Read by Council Too Many Artificial Numbers

[XyNox]

As the title suggest, I feel there are too many artificial values in the game that should be replaced by self-explanatory ingame mechanics instead.

Why do shields stop being shared at a certain threshold ( 25% / 50% ) instead of depending on a reasonable correlation between e.g. shield cap blocks /shield regen blocks / docked entity mass ratio ?
Turrets getting vulnurable just because my 20 mil shield ship gets shot down to "only" 5 mil shields is just silly when my 20k shield ship can still provide shared shields with only 6k shields left to a turret of the same size. It just feels somewhat random and illogical.

Same with thrust, why is it capped at a 2.5 thurst to mass ratio, further encouraging min maxing ? The ratio between thrust and mass poses as a fine, seamless balancing factor of max ship speed and acceleration by itself without an added artificial value capping it at 2.5 T/M.

Same with jumpdrives, although there has been a reasonable amount of input about this already and an overhaul is presumably in the works, the jumpdistance is again a fixed, unalterable, artificial number instead of being a product of number of modules to shipmass / size / etc.

Of course some numbers need to be given by default such as the damage of a single weapon module or the capacity of a power cap since there is no smaller unit to make these values dependant on. Yet I feel these types of knowledge barriers that only leave you to alt tab to check the wiki is what gives new players in particular too much of a feeling of non-transparency in order to stay hooked to the game.

 

[nightrune]

Same with thrust, why is it capped at a 2.5 thurst to mass ratio, further encouraging min maxing ? The ratio between thrust and mass poses as a fine, seamless balancing factor of max ship speed and acceleration by itself without an added artificial value capping it at 2.5 T/M.

Thruster speed directly affects in game stability. Due to how the physics will need to time step to determine collisions and other effects. 2.5 is reasonable to me. There will likely be artificial numbers, but I'm not responding to the others as I have no good explanation.

 

[XyNox]

Thruster speed directly affects in game stability. Due to how the physics will need to time step to determine collisions and other effects. 2.5 is reasonable to me. There will likely be artificial numbers, but I'm not responding to the others as I have no good explanation.

There is no arguing about a correlation between shipspeed and collision detection of course, the T/M factor of 2.5 is not what the server maxspeed hinges upon though. The factor of 2.5 simply defines at what point a ship can reach the server preset maxspeed. Removing this factor entirely would in no way mean that ships can reach infinite speed but rather that the maxspeed of a ship can only converge towards 100% of the server preset the higher the T/M ratio is.

 

[Lecic]

Why do shields stop being shared at a certain threshold ( 25% / 50% ) instead of depending on a reasonable correlation between e.g. shield cap blocks /shield regen blocks / docked entity mass ratio ?
Turrets getting vulnurable just because my 20 mil shield ship gets shot down to "only" 5 mil shields is just silly when my 20k shield ship can still provide shared shields with only 6k shields left to a turret of the same size. It just feels somewhat random and illogical.

Who knows? Why do you care? It's there for balance purposes. Maybe shield capacitors can only protect a ship until it gets drained to 25% because [insert technobabble here]. Why does this matter? This applies to all of your points here.

Same with thrust, why is it capped at a 2.5 thurst to mass ratio,

With default game settings, the 4.5x max server speed you can get with full overdrive (450m/s) exists because COLLISION PHYSICS BREAK DOWN AT THIS POINT.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Same with thrust, why is it capped at a 2.5 thurst to mass ratio, further encouraging min maxing ? The ratio between thrust and mass poses as a fine, seamless balancing factor of max ship speed and acceleration by itself without an added artificial value capping it at 2.5 T/M.

IIRC actual thrust values are not restrained by this cap, and your ship can have a higher than 5:2 TWR, it just doesn't get a top speed bonus for having a higher TWR.

 

[Master_Artificer]

For a second I thought this had to do with me before I read the full title lol

 

[XyNox]

Who knows? Why do you care? It's there for balance purposes. Maybe shield capacitors can only protect a ship until it gets drained to 25% because [insert technobabble here]. Why does this matter? This applies to all of your points here.

What kind of retort is this ? Why wouldnt I care ? Why wouldnt I want some kind of sense behind the mechanics in the game ?

