StarMade Ship Systems 2.0

[Deserea]

From what I can tell, it will actually be a lot less complicated in practice than it looks. You put down a reactor, place a bunch of system chambers (while not exceeding your maximum 'tech points'), you put down some conduits to connect it all together, and then add weapons. Instead of a global power capacity weapons now have their own capacity, so you don't even have to worry about putting down enough batteries to power everything.

well see, as it looks to me right now its more complicated than what we have now. You are probably right, but well see, and it all depends on how much i actually like the new system, even if its not as complicated, not that theres other games i can play, because there isnt.

 

[Ithirahad]

some thoughts:

* The way that docked reactors and power flow is controlled is just terrible. The boxdim of reactors/stabilizers is incredibly arbitrary and abstruse.
Should be consistent and uncomplicated; if anything at all, require conduits to the rail.

Agreed.

* The Tech Points system feels weird; I rather liked a heat mechanic as a limiting factor instead

Agreed, but if these core control channels are a more workable solution, I'm willing to take them.

* Stabilizers are kinda dumb, especially having to be far away from the reactor itself is just strange and encourages ships to be long on one axis

Agreed.

* Requiring conduits to connect to things isn't really bad but using them for critical subsystems would get annoying if enemies constantly shoot them off; they'd have to be somewhat tough.

You can have multiple conduits.

* "Weapons, tools and some other systems now have their own internal power capacity"
I'm not a fan of this one, it seems overly complicated, and would probably worsen some of the lag-based power issues that cause ships to have reduced functionality on servers

This may be what the 'better request system' that Schema's working on is designed to address. Regardless, this can likely be fixed, and the benefits (alpha weapons are now just as space efficient as DPS, small ships don't waste tons of space on bloated power infrastructure) outweigh the slightly increased complication. With a decently-designed UI the functionality can be made pretty clear.

 

[Sgtwisky]

well after reading that, I think we have a winner here. I'm sure it will require careful balancing for a while, but I don't see the same kinds of glaring flaws the other proposal had.

As a side note, I agree with others, please do not call it "TechPoints". Maybe "Anti-matter Particles" that are "Generated" by our reactors?

 

[Deleted member 678402]

Schine delivers again. Great Job on this I will be looking forward to implementation.

 

[Amadeus]

I like it! It seems like a really cool system that will make building ships intuitive and simple! My only concern is what Lecic brought up, the whole "bounding box" mechanic. If someone from Schine could lend their thoughts on that it would be most appreciated, seeing that it isn't in the post or video.

Edit: Perhaps Conduits could direct energy to docked entities?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I'm a little skeptical of this idea but I kinda like it. If done right, this could very well be the balance we've been looking for.
Target their weapons systems Mr. Worf.


If implemented poorly... Well... May whatever Cat God you believe in... heh... Have mercy on your soul...



I STRONGLY agree that multiple reactors should be allowed. Seriously; why the hell not?

Also, someone needs to stop tip toeing around popular sci-fi lingo and send their Star Trek/Star Wars/BSG/Babylon 5 techno jargon into over drive. Names other than tech points...

- re-route power - allocate power - power distribution - system override - divert power - system bypass - power coupling
- grid enhancement - phase induction - maglev cohesion - energize - system augmentation - system tuning - capacitance
- ...mix and match from the above

 

[0ldSkull]

The post text and graphics refer to "reactor groups" and appear to illustrate the possibility of using multiple reactors which are connected together via conduits. I got the impression that only one group per entity can be active at a time. Only the video gave a simplified impression that each reactor is independent.

 

[Manithro]

Why make it more complicated? One of the main problems with the old system is how it required you to build power in certain shapes to be efficient. Now the power system has not two but FOUR types of blocks, each of which must be placed in a certain way. This just makes power over-complicated, while making it more and more difficult to build smaller ships and turrets. Ship building should be limited to player imagination, not system placement mechanics.

That said, I appreciate your hard work and hope a solution can be found that the community, for the most part, likes.

 

[Shaker]

Replacing 2 blocks with 4 blocks and making it alot more complicated, dont you think this is not beginner friendly?

 

[Zerefette]

Replacing 2 blocks with 4 blocks and making it alot more complicated, dont you think this is not beginner friendly?

If the whole system will reduce the amount of blocks to 2% this will be more user friendly either way.

 

[IchSehDich3000]

I still think about, how much power do the systems now need?

The old power-system is:
power reactors give maybe 2million power recharge
power auxillary can give 2million power recharge for every group

So there is an maybe easy way to gain enough power for your factory with 100,000 enhancers, which costs alot of power.
The power reactors have an exponetially increase of power regen, the power auxillary have also an exponetially increase per group.
With the new System all power regen has an linear increase.
The biggest advantage for the old system is the fact of no need for physically connections between power reactors or different groups of power auxillary, so you are able to deploy the systems on each corner of the entity like alot of separatly "reactors" that bring up the whole power together. With this system you also are able to avoid big filled areas.
With the new System you have to build one big reactor to gain the same power, so your entity is restricted by the space for the needed reactor and there would be a big filled area. If your reactor generate 100% power through the stablizers, there is no way to gain more power for your systems, like with power auxillary.

Because of this I would have the choice between using one big reactor, which generate the needed power and using a bunch of small reactors generating the same power together. Instead of shutting down reactors, we could shut down specific chambers, to have the TP free for other chambers.

