Transporters: no transport on same entity

[Edymnion]

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.

Except that with boarding you don't have to be stronger than your opponent. A half dozen guys in 3 block pods and cutting torches can take down a titan.

Internal defenses? People are already complaining left and right about large ships. How exactly is "put automated turrets covering every square inch of the inside of your ship" going to help with that?

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".

Do you not see the irony of saying "Your objection boils down to 'I don't like it'" when your entire thread here is exactly the same thing?

"I don't like that this makes the part of the game I like harder, it has to go!"
"Well I don't like that your suggestion makes the part of the game I like harder, so I don't support it."
"You're just mad because you don't like it!"

Bwuah?

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

Last time I checked, the only difference between a PvP server for Starmade and any other server is that you'll get banned for stuff on the server after you're caught. This change is being proposed as a base change for the entire game, PvP and PvE alike. It hurts PvE in order to help PvP.

Its no protection against anyone intentionally griefing just for the lulz. So why hurt the majority of the players (and time and time again its been shown that PvE players are the majority) with something that has only marginal benefit for PvP?

 

[Jumper11550]

3) Don't play on PvP servers?

I'm completely okay with that, and often choose that as my route to avoid the type of PvP driven behaviour I don't like, but this thread is talking about a game engine change that would affect non-PvP environments too. My point is this change considers a purely PvP-centric of how the game should be built.

I don't think taking something away from PvE (where it's not a problem) by removing Intra-ship transport is worth the amount of in game effort it saves aggressors in a PvP setting.

Maybe as FatCobra has suggested this behavior needs to be a config option before either group will be satisfied

 

[Keptick]

Rght now all I see is people arguing about unrelated issues and generally ignoring what the other has to say.

I'll try to get a dev's opinion on this, should end the discussion.

 

[Jumper11550]

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.

That's my whole point. Starmade is NOT mainly focused around spaceship fights and territorial conflict. There is nothing anywhere that says the focus of the game has to be conflict. That entire line of thought that combat and winning the fight needs to be the core purpose of the game and everything else is framework for that purpose is ludicrous. Sure it's a vital part and the game couldn't survive without it, but claiming that is the sole purpose of the game for everyone is silly.

Lots of people are more than happy to build fun/cool/interesting ships. Exploration will hopefully become better with the expansion of the NPC system in the game when it comes out. There's no reason you need to build giant guns to fight over the same 27 systems around spawn.

 

[Thalanor]

Except that with boarding you don't have to be stronger than your opponent. A half dozen guys in 3 block pods and cutting torches can take down a titan.

If you are AFK away from your homebase, you will loose your ship, whether these half a dozen people spend 20 minutes cutting through advanced armor with a torch or bring a ship by themselves.

Internal defenses? People are already complaining left and right about large ships. How exactly is "put automated turrets covering every square inch of the inside of your ship" going to help with that?

How interior turrets are going to help with that? They provide your much requested boarding security. The interior is still interconnected and has to be traversed by anyone going along.

Do you not see the irony of saying "Your objection boils down to 'I don't like it'" when your entire thread here is exactly the same thing?

You're the only one who concludes every second post with "I absolutely hate X". My OP on the other hand actually shows a conflict of interest between the officially announced development direction of the game and the recent update, which is of factual relevance, unlike your hate.

In addition, like keptick said: Intra-entity teleporting actually makes purely roleplaying interiors redundant, too, even if you didn't even plan to ever join a pvp server.

Bwuah?

Yes, please stop bwahing. "I hate X" is getting old.

 

[Jumper11550]

Rght now all I see is people arguing about unrelated issues and generally ignoring what the other has to say.

I'm missing the unrelated issue part here. My argument all along has been we shouldn't make a change to the way transporters work that effects both a PvE and PvP (boarding parties) in a way that takes from one for the benefit of the other. Which was sort of what the OP was about, changing transporters to make sure boarding doesn't get harder. (or correct me if my read on the OP is wrong).

Because intra-ship teleportation doesn't make RP interiors even more useless.

Edit: this second quote was edited out of Keptic's earlier post, but was said.

I don't think people that enjoy using RP interiors now will really stop with transporters being available, and most of those that will use transporters to skip the walk along the ship probably already built very small interiors. This addition is not going to make or break player behavior that already existed in regards to RP interiors.

