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Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#1
Hi Josh! I've got another suggestion for LT.
Since you've just been able to implement ship editing/ station editing. Will there be a way to create a blueprint of the ship you created and mass produce it for your fleet?
And just one question, will you be able to edit your ship right on the spot in space? Or (probably the most likely way) dock in a station, and add on the required components to the ship within the station? Ex: In that stations cargo bay/ storage you will have components (regular expansions to the ship's size or hard points) that you bought or manufactured yourself, you add those components for an X amount of $$$..?
Thanks for your time! :)
Anything is possible if you can dream it.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#2
Having to collect specific ship components from all over the universe would be okay if the player was limited to one ship... but he isn't.

Doing this for a fleet is a huge hassle... unless you can automate it... which makes the feature pointless.

I would rather see ships built from 2-3 generic materials.
Varied enough to make the player harvest different stuff for radically different ship designs or race components but generic enough for not turning into micromanagement hell.
You can still break the generic rules and include the occasional rare material in a particular faction's blue prints if they are really alien.
As long as you don't have to find 4 rare spawns for every damn thing that's fine. You don't have to use knoxivan missile launchers after all... =)

Overall it makes more sense to make a big deal of acquiring blue prints.

PS:
The blue print list definitely needs a "hide this forever" function so that you don't have to scroll through old crap that you'll never use again.
That and a "show everything" feature because eventually, you will perma-hide something by accident.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#3
Gazz wrote:Having to collect specific ship components from all over the universe would be okay if the player was limited to one ship... but he isn't.

Doing this for a fleet is a huge hassle... unless you can automate it... which makes the feature pointless.

I would rather see ships built from 2-3 generic materials.
Varied enough to make the player harvest different stuff for radically different ship designs or race components but generic enough for not turning into micromanagement hell.
You can still break the generic rules and include the occasional rare material in a particular faction's blue prints if they are really alien.
As long as you don't have to find 4 rare spawns for every damn thing that's fine. You don't have to use knoxivan missile launchers after all... =)

Overall it makes more sense to make a big deal of acquiring blue prints.

PS:
The blue print list definitely needs a "hide this forever" function so that you don't have to scroll through old crap that you'll never use again.
That and a "show everything" feature because eventually, you will perma-hide something by accident.
These components are made of simple materials, and can be bought everywhere because they are very common? Just an idea, maybe this could be implemented in a better way perhaps :p
Anything is possible if you can dream it.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#4
The ship editor will in fact be a blueprint creator, you wont magically get the ship you've created in game, you'll have to build it. And as such you're free to build as many copies as you want and crew them with NPCs.
Relevant Josh comments can be found here, on the kickstarter, on the site, on his dev blog or in the interviews, I can't be bothered to go look through all of them every time I reply to a thread, especially not when the question has been answered on the forums already.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#5
Time for a bit of threadromancy (like necromancy but with forum threads ;) ):

What about an export/import functionality for blueprints, maybe with the ability to export/import whole directories full of blueprints at once :?:

In my experience, a popular game always has a few fans who like to mod things. If LT gets there (hopefully), such an export/import would allow those fans to share their work with others. This way, LT could actually get some handcrafted assets even if they were never planned to be delivered 8-).
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#6
In my experience, a popular game always has a few fans who like to mod things. If LT gets there (hopefully), such an export/import would allow those fans to share their work with others. This way, LT could actually get some handcrafted assets even if they were never planned to be delivered .
I can't remember where I saw it but I believe Josh said that he won't have mod support, at least not in the first release, because with the PCG setup of the game it can be hard to implement, which is why literally everything in the game is PCG without and custom created items that I know of. I may be wrong but I believe that is the case, if anyone has information otherwise though?...
I would rather see ships built from 2-3 generic materials.
Varied enough to make the player harvest different stuff for radically different ship designs or race components but generic enough for not turning into micromanagement hell.
In my opinion that is incredibly boring. Kinda kills the game a bit for the miners/traders if we have 2-3 materials used to build entire ships. I know we are ditching realism in a big way but that's just mindnumbingly basic. I agree you might not want to hunt around all over the galaxy to build a ship, but that's just warcraft 1 levels of basic, wood and gold, maybe pop cap kind of dynamic. In a game that many people might play for well over a hundred hours on an individual save to build up their fleet and faction and empire, a mere 2 or 3 items to develop your fleet, easily found in every system, is going to kill the game for people who don't want combat as much as trading and mining.

Maybe Josh can put in a pre-game economy setting that simplifies it a ton for people who just want to shoot things or what not, but I want a ton of items, different materials with different strengths and weaknesses, different ammunition types, even different materials for weapons, perhaps something that amplifies energy weapon damage but overheats faster or something. Maybe better targeting computers and reloading systems so your ship can aim more rapidly and missiles reload faster with an autoreloader.

Some of these things should be hard to find or expensive to manufacture because they do provide an advantage, but just sacrificing all that depth, interest and customisation just sounds like it'll get boring quick. Looking at how intriguing the new RTS feature that Josh has implemented, plus the fleet formation and tactics setup he's making and the awesome ship builder mechanic, it would be really disappointing if the other critical aspects of the game were really simple and, well, boring.
The enemy of my enemy dies next.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#7
Slevan wrote:
In my experience, a popular game always has a few fans who like to mod things. If LT gets there (hopefully), such an export/import would allow those fans to share their work with others. This way, LT could actually get some handcrafted assets even if they were never planned to be delivered .
I can't remember where I saw it but I believe Josh said that he won't have mod support, at least not in the first release
Bele wrote:The ship editor will in fact be a blueprint creator, you wont magically get the ship you've created in game, you'll have to build it. And as such you're free to build as many copies as you want and crew them with NPCs.
I guess it is debatable if export of blueprints to file and vice versa would count as full blown mod support. I guess it might be something that is easy to implement, as savegames have to contain these data anyway. If Josh decides to go for it, he would need
  • a separate save dialog for one or more ship designs from your blueprint list, in addition to the normal save game dialog.
  • a file container for the data and routines to write/read it
  • and a load file dialog for importing the blueprint cotainer.
Maybe not quite as easy as it sounds here, but probably not so difficult that it not worth consideration.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#8
Rabiator wrote:
In my experience, a popular game always has a few fans who like to mod things. If LT gets there (hopefully), such an export/import would allow those fans to share their work with others. This way, LT could actually get some handcrafted assets even if they were never planned to be delivered 8-).
In regards to this,
Josh wrote:Modding
Not in a sense of creating new ship modules, models, or features.
The way that the engine is structured is not conducive to modding. The good news is that, because of my choices, the game will run faster and I'll be able to complete it sooner. The bad news is that "real" mod support is unlikely, at least initially. Sorry!

