Change power all you like, it wont help us.

[godsgopher]

Hello Everyone,

I couldn't help but notice that everyone seems rather stirred up over this power issue. I think that's perfectly natural, truth be told I would like to do some screaming and yelling myself. You see I'm a server owner and these purposed changes to power don't help any of us who run servers.

Now please understand me, I'm not opposed to change. After all at some point we all have to admit that 8-track tapes aren't coming back and that were just going to have to embrace these new fangled cassette tapes. Who knows someday in the far future we might have spinning disks that are played by laser light, but then again that might just be too sci-fi for most of you. Things change, we cant stop that. We shouldn't try.

But as a server owner changing power or any of the current systems doesn't help me. It doesn't help my players who enjoy my server and have been with me for several years now. Why? Because the most awesomely complicated spaceship ever conceived and built is utterly useless if you cant play with it.

Game Play

As a game Starmade, outside of ship building, is about as basic as you can get. At present there is so little to do in the game with your beautiful ships that it causes people to wonder why the put the effort out. We run survival mode on my server. You know what it takes to survive on a Starmade server? You sit on your planet or station and you survive. Congratulations you made it on a survival server.

What about NPC? Well for starters their dumb. Really dumb. I have lost track of the number of times I have seen a powerful AI ship tumbling in space not shooting at a player. So just add more of them that will get those pesky players... No. Not really. Players just run away when the fight becomes too much. I haven't been able to kill a single player in a "fair" fight with NPC's. Playing Space Invaders on the Atari was more dangerous.

Well what about the new NPC empires, their challenge right?

*crickets chirping*

No. No they are not. There is no reason for a player to attack them, and they pretty much leave players alone. Of course its a new system, We need it for future updates. But as of right this second they are absolutely useless except to take up computing power on my server and cause me headaches with all the bugs they brought with them.

What about Exploration?
Expo..what? Umm... so why would you want to fly around seeing the same rocks and planets as can be found in the starting sector?

Well what about mining and trading?
There is no reason to leave the system you own. Every asteroid in the game is found there, they spawn fast enough to keeping even an obsessive miner from getting them all. No reason to go looking for "rare" ore or anything like that.

And Trading? Well other than being friendly and helping a player out its just not needed. A player who's willing to put the effort out (I admit there aren't many of them) can obtain any block they like.

The Rant

Its been three years guys. Minecraft a game not half as complicated had more gameplay in its first year than we do now. Development on how ships are built has been 90% of the game. That is simply no longer acceptable. What you do with power or any individual system in the game will not help with any of the real issue the game is experiencing.

There are other companies that are picking up the Starmade idea and running with it. Their already focusing on gameplay. Of course their ship building is nowhere as advanced, Ill give Starmade that. But they are very quickly becoming real games. If the Dev's don't get this game turned into a game very soon someone else is going to. And that's going to be a real shame because there is absolutely nothing wrong with starmade that isn't fixable.

My Advice

I know I am simply one opinion among many, but I am a customer. My server has also made major contributions in the never ending bug hunt. So please give this five seconds of consideration...

1. Stick to your development scheduled.
2. Focus on the whole game, not one little part of it.
3. Finish what you have started before starting something else.

Thank you.

 

[Shaker]

Mate, your not alone. Ive just bought osiris:new dawn and empyrion for the reason you stated above.

My server was on 10-20 players during december, now im lucky to get 3

 

[Panpiper]

I couldn't agree more. There is nothing so terrible about the current build system that it needs to be thrown out and for all intents, rebuilt (as was intimated in Schema's original post). The given logic for implementing this wholesale reinvention of the wheel, I feel I thoroughly rebutted previously.

Yes, power lines don't make a whole lot of intuitive sense for a new player. However power plants that don't produce power but somehow magically cause heat to disappear frankly makes vastly LESS sense. (Power plants not only produce power, but they 'produce' large quantities of waste heat, they do not get rid of waste heat.) New players will be every bit as confused by that bit of utter nonsense as they will be by power lines.

In order to achieve this completely unnecessary and IMO even less intuitive change, everything we've ever built needs to be gutted and rebuilt. Every asset ever created for the game needs to be tossed and reinvented. The bugs, tweaking and rebalancing of this essentially completely new build system will likely take years of 'extra' time. During those years of course, other games will rise, to who know what effect upon Starmade.

As the OP stated, the critical issue is to make Starmade an actual game, to continue the development schedule already laid forth without utterly unnecessary year long detours. We were so close, it looked like we were finally at that point where the actual game would start to emerge, and then this happened. Instead of being excited at the prospect of finally being able to play with what we have built, now the prospect is that not only will that play likely be delayed for who knows how long, but what we have built won't even be playable.

