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- Dec 29, 2014
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Starmade's power system is shit, and the auxilliary system hasn't done anything to fix it. Splitting ships into multiple entities provides an enormous power bonus, and the new auxilliary system has zero depth to it's design; it's just another blob.
Part of the problem writing suggestions for starmade is that the game lacks a clear vision for how it's supposed to play. Since the game has no idea how combat is supposed to flow, you have to elbow drop the game with your own vision for what the game should be; as such this is going to have a lot of my personal preference in it, which is why i'm splitting it up over multiple posts, but i'll put a TL;DR here because this is going to be pretty long:
What should power be in starmade?
This is really up to schine. The game currently doesn't have any real vision for what power's role is supposed to be, except as an arbitrary limiting factor for systems, which currently just means adding in enough e/sec to match system drain.
I would like to see power have a more profound impact on gameplay, following a few basic premisses:
Remove power drain from thrust
The first issue with the powersystem are the demands imposed on it, specifically from thrusters. It's a huge energy drain, and the drain is non-stop. What's worse, it's not like a ship without thrust is an option; all ships need to move, so all ships need to have high, constant power generation. This has completely dictated the power system for the game, and it's why power drain for thrusters need to go. Problem with removing it though: lightspeed titans. This needs to be matched with a decrease in thrust per thruster block, i think to about 20% (50% of ship must be thrusters to reach 1.0 TWR.) you can then add much higher benefits to overdrive effect, so ships can be brought back up current max speeds, or at least somewhere more sensible. +1000% thrust bonus from overdrive, matched with exponentially scaling power requirements depending on thruster count like we have now. Fighters are more easily able to reach max speed and titans can't possibly meet the power requirement for
Eliminate the power bonus
The power bonus just offers a massive incentive for moving power systems into turrets, docked entities or multiple smaller ships. When power isn't needed for thrust the bonus can be removed while keeping ships functional. The 25 e/sec output of reactors without bonus is just silly though, just means adding huge lumps of reactor tumors all over the ships making the most important part of ship design boring and lumpy like shields. Increasing power per block while adding a power scaling mechanic seems like a good solution; i've added a suggestion for a heat system that generates more heat the more power you're producing at the end of this tripe.
Remove the capacitor mechanic and give weapons internal power storage instead
You can't allow high power capacity on ships. This is due to the way weapons draw power; since it's pulled out of capacity in bulk having a huge power capacity pool means ships can mount overdrive effect weapons and instakill each other. Game needs to eliminate power capacitors as they exist, but giving each weapon system it's own internal system similar to jumpdrives or scanners doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it worse. What i would sugest instead is for weapons to be toggled on/off; as long as the weapon is online it will draw e/sec to remain active. While active it will charge like a scanner, but it doesn't stop draining power when it's fully charged; it keeps draining the same amount of power or it will start rapidly losing charge. This prevents players from charging exteme alpha overdrive weapons outside combat to instakill opponents, and with the current capacitors removed this also opens the door for a better capacity system:
Introduce batteries for longer power storage
Most fights in starmade last several minutes, mass for mass capacitors can barely store 20 seconds of power generation unless power is exceptionally inefficient. For ships in peak generation it's closer to 3 seconds. For power storage to work as actual power storage in combat it needs enough capacity to allow burst weapons to fire a single volley before retreating to recover, and must be able to output more power per mass than reactors for this timeframe. The lowest amount of time that would be useful would be around 30 seconds i think, and 1 minute would not be overkill. Best way might be multiple types of batteries with different capacities and output speeds, with linear output speed but exponential capacity.
Batteries should output only when all active systems drain more power than reactors can produce, and recharge in the opposite case.
Example values:
This also introduces a new mechanic for more effective fighters; instead of reactors they can be powered entirely by batteries, but they will only have a limited flight time. This adds better mass efficiency for fighters, letting them carry much more powerful weapons when compared to larger ships, and also makes carriers operate as more than just glorified transports, having to resupply fighters during combat so they can't just be parked in an adjacent system without needing to follow engagements. You can run much larger ships on batteries too, but that starts to add enormous requirements to infrastructure since they need jump drives and a lot more relative power to maintain high speed.
