Some common sense please

[GRHayes]

Ok, as someone pointed out my nature or personality can come off as abrasive, jerk, a-hole....

So in the hopes that might point isn't entirely lost because of my personality / temperament.

I figured it might be good to make a edit and clarifying a few things and leave the original statement below the hash marks.

First, this game has massive potential. While not playing the last several months I kept checking the updates to keep up with its progress. I wouldn't have done that for a game or a team I had no faith in. I drop people in real life far to fast for most people's liking.

Second, the base game isn't the issue or fault or flawed. I even understand why a lot of the decisions were made early on such as using power to pretty much regulate everything and limit stuff. It is because that was the primary and most easy tool at their hand to work with.

That said I think they got into a rut and practice of relying on it to try and solve problems rather than think of more creative and longer term ways.

They also seem to be a bit OCD on the idea of game balance. If you hand everyone the same tools to build or play with the game is already balanced. You can't in reality ever balance it beyond that point. It is simply a waste of time.

You can however help align and dictate roles such as a fighter being good for scouting, recon, infiltration, tracking, precision targeting and bombing.
A simple way to do that make cloaking something a fighter could rely on more so than larger ships in place of heavy shields. I fighter isn't meant to go head to head with larger ships. A small man doesn't beat a large man by just punching his way out of it tactics, cunning, ingenuity are all tools.
I described in The ability to turn off shields and other systems how to make changes to cloaking and shields to implement this.

The fact is I can't name a single positive thing that has came out of the game balancing over the last 2 years I played that has really improved the game. Just my opinion yours may differ.

That said I have seen massive improvements to the game.

If you look at every major issue in this game it ties back through balancing attempts. The point of all the mess below is to stop trying to patch issue and get them to change the mental way of looking at the issue and try and resolve the actual underlying problem with better solutions.

I'll go ahead now and apologize if it comes off raw or abrasive, rude...
Sorry.


############################################
So I decided to take a look back at this game after checking out all the updates going on. Which honestly I have to give the development team a lot of credit for when you compare them to others out there.

That said I am finding some things seriously annoying pretty leading back to why I stopped play several months back.

Before I get to far into this I get it this is still in development and that some of what I am about to mention is in the works to be fixed. That said this post is more about the mentality that lead to the issues to start with.

I'm going to discuss one of my current projects so as to have something to compare to. I came up with this game / non-game because I pretty much got sick off all the bot user in RPG games. The game is simple I generate a 2D world with random dungeons and the player setup a character names it and from that point on does nothing other than turn the game on and off. The Character and all the npcs do everything on their own. Yep you can sit there and watch him go out hunt kill monsters increase skills and so on. At the end of it all the player has is bragging rights on a wall of his characters stats and skills and treasures or more accurately having left it running on his or her PC the longest.

I don't have to worry about players doing something I didn't plan because simply they aren't really allowed to do anything other than watch. Even if they wanted to they can't do much more than setup, turn on, turn off.
Is from where I was building the dungeon generator. It currently pushes out about 40,000 rooms a second in a per thread.

So why bring up that project it is an extreme example of control and not letting players be creative or do as they choose. It is pretty much the exact opposite of a sandbox. With a sand box you have two parties that have a role each. The developers role is to create tools for the user to use. It is the job of the user to see what they can create with those tools.

It seems like there is a mentality here that every time users come up with something developers didn't expect them to do it gets labeled an exploit and they try to prevent it in some manor.

This game has a lot of caps. Caps aren't always bad. But in this game it feels like they are there to pretty much force you to fill up your ship with blocks and purely to discourage building large ships or very powerful ships.

But why do people want to build large ships well as much as people play PVP they also want to be creative but they want what they create to also be functional and to be able to survive.

The problem is your ability to build a large ship to survive with the cap system if you use no docked system is you fill the ship up with an ungodly number of blocks.

