Manufacturing coming to the game? (Possible Argo MCV with 3.18)

[Brictoria]

I just had the following video pop up on my "recommended" list, and it was interesting (Discussing what was found in text files, no images, etc.):

(I have no idea whether it is true or not (it does sound like a plausible idea for inclusion in the game), it sesms that there could be an entry level (possibly\probably solo player) "manufacturing" ship either in concept or set for full release in 3.18.

What was apparently datamined was (to save having to watch the video):

ArgoMCV_IG_001_TheMcvIs=The MCV is great if you're looking to start up a business, but I think it'd be a solid choice even if you were just looking to find a new hobby. Imagine having one of these in hangar and being able to take it out and tinker whenever you feel like it?

ArgoMCV_IG_001_ArgosMcvIs=Argo's MCV is built to be a mobile factory. Perfect for anyone who's trying to kick off their manufacturing empire.

If true, and manufacturing is for items\objects rather than being a mini-pioneer, there's no real reason that this sort of thing wouldn't be possible at the current game stage: Load ship with specific materials (cargo refactor would allow for materials needing to be loaded in specific areas in the ship), have a small "mini-game", then have manufactured items "appear" in boxes like the output of salvage materials in Vulture\Reclaimer, which can then be taken to sell. It also sounds like the sort of thing which would go well with Pyro: NPC's there will likely need items for their settlements which could either be purchased in another system (Stanton, to begin with) and transported there, or have ships which can take materials found in Pyro and manufacture those items for sale.

 

[CRISS9000]

A possible competitor for the CNOU Pioneer? a comment on youtube says this will be a good choice for orgs to go along with mining and refining fleets, and i have to agree. mine, refine, build, repeat.

Also, big Command & Conquer vibes from the acronym "MCV". I can see orange-ish yellow and black&red paintjobs for it.

 

[Brictoria]

A possible competitor for the CNOU Pioneer? a comment on youtube says this will be a good choice for orgs to go along with mining and refining fleets, and i have to agree. mine, refine, build, repeat.

Also, big Command & Conquer vibes from the acronym "MCV". I can see orange-ish yellow and black&red paintjobs for it.

The datamined description suggests it's more a "component"\object\"value add" manufacturing ship, rather than something to build structures like the Pioneer does:
"Imagine having one of these in hangar and being able to take it out and tinker whenever you feel like it" doesn't come across to me as refering to "base building", nor does "I think it'd be a solid choice even if you were just looking to find a new hobby" - Base building would likely been seen as more than "tinkering" or a "hobby", at least as I interpret it.

Then again, this is all speculation, based upon data that we aren't able to personally verify, so who knows what the ship is and what it does (if it exists - in concept or "reality").

 

[Vavrik]

That would be something that is needed, given the repair and support ships are going to need components. CIG has one crap ton of ships to complete...They seemingly come out of the woodwork, or plastic walls as the case may be. (Jared's office at least...)

 

[CRISS9000]

you have to really look at the bigger picture here. this ship being intended only for components manufacturing doesn't really makes sense, because components - just like guns, suits, ships and vehicles - have in-lore manufacturing companies.
from an in-lore perspective, those corporations are not going to be happy, to say the least, with the larger public manufacturing components that either violate copyrights (again, in-lore perspective) or create a hyper-competitive situation that only benefits those that can squash prices down to a minimum or even to the point of nonexistence.
and that's just the beginning of the speculation rabbit hole that you can get lost in.

in short, why bother to buy ship components if you can just manufacture them yourself? I find it really hard to believe that.

and on the other hand, the pioneer is really the only ship that sits absolutely alone in its market category of mobile factory. all other market categories have at least different-size entries, even if there is one entry at a certain size class. take mining for example - the Prospector is MISC, the Mole is ARGO and the Orion is RSI. But the category of Mining Ships has more than one entry. meanwhile, the Factory Ship category has one, lonely, single entry. so yes, i think the MCV is absolutely a competitor for the Pioneer.

