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    Greetings Players,

    Recently the team was contacted by members of our Russian speaking community asking if us to contribute to a Q&A that they might translate for their fellow players.  The following is what was discussed so that all Starmade players might have some more insight into our current and future plans.  

    -Q&A with the dev team-

    Bobby AI, would it be able to be coded, or more commands and modes available.
    Ingame coding. Scripting like in Space Engineers?

    This is planned so far, but not in the near future. Lua support is already in the game, although it is currently only used for conversation scripting with NPCs. Although, it is not an easy task to create more specific commands before all game mechanics are fully implemented.

    Official mods, will it be able to mod the game via official API?
    Yes

    If available, what abilities will get the API? Change NPC, balance, gameplay, blocks, AI?
    There are already a lot of options to alter the game server-side without need of any third party files being installed.
    Besides the “server.cfg” located in root directory of the server,
    please check /data/config/ directory of the server.

    FactionConfig.xml - Alters all faction point related settings
    GameConfigDefault.xml - Allows setting the starting items, credits, blueprints

    blockConfig.xml - Edit every blocks hitpoints, texture, armor, other stats (supports adding new groups for the shop for example)
    blockBehaviorConfig.xml - alter all weapon stats, jump settings, it is even possible to create or remove the ability to link specific weapons

    there will be a lot more, and there is a full API planned, but as long as the game is not finished yet (particularly missing features), it wouldn’t make any sense to release a full api, as many mods would have to be rewritten on every release, and this causes a lot of confusion, delays to updates for players and also some problems that we may not be able to predict at the moment.
    However, almost everything is already moved to config files, so its already possible to replace and alter all blocks and functions in the game and also their behaviour to some extent.

    Official documentation of game formats (like .sment, smb2 etc.)
    this is partially done already in our wiki:

    http://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Blueprint_File_Formats

    More logic blocks, elements?
    We are open to all useful additions, feel free to forward suggestions to us.

    Availability to restrict any kind of entities, like planets, asteroids, pirates, stations etc. via config?
    This is currently only possible in battle-mode, this allows a size and mass limit per ship.
    Restricting the total server wide amount of entities of some type is not planned at the moment, though it might be something the API would allow later on.

    Will we be able to configure servers in a way to make it accessable only for players who bought the game, like Minecraft? For ex. I don't want to accept players without buying the game to prevent griefing or something.
    While we are still free to play, there is no configurable difference between “upgraded” and “limited” accounts.
    However, it is already possible and default to require an account per ingame name (there is also a server setting to allow a set number of names per account).
    Beware: even “upgraded” accounts can have multiple ingame nicks.
    But with both options form server.cfg:

    USE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION = true //allow star-made.org authentication

    REQUIRE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION = true //require star-made.org authentication (USE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION must be true)

    You can enforce every nickname on the server to be identity safe.
    To limit everyone to one-identity you have to use the whitelist feature.
    You can either whitelist accounts, which allows every account to have multiple in game names on the server, or whitelist names, which effectively limits every name to be registered with your administrators (together with above settings they are also protected to belong to a single name then.)


    What about rails? When?
    There is no fixed ETA at the moment, but they are one of the next two main features coming up.

    Reactors are now very complicated, will you make it simpler, or harder, or may be you will change formulas for other blocks?
    Reactors are not very complicated at the moment, Please read our wiki regarding this:

    http://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Power_Systems

    its currently relative easy to set them up.
    However, this concept is not set in stone,
    once we see the need for a change or addition we may change it.
    Other blocks like shields and weapons are constantly tweaked to the needs of players and other development steps. We are often considering improvements to various systems, whether or not we actually plan to change them. 

    New mobs? Custom models for mobs?
    Animals, aliens, evolution, meteor strikes, quests during space adventure and so on?

    New Mobs, yes, they are planned, (evolution might be a hard thing to pull off though.)
    However, the other functions (quests, aliens/npc-factions) are a sure thing for the future but not for now.

