StarMade 0.16 - Crafting and BattleMode
Hello players,
the crafting update is finally in a working state. Also an all new
Game Mode called "BattleMode" was added.
Crafting
The crafting system essentially replaces the currently recipe system (random recipes still work, but will be taken out gradually).
Basically, each block has now a number of other blocks they consist of. Those blocks then again have something they consist of, and so forth. This forms the basis of the crafting tree.
New Raw Resources and Rocks
There are two types of raw resources: ore and shards.
Those are now separated from blocks. That means they can spawn in any rock. If you salvage a rock that has a resource in it, both the rock and the resource will be placed in your inventory. If you destroy the block, the resource is lost, too.
Raw resources have to be processed first! There are two new factories to do that: The capsule factory, which turns raw resources into capsules, and the micro assembler, which turns capsules into either metal meshes or circuits which are used as basis for blocks.
Capsules basically are refined resources made from raw ones. You'll get multiple from each raw resource you put in.
There are also 8 new types of rocks used in recipes. Those are now spawned on asteroids. You will also find 2 types of ores/shards on asteroids and planets now. On asteroids, depending on the asteroid type, the same resources will spawn. On planets it will be 2 random resources.
New Crafting Items
Several new block types were added as part of the crafting system, although they serve only as an intermediate stage in the crafting of other blocks, we gave them textures that you might find useful in decorating parts of your ship. With Kupu’s changes to the texture sheet, and the addition of these new crafting items, there are a lot of new looks to try out on your ships and stations!
Personal Crafting
But now you can not only use factories to craft, it can also be done in the player inventory. The capsule factory and micro assembler are permanently available there. They work slower than factories, but they can do all basic things. The last one available in the inventory is the factory crafting, where you can make the macro factory. The macro factory makes ALL other blocks in the game.
This means, even if you are stranded on a planet without any block, you can make a core from nothing, survival mode! Here is a little rundown on how
Small Tutorial
to make a core:
1. collect ore or shards (type is irrelevant but it's better focus on either shards or ore exclusively at first)
2. open inventory and click on the capsule button
3. place either ore or shards in the slot. Don't place both, or else you won't have enough space for the product to be put there.
3. You should be getting capsules
4. Place the produced in your inventory
5. click on the micro button in the inventory and place your produced capsules there. You should be getting either circuits (from shard capsules) or metal meshes (from ore capsules). Also only place one type at a time in the slot, as there has to be space for the product to be placed.
6. with 20 metal meshes or 20 circuits you can finally make the macro factory, which can produce all other blocks. put the 20 meshes in the slot after you press the factory button in the inventory.
7. place down your factory.
8. open the factory with R and select the ship core as production. In the graph you can see that other than circuits, you require metal grills. A factory can only do ONE STEP OF THE TREE at a time, so you will first have to change the production to metal grill
9. place in some metal meshes and the factory should now produce metal grills. Because factories require power and you don't have a power block, you can shoot it with with the new personal PowerSupplyBeam weapon until you can produce a power block.
10. when you have enough grills, put in some circuits and select "core" as product again.
11. your factory will now produce cores if you have the required resources.
Calbiri did a great job conceptualizing all the recipes applying them to the game. Still, the recipes may be adjusted as the need arises, it’s not always easy to predict every issue in a new crafting system.
It was not small work:
Factory Linking
As before, factories can be linked together. Linking a factory to another has the effect, that the factory can move elements out of all other factories that are connected into its own inventory and proceed to use them for production. This means, you can basically rebuild a crafting tree with the necessary factories linked together to be able to create anything from just resources and rock.
Dynamic Prices
To fix the economy, prices will also be based on what blocks are made of. The option is available in server.cfg but not on at the moment, as not all base elements and prices are fully balanced yet.
Battle Mode
On a completely other area, an all new game mode has been added to StarMade. Because PvP in sandbox is always connected to time consuming rebuilding, fleeing ships, and other things that don't allow for quick simple fun, battle mode was created. Essentially, an admin can either run this mode on top of sandbox, or dedicate the server to the mode.
Dedicated means, that players will spawn in a personal sector that has its own unlimited shop. They can't leave that sector though.
This is how battlemode works:
1. A countdown will run down. Players can press k to look up the current status and leaderboards.
2. To enter a battle, the players have to join the battle factions defined by the admin. Those factions will always be open to join from the faction hub menu. Logged out players are automatically removed
3. Depending on what faction configuration have the most players, an FFA (if more players are in the FFA faction), or team battle (if more players are in the team factions) will start
4. upon start, all players are warped into battle in that ship they are currently in. A copy of that ship will remain in the personal sector. You can also warp into battle as an astronaut
5. Before the battle starts, the ships can neither fire nor move, except the astronauts, so they have time to man a turret of a teammate
6. The battle itself is deathmatch or team deathmatch at the moment, but more modes will come.
7. After the match, the players are brought back to their sectors where they can make changes to improve their fighters.
Admins can also define the map that is used in the battle secor by simply exporting a sector and setting that name in the config.
All the necessary options are in the server config. Please do not turn on personal sectors on existing sandbox servers as it might jail players (the sector mode to not be able to enter/exit can be set with admin commands).
I’ll add a tutorial on the config options for battle mode shortly.
Personal weapons
Two new personal weapons have been added. A healing beam that also works on astronauts, and a power supply beam that will supply power to ships/stations/planets.
Both new weapons will be in the default inventory, and soon be craftable. There are also (amongst others) new admin commands to acquire them.
All updated commands can be found here: http://starmadedock.net/threads/admin-commands.1283/
Bugfixes
Some performance updates include better shard management to combat lag spikes from them.
Special thanks to all the testers! In the following week I’ll try to make the bug count a lot smaller.
Here are the fixes for this version:
If there are any problems, please don't panic. As always I'll try to fix it as soon as possible.
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema
