StarMade Mandatory Ship Aesthetics

[SeCor]

StarMade Mandatory Ship Aesthetics rehaul.

Hi everybody. Me and several of my friends were playing SM for a while now, pointing out problems with it and discussing possible solutions for them. In this post, i want to show some possible things that i think are wrong with SM now and to adress some ways of fixing them.

Me: i'm a 5th year student (doing my 1-st year Master's studies) of CS, game enthusiast since 2000; was playing competitively in mmorpgs, fps, racing games; doing stuff in computational math (plasm modelling) and linked to it algorithm optimizations.

Disclaimer: written in an airport, extremely long.
Sadly, it's not TLDRable either.. The best possible TLDR that can be made by human being was posted by @Tobie.
I wish some of you will stay with me through this text.
Also note: i do not elaborate on the "optionality" of this system in this post. Game mode, config -- those are all options, but this post is long enough.
Ability to change the way some checks are implemented requires scripting of sorts, and admin-defined scripting inside of "on hit" event handlers can be devastating for perfomance. Thus, ability to configure everything is a suggestion in itself, and it can be quite tricky to implement.

Spoiler: What i think are SM's gameplay problems right now:

• Ship design is not a step you have to spend time on. People are not encouraged to build aesthetically pleasing ships. Flying box always will be functionally better. It's not that i think people should spend several days just planning their ship: it's that i think that people who do spend this time should have better ships. Right now any aesthetics is counter-functional.
• Combat is too shallow. In current system, there are no ship specializations and they can not show up on their own.
• Current system encourages gigantism.

I see little beauty in a ship whose hull seems smooth only because it's 1500 blocks wide. It's one thing if effort went in this sleek hull and thoughtfuly placed wedge lines that not only hide corners but also take shape of a penis, but it's completely different when you just mashed blocks around until it looks smooth through squinted eyes.

Another problem with gigantism is that it's okay for EVE to have titans, because there are 40 thousand people online every second to swarm it with merlins. On a SM server with an average online of 50 a guy with a kilometer-long rogue titan with 60 turrets and 2200 drones will be unstoppable by the rest of the players combined. In the end there'll be three guys meeting on thursdays to check who's got the biggest gun out there, and the rest will be annihilated on the spot.

Spoiler: What i want to see:

• Aesthetically pleasing ships.
  Being an engineer myself, beauty of the ship for me is visible amount of effort that went into its building. X-wing replica? Check. EVE ship replica under 200 blocks length, built by hand and carefuly adjusted to look sleek by smart use of wedges and pentas? Hold my beer sir, i have to write an appendage for my testament. A script that generates ship blueprints from a 3ds file? Prometheus you are, giving fire for the people in need. USS Enterprise 4000 blocks wide, built by a script? Errm. Huh. I guess. No, it's awesome if you're still in school, or if you learned scripting or 3d modelling because of it, if only just basics. But i will never rate such ship higher than a 9x9x9 handmade drone.
• A way to reward skilled players in a combat.
  Sure, anybody can play anything, and we do not want this to turn into another EVE. What i mean is that there have to be some combat moves besides repositioning, turning and shooting.
• Degrading functionality during combat. I want to be able to damage other people cannons or go for their engines, and to do so knowingly. This means that somehow the game has to make ship design mandatory - i should be able to see where are the engines on your ship and where are the cannons or drone bays.
• No giant unstoppable juggernauts of destruction, armed with every system in the game. This is the most vague of all of my wishes, but it is the only one that can be fixed through number tweaking.

Spoiler: How do i suggest to achieve this?

Well, by mildly forcing people into obeying these rules. Note the 'mildly' and 'forcing' parts, they are the key of this post.
Why do i feel people should be forced? Well, because any MMO is a competitive game. Even in PVE of WoW there were in-raid fights about who's got the bigger DPS, and in PVP part of it or of any other game people won't build a beautiful thing if it's less powerful than Brett's Assholination Cuboid. Anyone building a beautiful ship will have to be either protected by the cubes or destroyed by them; and only way to have a beautiful yet useful ship is to either abuse OP weapon (kh khh heatmissiles kh kh automated circuit kh kh) (btw awesome design! as a software engineer i rejoice at the sight of an automated abuse :[*]or abuse environment (said heatseekers ignoring the only ship around the user that actually damages him) (btw great tactical thinking!).

Now i will talk about the design rehauls i want to propose. I will talk about weapon systems, shield systems, combat system management, drone systems and maybe something else i come up with. Please note that any of those proposals wont work with current shields/weapons/scaling factors, so it's kinda pointless to assess the effect of an isolated design update.

Spoiler: Weapons

Weapons have to be cuboids. I believe that cannon >::::::::::::::< is visually recognizable as one and is aesthetically pleasing, and cannon > ::::...< is a very tiny weenie on a very big nutsack.

Why cuboids? Because this is the only computationally easy shape to check against. Because it allows for easy and fast calculation of its dimensions, which are used below. Also, thanks to weapons being cuboids it's possible to mark the whole side of a weapon as its output, so now you can fire 2x2 cannonballs and giant rockets.

Geometry of the weapon system should affect it's characteristics, but all the weapons are broken in their own ways as they are now, so here's what i'd change:

• AMCs have unlimited range (well, limited, but by server settings and the despawning heuristics, not gameplay-wise)
• AMCs have scatter, so you still wont hit anything past certain distance except by chance.
• Missiles have finite flight time and turning speed
• Beams have 'defocusing' in the sense that their damage falls off as a function of distance, but they can be active for pretty much all the time

How would geometry of a weapon affect it? Well, for example (effects can be different than proposed, this is just to illustrate the point of my idea):

• long AMC has less scatter (and effectively longer range because of that)
• wide AMC has more damage
• long missile is faster and has larger range
• wide lockon missile has larger locking ellipsoid
• long beam has less defocusing (reliable long-range damage)
• wide beams are easier to aim and affect larger surface (duh)

Now in this system we have:

• very long AMC sniper cannons that just won't let their hosting ship turn fast enough to counter fighters (think those ships railguns). Yet those railguns are hard to hit from afar, as they have low signature (think arrow pointing at you) and can move sideways quite fast (but not turning)
• powerful, but short guns that do not increase size of the hosting ship enough to slow its turning speed (think those ships fighters)
• longrange rocket destroyers that can keep several fighers at range, but a larger group of fighters can dodge/knockdown some of the rockets and make it into close range, where fighters will have too much orbiting speed to be locked on with a small 1x1output reticle
• shortrange rocket destroyers that will be destroyed by the railguns, but have easy time locking onto fighters thanks to giant reticle of their 10x10x1 rocket arrays
• wide beams for close-range fighter and drone suppression
• long range beams for sustained but low damage, useful for slowly burning through titan's hull
• Motherships with Loads Of Drones That Are Balanced. More info lower below.
• recognizable weapon silhouette. I can selectively try to destroy your weapons now, so you are less of a threat to my fleet, instead of just randomly blasting in your general direction or core-drilling with beam turrets.
• Core-drilling disappeared! With long range sniper rifle you will have hard time aiming for exact same point over and over; with a short range rifle you will have scatter negating drilling; with a long beam you have low damage and with a wide beam it's damage is distributed around.

Also note: i do NOT believe in sublinear scaling of weapon blocks. People will just start utilizing double-chessboard pattern that is now used by all useful salvagers.
Clarification for interaction of such system with slave/effect systems can be found here

Spoiler: Shields

My main problem with shields is that right now people do not care where are they. Shields are usually what people fill holes with, much like sealant. Or some people (including myself) are just pile them up in some corner of the ship and let them collect the dust here.

So, we have to force people into distributing their shields around the ship.

• Make shields only affect neighbouring blocks. Say, only those who have Hamming metrics lower than 10 starting from specified Output block, similarly to how weapons have output blocks.. Or 10^15: numbers all need tweaking.
• If a block is hit, it looks up what shield groups affect it. This lookup can be cached, as it only changes when either the said block or shield block of said group is destroyed. The damage is distributed across these shield groups.
• There'll have to be a ship hp hud element: say, simplified transparent rotating silhouette of the ship, with shield groups highlighted. The more damage group sustained, the redder it is. Full shields are green, for example.
• regeneration ratio is split across damaged shield groups.

What this will achieve?

• You now have to think where to place shields and which systems to protect first
• You can selectively bombard other ship's engines. Or cannons. Or cabin. Or drone bays. Or... whatever you want.
• You can defend against a focus. Building a drone ship? Better reinforce those bays. Freighter? Who needs engines when warpdrive is charging. Destroyer? I have 20 missile silos, but destroying my engines will make me unable to catch up to enemy snipers, better protect those thrusters.

Spoiler: Drones

This part is quite simple:

• drone control system with drone control system units.
  bigger drone control - more "allowed weighted collective range". For example, AWCR of 1500 allows for 5 drones 30tonnes each, 10km far away from the ship or 10 mass-15 drones 2.5 km away.
• You send more drones away? Watch out for reactor. Those antennas are not for looks: the farther your drones are and the more of them are out, the bigger the power usage. Also if your drone system is damaged, your farthest drones deactivate, so you have to protect the carrier somehow.

What this is achieving?

• preemptively nerfs giant 2000-droned carriers.
• opens niche for anti-fighter drone ships that are protecting sniper ships.

Spoiler: Systems recognition and spatial distribution

All systems have some sort of "best-shape". This "best shape" should provide mechanical benefits to the group, or it won't be used. Your ship is nice? Well mine is powerful. A single Brett guy on a server will either make other people leave or force them into same brickships as his own.

For example, powercaps can be forced into cylindrical shapes using following two rules:

• power of a group increases linearly in block count
• power of a group decreases with surface area, at a speed greater than linear (x^2? x^1.5? I don't know: it needs tweaking. Maybe not a polynomial at all?).

What this achieves:

• ships will have to feature distinctly visible power capacitor banks, or they will have to provide excess shielding and armor plating to hide them.
• bigger ships will resort to multiple power storages rather than making single giant one, as starting at some point growing surface area will be voiding all the extra power from your powercaps in the same group.

Power generators:

• power of a group increases linearly in surface area
• power of a group decreases (linearly or somehow) in overall spatial size (sum of dimensions).

What this achieves:

• no more giant long power-rods in the middle of the ship
• complex reactor designs

Engines:

• the closer they are to the edges of the bounding cuboid of the ship, the bigger ship's turning rate along the axis those engines are acting around.

other systems can have similar notes, and those were used only to illustrate the idea of forcing players into certain "recognizable shapes" for their systems.

