Aux Power & Gigantism

[Lukwan]

My two cents on the value of Aux Power and and 'check-up' on Gigantism. Where are we at now? This thread is meant to be an open discussion so say what you will on these topics but know this:

The basic premise I am using is that gigantism is not desirable and that the game should try to limit it. I am not interested in the debate on this subject, that's just how I feel and I know many people feel the same way. I will make my case but I won't get embroiled in an argument. There are a variety of threads where that is taking place...please apply your debating skills where the debate is already raging.

So: it is assumed gigantism should be controlled (not eliminated)....a given...a premise.

Why?: Gigantic ships cause a performance loss for anyone not running the latest hardware. They are more prone to causing lag and a disproportionate draw on the server's resources which affect everyone playing on that server. They take a huge amount of time to make and often never get used because they are 'too valuable to risk' or they lord over a server, crushing smaller ships in mismatched Noob-stomps so everyone Turtles up. For a variety of reasons Gigantism can negatively impacts the 'Fun' potential in MP play. (in SP you can go to town...this becomes a non-issue) If we did not limit ship size people would break the game with giant ships...period.
I'll leave it there.

Aux Power is the latest chapter in the saga of the Soft-Cap.

I like the addition of Aux Power and I advocated for the risk/reward thing about Aux reactors blowing up. maybe they will be tweaked but they should stay IMHO. Over the years of debates on gigantism the Soft-Cap on power was introduced to limit ship-size. This led to docked reactor work-around by the player base that was itself an imperfect solution due to collision issues. We are now 'post docked-reactor' but we still need tools to combat gigantism.

Why not hard cap?

Schine has stated that they don't want to impose a hard limit on ship size so they have trusted players to push at the limits of size with a soft-cap on power. The players would never approve of a hard-cap so the choice is sorta made for us already. No limit is dangerous, a hard-limit is unpopular...that leaves us with:

Soft-Caps and other means of limiting ship size.

Aux power is nothing more than a buffer-zone in the soft-cap that has a risk/reward element. It should offer a high reward for the risk and this is something that should be discussed. Is the reward worth the risk? How can we improve this?

My final thoughts:

I think that,as the game stands right now, gigantism is pretty much under control. The soft caps are working and the scuttlebutt I hear from the MP community would suggest that gigantism is indeed NOT the most efficient way to kick butt. Apparently fleets of smaller ships with less total mass are killing titans just fine. If this is case then we are going in the right direction on this.

What do you think?

 

[Top 4ce]

I think beyond ship design, fleets are the main counter towards gigantism. Titans will always be a thing, but a rare show of power flag ship sort of thing. Actual combat effectiveness lies in fleets of smaller ships and well coordinated groups of players. Build more ships with resources, risk less loss, rather than sinking a lot into a few ships.

As fleets and AI become better and more viable, the "just build bigger" becomes less viable. As it should be in my opinion.

 

[MrFURB]

4ce hit the nail on the head there. This is just my own belief, but I imagine that when fleets are easy, intuitive, and capable we will see mixed sizes in fleets and the issue of gigantism will only exist in the case of servers pushing for that style with massive mining multipliers.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I agree that fleets are the way to go and logistically it's simpler. A fleet of cheaper vessels will always be easier to expand and repair, because you just build new vessels until it's back up to full strength, or keep building more if you want more firepower. And you can save more if you're forced to retreat, since you'll still have functioning ships. It's not that simple with a titan which depending on the specific damage could be totally disabled by damage that would have left an equivalent fleet somewhat functional.

 

[Winterhome]

Regardless of how much more effective fleets of smaller ships are, Bobby AI has difficulty doing the most simple of tasks at the moment, so any fleet capable of effectively taking down someone's 30 million block wtfnaught (likely built with all of their resources collected over six months or more) will be server-ending in its own right - there would be too many collision checks, and the Bobby AI's inability to do anything other than circle strafe (which it does very poorly) would lead to immense friendly fire.

I'm not saying fleets aren't amazing if used well, though. I'm saying that they're just as laggy as the fucknaughts that people fly around on some servers, if not moreso.

