Power changes are ridiculous and broken

[Comradecolonel]

I agree that doubling power is not the way to go. It makes combat very boring since you can just stick a ridiculous amount of guns on your ship and have full capabilities like stealth, fast scanners. It makes specialization a joke since you can just make a monstrous ship with everything on it and crank them out.

I don't even want to really refit most of my ships because now I'll be tempted to load them out like crazy. Almost all of my fighters and armored frigates can easily cloak now. My little 20,000 block corvette has 1.1 mill power regen now! It just makes the game feel broken and takes away from a lot of the fun design choices you had to make. Designing you ship around your power systems was a main part of the challenge. Now it just seems irrelevant.

 

[Tunk]

I agree that doubling power is not the way to go. It makes combat very boring since you can just stick a ridiculous amount of guns on your ship and have full capabilities like stealth, fast scanners. It makes specialization a joke since you can just make a monstrous ship with everything on it and crank them out.

I don't even want to really refit most of my ships because now I'll be tempted to load them out like crazy. Almost all of my fighters and armored frigates can easily cloak now. My little 20,000 block corvette has 1.1 mill power regen now! It just makes the game feel broken and takes away from a lot of the fun design choices you had to make. Designing you ship around your power systems was a main part of the challenge. Now it just seems irrelevant.

I'll agree it takes the fun out of design.
One of the things that makes me get really excited is desinging power systems to handle crazy stuff or squeeze out some more dps/interesting effects.

Now theres not really any need for that, all of my recent designs when slapped with overdrive now to melt through any ships shields of the same size in ~3 seconds (yay, your regen really helps when your shield is already dead?) and put several dozen nice holes through it after the 4th.

Its a race for damage now, might as well put everyone in a room with knives.

 

[Winterhome]

Okay, I fixed it. Reactors that produced 1mil e/s produce a tiny bit more than that with this, and the softcap is now 2 million as intended. I'm posting this in every thread where people are concerned about power generation.

With the PowerGrowth value halved, my 1mil e/s reactors still produced 1.4mil e/s rather than 1.05mil. The setting I chose gives the reactor I'm using for testing a power regen value of 1.2mil e/s.

<PowerCeiling>2000000.0</PowerCeiling>
<PowerGrowth>1.000278</PowerGrowth> <!-- 1.000696 normal, 1.000348 halved, 1.000278 2/5ths-->

The halved value is the safest for small ships - the value I chose is only valid if you're using 1mil e/s and 2mil e/s reactors as the goal post.

I'm thinking 1.000348 may be ideal.

 

[Andir]

Okay, I fixed it. Reactors that produced 1mil e/s produce a tiny bit more than that with this, and the softcap is now 2 million as intended. I'm posting this in every thread where people are concerned about power generation.

With the PowerGrowth value halved, my 1mil e/s reactors still produced 1.4mil e/s rather than 1.05mil. The setting I chose gives the reactor I'm using for testing a power regen value of 1.2mil e/s.

<PowerCeiling>2000000.0</PowerCeiling>
<PowerGrowth>1.000278</PowerGrowth> <!-- 1.000696 normal, 1.000348 halved, 1.000278 2/5ths-->

The halved value is the safest for small ships - the value I chose is only valid if you're using 1mil e/s and 2mil e/s reactors as the goal post.

I'm thinking 1.000348 may be ideal.

FYI: That's in \data\config\blockBehaviorConfig.xml for those looking.

 

[Drakkart]

real problem i see is
not that they made power regen run into the softcap at 2 million. the problem is that they just doubled power regen instead which causes huge changes all along the way. Thanks for such changes right before a community tournament *sigh*

 

[Winterhome]

Okay, I fixed it. Reactors that produced 1mil e/s produce a tiny bit more than that with this, and the softcap is now 2 million as intended. I'm posting this in every thread where people are concerned about power generation.

With the PowerGrowth value halved, my 1mil e/s reactors still produced 1.4mil e/s rather than 1.05mil. The setting I chose gives the reactor I'm using for testing a power regen value of 1.2mil e/s.

<PowerCeiling>2000000.0</PowerCeiling>
<PowerGrowth>1.000278</PowerGrowth> <!-- 1.000696 normal, 1.000348 halved, 1.000278 2/5ths-->

The halved value is the safest for small ships - the value I chose is only valid if you're using 1mil e/s and 2mil e/s reactors as the goal post.

I'm thinking 1.000348 may be ideal.

real problem i see is
not that they made power regen run into the softcap at 2 million. the problem is that they just doubled power regen instead which causes huge changes all along the way. Thanks for such changes right before a community tournament *sigh*

aye, you're right.

Support fixing the config setting they forgot and we'll probably see it fixed soon enough, though.

 

[ruger392]

What I'm seeing here is that this change does not make a difference in the overall scheme of things. It just ups the scale to 2x its previous scale. Combat ships now have 2x the power and as such can support twice the amount of shields, thrusters, weapons, etc. RP ships will still be inherently inferior to combat ships and they won't have more space available for their interiors because they need to use that extra space to come up to the new combat standards.

What this update does do is add maneuvering room. RP servers and whatnot can now design enemies using the old benchmarks and be able to fit smaller RP ships up to the old standards easier with more room.