But wait, i've just created a monster! With shields that have to be distrubuted, players will try to minimize surface area. So we will have Brett's Assholination Spheroids roaming the skies while last of humans are racing to death on flying carts through the deserts and canyons of a certain planet in a binary system.

How to fix? Relatively easy.
-= Intersystem interference =-.
Every system decreases its functionality for every block of other systems in its bounding cuboid, which for this check is treated as increased for every several blocks of the system. This is computationally easy, cached operation that needs recalculation only on block destruction; the cache is held by the ship rather than by the block so it takes little memory. Block destroyed? Lookup which group it belonged too, lookup systems that were intersecting with said group, then re-evaluate their power. Seems quite possible even for large ships and populated servers.

What this achieves:

• BAS are now required to leave a lot of space in between systems; and the bigger are those systems, the bigger gaps are required. If a lot of space inside the sphere is wasted, it loses its "useful volume"; and with that, it's no longer the best shape for a ship. Now people will try to build long ships or wide ships or multi-hull ships.
• drones can still be densely-packed, as for small system it's interference cuboid is the same as its bounding cuboid.
• with systems now not all mixed in, and with gaps between them, if you know the design of a ship your enemy is flying, you can try to destroy known subsystems. Also you know some "basic placements", such as "engines are on the sides", "long guns shoot far", "long ships turn slow", so you can to some degree assess the ship functionality by the looks alone. In clan wars, this allows for purposeful misinformation by making underoptimal, yet unrecognizable ships. Say, what if i build a long ship with a giant cannon in the middle? You'd think i am a sniper; but as you got nearby i'd launch drones at you as you forgot to check my bottom for drone bays. Reconnaisance and industrial espionage are relevant now.

Spoiler: Combat system management and power system tweak

CSM right now does not exist and power system is just meh, i cant even elaborate on that. So what do i want to change?

• All systems can now be toggled on and off. If system is online, it drains MASSIVE amount of energy constantly. Amount drained depends on the size of all togled on systems of the same type (so people won't start making chessboard-pattern weapons), and power consumptions grows at rate greater than linear (N log N may be okay).
• Any online system can be toggled off for no cost and instantly.
• Any offline system can be toggled on. Depending on the size and type of system, its activation time differs. Say, the larger the cannon - the longer it toggles on (up to several minutes for titans), but enormous warp drive can be toggled on much faster than barely operating on. Well, at least if you have enough power for the warpdrive to function at all, as it should be quite prohibitive to have WD and anything else active at the same time, unless the ship is specifically fitted for that role.
• Power usage during the actual usage (shooting / warpjump / cloaking) is significantly decreased.
• If for some reason (damaged reactors or full volley with engines on) the power for actual usage is not enough, system immediately goes offline (with the need for reactivation).

What this proposal achieves?

• Extra gameplay depth to combat. A lot of people on this forum want to see warp drive disabled for some time after shots were fired, but i believe that's sort of artificial limitation. Actually, i do not believe in quantitative limitations, as they feel fake and do not add depth to the gameplay. Consider:
  Bob farms pirates on asteroid belts. Josh-the-PVP-God jumps in. Bob has guns active, but decides to run away.
  
  • old/"forbidwarp": Bob decides to jump away. He tanks Josh for 4 mins and jumps away.
  • activated systems: Bob decides to jump away. He tanks Josh for 4 mins and jumps away.
  But what if 30secs into warp drive activation Bob notices that Josh's ship is actually vastly inferior to his own?
  
  • old: Bob starts shooting
  • activated systems: Bob deactivates his jump drive and turns cannon on. It will be active in 3 minutes. Or he can disable its activation and activate jump drive again. In 4 minutes, as he resetted the process.
  Proposed system significantly increases the cost of "redirecting power". It's still a viable combat maneuver, but now the decision "Disable cannons, get outta here" weights much more. You can not back down on your decision in a large enough ship, you have to plan ahead of time. In the old system, decisions are significantly cheaper. I believe that a rush of emotions during the decision making process contributes to the game, and what's better way to influence decision making if not by increasing responsibility of player for his decisions?
• Ability to balance jump ships and cloak ships. Now i can make a ship with a very fast-charging jumpdrive, but due to enormous jumpdrive energy requirements i will have to ditch shields, weapons and basically everything. First guy with a warp scrambler i run into wont even notice he hit something until he checks his inventory and discovers a whole bag of my goodies. Same goes for cloakers: i believe it's possible in such system to create a permacloaked ship that will slowly move into enemy positions, hide behind some moon, deactivate cloak, deactivate engines, activate heavy antenna array and scan the hell out of them so his mates can plan attack. Or maybe shieldless, yet cloaked drone reconnaisance ship which uses multiple drone-based scaners, hiding himself from enemy radar while her engines are offline? Seems quite OP, until somebody with a radar of his own notices an invisible ship with no weapons and shields. Oh, of course he can turn them on! But it will take precious time which he does not have; during which he will have to sit with no invisibility and no shields and no engines. Enemy can ram him into sun and he won't be able to do a thing. But that's the cost of specialized ships, and i think it's great.

