Power System Overhaul Proposal

[Lolvondon]

This is a proposal; we're looking for feedback on this system so that we can develop the best power system with assistance from the community. We realise that we may have overlooked some aspects of gameplay, this is why we're sharing our idea. Let's work together to create something great. Posts that aren't contributing to the discussion here will be removed, let's keep it clean. - DukeofRealms

Introduction

The power system was a point of contention for as long as StarMade existed, and there was never a real consensus on a specific solution. We went through every possible way to rebalance the current system, but each of them would create a problem elsewhere. We realized that we would have to redo a big portion of that later and waste even more time on things we can resolve right now.

Instead of trying to keep a broken system alive, we decided to make a cut and redesign it from the ground up. This solution would be drastic and would require you to refit power in almost all of your ships. However, in the long run this would still be better as changes in the new system would require a lot less adaption from this point on. So instead of frustrating players with small changes that likely wouldn’t fix the problems to begin with and would require players to refit their ships every time, we decided that it’s better to do one big change to solve the core problems once and for all. It’s important that we get this right from the start which is why we’re asking you for more feedback.

Since a news post is probably not the best place to discuss it, we moved it to here. We will be making more of these threads to keep you in touch.

Please keep in mind that everything is subject to change if there is a valid reason to do so. We kindly ask that you keep the discussions civil. These threads will be heavily moderated to ensure the most productive discourse possible.

The way we went about designing this new system is a relatively straightforward procedure:

1. Identify the problems
2. Find out what causes the problems
3. Try to eliminate those causes with new mechanics

Problems with the current power system

According to our own experience and player experiences shared on the forums, we have identified the following problems.

1. Forced design choices
2. Lack of complexity
3. Too many blocks involved (number, not types)
4. Focused on regen

Some of these overlap a bit though.

Forced design choices

StarMade has a great build system with endless options when it comes to decorating your structures or creating complex interiors, yet making a ship functional with all our systems can take a while and is usually a less creative process.

It’s not only the power system that suffers from it, but every other functional system that follows its design principles. Currently, most ships have a non functional ‘skin’ and everything else is filled to the brim with systems.

Filling your entire ship with systems is the most optimal way to make a ship. Making any interior or extra decoration creates weaknesses on your ship. It also favours one ship shape over another, in order to fill it with as many systems as possible; Doom cubes.

More systems and power means a better ship, and there is no incentive or mechanic that would ever make a pretty ship with interior as good as one filled with systems.
​

Lack of complexity

Our current power system has only 3 different block types which would be fine if it mattered more in how you placed them. That’s not always the case and usually there’s little to do besides changing the amount of a certain block when necessary.

This gets very tedious at larger scales. Fitting a bigger ship with power blocks is just a matter of finding the space for it. There doesn’t have to be any thought about placement and possible consequences. Additionally there is no way to customize your ship’s power systems.

The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and increases the total number of blocks.
​

Too many blocks involved

As the system forces you to balance the amount of blocks placed on your ship between 3 power block types, you constantly end up removing one type to replace it with another unless you calculate the amount of blocks needed for each type. Even then you have to roughly know how many blocks your ship can fit.

This is fine for ships where only a few hundred blocks are involved. You usually remember where you placed them and changing ratios isn’t a long process. Each system block matters a lot more in this case.

It’s not fine when your ship size becomes larger. Most ships have more than 100,000 blocks and it’s impossible to know where you placed all your blocks down. Filling your ship with the correct amount of blocks per type is a tedious and long process. Not to mention that changing it afterwards is even more frustrating where you have to dig for specific block types and you end up with a complete system mess.

Although additional build tools could alleviate some of these issues, it would never be completely resolved and any new system we add here would inherit this fundamental problem.

The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and only gets worse with a higher total block count. Also, the volume to surface area does not scale favorably for balance, and there is no incentive not to fill up a ship with systems. The larger your ship, the more volume you usually have compared to your surface area.
​

Focused on regen

Currently you will always care more about power regen than capacity, mostly because it’s scaled that way. In almost every case, you want to equalize your power regen with your total consumption during combat. Your capacity would be increased to have a small reserve that equals this consumption so that you can use all your systems at once and regen the power within a few seconds.

This results in a boring way of building ships since there’s little difference in power systems for any ship you create, it’s a simple equation and can result in a lot of frustration to achieve that goal.

Not to mention that it’s hard to make the AI use this system when their capacity is always too low to work with.​

Solution

To get rid of the aforementioned problems, we need to turn the entire power system upside down. This will break most if not all current ships but to us, it’s a necessary step to continue on game mechanics without always having to find workarounds.

As redoing the systems now will be easier, yet more complex, we hope you will find it a refreshing and fun building process. Additional build tools will speed up that process where you refurbish any of your ships.

A short summation of what we’ll do:

• 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.

• 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.

• We will also offer a block to serve as an “inner hull”, which will be a low mass, low HP block. You could use it to fill empty areas in your ship, or replace it with real interiors without making the ship weaker by doing that.

• Normal hull (armor) will add enough mass so it would not be viable to fill your ships with it.

• Making sure that most systems are usually clustered together and not spread out all over the ship in small amounts. This makes defending specific areas of your ship more important and could be incentive to add more inner armor to those locations.

