Devblog 11th July 2017 - End Goal Document Part 1

    Zyrr

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    I haven't done this in practice, but couldn't you just blap a couple of them, jump out, wait for shields to recharge, jump back in, and repeat? The AI is retarded, so if you selectively engage the swarm or avoid it then it becomes useless.

    That or use a dedicated swarm missile ship. Swarm missiles > swarm fleet. (This I have tested, and it works well). The challenge then becomed to predict what the enemy will use, which turns into fun strategy.
    This part here. Swarm Missiles don't work vs any of my drone fleets because of a combination of AMS Drones and AMS Turrets on the main damage dealer drones. You'd be lucky to see them leave the barrel in a fight with me. XD
    Just to elaborate further - due to the 2mil e/s power softcap, and with how AI strafe + high TMR works, you can make it extremely difficult for the majority of large ships to do any damage whatsoever. Since almost all ships will buckle after shields drop, massive collective DPS from drones can be absolutely astounding. Of course, actual DPS is less than the maximum DPS, but all the same, it's magnitudes more efficient economically.
     
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    Not to be off topic, but, there really isnt anything most 500k mass ships can do, in the generalist and RP categories, that can stand up to spammed, dirt cheap drones.

    these small, lightweight drones deal up to 100k DPS per drone. Up to 400k shield DPS if some are suing Ion effect but are more expensive units. Being 1/1000000th the total cost of a titan class (they dont even need proper shielding nor armour), its easy to field hundreds of these things in 1 encounter. 100x 100kdps is 10m dps every second from many small ships. Even the most Stalwart of shields at that size area would last only 30 seconds under such withering fire, before becoming sliced by the weapons due to the 2m e/s soft cap each of them carries, fielding in total a staggering 200m energy/second compared with most ships of that size having between 35-100m total e/s betweeen all docked enetities, on board power, and aux etc.

    Due to these things being small and numerous, Defences on the target ship will struggle to cut a reasonable amount of them down before the automated turrets begin to fail from lack of shields and pop off, then the main ship is destroyed if it is unable to escape.
    which is why i said as soon as the powersystem will be hopefully fixed these imbalances will be fixed as well.
    But we need to analyze correctly from wehere this imibalance comes from. it is not the linear scaling weapon system that causes the issue. It is the actual any ship utilizing the power sweetspot and is build around it is way more efficient than anything else syndrome. In the future given schine is able to actually come up with something that is working (i doubt it but ok) this then might not be an issue anymore because the increased systems to hull ratio of the bigger in combination to the now stronger guns and shielding should hold of way better for this sweetspot is gone. sure right now for max dps build as many 1.5 million energy reg units and given the linear scaling of the weaponssystem you end up with more dps... because auxilary can not keep up which is why selfpowered turrets also utilizing the sweetspot are important to stay in the actual system.
    [doublepost=1499926221,1499925325][/doublepost]
    Just to elaborate further - due to the 2mil e/s power softcap, and with how AI strafe + high TMR works, you can make it extremely difficult for the majority of large ships to do any damage whatsoever. Since almost all ships will buckle after shields drop, massive collective DPS from drones can be absolutely astounding. Of course, actual DPS is less than the maximum DPS, but all the same, it's magnitudes more efficient economically.
    turrets predict strafin very well. now build some big turrets also using the sweetspot in energy and see what they do such drones oh and add a cannon beam explosive gun... ai drones get picked from far by those.
     
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    Zyrr

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    which is why i said as soon as the powersystem will be hopefully fixed these imbalances will be fixed as well.
    But we need to analyze correctly from wehere this imibalance comes from. it is not the linear scaling weapon system that causes the issue. It is the actual any ship utilizing the power sweetspot and is build around it is way more efficient than anything else syndrome. In the future given schine is able to actually come up with something that is working (i doubt it but ok) this then might not be an issue anymore because the increased systems to hull ratio of the bigger in combination to the now stronger guns and shielding should hold of way better for this sweetspot is gone. sure right now for max dps build as many 1.5 million energy reg units and given the linear scaling of the weaponssystem you end up with more dps... because auxilary can not keep up which is why selfpowered turrets also utilizing the sweetspot are important to stay in the actual system.
    [doublepost=1499926221,1499925325][/doublepost]
    turrets predict strafin very well. now build some big turrets also using the sweetspot in energy and see what they do such drones oh and add a cannon beam explosive gun... ai drones get picked from far by those.
    Very easy to spoof turrets with enough drones. Using ablative to avoid hitscan + spaced armor will nullify most threats, enough that your DPS will beat theirs because it's far easier for 10 ships to shoot 1 ship than 1 ship to shoot 10 ships.
     