Spoiler: Overall, what features i think my proposition brings:

• combat depth
  
  • power management
  • targeted damage
• mandatory ship design
  
  • systems now have to be visually distinguishable, at least on a blueprint
  • gigacannon impossible because of NlogN power consumption growth
  • checkerboard cannon is not a loophole for power consumption, as it is collective size of all simultaneously active missiles/cannons/beams that matters, not size in a group
• drones
  
  • their behaviour configurations can be easily linked to their mothership, thus preventing balance issues of drone swarms.
  • system flexibility: because of their now-centralized nature, mothership-based effects can be added (increased shields, partial energy transfer, reduced cooldowns, autorepair while in dock, name it).
  • existence of drone control system allows for drone blueprints being stored in the mothership, so it can automatically build drones and recall them after the fight
• ship roles
  
  • fighters are good versus everything but drone ships and destroyers
  • long range cannons are good versus big, slow-moving targets
  • destroyers who have weak defences and low speed, but are able to fight off fighters and big targets depending on their missile configurations
  • drone ships that stand ground againist fighters
  • titans that require BIG reactors for their large guns (yet low-power vessels just wont have enough power to fire big cannons, so if you want to have a big cannon - you have to build a titan).
• preemptive balance tweaks
  
  • spherical ships are not advantageous over long ones
  • drone spam is limited because of drone system power consumption
  • players are not able to circumvent cannon power consumption rate by making several small cannons (because power consumption is based on the total amount of blocks across all groups)
  • core drilling is prevented because cannons now have scatter and beams defocus over long range
• a number of balance issues that i quite probably overlooked. But i think such system is still better than the one currently implemented.

Well, i have a flight in an hour, gotta get up and go. I hope what i wrote will be of some use and that at least overall "mildly forcing into obeying" idea will find its use during the design of this game. I would like to hear about weak points of my ideas and of their possible solutions, as i understand that no idea can be without flaws -- but i hope the collective mind of this forum will help fixing those.

Spoiler: edit history

• I got home and fixed formatting however i was able to. Sorry for everybody whose eyes fell victim to it. I guess you can ally with those geometry guys out there who are after me :D
• Clarified how shield metrics are calculated, under "shields". Added reference to clarification of how proposed system interacts with the concept of slaves/effects. Added reference to the best possible TLDR ever, thank you very much Tobie .
• Added "optionality" part in the disclaimer.

 

[Asvarduil]

Brett's Assholination Cuboid

The Esthar Fleet Systems Lunatic Pandora takes offense at this comparison. Prepare to be assholinated next Thursday when Mike and Chuck log on.

Edit: Seriously, no one here played Final Fantasy VIII? You're missing out on one of the most awesome airships (it's actually a spaceship) in JRPG history. Why are you doing this to yourself? Besides, you can break the game's combat by playing the card game.

 

[Ithirahad]

We are the Bored. Lower your shields and prepare for Assholination. Your architectural and artistic distinctiveness will be added to our own. Non-spherical shapes are irrelevant. You will be Assholinated. Resistance is futile.

 

[Comr4de]

So what I'm reading is that weapon attributes are based solely on the dimensions/shape of the system cluster?

Can you expand on whether or not this would be compatible with the current system linking?

 

[NeonSturm]

OMG

• Fits into 6 screens
• No WYSIWYG stuff used, neither pics or spoilers|headers.

Can somebody please post a summary?

 

[SeCor]

So what I'm reading is that weapon attributes are based solely on the dimensions/shape of the system cluster?

Can you expand on whether or not this would be compatible with the current system linking?

As far as i can see, it wont require any major interface [as in "class interface", not "user interface"] overhaul.
Systems are linked as-is, blocks are linked as-is, except there are additional checks made during the "group changed" event (i've never seen the code, but you obviously have something similar).
The differences are:

• "Weapon system computer" is now only a trigger for the weapons and a linking point for slave systems: damage, scatter and defocusing parameters are assigned to separate groups. As far as i understand, it's something similar right now: when i fire grid-pattern of beams, beams fired from different groups (but from the same WSC) deal different damage.
• When weapon group is changed (block added or removed), check for group being cuboid takes place. If it is a cuboid, parameters of this group are calculated and assigned accordingly; otherwise some kind of an error pops up and entire group loses attachment from its WSC. Additional effect (damaged weapons don't fire) is intended.
• There may be multiple output blocks per weapon group, but only single ray/bullet will be fired upon shooting. Output blocks are assigned automatically to take the whole side the gun is facing.

NeonSturm: yeah, sorry for that. Was in an airport, notepad was my editor. I'll try to clear it up a bit once i have time. It's been a while since i used any WYSIWYG or wrote anything but latex.

 

[jstenholt]

I read only half of that OP without seeing a single conclusion that was even half-way decent.

You can't force a build style on people.

Stop this assholery.

 

[SeCor]

I read only half of that OP without seeing a single conclusion that was even half-way decent.

You can't force a build style on people.

Stop this assholery.

Well, conclusions all are in the last part of the text. And what do you mean by "you can't"? Can't as in "it is impossible", or can't as in "it is inhuman and outright savage"? Because first part is called game design, that's what people who make games do. They get a concept and try to make up limitations in a way that will encourage players to bypass them; and when player will come up with some smart ship design or character build, he/she will post it on some forum and people will start gear their characters accordingly. And game designers will be sitting nearby, warmly smiling at the "really smart guy who just now has beaten the game". I was doing that as a player -- it really is a wonderful feeling, to come up with an idea and to see it work. As a developer, if you want your game to be successful, you ought to set up in-game situations where your players feel special, be it saving a princess or designing cool and functional ship.

