Transporters: no transport on same entity

[FatCobra]

Seem to me this is a very hot topic with passionate views on both sides of the coin. Why not just meet in the middle and make it configurable in the config files.

 

[Jumper11550]

I have to come down on the side of leaving same entity transporters as they are.

There is nothing about them existing that prevents you from building your ships with an "intelligent interior design" as they are now. It makes dealing with movement around large structures more convenient. It also seems to me that anything that makes your ship you put time and effort into building harder to board is actually more intelligent. There's no reason that having transporters as the sole connection between areas of the ship shouldn't be a viable method.

I really feel like this thread is stating: we need an artificial restriction on transporters because players will use them to do things that we don't like so we need to force them to play along. In case you can't tell I'm not a huge fan of the prospect of boarding either, but I'm not really a fan of open PvP either.

If any sort of limitation will be insisted upon I would much rather see a limit on the total number of transporter controllers an entity (higher for a station than a ship) can have rather than removing the ability to move from one to the other inside a ship.

 

[Edymnion]

Noone is stopping you from building your stations the way you want. You just might have to adjust to the the 30 seconds it takes for a gravtube to travel that distance, since your need for zapping around a giant station would hardly outbalance the wish for functional boarding a substantial amount of players have expressed interest in. Or better yet - design your station so that it doesn't build around an issue you won't have to face anymore in the future (bounding box overlapping lag).

Yes, yes you are trying to stop me from building my station the way I want to build it. The very fact that the next sentence is "You might have to adjust" flat out means I would have to change my build because what you are suggesting means I can't build it the way I want it.

And define "substantial". I've never seen more than a handful of people ever talking about boarding in the first place. Most of the time I've seen the topic come up, its been more along the lines of "Holy crap, the cutting torch is the most griefer friendly thing I've seen in this game, what do you mean you can cut someone's faction block out and steal their entire ship/station?!?".

I think its much more likely that the boarding people are a small vocal minority than they are any substantial amount of the population.

 

[FatCobra]

(sorry accidentally posted)

Seem to me this is a very hot topic with passionate views on both sides of the coin. Why not just meet in the middle and make it configurable in the config files.

heres the thing though.... we already have transporters they can already move you between multiple entities what possible justification can you give where it would make logical sense that you cannot have 2 of them on one structure?

I would have been all for not adding teleportation in the first place, but just putting some limiting factor on a system already in place because it makes things harder or more difficult makes no sense.

On a side not I believe warp gates were fixed so that astronauts appear right in front of them when you go through them.... you could also use warp gates for inter station transportation in the exact same way you can use transporters.

This is correct if you can transport between pads on two entities it makes no logical sense that you couldn't transport between two pads on the same entity.

I don't see the logic in lowering shields on same entity transports as the reason the shields need to drop is that the matter.energy stream can't penetrate shields.

I do see both sides. I think some way to control this via configuration is the best approach.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

There are ways to balance the system without completely removing the ability completely. The simplest but probably not the best is make it so NPCs can't use transporters to get around the ship. Crew will have to be able to get from their bunks to their stations and potentially to recreation areas to keep their stats high. Of course this could be designed around so that the crew never have to change areas on a ship in order to get their needs met.

Another easy solution is to make any teleporter accessible if it can physically be interacted with. That way if you design your ship how you want to then even boarding parties can use your methods for getting around. Currently the boarding mechanic is at it's infancy and we should be striving to improve that instead of nerfing other features into the ground to compensate.

 

[Thalanor]

I think its much more likely that the boarding people are a small vocal minority than they are any substantial amount of the population.

This is just as much guesswork as you see in my post.

Yes, yes you are trying to stop me from building my station the way I want to build it. The very fact that the next sentence is "You might have to adjust" flat out means I would have to change my build because what you are suggesting means I can't build it the way I want it.

Because if there is a conflict of interest, it makes sense that the side that only has to adjust by a few notches does so instead of the side whose functionality would be fundamentally broken. Gravtubes are fast, and if you absolutely positively want to design your station around a limitation (bounding box lag) that won't even exist in the future anymore, then you can still do so.

