Is it possible to release a standalone shipbuilder editor?

[SinKing]

I keep thinking about ship designs when I'm not playing. I'd like to make designs outside the main game and to have an option to import them. It would be a way to share designs with others. Maybe we could print out copies to hand out to others ingame, too.

Mainly it would be nice to fiddle around with the shipyard features in a standalone editor, like the WA island creator. I always find way to improve my ships and don't always want to park my ingame ship, note down code, make another yard...just to make a few adjustments. Would be really nice if something like it was planned, though of course it's far from being a priority.

[Fenix]

Hi SinKing. The devs have mentioned that they don't intend to release a standalone shipbuilding tool similar to the island creator. Having to experiment with ship designs is a big part of the game loop, so letting people do it in the safety of an offline environment would actively encourage us to not play the game.
https://www.worldsadrift.com/forums/topic/ship-creator-2/page/4/#post-48473

That said, there are improvements coming to make shipyards more defensible. For one, the dome effect will act like a shield and stop ordinance (but not players) from passing through.

However, I wonder if it would make sense to have a sort of "drafting table" furniture item on ships. So players could design ships while sailing through the sky. This could offer them some more options for working on ship designs as well as added safety of being on their ship the whole time - and thus being able to cut and run at the first sign of trouble.

It is possible to share ship designs to a degree: simply load up a shipyard with a frame. Anyone else who had access to the shipyard can put in raw materials and craft it. However I do agree, it would be nice to have another way to save/exchange designs. Maybe the ability to turn saved frames into schematics to trade with others. The one problem that comes to mind is how to “preview” the schematic before committing to learn it… Perhaps the shipyard could have an extra slot which accepts a single frame schematic. This could display the saved frame in a read-only mode (preferably with options to view in small and full scales). No edits could be made in this state, the player would have to take the schematic out and learn it before they could make changes.

[Stelar Seven]

It would be nice if we could save someone else's design. Trading would be easy, throw up a shipyard, load the design, there is the wireframe in life size.

Exchange goods, offer code, then the new person saves the schematic into one of their five slots.

[SinKing]

Originally posted by Apostate:

It would be nice if we could save someone else's design. Trading would be easy, throw up a shipyard, load the design, there is the wireframe in life size.

Exchange goods, offer code, then the new person saves the schematic into one of their five slots.

Yeah that's what I thought too. I mean, Fenix mentioned that we can share access to shipyards, but why can't we access each other's building table. I often saw things in my friends' design and tried to tell him what to improve. But showing it by changing the other guys' blueprint would be much more effective.

As for a drawing board: I could very well imagine something like this attached to the atlas core. You know how old ships often have a bronze plate showing the blueprint (side and or front) of the ship? We could have four slots on the atlas core to plot such things without consequence. And then when we landed, they could perhaps be transfered to a nearby shipyard!?

And then the shipyard itself could have far more slots, but you actually have to use it actively and stand around like a doofus without any way to protect yourself. To me, the crazy shipbuilding is one of the things in WA that has the most appeal. I simply love designing ships of all sizes and shapes. But it always gives me a dampener when I have to build several shipyards, deal with the changing codes and then transfer things over from the old ship by dropping everything on the ground making a huge mess and sometime glitching away parts.

Wouldn't it be an easy solution to allow one player the use of two shipyards, as long as he build one of them (or both)?

[Illiaz]

@fenix

What I got from it was not being able to build the ships but like an app to fiddle with the wirefram designs while you are at work or something. I know I like thinking about new designs and seeing how they would look/work on my breaks.

[Rigsie]

"Having to experiment with ship designs is a big part of the game loop, so letting people do it in the safety of an offline environment would actively encourage us to not play the game."

I think this is bad thinking on their part. It does little good for a person to design a ship offline they cannot fly. Having an offline ship DESIGN interface and then coming online to build is key.

Over and over people have expressed extreme distaste for the "challenge" of getting shot in the back of the head while having their nose buried in the ship design interface. This is the issue.

[SinKing]

Originally posted by Rig Nan Roach:

I think this is bad thinking on their part. It does little good for a person to design a ship offline they cannot fly. Having an offline ship DESIGN interface and then coming online to build is key.

I think so too. Technically the ship builder is a very simple design. It won't put out much information, but if we could save that info in the form of a *.xml file or something similar, it could become a versatile tool. If I could read my *.xml file ingame and onboard of my ship and then print out a "cartridge", which then in turn can be slotted into the shipyard - I'd have hundreds of ship designs and share + trade them with others.

And the beauty is - we can even keep the current shipyard with the pre-selection of four (or five) presets as it is now. If I want to use my original designs then, I'll just take a cartridge or store it somewhere for other people to find. It has my name on it and people will recognize their own ship designs in the world. I imagine that is the second best thing to discovering your own island in the game...

[Stelar Seven]

Short term there are lots of nooks and crannies we can tuck a shipyard into and be undisturbed. The bubble only shows up if you build the ship.