Power System Overhaul Proposal

[MacThule]

Will this significantly improve performance?

I think the answer to that is the answer to whether this proposal is good. Because otherwise it seems... deeply unnecessary. It's a complete re-invention of the game and looks like it will take over a year to implement.

On the other hand, many recent changes have been very good, so I can only assume there are valid underlying issues that this will somehow address that will somehow make the game better... it's all assumption though. How exactly will this help with balance?

 

[Fireshock]

Problems I see in the new system:

1. You say heat box size and dimensions will be determined by the box size of your ship, that limits outside decorations such as antenas or long cannon barrels.

2. Systems can not be placed inside heat box because they will get a penalty, what if player puts the systems on another entity and docks it to ship to escape this limitation? If you implement a code to check for that, know that people might first place systems outside the box, then later use rails to move them inside.

3. It seems a little too complicated.

 

[El_Poulpy]

If i understand well the goal of the new system is to respond to the problems listed and:

• limit the schema power use = power regen + only buffer batteries to diversify power strategies
• incite players to build rp spaces

That's an interesting idea but i'm not convinced by the bounding box solution, to much a pain for ship design in my opinion. <offtopic>if it's proposed it mean it is computationally possible and then could be part of a solution for an oxygen/life support system </offtopic>

I have reflected on power system for a while now and i have a modest proposition that i hope will contribute to the brainstorming:

Spoiler: my proposition

the power system is constituted of 3 systems
the batteries :

• the same as the ones we have now but with a lot more capacity by block

the generators:

• has the same structure (controller/module) as the weapon or effect systems
• works when modules arranged in a loop/min maxed cube(back to 2013)or whatever (i'm not sure about this part)
• generates power
• could be linked to an overdrive effect to have a temporary boosted power generation but necessitating a reboot of the system after
• explode when destroyed ?
• generate heat

the power distribution system:

• has the same structure (controller/module) as the weapon or effect systems
• determines power output : how much power can be used by second
  • it limits alpha strike strategies or incite to design ships dedicated to these strategies
  • it allows to have viable ships that have no power generation (fighter ...)
• could have a gui to assign ship system that have to be powered in priority
• could use C+V to be linked to a system and a generator (distributed power)
• could be linked to an overdrive effect to have a temporary boosted power output but necessitating a reboot of the system after
• explode when destroyed ?
• generate heat
  

with the power system comes a cooling/dissipater system

• has the same structure (controller/module) as the weapon or effect systems
• works when modules arranged in a loop/dissipater/solar sail whatever (i'm not sure about this part)
• explode when destroyed ?
• consumes heat
  

the ship has a heat value
if the heat value reach a certain threshold (the same for all ships) percentage the ship begins to have failures and if it reach 100% part (batteries/generators/distribution) of the power system explodes:

• the generators, power distribution systems, sun sectors increase the heat value
• the cooling system decreases the ship heat value

with this system you can have ship of similar size that have totally different power profiles


now for the part to incite to build interior spaces:
the generators, power distribution and cooling system have controller.
Npc could be assigned to these controller and then :

• decreases the heat produced by a generator
• decreases the heat produced by a power distribution system
• increases the heat consumed by the cooling system
  

More than one npc can be assigned to a specific system to cumulate the bonus

This give a choice :

• I'm flying alone but have a big cooling system
• I have a crew so a smaller cooling system but crew quarters.
  

With the good parameter you could make these two strategies equivalent
or have one that is more rewarding

I hope this suggestion will help

 

[kingreol]

You mentioned power being a problem for ai currently. And I'm assuming calculations. With this system what improves on the performance end of things, and what would hurt performance with this new system. A lot of alternative suggestions is sounding to complex and server lagging. And I wouldn't want to see starmade suffer the cpu intensiveness of space engineers

 

[Madman198237]

Power is an issue for AI because AI can't readily regulate their firerate right now. So, in the devs' system, they would fire everything and keep firing til the system melted or whatever.

In my system, they would likely overrun the power generation in non-AI-specific ships, go beyond "safe" levels of heat, and start things melting in hilarious (And somewhat unpleasant) fashion.

