Buff Thrusters!

[kiddan]

One thing I've noticed with thrusters is that they aren't treated as such by the game, really. We are filling our ships with these little blocks as if they are those miraculous balloons from Up, rather than making one or two large components like, say, a jet engine. Thrusters should be for building a well-functioning component on a ship, not filling-up hollow spaces to make something fly faster.

Have you seen how much space thrusters take-up in a 1-1 scale USS Enterprise (for it to fly remotely well) compared to how big the "actual" Enterprise thrusters really are? It's ridiculous!

 

[Edymnion]

One thing I've noticed with thrusters is that they aren't treated as such by the game, really. We are filling our ships with these little blocks as if they are those miraculous balloons from Up, rather than making one or two large components like, say, a jet engine. Thrusters should be for building a well-functioning component on a ship, not filling-up hollow spaces to make something fly faster.

Well, long long ago in a galaxy many patches away, thrusters used to work like power generators in that they scaled in lines. You can still see this in some of the REALLY old ships you can download where they no longer have enough thrust to move because of the changes.

The problem ended up being that you had all these systems that needed specific shapes and it got really hard to build a ship that wasn't mostly empty space due to the fact you had to fit all these puzzle pieces together awkwardly (especially since the optimal place to put thrusters was also the optimal place for power, hence one or both ended up sub-otpimal), so thrusters got changed to gap filler.

I do agree though, they really should be scaling like Capacitors where larger single blocks give better returns.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Y'know, I'd love to have thrusters scale like Capacitor.

It won't punish anyone, it'll boost every design currently out there, and those who like doing the minimum neccesary thrust can go even lower on their percentage of ship to thruster.

Meanwhile, the rest of us won't feel like we're flying a crippled potato. (allso, seconding the call for someone showing what values to change to boost the rotation, as that one is the biggest offender.)

 

[sayerulz]

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.

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. Ships accelerate slowly, decelerate slowly, and generally feel like driving a massive block of pig iron powered by a bottle rocket. It was always like this to an extent, but the thruster update has made things far worse. I make a small, sleek ship with what feels to me like a lot of thrusters, and it feels like I'm driving a supertanker.

Jojomo , the problem is that it isn't really a choice. High mobility is just not a viable option in combat right now. It's useful, to be sure, but the fact is that having enough thrust to actually be providing a worthwhile advantage will be hurting you so badly in durability and firepower that your ship will be virtually useless. Dodging 10% of an enemy's shots isn't worth much when you have only 10% of their durability and firepower at the same mass.

 

[Jojomo]

Apologies for bumping a thread that was drifting to the bottom of the front page...I've been away, just got back.

Jojomo , the problem is that it isn't really a choice. High mobility is just not a viable option in combat right now. It's useful, to be sure, but the fact is that having enough thrust to actually be providing a worthwhile advantage will be hurting you so badly in durability and firepower that your ship will be virtually useless. Dodging 10% of an enemy's shots isn't worth much when you have only 10% of their durability and firepower at the same mass.

I think that really depends on what you're fighting.

Anyway, if we just look at the premise of "a ship with 15% thrusters will always out-fight a ship with 25% thrusters, all else being equal", and treat it as the problem (i.e. the reason people don’t want to use more thrusters), perhaps the answer isn't altering thrusters themselves, but the mechanics that makes this true: I definitely could be wrong, but my understanding of Bobby's chance to hit is that it's based only on range and not on target speed - if that's the case I'd say that's a pretty nasty lump in the sauce that should be removed. Also, perhaps the default value for Bobby to hit should be reduced to match as closely as possible what the best Starmade player consistently and repeatedly can do, and no better.

Y'know, I'd love to have thrusters scale like Capacitor.

It won't punish anyone, it'll boost every design currently out there, and those who like doing the minimum neccesary thrust can go even lower on their percentage of ship to thruster.

Meanwhile, the rest of us won't feel like we're flying a crippled potato. (allso, seconding the call for someone showing what values to change to boost the rotation, as that one is the biggest offender.)

This sounds like an excellent compromise. I'd vote for that.