 

[Thalanor]

There is indeed much more than boarding listed in my OP. This also concerns the viability of rails or gravity based transports and of creating show-off complex interiors (these are purely RP features without any relation to PvP in the first place), since any station visitor would want a teleport to their destination, not traverse your ship or station, looking at what you have built inside. Internal teleporting demotes every single step of walking to an entirely undeeded action, but the game actually needs the opposite - more reasons to move your astronaut around.

 

[Edymnion]

Let me play devil's advocate here for a moment.

Lets ignore all the PvE vs. PvP stuff and just look at what would actually happen.

If they made a limit to prevent site to site transport, do you really think that would stop anything? The stated reason for this thread is that it makes boarding harder because you can't cut through one door or bit of hull and walk down a breezy hallway to the core/faction block. That people would just put teleporters that boarders couldn't use to jump around into sealed chambers.

Well guess what? If we put the "only one transporter per entity" rule into effect, people would simply have docked transporters the way we have docked reactors now, and there would be no way to stop it that doesn't also completely stop you from docking any ship with a transporter to a station with a transporter of it's own.

People who want to make sealed chambers still will, they'll just put a docking block in said sealed chamber and put the transporter on that. Bam, its no longer the same entity, but the effect is the same.

So all you've accomplished is increasing the size and complexity of every ship and station for absolutely no benefit.

 

[Ithirahad]

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.

+1. So much +1. (This would also help noobs not get stuck places if people leave their transporters at public access... :P)

 

[Thalanor]

With "entity" I mean the entire nested docking chain. This means that entity-to-entity transport would only be transport between disconnected entities. If you docked your ship to a station, you would have to exit the ship and walk there, this is how my suggestion is intended. Anything else would just make everything right down to the standard docking collar players developed redundant.

 

[Edymnion]

With "entity" I mean the entire nested docking chain. This means that entity-to-entity transport would only be transport between disconnected entities. If you docked your ship to a station, you would have to exit the ship and walk there, this is how my suggestion is intended. Anything else would just make everything right down to the standard docking collar players developed redundant.

Okay, so we still have the transporter "ship", only now instead of being docked its free floating in the room with some blocks physically locking it in place.

So now not only do we still have the exact same situation where people have sealed chambers with independent transporters, now there are collision checks being done 24/7.

There is literally no way to allow transporters in the game while avoiding the situation that this thread is trying to address. So its a pointless limitation.

 

[Keptick]

Let me play devil's advocate here for a moment.


Lets ignore all the PvE vs. PvP stuff and just look at what would actually happen.


If they made a limit to prevent site to site transport, do you really think that would stop anything? The stated reason for this thread is that it makes boarding harder because you can't cut through one door or bit of hull and walk down a breezy hallway to the core/faction block. That people would just put teleporters that boarders couldn't use to jump around into sealed chambers.


Well guess what? If we put the "only one transporter per entity" rule into effect, people would simply have docked transporters the way we have docked reactors now, and there would be no way to stop it that doesn't also completely stop you from docking any ship with a transporter to a station with a transporter of it's own.


People who want to make sealed chambers still will, they'll just put a docking block in said sealed chamber and put the transporter on that. Bam, its no longer the same entity, but the effect is the same.


So all you've accomplished is increasing the size and complexity of every ship and station for absolutely no benefit.

If you do that the shields will drop. Boom, that's the sound of a missile slamming into your unshielded ship.


And please, don't pretend that the almost godlike ability to instantly teleport anywhere on the ship with two blocks is balanced.

 

[Jumper11550]

There is indeed much more than boarding listed in my OP. This also concerns the viability of rails or gravity based transports and of creating show-off complex interiors (these are purely RP features without any relation to PvP in the first place), since any station visitor would want a teleport to their destination, not traverse your ship or station, looking at what you have built inside. Internal teleporting demotes every single step of walking to an entirely undeeded action, but the game actually needs the opposite - more reasons to move your astronaut around.

I think the kind of players that enjoy looking at builds will take the time to walk and do so, but why force them too? If you prefer the walk then you are free to do so. I myself would spend the time to walk around and look (at least once). It's one of my favorite things to do when I find a derelict station I've not seen before.

If your enjoyment from your builds is totally derived from the fact that others will be looking at them instead of using them, then *shrugs*. You do you.

