Thruster changes

[GaeasSon]

After further experimentation and extrapolation here's what I can figure out:
Total ship thrust =((ThrustBlockCount)*5.5)^0.87
The culprit is that .87 Any value less than 1 will mean that as your block count increases, your thrust per block will decrease, favoring smaller ships.
A number greater than 1 will favor larger ships, giving an advantage per block to greater numbers of blocks.

I think my preference would be for thrust= 5.5*((thrust block count)+(sum(groupZdimension^1.1)))

EDIT: Correction! I think I'd like to see separate thrust values per vector! Let the X,Y and Z thrust values be based on the corresponding X,Y and Z values of the group bounding boxes! Now you've got to design your engine structures for rapid linear acceleration on the Z axis, OR maneuverability on the other axies. Got a landing craft? Make sure it has the Y axis thrust to take off in gravity, or you'll have to tip back on your aft to take off.

 

[Qweesdy]

EDIT: Correction! I think I'd like to see separate thrust values per vector! Let the X,Y and Z thrust values be based on the corresponding X,Y and Z values of the group bounding boxes! Now you've got to design your engine structures for rapid linear acceleration on the Z axis, OR maneuverability on the other axies. Got a landing craft? Make sure it has the Y axis thrust to take off in gravity, or you'll have to tip back on your aft to take off.

CORRECTION: There's movement along the X, Y and Z axes, plus rotation about the X, Y and Z axes. This gives 6 different figures that determine the handling of a ship.

 

[GaeasSon]

We've already got rotational variation based (very loosely) on ship dimensions around each axis.

 

[Qweesdy]

We've already got rotational variation based (very loosely) on ship dimensions around each axis.

I know - it's incredibly stupid and needs fixing.

 

[Keptick]

Try adding "push" effect systems. They can be used for sudden pulses of acceleration when they aren't slaved to another system. I've actually built a small ship using push pulses as its primary drive. I'm not sure how well it'll scale.

Do they have to be put on a seperate docked entity or do they actually hit the ship when fired from inside?

 

[Lecic]

After further experimentation and extrapolation here's what I can figure out:
Total ship thrust =((ThrustBlockCount)*5.5)^0.87
The culprit is that .87 Any value less than 1 will mean that as your block count increases, your thrust per block will decrease, favoring smaller ships.
A number greater than 1 will favor larger ships, giving an advantage per block to greater numbers of blocks.

I think my preference would be for thrust= 5.5*((thrust block count)+(sum(groupZdimension^1.1)))

EDIT: Correction! I think I'd like to see separate thrust values per vector! Let the X,Y and Z thrust values be based on the corresponding X,Y and Z values of the group bounding boxes! Now you've got to design your engine structures for rapid linear acceleration on the Z axis, OR maneuverability on the other axies. Got a landing craft? Make sure it has the Y axis thrust to take off in gravity, or you'll have to tip back on your aft to take off.

Actually, we'll be dividing up our thrusters among the various directions in the future. This was confirmed. You'll have 100% to split among the various directions. Smaller craft will be able to afford putting more thrust in their forward and only a little auxillery thrust in the others, as they can turn quickly and just use forward thrust, while large ships that take ages to turn will need to put more in side/side/up/down directions to be able to go those directions without waiting forever to turn. There will also be some sort of warp system, before people complain about this change making big ships unable to go anywhere.

Do they have to be put on a seperate docked entity or do they actually hit the ship when fired from inside?

Put Push Modules that are linked to a Push Computer in your ship. Open the weapons menu, take the Push Computer, and put it on your hot bar. When you activate it, it will provide forward thrust.

You can also make Orion Pulse Engines using the old type of pulsar (not the damaging ones) on a docked ship to push your ship along.


Also, aren't the thrust numbers still bugged (something is a 0.1 instead of a 1.1), or has that been fixed now?

 

[Alpha_Squad]

You don't need to be near shops..

I was referring to buying ships from the catalog. The system is easily abusable and can make all scarcity non-existent.

On a ~850 mass ship using 1000 push modules resulted in very poor speed especially in contrast to 1000 engines.

 

[madmann135]

I consider the thruster readjust a bad nerf. I had a 100m long ship I use as a test bed for just about everything and it had a nice thrust to mass ratio for it's size, 1:1 before the nerf, after the nerf 2:1. I consider 1:1 to be a good balance for speed and capability, any less and the ship will be difficult to control in adverse conditions.
With the weapon expansion, the shield expansion and now the engine nerf I am having issues trying to build even a small ship with any respectable performance.
In my opinion a good way to balance engines would be to increase their energy consumption while they have high output, or put in engines specifically tuned for optimum efficiency in larger builds.