    Keptick

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    Very easy to spoof turrets with enough drones. Using ablative to avoid hitscan + spaced armor will nullify most threats, enough that your DPS will beat theirs because it's far easier for 10 ships to shoot 1 ship than 1 ship to shoot 10 ships.
    Unfortunately it'll probably stay that way until aiming or weapon scaling get improved...

    I've brought up the issue of weapon performance scaling incredibly poorly with ship size about a billion times with the devs (first time was well over a year ago). Was always told that the weapon's computer performance prevented them from balancing the scaling better. Funny thing is, their performance (computer wise) was massively improved a couple updates ago, but their balance wasn't changed at all. I've pretty much given up at this point...
     
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    Zyrr

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    Unfortunately it'll probably stay that way until aiming or weapon scaling get improved...

    I've brought up the issue of weapon performance scaling incredibly poorly with ship size about a billion times with the devs (first time was well over a year ago) but nothing has changed so far... Kinda starting to lose faith tbh.
    I mean, there's certainly very easy ways to kill off these marauding drone fleets without much problem. Bobby AI is not super intelligent.

    But it's not even really that, it's more that we have a very shaky system for handling the relationship between power cost, damage and block count. It just happens to also go hand-in-hand with a bunch of other limitations on various things that Schine has introduced as balance. Right now, the only true reason to build massive ships is to make them tanky - unlike weapons, it's much more difficult to make near foolproof defense without a ton of defensive blocks. I'm hopeful that the apparently very rapid development of the new power system will help alleviate a ton of these problems. While I think it overall reduces creativity, it should also serve to kill a lot of longstanding issues with the game. Of course, I'm positive it'll create new unintended nuance to explore, but such is life.
     

    Keptick

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    It's not even really that, it's just a very shaky system for handling the relationship between power cost, damage and block count. It just happens to also go hand-in-hand with a bunch of other limitations on various things that Schine has introduced as balance. Right now, the only true reason to build massive ships is to make them tanky - unlike weapons, it's much more difficult to make near foolproof defense without a ton of defensive blocks. I'm hopeful that the apparently very rapid development of the new power system will help alleviate a ton of these problems. While I think it overall reduces creativity, it should also serve to kill a lot of longstanding issues with the game. Of course, I'm positive it'll create new unintended nuance to explore, but such is life.
    Yea, what I was mostly refering to in my other post is the grouping penalty for power. It was originally introduced to reduce laggy weapons, but now that the performance is better the penalty wasn't reduced. There's only so much effective damage that can be dished out by small amounst of cannon or beam groups, meaning that large ships weapon are forced to either do little block damage or be really really inneficient power wise. So you either have to use a fleet or missiles (which fucks you either way if you want to fly a large ship). If you could make say 30-50 group beam weapons that don't take 300-500% more power you could easily dumpster small drones pretty much instantly.

    Sorry for not making that clear in my previous post.
     
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    nightrune

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    On the topic of defensive systems, there are changes to shields (some armor to) we'd like to test when chambers come around. Chambers divorce function from block count so, as designers, we are given more options then in the current system. As you've pointed out, lots of the issues are not truly bugs but systemic issues that were hampered by the tie to ratios and block count. We believe the new power system will help alleviate many of those. Testing will show though. The underlying system for chambers is also laying the foundation for the universe update as well. A quick peek into it would be the ability to diminish or increase jump distance in systems/sectors. More on that in later dev updates.
     
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    It is interesting to see the issues owners of large ships are reporting about 'op small ships' - for me, and also in other threads, the problem is more often 'op large ships' > both sides seem to want balance...a situation which seems, well, strangely balanced.