Ooh, random idea: When better AI is implemented, the highest end should be tied to crewmembers, so that BOBBY AI gets something just a bit better than it is now. That way, fighters become more effective than drones.

 

[deadisland]

I admit, like many I had a knee-jerk reaction to the OP after reading it, but, I took some time to re-read it and talk about it with a trusted gamer friend. That being said, as a almost always solo PvE player, I do not like this idea for a few reasons:

1) Part of the claim is that power systems are hard to build.

Now, I may have been blessed or maybe I'm insane, who knows, but I have never found building a power system on a ship or station hard, for me, doing so is easy, things like shipyards, cargo and turrets are more of a challenge, but that if because I favor Star Trek styled designs. You talk of lack of complexity to building power systems, well I rather like how uncompleted it is. Games like Space Engineers, which have more complex power systems are not nearly as fun for me to play on, because every part of the ship needs so much micro-management that I can't enjoy flying it.

2)Try and stop people from building "Death Cubes".

Now, I've been playing StarMade from about 3 months before the cargo update till now, and in that time I've seen 3 "death cube" ships, all of them were mining ships............ I've played on several servers and have never ran across a cube/wedge/brick shaped ship that was a combat ship, so really, I read about stopping "death cubes" and I wonder, where are you seeing these?

3)Design choice limitation due supposedly making a ship weak by placing a interior.

You hit that nail of the head there and while I've seen this brought up before, in all 15 pages of comments I read, I will, but in a different light I hope. Like many players, I do not do RP interiors, I don't, I've never liked RP in ANY game I've played, from WoW to Star Trek Online to Runes of Magic to DCUO to RIFT, you name it I might have played it. In all this time, I've disliked the idea of RP, refused to even do it, because that's not why I play the game, I didn't play a paladin in WoW to pretend to be some noble knight that rescues a fair prince and lives happily ever after. I played because the paladin at the time was one of the classes whose play style was liked by me, I'm a Tactical Captain In STO because I liked the idea of the extra damage abilities they got, not because I imagine myself a member of star-fleet.

Every ship I've ever build had a small interior if it was large enough to have one, mostly, the interior was about function over form: a teleporter to go between ship and station or ship to ship with, room for the ship core so I can get in and out with ease, a Storage box if the ship is meant to have cargo of any size, things of that nature. I don't need or use a cafeteria, restrooms, "sleeping" quarters, false bridges that are only for looks or other useless to me design choices like that, because I don't RP that this ship is anything more then a collection of blocks I've slapped together to play with. If someone want's to build such a RP interior in there ship in place of systems blocks, go ahead, do so if it what your want to do and how you like to build , I have ZERO care if you do. Beware tho, if you tangle with me, because my ship may look on the outside like the USS Defiant, but I have more shields and bigger guns and can out fly your so called battle-cruiser.

With what was posted about heat influence areas and making systems preform less efficiently while in them and create extra heat, I can't help but feel like your saying make your ships either have large empty spaces that are wasted or have RP interior, I really can't see anything else.
The ships I build, Star Trek style they may be, but if I build a ship based on the Sovereign-class USS Enterprise Ncc-1701 E the ship is not gonna be 1:1 scale, it's gonna be a handmade ship that is more like 1/3 scale and has a hidden door that leads right into the small, sometimes cramped interior that is all a single player like me needs.

4) Too many blocks involved and focus on regeneration.

As far as too many blocks, I really can't see it, but than again, with never having problems with power systems, maybe I don't see it. The supposed focus on regeneration for me only comes when attempting to build recon or stealth craft. Not a single fighter, corvette, frigate, cruiser or larger ship I've built have every had a massive focus on regen, every one has always ever had enough to make sure I could run ion passive, power shields, fire weapons, use my engines and charge my jump drive as needed, sometime at the same time. A frigate with powerful rapid fire cannons will have a regen that allows me to fire them with out stopping, while a large cruiser will need time to charge between it's large missiles that are it's main weapons while it's beam turrets keep constant fire on enemy ships. A miner will need only enough regen to power it's jump-drive and scanner since salvage beams take so little.


