Buff Thrusters!

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    is it possible to change the diminishing returns in the config, so we can test proposed changes to see what works?
    the current value of 0.87 is far to harsh simply because it punishes even fairly small ships ships.
    I would suggest testing a factor of 15/16 (0.9375), this is 3 times faster drop-off than shields, but half the drop-off that we currently have.
     
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    is it possible to change the diminishing returns in the config, so we can test proposed changes to see what works?
    the current value of 0.87 is far to harsh simply because it punishes even fairly small ships ships.
    I would suggest testing a factor of 15/16 (0.9375), this is 3 times faster drop-off than shields, but half the drop-off that we currently have.
    The following line in the blockBehaviourConfig.xml seems to be what you're looking for:
    Code:
    <PowTotalThrust>0.87</PowTotalThrust>
     

    Ithirahad

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    is it possible to change the diminishing returns in the config, so we can test proposed changes to see what works?
    the current value of 0.87 is far to harsh simply because it punishes even fairly small ships ships.
    I would suggest testing a factor of 15/16 (0.9375), this is 3 times faster drop-off than shields, but half the drop-off that we currently have.
    Try just reducing the mass of thrusters first, by, say, 50%, and maybe giving them an extra bit of thrust. Messing with the actual diminishing return curve may not even be necessary; the "mass creep" as I place thrusters is the most evident issue here for me.

    Whatever the thrusters are now or become later, there should always be that feeling at the end of needing to sacrifice one (or more) aspect of performance for another.
    Not only is it realistic, but it's what makes design a challenge, and interesting, and fun, and it helps make each ship more unique (choosing what sacrifices to make is another decision to make that can differentiate your ship from someone else's).
    Yes, but "every ship larger or heavier than a practically-armourless corvette moving like a large neutronium brick with bottle rockets taped onto it" is not the same thing as "thrust vs. heavier equipment/armor being a design consideration."
     
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    The following line in the blockBehaviourConfig.xml seems to be what you're looking for:
    Code:
    <PowTotalThrust>0.87</PowTotalThrust>
    Has anyone actually experimented with this? If so, what has your experience been, what have you learned?

    There is also a different set of parameters in the config that control how much the sliders affect turn mode and such. I cannot recall what and where they were. I expect that to truly make flying even slightly close to fun, both would have to be tweaked rather generously.
     
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    Edymnion

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    I have to agree. It gets to the point you need 3/4's of the ship to be thrusters simply to move your thrusters.

    Either their weight needs to be reduced by quite a bit (so that its mostly just space that they take up), or the diminishing returns need to be buffed so that they require less of them.

    It really isn't very much fun to want lots of nice interiors and then realize the only way you can make the ship functional is to take most of said interiors out and fill the space with thrusters.
     
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    I have to agree. It gets to the point you need 3/4's of the ship to be thrusters simply to move your thrusters.

    Either their weight needs to be reduced by quite a bit (so that its mostly just space that they take up), or the diminishing returns need to be buffed so that they require less of them.

    It really isn't very much fun to want lots of nice interiors and then realize the only way you can make the ship functional is to take most of said interiors out and fill the space with thrusters.
    The "Thruster goo". Wopie:davehurr:
     

    AtraUnam

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    I agree with this whole heartedly, past a certain point a ship can be literally 50% thrusters and still move slow as hell; and that point isn't even a particularly large point.
     

    Endal

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    Graphs!
    (Red is actual, Green is linear reference)
     
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    Graphs!
    (Red is actual, Green is linear reference)
    I have to say those graphs look quite forgiving, and make it a little hard for me to understand what the problem is.
    The upper part of the first curve is quite linear, and the last three become flat quite quickly, which is exactly what you'd want.

    You can make fast ships. You can make big ships. Should you be able to make big fast ships?

    If they were buffed, how long would it be before someone said: "I want my ships to be even bigger, but not get much slower: time for another thruster buff!"
    At what point would thruster buffing stop? How do you determine a good point to stop buffing? How do you even define what a good point is?
     