• As the amount of blocks involved is a lot less than before, we can add extra mechanics to the placement of system blocks. That will introduce complexity on a small scale since every block you place is equally important.

• Provide context based information to the player and add “logical” mechanics to a ship to make it easier for players to get started. Also keeping the new system easy to use for small ships.

• Change armor so that it scales accordingly for weaker and larger ships, without adding extra thickness to your ship.

• Weapons will also be adjusted although that’s for another thread.

Reactor design

The new power system is of a modular design. Depending on your reactor size, you’ll have 1 or more components that influence the final result and define your ship’s capability:​

• Reactor core:
• Reactor chamber types:
  • Reactor rod system that requires built-in coolant
    
  • Heat shielding
    
  • Coolant Tanks
    
  • ...
• Conduits to connect the chambers

The reactor core (a relatively small cluster of blocks) defines it output. The bigger your reactor is, the more complex it will get. This means you will have to add and connect additional chambers to your reactor at certain points to keep it from producing additional heat. When considering new players, this ensures that building power for a very small ship is still easy. It’s complexity grows with ship size, so the learning curve for players will not get too steep.

Heat

We remove “power regen” and “power capacity” as we know them right now and replace it with only one value you would see on your screen: Heat, 0% to 100%

Anything that previously used power, will now generate heat instead. Depending on your reactor size and how you build it, the heat you accumulate will be manageable...or it won’t be.

If your reactor is too small for the systems you want to use, they generate more heat than usual:

• Reactor has X output depending on reactor core (optimally built reactor)
• Needs Y power depending on systems (weapons, thrust, etc)
  • Y - X = deviation
• Heat generated is deviation + defaultMinOfSystem

If your reactor is too big, you would not generate extra heat, but you would be wasting power and space due to the new “heat influence area” or “hear boundary” system we will talk about below.

Heat generation will be available to the player in percent by value. We will also break down for the player, what they can do to improve their reactor.
​

Cooldown

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. Accumulating too much heat will affect your systems, and if you keep pushing to the limit, systems would even shut down completely. We could introduce all sorts of ways to have Heat influence your ship, or even have Stars influence your Heat if that would be a nice addition.

With this system, detach the system from large numbers since your Heat levels will always be between 0% and 100% and your heat dissipation will be a % per second.

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. Putting additional reactors down will ensure that you have backups running if one or more reactors get damaged or destroyed during battle so it’s a nice balance between efficiency and sustainability that you can define.
​

Heat Influence Area

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.

This does create a lot of empty space between your systems, space that can be filled up with something that isn’t systems like interior.

The designer is of course free to chose if they want to have an interior. We will also offer a“Inner Hull” block which will be cheap, have low mass and no armor, with a few block hp to not directly expose your inner systems on a hull breach.

Their collective mass would be negligible compared to what your systems and armor add to the ship and they would also not add enough protection to where it’s better to fill up a ship instead of having an interior.

We will also have some extra build tools to help you out with filling/removing that particular block type.
​

Other systems

Shields could be their own “reactor” with its own chambers etc and we could do something similar to thrusters.

They could also just be a few chambers that use a Power reactor.

We’re not sure about that yet though, it doesn’t matter too much as long as those system’s block count is kept small. Both are limited by their Heat generation so we don’t need to do anything besides buffing their values per block and adjusting the heat generation to make them work for now.​

Reactor mechanics

The bigger your reactor gets, the more requirements it will get to keep heat generation to a minimum. This means that you could build a small fighter without having to worry about reactor placement at all. Also, building the iconic core + power + thrust stick will still be possible.

When you build medium sized ships, not only will the heat influence area already affect the placement of your systems a little, but you will also get more heat generation in general. To keep this heat generation low, you can add an additional chamber to your reactor. And the more core blocks the reactor gets, the more chambers can be added to keep heat generation low.

The Core and Chambers each have their own local heat area which is only relevant to the reactor design. The size of those areas will be its groups dimensions multiplied by a factor depending on balance. If this box overlaps with other local boxes, you get a rather big efficiency loss. This means each chamber will have to be independent.

Core

As this is the base component, its size defines the base statistics/output of your ship. Currently there’s only one block type for it right now so you just end up placing them together as a small group.

A bigger reactor core group can be connected to other chambers in order to combat growing heat generation, add additional output or achieve a different effect. We haven’t fully decided on the specific types of chambers yet.
​

Chamber

A chamber is essentially an upgrade to your reactor. Each chamber will only be effective at a certain minimum size of reactor. It could combat heat generation, amplify output, redirect that output to another system (shields?) or just be a necessary component to be there or else a Reactor core wouldn’t do anything.
To keep your reactor optimal, you’ll require more chambers the bigger your reactor core goes. The specifics aren’t fully set in stone of course.

The base mechanics stay the same however, each chamber type has its own build restrictions and requirements in order to be valid.
Example: A reactor chamber could be reactor rods, to maximize output for a mid-sized reactor core. It would generate heat, if water is touching them that heat would be less. They have to be in a single group or there would be penalties.

The total heat versus the total amount of rod blocks determines its efficiency, stability, heat radius, throughput and more… It doesn’t matter too much what we do with this since we can easily change it between updates without messing people up.

