devs had made to that point.

There will be always META like you it or not. The devs ships are unique because of set of reasons, but the players' META ships are different because:
- They want to win at all cost, so they do everything they can to make the ships the best
- There is a lot of players involving into ship building, testing, fighting and so on. They learn strong/weak approaches to build a ship (the devs are loosing by numbers of the tests/fights to the players)
- I agree that some abuses or not overpowered techniques should be fixed/balanced, but still... you need to accept that some practices works better than others

Almost all the "store" ships were avoided because players could easily design something better

- They were avoiding because most of them were outdated (<- I chose the most polite word here to not harm the designers of those ships). When larger audience joined the game, ofc the META/complexity/competition of the ships are increased.

Players don't care so much for looks and decals and the design. They mostly want to satisfy efficiency for their time. So, the SSC became the game of choice for players who wanted to succeed in the game of Starbase.

Yes, I do care about efficiency more than the design. When I buy a blueprint of a ship that I need, I remove anything that only has a cosmetic function. It's my choice and you cannot do anything about it. I would remove all the unneeded plates/windows even by hand, so there is nothing to do with SCC.
If you enjoy the good looking ships - please do, but do not force others to do so.

I'll start with player behavior and their drive towards efficiency. Without the SSC, players would have been facing the live game world of Starbase with their efficient minds. In doing so, they would have had to work with other players, sourcing parts, resources and other means to produce the items they needed to prototype ships build inside the live game world (even in the instances would have been fine; some area to place parts in peace is fine). The need for ship parts means the market would be filled with parts as players would rather buy a part than spend the 10-20 minutes producing them. Players would also face the reality that if they did not acquire resources, someone else would do it first, thus hurting their efficiency in efforts. Meaning, players would be building to a point where it was "good enough" for the current state of the game, to then go out and do something in the game world, to then return, and slowly over time, larger ships would be produced once the resources and time available accumulated to a point to make it worth it. This would have led to a natural progression level of players as they built larger and larger ships over time - one-off ships that could not be easily reproduced, lending them to become popular, maybe even being hired out for specific missions/resource acquisition and so on.

I understand the idea, but I think I will live not more than 80 years irl (taking my current age, there is even less :/ ). So please, the building/designing/testing process EVEN INSIDE SSC is already long enough, do not prolong it.

Again, it is hard to convey the thousands of problems that stem from a single critical issue like the SSC. I will try. For now, let's take a quick break and watch some guy in Space Engineers manually create a ship in the game world.

I don't like SE, so I would not

But, the making of this ship in Space Engineers is well balanced - the player has something they want to do, and will make a ship that satisfies getting to that point, but not wanting to go too big too quickly. The player needs a basic ship before they have a bigger ship. The player needs to know how things work, before they can fathom a huge drill that consumes planets. In short, the player needs to learn how to walk, before they learn to run.

How do you know the process there is well balanced while you haven't played it? And again, SE is a good example to take a reference, look how some problems are solved there, take some examples and inspiration and so on. Although, it's a different game with different approach! You cannot just copy their solutions. Same for EVE Online, DU, SC, and many more.

In Starbase, with the SSC as a competing game mode

Right now, the huge portion of the players are stuck to SSC because THE MOST FINISHED GAMEPLAY LOOP IS THE SSC! So, no wonders why they still playing it. It wouldn't be a problem, if the other gameplay loops were developed on the same level as the SSC. And you could meet people doing something else in the game, not only SSC enjoyers (leave them alone)

There is no walking, and no running

I agree, SSC allows you build anything, even what you haven't opened yet. This needs to be changed/rehauled/reviewed somehow.

You immediately go from recognizing all the store-bought ships are slow and bulky and plated with weird non-functional plates, to opening up the SSC and purposefully crafting a monster;

It's not a problem of SSC, it's a problem of "slow and bulky and plated with weird non-functional plates" ships

Ok, I am tired to read this article, but I hope I could show at least at some level why SSC is important and why the problem is not the SSC.

