Resource and location constraints for player-operated respawns are overly restrictive

[glacial roost]

I've been banging on about this one for a while, and I think it will be validated once there's a lot more death in the universe, but I think the resource costs and restrictions on distance that affect the use of reconstruction machines (especially station reconstruction machines) are overly restrictive, and trend towards keeping people away from interesting things. Other games in the multiplayer competitive builder-survival space tend to make controlling where you respawn fairly cheap because it's not fun to learn that something you have is being attacked or stolen while you're too far away to defend it; it encourages overly localized, low-adventure play while introducing excessive downtime from the need to travel between all your various things just to be there, even if you aren't actually moving any materiel.

Space engineers' survival kit and med room system makes the player more an avatar for their hardware than they are a spaceman; the engineer is mostly useless, dwarfed by the systems they can build in terms of violence and economics. Survival kits are cheap, their only restriction being a must-be-this-tall-to-enter resource processing requirement which becomes meaningless after the early game. There is no restriction on range.

Rust's sleeping bag and bed system functions similarly, and is even cheaper, but interacts with a decay mechanic and numeric limit to allow players to be at whatever base or location they have previously visited and prepared, but punishes repeat or quick deaths by locking the player out of the respawn for a significant period of time after its use. There is no restriction on range

Starbase's respawn system is comparatively costly: the resources required are prohibitive, and there is no location in the universe except the origin auction house where all the materials to make it are available (something not true of the others). It is time consuming to set up, requires a consumable, and has a maximum range.

I will say that shipboard reconstruction machines are actually...kinda fine by my book? like all the resource, consumable, and distance constraints make a lot more sense when the thing is an asset being used as a siege utility and forward operating system and is easily destroyed. In that situation it's a very powerful tool, comparable to the camper van in rust.

[ripe thunder]

im personally not so bothered by the range, 5000km is enough to cover basically every moon except EOS itself. because the game is one server for the whole world, it sort of limits each "moon" as its own individual "server", whereas other survivals that have dedicated player servers tend to have smaller potential server and map size. It's something that the devs have to make a call, I can see reasons on both sides of the argument, the convenience would be nice, but idk if insta transferring from every corner of the map with endo would be balanced either.

the resource cost doesnt feel toooo bad right now but I think you'll be right once we get in the territory of hours long sieges with dozens or a hundred people involved, particularly with the fact it requires arkanium for some reason. it feels like having it all T1 ores would be much easier to stock up, and an endo respawn is a fairly basic action compared to say buying an expensive gun or ship.

what I do find really annoying though is the crafting time (20 seconds per kit, that's 180 kits per active acount per hour MAX having to sit in base AFK). and also having to take 5 seconds to enter each kit manually one by one in the machine. lastly the fact that capitals and stations are so buggy with many players around, means there is very real risk of your whole network disconnecting frequently, which ALSO ERASES ALL KITS IN THE MACHINES. you can imagine how if you spent a whole entire hour to prep kits for a fight only to have disconnects mid-fight erase them all would ruin entire fights.

lastly ship reconstruction machines should work without the ship being hosted, idk why it works like this as is (other than just "game limitations due to how hosting works"). it makes using them overly punitive for solos/small groups and only be a "backup safeguard" rather than an active tool you can use in a forward manner.

[glacial roost]

wait what they changed it to 5000km? is that planned or live?

i thought it was 500km

[ripe thunder]

iirc station/cap machines have always been 5000 km? ship ones are 100km tho

[glacial roost]

okay, so, my order of magnitude is wrong, but the problem is still totally real because:

for...operational security reasons i'm not going to disclose what two bodies that is between, but i can say conclusively that 5000km is not enough to cover even most moons

wait, i'm sorry, i misread your response

you're saying "cover most moons while you're at them" and I thought you said "cover most moons from origin"

what I want is reconstructions to let me transfer my avatar between moons (understanding that without dropping inventory on transfer this is problematic in the game's current state)

because if i'm at a moon, and my friends tell me there's a fun fracas near my station on a different moon, and i otherwise have resources stationed there, i'm gonna want to be able to be there to participate.

If i can't do that as a player in that situation, i'm just not gonna station resources at that location; my whole logistical strategy becomes "carry everything you own in one capital ship" because anything else is a huge pain

i can say that with pretty good confidence because unless i'm piggybacking on someone else's expedition, that's my logistical strategy right now

i have no reason to set up respawns at my stations because i'm gonna be there with my capital anyway

...anyway i otherwise totally agree with everything you said

[ripe thunder]

for "orbital stations" you're pretty much right, for surface stations though having ground reconstruction machines is useful because it helps save the 80-160km landing travel time for the larger moons. but unfortunately that also ties into the the whole, well ship reconstruction machines are 100km range so they'd be perfect for 90% of moons as a quick surface to orbit travel without needing to create ground station ones, but the fact they need to be hosted means that option is useless as well.

I get the point that being stuck 30-120mins warp away from something is really annoying though, it'd be nice to have something better but I think there should still be some form of cost. I guess two options could, maybe if they decided to not have endo inventory drop when insurance transfering (same as now), they could change it so that you could transfer a distance larger than 5000 km, but that this would drop inv if you are going elsewhere than origins. either that, or they could simply double or triple the warp speeds to reduce inter moon travel to 10-45mins max instead of 30-120mins.

[tacit depot]

We most likely will have two home respawn points that you can always access, one station and one capital that you can designate. No distance limit or kit needed.

[strong juniper]

Would they have to be owned by the respective player or could you set your spawn point on a community/company station?

[tacit depot]

i think company stations should be allowed to have as home

[glacial roost]

I appreciate that, genuinely. but why the reluctance to make that the behavior for all station reconstruction machines? What are you afraid is going to happen?