A chamber will orientate on the size of the reactor core. That’s easy to adjust if needed.

Chamber shape and placement could also be an important factor to keep in mind. A “Thruster” chamber (if we’re going to use that) could be great for rotation when placed near your Center of Mass. And great for a particular thrust direction when placed the furthest away from your Center of Mass on that axis.
​

Conduit

The block you use to connect chambers with other chambers, or connecting them back to the reactor core is done by using Conduits. A single conduit block has a fixed throughput but the longer a line is, the more throughput loss you get.

You would prefer to have these conduits as short as possible.​

Kupu made some info graphics of this current system and how it might look like if implemented:

• Example of a reactor

• Below is an example of how it could look like in-game for a ship. Any not used space would either be inner hull or interior. You could also make interior within the heat boundary boxes since those only affect systems.

• Keep in mind that the heat boundary box doesn’t go out of the ship dimension box. Putting your reactors on the edge of your ship will make the heat boundary box move till it’s not overlapping with the edges. It’s basically forcing the heat boundary box to be more inside of the ship than the reactor itself.

I for one am very excited if such a system would occur. A reactor makes much more sense realistically and goes in touch with the overheating principles of ships. In a tactical and role-play ship, a reactor creates weak-spots on massive craft (much like the infamous Death Star) that make fighting it (and defending it) all the more intense! However, I am not so supportive of completely removing the old power systems. I recommend keeping both. The old system could be used for small craft and turrets (as the designs shown above seem to be taking up A LOT of space). The new reactors could be on larger ships and stations: things that need a lot of power per output. As for practicality, I propose a logic system that can toggle reactor activity- essentially a kill switch. If a large ship or station has an unstable reactor, it could resort to other reactors and/or the old system just to keep it barely functioning (and able to escape). Things like sensors that detect shield damage to kill-switch a reactor could be a great addition to this system!

 

[Andir]

The problem I see with everyone claiming crews being the answer is that even today the US Navy is constructing and developing systems which use fewer and fewer people. Humanity as a whole is probably not going back to huge battleship turrets with manned ammo loaders and sighters. We are moving to electronic controls and automation to do these menial tasks making turrets more capable and powerful without the need to put people there. While it's fun to imagine players manning turrets, it's just not realistic to imagine that a space faring race of people have not figured out the computational power to control a turret from a central location. This breaks so much immersion and common sense for me that it hurts. Turrets of the future will not be crewed in the sense that you think about in sci-fi movies. It even bothers me that the game purposefully factors in a miss ratio where the computers are so good at tracking that we have to account for for that.

 

[entarlas]

I agree with a more complex and compact reactor system, but I strongly disagree with arbitrary boundaries that prevent systems from functioning, and I propose an alternative somewhat similar to others in the thread.

1. Increase reactor complexity with various systems around the core to increase efficiency and safety in the event of overheating. Furthermore, add heat sinks, radiator blocks, and possibly coolant pipes to connect them. Reactors would provide power and produce heat as a by-product. As power demands increase, so too would heat output.

2. Instead of arbitrary boundaries, tie heat management to the surface area of hull and armor blocks exposed to space. Armor blocks would be less efficient at dissipating heat than basic hull blocks, therefore forcing design choices to be made. Lightly armored ships with fast heat dissipation would be one extreme, while heavily-armored brawlers devoting lots of internal space to heat sinks would be the other.

Hull shape would also be important, as the surface area to volume ratio of an oversized brick is lacking, to say the least. This would be the death knell of efficient Borg cubes of massive size, due to the square-cube law. This would also allow for more design decisions and compromises, since a non-combat ship such as a cargo or mining vessel could get away with a boxy hull and large, flat "sails" made of basic hull plating or other blocks that act as basic and cheap low-temperature radiators. On the other hand, this arrangement would be less than ideal for a combat ship, which would probably opt for dedicated (but expensive) radiator blocks and heat sinks to prevent their cooling from being shot off the moment the shields go down.

3. The idea of radiators and heat sinks I'm going for are not the hard sci-fi fare of massive retractable panels, but similar to those in the Mass Effect universe, which are strips made of high-temperature material placed along the hull. In game, these would be ordinary but expensive blocks placed along the outer hull that provide a large amount of additional cooling, but take up a small enough area on the hull that they are not blatantly obvious weak points for the average weapon. The radiators could glow with heat when under heavy load, which would be a nice visual effect and allow for creative design choices, such as a symbol on the hull only becoming obvious when the ship is operating at full combat power.

4. Overheating. Vessels should suffer from overheating if heat output exceeds heat dissipation, and any heat sinks are already overburdened. First, this would cause HUD warnings. Second, radiators and blocks close to them would begin to take damage, exacerbating the problem if the ship continues to operate over-capacity as these systems are destroyed. Lastly, the reactor core or cores would melt down, causing extensive internal damage and disabling the vessel, even gutting it. Internal armoring should be able to mitigate this effect, but if coolant pipes are implemented, would force compromises. Reactors should not explode by being directly hit, but only through battle damage to cooling systems that would be distributed throughout the ship in a good design.

5. The system should be balanced so that massive flying bricks and spheres dedicated to combat are highly inefficient or even non-functional, but well before the point that space-borne chandeliers rule the skies. That would be silly.