So people such as myself who actually want the ship to have rooms in it and serve other functions resorted to the docked systems. When they limited power the transfer beams got across effectively I looked at using docked systems and having it provide power in the other direction. It worked and I then got told that was an exploit. My answer to that is I made use of what you gave me. Its like handing a man a shovel and expecting him never to dig a hole.
You gave me rails I came up with quad armor with over lapping shields. And again its an exploit. Even if you reduced the armor of those blocks to 1/4th the shields would still overlap.

In most games an exploit is consider making use of a function you where not given to use in a game or a feature. These are things they gave and then simply because some of us used a few extra brain cells it gets labeled exploit.

If it gets any worse they may as well start building our ships for us and then just turn it into a game like I am making.

Rather than leave this purely as a rant. I'd like to suggest something.

Loose the mentality that every time someone comes up with something you didn't expect to be done in the game as it being an exploit.
Second, if someone makes use of a tool you provide them and it creates problems well then the tool wasn't designed right. While the rail system is brilliant compared to the old docking system what isn't brilliant is the horrific practice of using the directories. By not doing so it would give you options that could fix pretty much every issue discussed with docking. To me that would be a no-brainer to change.

Start looking at underlying causes before you try and fix issues. I'm 47 now. I've worked since I was 15. I have been always the go to guy for trouble shooting issues and resolving them. If you don't fix the underlying cause it always comes back to bite you again. It will bite you when you have to repair that system again and it will bite you on other systems because you will repeat the same stupid problem over.
A good example is if a fuse blows. 99.999% of the time if a fuse blows there is an issue in the circuit that needs to be fixed. Fuses generally do not blow on their own they usually are rated higher than the required current. If you simply replace it you will be back there again to replace it until you decide to fix whatever is causing the over current. Most likely if you do this on one system you'll end up doing it on others.

Another good example of not fixing the underlying issue. 3 mile Island. warning indicator was never labeled. The operator didn't no what it was caused by. Rather than find out the cause they simply silenced the alarm until it got bad enough they had other alarms going off they couldn't simply silence.

I find that exact same nature in programming. People want to patch shit all the damn time without fixing the underlying issue. It turns into a habit. Ask why are you putting caps on everything and what is the real issue at hand.

If you are trying to prevent big ships the simplest answer would be limit block count. So that doesn't appear to be the underlying goal.
Well maybe you are trying to make everyone equal. That can never be done not even if you gave them all ships of the same time. Hell it wouldn't even make them equal if you went to my level of control on the game and had AIs control the character. Some people can run it longer. Some people will have storms and power failures... In short that is a moron's quest.
I can safely say it doesn't match real power systems.
While I do remember someone bringing up square-cubed law that is a natural occurring effect created by simply following general physical principles not something that needs to be forced or created.

In short if you are worried about size let the server admin limit block count. Other wise you really aren't fixing anything with the caps at all. There is no game balance being served by it what-so-ever. It is simply delusional to believe it is.

The reason there is a risk of huge lag issues with docked systems is that the risk of such hasn't been minimized or eliminated both are possible. It can be minimized by using the virtual directory system and allowing more than 1 docking connection. It can be eliminated by setting a flag on the docked craft to make it part of the primary so that it follows along with it in place regardless. A second option would be to make the docked system have no physical effect on the primary once it comes loose in short they could pass through one another. Another option is to set up a selection list to determine what type of docked system it is thus allowing control over it so that different types of system have different effects. Like a ships, containers, and so on you would want to have physics and so on interacting with the ship. While the hull,docked power and so on you want to follow along with ship and if breaks away just to pass out of the ship or even act like it is ejected to prevent the lag issue.

The more you keep saying that wasn't intended or we need to limit that the closer it gets to being like my project. While with my project that is my intent. I am planning on releasing the source with it when I do publish. The intent is for it to be a tutorial on how stuff works and what not to do. I don't think your ultimate goal with this game is to simply provide everyone a ship and let an AI fly it around so everyone can be equal. So instead of saying something is an exploit when someone uses the tools maybe it is time to start looking at the underlying issues of what got the game to that point to start with.

