Hello players,

the first devblog for the universe update has been posted here: StarMade News - Universe Update Roadmap #1

Thanks for playing StarMade,
- The Schine Team

Hello players!

A new update is out. Read the full news here:

StarMade News - StarMade v0.201.337 LOD Blocks, Rule System, Balance, Fixes

2019 is going to be the year of the universe update! We are looking forward to share all the wonderful things we have planned.

We hope you have wonderful holidays and we wish you a happy new year,
- The Schine Team

Hello Players,

This is more of a blog post about the general direction of the game.

With the recent updates there have been a lot of new build mechanics and restrictions that were controversial. However, they seemed necessary to solve certain problems with people exploiting certain aspects of the mechanics. Most players never plan or intent to abuse these mechanics but they were still negatively affected by them. New players are also affected by the added complexity. Even the existence of an additional number while building has a negative effect. Understandably, a lot of those players asked the question “Why is this even a thing?”.

Restricting the build mechanics is most of the time affecting the wrong people, and a lot of times they are also not 100% effective in what they are trying to prevent. Making them more severe would put even more restriction on the whole system. Reducing them would make them completely ineffective.

With all that in mind I came to the realization that my perspective on balance might be a bit off. In trying to put out fires, new fires are coming up while development of other things suffers. We have been focusing on fighting the extreme cases of exploits way to much.

The conclusion of this is that I want to go back to those things that make the game fun.

To explain it better: The game should be fun for one or a group of players that are enjoying the game without going out of their way to exploit mechanics. While there still need to be things to prevent these exploits, it will be done with a different perspective. Measures that solely exist to prevent to exploitation will be put into a rule system, so a server admin can apply them. This rule system will be quick and easy to setup, which will be explained a bit later.

We will still be sticking with the basic premise of reactors and stabilizers but will be simplifying things a fair bit.

The first things that will be removed from the game is integrity and the reactor stream...

Greetings,

We still have a few questions to answer here, thanks must go to Saber for transcribing them.

(Just a quick update on bi-weekly QA posts, it's no longer really accurate to call them bi-weekly. We'll still be doing QAs semi regularly, just not restricted to a bi-weekly schedule.)

Weapon Stream Q&A from Twitch

These questions were taken from a live Q&A stream about the Weapons update. Watch the video here.

Q: Aesthetics_SM - Will interdiction (ripping ships out of hyperspace) be added in the future as part of the inhibitor thing?

A: Schema - That is very possible for the universe update. In the universe update the universe how you knew it will completely change in its shape, and it will be a lot more distinct. You will still have a lot of space but the difference is it will be a little bit more condensed into more interesting areas. So there will be more ship traffic between those kind of areas, basically there will only be ship traffic between all of those areas because the other areas will be not very smart to go to. And being able to interdict ships between those routes is definitely an interesting concept and I kind of want to add that.

One of the main problems currently is that any interdiction would be an area of effect that would either be too small or too big. So either you could make it so you could rip basically anything out of space that tries to use it in your systems around you or it will be too small that you will never catch anyone because at the moment space is ordered in a way that the three dimensional movement makes it impossible to predict where somebody is coming from or where they are going. You can kind of see it in the map but it takes so much work to kind of figure out where stuff is going really, and with the new universe you will have a lot easier time to kind of predict these kind of things.

If that will be coming that will be station only....

Hello players,

the weapons update is finally out. Read the full news here:

StarMade News - StarMade v0.201.126 - Weapon Update

Thanks for playing StarMade,
- Schema and the Schine Team