But if i misunderstood you, and you think it is inhuman to impose one's views onto ship design, then you may wish to re-read what i wrote in my now-formatted post.

• I first specified what i think is beautiful - do you disagree that a ship that was planned for a week and built because of reasons is better than some mashup of cubes that required no thinking?
• Next, i explained why players have to be forced into thinking before building. Because if thinking won't be beneficial for them, they won't do it. End of story. There will be PVP servers where players build cubes and grief eachother bases and there will be private building servers where people build nice but completely unpractical designs to submit for "starmade best ship contest". Do you disagree with this?
• In the same point and right now, i explained how outright "forcing" players is just depriving them of their freedom of expression. Right now SM is being /developed/. It is the exact time for major changes, you won't be able to do so once it hits, say, 0.9. And it is developer's job to set up a sandbox so it's interesting. Do you disagree that the only way to force player into something without maddening him is to make him discover the most optimal way by itself? And oh! For some random chance it's an actual ship and not a box with walls made of shield blocks.
• I've analysed consequences, both gameplay-wise as a gamer who likes to abuse systems and implementation-wise as a programmer who hates changing existing code too much, and shown ways of fixing them. If you think you know better, then please point out to exact errors.
• Dude. I spend five damn hours of my time to write it, analyse it, discuss it, re-write it, proofread it and post here. And you come up with an "assholery"? Maybe my shirt is too offensive for your likes?

But again, this second part is only if i misunderstood the context of your "cant force X on people". I just do not want to waste everybody's time and just going to read both variants of speech regardless of the outcome. Maybe they'll land on the moon, after all.

 

[Comr4de]

As far as i can see, it wont require any major interface [as in "class interface", not "user interface"] overhaul.
Systems are linked as-is, blocks are linked as-is, except there are additional checks made during the "group changed" event (i've never seen the code, but you obviously have something similar).
The differences are:

• "Weapon system computer" is now only a trigger for the weapons and a linking point for slave systems: damage, scatter and defocusing parameters are assigned to separate groups. As far as i understand, it's something similar right now: when i fire grid-pattern of beams, beams fired from different groups (but from the same WSC) deal different damage.
• When weapon group is changed (block added or removed), check for group being cuboid takes place. If it is a cuboid, parameters of this group are calculated and assigned accordingly; otherwise some kind of an error pops up and entire group loses attachment from its WSC. Additional effect (damaged weapons don't fire) is intended.
• There may be multiple output blocks per weapon group, but only single ray/bullet will be fired upon shooting. Output blocks are assigned automatically to take the whole side the gun is facing.

NeonSturm: yeah, sorry for that. Was in an airport, notepad was my editor. I'll try to clear it up a bit once i have time. It's been a while since i used any WYSIWYG or wrote anything but latex.

I should've been a bit clearer. Right now you can link multiple weapon types (ex. Cannon + Beam or Missile + Cannon) for different fire effects, how would that factor into this suggestion

 

[NeonSturm]

I first specified what i think is beautiful - do you disagree that a ship that was planned for a week and built because of reasons is better than some mashup of cubes that required no thinking?

If you download such a ship, do you deserve it to be better?
I agree partially with it, perhaps make it an option

Next, i explained why players have to be forced into thinking before building. Because if thinking won't be beneficial for them, they won't do it.

Thinking is good, but some peoples want that only as an option if they even accept the option.

• In the same point and right now, i explained how outright "forcing" players is just depriving them of their freedom of expression. Right now SM is being /developed/. It is the exact time for major changes, you won't be able to do so once it hits, say, 0.9. And it is developer's job to set up a sandbox so it's interesting

Interesting how you say freedom if you have to run code with unknown/unseen source code on your PC :p
The existence of proprietary over-shadows the things one young programmer alone can do.

He is forced to neither be able to compete or help and bored waiting for official version to add what he wants.

• I've analysed consequences, both gameplay-wise as a gamer who likes to abuse systems and implementation-wise as a programmer who hates changing existing code too much, and shown ways of fixing them. If you think you know better, then please point out to exact errors.

• Dude. I spend five damn hours of my time to write it, analyse it, discuss it, re-write it, proofread it and post here. And you come up with an "assholery"? Maybe my shirt is too offensive for your likes?

Agree. Stupid peoples not seeing the effort put into long posts and then spam personal opinions which are not contributing at all.

Will read it tomorrow.

 

[SeCor]

I should've been a bit clearer. Right now you can link multiple weapon types (ex. Cannon + Beam or Missile + Cannon) for different fire effects, how would that factor into this suggestion

Ah. My bad, should've clarified that part.
Slaves are exactly like now. Dimensions provide different effect based on exact combination (beam-missile, missile-missle) -- i thought i noted this somewhere. I specifically pointed out lockons and heatseeking missiles -- just sorta assumed the slaves as they are right now.