This update is also largely unnecessary and annoying, because although the extra space is really nice it's not necessary and people can live without it. It also makes all ships before this obsolete, because those older ships can now support bigger guns and more shields and in the big picture are severely outdated.

All in all this change was not required but I see no problem, as long as everyone can live with having to start anew or retrofit their old ships. My personal opinion is that I don't WANT to start again and I don't WANT to refit my older ships (and I probably won't) but I can live with the change. The only thing this new version does is raise the bar and change the standards.

 

[Lancake]

From the amount of feedback in here, I notice that we indeed should have adapted the power growth factor so the same amount of blocks now would have a similar regen as before.

I apologize for this mistake and it will be corrected for next release.

 

[Winterhome]

From the amount of feedback in here, I notice that we indeed should have adapted the power growth factor so the same amount of blocks now would have a similar regen as before.

I apologize for this mistake and it will be corrected for next release.

Let's have it come with the next bugfix/hotfix

 

[Master_Artificer]

Oh to clarify, the armor tank could cloak for 20 seconds, not perma cloak.
But I bet if I turned off the jamming and effects undocked the turrets, and removed dome of the decal and rear armor (who is gonna sneak up on a cloaked ship?) I could make it perma-jam.

 

[Master_Artificer]

I think my problem is that I care too much about the game to not put up a fuss.

I love the intricacies of the game and the pros and cons of decisions you have to make when designing a ship. Even down to what color advanced armor is the cheapest to use in terms of ore because some ore is used more than others. (blue for cannons and for ion, a very stable weapon with a great defensive effect and offensive effect, while red and orange and green are "cheaper" because of this).

That's why I kinda blew up i think. It took out the challenge, the skill, of playing with setting up the power trees in your ship. Instead of needing maybe 4-8 (or even 12!), you could make due with 2-4 when building with those small compact ships. (like for blood and steel).

The new softcap is great, I am just talking about the regen.

Sure you can add more guns, more thrusters, more shields, but the ratio of blocks needed for a good power system was already small, like 1/100'th of the mass (kinda like some of the passives) and making it smaller didnt make sense to me when most of the space was filled with thrusters and guns already!

Sorry for appearing hostile, I just wanted to bring to light what I thought was a glaring issue and making sure people understood my reasoning on why it needed to be addressed.

 

[Hawk18]

Yeah, no. If I can permacloak an armor tank, the weight of some cargo isn't going to mean jack-shit.

are you using motherboards to armour tank?
according to the wiki they have less hitpoints than even power reactors
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Sapsun_Motherboard
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Power_Reactor_Module
so maybe use basic hull instead (more damage neglected per mass)
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Grey_Hull

 

[Lecic]

are you using motherboards to armour tank?
according to the wiki they have less hitpoints than even power reactors
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Sapsun_Motherboard
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Power_Reactor_Module
so maybe use basic hull instead (more damage neglected per mass)
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Grey_Hull

No, no, that cloaker of mine is not the armor tank that can cloak. Mine was designed with motherboards as extremely lightweight, decorative hull, and loooong before these changes.

 

[Winterhome]

are you using motherboards to armour tank?
according to the wiki they have less hitpoints than even power reactors
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Sapsun_Motherboard
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Power_Reactor_Module
so maybe use basic hull instead (more damage neglected per mass)
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Grey_Hull

The armor tank we're talking about uses very, very thick advanced armor <_<

 

[Hawk18]

No, no, that cloaker of mine is not the armor tank that can cloak. Mine was designed with motherboards as extremely lightweight, decorative hull, and loooong before these changes.

i see

 

[Lecic]

Guess it's not coming in the hotfixes. Newest one does not have power changed.

 

[Master_Artificer]

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

 

[Lancake]

Okay, I fixed it. Reactors that produced 1mil e/s produce a tiny bit more than that with this, and the softcap is now 2 million as intended. I'm posting this in every thread where people are concerned about power generation.

With the PowerGrowth value halved, my 1mil e/s reactors still produced 1.4mil e/s rather than 1.05mil. The setting I chose gives the reactor I'm using for testing a power regen value of 1.2mil e/s.

<PowerCeiling>2000000.0</PowerCeiling>
<PowerGrowth>1.000278</PowerGrowth> <!-- 1.000696 normal, 1.000348 halved, 1.000278 2/5ths-->

The halved value is the safest for small ships - the value I chose is only valid if you're using 1mil e/s and 2mil e/s reactors as the goal post.

I'm thinking 1.000348 may be ideal.

Yes, it's pretty much what we should use. Keep in mind that there will still be a difference between old and new regen when you're approaching 1 000 000 regen. Using that value would mean an old 800 000 regen ship has 1 000 000 now but I think that's OK, it's pretty much what we want.

 

[Gladstone]

You guys know this was a community suggested change, right?

If you really want it changed or improved, go to http://starmadedock.net/threads/game-balance-suggestions.22101/
where this suggestion was originally made by community memebers, and get them to change it for the next update.

 

[Ithirahad]

You guys know this was a community suggested change, right?

If you really want it changed or improved, go to http://starmadedock.net/threads/game-balance-suggestions.22101/
where this suggestion was originally made by community memebers, and get them to change it for the next update.

The doubled power generation is unintended. A new formula will be put into effect which will fix the ridiculously high power outputs while preserving the higher cap, which is what was asked for. Not just tons more power.