 

[Groovrider]

Optimizations and New Features resulting from bug fixing:

~ Considerable improvement of network load sending logic activations, and improving overall performance of logic

~ Optimization of display blocks, making their drawing speed multiple times faster

~ Fleet Commands now include cloaking and jamming

~ Bobby AI can now be activated via logic

~ GameConfig can now include size restrictions on ships and stations to add more customization for servers. This also includes blueprint spawning.

 

[NeonSturm]

I name one example for which I want to hear if you considered it in this context which I'll tell you also.

Example:

The quadrupled armour - putting 4 or 8 blocks into the same space of 1x1y1z meters.
​

Context:

AuthorUser builds the ship.
It took 1 weeks to build because it was difficult to use automated build tools on a non-boxy shape which is also layered so he had to do it manually.
Now AuthorUser has a "very nice looking super strong drone" which he calls AuthorDronesAreAwesome.

You can say it's an exploit because to get a good ship you have to use shitty manual build instead of comfortable volume-placement build-tools.
Or you can say it's ok because he invested a lot of time into it.

The issue however is that he can now share this ship to his faction-mates which can now use super-strong AuthorDronesAreAwesome without spending any effort and bombing everyone else to hell.

And because AuthorDronesAreAwesome are really awesome, everyone starts stealing/using them.
Now server-admins complain about lags.
The users tell "but we have to - why is it an exploit if we just use the tools available to us?".
​

Evolution path:

1. AuthorDronesAreAwesome
2. AuthorDronesAreAwesomeLaggy
3. AuthorDronesAreAwfullAndUnfun
4. AuthorDronesAreAwfullAndCalledExploit

Do you think this "calling AuthorDronesAreAwesome an exploit" is a valid complaint?​

[doublepost=1491096092,1491096006][/doublepost]

~ Fleet Commands now include cloaking and jamming

Ty.
This will make it less exploity if every ship can use it rather than player-ones only.

~ GameConfig can now include size restrictions on ships and stations to add more customization for servers. This also includes blueprint spawning.

BORG-cubes again NOOOO!!!

 

[GRHayes]

Optimizations and New Features resulting from bug fixing:

~ Considerable improvement of network load sending logic activations, and improving overall performance of logic

~ Optimization of display blocks, making their drawing speed multiple times faster

~ Fleet Commands now include cloaking and jamming

~ Bobby AI can now be activated via logic

~ GameConfig can now include size restrictions on ships and stations to add more customization for servers. This also includes blueprint spawning.

I realize they are making these changes and plan on making the power change as well.
If you look at the power system of the past. It has a limiter built in the cap and the curve.
The new power system has a limiter as well the heat system. You can't say either one of these are based on reality because they simply aren't.
So again you have them building another limiter in even though they have the block limit restriction available.

No matter how you look at it they are adding another cap to the game(block limit) and they still have a limiter or cap on power in that regard.

You can put a saddle on a saw horse and add all the bells and whistles you want but you aren't going any place till you get a real horse.

I name one example for which I want to hear if you considered it in this context which I'll tell you also.

Example:

The quadrupled armour - putting 4 or 8 blocks into the same space of 1x1y1z meters.
​

Context:

AuthorUser builds the ship.
It took 1 weeks to build because it was difficult to use automated build tools on a non-boxy shape which is also layered so he had to do it manually.
Now AuthorUser has a "very nice looking super strong drone" which he calls AuthorDronesAreAwesome.

You can say it's an exploit because to get a good ship you have to use shitty manual build instead of comfortable volume-placement build-tools.
Or you can say it's ok because he invested a lot of time into it.

The issue however is that he can now share this ship to his faction-mates which can now use super-strong AuthorDronesAreAwesome without spending any effort and bombing everyone else to hell.

And because AuthorDronesAreAwesome are really awesome, everyone starts stealing/using them.
Now server-admins complain about lags.
The users tell "but we have to - why is it an exploit if we just use the tools available to us?".
​

Evolution path:

1. AuthorDronesAreAwesome
2. AuthorDronesAreAwesomeLaggy
3. AuthorDronesAreAwfullAndUnfun
4. AuthorDronesAreAwfullAndCalledExploit

Do you think this "calling AuthorDronesAreAwesome an exploit" is a valid complaint?​

[doublepost=1491096092,1491096006][/doublepost]
Ty.
This will make it less exploity if every ship can use it rather than player-ones only.