    Gas and gas planets? Anomalies?
    We would like to add these yes.

    Moons for planets?
    Also planned

    Shipyards? Automatic building ships?
    Yes shipyards are a confirmed long term feature we are working towards.
    The blueprint meta item was one step towards them. Rails are also a step on the way to have automated shipyards of some type. 

    Repairing ships via blueprint?
    Yes, this is planned.

    Limit of ship size via configs?
    Currently only in battlemode, 
    although this implies it could become a regular server setting in the future.

    AI fleet? 
    Commands to AI?

    Yes, we have plans to implement AI and fleet control functions as well as personal commands you can issue to NPC’s under your control.

    Economy, what's next?
    The universe overhaul was one step for it, in the long term it’s planned to build some automated and self sustaining economy by utilizing AI-Fleets and NPC-Factions to create a universe that lives and reacts to player actions. Like flooding one area with cheap system blocks will make the price drop in that area and cause NPC-Fleets to distribute them to other systems, while this may lead to another set of tasks, quests for the player (escort fleet, Paid cargo transfers, etc.)

    Automatic prices change, availability to change the range?
    This functionality is in the config now, some of the controls were more recent, others have existed for some time. Further controls are also planned (custom rarity settings per block per shop, bulk purchases of low value item types; ie, dirt/rock/plant stacks for less than 1 credit per item.)

    Factories on ships?
    Factories on ships is possible now, however, we have held off on implementing them, as we feel there needs to be a method of counterbalancing this “perk” on a ship. We have a type of non combat system balancing planned called “capital systems” this won’t make your ship a capital ship, but it would typically apply to things you would find on larger ships with a specific non combat role (like a giant factory ship.) These will dynamicly apply a range of potential downsides depending on what and how much you have of number of non combat functions. 

    Cabin for pilot, not the abstract core?
    We have talked about this, and are interesting in implementing it yes. We’re pretty sure how we want to go about it, we just have not had the time to update this yet. 

    Armor, that will take % of damage, not fixed values?
    May indirectly be covered by an upcoming armor/hitpoint overhaul.

    Limit size of storages?
    Yes, planned by limiting stack sizes at some later point in the game.

    Version 1.0? When?
    Version 1.0 will happen when we have implemented all the major features that we feel are vital to gameplay and have resolved the bugs that come up as these features are completed. Theres never really an accurate ETA on this. 

    Changing of build mode? More tools in advanced mode?
    Build mode will be limited in some way, once the shipyards are done.
    However, there are already a lot of tools like replace, build helpers and templates to copy and paste sections between ships and stations. If there is anything useful/awesome missing, feel free to bring it to our attention in the suggestions section.

    Weapon system, will it behave more realistic? For example like linear ships XVIII ages. I mean weapon sight can't deflect more than 10-20 degrees?
    The topic of restricting the aiming reticle is pretty highly contested. However, we believe there is a dynamic solution (for all types/sizes) available that we will try out at some point.

    Newton physics? Movement like in reality?
    There are currently some settings in your configs to modify the linear and rotational drag you experience in the game. In addition to this, we are looking at modifications to our flight mechanics (ships & missiles) to cause them to perform in a more natural (and less limited) manner. 

    Faction module. Individual permissions?
    Currently its only possible to set edit permissions per faction rank. 
    We would like to have name based permissions, but this may end up being difficult to achieve without potentially impacting performance, as it means additional meta data needed per ship per name. Still, it would be cool to have.

    Shops, availability to control shop for few persons or whole faction?
    It is already possible to add individual owners to a shop, leading to a per-person control over the shop. Adjusting the groups able to use the shop is currently generalized to:

    “All”,
    “Allies Only”
    “No enemies” and
    “Faction only”

    As multiple stations in one system are no problem, it would be no problem to set up one shop for the faction, and another for the public, or even a separate for allies only.

    -- Schine Team

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