With default game settings, the 4.5x max server speed you can get with full overdrive (450m/s) exists because COLLISION PHYSICS BREAK DOWN AT THIS POINT.

I am quite baffled. I do not think of myself as being very good at math or physics in general but it appears that the understanding of those topics I am taking for granted here is too much.

Thrust-to-weight ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suggest you give this a read. T/M ratio =/= maximum velocity

 

[Lecic]

I suggest you give this a read. T/M ratio =/= maximum velocity

Huh. You know, I just checked, and T/M ratio is capped at 2.5. I'm almost certain it did not used to be like that.

EDIT- Regardless, why do you even want a ship with that high a T/M ratio? It's impossible to get a ship that's remotely combat viable with that much thrust.

What kind of retort is this ? Why wouldnt I care ? Why wouldnt I want some kind of sense behind the mechanics in the game ?

Why does the game need to follow what YOU think makes sense? Why can't a constant like "25%" for shield caps work? Does water boil at different temperatures because there's more or less of it?

 

[XyNox]

Huh. You know, I just checked, and T/M ratio is capped at 2.5. I'm almost certain it did not used to be like that.

EDIT- Regardless, why do you even want a ship with that high a T/M ratio? It's impossible to get a ship that's remotely combat viable with that much thrust.

Ah, I see you just were not aware of the 2.5 cap. Lost faith in humanity for a second there.

For the second part, why I would want such a ship is of no relevance to the issue, which is that there is an artificial cap to a system where none is needed, since the T/M ratio - being a ratio - regulates this by itself as every placed thruster adds mass in the same turn. That means the T/W ratio of the entire ship ultimately can only converge on the T/M ratio of thrust modules themselves, posing as a good example of a "natural cap" instead of an artificial one. ( Thrust per module would need to be truly linear then of course, although that is actually more desirable from a dev perspective I would assume. )

Having a cap of 2.5 is well below of what CAN be achieved ( core + power ractor + thruster block for example reaches a T/M ratio of 11 ) means that smaller ships with a lot higher T/M ratios than bigger ships do not gain as much as a speed advantage as they should. It also encourages min maxing, which I highly consider as a bad thing.

Why does the game need to follow what YOU think makes sense? Why can't a constant like "25%" for shield caps work? Does water boil at different temperatures because there's more or less of it?

You should rather ask yourself why 50% or 25% makes sense in the first place. "Sense", not in form of "realism", since Starmade in particular is not trying much to be realistic but sense in a way of a system that a player can expect as a result of their inputs.

You can easily look at this by reverting the function of existing mechanics. Imagine weapon modules placed in turrets would only have 50% or 25% of the weapons strength. Wouldnt you be able to comprehend why somebody felt the need to question this decision ? Imagine armour blocks on docked entities would only inherit 50% or 25% of their HP and armour values. Wouldnt you wonder why it is this way or would simply swallow any random number that people feel free to shove down your throat ?

Of course the intended effect is to make turrets more vulnurable and adding some more dept into battles as a result. But still, just as with armour blocks where I decide how much armour I put on the turret and I decide how many guns the turret has, why can I not decide how much shield I want my ship to share with its turrets ?

Again, a 20 mil shield ship that has been shot down to 10 mil will stop sharing shields while a 10k shield ship will still share the shields with only 6k left, regarless the mass or size or power or anything of the turret itself. You want to tell me that this does not seem even remotely off to you ?

 

[Lecic]

Having a cap of 2.5 is well below of what CAN be achieved ( core + power ractor + thruster block for example reaches a T/M ratio of 11 ) means that smaller ships with a lot higher T/M ratios than bigger ships do not gain as much as a speed advantage as they should. It also encourages min maxing, which I highly consider as a bad thing.

How does this encourage minmaxing? Also, small ships are already massively more maneuverable, especially with overdrive and passive push/pull.

You should rather ask yourself why 50% or 25% makes sense in the first place. "Sense", not in form of "realism", since Starmade in particular is not trying much to be realistic but sense in a way of a system that a player can expect as a result of their inputs.

You can easily look at this by reverting the function of existing mechanics. Imagine weapon modules placed in turrets would only have 50% or 25% of the weapons strength. Wouldnt you be able to comprehend why somebody felt the need to question this decision ? Imagine armour blocks on docked entities would only inherit 50% or 25% of their HP and armour values. Wouldnt you wonder why it is this way or would simply swallow any random number that people feel free to shove down your throat ?