I actually love this idea!

 

[Zylofan]

So just some thoughts off the top of my head.

I like the sound of the idea so far, I'm sure some problems will arise once the players get their hands on it, but if not the perfect fix out of the gate it is a step in the right direction and I agree that this needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Anything that removes death cubes and lets my cool looking ship be viable is A OK in my book. Yes this wont stop people from filling their ship with tat to give it a bit more HP but maybe when crews become a bigger thing that problem can be solved too. Or make it so the only way to fix an overheated system is to physically walk over to it and fix it, making it crucial for players to build walkways to their systems.

As for the worry about core mining. I think its already been said but the solution is multiple smaller generators, and honestly I like the trade off. You can build the death star with its one major weak point, or you can build something a bit safer but less powerful.

 

[Jojomo]

Let alone the lag issue, the coding issues, and finally the idea of punishing people for not interior designing when it should be a viable trade-off. I like my interior designs, but it's a sacrifice I make willingly. I do not understand why that willing sacrifice should become a heavy-handedly forced situation for everyone.

No-one is being forced to do any interior design - the OP even says that this proposal won't do that. (I'm one of the people who would complain if I had to build interiors)

TL;DR - How is nerfing everything on everyone a fix to any system when the crew update may remedy a lot of these issues to begin with?

Nothing is being nerfed.

 

[Morrigi]

No-one is being forced to do any interior design - the OP even says that this proposal won't do that. (I'm one of the people who would complain if I had to build interiors)


Nothing is being nerfed.

Volume is being nerfed.

 

[Jojomo]

Volume is being nerfed.

Volume is not an ability, nor a system. It can't "be nerfed".

 

[Raisinbat]

I do think that this way of shipbuilding should be discouraged. Slapping together thousands of blocks should not make a good ship.

Why is the aesthetic community so damn determined to exterminate everything that doesn't meet their beauty standards? WHY do you need this? (you don't)

Actual ships with minimal interiors are stronger. Since there is less interior there are more systems, more armor etc.

EXCELLENT OBSERVATION except the ship with interior IS ALSO LIGHTER. I'm going to assume you aren't stupid enough to think that all ships must be equal in strength reagardless of size, mass or cost, so im just going to point out that the power discrepancy you're talking about is found only in the weight of the interior decorations and the armor used to encase the interior. This is an extremely small difference as long as you compare ships of similar mass instead of size, yet the difference between PVP ships and RP ships are more in the range of 2000% or worse; i've seen a 4000 mass ship effortlessly dominate a 70.000 mass ship. That's not a matter of having interior, although it did, it's a matter of being designed by someone who has no idea wtf they're doing.

This complaint is based in the delusion of the RP community. They don't understand what they're talking about and this stupid idea needs to stop being a thing.

On of the biggest problem with the current system is it creates an unbalance in other systems already, if you want t high damage long reload weapon you have to dedicate a lot of mass to capacity where an identical sized weapon array that has a fast rate of fire and low damage can get by simply on regeneration therefore taking up less space and dis-incentivizing pretty much all pulse slave weapons. This of course could be remedied simply by removing capacity and make every weapon system consume power as they reload instead of when they fire much like the sensors.

This is one of the REAL problems with the current power system, why is this not addressed in the OP schema ?

The other one is the power bonus for smaller ships, which is apparently being repeated in the new one. We have fleets; why are big ships limited in power when small ships are not; we'll just end up with huge fleets with thousands of small but efficient ships. Stop these irrational handicaps for big ships, they're pointless, and big ships can easily be limited by simply making the game more aggressive forcing players to defend themselves more and inflicting material loss to limit snowballing, and making mining/crafting a lot slower so you aren't drowning in materials nonstop.

We need to end this false dichotomy between form and function and insisting that those in favor of building for performance first simply cannot conceivably build with style or that a style based on performance is somehow "inferior" to styles based on popular media (making models of famous ships and flying them around for everyone to look at isn't roleplaying; it's more like... cosplay. RP occurs in dialogue and action, not purely in appearance.).

That was beautiful

It's literally anti-creative and discourages Starmadians from evolving styles unique to Starmade. I've seen many ships that were clearly built to optimize performance in the REAL starmade (not theoretical, not based on a show that has nothing to do with starmade) that are super cool looking and unique - there's nothing like them in other games and media. That's a good thing. A great thing. My post was about how much of Starmade's unique style will be lost if the systems are redesigned in a way that makes them have no influence whatsoever on style.

Also would like to point out the existence of starmade unique technology, such as inline turrets. These exist ONLY because systems take up a lot of space, so you needed a way to accomodate the space of a turret without inhibiting the firing arc.

Eliminating system space as a limiting factor is eliminating a central gameplay element, one that's created REAL ships in starmade instead of glorified dollhouses, and you're all gleefully yucking it up like this is some great thing...

I can't see a reason why the proposed system won't reward a particular style - i.e. PvP players will still min/max the new system.

And because you don't minmax you don't understand what we want. On top of that you aren't listening to our complaints, just dismissing them.

This has been explained to you repeatedly by multiple people, i don't even know why i bother to pretend you give a fuck about any other position but your own but hey here we go again.

