Who doesn't want infinite stuff? Well you don't. The nature of this game is that resources are limited. Replacing a ship is meant to take time and effort, almost as much as building the first one. Certainly there are games where assembling your design is easy, but there is every indication that isn't the intent for Starbase. Losing a ship matters because it took time and effort to get that ship in the first place. This affects everything else in the game.
So of course they introduced the mining laser, a ship mounted device that coverts asteroid voxels into ore items, which are then put into your inventory by an ore collector. This is the same function as the blunt end of the pick axe and the mining back pack, but now with a ship mounted version. A player can only hold and swing one pick axe at a time, while ships and stations allow for any number of various devices. So now imagine you could build a ship with 30 mining lasers. Do 30 mining lasers mine 30 times faster? You would need more than the mining lasers themselves, but if you double everything on your ship you would double your mining rate. If the rate you gather resources is directly proportional to the resources you invested in your mining ship you would get exponential growth of mining ship size and that player's mining rate which only stops with ship size limits. Depending on what exactly those hard upper limits are like in the future, a maxed out mining ship could gather hundreds of times what a swinging pick axe could.
With exponential growth the changes to the economy would not be noticeable for a time. People would rely on starting ships, grinding at "jobs," and selling to NPCs for a time. It would be a slow grind at first. When it finally took off noticeable changes would come relatively rapidly. Players would need to trade in their mining ship for something better regularly. There would be a period where things match what developers imagined, but it would be very brief Once you have a max-sized mining ship growth would be linear. Cargo and combat ships would also max out soon, and this linear growth would result in max size ships becoming steadily cheaper and more expendable. Combined with the fact that everyone is competing with everyone there would be some problems.
Firstly, older players would have an immense advantage over newer players. Starbase throws every player into the same pot, everyone is competing with each other on some level, whether that is their contribution to the economy or actual combat. A newer player will be relatively inconsequential and defenseless next to the vets. Exponential progression might motivate them to take the next step, but it also means someone who has twice as much as you will continue to have twice as much as long you both progress at the same rate. If reaching the end game takes extremely long, and being a non-end-game player means you have comparitively nothing, the frustration from the grind could outweigh the positives. Of course they could skip ahead by joining an established faction, but then the veterans that lead not only outperform the newbies but also get to boss them around. It promotes a one sided relationship and that should never be necessary.
Secondly, with huge yet cheap ships, balance is a problem, the meta gets weird, and a handful of designs will dominate. The arbritrary part limit and the number of crew becomes the limiting factor, and so designs have to revolve around that limitation. There is little benefit to getting a cheaper ship, which means almost everything will be max-size, (unless the ship is a scout, light courier, or needs to be particularly expendable). Even having multi-crew ships will be pointless when you can afford multiple single crew ships. Yes 1 on 1 the multi-crew ship is better, but when everything is the same size 1 ship per person means more power. Obviously there is less variety when every ships is max-size and single pilot.
When everything has exactly 24 weapons people will almost always use the weapon that needs fewer reloads. Ships could be super slow simply because they don't have sufficient surface area for all of the engines. A similar issue with weapons could mean big ships have much more armor than firepower, resulting in slow tanky fights. If building a ship is vastly more effort than mining, design consideration would be based on whatever makes building simpler. The first faction that creates an automated factory that make a max-size combat design could completely dominate. Though making automated factories too easy is also bad.
Thirdly, LAG!! When there is a ship with hundreds of thrusters and millions of parts in your area you will notice some problems with the game. Starbase relies on a "peer to peer computing" concept; the computing load is shared between each player in a given area. Like other computing schemes Having more stuff to simulate per person means more lag, and having each person flying a bigger ship means more stuff to simulate. The lag would most severaly affect the pilot of the big ship, but would also hit everyone around. In a situation where everyone has a huge ship the lag will be similarly huge. Since combat and destruction is espiecially simulation intensive, those battles made slow by thicker armor will be even slower. Frozenbyte may have to further shrink the maximum part limits.
Of course optimization will help, but optimization is asymptotic, meaning improvements come easily at first but slow down as you get closer to a hypothetically perfect version of the Starbase engine. Even a perfect version of the engine would merely reduce the burden. Computer hardware improves exponentially, but not all exponential growth is equal. The growth of computer capability has noticeably slowed across the last decade and I don't know exactly how fast ship size would grow in Starbase.
tldr: Mining laser spam could make big ships too cheap ruining balance, new player experience and lag.