Except those modules are directly on the turret, not on the main ship. It's more like how the transfer beams have an efficiency loss.

Of course the intended effect is no make turrets more vulnurable and adding some more dept into battles as a result. But still, just as with armour blocks where I decide how much armour I put on the turret and I decide how many guns the turret has, why can I not decide how much shield I want my ship to share with its turrets ?

You decide how many shields your turret gets by putting more shield capacitors on it. Additionally, since you're capable of understanding that it was added for balancing purposes, why do you continue to argue against it?

You want to tell me that this does not seem even remotely off to you ?

Yes. The game has plenty of systems that are the same regardless of how many of them their are. Shield sharing is perfectly fine at some set %.

 

[XyNox]

I see we are going nowhere with this. I have no problem accepting another ones point of view but you seem to lack a fundamental grasp of rationale in order to form one. I am a bit too tired of having such unnecessarily awkward discussion about such rudimentary things that should not even require any further explanation. The point is made in the OP and those who got the point, got it.

 

[Alphajim]

He answered.

It's there for balance purposes.

Maybe schine prefer this because it's simpler. Like water ebulition temperature IRL is 100°C aproximately. Don't forget one thing: this kind of suggestion, that speaks about balance things, is useless. You're not a tester, not a dev, not a known or old player, and you seam to begin the game for just some months.

But for regular suggestions you're welcome. Suggestions help the game growing, just care about pertinence

 

[DeltaEpsilon7787]

Why do shields stop being shared at a certain threshold ( 25% / 50% ) instead of depending on a reasonable correlation between e.g. shield cap blocks /shield regen blocks / docked entity mass ratio ?

It's a simple solution for a complex problem. Back in the days turrets weren't sharing shields at all.
While it's true they stop sharing shields abruptly and don't have explicit smooth curve, it must be noted that they DO have implicit smoothness. In a battle shields aren't usually kept at high percentage and are usually barely kept working at all, bordering between shield damage and block damage. If somehow shields ARE being kept at higher than no-sharing limit after a long time (or outright if shield-buster are used), it usually means the opposite side doesn't really have the power to penetrate shields or accuracy and therefore is not capable of destroying the former anyway. Don't forget that shields DO have non-linear regeneration curve. Shortly speaking it's a rare situation when the exact value of turrets unshielding matters as it becomes more of a period during battle, the range of which depends on your weapon damage. You don't struggle around certain percentage and therefore you are implicitly having an enemy whose turrets shield busting percentage is not certain. This percentage is more of an idea during battles rather than some value you are trying to pass.

Same with thrust, why is it capped at a 2.5 thurst to mass ratio, further encouraging min maxing ? The ratio between thrust and mass poses as a fine, seamless balancing factor of max ship speed and acceleration by itself without an added artificial value capping it at 2.5 T/M.

Because TWR only matters for your maximum speed. Your acceleration has no limits (I checked that myself by glitching the game out and getting documented results of me accelerating to the max speed (450 m/s) within less than 0.1 seconds), only your maximum speed is affected by that value. Once again, it's a simple solution. You could use exponential formula... oh wait, you already do that. Your thrust growth is not constant, it slowly degrates as your add more thrusters.

Same with jumpdrives, although there has been a reasonable amount of input about this already and an overhaul is presumably in the works, the jumpdistance is again a fixed, unalterable, artificial number instead of being a product of number of modules to shipmass / size / etc.

While your jump distance is fixed, your effective jump speed changes. Shortly speaking the more jump modules you have, the faster you get your jumpdrive loaded. It does cap at some uncertain value (I estimated it to be 5 seconds) due to the fact that you have to wait out the animation of the jump, so even if you somehow manage to get 0 seconds delay, you'll still need to wait 5 seconds before making the jump, which effectively limits your absolute maximum jump speed to 1.6 (8/5) sectors a second. I did try to use glitches to get myself that speed actually, and it seems like you can't perform another jump while jumping. So once again - this constant jump distance is smoothened by another variable.
So by making jump distance dependent on something else too, you will just achive the same result while making the system stupidly complex.