 

[Erador]

Honestly, I don't think it's worth continuing this conversation. I say that a lot of people don't test for dozens of hours, and you just say 'wrong'. Obviously there's going to be hyper-optimized ships with loads of testing behind them, and this is true for hand built ships too. There's just nothing worth talking about anymore because you don't seem to consider anything other than your preconceived notions of how people use the SSC, like how people never play the game, just the SSC.

Man, I think you just nailed it

 

[Erador]

SSC currently hoards most of the the dozen players, as it's the only well-done part of Starbase. However, those who use it, are truly hardcore players - a regular space MMO enjoyer would never touch it.

Right now, the huge portion of the players are stuck to SSC because THE MOST FINISHED GAMEPLAY LOOP IS THE SSC! So, no wonders why they still playing it. It wouldn't be a problem, if the other gameplay loops were developed on the same level as the SSC. And you could meet people doing something else in the game, not only SSC enjoyers (leave them alone)

Hahahaha, I like that FB understands this
* I haven't read the discussion, just were replying to the first message, and only then took a look on the thread itself.

 

[La_fleur_]

Killing an SSC is a very serious matter. This action deprives the game of the uniqueness of ships and the search for optimal parameters. It's a science game. Designing ships is part of the scientific process. I agree that this is a game within a game and it kills the game. But at the same time, it gives a lot of players to show their creative qualities. I am also waiting for the SSC Capital Ships. Because building a beautiful Capital ship with your hands is a very difficult task as it is now. My thoughts. We need a builder of Capital ships and regular ships. Assembling it in the same way in the editor quickly from modules. Improved Easy Build. Where you don't have to do anything with your hands. We select the modules and show where to put them. It may be worth removing it from the game client but leaving it as a separate application. So that those who want to design ships further can do this. New players will no longer see SSC, and old players will always be able to design.

 

[Vexus]

I must say I didn't read it all, but what I understood the SSC is the issue. I'd like to offer alternative perspective.

SSC currently hoards most of the the dozen players, as it's the only well-done part of Starbase. However, those who use it, are truly hardcore players - a regular space MMO enjoyer would never touch it.

If we were able to get healthy playerbase by having a living universume full of things to do and full on interactions outside of SSC, we would most likely see a situation where SSC holds the elite shipdesigners, which would be like a couple percentage of the players. Vast majority of players would be outside enjoying the actual game - if one would exist.

So instead of limiting SSC, I'd go for building the actual game and actual universe outside of it. Once that's working, the ship designer are crucial part in providing more ships to those roaming the outsides, but who will never touch the SSC.

Although I understand where you are coming from, and a lot of people will agree with you, I must disagree and reiterate that the game of the SSC is incompatible with the game of Starbase. You can create different classes of ships in the SSC vs Starbase, and as such, the SSC is the only place to go to work on a ship. Even if I want to make small changes to my ship, I'm better off doing it within the SSC than anywhere else, usually resulting in scrapping the "old" version (ignoring it in storage), and going to design and print the "new" version. Although the current remnants of players are hardcore SSC fans, there's not a single person who simply does not touch the SSC when playing Starbase. It is required to play the game of the SSC to understand ship designs, to test weapon damage, to play with all the "cool stuff" in Starbase, and so on.

Unfortunately, trying to build the actual game of Starbase will be impossible with the presence of the game of the SSC - the only place the most complex designs can be created. Bolting from the back of plating, hidden wiring and all sorts of non-Starbase functionality are available in the SSC alone and only transfer over upon ships being printed.

The game of the SSC is the creativity-sink of any players who play Starbase. Want to be creative? You go into the SSC. That is a huge issue. You don't think of how to interact with other players or do anything else - the SSC takes all the creativity out of the room and isolates it into an offline experience.

I've seen enough games where I'm certain this will just be another example of learning a hard lesson, but I have to plead the case regardless.

The SSC allows too much - unique ships only available in the SSC, the ability to test all weapons and damage, the ability to play with all the parts of Starbase with no downside or cost or risk, and much more. You can experience nearly all the "fun" of Starbase inside the SSC, and the only thing you get out of it and in the game of Starbase is player interaction, which is unfortunately lacking and available everywhere else by every other game in a more accessible and less complex fashion. The only way to capture players into the game of Starbase is to force them to create by hand inside the game of Starbase, to make the game of Starbase the only place to use your creative energy, which will then lead to more player interaction.