In all fairness, I am ready and willing to revise my opinion on this proposal if given more facts, more information on how this will impact ship design, more of a concrete idea of what the new system will be, more information on how it will tie into changes in weapons and shields and other systems. Ultimately , I really need to see the whole picture before I'd even feel comfortable saying yes to this proposal, there is just too much still in the air and unknown to say yes.

 

[jorgekorke]

I won't really repeat and reinforce all the arguments of why this is all a bad idea, I'll just request something.

Do a legit test, and by that I don't mean "throw in dev for 3 days and release" - do a serious battery of tests on a specific server, rally the community to check it out if it's gonna work, and what consequences will happen. EDIT: And more importantly, do not fear tossing it to the trash if it all goes south. Do not let personal ego interefere in the development.

I'm telling this because despite the name "proposal", I do get the feeling that this is almost a final word.

This is bringing me bad memories.

 

[Comradecolonel]

To me it seems like a bigger issue of having systems built the way they are now. I find I sometimes get confused when I am on bigger build because I can't see what I'm doing after a while. There are many ways the build process could be enhanced. Build tools could definitely use some new features. Right now editing and refitting ships can be a pain. Making building faster and easier would reduce A LOT of the workload in the long run.

I think the dynamics of the current power mechanics are good we just need more ways to use the mechanics that we have. I like the idea of having to build reactor systems that allow me to customize how my systems function. I think certain set ups should focus on creating different characteristics for ship. Regen focus systems could be good at some things while large capacity systems are good for others. As others have stated this is an area where there can be new power systems to add depth.

Right now the physical design of your systems matters very little. All that matters is their impact on the ships stats. Where they are placed in relation to enemy fire is the only secondary concern. You could literally make a checker pattern of all your different systems and they would functionally be the same. The main appeal of the new system is there would be various structures to your systems instead of big blobs. the hope is that it will allow us to create more interesting insides and functional interiors. I think this would be an amazing improvement. As long as these new systems aren't geometrically limited it would make for more interesting ships.

 

[Yetter]

so... what the hell is this? If there's only going to be heat, how can we tell how much power we're using for our weapons, and how much we can give to them? Seems a little silly, honestly. I don't see what people are on about saying this is going to be awesome.

Assuming I understand it, your weapons would not use power, they would generate heat (every time you fire = x heat per/sec). If your start to generate too much heat you need to add another reactor blocks. cooling chambers dictate how quickly the heat level goes down. Frankly, I prefer the idea of building an engine room as oppose to the current model which is fill as much empty space as possible with power,shields and regen blocks

 

[DukeofRealms]

Do a legit test, and by that I don't mean "throw in dev for 3 days and release" - do a serious battery of tests on a specific server, rally the community to check it out if it's gonna work, and what consequences will happen. EDIT: And more importantly, do not fear tossing it to the trash if it all goes south. Do not let personal ego interefere in the development.

We haven't started development on this, we've come up with an idea and have decided to share it with the community to find out what's good and what's not. I expect to see it take at least weeks to mature enough to be implemented as a test feature (turned on by config) and months before it's tested, balanced and reworked in-game for it to replace the previous system.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Wow, I have been wishing for a power system akin to the ideas presented in the original post.
Sorry, I haven't read all the following posts.

“Heat” influence area or boundary box

Logically, wouldn't this be hazardous?

• deadly for players and NPCs building interior in these areas.
• damaging for systems, interrior structures
  • My solution would be to allow for and use containment.
    • Could be armor, forcefields or shielding as containment.
    • Forcefields and shields should require power from the reactor to generate. If they fail, the boundary area is hazardous and deadly to players and NPCs. Would make moving through ship interiors contaminated with this boundary an obstacle or a useful defense against intruders or boarding parties.

 

[ashenswift]

My two pieces:

First: I saw someone else ask and not get answered. I'd like more info on how it works with docked entities. Self sufficient turrets, fighters, etc.

Second: I don't mind the bounding box idea. I feel however, it should conform to the volume and the shape of the reactor. Say you have a 6 block reactor, and for shiggles, we'll say the volume of the bounding box is 6x the reactor size. So that's a 36 block box. If you build your reactor in a stick, have the box fit to that stick. So you have like, a 9 x 2 x 2 bounding box around it. or whatever. If you build a 2 x 2 x 2 L cube reactor, you have a 3 x 3 x 4 L shaped bounding box around it, or however. That would allow us to customize our reactors and the bounding boxes around them to fit our designs.