 

[taisong]

this is so true. After they dropped the Power Overhaul bomb on my Kestrel A, all my crew was stunned and lost the will to repair/build or even fight ships. What is the meaning of building a ship, when these ships are sure to be obsolete?

Right now, starmade is only good in the aspect of building. No other game mechanic is polished enough. Some of them are not even carved out correctly yet. Why do you have to look into a fine system when you see all the other system in...catastrophe?

 

[JinM]

Now that is the first thread with constructive critique I found. The same reasons might have been stated before in the 25 pages propposal thread, but I only have read the first 3 of them. And I think it's not the communities fault, that constructive critique just vanishes in the sheer mass of responses to important topics.

I agree, that implementing a working gameplay is the top goal of every early access game after a certain ammount of time. The only reason for this is, that you get Steam-reviews and if you don't "deliver" you Steam-score goes down down down until the game doesn't sell anymore.

Atm. we only have creative as a working as intended element.

 

[Aesthetics]

Agreed. This strong argument is what Schine needed to hear. And not soon enough it was.​

 

[AWildSylveon]

I gotta say, I am a creative only player, and yet, I build ships for my own use, and when the announcement for an unnecessary thing that'll ruin the game for good if implemented, I'm like 'Well this isn't going to be fun...' As i say this, I am pretty sure allot of people are yelling at the devs for trying to change something that should just simply be fixed with different calculations. No heat, no useless pipes, no stuff with reactors, It'd be cool to see the stuff, but having it for good would be dangerous to the new players.

 

[Az14el]

This suggestion would be assuming the current schedule can actually work with the current power system, that not being the case being the reason for the proposal.

 

[Comradecolonel]

This suggestion would be assuming the current schedule can actually work with the current power system, that not being the case being the reason for the proposal.

This is my biggest issue. I'd really like to hear a good explanation as to why it is necessary to do this now. If we had a game to screw around with I wouldn't mind just using the ships I've built so far. I do think we need to work on systems a bit but I'd rather they stuck to the schedule if possible.

 

[Shaker]

Where is this schedule? Is it Benchs list in the schine section? If so, that isnt a schedule as they have been picking and choosing bits of it

 

[godsgopher]

I confess this thread took a little time to track down. I do not however know if it represents current thinking.
StarMade Active Development Timeline

 

[Raisinbat]

Now please understand me, I'm not opposed to change. After all at some point we all have to admit that 8-track tapes aren't coming back and that were just going to have to embrace these new fangled cassette tapes. Who knows someday in the far future we might have spinning disks that are played by laser light, but then again that might just be too sci-fi for most of you. Things change, we cant stop that. We shouldn't try.

We're using tapes now? No wonder my vinyl won't fit in the slot

Your post is hella solid, but there are a few things i think needs to adressed:

There are other companies that are picking up the Starmade idea and running with it. Their already focusing on gameplay. Of course their ship building is nowhere as advanced, Ill give Starmade that. But they are very quickly becoming real games. If the Dev's don't get this game turned into a game very soon someone else is going to. And that's going to be a real shame because there is absolutely nothing wrong with starmade that isn't fixable.

Focusing on gameplay and failing 100% on the shipbuilding side, precisely because they're only focused on cosmetics/interior decorating without letting you create a ship that functions differently. Don't get me wrong, i've had fun with empyrion and space engineers, but i'm pretty much done with them and still waiting for starmade.

Starmade's team is much smaller so it's going to take longer, but if there's one dependable thing in the games industry it's that innovation is it's kryptonite. The Sims is a much bigger money tree, but noone is trying to get in on that, despite it being extremely clunky with multiple awful features and run by literally satan.

Not to mention transport tycoon which only had transport fever trying to replicate it and that failed spectacularly.

What people are chasing after are the star citizens or maybe space engineers, not starmade. Noone is going to try and steal your success until after you're successful...

But as a server owner changing power or any of the current systems doesn't help me. It doesn't help my players who enjoy my server and have been with me for several years now. Why? Because the most awesomely complicated spaceship ever conceived and built is utterly useless if you cant play with it.

The most powerful ship is a modular ship with docked lock-on launchers and chaff; that paradigm utterly dominates every other design. Sure this is a problem with weapon balance more than power balance, but fixing the weapons only goes so far. When you start to optimize competitive builds you have very little elbow room in terms of how your ship works; fast power generation is king which makes docked guns a must to get good DPS. You can't have sometimes systems that aren't active all the time because it butchers your ships mass efficiency, and defensive systems that aren't at their cap are practically worthless, so how many different ship designs are actually viable? Do you think it's acceptable for the game to launch with all these backwards mechanics like docked guns and modular ships in place?