There are times however I would much prefer to be able to get right to the playing part of the game instead of being forced to walk through an extra 2 minutes of someone else work every time I need to make a trip from point A to B. Transporters don't break immersion, they make sense given all the other technology that exists in game and provide a more efficient means of getting about.

tl:dr Just because some of us (myself included) really like the idea of having RP interiors, doesn't mean transporters, which let other players skip the longer walk, are a bad thing.

Edit: Upon some reflection I felt I should emphasize that I myself do enjoy RP space and always strive to include it in my builds, however I don't feel like a change to transporters can be justified on the grounds that fewer players will take the time to enjoy all those hallways. Removing the option from players because they will "not do the other thing if we let them have this." Just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me.

 

[Thalanor]

To floating entities as transporter hubs: On moving ships, this does not work, and on invincible stations, this means that the floating entities are not invincible and could be destroyed (even by just one malicious visitor with a pistol, or someone deciding to spawn a core and slap weapons on it inside your station), obliterating the entire portal network, so there would be an actual reason to have a walkable interior in the first place again, which is all the suggestion is aiming at.

 

[Edymnion]

If you do that the shields will drop. Boom, that's the sound of a missile slamming into your unshielded ship.

And why exactly are you walking around inside your ship during combat in the first place?

And please, don't pretend that the almost godlike ability to instantly teleport anywhere on the ship with two blocks is balanced.

And just what exactly are you finding overpowered about a player moving around inside their own ship?

Do you routinely find a lot of people sitting undocked in deep space having tea parties?
[DOUBLEPOST=1446582196,1446581951][/DOUBLEPOST]And lets not forget people, we already know that they are implementing cockpits of some kind that allow you to control a ship without accessing the core directly.

So you could just as easily put a cockpit in every room of a ship. Boarders couldn't use them, but it would let your tea party hosts go straight into combat mode without having to move across the ship to reach the core.

So thats not even an issue.

So we're pretty much just down to not allowing it on stations. Which pretty much no one has of any size other than invincible faction homes to start with.

So what part of this exactly is helping boarding again by being restricted?

 

[Keptick]

And why exactly are you walking around inside your ship during combat in the first place?

You misunderstand, it leaves open the possibility of an ambush. Getting out of your ship during combat is just as stupid with or without shields.

And just what exactly are you finding overpowered about a player moving around inside their own ship?

> Intentionally misinterpreting my argument as walking around in a ship in general.
And oh I don't know, maybe just that fact that it's like admin teleport. Just my own super biased personal opinion though . It just doesn't fit well into the game imo.

 

[Thalanor]

No, we're not down to only restricting this on stations. Literally all of the issues listed in the OP exist with ships. We don't even know if you can place more than one cockpit, and you would actually have to interconnect these even if you slapped twenty onto your ship if you wanted them all to be usable.

 

[Keptick]

As idk who said before, a config option would make everyone happy. There, problem solved.

 

[Edymnion]

No, we're not down to only restricting this on stations. Literally all of the issues listed in the OP exist with ships. We don't even know if you can place more than one cockpit, and you would actually have to interconnect these even if you slapped twenty onto your ship if you wanted them all to be usable.

And you think someone that is so afraid of boarders that they would be installing this kind of transporter based lockout system into individually sealed rooms wouldn't just simply build it so that they have quick access to the ship controls on either side of the thing? Do you honestly think people are going to set up Team Rocket style transport mazes?

They're either going to be in the core, and not have to transport into it because apparently they were, I dunno, waxing the ship in deep space, or they're going to be waxing the ship when you ambush them and just jump in the cockpit next to the transporter. Either way, the core and the faction block are going to be sealed away in the center of the ship, and they will be able to take control of the ship without dropping shields at a moment's notice.

So no, we've pretty much ruled out site to site transport on ships as being an issue here, because even if there is only one cockpit per ship, a paranoid builder can already use that to the same effect.

So we're just down to stations. Which currently don't really exist as anything but faction homes because nobody likes coming on to an eradicated station after waking up.

Please explain to me how PvP boarding is enhanced in any way with this limitation that isn't VERY easily bypassed.

 

[Thalanor]

Did you read the recent development direction post? Ships are precisely not going to be all about one pilot in a core forever. Yes, you can currently choose to not have any interior at all, but this issue precisely is going to be covered in future development.