(sorry accidentally posted)
I don't see the logic in lowering shields on same entity transports as the reason the shields need to drop is that the matter.energy stream can't penetrate shields.
I do see both sides. I think some way to control this via configuration is the best approach.

We have infinite power and whatnot in the game, so in this case, gameplay would take precedence over in-verse logic - and there are enough possible explanations like transporters having to combat interference with ship systems. A config option would probably be fine, although it would open up another setting that makes ships not fully compatible with every server.

There are ways to balance the system without completely removing the ability completely. The simplest but probably not the best is make it so NPCs can't use transporters to get around the ship. Crew will have to be able to get from their bunks to their stations and potentially to recreation areas to keep their stats high. Of course this could be designed around so that the crew never have to change areas on a ship in order to get their needs met.

You mean players couldn't use transporters and NPCs can? That would solve the issue Ithirahad brought up and at the same time make ship interiors the PvP "FPS maps" they could be. The other way around would not fix a thing though, since that would still leave players with the instant-teleport.

Another easy solution is to make any teleporter accessible if it can physically be interacted with. That way if you design your ship how you want to then even boarding parties can use your methods for getting around. Currently the boarding mechanic is at it's infancy and we should be striving to improve that instead of nerfing other features into the ground to compensate.

If internal teleporting is kept around, then all future features would have to be built with that in mind, and eventually it would be too late to remove it anymore. This is why I find it somewhat dangerous to release full functionality first and then balance it down later instead of doing it the other way around.

 

[Edymnion]

Because if there is a conflict of interest, it makes sense that the side that only has to adjust by a few notches does so instead of the side whose functionality would be fundamentally broken.

No, the conflict of interest is the fact that your current desire for how boarding should work conflicts with what is currently in the game right now. You want to restrict useful abilities for regular play because they make your boarding inconvenient.

Its like MMOs that don't allow flying because it makes it harder for the griefers to gank people, or remove/cripple legit PvE abilities because they're not well balanced for PvP.

This is a major sore point for me. Don't cripple my PvE because you want to be able to gank people easier in PvP.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

You mean players couldn't use transporters and NPCs can? That would solve the issue Ithirahad brought up and at the same time make ship interiors the PvP "FPS maps" they could be. The other way around would not fix a thing though, since that would still leave players with the instant-teleport.

That's not what I meant at all. I was saying the teleporters would still be usable by the player but the ships would still have to be designed in a way that NPCs have to traverse, therefore boarding attackers can still be able to get around the ship the same way the NPCs do. It's not an ideal solution as I said because you can design your ships in a way that NPCs get everything they need without having to move between ship sections.

I still think there are far better ways to balance this without nerfing it into the ground.

 

[Sha3es]

How about this... for the same entity there must be some sort of connection of blocks, solid blocks not light rods, for the transporter to work... I mean hey it makes sense if you use something that will not interfere with shields there has to be wiring somewhere right? This means that by simply connecting blocks together the transporter would function inside of an entity but at the same time would not allow for ships to become a random collection of blocks floating in space.

 

[Thalanor]

Boarding isn't ganking people - if I wanted to gank someone, I'd barrage their ship from a safe distance until nothing is left anymore. Boarding as it is in the process of being developed is actually the exact opposite to ganking, as it requires the boarding crew to actually get themselves into the dangerzone and fight on hostile terrain where they are at a disadvantage. And yes, boarding is currently not where I'd like it to see, but it is being worked on by the developers, and they will have a much harder time getting this done in a way that is even remotely useful with internal teleport.

That's not what I meant at all. I was saying the teleporters would still be usable by the player but the ships would still have to be designed in a way that NPCs have to traverse, therefore boarding attackers can still be able to get around the ship the same way the NPCs do. It's not an ideal solution as I said because you can design your ships in a way that NPCs get everything they need without having to move between ship sections.

I still think there are far better ways to balance this without nerfing it into the ground.

The teleporters being usable by the players is the very source of the problem though. If only NPCs ever have to go through the interior, it doesn't really have a point. I'd love to see a better way to balance this, but this is just too much of a shortcut to patch up at a later time. Unless someone actually has an idea, in which case I'd love to hear it

 

[Edymnion]

Boarding isn't ganking people - if I wanted to gank someone, I'd barrage their ship from a safe distance until nothing is left anymore. Boarding as it is in the process of being developed is actually the exact opposite to ganking

See, I don't see it that way.