So, clarification:
Slaves work as they are now. If you want, "weapon control system" + "slave" + "effect system" = "weapon header". "weapon" = "weapon header" + group1 + group2 + group3. You can't make separate slaves for separate groups under same WCS, so it's the same. When you calculate the effects of dimensions, you factor in the "weapon header" used.
For example, as i said earlier - long missile silos provide speed for all missiles, but wide missile silos only benefit lock-on missiles as wide silo increases the aiming reticle. But that was just an example: it's absolutely okay to make wide launchers useful for heatseekers or unguided. Maybe unguided should have bigger blast based on silo width and deeper penetration based on their length? And heatseekers can have increased turning rate based on the width of silo.

 

[Comr4de]

I see, thank you for the clarification

 

[SeCor]

If you download such a ship, do you deserve it to be better?
I agree partially with it, perhaps make it an option

I see downloading of the sh... huh. Well, time to disclose private info :D
I was playing WoW competitively as a holy paladin. Wrote spreadsheets, software simulations; spend hours thinking on builds and discussing them on a forum. Holy paladin btw - always wanted to try retribution, but it turned out that there are too little good healers out there. There are just tasks no one can do besides yourself, so you have to stick to your role if you want the boss dead.

So. Downloading of the ships? Totally fine with me. I spent three weeks deciding if gemming Int or ManaRegen is the way to go. Posted several guides on trinkets. All the other people will look at them and get this knowledge without any effort: but they will see my name on it. That's sort of a pride, to see people linking your posts on character gearing to other people, months after you quit playing. Makes you feel important. That's the kind of thing i want to recreate here. So, you built a good ship during a clan war and decided to hide blueprints? Okay, fine. You stole blueprints during game? That's the spirit! Those are the kind of stories EVE is famous for, how can be that bad? Downloading a ship means somebody got the blueprint, be it through trade, craft, or thievery: it's all part of the metagame and i love it.

Thinking is good, but some peoples want that only as an option if they even accept the option.

I completely agree with it. That's what i meant when i said "mildly force" - some Blizzard blue posts on mmochampion really give insight into such kind of think. There were ~80 possible skills to spend skill points on in just one of three subtypes of paladin; and you had 61 of those points. Half a year into expansion there were 2-3-4 variants for each class, any other build was heavily suboptimal. Later they rewamped skills to get rid of "optional, yet mandatory" skills (sadly i already dropped WoW at the point) -- there are still maybe a few variants of each character build. What i mean is, that's as close as you can get to optionality. That's why i do not like the idea of hard power regen cap (1mil) -- it just seems strange. I am okay if devs thought it out, put some math together and i just realize it's pointless to build such powerful ships: but seeing the wall (see: exact number) really breaks the immersion of the game.

Interesting how you say freedom if you have to run code with unknown/unseen source code on your PC :p
The existence of proprietary over-shadows the things one young programmer alone can do.

Well, i meant "freedom" as in "you are free to build whatever ship you want, be it spheroid or whatever else". Exact hard-caps are what restrain freedom -- i do not want to be limited in ship length because number in patchnote said so; i want to be limited because i will have turning rate so slow people will be able to ram me into the sun.
But.. yeah. Proprietarity can be somewhat depressing; but it just is. It was the viable strategy in the Grand Game, so it emerged -- and it's impossible to get rid of it as it has its benefits. If it had not any, it would not have emerged.

And thanks for understanding longpost effort. I was starting to get desperate that it will be forgotten without being read.

 

[jstenholt]

You cannot force shipwrights to build in a manner that fits you personally. Aesthetics are great, but not everybody can implement them. What you are suggesting severely limits the freedom that this SANDBOX game offers.

And just because something is long and makes a large number of points does not, in any way, make it viable, correct, or deserving of attention.

After reading the second half of this atrocity of a post, it is very plain to see that you have typed much and said little.

When you aren't re-hashing others' ideas, you are rambling about balancing that is only necessary if the changes you suggest are implemented. What this entire post boils down to is, "change this game, i have opinions."

 

[CaptainTaz]

So basically, you want to force people to build things in certain ways....

Yeah... good luck getting support for this in a sandbox game.

Starmade is NOT an MMO, think of it more as a Minecraft focused on vehicular operation and space exploration instead of survival. There are many types of players, from shipwrights to planet dwellers, and hoarders to nomads. Putting restrictions on ships is a server admin's job, not the dev team's job, and will very easily kill off a lot of creative ideas.

Sure, it could stop doom cubes, but they're not a really huge problem when there's a competent admin team. From what I see, if anything, this will discourage players from playing and being creative.

 

[Kaamio]

While I'm not that thrilled with the exact suggestion, I do agree that shaped systems would be better than current amorphous mass. Creativity spawns from limitations more than empty canvas with limitless possibilities which punishes those building pretty.

Games and sandboxes are based on having a certain framework of tools and limitations you have to work with to achieve your goal, otherwise it's too simple to be fun.

That said, cube design does have one good effect: when your ship is built in 20-30 minutes without all the random bits to make it look good, losing it in battle isn't all that bad... which makes pvp much less daunting.

 

[DraconisDomini]

I tend to agree with Kaamio, I appreciate some of the ideas, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about the framework presented taken as a whole.

The idea of having system properties partly determined by their size/shape rather than simply their total mass is certainly a plausible addition and might have some interesting results. That said, it wouldn't necessarily discourage doomcubes per se, it might just cause them to morph into 'doomstars' instead.