 

[nightrune]

Regardless of how much more effective fleets of smaller ships are, Bobby AI has difficulty doing the most simple of tasks at the moment, so any fleet capable of effectively taking down someone's 30 million block wtfnaught (likely built with all of their resources collected over six months or more) will be server-ending in its own right - there would be too many collision checks, and the Bobby AI's inability to do anything other than circle strafe (which it does very poorly) would lead to immense friendly fire.

I'm not saying fleets aren't amazing if used well, though. I'm saying that they're just as laggy as the fucknaughts that people fly around on some servers, if not moreso.

That's pretty much already been said. Players Fleet > Player Titan, We'll see AI get better, but yeah its derpy right now.

 

[Edymnion]

Yup, when fleets get to the point you can have players ordering not just the fleet but fleet subsets to do different things, then we'll see... not the death of the titan, but the death of the titan as the go-to ship.

When you can have wings devoted to taking out drones/fighters, wings devoted to attacking primary targets, wings devoted to defense, etc that you can command in real time, then the size advantage will drop drastically.

Its really not about limiting the players from building big, its more about give them a working alternative to building big.

 

[Lukwan]

Yup, when fleets get to the point you can have players ordering not just the fleet but fleet subsets to do different things, then we'll see... not the death of the titan, but the death of the titan as the go-to ship.

When you can have wings devoted to taking out drones/fighters, wings devoted to attacking primary targets, wings devoted to defense, etc that you can command in real time, then the size advantage will drop drastically.

Its really not about limiting the players from building big, its more about give them a working alternative to building big.
[doublepost=1477591290,1477591240][/doublepost]Yup, when fleets get to the point you can have players ordering not just the fleet but fleet subsets to do different things, then we'll see... not the death of the titan, but the death of the titan as the go-to ship.

When you can have wings devoted to taking out drones/fighters, wings devoted to attacking primary targets, wings devoted to defense, etc that you can command in real time, then the size advantage will drop drastically.

Its really not about limiting the players from building big, its more about give them a working alternative to building big.

(I agreed with you the first time...)

 

[Edymnion]

(I agreed with you the first time...)

Whoops, sorry.

Downloading Skyrim Special Edition and the boards derped on me. My bad!

 

[NeonSturm]

There could be inaccurate bomb bays which launch bombs with a time delay after which they activate (to increase inaccuracy)

A minimum travel time of 5 seconds with an inaccuracy of 30° would make them miss small ships most of the time.

 

[Byamarro]

Since the beginning of this game I've never noticed any move made by Schine to reduce gigantism.
Good luck with your suggestion. </sarcasm>

 

[Malacodor]

Why?: Gigantic ships cause a performance loss for anyone not running the latest hardware. They are more prone to causing lag and a disproportionate draw on the server's resources which affect everyone playing on that server. [...] or they lord over a server, crushing smaller ships in mismatched Noob-stomps so everyone Turtles up.

How is that different from big fleets? They also cause performance problems and allow for noob stomping.

I like the addition of Aux Power and I advocated for the risk/reward thing about Aux reactors blowing up. maybe they will be tweaked but they should stay IMHO. Over the years of debates on gigantism the Soft-Cap on power was introduced to limit ship-size.

Aux reactors give a linear power growth after the soft cap, which still allows for arbitrarily huge ships. They punish ships with a few aux reactor groups almost as much as ships with lots of them, maybe even more, since bigger ships can protect aux reactors better. Replacing the soft-cap with a logarithmic power curve would have punished really big ships significantly more than not so big ships. Also, it would have reduced complicatedness and eliminated the need to waste valuable development time on russian roulette reactors. But schema for some esoteric reason wanted a solution, that complicates the power system and that mirrors exactly the power curve of power injectors as well as their risks, and he heavily overshot the risk part.

This led to docked reactor work-around by the player base that was itself an imperfect solution due to collision issues.We are now 'post docked-reactor' but we still need tools to combat gigantism.

We are 'post-power injector', but not 'post-docked reactor', we can still use them to power turrets, which makes even more sense now that power injectors are gone. Also, it makes sense to hide as much as possible of a turret inside the hull for protection. And there are many ways to make ridiculous exploit ships, whose parts are far worse than a few power injectors when undocking. So the problem with internal undocked entities isn't solved, schema just put a bandaid on it. And since we don't know if or how it will be solved, it's impossible to plan ahead. Yes, that's a general problem of the alpha phase, but it should be mitigated rather than being made far worse.