    Spoolooni

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    I have to say those graphs look quite forgiving, and make it a little hard for me to understand what the problem is.
    The upper part of the first curve is quite linear, and the last three become flat quite quickly, which is exactly what you'd want.

    You can make fast ships. You can make big ships. Should you be able to make big fast ships?

    If they were buffed, how long would it be before someone said: "I want my ships to be even bigger, but not get much slower: time for another thruster buff!"
    At what point would thruster buffing stop? How do you determine a good point to stop buffing? How do you even define what a good point is?
    The thruster buffs shall stop the moment we no longer need to to fill half our ship with thrusters in order to have an optimal experience, of course you could be all, "people should stop building big then." Except, people who build ships that aren't even titan size have to deal with this nonsense. If you've played other ship games like fractured space or dreadnought, the feeling of piloting a ship that realistically would be lot faster creates combat that is a lot more interactive. I'm not saying big ships should be equally as maneuverable, or turn just as fast as a fighter or a drone, but just the forward and backwards thrust on its own? It's pathetic as it stands.

    As of now, we all have to make design decisions as to whether we should go faster, or be powerful in combat and it seems many of us choose to be powerful in combat and so we rely on chain drives to get around the universe, slugging our way through sectors in each and every encounter. In other cases, quite a lot of the "PVE" and roleplay players, would rather fill their ships with rich interiors as opposed to thrusters. In addition, bigger ships generally become hovering turret bodies where you just drive by, broadside and spend half a minute trying to brake a ship to prevent collision. If I could describe combat right now, it's like watching two paraplegic patients throwing hospital food at each other's faces.
     
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    Edymnion

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    Yeah, thrusters can be seen as the source of a lot of the game's lag, when you think about it that way.

    Its well known that turrets create a lot of lag, even now (used to be WAY worse). Why do we use so many turrets? Because typically by the time you have a ship big enough to put turrets on, its so slow and hard to turn that the turrets are the ONLY way it can fight. I'd wager we'd see fewer docked reactors if we weren't spending nearly 100% of the soft cap on thrusters.

    Getting enough thrust to even move anything bigger than a fighter is a common underlying cause of many other things that slow the game down.
     

    Endal

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    Well, I guess I have to pull out my more advanced graphs then.

    READ THIS SECTION
    [Higher proportion of armour in ship from lowest (all systems) - Green to highest (all armour which technically isnt possible) - Red]


    (Y = Time it takes to reach 100m/s in seconds, X = Ship Block Count)


    Oh that white line? That's the point where thrust alone uses 2mil e/s.
     
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    Well, I guess I have to pull out my more advanced graphs then.

    [Higher proportion of armour in ship from lowest (all systems) - Green to highest (all armour which technically isnt possible) - Red]

    (Y = Time it takes to reach 100m/s in seconds, X = Ship Block Count)


    Oh that white line? That's the point where thrust alone uses 2mil e/s.
    Without knowing what the colored lines represent, everyone of your graphs has been meaningless for me.
    [doublepost=1482423699,1482423569][/doublepost]If they're going to balance thrusters again, I hope they do it sooner rather than later. Given the amount of volume they take up in a ship, they have a huge impact on a ship's design. I'd prefer that it gets ironed out before I build a great many more ships.
     

    nightrune

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    I'm actually not seeing the issue still. So far this all looks good to me. I think it should be rather easy for a small ship to be in the 2 range, and then astoundingly hard for bigger ships to get past 1.0.

    Is the problem that people tend to circle strafe? Thus using more power during flight? I'd imagine you just aren't used to it since every other arcade style fighter doesn't make you deal with it. I think this is another case where being able to divert power to certain systems would be useful.
     

    jayman38

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    I mostly deal with smaller ships (generally within the range of the first 5 quadrants of the charts), so I think the curve needs to be much gentler, in addition to the increased thrust by default.

    I start to see the problem of a lack of thrust at the Starmade "fighter" level of ship. Ships that are only 30m long are too slow to turn around. Ships in Scifi media like movies that are 30-40m are regularly shown to swing around faster than their Starmade counterparts. Some people may want to argue for realism, but Starmade came out to pay tribute to and immerse the player in a Scifi space opera. So I believe smaller ships should be snappier.