The idea of shield blocks having a limited 'area of effect' is also plausible, though it might be more difficult to implement without lag. An alternative if one wanted to move shield capacitors/regenerators away from being used as filler would be to give them bonuses from being connected as larger blocks the same way power capacitors do. An alternative way of encouraging distributed shield capacitors/regenerators rather than 'filler' type might be to give them a connectivity bonus that increases if a block is touching up to 4 others, but decreases if it is touching 5 or 6. That would encourage sheets of shield capacitors/regenerators, and the way to get the largest sheet would be to put it directly under the hull.

Core drilling should be dealt with when we get the promised HP update, but I do appreciate what you are saying about targeting specific systems/knowing where they are. I think perhaps a more elegant solution to that though would be to add a new mode to the scanner, or even a new 'sensor' block that allows you to scan a ship that you have selected as a target and highlight specific system blocks, e.g. you set the scanner to 'power' and it gives you blinking frames around all of the power capacitor/reactor blocks in the enemy ship. If you then set the scanner to 'weapons', it would highlight all of the weapons, but you would lose the power system highlighting. This could also introduce a new role for radar jammers if they are able to (partially) jam this effect.

The combat system management idea I just don't really like at all. Jump drives already have that kind of effect to an extent since they have a rather large power draw, as can very large missiles that have long reload times. I do support a faster than linear rate of increase in power draw for weaponry, as this would help cut down on the giant doomcubes as well, but the idea of having to choose to turn the entire weapon system 'off', rather than just not being able to fire it without depleting your ships power I don't like.

Stop this assholery.

Yes, please do.

 

[SeCor]

Starmade is NOT an MMO, think of it more as a Minecraft focused on vehicular operation and space exploration instead of survival. There are many types of players, from shipwrights to planet dwellers, and hoarders to nomads.

You've seen many shipwrights and hoarders and nomads /on the same server/ in garry's mod? That's exactly what i meant in my original post when i said that "current system provokes splitting of playerbase into two separate kinds: one will be mashing 1k*1k*1k doomcubes againist one another, while other will be building ships for contests on private servers. Are you okay with that separation? If yes, say so clearly.

So basically, you want to force people to build things in certain ways....
Putting restrictions on ships is a server admin's job, not the dev team's job, and will very easily kill off a lot of creative ideas.
Sure, it could stop doom cubes, but they're not a really huge problem when there's a competent admin team.

So what you are saying is that it's server admin's job to monitor all the ships that are being built on his server and to selectively ban players based on his own judgement for "wrong ships"? You do realise this will lead to yet another minecraft, where target audience plays on private servers with maybe 5-6 friends each? Are you okay with total lack of at least 50ppl servers?

So basically, you want to force people to build things in certain ways....
Yeah... good luck getting support for this in a sandbox game.
From what I see, if anything, this will discourage players from playing and being creative.

So current system, where any carefully planned ship is at best "not much worse" than it's mashed together counterpart, is encouraging creativity? How do you propose to design ship's defence, when Brett will just add a 10x10x10 cannon modules floating next to his ship and will kill me twice over?

jstenholt
Welp. And here was me, thinking i can get a discussion here. I asked you personally a number of questions regarding your opinion of my post. Those were simple "yes or no" questions. Please, answer them before i can reply anything meaningful to you. You see, to argue rationally i have to find flaws in your post and expose them. The only idea that you carry in your post is that i am an asshole who dares to impose his will onto other people. The only rational argument to that is "no and your mom is fat", but using it will make me seem an asshole, thus proving your point. So i won't use that argument.

edit: on a second note, just to stop explaining the same over and over: gamemode maybe? So there is a "creative mode" with no hp and infinite resources for forum contests, there is a "FoRfUnPvPOnLySerV mode" with no in-game ship configuration limitations and there is an, idk, "space" mode where people can actually play a game? Kinda like simplified mini-EVE with self-designed ships?

 

[NeonSturm]

And just because something is long and makes a large number of points does not, in any way, make it viable, correct, or deserving of attention.

After reading the second half of this atrocity of a post, it is very plain to see that you have typed much and said little.

When you aren't re-hashing others' ideas, you are rambling about balancing that is only necessary if the changes you suggest are implemented. What this entire post boils down to is, "change this game, i have opinions."

Does this contribute to the thread? No? Why don't keep such flaming stuff out?

Putting restrictions on ships is a server admin's job, not the dev team's job, and will very easily kill off a lot of creative ideas.

Sure, it could stop doom cubes, but they're not a really huge problem when there's a competent admin team.

It's the dev teams job to allow admins to do this efficiently.

If they don't see this point, they don't care about whether the game has success (except on a theoretical paper).

It's a lot better if the game tells you this is not allowed on that server, than if you have to follow "random jurisdiction of your server's admins" when he bans or warns you.​

Can you have freedom in the real life?

There are physical laws which restricts you.
But they also restrict a single person to be able to just unleashing personal unforgiving wishes onto you.

At least if the community of humans care about that issue.
Does the God=admin care? Or are we god since he is a creation of our minds => So do we care?​

Restrictions are not evil if everybody has the same.

Putting yourself out of restrictions and expect others to restrict themselves expose your mind to do evil things

• things like controlling users with proprietary software (Apple, MS).
• like automatically deleting music from alternatives to iTunes or software which does not allow downgrades.