Aux power is nothing more than a buffer-zone in the soft-cap that has a risk/reward element. It should offer a high reward for the risk and this is something that should be discussed. Is the reward worth the risk? How can we improve this?

I don't plan to build any ships with exploding reactors at the moment. Just designing a good ship that merely hits the soft cap and has self-powered turrets and building it as often as resources allow seems to be a good meta currently. (I might be slightly exaggerating here.)

I think that,as the game stands right now, gigantism is pretty much under control. The soft caps are working and the scuttlebutt I hear from the MP community would suggest that gigantism is indeed NOT the most efficient way to kick butt. Apparently fleets of smaller ships with less total mass are killing titans just fine. If this is case then we are going in the right direction on this.
What do you think?

The direction is right, but I think went a bit too far. Aside from my dislike for self-destroying reactors, I think the size-dependent agility penalty hurts medium-sized ships too much. Reducing it would still hit titans hard, but make flying medium-sized ships more fun.

Since the beginning of this game I've never noticed any move made by Schine to reduce gigantism.

Sorry, but that's entirely your fault.

 

[Lukwan]

How is that different from big fleets? They also cause performance problems and allow for noob stomping.

I can't argue with with this fact except to say that there is an ongoing debate about single, gigantic titans, but no one has yet even suggested to limit the size of fleets. This is a major difference between the two approaches.

We are 'post-power injector', but not 'post-docked reactor', we can still use them to power turrets, which makes even more sense now that power injectors are gone.

Thanks for the clarification. (That is actually what I meant.)
[doublepost=1477614044,1477613755][/doublepost]

The direction is right, but I think went a bit too far. Aside from my dislike for self-destroying reactors, I think the size-dependent agility penalty hurts medium-sized ships too much. Reducing it would still hit titans hard, but make flying medium-sized ships more fun.

I agree they may have gone too far but there is plenty time to adjust them for balance.

I also agree with the agility penalty being too high. Flying medium to big ships is really no fun at all and they don't need to punished this badly.
[doublepost=1477614452][/doublepost]

So the problem with internal undocked entities isn't solved, schema just put a bandaid on it.

I suggested a simple solution to this months ago. Rather than being un-docked when a rail-docker takes terminal damage just make the docked entity remain in place and lose all functionality. The rail-docker becomes intangible but maintains the connection to main ship as dead weight.
Then internal docked entities can still be used with a risk/reward element of 'great when are working but a burden when shot-up'.

 

[AtraUnam]

I'd just like to point out that a titan specifically designed with killing small ships in mind will completely stomp its own mass in smaller ships, it generally goes.
Fleet > Anti big-shit titan > Anti little-shit titan > Fleet

 

[jstenholt]

I'd just like to point out that a titan specifically designed with killing small ships in mind will completely stomp its own mass in smaller ships, it generally goes.
Fleet > Anti big-shit titan > Anti little-shit titan > Fleet

Absolutely have to agree with Atra here. Titans are going to be king forever, just depends on how the titan is designed.

Plus, you have to remember, if a faction has enough clout that they are able to field a titan, they'll probably be able to field a fleet of smaller ships to go along with it. So while a smaller number of ships with an equivalent mass might be able to defeat some titans, remember that only idiots field titans without support.

I'd like to see a fleet of ships take down a titan of equivalent mass while that titan deploys it's own fleet of even smaller ships that in turn are equivalent to the mass of the attacking fleet. Titanception.

 

[Panpiper]

There is no question that aux reactors have changed the game for Titans. I am not sure they have obsoleted them entirely, as AtraUnam may have a point, but the ten million block newbie brick titan is history. Or rather, they will still be built, but they will be easily dealt with, with a fleet of smaller ships requiring vastly less resources. I have right now built, a million block fleet I am absolutely confident will defeat such a ten million block titan. (I would be very interested to see how that fleet would stand up to AtraUnam's hypothetical titan.)