I see boarding as what a weaker opponent does when they know they can't actually win a head to head fight.

Worse, the current boarding tools and rules make it far less of an alternative way of winning a fight, and much more of a way of outright stealing people's crap. Board a ship, cut out the faction block, cut the pilot out and kill him, then put your own faction block in place and you've not only beaten them, you've outright stolen their ship.

But its okay, because thats how boarding works right now.

I honestly do not see boarding in a positive light in any form right now. I see it purely as a griefing tactic.

 

[Jumper11550]

I honestly do not see boarding in a positive light in any form right now. I see it purely as a griefing tactic.

This, I'm scratching my head trying to come up with any reason to board someone's ship other than to take the ship itself, and I can't. If you just want to kill them then it can be done from a distance as Thalanor points out. If you just want to take their stuff, that only really makes sense (with the new cargo system coming ) to hit transports, ships that have stuff worth stealing in them, and the easiest way to move the stuff is in the ship it's on. I suppose once inter-ship cargo transport is a thing you could take the stuff and leave the ship without much more effort. Other than stuff on the ship there is the ship itself but we're trying find a reason you wouldn't be taking the ship here.

Plain and simple there is no reason to board a ship to except to take the ship. If you just want a place to run around in and fight as astronauts with your friends then you all can still build your ships with internals that provide that. If someone wants to build their ship in a way to make boarding a huge pain and they incorporate transporters into that design then obviously the thought of having someone take their stuff isn't fun or appealing to them.

Really as I see it this is coming down to a conflict of opinion between people who find it fun and exciting to have the constant threat of PvP and losing all your work over your head and people who don't find that idea all that appealing over how transporters fit into how the game mechanic favors one group vs. the other.

Frankly I don't think a fundamental change in game mechanic to force players to build their ships in a manner that favors the pro boarding group when they can choose to still build their ships that way with the current setup is good game design. Especially since making the change actually restricts the choice and design capability of players more interested in the PvE aspect. I think this would be a terrible design choice mostly because I see Starmade as NOT primarily a PvP game. Even once it's out of alpha (or even beta) I don't see starmade being any more PvP than it is PvE.

Edit: clearing up some redundancy and spelling errors

 

[Thalanor]

If your ship is not docked to a homebase, then there already is the constant threat of loosing the entire ship. It doesn't make much of a difference to the attacked party whether their ship is blown to pieces and salvaged, or the crew killed and the ship stolen - any entity out in space, away from the invincible homebase is in constant danger of complete resource loss one way or the other! If you want to make it harder to kill your crew than to fight the ship, use interior turrets set to hostile vs astronauts. You'd make it extremely difficult without just placing computers and core in a sealed-off armored shell that can only be accessed via teleporters.

 

[Keptick]

No thank you.

I am currently building a very large station, as boundary box of a cubic kilometer. The lag is currently very bad when you bring a large ship into the bounding box of a large station, so I a building satellite docking ports out at the edges of the bounding box for large ships to dock to without having to drop to 1 FPS trying to navigate closer in to dock directly to the station proper.

It is my intention to have site to site transporters in those docking satellites to allow quick access from the dock to the central areas of the station. Otherwise, the only option is to make people walk half a kilometer to get to the station, or to build rail cars which frankly are still pretty damned slow even at max speed. Or rig up old fashioned gravity tubes and have people fall around the station just to get from their car to the front door.

And I just have to say I hate boarding parties, I honestly think they have no purpose in the game, and if the only reason someone has to be against something is "It makes boarding harder", then I'm totally fine with it.

Notice how the OP refers to transporters on the same entity? In your case just having a transporter on the docked ship and one on the station would work.

 

[Edymnion]

Really as I see it this is coming down to a conflict of opinion between people who find it fun and exciting to have the constant threat of PvP and losing all your work over your head and people who don't find that idea all that appealing over how transporters fit into how the game mechanic favors one group vs. the other.

Agreed.

The fact the home station is invincible is the only reason I still play Starmade.

