Ask Cake

[therimmer96]

So, applications are live... figured I'd jump the gun with these pointless Q/A's

Ask me anything.


VOTE CAKE

 

[Jake_Lancia]

What's your stance on StarMade PvP and how would you fix it?

 

[therimmer96]

What's your stance on StarMade PvP and how would you fix it?

Fixing PVP. Oh lordie. Why do you do this to me Jake?!

I personally believe that starmade should look to other space based games for pointers on PVP. I think the mechanics we have now are good, ships are complex, with the ones with more complex systems like docked reactors, shields, and armour tending to have an advantage over the less well designed ships (like my own)

In my opinion, the issue is the way we control our ships. Everything is a big fighter. This lack of variation between controls kills some potentially awesome ship roles. I believe the way to fix this is change how we interact with ships, and base it on other games.

In my opinion, Elite Dangerous has space combat with small ships spot on. The mouse is a virtual joystick rather than the point and go thing we have now, and the ships fly like aircraft unless you turn that off. You also maneuver better traveling at an "optimal" speed for your ship, which is usually roughly half the top speed. These are what should be stolen from Elite IMO. The system we have now prompts just 2 people pointing at each other and shooting until someone wins, whereas these controls in elite prompt actual skill in piloting small ships. This would obviously require changes to how weapons are aimed. I honestly don't have a solution to this that I think would be perfect, the only thing that comes to mind is having the ship target the selected entity itself if you're pointing at them close enough, but I feel like this would be an unwelcome change.

I also feel that we should have the ability to over and under power key systems on ships. For example, if you decide you're losing a battle, you could overpower your propulsion subsystems in order to escape quickly, but at the cost of your weapons and shields being weaker, or if you're going against a slower, heavier target than you, you could overpower weapons at the cost of slower propulsion. this would allow ships to be more versatile, rather than requiring fighters to be built to handle specific types of ships, while also allowing another layer of skill in that the person who is smartest with their power management will be more capable. For this to work properly, we should be able to quickly direct power around with hotkeys and no recalibration time.

The rolemodel game for larger ships IMO should be Pulsar:Lost Colony. Right now, it has even less gameplay than starmade, yet I've had more fun in that than I have had in starmade in a long time. The fun in that game primarily comes from how you interact with the ship. It's a 5 player co-op game, and everyone has a role. Captain, Pilot, Weapons, Engineering and Science. In a combat scenario, everyone should be busy. Weapons is responsible for aiming and firing the main weapons, the pilot for keeping the ship facing the direction so the main gun can see the enemy, engineering is busing keeping the power core cool and diverting power around to systems that need it, science is running executing virus' and running antivirus, and the captain keeps it all tied together, while everyone is running around trying to repair and repel any boarders. While not all of this is suitable for the large scalability, I feel even getting close to the level of interaction and things to do in a ship will help with improving not only combat, but the entire game. I feel with the NPC system, consoles and chairs planned, starmade is already on the correct course to get this right.

That's all on a per-ship basis. At a faction scale, things need a refresh aswell. We need to be able to group players into fleets aswell, and issue them orders, with more customizability than the current system. We need fleets to be accessible by the faction. We need more interesting universes with things worth controlling like large sources of fuel (something I am strongly for in some fashion). Stations need a buff and their own purposes to allow them to be worthwhile controlling, prompting not only factions to try to build them, but also factions to attempt to board and take control of them rather than just blasting it out of existence.

PVP is hard. Starmade is on the right track in my opinion, it just needs a while to get there and the right ideas on how to make it even better.

 

[Jaaskinal]

What's your stance on the economy inside starmade. What are you going to try to introduce to make it more lively/challenging?

 

[therimmer96]

What's your stance on the economy inside starmade. What are you going to try to introduce to make it more lively/challenging?

Nothing. That's not the job of the council. All a councilor does is act like a filter between SMD and schine, making sure that they get sent any valid suggestion. It's not their job to introduce features, but rather tell schine about the features the community wants introduced.

I don't really have a stance on the economy, because I don't know enough about starmades or economy as a whole to form a valid opinion, and trying to form one based on that little knowledge would be pointless and full of holes.

my knowledge was so small I didn't even spell it right -_-

 

[Nauvran]

Why are you a cake? and why are you so DAMNED DELICIOUS?!?

 

[therimmer96]

Why are you a cake?

Why are you a clockwork robot thing?

and why are you so DAMNED DELICIOUS?!?

Lots of sugar and drugs.

 

[Nauvran]

Why are you a clockwork robot thing?


Lots of sugar and drugs.

I dont know :u

oh sugar? mmm~~ SQUIREL!

 

[MeRobo]

Will you forward suggestions to the devs independent of who the author is?

 

[therimmer96]

Will you forward suggestions to the devs independent of who the author is?

Yes, anyone can make a valid suggestion, and even if I wouldn't, I wouldn't have much choice because 4 other councillors, and schine members would be looking at the suggestions aswell.