I want to make mechanical solutions to mechanical problems. If you take all the problems away, what am i going to do?

I think what you have proposed does this. I'd say take a look at dwarf fortress. Its systems are "fun" and provide strategy, but the issue is that the learning curve for beginners is way too high. The game has its niche and if Starmade's goal is a small hardcore community then fine. But if your goal is a large immersive universe with many players its better to have a shallower learning curve so that people of many skill levels can contribute. Not just those that demonstrate mastery. Now i'm not saying that those that master the system shouldn't be rewarded, but maybe we shouldn't make the system more complex just to spread out the player-pool based on building skill. I don't think your proposed system solves your problems.

Dorf fort isn't hard to learn because its complex, it really isn't. It's a very simple game, but there is no introduction, no interface, no help system and the submenus make no intuitive sense. Having a deep game makes a game fun. Making it shallow is not the right solution, there are plenty of ultra simple games noone understands because they are poorly explained.

You want people to understand the system mechanics? Have some challenges in the main menu that gives you a set amount of blocks and challenges you to create a ship with X stat and a quick description and they'll figure it out quickly.

The OP explicitly states that this wouldn't force the addition of interiors. It forces the addition of empty space, internal or external (within bounds), that can optionally be used for interiors.

Which is the removal of the space problem from system design. Eliminating gameplay in the name of aesthetics and roleplayers.

And for what? Because a bunch of idiots can't figure out how to build ships in starmade, or want to force everyone to make RP interiors.

As the PVP community has demonstrated, people are perfectly capable of having interiors on their ships, they're just too stupid.

If you are an RP player, please address this:

• Why is it necessary to force other people to play the way you want them to? (Forcing interior decorating instead of leaving it optional)

• How does the existence of efficient ships detract from your enjoyment of the game? Even if a ship is 50% less powerful, that by no means makes it unable to fight; what makes you think you should be on equal footing with someone putting a lot of effort into their systems, when you haven't put any?

• Why are so many of you complaining about game ballance when you don't understand the current ballance? I don't go on a nuclear physics discussion forum and try to shove my worthless opinion down their throats because i don't know a damn thing about it, if you don't play the game stop talking about it, because this cannot be quoted enough:
  

  The idea that the game should be balanced around the whims of aesthetic RP builders and not around the PvP that those balance changes will actually effect is idiotic.

• Do you see starmade as a purely cosmetic tool, like photoshop, for the creation of creative products rather than a game, or do you eventually want to see gameplay? If you want gameplay, what kind of challenges do you expect that game to have if you are opposed to all design challenges, as all design challenge limits aesthetic freedom?

 

[Jojomo]

And because you don't minmax you don't understand what we want. On top of that you aren't listening to our complaints, just dismissing them.

This has been explained to you repeatedly by multiple people, i don't even know why i bother to pretend you give a scupper about any other position but your own but hey here we go again.

I want to make mechanical solutions to mechanical problems. If you take all the problems away, what am i going to do?

I wonder if you intended this reply for someone else?

I don't call myself a PvP player because I don't have the experience, but I do min/max. I have zero interest in interiors, and I don't care what this proposal does to aesthetics.

No-one is complaining to me.

No-one has explained anything to me (and I haven't asked anyone to).

Should anyone bother to pretend you "give a scupper about any other position but your own"?

Which is the removal of the space problem from system design. Eliminating gameplay in the name of aesthetics and roleplayers.

And for what? Because a bunch of idiots can't figure out how to build ships in starmade, or want to force everyone to make RP interiors.

As the PVP community has demonstrated, people are perfectly capable of having interiors on their ships, they're just too stupid.

If you are an RP player, please address this:

• Why is it necessary to force other people to play the way you want them to? (Forcing interior decorating instead of leaving it optional)

• How does the existence of efficient ships detract from your enjoyment of the game? Even if a ship is 50% less powerful, that by no means makes it unable to fight; what makes you think you should be on equal footing with someone putting a lot of effort into their systems, when you haven't put any?

• Why are so many of you complaining about game ballance when you don't understand the current ballance? I don't go on a nuclear physics discussion forum and try to shove my worthless opinion down their throats because i don't know a damn thing about it, if you don't play the game stop talking about it, because this cannot be quoted enough:

• Do you see starmade as a purely cosmetic tool, like photoshop, for the creation of creative products rather than a game, or do you eventually want to see gameplay? If you want gameplay, what kind of challenges do you expect that game to have if you are opposed to all design challenges, as all design challenge limits aesthetic freedom?

Again, the reason you'd direct this at me is a mystery.

I'm not an RP player.

The OP specifically states that interiors will not be forced, they'll remain optional (which I'm very happy about).

The existence of efficient ships doesn't detract from my enjoyment, it enhances it.

If you're going to attack someone, attack the right person. And when you have the right person make sure you know what their opinions actually are. That was just pathetic.

 

[Raisinbat]

Having some more time to think on this and better understanding the suggestion i want to readdress schema's reason for suggesting this.

• Forced design choices

These are a good thing, they cause us to think about how we design our ships and come up with solutions for them.