BORG-cubes again NOOOO!!!

The drones are not an exploit and the lag issue is the fault of the programmer.

It is the programmers job to look at the underlying cause of the issue.

Take the dungeon map generator. I put up. You can find lots of tutorials online that show how to make dungeons even similar to that none are near that fast. It doesn't just draw the rooms it makes sure they are all connected together in a maze like pattern.
I didn't just arrive at that on the first go. I had to realize what was causing stuff to be so slow and then work out a means to counter it.
First I had it drawing about 300 rooms or less then went up to 7000 rooms and that took about 7 to 10 seconds. If I simply tried to create 40,000 rooms then path all of them in a single go it would have taken probably an hour. The issue was the pathing method grows exponentially. So I had to come up with a way to control that aspect and keep it pretty linear in growth.
If you are curious those 40,000 rooms are generated in 12x12 grid of 200x200 blocks making a map 2400x2400 and does the entire path finding for all of it in that time. But here is the thing. That is about 10% CPU usage. However, if you look at the program running you will see that there is 30% usage while the map is up. It isn't recalculating the map over and over. That usage is from unnecessary work of copying over and over again the tiles onto the screen. In true all I need to do is set a flag up to determine if an event has happened in which it would require redrawing the screen. I can setup a mask to determine if any part of the screen has changed and limit the redraw even further.

Bad programming choices are simply a method of learning what works best. If you haven't done it before or haven't seen similar code before you may not recognize the downfalls before you choose a method. Some times people even try something but implement it poorly and get turned off by it. I tend to find most people go by what they can find written out or described by someone else especially if there is sample code. Unfortunately this often doesn't leads to the best choice.

 

[AtraUnam]

BORG-cubes again NOOOO!!!

Assuming its a dimension restriction and not a mass restriction. Both are frequently reffered to as 'size'

 

[Batavium]

Loose the mentality that every time someone comes up with something you didn't expect to be done in the game as it being an exploit.

It is not so much that something can be viewed as an exploit. But that the server is incapable of handling it.

There is a limit to what a server can process. In this game you can build a server to pieces. Be it with lots of entities, multi armor, to many fleets, complex logic, etc etc.

You also do not want a single person to grab all the servers CPU power because he flies a 500K ship.

That is why you need limits. If servers never crashed because they overload. Then you would hear a lot less about this sort of thing.

the lag issue is the fault of the programmer.

You made your own game. You know the hardship. If you think you can do better in a sandbox like StarMade. Then by all means show us.

The issue however is that he can now share this ship to his faction-mates which can now use super-strong AuthorDronesAreAwesome without spending any effort and bombing everyone else to hell.

Friends and allies can offcourse use each others advances. Never heard of NATO? The whole blueprint system is about being able to share builds. In a Multi player environment people will interact and share. And yes that means they will sometimes get advances they never would have toughed up themselves. If you do not like that then stick to single player.

 

[Snowtiger256]

Assuming its a dimension restriction and not a mass restriction. Both are frequently reffered to as 'size'

Mass and block limits are already in GameConfig, so it makes sense that the next restriction would be dimensions.

 

[GRHayes]

It is not so much that something can be viewed as an exploit. But that the server is incapable of handling it.

There is a limit to what a server can process. In this game you can build a server to pieces. Be it with lots of entities, multi armor, to many fleets, complex logic, etc etc.

You also do not want a single person to grab all the servers CPU power because he flies a 500K ship.

That is why you need limits. If servers never crashed because they overload. Then you would hear a lot less about this sort of thing.



You made your own game. You know the hardship. If you think you can do better in a sandbox like StarMade. Then by all means show us.



Friends and allies can offcourse use each others advances. Never heard of NATO? The whole blueprint system is about being able to share builds. In a Multi player environment people will interact and share. And yes that means they will sometimes get advances they never would have toughed up themselves. If you do not like that then stick to single player.