The evidence is readily available; the devs themselves made interesting "hand-made" ships and also technology anticipating a world without the SSC. The factories and so on are not necessary in an SSC-enabled Starbase. All the destruction is discounted with the presence of the SSC and people printing ship after ship.

I posted this thread knowing the result, but again, I feel compelled to warn of the risks here, and sadly, in my opinion they are fatal.

 

[Askannon]

I want to just hit this paragraph here

Instead, they are incentivized to spend hours upon hours of solo-playtime refining a ship that they could not practically create in the game of Starbase without the aid of the game of the SSC's unique ability to work on a ship from any direction, to bolt parts from the back-side, to affix parts in strange positions otherwise made impossible and so on.

solo-playtime
First, you know that the SSC has group design as an option? If you are in a group, you can join another in the SSC and work on a ship together. It's just prone to desyncs, as everything that has to do with 2 or more players being in proximity. Which leads me to my next point: working as a group wouldn't be so rare, if it wouldn't be working against frustrations at all points. Want to go mining? Sure, but only one can actually see the asteroid, the others get a broken representation of what it would look like if it was all the core material. Want to use moving parts? Sure, but they will flip out when there are people around.
So instead of saying the SSC is a major player in forcing solo-playtime, I would look at those.

Now, incentives.
Have you tried building a ship from scratch?
Have you tried making a ship specifically for the purpose of tinkering with it in world? Placing Ore Crates? Plating?
Have you tried expanding a ship?
Have you tried upgrading thrusters? Generators?
I have done all and I can say I am not impressed.
Lets go backwards: changing generators. I have a ship, where I wanted to switch from Nhurgite to Exorium for the efficiency. I have 18 generators and 12 fuelchambers, setup in 6 groups, with plenty of walk space inbetween. Since I have the blueprint, a new design with them would take 5 minutes, but it would take quite a few resources, so I got to work. It is very dull work, loosening the bolts, replacing the generators and fuelchambers and autobolting them, and then going back to bolt them again so they behave with durability. I have switched a generator set once, and already don't want to do that again.
Thrusters: same ship, after the generators. I wanted to change 16 box thrusters and 4 blocks of 32 (4x4x2) triangle thrusters. I managed the Box thrusters and around 1.5 blocks (48) before I gave up. And will never want to upgrade a thruster pack by hand again.
I've tried expanding the frame of a ship, but it is just clunky and slow, especially when I don't know what I want to go for yet. So I avoid welding to a frame.
The next three are all related to the same ship, though I will start with ore crates since that relates to the previous ship as well. On that, I placed 350 crates. I designed it in a way that the crates fit seemlessly between all walls, and still there was a lot of rebolting when they became misaligned (which is hard to see). And before that the predecessor of the ship had pretty much nothing in it for budgetary reasons (back then the differentiation between assembly and manufacturing cost wasn't done, so I didn't know precrafting lowers cost), so I got to plating (inside) and then bolting crates. I was helped in all three of these instances, but I will readily say: never again. The predecessor was designed with tinkering in mind and had plenty of room for stuff, but I will rather have a mostly designed ship than a Skeleton of a freighter that I want to work on. For a start to understand what I wanted it wasn't bad, but I wouldn't have made a ship if it took ages to even get the basic frame done. Tinkering with it, yes. Small adjustments to make a ship your own. But I would argue vehemently against anyone who says making a ship of any size by hand is a fun way after the first ship.
And to show that this isn't just a beginner speaking, I challenged myself to make a ship with as little help from a station as possible. That means getting a few parts beforehand to avoid station inventory when crafting to get ship inventory going (hardpoints, resource bridge, full battery) to craft stuff that requires more than 2 components or stacks of ore. I managed to get to a reasonable size for a starter ship before I stopped.
Admittedly, this was a unique way of going about it, but it still showed me that I will avoid building ships by hand unless I want to challenge myself.