So of course they introduced the mining laser, a ship mounted device that coverts asteroid voxels into ore items, which are then put into your inventory by an ore collector. This is the same function as the blunt end of the pick axe and the mining back pack, but now with a ship mounted version. A player can only hold and swing one pick axe at a time, while ships and stations allow for any number of various devices. So now imagine you could build a ship with 30 mining lasers. Do 30 mining lasers mine 30 times faster? You would need more than the mining lasers themselves, but if you double everything on your ship you would double your mining rate. If the rate you gather resources is directly proportional to the resources you invested in your mining ship you would get exponential growth of mining ship size and that player's mining rate which only stops with ship size limits. Depending on what exactly those hard upper limits are like in the future, a maxed out mining ship could gather hundreds of times what a swinging pick axe could.
With exponential growth the changes to the economy would not be noticeable for a time. People would rely on starting ships, grinding at "jobs," and selling to NPCs for a time. It would be a slow grind at first. When it finally took off noticeable changes would come relatively rapidly. Players would need to trade in their mining ship for something better regularly. There would be a period where things match what developers imagined, but it would be very brief Once you have a max-sized mining ship growth would be linear. Cargo and combat ships would also max out soon, and this linear growth would result in max size ships becoming steadily cheaper and more expendable. Combined with the fact that everyone is competing with everyone there would be some problems.
Firstly, older players would have an immense advantage over newer players. Starbase throws every player into the same pot, everyone is competing with each other on some level, whether that is their contribution to the economy or actual combat. A newer player will be relatively inconsequential and defenseless next to the vets. Exponential progression might motivate them to take the next step, but it also means someone who has twice as much as you will continue to have twice as much as long you both progress at the same rate. If reaching the end game takes extremely long, and being a non-end-game player means you have comparitively nothing, the frustration from the grind could outweigh the positives. Of course they could skip ahead by joining an established faction, but then the veterans that lead not only outperform the newbies but also get to boss them around. It promotes a one sided relationship and that should never be necessary.
Secondly, with huge yet cheap ships, balance is a problem, the meta gets weird, and a handful of designs will dominate. The arbritrary part limit and the number of crew becomes the limiting factor, and so designs have to revolve around that limitation. There is little benefit to getting a cheaper ship, which means almost everything will be max-size, (unless the ship is a scout, light courier, or needs to be particularly expendable). Even having multi-crew ships will be pointless when you can afford multiple single crew ships. Yes 1 on 1 the multi-crew ship is better, but when everything is the same size 1 ship per person means more power. Obviously there is less variety when every ships is max-size and single pilot.
When everything has exactly 24 weapons people will almost always use the weapon that needs fewer reloads. Ships could be super slow simply because they don't have sufficient surface area for all of the engines. A similar issue with weapons could mean big ships have much more armor than firepower, resulting in slow tanky fights. If building a ship is vastly more effort than mining, design consideration would be based on whatever makes building simpler. The first faction that creates an automated factory that make a max-size combat design could completely dominate. Though making automated factories too easy is also bad.
Thirdly, LAG!! When there is a ship with hundreds of thrusters and millions of parts in your area you will notice some problems with the game. Starbase relies on a "peer to peer computing" concept; the computing load is shared between each player in a given area. Like other computing schemes Having more stuff to simulate per person means more lag, and having each person flying a bigger ship means more stuff to simulate. The lag would most severaly affect the pilot of the big ship, but would also hit everyone around. In a situation where everyone has a huge ship the lag will be similarly huge. Since combat and destruction is espiecially simulation intensive, those battles made slow by thicker armor will be even slower. Frozenbyte may have to further shrink the maximum part limits.
Of course optimization will help, but optimization is asymptotic, meaning improvements come easily at first but slow down as you get closer to a hypothetically perfect version of the Starbase engine. Even a perfect version of the engine would merely reduce the burden. Computer hardware improves exponentially, but not all exponential growth is equal. The growth of computer capability has noticeably slowed across the last decade and I don't know exactly how fast ship size would grow in Starbase.
tldr: Mining laser spam could make big ships too cheap ruining balance, new player experience and lag.