Add heat mechanic for depth and to limit how much hull can be assigned to reactors
With the other changes i suggested you could pile on as many reactors as you want and get insane power generation again, which isn't the point. A counter scaling mechanic is needed as well, a heat system is my idea for it.
Heat would be a negative buildup on a ship that limits how much power can be generated. Each reactor block generates power AND heat. Ships would have a basic heat capacity like shield or armor HP based on it's mass (and power capacity just opened up a vacancy ) When reaching certain thresholds, the ship gets negative effects.
Heat effect examples:
Other heat controls could include heat sinks for raising the ship's heat capacity as well as active heat vents that rapidly drop heat but exposes weakpoints in your ship. I know it's hard to add parts that are "exposed", but simply making it work like a damage pulse that hits your own ships (vent blocks not affected) should have designs exposing these, while still allowing rail doors to cover them up during combat. Have the vents require large amounts of power, but never more than the heat vented would generate in power.
The powerline design is a really great mechanic for starmade; it encourages people to have reactors running all over their ships, making them more vulnerable to hull damage since they start loosing efficiency quickly. The current design principle could be kept, but instead of adding power, dimensionality would reduce how much heat is produced by that reactor group.
Part of the problem writing suggestions for starmade is that the game lacks a clear vision for how it's supposed to play. Since the game has no idea how combat is supposed to flow, you have to elbow drop the game with your own vision for what the game should be; as such this is going to have a lot of my personal preference in it, which is why i'm splitting it up over multiple posts, but i'll put a TL;DR here because this is going to be pretty long:
- Remove power drain from thrust, greatly increase strength and energy cost of overdrive to compensate
- Remove capacitor as it works now, all systems have their own power storage like scanners and jumps
- Remove power bonus. Period.
- Add battery systems that absorb excess e/sec not going into other systems when excess power is produced, and shovel it back into systems when generation can't keep up.
- Add heating mechanic to reintroduce depth to power design (see section for details)
What should power be in starmade?
This is really up to schine. The game currently doesn't have any real vision for what power's role is supposed to be, except as an arbitrary limiting factor for systems, which currently just means adding in enough e/sec to match system drain.
I would like to see power have a more profound impact on gameplay, following a few basic premisses:
- Power should be limited in availability so ship designs carrying different systems will want to choose between them instead of everything always being active.
- Ships should have different power profiles; some ships focussing on maximum generation to maintain steady performance, while others have peak performance windows with greater power generation in quick bursts
- Power should not be a trivial design concern as it is now
Remove power drain from thrust
The first issue with the powersystem are the demands imposed on it, specifically from thrusters. It's a huge energy drain, and the drain is non-stop. What's worse, it's not like a ship without thrust is an option; all ships need to move, so all ships need to have high, constant power generation. This has completely dictated the power system for the game, and it's why power drain for thrusters need to go. Problem with removing it though: lightspeed titans. This needs to be matched with a decrease in thrust per thruster block, i think to about 20% (50% of ship must be thrusters to reach 1.0 TWR.) you can then add much higher benefits to overdrive effect, so ships can be brought back up current max speeds, or at least somewhere more sensible. +1000% thrust bonus from overdrive, matched with exponentially scaling power requirements depending on thruster count like we have now. Fighters are more easily able to reach max speed and titans can't possibly meet the power requirement for
Eliminate the power bonus
The power bonus just offers a massive incentive for moving power systems into turrets, docked entities or multiple smaller ships. When power isn't needed for thrust the bonus can be removed while keeping ships functional. The 25 e/sec output of reactors without bonus is just silly though, just means adding huge lumps of reactor tumors all over the ships making the most important part of ship design boring and lumpy like shields. Increasing power per block while adding a power scaling mechanic seems like a good solution; i've added a suggestion for a heat system that generates more heat the more power you're producing at the end of this tripe.
