Resource extraction

Aurelius

The companion page to the recent Economy info we published is up - this one's all about how you extract the resources that are used to produce things.

https://www.starmourn.com/resource-extraction/

Qitorien

Thinking about piracy made me wonder if NPC piracy would ever be a thing. It could be a fun addition to have mobs be attracted to ships harvesting resources from asteroids and clouds. I enjoyed reading the post; great stuff!

Sairys

Qitorien said:

Thinking about piracy made me wonder if NPC piracy would ever be a thing. It could be a fun addition to have mobs be attracted to ships harvesting resources from asteroids and clouds. I enjoyed reading the post; great stuff!

The flipside would be cool too, npc harvesters that you could go out and raid.

Kaedok

Are the resource extraction and economy systems separated entirely from your class, or will class abilities/skills/effects lend themselves better to differing aspects of the economy i.e. engineers are better at setting up autofactories, smugglers are more adept at maneuvering their ships with cargo in tow etc

Traveler

Sairys said:

Qitorien said:

Thinking about piracy made me wonder if NPC piracy would ever be a thing. It could be a fun addition to have mobs be attracted to ships harvesting resources from asteroids and clouds. I enjoyed reading the post; great stuff!

The flipside would be cool too, npc harvesters that you could go out and raid.

That's a cool idea. It could be like bashing, but with some pirate flavor added. Like perhaps the NPCs have a random (low) chance to pay protection money, or maybe they send out an SOS and you have to capture your loot before the guns arrive.

Tecton

Qitorien said:

Thinking about piracy made me wonder if NPC piracy would ever be a thing. It could be a fun addition to have mobs be attracted to ships harvesting resources from asteroids and clouds. I enjoyed reading the post; great stuff!

While we don't have space NPC AI for this specific scenario, I could definitely see it being added!

Tecton

Kaedok said:

Are the resource extraction and economy systems separated entirely from your class, or will class abilities/skills/effects lend themselves better to differing aspects of the economy i.e. engineers are better at setting up autofactories, smugglers are more adept at maneuvering their ships with cargo in tow etc

Entirely distinct!

Bandus

Greetings all! I wanted to post a few questions and answers that Tecton was gracious enough to answer in a conversation on the unofficial Starmourn Discord.

First question: For asteroids and clouds, can you elaborate on "regularly." How often, time wise, will one encounter an asteroid and/or cloud assuming they are actively looking?

Answer: Depends. There's a lot of numbers involved when determining how many and of what to spawn. Based off of stockpiles, usage, and a few other things.

Second question: I imagine the intention isn't that everyone has a refinery and auto factory. How do you plan to make them scarce? For example, will it be purely a monetary barrier to access one or will there be limited amounts. Will the price go up as more in one place are purchased to simulate scarcity? Also, how will you initially boot strap the economy since no one will own autofacs/refineries? NPC owned? Finally, how do you prevent someone from buying up all the auto facs/refineries and generating artificial scarcity?

Answer: Ties into the economy stuff, it uses the same taxed economy as autofactories, so if you're not producing with it, you're still paying taxes on it. 

Second question follow up: So they'll be so expensive, tax wise, it wouldn't be viable/possible for someone to buy them all just to prevent others from doing so?

Answer: Well, they won't be prohibitively expensive, but if you're not using them, they will be a money pit. So people won't just own them just to own them. There's currently no limits to the number of factories/refineries though.

Second question follow up: And when the game first starts will there be NPC owned autofacs or refineries?

Answer: Likely have a couple of NPC owned ones to start with, undecided. We'll see how quickly players take to them and supplement if need be. If we did supplement the factory/refinery scene with NPCs, we'd scale them back and remove them when players got on their feet.

Third question: Is it safe to assume that if need be, one can cut loose their tethers/parachutes to regain maneuverability?

Answer: Yes.

Fourth question: What happens if a second ship tries to tether to an asteroid?

Answer: Can't tether an already tethered asteroid.

magee101

I really love the first look at the economy. Wanting to be a beast class that is less personal pilot and more hired bodyguard merc I am hoping there might be ways for us mech suits to fight in space bc this sounds like a way to get jobs easy

Aurelius

magee101 said:

I really love the first look at the economy. Wanting to be a beast class that is less personal pilot and more hired bodyguard merc I am hoping there might be ways for us mech suits to fight in space bc this sounds like a way to get jobs easy.

No, a BEAST would get slaughtered by even the smallest starship without being able to even dent it.

Malash

You're killing my dreams of denting a starship...

Aurelius

Think of it this way: BEASTS are human scale. The smallest ship weighs about 1400 tons, and that's before you add on a linear drive (heavy), capacitor, shield generator, cargo, weapons, etc.

Minion

If Guardians of the Galaxy has taught me anything, never underestimate the power of human scale beings to break shit unexpectedly.