I absolutely *HATE* the idea of people being able to completely destroy everything I've spent days, weeks, or months building literally overnight while I'm sleeping with absolutely no way of stopping them. I see boarding as a "You can't even defend yourself if you're on now, as long as they've got a couple more guys with them they can just walk into your ship and take it out no matter what precautions you put in place."

 

[Keptick]

Agreed.

The fact the home station is invincible is the only reason I still play Starmade.

I absolutely *HATE* the idea of people being able to completely destroy everything I've spent days, weeks, or months building literally overnight while I'm sleeping with absolutely no way of stopping them. I see boarding as a "You can't even defend yourself if you're on now, as long as they've got a couple more guys with them they can just walk into your ship and take it out no matter what precautions you put in place."

1) Internal defenses.
2) Save your stuff.
3) Don't play on PvP servers?

 

[Thalanor]

I absolutely *HATE* the idea of people being able to completely destroy everything I've spent days, weeks, or months building literally overnight while I'm sleeping with absolutely no way of stopping them.

This is completely unrelated to boarding and a phenomenon of the game itself. Yes, everything that is not docked to the homebase is not invincible. This doesn't change if there was no intra-entity teleporting (nothing but the homebase was invincible before that update either).

I see boarding as a "You can't even defend yourself if you're on now, as long as they've got a couple more guys with them they can just walk into your ship and take it out no matter what precautions you put in place."

If you are not docked to the homebase, then yes, you cannot defend yourself even if you are online if the attacking party is stronger. They could just use a larger ship than yours, or more ships, or whatever - this is completely unrelated to boarding and has been the same before the update. Your force is either stronger or you loose your ship, this is how Starmade currently works, and while that might need a change, this is, again, completely unrelated. Don't confuse your PvP frustrations with the actual suggestion at hand.

If you don't want to loose your stuff at all, regardless of where you currently are, don't play on public servers. Your arguments always boil down to "I hate X".

 

[Jumper11550]

If your ship is not docked to a homebase, then there already is the constant threat of loosing the entire ship. It doesn't make much of a difference to the attacked party whether their ship is blown to pieces and salvaged, or the crew killed and the ship stolen - any entity out in space, away from the invincible homebase is in constant danger of complete resource loss one way or the other! If you want to make it harder to kill your crew than to fight the ship, use interior turrets set to hostile vs astronauts. You'd make it extremely difficult without just placing computers and core in a sealed-off armored shell that can only be accessed via teleporters.

And I'm already not excited about that. I would much rather have a new game mechanic that opens up my choice in terms of design and freedom of movement in PvE. The fact that it also makes it less attractive (more costly/harder) for someone to decide to try and take my stuff is just icing on the cake. Anything that makes being successful at PvP (particularly PvP activities that don't require your target to be present) more difficult is a good thing. Too many online gamers today take the view point that if they can do something that takes from another and they manage it then poo on the other guy. As the other guy that doesn't find that stuff fun you just make the game a terrible experience for me. Making the argument that it's just part of the game doesn't make it better. The fact that the common mindset that deriving fun from being a jerk to another player "is just the way it is" is a mindset that I hope never really takes hold here in starmade.

The fun in starmade is putting effort into making cool things (sometimes cooperatively) and occasionally planning a fight with your fellow players, not in being a target for someone that doesn't seem to understand (or worse doesn't care) their fun is ruining your game experience

 

[Keptick]

All you people complaining about "forced PvP" blablabla...

DON'T PLAY ON F****** PVP SERVERS!!!!

Everyone was happy before we had transporters, so it's not like losing an NEW overpowered mechanic will change much.

 

[Thalanor]

The fun in starmade is putting effort into making cool things (sometimes cooperatively) and occasionally planning a fight with your fellow players, not in being a target for someone that doesn't seem to understand (or worse doesn't care) their fun is ruining your game experience

Then faction warfare servers are just not for you. They are still the main focus of a game focused around spaceship fights and territorial conflict, and as such balancing can only be done from the POV of a faction warfare server. If you don't want to face any hostility, open up a server for you and your friends, and your problem is solved. This does not bear any relevance beyond that.