Lets analyze your suggestion. I should stop working on my projects and put a bunch of work into something that is based on another person's game for no profit just to prove a point when they could simply read and evaluate it. I do tutorials online for free to teach people how to program. I'll help the figure out where they made mistakes. I'll tell them where to look for issues. I don't build their programs and games for them and I don't coddle people. I think they are plenty capable of figuring it out without me going to that extent.
I mean it would seem pretty dicked to me if someone thought I wasn't smart enough to work it out and felt they needed to go to that extent just to stick it in my face to prove I was wrong.

 

[Groovrider]

The power curve was not meant as a limiter. It was meant as a bonus to smaller ships.l

Please leave your real-life knowledge at the door. Information on how various types of reactors work is easily accessible in many formats in many countries. It is logical to assume that is aware of such information and is pursuing the current plans in their current (proposal) form for reasons that are his own and that we are not privy too.

 

[NeonSturm]

The drones are not an exploit and the lag issue is the fault of the programmer.

It was unintended behaviour that multiple shield-entities occupy 1 cubic metre at the same time.

But because it's hard to take the visual advantages away once they made it in without upsetting the community.
needs a solution which works without every planing to take on that task.
​

Bad programming choices are simply a method of learning what works best. If you haven't done it before or haven't seen similar code before you may not recognize the downfalls before you choose a method. Some times people even try something but implement it poorly and get turned off by it. I tend to find most people go by what they can find written out or described by someone else especially if there is sample code. Unfortunately this often doesn't leads to the best choice.

I tried to use inheritance with a static java class for it's static functions, which is totally different from non-static calls.
It does not work because of Java and there is nothing I can do to make it work intuitively.

Ok, you could adapt because you can see or test against this issue on every computer.
But what about hardware you cannot test because you don't have it?

Or if it is a task too big for one developer to work around various specific issues?
That's why I stick to simple functions for my current projects.

I also have no time to work around Internet-Explorers different implementation of a certain function Firefox supports.
Example: Using option-inputs from forms and labels for them to select displayed content and swap shown links.
This can enable as much as JavaScript-function without JavaScript and mouse-tracking exploit of css if you like to stalk your visitors.
The problem with IE is that it breaks html-tables if you insert input-tags before hr-tags and to some extend with table-styled divs
(Disclaimer: not sure if recent versions are still affected).
​

New The power curve was not meant as a limiter. It was meant as a bonus to smaller ships.l

And if that bonus got tied to the core, everyone would just spam drones.

But now we have "crew-bonus" with the new power-system
​

Friends and allies can offcourse use each others advances. Never heard of NATO? The whole blueprint system is about being able to share builds. In a Multi player environment people will interact and share. And yes that means they will sometimes get advances they never would have toughed up themselves. If you do not like that then stick to single player.

Let's just forbid NATO-like alliances on a server because they are no fun?

Perhaps think about calling some friends and bully a police officer 5vs1 and guess what happens …
… you will get RESTRICTED by stuff you yourself can never do without hurting yourself emotionally.​

 

[GRHayes]

It was unintended behaviour that multiple shield-entities occupy 1 cubic metre at the same time.

But because it's hard to take the visual advantages away once they made it in without upsetting the community.
needs a solution which works without every planing to take on that task.
​

I tried to use inheritance with a static java class for it's static functions, which is totally different from non-static calls.
It does not work because of Java and there is nothing I can do to make it work intuitively.

Ok, you could adapt because you can see or test against this issue on every computer.
But what about hardware you cannot test because you don't have it?

Or if it is a task too big for one developer to work around various specific issues?
That's why I stick to simple functions for my current projects.

I also have no time to work around Internet-Explorers different implementation of a certain function Firefox supports.
Example: Using option-inputs from forms and labels for them to select displayed content and swap shown links.
This can enable as much as JavaScript-function without JavaScript and mouse-tracking exploit of css if you like to stalk your visitors.
The problem with IE is that it breaks html-tables if you insert input-tags before hr-tags and to some extend with table-styled divs
(Disclaimer: not sure if recent versions are still affected).
​

And if that bonus got tied to the core, everyone would just spam drones.

