IKR. I enjoy many of your postings here, I kept my criticism of how I interpreted your suggestion civil, you responded in good form and clarified some things that I had not divined from reading your OP. Recipe for productive discussion. Arguments should be productive, and can be when there's mutual respect between all involved.
Invalid argument, sorry. You need to look at it from the perspective of the finished game, not from the current alpha state. Once we reach beta updates will not break ship design. Until then, this is the price you pay for early access.
The rest of the your arguments are ok, tho. Even if I don't agree with them.
I personally don't think the current system is complex at all. I really don't understand why people have a hard time understanding it.
I will admit that it is not intuitive, tho. Most sci-fi stories have a single power core, not reactor lines running all over the ship. My very first effort at making a ship included a spherical power core. It looked awesome in the blue lights with it's glass sheath. Of course, now I know it was even less efficient then just dropping in a square block.
Invalid argument, sorry. You need to look at it from the perspective of the finished game, not from the current alpha state. Once we reach beta updates will not break ship design. Until then, this is the price you pay for early access.
The rest of the your arguments are ok, tho. Even if I don't agree with them.
While I agree the whole "Now try refitting after an update" line maybe an invalid argument to a point. I stand by the premise.
Lets take a step into the future and imagine for a moment that Starmade has been released and is raking in money from game sales. I don't believe for a minute that their wont be more updates. Whether it be for game balance, or an expansion pack for more play-able alien races, or what ever. My point is some dynamic of the game will always be changing (even if only subtly). Most successful games need updates and expansion packs to keep the content fresh. And while the changes will probably be minuscule, if they result in a couple players modify their ships, then those players will be forces to awkwardly work around squiggly reactor lines.
Not only that, but players wont need an update as an excuse to work with power lines and junctions. I used to refit my ship all the time in between updates. Just in an effort to get my ship "perfect". I always end up unintentionally screwing with my power lines in the process. It was kind of cool, interesting, and challenging at first, but it's since become annoying
Firstly all I have to say against this suggestion is NO.
If this change was implemented not only would it break all ships currently built but also drive away older players as they now have to refit everything. I could cause mass mayhem in the community as well.
Not to mention that currently power is the one thing that has a near perfect balance in terms to ship to power ratio while having room for everything else.
Something that makes the difference in power systems perfect is that you don't have to fill your ship up with reactors unlike other systems.
This is one thing that should never change power systems are fine as is.
What could be done instead would be to show new players examples of power grids in a tutorial.
Encourage them to explore power systems and make their own solutions.
Let them use their creativity to make power.
We all made some mistakes creating power in the beginning, like creating large blobs of power.
Now that I am experienced I make asymmetrical power lines that can make tiny frigates have the power of a cruiser.
If anything I would rather teach new players my knowledge than to destroy the current system, possibly upsetting a lot
of the community as well.
Do not change something that can be learned in favor of forever changing the game (In the wrong direction).
sorry to say it but i persoanlly would wish for more blocks requiring a bit more cleverness to become more efficient. So more space to get an edge not just power and power storage but maybe that is also just me...
I would like to see more reactor shape requirement rules. Especially the kind that require some sort of hollow space in the middle while ensuring that the walls are completely enclosed. Any battle damage or failure to enclose the walls restrict each reactor block to the default efficiency of 25 e/s.
Players who hate the idea and don't want to refit their ships and who threaten to leave the game if reactors are drastically changed are either two updates away from leaving the game, or will stick it out, just like they will stick out the next two updates.
For example: require that a true reactor with increasing efficiency has to have an empty space between reactor walls, so that a complete reactor still runs in a line, but is cross-shaped, with lines of reactor blocks running parallel, above, below, left, and right, with a hollow space in the center, to allow space for some kind of plasma stream. With this rule shape, a lot of existing designs will still be viable, due to checker-board line reactors in place, with a single line of whatever filler block is between the reactor blocks needing to be removed. A variation of this design requirement would be that the corners would also need to be reactor blocks, so that in a 3x3 cross-section, all 8 wall blocks would be reactor blocks, and the center space would be hollow.
Some people use blank space for filler. Some use power storage. Filler doesn't matter. Some might argue that the existing power lines might be a "miniaturized" version of what I suggested. Plus, a lot of people will be concerned with the need for empty space. I don't care. Lines still don't say "reactor" to players, especially if they are new players who aren't yet familiar with line reactors. Reactors need to become more room-like to feel "real" and less like a game mechanic gimick.