[strong juniper]

My suspicion would be people jumping resources between two places, entirely circumventing the need for hauling them, reducing piracy risk out and about to 0 if you do it from safezone to safezone

[glacial roost]

this is why i made this remark

if that's the justification for that now, then will it change once death box dropping systems render that a non-issue?

[indigo abyss]

#starbase-chat message

[remote star]

I'd def like to see tiered kits or something
current ones for ships and cheaper ones for stations+caps (maybe even station/cap in separate tiers, advantaging defenders in sieges)
ideally let higher-than-needed tier kits still be usable, maybe even count as multiple kits so they offer faster storage/loading or something

[strong juniper]

Could be lower power draw, provided we don't get something like a battery for stations

[remote star]

that'd probably be more balanced while still giving you something, yeah

might also be reasonable to look at some sort of distance-cost scaling
since I feel like respawning at your station from close by should be quite cheap, but I'm not against higher costs when going larger distances

maybe have it scale on frequency too, so that during siege the cost can ramp up

[glacial roost]

i mean rust doesn't have most of these restrictions and you can still totally run out of spawns in that game, in fact its much harder to "run out" in this game because you can craft new kits and respawning has virtually no cool down relative to the pace of the action.

[glacial roost]

tiered reconstruction machine kits sounds miserable to me, about as zero-fun as the tiered thrusters we have right now. The power draw of a reconstruction machine is one of the things i care about the least with this issue, because it doesn't affect my ability to be at the remote part of my stuff where interesting things are happening; I just build more power to keep it running, and then get sad when i look at the range limits. spawns on a shipboard reconstruction machine are already more limited by their being used in a "pack-in" scenario (where what you have is what you brought) than they are by the price of the kit

[remote star]

I mean I'd also support just global cost lowering, just seems like tiered kits would be the least devwork if balance is a concern

[glacial roost]

I see

[remote star]

like if complexity is no obstacle then something nice might be a cap/station "endo kit manufacturer" device that takes cheaper resources and feeds kits straight to recon machine at the cost of being very slow, for example (and you can still refill manually with regular kits if you need them faster)

[remote star]

(also I do definitely support range increases of some kind, it's quite restrictive. force us to build antennas or something if they don't want it to be free)

[grave wolf]

I agree with the general idea - more accessible respawn.
However, I'd also put some emphasis on the physical aspect of respawn machines.
Currently they're terminals - single box that spawn you. They lack the physical aspect: Where are those endo kits stored? Where is the communication infrastructure? Why is the base/cap respawn range so much higher? Why is there an endo appearing mid air?
They allow that clown-car effect of spawning unproportional number of endos from a small box.
Same problem as the current hangar system.
And solution is similar - one hangar, one ship. Just for endos.

So I suggest developing it into an modular system. Same for ships, caps and stations.
It would consist of 5 components:

1. Endo storage: a seat encased in a shell, with opaque forcefield in front (to avoid moving parts). When you spawn, you appear seated and the forcefield deactivates. So nobody can see you pop in mid air. One chamber fits one endo. You can also sit in an empty chamber and deactivate the body - that allows transfer without wasting endo-kits. You can also refill chamber by using endo kit on it.
2. Link interface: shelfs that holds player links (they look like boxes). If your link is on the ship, you can spawn there. You can also transport link-boxes between ships/stations.
3. Antenna: Inceases range. [antenna length^2*1000]. So 10m antenna gives you 100km. 100m -> 10000km (subject to balance changes)
4. Capacitor: the more you build, the more often the system can be used.
5. Equipment storage: automatically stores all your items when you despawn, and automatically gives you the same items if it has them at the new location. Can be used to manually switch equipment too.

The goal is to encourage building specialised respawn ships (big ones), encourage interiors (each chamber needs walkable access), fill up those vast empty spaces on stations, remove artificial distinctions between ships and stations, and immersify the whole process.

[glacial roost]

aie yah i mean like sure but i'm trying to suggest something that could actually get implemented some time in the next six months rather than years

[fierce totem]

Having some cost to respawn makes sense
The distance for ship respawns too
But for stations and capital ships it is pretty dumb
Aren't people quite often complaining that their or their friend's capital ship bugged out and they can't TP to it because it's out of range? With more people this will be happening much more often than now. I guess the home capital/station will solve that for single players but if a company has multiple then there will still be a problem

[grave wolf]

I just like posting my well-too-ambitious ideas. I know it won't get implemented....
Don't kink shame 🙂

[glacial roost]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/667286173336469504/671366268967714826/crazyman.gif

[forest fox]

It will be nice to craft the respawn kits or in future loot respawn kits from npc because currently you have to hunt players in order to get respawn kits. Though I will prefer the PvE option for getting respawn kits.

[glacial roost]

reconstruction kits are...not looted? do you think that death boxes (which are only a feature on PTU) are the thing you're putting in reconstruction machines because they look the same?

how in the hell...

[forest fox]

This is what the developers mentioned is going to be a thing the looting of reconstruction kits.

[glacial roost]

yeah okay sure that was like a passing remark but i do know what you're talking about. but like, you do know that you can craft reconstruction kits right now right?

[forest fox]

But how because developers didn’t mention that.

[glacial roost]

it's been in the game for years now, in live

they were added when the slowdown happened and they added the capital ship parts

but you have to research the shipboard one to actually be able to craft the kits, due to an oversight

[forest fox]

That explains that.

[glacial roost]

oh i see what happened, eh...

[forest fox]

They should have that reconstruction kit in the capital ship reconstruction component research.

I guess the developers went away from there original plan for reconstruction kits.