 

[MacThule]

I'm completely not seeing how this proposal resolves any issues of game mechanics. The problems stated in the proposal are about Design, Complexity, & Number of Blocks. Then in the solution it sounds more like this is about mechanics and balance (it mentions this somehow reducing the need for workarounds, but never says what is being worked around or why an alternative system would have less fundamental issues to be worked around). This is confusing me; the stated problems don't feel like they warrant a re-design of every system in the game from the bottom up, but an issue of the current system causing too many implementation problems would absolutely warrant that... if the solution is indeed somehow more free from unforeseen roadblocks of its own. I feel like any coded system must include certain walls that need to be worked around.

Is there a strong reason why BOTH power systems (current & reactor model) could not exist in the game together, as vastly alien system alternatives. That is - rather than totally eliminate the current system, simply adding reactor-style generators with heat-based power grids so that entities could operate on either one type of power or the other?

Also... I'm having difficulty grasping why I would WANT to fill the interior of a ship with with "interior hull," regardless of cost or mass. Wouldn't it be better to simply leave any space between systems & interior rooms open? It would be easier to make internal modifications, easier to see systems from within the ship. Would dumping a ton of interior hull into the gaps yield some kind of benefit or performance advantage to my ship?

These demurrers aside, I'm not entirely opposed. The system sounds engaging, complex, and potentially fun. I'm just not convinced that the problem warrants a solution so complex and time-consuming to implement at this point in development. If this proposal is indeed fairly close to what ends up happening, I do think it could dovetail well with finally requiring ships systems be tied into a power generator with some sort of conduit and feels a bit like a positive step towards upping the complexity of the entire game, leading towards systems such as life support.

 

[Criss]

Wouldn't it be better to simply leave any space between systems & interior rooms open?

It is subject to change, but without that hull a shot through your armor has a straight uninterrupted line to your systems.

 

[Katorone]

I'm liking the sound of this proposal! A few thoughts crossed my mind:
- Will we be able to reroute the heat to a different area as well? Maybe offset the heat box by using a heat conductor block.
- Why would multiple reactors create a higher inefficiency if their heat boxes aren't overlapping?
- How does this behave with docked entities? Are self sufficient turrets also made more inefficient the more you have docked?
- What happens with ships docked inside the heat area? (I'd be in favour of having the effect depend on its AI settings to simulate active/inactive modules.)
- With the weapon rebalance, will you also rebalance targeting? We need more options WRT range & priority of targets. With the heat mechanism we'll need to be able to fine-tune when each weapon will fire in case the ship isn't dimensioned to have them firing all at once.
- Would bigger cabling decrease the loss? Just like in reality where large diameter cabling gives less loss by heat.
- Will we get tools that give us an idea about our heat potential and the impact of each system (including conductors), so we can dimension our reactor accordingly? Since the shipyard doesn't allow for testing weapons or rails, this information would be invaluable.

 

[Valiant70]

It is subject to change, but without that hull a shot through your armor has a straight uninterrupted line to your systems.

This should probably change somehow, as this makes non-interior still better than interior.

 

[Drakkart]

You are not limited to only one reactor core on your ship though, you can put down more of them but the heat generated by your systems would be increased per additional reactor.

What is the reasoning of putting penalties on multiple core designs against single core designs

Systems (weapons, thrust, power, etc) will take a considerably smaller amount of space on your ship. This could be ranging from 5% (large ships) to 50% (small ships) of your total block count. The way we will achieve this is described in the section below.

Why should that be the case if i buiuld something bigger it naturally offers more volume why should we not use the volume?

Due to systems being a lot smaller, there will be a lot more empty space the larger a ship gets. The player is free to leave it empty, or put in decoration and interior at a very low cost to mass.

You are aware that interior design does not work like i buildd interior around systems... Atm we build interior and then put systems around it between hull and interior your new "solution" sounds like your systems want to be packed close to each other which totally works against interior building as it is. kinda bad idea if you ask me.