A lot of people aren't aware of the balance issues inherent in the game, exactly because there's no gameplay so nothing gets tested, but they're there. Enabling a variety of ship doctrines is impossible with the current power system, because power generation is super cheap and systems are expensive and only works at maximum. Fixing this requires a power overhaul that will break all ships, or at the very least make them inefficient which is pretty much the same, at least in my book, so would you rather get it done as fast as possible, or wait a couple of years for it? I've been waiting over a year now, and it's not exactly encouraging knowing it's needed but being kicked down the road...

this is so true. After they dropped the Power Overhaul bomb on my Kestrel A, all my crew was stunned and lost the will to repair/build or even fight ships. What is the meaning of building a ship, when these ships are sure to be obsolete?

Right now, starmade is only good in the aspect of building. No other game mechanic is polished enough. Some of them are not even carved out correctly yet. Why do you have to look into a fine system when you see all the other system in...catastrophe?

Same question; would you rather have the issue that makes all your ships obsolete over with ASAP, or be able to play with them for a year or two but still knowing they'll be made obsolete?

Another point is that development shouldn't necessarily prioritize features based on how much they improve the game for the player, there's no doubt that improving the AI will make the game a lot more playable than improving the power system, but if the AI needs to be changed when the power system changes (managing different power pool) then it will take longer to get the game into a fully playable state. Gameplay is highly dependant on ship design for how it works, but ship design isn't affected by gameplay elements being added; for example if power becomes scarce and you cant fly around guns blazing nonstop that changes how the game is played, which requires ai changes, but going up against new challenges or unique ships doesn't affect how you build your ships (although you may want new types of ships, how these ships are built remains the same).

As a game Starmade, outside of ship building, is about as basic as you can get. At present there is so little to do in the game with your beautiful ships that it causes people to wonder why the put the effort out. We run survival mode on my server. You know what it takes to survive on a Starmade server? You sit on your planet or station and you survive. Congratulations you made it on a survival server.

This is, at least to me, the most important point in your post. I agree completely that getting the game into a playable state should be the focus for schine; starbound wasted years adding pointless tat like beach balls and pokemons to the game and ended up a huge waste of time, i would hate to see starmade follow suit. I just disagree that ship design isn't the first and most important step to getting there.

Ship design is what separates starmade from every other space sandbox; if you rush out gameplay now, how is the gameplay going to take advantage of the ship design? How are you going to have interesting space battles when all ships are functionally the same? I know that's doable, but that means eliminating shipbuilding from the equation. A little of topic, i'm sorry mods please don't ban me, but questing and story would utterly suck in starmade; how does shipbuilding tie into that? If you emphasize generic gameplay like that you risk turning starmade into another generic space survival game instead of playing up it's greatest strength...

EDIT: Oh and in absolutely no way do i approve of the power system changes proposed by schine. Literally every premise and solution offered is awful, i just want the actual issues resolved...

 

[JinM]

(this needs to be adressed: ) Focusing on gameplay and failing 100% on the shipbuilding side, precisely because they're only focused on cosmetics/interior decorating without letting you create a ship that functions differently. Don't get me wrong, i've had fun with empyrion and space engineers, but i'm pretty much done with them and still waiting for starmade.

Starmade's team is much smaller so it's going to take longer
(...)
Fixing this requires a power overhaul that will break all ships, or at the very least make them inefficient which is pretty much the same, at least in my book, so would you rather get it done as fast as possible, or wait a couple of years for it? I've been waiting over a year now, and it's not exactly encouraging knowing it's needed but being kicked down the road...

I agree with the problems around Empyrion and Space Engineers, and that the other games the actual space ships you can build are not that complex (and cool) as in Starmade.

Seems like we just have to wait then. =) Actually exactly this was my thought in oktober 2016 when I paused Starmade: "Meh pvp, survival and ship building is not that much fun and I allways have lag. I come back in half a year and then there will be more game to play."

But within three months they improved the engine, so that I have constant 60 fps now with the same setting where I had 25 fps 3 months ago. And it looks better and all the block variations don't need to be manufactured now seperately.

So I am pretty sure they will do something within the next 3 months again. And actually for me it's enough: I paid 15 € and played like 20 hours back in 2016 and now I played 20 hours in February.

It's not that I spend my money bad. It's the problem, that not enough people are interested into buying a complex space-sandbox like I am. We just have a special taste, the majority of people isn't into. =) Ofcourse with less money this game will take longer to dev. Why it takes longer (power system or weapon rebalance or new chunk format or whatever) doesn't matter too much for me. I allready know that it takes it's time. Knowing what stone on the road is very big for the devs is just some additional information for me, but not that important. I allready know that there will be stones on the road for the development, I don't need to bother about this power change too much.

Still I think, that adding some actuall gameplay would be very nice for Starmades overall feeling. Small stuff like real handheld guns that feel right and maybe some armor you can pick up. Why not some more detailed npc modells and maybe some animals? And the planets...why can't there be some procedurally generated cities or factiories on them? And some real treasure ships that are abandoned. Maybe even abandoned ships that you can only board as player and then you would need to use guns or solve some puzzles...Or the ability to create quests.