But now we have "crew-bonus" with the new power-system
​

Let's just forbid NATO-like alliances on a server because they are no fun?

Perhaps think about calling some friends and bully a police officer 5vs1 and guess what happens …
… you will get RESTRICTED by stuff you yourself can never do without hurting yourself emotionally.​

The cubes occupy the same space because they didn't fit the shield to the shape of the block. They also did damage checks per cube rather than break it down. If they hadn't short cut it then it wouldn't be an issue would it!

Generally I avoid Java other than when I can't get around it. I prefer C and C++. It isn't Java is a bad language or anything just simple preference.
As for inheritance and static functions. Always best to get from the source. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/subclasses.htmlsource. Inheritance (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Interfaces and Inheritance)

Generally when it comes to game development you don't aim for the highest level of hardware or the most bleeding edge. The vast majority of people will not have it. Targeting new graphics functions is pretty much a waste of time. In general relying on libraries like SDL tends to make most of those issues fairly small. In short I tend to keep several systems to test on a minimal system and then a midrange system.
I tend to strive for good performance on the lowend system by doing so it generally runs better on the higher end systems.

Define to big of task. I've written an OS from scratch, clone of facebook, compilers, MUDs, automated ware house systems,... I think to big is dependent on the developer and the time they have.

Like you I don't bother coding for IE. I consider it a bad policy. IE needs to get with the standards and people need to stop coddling them.
[doublepost=1491157772,1491157580][/doublepost]

The power curve was not meant as a limiter. It was meant as a bonus to smaller ships.l

Please leave your real-life knowledge at the door. Information on how various types of reactors work is easily accessible in many formats in many countries. It is logical to assume that is aware of such information and is pursuing the current plans in their current (proposal) form for reasons that are his own and that we are not privy too.

He's also plenty capable of speaking for himself. Doubt he needs you replying for him or trying to be his white knight.

 

[Groovrider]

Stating the obvious isn't being a white knight.

You also seem really angry. It's a shame. Your intelligent suggestions are totally obliterated by your very unpleasant personality.

 

[NeonSturm]

You also seem really angry. It's a shame. Your intelligent suggestions are totally obliterated by your very unpleasant personality.

The whole problem starts because we have to wait for schema to implement something, can't do it ourselves because of the obfuscated source and ToS.
Ofc you could make your own game, but would you get a community like SM has? They would all go off to MC,SM,SE,SN,SoA, …
​

I am trying to solve some AI and try my first rendering-pipeline,

then I may have learned enough to write a physics-simulator which simulates bubbles-in-space and Level-of-Detail.

​

But until now bugs in my frameworks or not intuitive behaviour and missing knowledge prevented me from making it.

©opyright: Truth allowed. Your actions create (good/bad-)Karma at your own risk.

Spoiler: I agree

I will not make exact collisions for objects but use simplified convex shapes and environment-pressure-bubbles which interact with convex shapes.

Just 3 Bump-maps for each object.​

I won't care about UI-design and just use sprites (similar to floating holographic display-blocks). Customize them with regex XD.
I never make a Dave or HUD, but make a exo-suit everyone can build from micro-bubbles which can be entered (ship-core).

You might place some display sprites with graphics in it.​

I don't even care about giving each bubble life-points, just a content-weight -value and a reference to a nearby material-table.

Weapons take away and create a new gas-cloud bubble around that one ​

There will be no complex textures - they are over-rated anyway if you use a parametrized shader on bubble-bubble-crossings.
I will not care about Fleet-code either. There is a flag-ship captain which can be made to says stuff and other captains which might listen to it.

Who cares about block-limit? Everything gets gifted CPU/GPU-cycles/second for logic or changes it causes to the universe.
Every script line needs to be paid. Lazy functions might return some unused value, depending on complexity of payment checks vs skipped functionality.

There can be a Block/CPU/GPU limit for a portal between a spawn/edit spot and a certain "virtual-space of existence" which is hosted by anyone.
You can write your own scripts for these portals.
Someone corrupts your virtual-space? Just SIG_TERM the environment.
​

There will be no credits either, only a trust-value which needs to be positive for a player to enter your current re-incarnation of virtual-space.