The problem I have however is that my million block fleet causes every bit as much framerate issues as would any titan. Inside my homebase (which is not small, sporting 24 capital ship turrets of it's own), with my battleminer docked (itself nearing a million blocks, also with a great many turrets) and that fleet of 25 destroyers (each 40K blocks and 14 turrets each) hovering nearby, my framerate is as often as not down to 15 frames a second. If I send the fleet two sectors away, my framerate jumps back up to the over 100 FPS I am used to most of the time (usually 120 when mining with just my battleminer). Interestingly, if I then give that fleet orders to defend my homebase sector such that it returns, it returns to the edge of the sector rather than to the center (the map actually says it's in the adjacent sector). This is really quite a good thing, as with the fleet reasonably distant from my homebase, my framerate is a perfectly reasonable ~55. (I'm using a GeForce 970.)

In short, doing away with giganticism will not help if it leads to fleet spam that results in the same sorts of issues.

Ultimately I think what is needed is some sort of maintenance cost, abstracted likely through faction points. Both titans and the megafleets that could defeat them should be roughly equal in that logistical support cost. A faction of one person probably should not be able to generate enough faction points to have anything larger than a million block ship. That is enough to build a really good battleminer that would make such a player a prime catch for any faction. Factions probably should get more than the addition of a single player's faction points when said player joins, but a small logarithic bonus on top of that, lest all a faction be able to deploy would be every player's favorite cruiser. But some sort of balancing ultimately needs to come into play to keep both giant ships and giant fleets, rare.
[doublepost=1477661076,1477660514][/doublepost]It occurs to me to wonder if perhaps crew might be the thing that could keep fleet spam in check. If crew was 'required' for a ship, or otherwise conferred bonuses so significant that a ship without would be at a serious disadvantage, and that crew itself was not infinitely plentiful, then we might achieve much the same end. This assumes that crew requirements to gain full bonus would scale at least somewhat linearly with system block count (not mass).

 

[Lukwan]

Ultimately I think what is needed is some sort of maintenance cost, abstracted likely through faction points. Both titans and the megafleets that could defeat them should be roughly equal in that logistical support cost.

Good point. I think this deserves it's own suggestion if it has not already got a thread. We may not be there yet, but if fleets get more options for orders and start to behave in a reliable fashion people will start pushing the limits with fleets more often. This will become an equally big issue.
[doublepost=1477661649,1477661428][/doublepost]

It occurs to me to wonder if perhaps crew might be the thing that could keep fleet spam in check.

Hmmmm...interesting. How about: require NPC crew to operate lesser fleet ships, and introduce a FP cost to maintaining an NPC crew?

 

[Spoolooni]

I think the community realizes that titans are just floating cash cows, even the bigger ships are below the 800 meter, mostly more so than before with the implementation of auxiliaries and the ousting of docked reactors. Auxiliaries to me representing something I agree and disagree with, granted I find that auxiliaries may be too punishing since a lot weapons and even thruster drain a ridiculous amount of energy. At least there should be an implemented method to shutting halting or lowering the explosion threshold. Others have suggested turning off auxiliaries should stifle the explosive damages.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

This will probably be unpopular, but I think some of our issues come from StarMade having free energy. How would things change if you had to keep Titans refueled? An idea that might be worth some discussion is lowering the softcap for current reactors to about half while reworking power auxiliaries to be much more powerful but require fuel to operate. Small ships would be about the same, but now any design that requires gobs of power needs some kind of fuel input. Functionally, power auxiliaries would be extremely-high-capacity capacitors that can only be recharged by adding a fuel item to them. Add in some kind of radioactive crystal ore which can be refined into fuel, and Bam! there's your maintenance cost.

 

[Panpiper]

This will probably be unpopular, but I think some of our issues come from StarMade having free energy. How would things change if you had to keep Titans refueled? An idea that might be worth some discussion is lowering the softcap for current reactors to about half while reworking power auxiliaries to be much more powerful but require fuel to operate. Small ships would be about the same, but now any design that requires gobs of power needs some kind of fuel input. Functionally, power auxiliaries would be extremely-high-capacity capacitors that can only be recharged by adding a fuel item to them. Add in some kind of radioactive crystal ore which can be refined into fuel, and Bam! there's your maintenance cost.

Leave aside the whole scale restructuring such would entail, this would address the problem of giganticism, but NOT the identical problem of the fleet spam that is now likely to become the norm. We need a solution that addresses both, not one that makes just titans even more unwieldy.