• Lack of complexity

Agree with title, not with assessment. Also assuming you mean depth. Depth comes from having a lot of different options. There's no option in this system, it's a completely static design, that's also going to limit what kind of system distribution you're able to have, since this creates design apexes, i don't know where, but either X amount of cores or chambers will get peak performance and you'll stop gaining meaningful performance until reaching some new apex, same with other systems once this is adapted.

• Too many blocks involved (number, not types)

Just like forced design choices, this isn't an issue. The limitations are part of the game.

• Focused on regen

This is the only point i find myself agreeing with, but your explanation seems to lack understanding why. This is a subpoint of lack of complexity; we have no different types of powersystems to design. We can have high capacity/low regen ships in the current powersystem because the powersystem for a 16 second cooldown weapon doubles it's size, compared to a weapon with identical DPS because of the capacitors required. Building a ship that has a peak performance time in combat where it's running of capacitor instead of generation for about 1-2 minutes cannot be done in the current system because capacitor is accessed instantly, so it can blow through it's power in one second and kill its opponent in one hit.

The other problem with power is that, and i've heard this is a developer idea as well, players are never in a position where we have to manage our power, because there's so much of it. We never have to prioritize one system over another, because ships designed with multiple inactive systems are extremely inefficient, primarily because the power system produces plenty of power to keep everything running non-stop.

It's clear you listened to the majority at the forum for this, because the majority of people on these forums don't want a game, but a drawing tool, not because that's a popular opinion but because those are the only people that stay here. Anyone who wants a game gets frustrated and either leaves or gets banned. This time please listen to arguments instead of how many people support something.

The existence of efficient ships doesn't detract from my enjoyment, it enhances it.

Then why are you excited about a system of efficiency (space efficiency) being eliminated from the game?

 

[Jojomo]

Then why are you excited about a system of efficiency (space efficiency) being eliminated from the game?

It's being replaced with another system that has its own efficiency.

 

[Raisinbat]

It's being replaced with another system that has its own efficiency.

No the power system is being replaced, and with one that doesnt have efficiency. Current power has ways to improve the design, new one just has right way and wrong way; It even limits your ability to choose your system distribution freely since you're now tied to apexes based on exact core/chamber mechanic.

So one system is being downgraded, and one is being eliminated.

Again, if you actually like efficiency design, what are you excited about?

 

[Jojomo]

No the power system is being replaced, and with one that doesnt have efficiency. Current power has ways to improve the design, new one just has right way and wrong way; It even limits your ability to choose your system distribution freely since you're now tied to apexes in based on exact core/chamber mechanic.

So one system is being downgraded, and one is being eliminated.

Again, if you actually like efficiency design, what are you excited about?

No, the new system does have efficiency (you can build it efficiently, or inefficiently, or anywhere in between), with more variables to consider and optimise than the current system.
And space efficiency will still exist - you'll still try to minimise volume/surface area etc, while balancing that against reactor efficiency.

 

[Raisinbat]

No, the new system does have efficiency (you can build efficiently, or inefficiently, or anywhere in between), with more variables to consider and optimise than the current system.

Here's your problem; you don't what it means to design efficiently. There's no design involved when one option has all the advantages and one option has all the downsides. That's like saying this is a design game:

We can the square peg in the square hole for good efficiency or we can the square peg in the round hole for poor efficiency, or we can put it in between!!! There are infinite possibilities!!!

When there is one final optimal solution to designing your ship, which this is, there is no design anymore. Like i said, you're either dismissing our arguments or you don't understand them. If you don't get it feel free to ask for clarification, but just dismissing our points all the time is extremely grating.

And space efficiency will still exist - you'll still try to minimise volume/surface area etc, while balancing that against reactor efficiency.

See : Power System Overhaul Proposal (links to post)

This is a spatial optimization problem: How do i shove a 30 block wide powerstick 50 blocks deep into my hull without introducing structural weaknesses, allowing it to rotate, and fitting the hull's powerlines around it?

Because empty space will be everywhere, this problem goes away. There's no ballancing space/surface area against reactor, what does that even mean??? The reactor is completely detached from the space/surface area, it means NOTHING to it.

 

[Jojomo]

Here's your problem; you don't what it means to design efficiently.

A company pays me to design real life ships efficiently every day, so I can have money to eat and live in a house.

There's no design involved when one option has all the advantages and one option has all the downsides. That's like saying this is a design game:

You mean as opposed to the current power system which lets you choose a large triple axis reactor to be efficient, or anything else to be less efficient.
And for space you have you have a single spectrum: use more or use less.

This proposal will have the same choice spectrum for space, and a larger choice spectrum for power.

When there is one final optimal solution to designing your ship, which this is, there is no design anymore. Like i said, you're either dismissing our arguments or you don't understand them. If you don't get it feel free to ask for clarification, but just dismissing our points all the time is extremely grating.

"Our", "our"? Who are you referring to?

Asserting that there will only be one optimal design is ridiculous. Just like in real life and SM currently, designs will depend on role, cost, resource availability, operator ability, and area of operations.

This is a spatial optimization problem: How do i shove a 30 block wide powerstick 50 blocks deep into my hull without introducing structural weaknesses, allowing it to rotate, and fitting the hull's powerlines around it?

Because empty space will be everywhere, this problem goes away.

