A moment of silence for the Modern Chain Drive

[alterintel]

as Jaaskinal said in her profile update: Modern Chaindrives are broken. Everything after Chaindrive II is worthless right now. It's been confirmed....

Let's all take a moment and bow our heads in silence. Chain Drives took some of the monotony out of the game, and made it fun to play. Now we're left with over-sized clunky old Chain Drives, or Over-sized Jump Drive systems that make our mouse finger hurt. Modern Chain drives had a nice run, and they will truly be missed. But it's not just the modern Chain drive that will be missed. It was the super easy and simple to use fast shoot out rail clock that will be missed the most. It was actually the most simple and easy to understand rail system in the game.

"What's that you say?... Simple and Easy?... There is no place for that kind of shenanigans in Starmade... Get rid of it"

The Starmade Universe will never be the same, but we will recover. We will move on. We will find a way to persevere and to create newer faster clocks that will power our Chain Drives into distant galaxies once again.

Good Bye, Easy to Use, Easy to Understand, Super Simple Rail Clock... You will be missed
/<3
alterintel

 

[nightrune]

Meh, We'll get better travel. Just make your galaxy's super small.

 

[NeonSturm]

Jump drives are foot-soldiers.
If you want fast travel, make your gate-network - which is your troop transporter.

To keep the gates small, recharge them from your ship, use a lot of small ships recharging them before each one goes through …

You could dock a long carrier's front to a gate and let all rail docked ships work as reactors charging the gate instead of your carrier's jump drives and guns.
To also keep the required energy capacity low, half of the ships switch rail-systems to that of the gate, go through the gate and wait at the other side for your carrier which docks to automatically collect these ships.

Draft:
A ================ carrier
| | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| docked ships. If you move the docked blast-door, they can target the gate.
V ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ gate's power receiver pipe and rail to dock your carrier.
Gate in line with the docked carrier.

 

[Batavium]

This is still the best way to move about in the universe:

Pulsar Perma Jump Cloaker

It has massive regen so you can add things without it loosing it's function.

 

[Winterhome]

Jump drives are foot-soldiers.
If you want fast travel, make your gate-network - which is your troop transporter.

To keep the gates small, recharge them from your ship, use a lot of small ships recharging them before each one goes through …

You could dock a long carrier's front to a gate and let all rail docked ships work as reactors charging the gate instead of your carrier's jump drives and guns.
To also keep the required energy capacity low, half of the ships switch rail-systems to that of the gate, go through the gate and wait at the other side for your carrier which docks to automatically collect these ships.

Draft:
A ================ carrier
| | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| docked ships. If you move the docked blast-door, they can target the gate.
V ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ gate's power receiver pipe and rail to dock your carrier.
Gate in line with the docked carrier.

have you ever heard of galaxy maps and griefers


EDIT:

If someone who already knows this stuff could post a table of timing delays for common clock systems, that'd be great. Most of us don't have a computer or reaction time good enough to use a stopwatch to count.

100% speed rail rotator clock, top speed bouncy rail basic clock, etc.

 

[Batavium]

have you ever heard of galaxy maps and griefers

StarMade needs a way to set a border in sectors from the galaxy centre asap. Since map size in GB is mostly due to player movement and not so much to builds or action.

A server cleanup command that reverts/deletes every sector that has been visited but not modified back into the Fog of War will also greatly help. A discoverd shop or station would count as modified so things don't fall of the map.

As for griefers... In this game there are no griefers. Only people who do not use a Home Base. Or those that use more than one station. Any block that can be consumed will be consumed. That is StarMade. Can't handle that? Go play Pokemon. :p

 

[Winterhome]

As for griefers... In this game there are no griefers. Only people who do not use a Home Base. Or those that use more than one station. Any block that can be consumed will be consumed. That is StarMade. Can't handle that? Go play Pokemon.

Of course. I'm mostly referring to people who destroy warpgate stations for zero gain when not engaged in war.

Warpgates are completely nonviable without admin protection or homebase protection at the moment because any jackass with a warhead stick can find and destroy them with zero difficulty whatsoever.

 

[Batavium]

Of course. I'm mostly referring to people who destroy warpgate stations for zero gain when not engaged in war.

Warpgates are completely nonviable without admin protection or homebase protection at the moment because any jackass with a warhead stick can find and destroy them with zero difficulty whatsoever.

That's why a good server has admin set Trade Guild Gates in protected sectors thats what i did as Admin from BeTheGoat.

And yes i will shoot your Gate because it's blocks to add to my own. And to deny you travel or simple because i can. It's your job to add shields turrets or other defense so it won't happen very difficult. Right now make your gates between fellow Home Bases and your fine.

 

[NeonSturm]

And yes i will shoot your Gate because it's blocks to add to my own. And to deny you travel or simple because i can. It's your job to add shields turrets or other defense so it won't happen very difficult. Right now make your gates between fellow Home Bases and your fine.

Actually, gates which are set to public use shouldn't be a public target.
Only private gates should be something the public wants to shoot.

If you salvage my gates for blocks, I can add a self-destruct mechanism to punish you by wasting your time.

But SM really needs something against just-killing-everything trolls.
Either an admin or public-use gate-protection (cooldown for set-private or offline could be 24h).

But nevertheless, these small gates are great if only you have access to them by using here and there a few big gates which are well protected for those who don't look behind the strong target.

 

[Winterhome]

It's your job to add shields turrets or other defense so it won't happen very difficult

any jackass with a warhead stick can find and destroy them with zero difficulty whatsoever.

