Basebuilding in Starfield got replaced by Shipbuilding

[Duke H. Vytantis]

Anyone else think this? Most of my time spend in Fallout 4, I found happiness tinkering in my bases between adventures in the commonwealth-wasteland.
Updating and expanding every DLC that came with the season pass was a thing.

But now for Starfield, besides the shipbuilding being fun, the basebuilding feels lackluster and even though you could theoretically set up a factory.. there really isn't a point because you aren't building towns anymore.

Eh.. discuss

[StormhawkV]

Even more reason to improve shipbuilding further. Why is there a ladder directly behind my Cabot bridge? We want full control of how habs are connected.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Duke H. Vytantis:

Anyone else think this? Most of my time spend in Fallout 4, I found happiness tinkering in my bases between adventures in the commonwealth-wasteland.
Updating and expanding every DLC that came with the season pass was a thing.

But now for Starfield, besides the shipbuilding being fun, the basebuilding feels lackluster and even though you could theoretically set up a factory.. there really isn't a point because you aren't building towns anymore.

Eh.. discuss

Yep, this is actually a very common complaint, and I agree. I really wish they would scrap outpost building and replace it with settlement building. Let us set up colonies on planets, let us find a home for the ECS Constant colonists, give us a notable reason to be building!

[Lichtgestalt]

Weren't the outposts planned to be a survival thing originally? You were supposed to need them for fuel and other resources I think. They scrapped that and now outpost building is kind of out of place. I'd prefer space station building anyway. Dealing with terrain while building your outpost is a pain. It's worse than in Fallout 4. No terrain in space and space stations are much cooler.

[StormhawkV]

The outposts do exactly what they're supposed to do though. They're great for farming money, exp and resources. And you still need fuel outposts to power your inter-system cargo-links.

[Lichtgestalt]

Yes, but I think I heard something about them being necessary for refueling your ship at some point in development. I like that idea. They are completely optional now. You can just buy all the resources from merchants.

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by Lichtgestalt:

Yes, but I think I heard something about them being necessary for refueling your ship at some point in development. I like that idea. They are completely optional now. You can just buy all the resources from merchants.

They were never necessary to refuel your ship, they only expanded its range. What you had to do was refuel your ship BY HAND every time you ran out of hydrogen. Imagine how tedious it would have been. The mechanic got removed because it made travelling the stars a chore.

[Duke Flapjack]

I want to see two things: station building and (official) M-class ship building.

Originally posted by StormhawkV:

Even more reason to improve shipbuilding further. Why is there a ladder directly behind my Cabot bridge? We want full control of how habs are connected.

Snag the "Place Doors Yourself" mod from the Nexus. It'll take care of that problem.

[veryinky]

Originally posted by Lichtgestalt:

Yes, but I think I heard something about them being necessary for refueling your ship at some point in development. I like that idea. They are completely optional now. You can just buy all the resources from merchants.

Originally yes. There's even an old loading screen tip saying that the player should build He3 outposts to extend their exploration range. A dev said that playtesters couldn't understand why a spaceship would need fuel so they dropped the idea.

Doesn't make sense now that literally every planet you visit is entirely covered in old factories and settlements, player is never setting up an outpost on the frontier - wherever they go there's thousands of gas stations with chunks vending machines (equivalent of going to explore the unknown only to wind up at a shell gas station with an attached mcdonalds)

It's the same reason why planets don't orbit. You can find an old Todd interview where he talks about how they simulated the planets orbiting their respective suns. That feature was cut because playtesters were confused at the idea of planets moving.

[Duke H. Vytantis]

Originally posted by veryinky:

Originally posted by Lichtgestalt:

Yes, but I think I heard something about them being necessary for refueling your ship at some point in development. I like that idea. They are completely optional now. You can just buy all the resources from merchants.

Originally yes. There's even an old loading screen tip saying that the player should build He3 outposts to extend their exploration range. A dev said that playtesters couldn't understand why a spaceship would need fuel so they dropped the idea.