No it doesn't go away: you'll still want to fit it outside heat boxes. If anything the problem will become more difficult to solve - it looks like heatboxes will be large, and a few large objects are harder to alter to fit something than many small objects.

There's no ballancing space/surface area against reactor, what does that even mean??? The reactor is completely detached from the space/surface area, it means NOTHING to it.

For maximum efficiency you'll have to space reactors and systems apart, which will increase the volume enclosed by your armour, and so increase the armour needed.
That's what it means.

 

[Asypha]

tl;wr (too long; won't read):
Keep power, add resistance, current, and by default, heat. Treat Reactors as DC power supplies, Systems as light bulbs, Conduits as wires, AUX as capacitors. Allow everything to be in series\parallel\separate with everything else.

Also, add an insulator block as a balancing tool to allow both systems stuffing and interior building to co-exist with minimal dis\advantage on small to medium scale ships.

DC Based Power Proposal:
Before you begin, I would like to thank you for making the effort to read the post below.

I would like to make some broad proposals. Do not expect a lot of nuance about block counts etc.

For the power system, I believe that a strong solution would be to model reactors and sub-systems such that they are analogous to real life DC circuits. (eg. batteries and light bulbs, and capacitors for AUX blocks) The math has been solved before and all of the complexity is there for the taking. Additionally, heat is a real issue and is tweakable by setting system efficiencies.

To follow this, you will need some terms.

Variable                |  How it is driven in the new system
V: Voltage in Volts     | (Driven by Reactor(s) Design and connection(s).)
I: Current in Amps      | (Driven by Reactor(s) Design and connection(s).)
R: Resistance in Ohms   | (Adjusts with the size and state (On\Off) of the system.)
P:  Power in Watts      | (Calculated for each System.  Not all Watts are excess.)
wP: Waste Power in Watts| (The amount of power which needs to be dissipated.)
sE: System Efficiency   | (Percent of power consumed (not given off as waste).)

Here is all of the math a players will need to understand and design their complicated systems:
Ohm's Law: V=I*R
Power Formula: P=V*I
Waste Power: wP=P*(1-E)

To clarify the Voltage and Current notes above; elements in DC circuits can be connected either in line with each other (series) or in parallel with each other. These layouts have trade-offs for builders as they decide how to eek out the best performance while balancing survivability.

Series:
Each element (Reactor\System) is connected to the next in a long chain.
+Voltage is constant across all loads
+Voltage is equivalent to the combined voltage of all supplies in the circuit.
=Current is a function of R
-A single failure in the chain stops the flow of energy. (Although depending on how it's implemented in game, It could be assumed that any element connected to a reactor is going to neutral if there is no link after it. Thus the first part of the chain may stay active if the reactor connected can power it. And the severed part may have the same situation if there is a reactor in that portion of the chain. Thus both chains would be operating at reduced Voltage, but otherwise treated normally.)

Parallel:
Elements are connected in such a way as to create separate paths from the reactor to neutral.
+Current is constant across all loads unless damaged or changed.
+Taking out a path does not shutdown the other parts of the circuit. (However, it will change the Voltage going to other sections, possibly sending them over their max voltage, if such a thing is implemented.)
=Voltage is distributed based on R
-Can pull a lot more current
-Power Supplies with differing loads can "fight" each other, with negative effects

Also, I believe that the Aux Block could still have a home in the future (modeled as a capacitor, which it really already is). Although you want to remove regen, I believe that the ability to trade a volatile, dangerous structure inside your ship, for the ability to store and release a large amount of power could provide great complexity with a DC circuit based system. The heat trade off would still be present in whatever is consuming the power and again, and the path from the Aux to the system, and the infrastructure handling it, would need to be able to cope with the stress.

Finally, for the power part of this post; The entire state of the ship's power and sub systems can be presented in three bars. (Assuming the ship has one system in use and not multiple segregated systems) One for Voltage, one for Current, and one for Heat. To get fancy, an additional line could be drawn across the Bars to show ideal states etc. This could be sent as a few bits to something like the Decorative Chart block (just thinking of how it looks), and used as a display. Just mentioning that because I would love to see some graphical displays that mean something.

Benefits of the DC approach:
A surprising amount of complexity.
Conduits like real wires, can have a resistance, naturally creating loss over long runs.
Efficiency of subsystems could be adjusted in real time due surroundings.
Tweaking system voltage\current\resistance\efficiency scaling, has the potential to create interesting and even conflicting reactor, cooling, and infrastructure requirements.
The possibility of causing damage to a system from supplying to little or too much of something it needs. (voltage\current\heat dissipation)
Schematics would allow builders to communicate entire ships subsystems in a common language.
Math is easily discoverable, with plenty of youtube videos to help understanding.
Techniques to simplify and analyze large complicated systems exist and are readily available users.

Dangers:
Requiring low level builders to need to learn the intricacies of circuit design to make a simple ship work. All circuits not explicitly linked in series should be considered on a parallel path to neutral, and their voltage\amperage requirements should be wide enough that simple ships can use a single reactor to power all (or at least most) expected systems. One of the easiest ways to ensure this would be to make the subsystem resistance values close to each other for small systems.
Complexity Creep from, "Wouldn't it be cool to model..." (eg. shifting to AC and attempting to use RF interference modeling to calculate efficencies across systems.)