Heat cooldown will be constant and independent of how big your reactor is. What changes is the speed in which a ship accumulates heat depending on how optimal their reactor is built.

Why would heat cooldown be constant. why can we not influence it?
Ok look you want to change power generation ok. you think implementing heat as countermeasure would be cool ok. Then we of course demand heat sink blocks to be placed as ship hull and conduits moving the heat and bigger reactors ofc will demand more such conduits and of course more heatsinks... And same for systems them generating heat, same issue... BUT Why should we not be able to place multiple reactors on bigger ships? given each reactor has it's cooling thing?
I do not think you are aware of the consequences of what kind of build style such changes to systems would dictate for interior design. If we are supposed to fill the gaps between stuff that does not like each other ...

Each reactor core has their own “Heat” influence area or boundary box, which takes the shape of your ship’s dimension box and its size is determined by the reactor core block amount. If this Heat boundary box overlaps with any other system, or another reactor core, extra heat generation penalties are added. This forces you to think twice where to place your reactors and it limits the amount of blocks you can use in your reactors. Your weapons/thrusters/etc cannot be within those heat boxes or you will suffer a large efficiency loss.

You probably will up the hurdle to get into the game by a very big margin. Meaning if you think right now a few people had issues understand how to build effective ships with the actual power system don't dare to think about how this will become with this new system in place.
Also i see big problems regarding turret building how will you handle the heat stuff over docked entities... your ai is not even able to figure that it should switch targets when it has no LoS, Why do you even consider us liking the idea of a area related heat system, in such complex surroundings with moving parts where the calculations for heat spread become even more complicated than a simple LoS check.

I am very critical about these announcements and i am assuming schine is going to take the usual shortcuts instead of really solving the issues. I do not believe that this will allow newer players to understand the game more easily untill i see the described concept prooven to be easy to apply without hindering our creativity regarding interior design. There is nothing wrong with bigger ships providing more volume /surface ratio than smaller ships for systems. I fear your changes are going to backfire in some way because schine probably did not think through this idea to it's fullest consequences.. Well, we will see...

 

[Panpiper]

It is clear that with the rapid growth in size of this thread, people are reading the OP and responding solely to that, without having read the very great many critical posts buried in the 16 pages of thread. It is perfectly understandable that people will want to be supportive of the developers, but they are as human as the rest of us and just as capable of making mistakes as any. It is my STRONG opinion that the wholesale "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" that this proposal represents is using a sledgehammer to swat a fly, and is frankly a bad idea, as I elaborated upon in a previous post.

 

[Kadeon]

Shape and Size problem!
First of all I see this actually being worse in many ways to the current system. Why I see this is due to the extra level of complexity causing ships to be either massive or small while cutting out all the ships in the middle. The heat boundary system is why. It limits all the ship sizes to either being a cube as this would still be one of the best or to being very long drawn out ships so the heat boundary is is escaped. The third picture on how the heat systems work to show the ship total size affects the heat boundary. Why not just make a spike of armor or inner armor to enlarge the boundary? As far as medium ships are concerned it will force them to have to fit the power core in a very certain way in order to get enough power/heat ratios to support a decent thruster/shield/weapon systems. making the shapes for ships even more box like. As of the current power system you can snake it around the sides and through small areas without forcing the ship to become a square. This will force you to place it one way and one way only. I know deathcubes are going to stay the same and its hard to get away from that but this will cut down on those ships that weren't like that as they can no longer attempt to spread out the power system in order to get different ship shapes.

Ship Design Favoritism
It is not possible to truly remove such a idea as it will always be a mold based on min/max values. This reactor system embraces it abit more then the older power system. The heat boundaries also affect where systems must be placed therefore you either place a ractor in the center and expose systems to the outside or the reactor on a edge with a boundary armor spike (pushes the outer ship boundary further out) and the systems in the center. This makes the middle ground a giant rectangle in my image with reactor on one side and systems on the other, off center just enough for heat boundaries. truth be told I can't prove this 100% without actually being able to see it in action but based on everything that is how I see it playing out at the moment.