Remove the capacitor mechanic and give weapons internal power storage instead
You can't allow high power capacity on ships. This is due to the way weapons draw power; since it's pulled out of capacity in bulk having a huge power capacity pool means ships can mount overdrive effect weapons and instakill each other. Game needs to eliminate power capacitors as they exist, but giving each weapon system it's own internal system similar to jumpdrives or scanners doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it worse. What i would sugest instead is for weapons to be toggled on/off; as long as the weapon is online it will draw e/sec to remain active. While active it will charge like a scanner, but it doesn't stop draining power when it's fully charged; it keeps draining the same amount of power or it will start rapidly losing charge. This prevents players from charging exteme alpha overdrive weapons outside combat to instakill opponents, and with the current capacitors removed this also opens the door for a better capacity system:
Introduce batteries for longer power storage
Most fights in starmade last several minutes, mass for mass capacitors can barely store 20 seconds of power generation unless power is exceptionally inefficient. For ships in peak generation it's closer to 3 seconds. For power storage to work as actual power storage in combat it needs enough capacity to allow burst weapons to fire a single volley before retreating to recover, and must be able to output more power per mass than reactors for this timeframe. The lowest amount of time that would be useful would be around 30 seconds i think, and 1 minute would not be overkill. Best way might be multiple types of batteries with different capacities and output speeds, with linear output speed but exponential capacity.
Batteries should output only when all active systems drain more power than reactors can produce, and recharge in the opposite case.
Example values:
- Reactor 200 e/sec - unlimited output
- Fast battery - 500 e/sec - 30.000 capacity (1 minute)
- Medium battery - 375 e/sec - 67500 capacity ( 3 minutes)
- Slow battery - 250 e/sec - 300.000 capacity (20 minutes)
- Marathon battery - 150 e/sec* - 3.000.000 capacity (6 hours)
This also introduces a new mechanic for more effective fighters; instead of reactors they can be powered entirely by batteries, but they will only have a limited flight time. This adds better mass efficiency for fighters, letting them carry much more powerful weapons when compared to larger ships, and also makes carriers operate as more than just glorified transports, having to resupply fighters during combat so they can't just be parked in an adjacent system without needing to follow engagements. You can run much larger ships on batteries too, but that starts to add enormous requirements to infrastructure since they need jump drives and a lot more relative power to maintain high speed.
Add heat mechanic for depth and to limit how much hull can be assigned to reactors
With the other changes i suggested you could pile on as many reactors as you want and get insane power generation again, which isn't the point. A counter scaling mechanic is needed as well, a heat system is my idea for it.
Heat would be a negative buildup on a ship that limits how much power can be generated. Each reactor block generates power AND heat. Ships would have a basic heat capacity like shield or armor HP based on it's mass (and power capacity just opened up a vacancy ) When reaching certain thresholds, the ship gets negative effects.
Heat effect examples:
- 25% Heat capacity -> -10% thrust, +10% shield damage taken
- 50% Heat capacity -> -20% thrust, +100% shield damage taken
- 60% Heat capacity -> -30% thrust, +200% shield damage taken, +100% armor damage taken
- 70% Heat capacity -> -40% thrust, +300% shield damage taken, +200% armor damage taken, +100% structure damage taken
- etc
- 100% Heat -> ship explodes with no survivors
Other heat controls could include heat sinks for raising the ship's heat capacity as well as active heat vents that rapidly drop heat but exposes weakpoints in your ship. I know it's hard to add parts that are "exposed", but simply making it work like a damage pulse that hits your own ships (vent blocks not affected) should have designs exposing these, while still allowing rail doors to cover them up during combat. Have the vents require large amounts of power, but never more than the heat vented would generate in power.
The powerline design is a really great mechanic for starmade; it encourages people to have reactors running all over their ships, making them more vulnerable to hull damage since they start loosing efficiency quickly. The current design principle could be kept, but instead of adding power, dimensionality would reduce how much heat is produced by that reactor group.
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