Doesn't make sense now that literally every planet you visit is entirely covered in old factories and settlements, player is never setting up an outpost on the frontier - wherever they go there's thousands of gas stations with chunks vending machines (equivalent of going to explore the unknown only to wind up at a shell gas station with an attached mcdonalds)

It's the same reason why planets don't orbit. You can find an old Todd interview where he talks about how they simulated the planets orbiting their respective suns. That feature was cut because playtesters were confused at the idea of planets moving.

These "playtesters" sound incredibly sus.
I mean it's a space game, don't you know how space works then?

Probably same reason why those resistances in the game don't serve that much purpose other than combat armor. Like it also looks they cancelled extremely hot and cold planets. Because they even have the perks for it there but then it felt like a let down.

[Ravness01]

i remember seeing an interview on youtube that Todd did where he said originally the ships would consume fuel to grav jump and you had to use outposts to farm fuel. They also had a mechanic where if you're ship ran out of fuel you could call another ship to tow you to a nearby planet to refuel. The play testers complained that having to refuel/build outposts to farm fuel/being towed prevented them from continuing on with whatever part of the game they were trying to play, so all the related systems just got scrapped.

It's probably why the outpost system in it's current state feels like an afterthought since it isn't integrated into the game in a way that makes it necessary any more. I'd also wager(this is my own speculation) that after they decided to scrap the necessity of fuel the amount of effort they put into anything outpost related probably also got reduced since it was no longer a required mechanic in the game and just something optional you could choose to engage with or not.

[StormhawkV]

Even back then outposts weren't necessary to get fuel. Sure you could build them to get fuel easier and extend the range of your ship but you didn't have to because you could get fuel by hand the same way we do now. Outposts didn't change because the fuel mechanic for the player ship got removed. They're still the same.

Edit:
It was also impossible to build an outpost in every system because we had the same limitations as today. If you ran out of fuel in a system without one of your outposts you always had to collect fuel by hand, the only difference was that you only had to collect enough to make it to one of your outposts which was still a chore.

[jonnin]

I like where this part of the game ended up.
There are lots of pointless base building games -- even NMS jumped on that bandwagon, where you can spend days making an amazing base that you really have no reason to visit because you live and work off a ship. NMS even doubled down to control a small village and still you would never go back after helping them get up and running. This game too, you live on and work in etc your ship for everything from storage to cooking and sleeping and all.

Even if we had full building (wall by wall, tile by tile) of beautiful homes (like we can find but cannot make) or giant complexes (like the ones we loot and shoot out in the wild) it would mostly be pointless to visit them! There has to be a *good reason* to fly a long way and land at your base to DO some activity worth the time. That could be production and selling, which we have, but its not worth it (without mods, you can drain every vendor of every credit without ever building anything, just from self defense and looting). That could be crafting, but we can do that on ship -- its not valheim where crafting stations can take up 3/5 of your home and require too much to be placed randomly everywhere, or something like that game. I just couldn't see myself building a home for days on end in this game to know that 1) I can't do anything useful there (that I couldn't do on ship I mean) and 2) it will be gone in a week or two when NG+ time arrives again.

Meanwhile ships are also lost on NG+, but the pod-by-pod builds go fast (vs a tile by tile home) so replacement is easy, just need some $$ (NG+ first 2 hours can be annoying after a while). The way it is now is pretty darn nice... play a little while, get a little money, build your ship, decorate it a bit, and fly your home/storage/crafting/everything with you for the rest of that game iteration.

Conclusion: I wouldn't change the way they did it one bit.


** and yes, I know we don't have tile by tile building. What we have is AWFUL -- ugly prefab buildings and no interior walls. You will never recreate vlaad's villa or the dream house -- you will get a hovel no matter how hard you try (again, without modding it heavily).

[shiftydarkshadows]

they better get rid of them load times....

[cravnmore]

Starfield needs a DLC that updates outposts and shipbuilding. Outposts needs things other than the prefab stuff (floors, roofs, walls, normal doors for habitable planets). They should do something with L.I.S.T. so outposts have settlers like FO4.

Shipbuilding needs more parts and would be nice if they brought the scrapped strategy game/resource management part that was planned back.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by DataBase:

they better get rid of them load times....

What load times? Mine are mostly 1-2 seconds. If yours are longer, there might be ways to improve them.