Core, Chambers, Conduit, Coolant...
This is rather nice as it adds a decent set of realism to the power systems but I also foresee a problem here. While the core and chamber system needs a bit more of a clean cut explanation before I can really decide how that fully works out. With what information I can read currently it looks like you will have a core placed that has a conduit connection to a nearby chamber. The size of the core directly relates to the size of the chamber and they must be close due to conduit distance to loss ratios. Since the one picture lets us connect a core to more then one chamber that could offset the size needed for each chamber but with far to great of a heat boundary spread. No one way to be certain on this as I do not know how heat boundaries are currently calculated. The idea of having coolant is nice as well but it always adds a lot more maintenance to a ship as in does it require and refill/change of coolant? Little maintenance is one of the greatest aspect of this game. Fly ships, waste enemy ships, mine rocks, build stations but you do not have to micromanage each part over and over.

Ending Note
I see an idea here that could work but has to be looked at more from a game logic point rather then realistic systems. Forcing areas to be open or non vital filler is not something many will agree with when time comes to actually build said ship. Looks nice on paper but then you attempt to figure out how you are going to fit anything where you it would want to be. Your weapons can't be near the reactor section of the ship. Unless you build a massive cube/rectangle and have the reactors in the center so all your systems can be spread out along the outer sides. The idea of more then one reactor is great but with a massive power loss/heat increase makes it pointless as it only adds more heat boundary. The last thing I worry about is how the game will handle having all these new area sections being generated and calculations on the reactors during combat damage to system performance. All in all the power/weapon/shields could use a quality of life update, I just have my worries.

 

[Valiant70]

It is clear that with the rapid growth in size of this thread, people are reading the OP and responding solely to that, without having read the very great many critical posts buried in the 16 pages of thread. It is perfectly understandable that people will want to be supportive of the developers, but they are as human as the rest of us and just as capable of making mistakes as any. It is my STRONG opinion that the wholesale "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" that this proposal represents is using a sledgehammer to swat a fly, and is frankly a bad idea, as I elaborated upon in a previous post.

The reason I continue to support this change regardless of the arguments you laid out is that it does something that no change to the current system can do. It makes room around my reactor for a cool reactor room, and forces less aesthetically-minded players to leave it empty. Thus I get a cool reactor room with no drawback. After reading the dev post, I'm getting mental images of what ships might look like if the change goes through, and I'd rather play the game I see through my mind's eye than the one currently on my hard drive. I would enjoy making those ships a lot more than I enjoy making ships with the current power system or a modification thereof. I believe we will ultimately get a better and more unique game if we bite the bullet and go through with the change. Refitting your ships and stations in the new system should be more fun and less tedious than refitting them in the current system.

We're not swatting a fly. We're swatting a goliath beetle. I'd rather use the sledgehammer and kill it in one whack.
[doublepost=1486940062,1486939626][/doublepost]

The idea of having coolant is nice as well but it always adds a lot more maintenance to a ship as in does it require and refill/change of coolant? Little maintenance is one of the greatest aspect of this game. Fly ships, waste enemy ships, mine rocks, build stations but you do not have to micromanage each part over and over.

Well, you could just have a little refueling dock on your station linked to your home base's stockpile of coolant. That would make it easy to refuel. Just dock and it happens. If you only use coolant when you push the ship really hard and run too hot, how bad could it be? Using coolant would give an advantage until it runs out. Designing ships to work without it would give an advantage in longer battles.

Ending Note
I see an idea here that could work but has to be looked at more from a game logic point rather then realistic systems. Forcing areas to be open or non vital filler is not something many will agree with when time comes to actually build said ship. Looks nice on paper but then you attempt to figure out how you are going to fit anything where you it would want to be. Your weapons can't be near the reactor section of the ship. Unless you build a massive cube/rectangle and have the reactors in the center so all your systems can be spread out along the outer sides. The idea of more then one reactor is great but with a massive power loss/heat increase makes it pointless as it only adds more heat boundary. The last thing I worry about is how the game will handle having all these new area sections being generated and calculations on the reactors during combat damage to system performance. All in all the power/weapon/shields could use a quality of life update, I just have my worries.

I already have several mental solutions for some of my favorite hull shapes. I'd like to see a working concept so I can test them out a little bit.