However, nearly all game content (and therefore balancing) is generated by formulas. It is very likely that you will be able to change key constants and, for instance, reduce the drag factor in the flight model so far that you effectively have a "Newtonian flight model mod"!
The enemy of my enemy dies next.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#9
How about production *chains*? In games such as Eve (8 minerals, not counting salvage or ice at the moment) or X3 (ore, silicon, energy cells), a very few basic resources feed into larger production chains (weapons, hull plating, construction components), which then feed into progressively larger chains until you get your desired component (a ship for example). Yes, having all ships be (credit cost / ore 1 cost / ore 2 cost) would be pretty boring. I also really like how Eve handles production (blueprint for everything) though the MMO nature of the game naturally skews some things (a single valuable T2 BPO being worth ungodly amounts of money, creating a huge artificial supply vacuum and stuff) Occasionally you can have the rare component (morphite, nividium) that's used for a totally different set of upgraded production strategies. That sort of stuff.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#10
Slevan wrote:
Rabiator wrote:
In my experience, a popular game always has a few fans who like to mod things. If LT gets there (hopefully), such an export/import would allow those fans to share their work with others. This way, LT could actually get some handcrafted assets even if they were never planned to be delivered 8-).
In regards to this,
Josh wrote:Modding
Not in a sense of creating new ship modules, models, or features.
The way that the engine is structured is not conducive to modding. The good news is that, because of my choices, the game will run faster and I'll be able to complete it sooner. The bad news is that "real" mod support is unlikely, at least initially. Sorry!

However, nearly all game content (and therefore balancing) is generated by formulas. It is very likely that you will be able to change key constants and, for instance, reduce the drag factor in the flight model so far that you effectively have a "Newtonian flight model mod"!
In regard to that, I'd like to have constant initialization happen during every load, instead of having constants fixed at the creation of a new game. After all, it does no good to tweak if those tweaks don't make it into your 200 hour savegame.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#11
Gazz wrote:I would rather see ships built from 2-3 generic materials.
Varied enough to make the player harvest different stuff for radically different ship designs or race components but generic enough for not turning into micromanagement hell.
Sounds rather dull and watered down for those who are into industry.

Certainly something like EVE's production chain for capital ships is way too arduous and convoluted. Would be cool to find some middle ground. Standard ships only use ~aprox 5 or 6 minerals, advanced ships maybe twice that.

Either way, a handful of resources for Limit Theory, a game of infinite possibilities seems rather lackluster, but that is just my take.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#12
Rabiator wrote: What about an export/import functionality for blueprints, maybe with the ability to export/import whole directories full of blueprints at once :?:
Are you referring to the ship editor and Josh stating that there will be import/export capability in regards to ships or something more?

As for a few number of resources to manage when it comes to production, I feel there needs to be more rather than few. Why? Because if someone is going to play the economy game, this will be essential. Those who won't be playing the economy game won't be using it anyways. You'll set up an asteroid chomper and it'll spit out a cap ship, handling it all for you. Production should become automated to that point where you just set up the chains mentioned and leave it at that.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#13
DWMagus wrote:
Rabiator wrote: What about an export/import functionality for blueprints, maybe with the ability to export/import whole directories full of blueprints at once :?:
Are you referring to the ship editor and Josh stating that there will be import/export capability in regards to ships or something more?
Ship editor with import/export capability, if possible for multiple ships at once. Should not add too much work and players would be able to post their blueprints on the web.
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Re: Edited Ship Blueprints/ Mass Production

#14
No Potential wrote:
Gazz wrote:I would rather see ships built from 2-3 generic materials.
Varied enough to make the player harvest different stuff for radically different ship designs or race components but generic enough for not turning into micromanagement hell.
Sounds rather dull and watered down for those who are into industry.

Certainly something like EVE's production chain for capital ships is way too arduous and convoluted. Would be cool to find some middle ground. Standard ships only use ~aprox 5 or 6 minerals, advanced ships maybe twice that.

Either way, a handful of resources for Limit Theory, a game of infinite possibilities seems rather lackluster, but that is just my take.
Yes, EVE's component system for more advanced ships is quite absurd:

Ore and Ice > Refine > Minerals and Ice Minerals

Planet materials + Ice > POS > Basic materials

Basic materials > Blueprint > Intermediate material

Intermediate material > Blueprint > Advanced material

Advanced material > Blueprint > Ship component

Ship component + Minerals > Blueprint > (advanced) Ship

No wonder capital ships are so expensive. I'm excluding research, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff. (Never had the patience to actually try to build or run a POS).



Just 3 steps would be good:

Ore > Minerals (none of this ice business or distinguishing planet from asteroid minerals)

Minerals > Components

Components > Ship

Depending on how many types of minerals you have, you can even skip the components part. But I'd prefer keeping the # of minerals low (2-4) and using components.

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