 

[Raven_King]

I'm torn. Manufacturing could be a fun game loop, I guess. It could be justified in lore if we license designs from existing manufacturers (buy the blueprints, and/or pay a license fee for each component made), or if we instead manufacture 'homemade' versions of components. It might have a real in-game purpose for locations far away from Stanton where we can't easily or cheaply buy components, and where we need an alternative to shipping components long distances through insecure space.

But it's also another in a longish list of proposed occupations we don't yet have. Mining isn't finished. Exploration (whatever that turns out to be) is high on a lot of people's wish lists - there are multiple exploration ships flyable now, in active development or in concept, and I don't have much idea what exploration even means yet - does anyone? It probably includes mapping and surveying, but does it include discovering whole new systems, planets and moons etc.? Then there are the occupations the Endevour is intended to support: research, growing stuff in space. Then there's deeper medical gameplay - being a paramedic as a profession, search and rescue, bounty hunting where you bring 'em back alive, and base building. I probably missed some - I recall seeing a list somewhere. I'd much prefer to see things CIG already sold ships on the promise of being able to do delivered first, before adding yet another with manufacturing.

Also, adding a new and arguably unnecessary complexity to what is already a very complex and unfinished project will slow it down further, and add to what is already a very large future maintenance burden for CIG. Someone has to keep all the code up to date and balance things as related systems evolve over time.

Yeah, I'm not torn any more. Nice idea. But save it for the distant future please CIG.

 

[CRISS9000]

i'm at the point where I put my tinfoil hat on and say development is being slowed down deliberately for the purpose of having the marketing department come up with new ideas for how to get more money out of people. call it a hunch, because i can't really explain it. but what a lot of people call "feature creep", the tendency of CIG to expand features during development in a way that slows it down and causes delays, is how i would describe the reason for why i have that feeling. it's just something to do with the fact they bloat the features in development.

 

[Vavrik]

i'm at the point where I put my tinfoil hat on and say development is being slowed down deliberately for the purpose of having the marketing department come up with new ideas for how to get more money out of people. call it a hunch, because i can't really explain it. but what a lot of people call "feature creep", the tendency of CIG to expand features during development in a way that slows it down and causes delays, is how i would describe the reason for why i have that feeling. it's just something to do with the fact they bloat the features in development.

It's not going to stop, not this way. That has been a problem with waterfall development generally, and it can be worse if a developer is the project owner. The traditional solution for that is a deadline for release. We generally set expectations prior to the project, for the release conditions. If it's successfully launches and doesn't fall flat on it's nose, we can set up a release schedule for updates to the software.

CIG doesn't seem to have that discipline, and the entire company seems to go down rabbit holes a lot. It may be up to us to control that, but I can't quite see how. I know what needs to be done, just not how to drive it in this environment.

 

[CRISS9000]

you're gonna have to convince a looooooot of people... starting with the myriad of youtube personalities...

 

[Sky Captain]

Maybe the MCV, being of small size, makes a prevalent commodity beneath the in-lore manufactures' radar? Something like ballistic ammunition?

 

[Brictoria]

you have to really look at the bigger picture here. this ship being intended only for components manufacturing doesn't really makes sense, because components - just like guns, suits, ships and vehicles - have in-lore manufacturing companies.
from an in-lore perspective, those corporations are not going to be happy, to say the least, with the larger public manufacturing components that either violate copyrights (again, in-lore perspective) or create a hyper-competitive situation that only benefits those that can squash prices down to a minimum or even to the point of nonexistence.
and that's just the beginning of the speculation rabbit hole that you can get lost in.

in short, why bother to buy ship components if you can just manufacture them yourself? I find it really hard to believe that.

and on the other hand, the pioneer is really the only ship that sits absolutely alone in its market category of mobile factory. all other market categories have at least different-size entries, even if there is one entry at a certain size class. take mining for example - the Prospector is MISC, the Mole is ARGO and the Orion is RSI. But the category of Mining Ships has more than one entry. meanwhile, the Factory Ship category has one, lonely, single entry. so yes, i think the MCV is absolutely a competitor for the Pioneer.