 

[Napther]

Im not sure making the thrusters, with an non-linear decay curve, gain power from grouping like Power Capacitor's gain curve. There has to be some compromise.

But yes, generally all thrust is centered on decorative engines. But you have to balance that out with RP builders who may have several, distinct engines. For example the 2 largest ships in this: Napther_Fleet_Submission_1 fleet submission of mine have almost ALL their thrust inside those engine nacelles. While they can be linked via the barely-thick-enough struts, I'd imagine that other builders may not want to do this

 

[Spoolooni]

Im not sure making the thrusters, with an non-linear decay curve, gain power from grouping like Power Capacitor's gain curve. There has to be some compromise.

But yes, generally all thrust is centered on decorative engines. But you have to balance that out with RP builders who may have several, distinct engines. For example the 2 largest ships in this: Napther_Fleet_Submission_1 fleet submission of mine have almost ALL their thrust inside those engine nacelles. While they can be linked via the barely-thick-enough struts, I'd imagine that other builders may not want to do this

I personally don't think engines should need to connect at all, too many arbitrary connections would really stifle what freedom we have as to designing and building our ships. I doubt this is exclusively RP build practice as other hybrid or PvP builders like myself treasure aesthetic and don't exactly like compromising to arbitrary mechanics you'd find in games like Interstellar Rift.

 

[Edymnion]

Im not sure making the thrusters, with an non-linear decay curve, gain power from grouping like Power Capacitor's gain curve. There has to be some compromise.

But yes, generally all thrust is centered on decorative engines. But you have to balance that out with RP builders who may have several, distinct engines. For example the 2 largest ships in this: Napther_Fleet_Submission_1 fleet submission of mine have almost ALL their thrust inside those engine nacelles. While they can be linked via the barely-thick-enough struts, I'd imagine that other builders may not want to do this

I dunno, I have seen a lot of people who have expressed in more or less terms that "If the game doesn't make me do it, I'm not doing it" when it comes to things like that.

I would think the RP builders should ENJOY (or at least appreciate) something like this which groups things up and allows them to more effectively build proper components instead of just gap filling.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Im not sure making the thrusters, with an non-linear decay curve, gain power from grouping like Power Capacitor's gain curve. There has to be some compromise.

... Thank you for bringing that up, I hadn't quite finalized my own thoughts on it.
Hmm, probably the simplest compromise is to make them subject to both.

Don't panic. Yes, it is computationally more difficult than the current one. I don't believe it would be that much worse.

The way I'm seeing it is as follows:
Use the Capacitor system, but have the starting value be that 6 that a thruster gives to a core-only "ship", instead of the 1000 of a capacitor block.
Then, apply that result as the input of the existing thruster decay curve.

This allows "fighters" to be fast, if using the standard "filler" method for thruster placement, or blindingly fast if you concentrate most of them* into the biggest blocks possible. (as several "experimental" or "roleplay" or "decorative" builds allready do)
* using the same total number of thruster blocks, I don't know how many could be shaved off, but let's keep the comparison a simple one.

It allows for "survivable" damage (filler method), versus proper "critical" damage (new capacitor method).
The existing Thruster Calcs, don't really do that. Sure, taking a decent missile hit, and loosing half your thrusters (blocks) hurts like a bitch, but it doesn't hurt quite the same as loosing half your thrusters (blocks) and in so doing loosing 3/4 (or more) of your thrust value.

From a design perspective, this is a simple trade-off. Survivability, versus improved performance.
One that, if we follow this modified version, your Community Content ships would greatly benefit from.
My one Community Content ship would benefit too, along with several others I've not gotten far enough along with to consider releasing. (I'm not afraid to admit that I would benefit from this change, why else would I be campaigning for it?)
Many, many, many ships from many authors would benefit, to both greater and lesser degrees.


Probably equally important, from an eventual "game is fully released" new-player perspective:
The proverbial new player won't need to understand the full import of this mechanics change to play or enjoy the game. (unlike power reactor's current mechanics, which basically require that you know them to play)
But, if they DO learn it, they end up with options.

EDIT: Dang, new i was taking a bit long to consolidate my thoughts,