I like the learning curve. Any nincompoop can put a reactor on a ship.
I like the skill required to get optimal performance from a reactor. Only a master will be able to min-max effectively.
I dislike the current system. It's ugly. It's hard to balance. It doesn't look like a reactor by any stretch of the imagination.
Yeah, it's better balanced now than ever before, but it's still lacking. I'd rather break all my ships again than have to live with this system in the game's full release. We need a new concept.
However,
I think I've gotten pretty good at power reactor lines. All of my ships have custom setups with what I believe to be above average energy per second for their size, and all of them are on the dock. Here's my problem. These things are a bitch to work around while building... Its very common to put in your power reactors before the rest of your systems. So in my case that ship gets filled with all kind of wacky squiggly reactor lines that I have to work around for the next couple of days or weeks on my system fills. It's not fun. Now if it was a job, fun wouldn't be an issue. But this is a game that I'm supposed to enjoy playing. Now try refitting it after an update?
Players who hate the idea and don't want to refit their ships and who threaten to leave the game if reactors are drastically changed are either two updates away from leaving the game, or will stick it out, just like they will stick out the next two updates.
Yes it is true the rail update made us all have to rework ships and turrets, difference being that the old docking was still able to be used in the between time, technically the ships worked.
Any suggestion that requires any extra space for power will likely make ships need increased volume, which also increases mass block ratio and overall size, making smaller ships suffer.
Yes it is true the rail update made us all have to rework ships and turrets, difference being that the old docking was still able to be used in the between time, technically the ships worked.
Any suggestion that requires any extra space for power will likely make ships need increased volume, which also increases mass block ratio and overall size, making smaller ships suffer.
There's no reason to believe old power wouldn't work during a transition time as well. Any new solution will have to provide for small ships as well as large ones. I wish I had an idea to demonstrate, but I'm too sleepy to come up with one.
sorry to say it but i persoanlly would wish for more blocks requiring a bit more cleverness to become more efficient. So more space to get an edge not just power and power storage but maybe that is also just me...
I agree with the sentiment here, I'd love to build systems that require more thought and less hunting for the last available space on the ship. I liked the docked reactor bug for this reason, it was something you could do to make your ship better that wasn't just adding more blocks. I mean, it was horrifically broken, but it was a thing you could do.
That said, I don't think these systems would need to be too overly complicated to be interesting. if thrusters were more efficient farther from the core and shields worked best in one block thick sheets (to pick a random pair of examples) that would at least be something to think about while adding systems.
sorry to say it but i personally would wish for more blocks requiring a bit more cleverness to become more efficient. So more space to get an edge not just power and power storage but maybe that is also just me...
I wonder why the devs went with a 'magic blue block in complicated configurations' angle instead of perhaps modular engines and additional components; EMS's, cooling, shielding and minimum requirements based on ship mass - bigger the ship the need for extra cooling & so forth.
Has there been discussion about how engines work, real, fictional & hypothetical, to get a concept which would fit the game other than the 'magic blue block in complicated configurations'?
Off the top of my head, and further down the development cycle, perhaps the introduction of base/stock components from differing manufacturers could be enhanced by after market bolt on goodies, rare artifact research and salvaging could offer these to increase performance and so on.
The Magic Blue Block has served it's purpose but feels increasingly archaic and in need of a rethink to fit with the rest of the game.
Some people use blank space for filler. Some use power storage. Filler doesn't matter. Some might argue that the existing power lines might be a "miniaturized" version of what I suggested. Plus, a lot of people will be concerned with the need for empty space. I don't care. Lines still don't say "reactor" to players, especially if they are new players who aren't yet familiar with line reactors. Reactors need to become more room-like to feel "real" and less like a game mechanic gimick.
IMHO The most time spent on ship builds should be on aesthetics. So the shape and style of both the hull and the living space should be the hardest/funnest part of the build. The other part which is system fill, should just be a decision on what percentage of systems you want, and then it should take 5 to 50 minutes to fill it. Currently it takes well over an hour to get my power generation tweaked, and then another 5 hours to fill systems around my reactor lines. If power reactors were easier, I could spend more time on strategy, and less time on working around unnecessary mechanics.
Unless you've gone really weird with the layout you can just mass place other system blocks. In smaller ships it can be pretty awkward to work around sometimes, but compared to say, filling systems out in organically shaped ships or whatever it's not nearly as time consuming. You even have the advantage that the bigger your ship the less work it is to work around the reactor lines.
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