The components I was referring to weren't "ship" components, but rather the "components" (parts) that the people living in the outposts may need to survive: At a low level, nails, screws, fuses, "chips", light globes, switches, etc. and at higher levels more specific things like individual parts\components needed to repair or keep running machinery (mining equipment, hydroponic farms, etc.) that had broken down (or to have spares in case something went wrong and they were needed, given the distance required to get them from the equipment's supplier).

 

[GPcustoms]

Its just an opinion but I would love to have the game play in place for flyable ships that are not yet supported @ Data/intellegence gathering missions for the likes of the Star Runner, Herald and Terrapin amongst others.....But it does sound interesting and I will raise a glass to everything they add to the PU....Cheers

 

[Brictoria]

Its just an opinion but I would love to have the game play in place for flyable ships that are not yet supported @ Data/intellegence gathering missions for the likes of the Star Runner, Herald and Terrapin amongst others.....But it does sound interesting and I will raise a glass to everything they add to the PU....Cheers

Once Pyro gets here, with the larger distance between planets, as well as the opportunity to travel between systems, things like data running could (in theory) be implemented in a similar manner to the way box missions work: Go to location, connect to a terminal there\get into "scanning" seat to upload data, then fly to new location and unload that data again.

Alternatively, they could have you deploy monitors around comms sats (or stations), with the data needing to be collected by the ship though a player using the scanning seat in the ships, then travel somewhere to unload (or sell) the data.

I do agree that it would be nice to see those ships get some gameplay for their data features (the reason for their existence).

 

[Michael]

this is (kind of) planned since 2013 (so take it with some grain of salt)

Manufacturing gameplay: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/13128-The-Star-Citizen-Economy

We have mining ships
We have Refinery ships
A factory ship would make sense

Also it gives me hope that my caterpillar will still get its entertainmant module aka "stripper pole"

 

[CRISS9000]

The components I was referring to weren't "ship" components, but rather the "components" (parts) that the people living in the outposts may need to survive: At a low level, nails, screws, fuses, "chips", light globes, switches, etc. and at higher levels more specific things like individual parts\components needed to repair or keep running machinery (mining equipment, hydroponic farms, etc.) that had broken down (or to have spares in case something went wrong and they were needed, given the distance required to get them from the equipment's supplier).

ah, hardware parts. that makes more sense.

 

[breadbin]

My first impression is ammunition, repair components (they said we'll need a specific generic repair resource right), and general consumables. Not huge manufacturing, but small stuff that you can use up surprisingly quickly and might want for an org or a long-haul expedition. Things to keep an operation rolling along, but it'll be on you to supply things like the weapons, core ship components, and otherwise expensive or rare things. Imagine something like grabbing one of these during a JT lockdown and pumping out a few extra magazines for a few guys with missile launchers, and possibly down the line manufacturing the ammo to re-arm ballistic-armed ships to get a fleet back up and running while on-the-go. If it's smaller than a cutlass I know it's the sort of concept I've love to jam into my Odyssey the way I envision it.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

If I can build toilets and/or toilet paper in it I'll take two.

 

[CRISS9000]

inb4 it looks like a toilet

 

[Brictoria]

It appears that the PTU has introduced a form of "crafting"\manufacturing: The Vuture can use reclaimed material to "craft" a multitool and some attachments for it.

I wonder if this is an indication that this gameplay\profession is now under development, and that we may soon see ships released to support this.

 

[KuruptU4Fun]

I wonder if this is an indication that this gameplay\profession is now under development, and that we may soon see ships released to support this.

Not from my understanding, the salvaged materials needed to create a multi-tool are 1 SCU, with the smaller attachment being .2 SCU. They're not putting you in the position of being able to craft in order to sell items, if you read between the lines it looks like they're putting in crafting so you can survive if you forgot to bring/ lost something as well as the creation cost to make just the multi-tool far outweighs the profit you'd make to sell one. Though it is at this point a temporary solution as stated below.

Spectrum - v6.21.1

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View: https://youtu.be/-Ll97fjEWkI

I doubt their will be ships that support this as such, maybe a module inside a container that will help you craft items, but not an entire ship dedicated to it.