And a question, does the needed amount of TP for a chamber depend on the size of the chamber, or the size of the ship? A bigger ship also needs more power, so also a bigger reactor. You wrote, the efficiency of chambers depends on the reactor/chamber size ratio. So a bigger ship also needs bigger chambers. But you wrote the amount of TP, that can be used is fix and don't depends on ship size or reactor size. When is a chamber fully filled with TP?`Is the amount of needed TP for one chamber also fix as the whole amount of TP that can be used?

And please don't term them TechPoints. That sounds awful.

 

[DukeofRealms]

So, what we'll likely do is create a separate (locked) thread called "Answers to Ship Systems 2.0", where we'll go through all the questions here and expand upon them. We'll quote and reply to whoever asked, so you're notified. This way our answers won't get buried in this thread.

Yea... tech points, I think we were sick of trying to find a name and just went ahead with whatever we had. Suggestions are appreciated

 

[jorgekorke]

I still did not form a proper opinion to shoot around - All I can say for now is, please, do pay a lot of attention on how this new power system of yours will work when it comes to the rail docking system. Remember, 90% of the current game exploits do exist thanks to the docking system.

 

[IchSehDich3000]

Excuse me, I only now the "docked power reactor" exploid but this exploid was deleted by preventing power-supply through docked entities, which other power exploids exists because of the rail system?

 

[Ithirahad]

Excuse me, I only now the "docked power reactor" exploid but this exploid was deleted by preventing power-supply through docked entities, which other power exploids exists because of the rail system?

A way to power turrets without using the main ship's power (thereby circumventing the 2m e/s cap), a way to prevent aux explosions from doing significant damage, some strange shenanigans that allow turrets (and fixed autoguns) to get tons of power in a compact manner with no aux at all, etc.

 

[Atheu]

I'm entirely worried about how all this is going to change our current builds, as some of us have already have large requirements for power in our ships, and stations.

What I really want to know:
- what's the projected date for all of this to come out
- How much power is a moderate (200block) reactor going to generate
- How will the Offensive EMP effect change
- will weapons receive any buff to damage

What I'm very concerned about:
- I know it's been mentioned earlier, but the scanners revealing where reactors are, what I could see other than highlighting the reactors themselves, is to draw a box around them in flight mode, (much like how old docking was) or even add in a target-able nav point.
- why can we only have one reactor running at one time? It would make more sense on ships, but on stations there might be more than one running.

As a side note, I agree with others, please do not call it "TechPoints". Maybe "Anti-matter Particles" that are "Generated" by our reactors?

I prefer the term Dark Energy (my fleet lore is that my ships take energy from the void)
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a way to prevent aux explosions from doing significant damage

It's called wrapping them up in advanced armor, mitigating the explosion. (sure it makes it heavier but you aren't gonna gut your ship if it overloads)

 

[Chckn Wildstyle]

Many people have already brought this up on this thread so I will try to keep it short and to the point.

The restriction of only one reactor on at the same time is going to need a rectification, either through clarification of confusion, or through new implementation. What I think you mean is that the "Tech Points" (God awful name) will take a while to spool down then spool up whilst the secondary reactor can turn on instantaneously. If you don't mean that and you mean that the whole secondary reactor needs to spool up and leave the ship powered down for a bit, then you should go with the first option I just laid out instead. Backup reactors are meant to keep you afloat without interruption, maybe some rerouting is necessary i.e. the TP's, but the ship should have the ability to never go completely power down.

AND, because you guys thought that Tech Points was a good name, allow me to make a few suggestions that are notably less cheesy.
1) Overload Capacity
- Overload Points
2) And I know you're gonna be like "Awww shiiiiet I didn't think of that": Auxiliary Power.
I know I know we had that before, but it makes sense, we no longer have Aux reactors, and these new chambers are in fact "Auxiliary" as you don't need them, so why not? Auxiliary Power can be used in sentences easily and has a nice ring to it. Auxiliary Power for Auxiliary Systems.

Also, with turrets, if I have a reactor in the barrel, don't shut it off just because I added some gun depression, please only use the starting orientation for determining what is on or off, otherwise I will be very angry.

 

[tron1001]

A much needed dev blog. Great job. I don't like the tech points. I think it should be called power units or something relating to power. I don't like the stabilizers needing to be at a certain distance from the reactor. If they're stabilizers, why wouldn't they be placed along the reactor to better help? This seems to be an over complicated system in regards to what is place now. I like the idea of a priority system to better distribute power. I like the conduit block but I have some issues with the chambers. These will essentially be the current modifier blocks we currently have in place. A dual system wouldn't help.

Suggestions: Remove the distance the stabilizers have to be at and make them have to be in contact with the reactor. Forget the chamber blocks and replace them with a distribution block. Power would be transmitted from these to the systems and power would be carried to these blocks via the power conduit blocks.

 

[Andir]

But why 'heat' aka bounding boxes? What you are doing is forcing people to build cubes. If I can't build a toroidal ship with a central turret having it's own power system, what's the point?

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

All this reading for the past hour has given me a headache served with a side of bloodshot eyes...

I like this new proposal. I don't wanna repeat what's already said (no one will read this anyway ;-; )

BUT I COULD BE OF SOME USEFULNESS...

...name it System Enhancement Nodes... or Power Nodes? Something nodes.

Meh, I tried. A+ for effort.