 

[Hexed]

Honestly the gameplay issue is the key thing for me right now. I recently suggested an improvement on the beam weapons effects, because honestly the weaponry in this game right now is awful. It's not amusing at all. The game is described on the home page as a 3D sandbox space shooter, but that description is like calling chocolate frosting on a piece of bread chocolate cake. The sandbox element is very bare bones because outside of creating ships the environment is just a meaningless backdrop. There is no motivation to explore whatsoever. The shooting is outdone by games from the previous millennium, and that's not hyperbolic. Whether it's Doom or something like Descent, Starmade is outperformed by games that are nearly 20 years older than it. New players could easily be mislead into thinking that this game is something that, at the moment, it's not.

I spend all my time building ships. And then when a ship is finished, It gets added to the catalogue, it's prototype is trashed and I begin work on another ship. I want to use my ships, I really really do. But outside of ship creation the game is sorely lacking.

I understand of course that the game is still in Alpha, but I started playing back when we only had cannons and wedges weren't a thing. And the feeling I've gotten over the past few years is that the vast majority of improvements have been centered solely on ship construction. The few changes that have been added like the faction system and asteroids have been like putting a bandaid on a cut off limb. They aren't anywhere near enough to properly address the game's serious lack of actual substantial gameplay. And now we are at a point where I can spend hours upon hours building a ship and yet feel no motivation to actually use it. A change in direction feels necessary.

I'd choose Starmade over any of it's competition, but I do think it's well past time that greater focus is given to the gameplay mechanics. The ship construction is in depth and entertaining. Any issues it has will easily survive being put aside for awhile so the, in my opinion, more pressing issue of the game's core gameplay can be properly addressed.

 

[taisong]

I think the complexity issue is hitting hard on large vessels with tremendous space to fill up. I do not think the power overhaul has to be done on drones, but to massive ships with so much shield regen/capacity blocks.

Whenever we make a titan, we will likely spend more time filling up systems than think of an interior. That is not creative. It is no wonder some people feel these ship-filling process to be unintuitive and bland.
Still, that does not apply to smaller ships. Smaller ships need a lot of planning and testing to have that extra power squeezed out. Which is a creative and fun thing to do. It is exactly what ship-engineering is.

So, I think a new power system that ADDS to the old one is better. Right now, we have Aux power for that extra power. Aux power was a nice solution for fixing the low power regen cap, but did not really help on complexity and aesthetics. Sure, you need to protect it and stuff, but it is still part of that tedious ship-filling process.

Which leads to me proposing to make this heat system, a thing that helps you exceed the power soft cap. If you think building a titan is unintuitive, then we should add more complexity to that part.

 

[Scypio]

Whenever we make a titan, we will likely spend more time filling up systems than think of an interior.

Everyones fly and fight with a titan, it's well known. 1km long ships at least or nothing, it's impossible to enjoy playing starmade with a smaller vessel, everyone knows that and it's a shame Schine isn't aware of this fact.

Seriously...

 

[NeonSturm]

Everyones fly and fight with a titan, it's well known. 1km long ships at least or nothing, it's impossible to enjoy playing starmade with a smaller vessel, everyone knows that and it's a shame Schine isn't aware of this fact.

Seriously...

Reminds me of this

Once I logged into the test server …
… one invited me to 100.0.0 or similar
… and killed me with his heat-seakers because he didn't know I had only a starter ship.​

 

[JinM]

Just don't join servers that allow pvp and titans in the same place. Easy decission for me to avoid such places.

 

[Scypio]

Reminds me of this
Once I logged into the test server …
… one invited me to 100.0.0 or similar
… and killed me with his heat-seakers because he didn't know I had only a starter ship.

Mummy always say to not trust strangers. Guess that's not for nothing.

 

[Keptick]

You make good points. However, the proposed power chsnge would actually help you if you're a server owner. Not in the form of gameplay but in the form of performance.

As you already know bigger ships are more performance heavy, especially in combat (I'm talking about the server calculations here, not rendering it aka fps). The reason for that is that higher amounts of system blocks require more calculations. In fact, you can reach a point where there's so many system blocks that removing or adding one block will cause a noticeable delay (depends on your cpu and ship size). I actually reached thaf point with one of my ships, where removing say 100 blocks will freeze the game for about a second. Now you might say, "but kep, 1 second isn't much". Imagine that ship in combat, with thousands of system blocks being destroyed per second, what effect does that have on that have on the server? I think that you already know :P . The system they're proposing significantly lowers system count, and replaces it with filler blocks (which are much less performance intensive).

Tbh it's more a question of "is it more worth it to work on gameplay features or a change to an existing mechanic that could potentially solve a lot of issues". Only the devs can answer that.