Your environment can re-incarnate and has an "virtually-immortal-soul which is called backed-up data".​

If you want to use a server, you can access virtual message-pipe files like with Linux "/dev/*" files to write your own program.
If you lag a server, you just waste your own CPU/GPU-cycles and any serious issues will all be related to invalid benchmark database entries.


I won't care if it displays 10'000'000 blocks at once as long as logic, AI and Level-of-Detail work - If you care about more complex physics, ™do it yourself™.

It completely irrelevant if it gets as appreciated or a community like StarMade.
If it does, Schema wasted just too much time implementing unnecessary complex functions.​

Don't click the link near "NeonSturm said:" - it crashes your browser-page's current reincarnation.

​

 

[GRHayes]

Stating the obvious isn't being a white knight.

You also seem really angry. It's a shame. Your intelligent suggestions are totally obliterated by your very unpleasant personality.

Angry, maybe probably more disappointed and frustrated. I seen the work they done over the last 2 years. So I know they are more than capable. I know this game has much more potential that it currently is at. Frustration probably from why I can't hand over stuff and say here see this. Past employer stuff.

I knew about the small ship stronger part. If you checked I mentioned square-cubed law. That was brought up to me in the past by one of the team members. The problem is it isn't something you implement it happens naturally and not the way they intended or why they intended. they simply heard an ant is stronger because it is smaller and didn't bother to consider the rest of the physics why that appears true. Pretty much any material has a point where when it is smaller it is stronger than at a point it is larger. Some of it has to do with the material, some has to do with the structural or architecture... (we don't need to turn this into a physics and chemistry lesson). If you made an ant the size of an elephant it would collapse under its own weight its legs would break just by walking. Same with a human.

A better example would be take a bridge that cross between two banks 100 feet apart. Lets say you create a large upside down V shape on bother side of the bridge to support the road. So now you want to cross 1000 feet of space. You can't simply magnify the size of everything or it would collapse under its own weight. The beams weight would be much heave but really support no more weight because they only connect similar to the smaller bridge. The road is large heavier and has a greater expanse thus it breaks.

So then why did they want to make a small ship stronger? Well from what I gathered it was so it would have a better chance against larger craft. In general people watch movies and see the loan hero in his ship or plane and he takes out a large target. They tend to always for get the only reason he got close was the large number of other craft small and large tying up defenses giving him that opportunity.

They almost always are hitting a vulnerable spot. Ammo storage, fuel storage... Something that amplifies the damage they do. If it is a space movie they usually have to get past the shields to do it. In most games you can't get past the shield you have to rely on a larger vessel or two to bring them down. In this game the shields start drawing more power and if you can create more damage than the combat recharge rate which is a fraction of the normal recharge rate you could bring them down yourself.

Not sure about you but for me the cooperative play for taking out a large target is more fun.

 

[NeonSturm]

They almost always are hitting a vulnerable spot. Ammo storage, fuel storage... Something that amplifies the damage they do. If it is a space movie they usually have to get past the shields to do it. In most games you can't get past the shield you have to rely on a larger vessel or two to bring them down. In this game the shields start drawing more power and if you can create more damage than the combat recharge rate which is a fraction of the normal recharge rate you could bring them down yourself.

Not sure about you but for me the cooperative play for taking out a large target is more fun.

Maybe later - but now, not everyone can play cooperative if the server crashes with 20+ peoples.
Not everyone is good making friends, especially if the "group collectors" are already occupied by factions.

Problem1 : Where can I join a raid, when and who to speak to?
Problem2 : Who invites a mercenary? In StarConflict, playing with random strangers isn't fun. In StarMade it can be a similar issue.
Problem3 : Will I get an invitation during school/work or while I sleep, do I have to check my mails every 5 min or swap between many games (dota/starmade/…) to get the amount of action I want?
Problem4 : You may select a time-zone but get a shorter list of factions/servers to join (especially popular populated ones).


I think boosting small ships is both good/bad and a double-edged sword.