Restricting others while not also restricting yourself is evil -- but we accept the restriction for the sake of fairness and beaty.​

While I'm not that thrilled with the exact suggestion, I do agree that shaped systems would be better than current amorphous mass. Creativity spawns from limitations more than empty canvas with limitless possibilities which punishes those building pretty.

+1
To get the third side's length in a triangle you need 3 variables : side A+B + a known angle OR side A + 2 known angles.

And to get creativity (=third side, previously non-existing stuff) you need more than one restriction (mass, number of guns+shields)

Games and sandboxes are based on having a certain framework of tools and limitations you have to work with to achieve your goal, otherwise it's too simple to be fun.

Perhaps we need a baby-mode, a youth-mode and an adult-player mode? :D

You can only have fun with Math if you understand Math and have few barriers understanding it when it's written.

 

[CaptainTaz]

Can you have freedom in the real life?

There are physical laws which restricts you.
But they also restrict a single person to be able to just unleashing personal unforgiving wishes onto you.

At least if the community of humans care about that issue.
Does the God=admin care? Or are we god since he is a creation of our minds => So do we care?​

Restrictions are not evil if everybody has the same.

Putting yourself out of restrictions and expect others to restrict themselves expose your mind to do evil things

• things like controlling users with proprietary software (Apple, MS).
• like automatically deleting music from alternatives to iTunes or software which does not allow downgrades.

Restricting others while not also restricting yourself is evil -- but we accept the restriction for the sake of fairness and beaty.​

Doom cubes are comparable to Minecraft's Dirt houses. They're ugly, square, and nobody wants to see them. Yet they still exist.

They exist because, like Minecraft, this game is a SANDBOX, and not an MMO, which is a detail you seem to be forgetting. If Starmade were going to go down an MMO-like path, then this idea would have some merit, but it doesn't.

Some people don't have problems with these things or enjoy throwing together something easy so they can do other things that they enjoy better. I know I'd rather be out mining than working on an extravagant house (In Minecraft), The same thing applies to starmade, where some people would rather be able to throw something together so that they can kill pirates or defend them selves from players with titans that threaten their home without spending days working on it just to see it get blown up.

(and don't pull the "Starmade is not Minecraft" card, because I know this. But they are both successful sandbox games, so why would we ignore it? )

It's not that hard to fight a doom cube on servers with size and look restrictions, just have good AMS, and decent shielding, and a main weapon that deals a lot of damage (Which should be very normal on most ships). And if you lose the ship to greifing by them, just be sure you had a blueprint (Who doesn't save all their ships to local?) and have it replaced by an admin. The reason servers have rules is to have things conform to what they want on their server. and I KNOW for a fact most of the big servers do not want them, hence, taking screenshots and alerting staff, because that is their job to delete the ship and alert the offender.

Also: "Restrictions are not evil if everybody has the same." "we accept the restriction for the sake of fairness and beaty"

Restrictions in a sandbox game will lead to a loss in beauty and creativity, not a gain in it, because it will harm the people who like to get creative with their stuff, and only push more people away from the game who can't build to a good standard. I like having the creative freedom to say "Hm, I think I should put most of my weapon in the back of the ship, and have a part that leads to a frontal output through my shielding system" and not get penalized for it.

and fairness, hah, a game where everyone is equal is boring. then it all comes down to just how good you are at the game, which alienates newer players, for instance, let's take an example. Most Minecraft PVP games have you in a preset class with the same armor and weapons as anyone else. the people with the most PVP experience will pretty much always win, with new players not able to keep up. I don't think anyone would want this for a game that hasn't even left alpha yet. You'll push new players away.

on top of all this, read how the game is advertised on steam: "StarMade is a voxel-based 3D sandbox space shooter. Play in your own universe or on a multiplayer server. Participate in epic fleet battles, strive to dominate entire galaxies and harness the universe’s resources for your industrious empire or the destruction of others. The universe is yours!"

Not anywhere does it say ships are/should restricted. In fact, it pretty much implies you can do as you wish. This includes building a doom cube.

Something that restricts the creativity of this game to stop a very minor and easily controlled problem should not be allowed. Restricting the game, means restricting what beauty people can make, so that ships will all look very similar to one another, and who the hell wants that?

EDIT: After finding images on a thread with a similar topic, I'd like to show you some very nice ships you're basically make burn in hell because of restrictions;

I can agree with that.
But it does feel a bit better to get killed by a Cube that looks good rather than one thats just pure systems or one with one layer of flat hull.
Indeed there are some ships that looks like rectangles but that is either because the design is like that, the builder is not good at shapes, or the builder just didnt care
Though I must say there are some fantastic looking "cubes" out there, here are some pics of some more accepted cube ships

Spoiler: Pretty Borg ships

oh and thise one by pikayoda

So cubes can be beautiful but doomcubes are usually not beautiful.
We can therefore conclude that cubes are ships that are cube shaped like those in the spoiler, these ships can be pretty there as doom-cubes are ugly blocks usually made out of pure systems or systems with 1 single layer of plain hull.

Doom-cubes are not liked because there have been used no creativity to build the ship and the only time spent on the ship have gone into making it a cheap killing machine.

You forgot showing my Borg cube ^^

I never finished it, because its a Fu*** Cube ^^
But im a big Startrek fan, and with that i really had to build that thing