And I feel like that is exactly where hand crafting ships should remain: a challenge for those that want it. Ships in SB are complex things, even when build by hand. To deny people the quality of life feature that is a designer mode because it is "cheating" is just plain stupid. People are only going to allow so much work and frustration in their game, after which they will just go.

 

[Askannon]

The game of the SSC is the creativity-sink of any players who play Starbase. Want to be creative? You go into the SSC. That is a huge issue. You don't think of how to interact with other players or do anything else - the SSC takes all the creativity out of the room and isolates it into an offline experience.

You know, this is a lot of big words, but I don't think you see the forest for the trees.
If it takes ages to get a ship working... why would people ever make a new ship after they have a good one? With the SSC at least there is always progress, always the option of trying out a new design, without first spending a month at least getting the frame right, the components, then the frame again, the cabling, the piping, the device fields, the YOLOL...
You say you want the SSC to cease to be the only place to spend the creative energy by removing essentially the only place where one can be (with reasonable effort for a game) creative in the first place. I don't think that's it chief.

 

[JonnB]

I personally think this is a good idea, my early game experience with the game was pretty much ruined by someone printing an endgame ship off for me and hounding me to take it as it would be difficult for me to make one on my own. (I was asking in global chat for advice for issues I was having when modifying the labourer when I was approached).

I never got the chance to experiment whilst learning to build a ship, I had no idea what anything did and how it worked - I just knew how to fly the ship.

I tried to make my own ship after this point and was offput by the massive feature loss I would have and also I had no idea where to get the recourses from to actually get the components for the ship because I never had to know whith just being printed a ship off. I also had pretty much no components unlocked on the skill tree cause I had never crafted anything myself so creating a ship of similar quality / feature set would've taken a long grind.

I really enjoyed the manual aspect of building and the time it took to weld and bolt everything into place, tried the SSC however didn't like it as much as physically doing it myself in the world.

 

[Lingontuva]

my early game experience with the game was pretty much ruined by someone printing an endgame ship off for me and hounding me to take it as it would be difficult for me to make one on my own. (I was asking in global chat for advice for issues I was having when modifying the labourer when I was approached).

Many such cases, I try to discourage it when I see it

 

[Askannon]

I personally think this is a good idea, my early game experience with the game was pretty much ruined by someone printing an endgame ship off for me and hounding me to take it as it would be difficult for me to make one on my own. (I was asking in global chat for advice for issues I was having when modifying the labourer when I was approached).

I have some simple ships I may show someone new as an option, but I wouldn't pester someone without at least answering the question asked. That's just rude.
Though considering what Lauri wrote about the Laborer II being the new beginner ship, I think this practice overall will lessen since that is at least a workable ship that doesn't eat your fuel 4x faster than needed or is becoming slow real fast.

 

[Fruitkek]

i sent vexus a blueprint for a ship i made out of boredom a few months back, it came with all the bells and whistles of a meta ship - the meta armor, clipped plates and beams, horizontally stacked glass, impossible bolts, hidden fuel chambers only refillable via repair house, pilot seat pixel peek jumping and hinge assisted ejection, four plasma guns tucked tightly around the center, nicely hidden and enough engines to get it to 95% of max speed.

It was essentially a showcase to the power of the ssc. oh the beams along this point are a little too long? clip them all into each other just a bit along the whole row and itll fit like a glove. too short? seperate them JUUUUUST enough to allow welding and youre good. structure unstable? weld blobs. structure not unstable? weld blobs anyway. you wanna make sure certain parts dont separate? clip a socket between them and bolt either side and they will never come apart.

point is, the ssc and the repair hall allows for a lot of exploits that wouldnt otherwise be allowed within the game

If we were able to get healthy playerbase by having a living universume full of things to do and full on interactions outside of SSC, we would most likely see a situation where SSC holds the elite shipdesigners, which would be like a couple percentage of the players. Vast majority of players would be outside enjoying the actual game - if one would exist.

do you believe in trickle down economics? because i dont. if i were one of those chosen few i wouldnt share anything with anyone outside my close circle.