 

[GaeasSon]

I'm not a developer, but I have some sympathy and guesses about their motivations. _A_ dreadnought is a thing of awesomeness. A fleet of them represents laggy server death. For lots of physical reasons bigger ships should not be as maneuverable as smaller ships. For game-play reasons large ships should have compensating disads for their strengths. (this from a builder who has LOTS of ships who's collective sterns have been thoroughly kicked by this nerf) I don't necessarily like it the way it is, but I approve of what the developers are trying to do.

 

[therimmer96]

Here is my 2 cents on the war against gigantism, which appears to be the reasoning behind this.

It doesnt happen. It is very rare you will see a player out to get groceries in a 1.5km long dreadnought. Why would they?

1. It is obnoxously impractical to fly anyway
2. On the off chance you see another player, you don't want do damage this thing
3. An increasingly large number of servers have mass/dimensions limits
4. It is impossible to buy them without having to buy a half complete one and finish it due to the credit limit

It just does not happen. The vast majority of server ending dreadnoughts are built on the server, meaning it takes a silly amount of time to construct, for example, The USS-Vengeance has taken over 6 months so far.

Also, Starmade has gotten better handling big things. Servers no longer crash as soon as you move a ship. Yes, it can cause client lag, but if the server has bigger sectors, the client should have rendered part of the ship along time before you actually see it.

 

[Lecic]

Here is my 2 cents on the war against gigantism, which appears to be the reasoning behind this.

It doesnt happen. It is very rare you will see a player out to get groceries in a 1.5km long dreadnought. Why would they?

1. It is obnoxously impractical to fly anyway
2. On the off chance you see another player, you don't want do damage this thing
3. An increasingly large number of servers have mass/dimensions limits
4. It is impossible to buy them without having to buy a half complete one and finish it due to the credit limit

It just does not happen. The vast majority of server ending dreadnoughts are built on the server, meaning it takes a silly amount of time to construct, for example, The USS-Vengeance has taken over 6 months so far.

Also, Starmade has gotten better handling big things. Servers no longer crash as soon as you move a ship. Yes, it can cause client lag, but if the server has bigger sectors, the client should have rendered part of the ship along time before you actually see it.

No one flies around in a 1.5km supertitan because they bounce into asteroids and stations and shops. People fly around 300m-700m ships, and the only reason someone flies something smaller is because they haven't learned how to exploit the economy yet or are just moving a short distance around a base. No one builds 1.5km supertitans because they're impractical. They build things that are just under the credit limit so they can be imported to anywhere else.

Also, point number 2 is ridiculous. A 1.5km supertitan is going to destroy anything, if only just from the turrets on such a thing. Don't get me started on the main gun of that.

Gigantism is an issue because there isn't any reason at all to build something any smaller. You'd think a 200m ship would be able to at least hold its own and maybe outmaneuver a 350m ship, but no, that won't happen.

 

[Keptick]

No one flies around in a 1.5km supertitan because they bounce into asteroids and stations and shops. People fly around 300m-700m ships, and the only reason someone flies something smaller is because they haven't learned how to exploit the economy yet or are just moving a short distance around a base. No one builds 1.5km supertitans because they're impractical. They build things that are just under the credit limit so they can be imported to anywhere else.

Also, point number 2 is ridiculous. A 1.5km supertitan is going to destroy anything, if only just from the turrets on such a thing. Don't get me started on the main gun of that.

Gigantism is an issue because there isn't any reason at all to build something any smaller. You'd think a 200m ship would be able to at least hold its own and maybe outmaneuver a 350m ship, but no, that won't happen.

That won't happen because the turn rate of BOTH ships got nerfed to shit following complaints made by people who didn't make anything longer than 40m. And of course, a smaller ship won't best anything about twice it's lenght. But two of them will.

Below a certain size difference ships will be mostly immune to one another due to the bigger one's turrets being unable to aim and the smaller one simply not doing enough damage. So I don't see where the problem is.

I can agree with thrust Having a decreasing efficiency curve the more there is, but that curve last version was just too damn steep!!!

Ps: Before anyone starts Ad-hominem(ing) me, know that I always fly relatively small ships on servers (125m at most).

 

[Cyrius]

The speed and thrust systems seem to be fine.
However with no "space friction" I have seen to many players lose there ship doing 500+ because of a server crash or connection lost.
So each server based on size of sector and max speed should be reflected by themselves.
I played on one server where sectors took 20 minutes to crass due to large sectors and low speeds, great for major battles;
and later played on small sector with high speeds took 20 minutes to cross quadrants.
So its a balance needed, 5-10k sectors with maybe 125-250 speed, but then again might just not be looking at it right.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

thread is necro FYI