Read, please. Shields, turrets, and such are literally worthless on easy-to-find stations.

 

[Batavium]

It's a mind set thing. Ever since the very beginning StarMade said to you. Use a Home Base the base and all things docked to it are invulnarable.

That's it nothing else that a player does in the universe has protection.

Shoot all Trolls are again your problem. The shooter does nothing wrong. Only an admin has the authority to set public stations.

If you claim or shout like i am making this here it's public don't shoot it then all i do is laugh and shoot it for sure!

The failure is inter action on your part. Sometimes you need friends or allies to get stuff done. Set Jump Gates on the Home Bases of your friends and connect them.

Or contact the admin and ask him to set a gate system in the Galaxy. It is not hard but in order to be fully protected. The gate has to be given to the Trade Guild and set in a protective sector. Just protecting the sector is not good enough! Because you can't shoot it but a salvage beam will still suck up all the blocks even if it has not been shot! The computer used for the connection must be incased all around. Because if players can access it then even if it is set to the Trade Guild and in a protected sector. Hitting R on it will still allow you to remark it. The same goes for monitors whos tekst can only be protected by incasing front, back, top and bottom in crystal armor or glass.

EDIT EXTRA TIP

Derelict stations can be replaced when making a new server map! Just add a Gate to the mix and it will spawn all over the place. Yes it's a Derelict but even without buying it will work! Just add your faction module and start marking.

I am totaly baffled why any server admin would choose to keep the completely outdated stations. Just grab new ones here on StarMadeDock. It's creators would be most happy knowing their creation made it to a server.

EXTRA EDIT

Because this thread was about the chaindrive and there is no need to derail it further.

StarMade is fully data driven. This means that you can chooce to ommit blocks from a server. So set up a server without Warheads. Remove the Cloaker block. And leave out the Torch. That way things get a lot harder to bust defences other than going head to head. Not that that will stop people from trying!

 

[Gonzalo]

you can all thank Lancake

but either way, vaygrs spin drive is back in business >: )

 

[NeonSturm]

It's a mind set thing. Ever since the very beginning StarMade said to you. Use a Home Base the base and all things docked to it are invulnarable.
That's it nothing else that a player does in the universe has protection.
Shoot all Trolls are again your problem. The shooter does nothing wrong. Only an admin has the authority to set public stations.
If you claim or shout like i am making this here it's public don't shoot it then all i do is laugh and shoot it for sure!

Ok … you get your troll-veto and I request something else.
I'll request perma-jamming against sensors unless the troll spends quite some time scouting. It should be "A troll's play-time" vs "A player's play time" at the very least.

EDIT: Stations are what makes the universe fun to explore. If nobody can build stations, there is nothing to explore.

Do you want to blow up someone's gate network or discover where it leads to?

 

[FlyingDebris]

Stations that aren't indestructible are totally useless and are massive liabilities regardless of how good the person building them is.

As to the chaindrives being broken, this is why I insisted on keeping a decently sized normal drive on my ships. Still think chaindrives should continue to be a thing, though.

 

[StormWing0]

My gate stations are usually small and easily replaced, that said we do need a better Faster Than Light system.

Hint when building a spam gate network to make it griefer resistant dock some turrets to it that can one shot a million shields of so or position the things in such a way they'd be public hubs.

 

[NeonSturm]

First-Strike

• weapons with very high mass made by server owner's config files.
  • Stations don't care that much about mass.
• They have extra range, maybe 20% because of their high mass.
  • This allows stations to first-strike.
• (Don't forget jump inhibitors though)

Satelites

• are rail entities circling around the station.
• Their shields are at the inner end of the rotator
  • if they die, the shields still help the station as a whole.
• They carry mostly guns with a alpha-strike weapons
  • hit&run on their orbit around the station.
• Satellites can wiggle by moving their inner point along the rotation axis or by having a variable rotation speed
  • this gives a huge evasion bonus against slow projectiles
  • Missiles which try to lead ahead their target will travel a longer way and arrive later - maybe when the satellite is already out of range.

Terrain-Shields

• Terrain could have a really high mass compared to hp.
  • Terrain is a waste of asteroid mining and pretty cheap, but you won't use that weight on a ship
  • This gives station a lot of hp ships don't have

Tracker drones (experimental)

• have maximum attack range with a very weak weapon and good speed
  • and perhaps some jump inhibitors as you cannot follow jumps
• they go berserk on enemy ships, but stay at max range due to dampening and push modules in the opposite direction.
  
• Push module in the opposite direction also keeps the drone at max range where it actives thrusters to counteract it again.
• Usage:
  • Trackers stick to the target and work as target-painter (Revenge your fallen station).
  • They could drop bread crumbs (cores with a name) with a clock.
• But I don't know if this works - it would fun to try out if I could play right now

I'd like to have a full guide through all suggestions on how to buff stations!

 

[AtraUnam]

How did we get from bitching about clocks being slightly harder to make to bitching about warp-gates?

 

[Jaaskinal]

I already have a mostly functional 1:30 Chaindrive back on the dock. It breaks 50/50 on re-load simply because I'm a retard and didn't notice something going wrong. I already have a 0:45 clock in the works, but I just want to test it a bit more so that it has nearly no chance of breaking on reload.

 

[Master_Artificer]

People talking about warp gates reminds me of the first faction ball comic I made... oh the memories...

 

[Tunk]

Did something happen last night to kill em again?
Lots of people had immune designs or rebuilt working shootout clocks a few hours after the update came out.