 

[BlackAndWhiteBird]

In part, I could agree with your theses, but only in part. Perhaps only in the part where the complete printing and repair of ships using ssc is condemned. In exactly the same way, I am reprehensible about auto-installation and foaming of damaged parts according to the drawing using a universal tool.
First of all, I want to say that citing space engineers as an example is a very unwise idea. You correctly noted that you did not play this game, because if you played it, you would know that:
1 Construction in engineers is strictly tied to the grid, which is very similar to construction in easy build. Which is much simpler in manual construction than what we have here, but at the same time it greatly limits the range of possible engineering and design solutions.

2 Manual construction is used only at the initial stages, for the simplest devices that can be assembled literally on the knee.

3 Complex devices and large ships are always created in a separate game mode with unlimited resources, after which a blueprint is removed from the device and it is reproduced in the main game using a projector, as well as manual welding or by creating a stationary “printer”. Which is not that much different from ssc.

Now let's return to the star base.

My first miner ship was completely designed in ssc. Then all the parts that I could not afford at that time were removed from it, and the critical components were replaced with simpler versions. What was printed in the end was the hull, the chassis of the ship, which was constantly being modernized for a long time. Moreover, it has been extensively rebuilt by hand twice, including a change in the shape of the hull. Which ultimately turned the ship into a pile of poorly managed metal, subsequently used only as a crafting workshop. So, I have a lot of experience in manual building in this game.

And I can say that manual construction in a starbase sucks. Manual construction is a burning ass due to parts that do not want to be installed the way you need; these are bolts that suddenly become overlong and prevent you from installing what you need; these are wiring and pipes that do not lie straight, stick to parts that should not have been glued to and create breaks that should not exist; these are microdisplacements due to which the entire balance of the ship goes for a walk; these are inexplicable anomalies of structural strength, arising from the fact that the load suddenly decided to be distributed through the decorative plate, and not through the supporting beam to which the part was attached, and thousands and thousands more problems that take tens and hundreds of hours alone inside the station hangar.

I am against magical sealing of ships. I'm against creating parts in ssc that you don't know how to make. For me, it would be much preferable to assemble them according to the drawing from ssc with the help of robotic hands on conveyor lines. The same assembly that they showed on promotional videos. But there is nothing of this and whether it will ever be realized is unknown. SSC is a design tool that for some reason was added with a magical 3D printer. And as long as there are no production lines, conveyors, metallurgy, blueprint chips and other things that the developers promised us, printing ships through ssc will remain an inevitable but necessary evil.

 

[Erador]

@LauriFB

I have some simple ships I may show someone new as an option, but I wouldn't pester someone without at least answering the question asked. That's just rude.
Though considering what Lauri wrote about the Laborer II being the new beginner ship, I think this practice overall will lessen since that is at least a workable ship that doesn't eat your fuel 4x faster than needed or is becoming slow real fast.

[PB] Alkash actually has a good starter ship: it's like a constructor which can be easily upgraded. There is also bolted text panels on different spots with the notes or explaining things.
So, if there is will be no EBM, the ship has predefined spots where you can bolt additional materials crates, thrusters, generators, heatsinks, lasers, ore collectors and so on.

I would prefer something like this for a starter ship. A platform that can be easily expanded and be able to get from "no Minning Lasers and 10 materials crates" to something like "~6 Mining Lasers and ~60-100 Material Crates"

 

[Erador]

@LauriFB

[PB] Alkash actually has a good starter ship: it's like a constructor which can be easily upgraded. There is also bolted text panels on different spots with the notes or explaining things.
So, if there is will be no EBM, the ship has predefined spots where you can bolt additional materials crates, thrusters, generators, heatsinks, lasers, ore collectors and so on.

I would prefer something like this for a starter ship. A platform that can be easily expanded and be able to get from "no Minning Lasers and 10 materials crates" to something like "~6 Mining Lasers and ~60-100 Material Crates"

There can be a community tender opened to make the best ship that will follow the given standards.