    Moving up to Frigate size, generally about 80-100 m in length, you really start to feel it. It's like you are piloting the Space Battleship Yamato (generally considered about 280 m long) with damaged engines. It makes you want to get out and push.

    I piloted a 199-m long ship once, and it felt OK. It was still a bit overly sluggish to turn, but at least it felt big enough that the sluggishness was more fitting.

    But for smaller, lighter ships? The curve feels far too punishing.
     
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    The thruster buffs shall stop the moment we no longer need to to fill half our ship with thrusters in order to have an optimal experience, of course you could be all, "people should stop building big then."
    Getting a consensus on what an "optimal" experience is will be impossible...

    As of now, we all have to make design decisions as to whether we should go faster, or be powerful in combat...
    I think it's great that design forces you to make hard decisions and compromises.
    [doublepost=1482436278,1482435923][/doublepost]
    Well, I guess I have to pull out my more advanced graphs then.

    [Higher proportion of armour in ship from lowest (all systems) - Green to highest (all armour which technically isnt possible) - Red]

    (Y = Time it takes to reach 100m/s in seconds, X = Ship Block Count)


    Oh that white line? That's the point where thrust alone uses 2mil e/s.
    But these graphs are still generous/gentle: even doubling your ship block count (say from 200000 to 400000) only increases time to reach speed by between 1 and 2 seconds (depending on which curve you look at - you don't say what they are)

    And I completely disagree that 25% is an absurd percentage of a ship to be thrusters. I think that's extremely reasonable.
    [doublepost=1482436946][/doublepost]
    But for smaller, lighter ships? The curve feels far too punishing.
    I agree, it is pretty harsh on the small end. It looks like they could just make it linear instead without any real problems, that would solve that issue.
     
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    I have no idea what people mean when they say 'small ships' because it feels like every single person has a different idea of what small is, and because of that i'm a little leery when people say that thrust they get is too little.

    Like someone earlier said rotational speed definitely falls off way too fast and I'd like to see that adjusted. Maybe increase the initial thrust given per block slightly and cut the mass of thrusters, because it is a little weird that they can't even carry themselves by around 1000 blocks.
     
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    I love Starmade. Fantastic game concept, great depth and possibilities for building, great expectations for it's evolution into an MMO 4X game, etc.. But there is one thing I absolutely hate about Starmade. I dread it and avoid it as much as I possibly can.

    I hate flying ships.

    Now given that this is a game in which people are expected to have fun and enjoy themselves, you would think that a space ship game in which we build space ships with which to do stuff, you would think they would make actually flying those ships, well... fun! There you have it. A game about building and flying space ships should be fun, flying them should be fun. But it is not, it is downright painful. Small ships fly through molasses, bigger ships fly through wet concrete.

    There is absolutely no reason I can fathom to maintain this state of affairs. The speed and maneuverability of all ships could be drastically increased without harming any sort of playability or game balance whatsoever. As long as we are all playing with the same rules and game physics, it is all balanced. Forcing us to spend forty seconds dragging a mouse just to turn around is fracking insane.

    I would have less of an issue if there was a way in which the server config could be modified to change this, to radically increase the acceleration and especially the turn rate of ships. But the whole thing is so utterly obtuse as to defy understanding, and what few parameters people have put forth seem to be broken and have no effect in the game. I wish we could get a developer who actually understands the mechanics to tell us precisely what parameters need to be modified to fix this, and give us an idea as to what degree they could be without the game swallowing itself.
     
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    Endal

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    I can't believe people don't know how to read. (Graph key edited to highlight important points)
    Also, considering that 100m/s is by no means any considerable speed, the fact that it takes an awful lot of thrusters to simply get said speed in good time is ridiculous. 25% is a hell lot of the ship, just take any ship around and try to make 25% of its block count thrusters; very soon you'll find yourself eating into shield systems and even interior just to get any decent speed.
    Not to mention the power consumption.
     
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