Small craft like Quad-copter drones have a greater evasion value because the relative speed is higher compared to the diameter.
Large craft like Zeppelin-sized could never archive that even with efficiency-bonus from more efficient components.

But at the same time, the opposite is true.
1000 small boats have more water-resistance than a single tanker-ship.

Offset-gradient can emulate that without needing to implement factory manufacturing granularity or other complex parameters real life has (like micro-aerodynamics on a plane-wing).

​

Recently I read a blog about military shooting down a 200$ drone from ebay with a 3'000'000 Mach-5 Missile-counter-missile.

It's a stupid choice for which one should get fired (peoples are working a lot of hours for enough taxes).
And a very real example of imbalance.​

 

[Brokengauge]

Maybe later - but now, not everyone can play cooperative if the server crashes with 20+ peoples.
Not everyone is good making friends, especially if the "group collectors" are already occupied by factions.

Problem1 : Where can I join a raid, when and who to speak to?
Problem2 : Who invites a mercenary? In StarConflict, playing with random strangers isn't fun. In StarMade it can be a similar issue.
Problem3 : Will I get an invitation during school/work or while I sleep, do I have to check my mails every 5 min or swap between many games (dota/starmade/…) to get the amount of action I want?
Problem4 : You may select a time-zone but get a shorter list of factions/servers to join (especially popular populated ones).


I think boosting small ships is both good/bad and a double-edged sword.

Small craft like Quad-copter drones have a greater evasion value because the relative speed is higher compared to the diameter.
Large craft like Zeppelin-sized could never archive that even with efficiency-bonus from more efficient components.

But at the same time, the opposite is true.
1000 small boats have more water-resistance than a single talker-ship.

Offset-gradient can emulate that without needing to implement factory manufacturing granularity or other complex parameters real life has (like micro-aerodynamics on a plane-wing).

​

Recently I read a blog about military shooting down a 200$ drone from ebay with a 3'000'000 Mach-5 Missile-counter-missile.

It's a stupid choice for which one should get fired (peoples are working a lot of hours for enough taxes).
And a very real example of imbalance.​

I still have trouble understanding what you say (sorry)

But that last paragraph was on point lol

 

[GRHayes]

Maybe later - but now, not everyone can play cooperative if the server crashes with 20+ peoples.
Not everyone is good making friends, especially if the "group collectors" are already occupied by factions.

Problem1 : Where can I join a raid, when and who to speak to?
Problem2 : Who invites a mercenary? In StarConflict, playing with random strangers isn't fun. In StarMade it can be a similar issue.
Problem3 : Will I get an invitation during school/work or while I sleep, do I have to check my mails every 5 min or swap between many games (dota/starmade/…) to get the amount of action I want?
Problem4 : You may select a time-zone but get a shorter list of factions/servers to join (especially popular populated ones).


I think boosting small ships is both good/bad and a double-edged sword.

Small craft like Quad-copter drones have a greater evasion value because the relative speed is higher compared to the diameter.
Large craft like Zeppelin-sized could never archive that even with efficiency-bonus from more efficient components.

But at the same time, the opposite is true.
1000 small boats have more water-resistance than a single tanker-ship.

Offset-gradient can emulate that without needing to implement factory manufacturing granularity or other complex parameters real life has (like micro-aerodynamics on a plane-wing).

​

Recently I read a blog about military shooting down a 200$ drone from ebay with a 3'000'000 Mach-5 Missile-counter-missile.

It's a stupid choice for which one should get fired (peoples are working a lot of hours for enough taxes).
And a very real example of imbalance.​

Well look at what you just said, "not everyone can play cooperative if the server crashes with 20+ peoples."
That is precisely what I am talking about when referring to the underlying issues. The root cause in others in this case is the servers crash when the load is to much.
Why is the load to much for the server?

1000 small boats have more water-resistance than a single tanker-ship.
This isn't necessarily true. It depends on water displacement, mass, how close they are to each other when traveling, the amount of turbulence they create, boats hull surface, .... In short I can list millions of ways this doesn't hold true. That said it can for a specific set of data.