Some Other Notes about the OP's proposals:

Conduits could come in 3 types, Power (Wires), Heat (Heat Pipes), and Combined (with reduced throughput for each, but able to carry both.)

Reactors could have unpredictable fluctuations in the three variables when built too close to each other without shielding. The same could be done for systems.

Instead of a soft cap, perhaps reduce the stability of large reactors or simply introduce an efficiency curve which will reduce the desire to build past a certain size of weapon. [Edited to note: I am not advocating a hard stop, and I don't feel this correctly presented my desire to introduce a sharp corner in the complexity\danger curve of large ships\systems. I don't want to stop gigaships or cause a single meta to rule them all in terms of size, but feel that larger ships and systems could have weaknesses and concerns that smaller ships don't need to consider, and could sometimes exploit, while gaining capabilities that smaller ships can only cower in front of... (eg. Ya, you can come in for a trench-run style pinpoint attack and possibly lessen my ability to destroy your gigaship, dodging my turrets if your lucky, but you can't really dodge this 10k anti-fighter missile swarm I can fire once every 10 min can you?)]

I side with the numerous other people who have pointed out that, although it is only a place holder name, the idea of housing my crew in a zone so inhospitable that mechanical systems can't operate, is not appealing to my sense of RP. Perhaps rename it interference zones or something.

Also, in response to the void requirement between subsystems to prevent said interference, I propose a new insulation block which reduces a portion of the interference between systems (possibly a percent of the interference at the current location so that more insulation is needed when an overlap is large than when it is small). This would still require some space and not provide a perfect barrier between systems, but still allow a min/maxer to fill the space with systems and some insulation (balancing the mix), to eek out the very most performance they can from their systems, while allowing those who want to build reasonable RP space within a ship the ability to do so at reduced cost to performance provided they build in part of the ship where gains from system blocks would be less than 100%. Min/maxer's would still have the upper hand in a battle, but, provided the interior for the other ship is intelligently positioned, the difference should not be gargantuan. (This assumes overlapping area is not massive in relation to the over all ship.)

As much as I would love to see massive reactor detonations, I don't want to see them becoming hair triggers, even at the upper end. I do not miss the days of core drilling.


Edit:
Reading through another thread, I was reminded that if I don't call out to them, those in charge may not be aware of my proposal. Hopefully this is not frowned upon. If so, I apologize. I just don't want to be lost in the bottom of the pile and missed. With that said, I call to you, schema ,DukeofRealms , Criss , Bench , Saber , Lancake

[edited for clarity and to remove a malformed thought which may have caused misunderstanding.]

 

[Sir_Rob_DSM]

if the goal Is to make smaller ships / ships use less volume why not just increase output/regen/dmg/input on reactors/weapons/thrusters and re-balance mass 10x-100x

we had titans before we had fleets. - now we have fleets and better designed Fighters /Cruisers /BattleCruisers / Battleships/ Carriers

Ive watched ppl stream this game more than ive played this game, The only ships ive ever made/finished are cloaking scouts and small miners ( ive been playing on and off for 3+ years ).

-add new design keep old one in ( make it more powerfull and ppl will use it )

 

[Arcaner]

Looks great... HYPE HYPE HYPE. But when can we expect this to come out? Any rough timings like a couple a months .... (a year?)
This seems like it will take a time....... you have to redesign the whole game pls give us a date

 

[Snowtiger256]

"I reject your reality an substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Seriously raisinbat, that's all I hear from you, if it kills you to adapt your build style so much if this new proposal ever becomes reality that you have to constantly bash other people's opinions because of it, then stop updating your game and be content with what you have. If you're so adamant in your quest for the "creative freedom" you perceive in the good old system, then you have the choice of not going with the system as it is proposed.

Stop bawling about people BREAKING your game and acting like the game will be broken in the next few hours. Realize that the new system is just a PROPOSAL and an offer to get Schine some actual player input on the proposed changes, and it might not even make it into the game in a timely manner, or in the form it was proposed here.

We need to give the folks at Schine time to flesh out the proposal and come up with a dev build so we can actually test what kind of chnges the system will actually incur in game. In the meanwhile, both the proposed system and the game might change, so we might still have to adapt our building process in order to make use of any other changes during the time Schine works on this proposed change.

And for your information, I'm a builder firmly planted on the gray area between RP and PvP, I enjoy both aspects of the game (although I don't have a lot of experience in combat (whether it be PvP or PvE), and I want to see both parties to have fun with the game. I care less about whether my ships are actually capable fighters or not, I just wanna have fun, build ships and be a part of the community. I have seen a lot of ships during my time in-game, some of them have been awesome, and others less-than-that, but it's all cool, because people tend to be different and I respect them for those differences.

 

[johno1928]

someone has almost certainly said everything i'm going to say but ill say it anyway just in case someone starts tallying votes

i think the new system is a great idea but i disagree with how some people are interpreting it. rather than your systems "generating" heat doesn't it make more sense that you run your reactor harder to provide power which produces excess heat? like how a nuclear reactor can produce a little power and a little heat or it can go nuclear, exploding with enormous power and heat.

lastly, will armour count towards your heat-box penalty in the same way as systems?