Ship Building (Crafting system)

[DeLindsay]

Since Crafting isn't in the game yet, you may very well have Ship Building in mind and even on it's way soon. Here are some of my thoughts as a LOONG time Eve Online player since 2007.

Capital Station additional section (requires Players to build a Capital Station). Doesn't give buffs to the Fleet but allows the construction of Ships:

SHIPYARD

T1: Players can construct Tier 1 Ships.
T2: Tier 2 Ships.
T3: Tier 3 Ships.
T4: Tier 4 Ships.

PERKS

In order to add the Perks you want (up to 3) the Player would be required to find the Blueprint through Exploration, maybe through Wormholes, or a low chance of drop from enemy Ships at the scanned out locations. Once learned, they would be capable of adding that Perk to any Ship they construct.

MODULES

These Blueprints could be Purchasable from certain Factions/Houses' Capital Station (this would need to be better notated in the Game, which is their Capital Station) for a hefty sum and only if you are in good standing with that Faction/House. I'd suggest each of the Modules be available at up to 3 different Factions/Houses just in case you wiped one out and are at War with another, you still have an option left.

This would also need to correlate with Faction standing grinds to get your Reputation high enough, should you be on their bad side.

COMPONENTS & WEAPONS

I think Blueprints for these could be added into the Salvage system that isn't implemented yet. It makes sense that you'd find an old blown up Ship floating in deep Space, then salvage it and glean a Weapon or Armor plating, etc, thus learning how to build it through reverse engineering.

You could still have all of the above purchasable as it is now because let's face it, not every Player will want to go through all that effort just to craft the EXACT Ship they want, in a Single Player game.

BENEFIT vs DRAWBACK

Ship/Component/Weapon Stat tuning during Construction (sliders increase 1 thing but decrease another) could be tricky but done through cost vs benefit. For example, if I wanted to build a Ship that not only had max Damage output but a strong Tank, maybe the cost would be no capacity for Captives and only 8-10 Cargo slots with ~25 m3 capacity (boosted with Attribute points of course).

Or maybe I wanted the fastest Ship in SpaceBourne 2, but it has basically no damage output and the lightest Tank possible.

Last option could be a pure Exploration Ship that has bonuses to Scanning, Speed, Cloaking at the expense of DPS/Tank/Cargo.

CONCLUSION

If you can't tell, I love and am passionate about this game! To me, it's the proper successor to Freelancer (yes, once completed). Maybe the Dev has all of the above already planned, or some iteration of it but I thought I'd give my thoughts, thanks.