    "30-50 beam group that don't take 300-500% extra power" would indeed dumpster small ships quickly > which is exactly the point of the power penalty isn't it ? Multi groups on huge ships need very careful power management and/or additional logic and wireless systems > this extra work seems balanced for large ships, especially as the fundamentals of the game allow for a large ships to simply be scaled up versions of small systems-cubes.

    I appreciate the info given out by the DevTeam, and I don't think we should read to much into its details as yet. I do also agree that there are 'daily game-play issues' that are major inhibitors current combat orientated game play: AI in various aspects (spinning in spot, responsiveness, collision, path finding), fleet controls (formations, patrol, squad targeting), behavior of turrets/docked on overheat...

    That said, in multi-player context, i find the biggest limitation still to be the behavior of some players when they find an exploit, or build a big death-dealer, which is used to systematically and continually terrorize whole servers, often against targets which pose no realistic challenge whatsoever. Not only is this annoyingly tedious both to be subject to and to observe, but it it induces a Bad Vibe which begins to effect how the players view the whole Game.
    One this stars happening, several effects can occur;
    -players stay in home base more
    -players remain focused on meta-ships, and neglect nice 'complete' builds across size ranges and functions.
    -ship systems balance tends to suffer, and aspirant designs tend towards the 'bigger than necessary'
    -all other aspects of co-operative and other non-combat interactive game-play begin to suffer, as any progress can be obliterated in seconds, at any time, without any warning or reason, unless you already have an equally powerful meta-ship at hand....

    It is not that i want to balance the ship/power/shields/ect systems to account for this - in terms of design and function, these 'server terrorists' are indeed legit and good players. Players like these will always find the exploit, the OP, and the killer sweet-spot > and fair play to them for that.

    But still this a big problem for multiplayer Starmade, with a cascade of effects (because it affects peoples perceptions about what they 'need' to build, about what progressions are worth spending time on, and ultimately what can be achieved in the game).

    For testers who maybe have not been spending much time on servers, I think (and hope others agree) that this is an important factor to consider

    (Perhaps some thinking on how faction points or diplomatic effects might be used to limit this kind of behavior could be considered. Eg - if your kills/faction points are much higher than your opponents, you might get none, or negative if you kill them - big penalties for destroying factions/home-base if your factions points are much higher. Thus to continually terrorize one would have to have friends and other faction members, make use of allied factions to destroy other factions perhaps, and really focus on targets of value with more or equal power to yourself)
     

    Az14el

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    It is interesting to see the issues owners of large ships are reporting about 'op small ships' - for me, and also in other threads, the problem is more often 'op large ships' > both sides seem to want balance...a situation which seems, well, strangely balanced.
    "Owners of large ships", for real? everyone here owns all ranges of ships up to the range of their largest ship. Regardless, 2m e/s is the soft cap for reactor based power gen > efficient reactors are upwards of 10x the efficiency of aux > 2-4k mass makes use of this power most efficiently for dps > damage is upwards of 14x the efficiency by block of the most efficient form of defence in combat.
    The meta is obviously in many efficient damage oriented entities, the only thing "op" about large ships is the amount of these they can carry as turrets, and they do not outperform even half their mass in efficient drones, they pretty much can't without taking advantage of bugged AI mechanics, and that's before considering the input lag and fps drops that players will suffer from but AI will not.
    It's unfortunate that these entities also make the game damn near unplayable the moment they reach a problematic number, and so damn near undocumentable as a result.

    As far as sides, and Lancakes statement earlier about the "hardcore pvpers" being hard to approach, well to be honest they simply don't want to be here, and don't want to voice their opinions about systemically flawed mechanics when there's this "other side" who just throws up their hands and say they have an Agenda the moment niggling details like maths or actual server side combat data are involved, Fuck that tbh, it's an exhausting and insulting exercise every time and sometimes even the mods run to their defence. Depressing.
     
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    "
    The meta is obviously in many efficient damage oriented enemies, the only thing "op" about large ships is the amount of these they can carry as turrets, and they do not outperform even half their mass in efficient drones, they pretty much can't without taking advantage of bugged AI mechanics, and that's before considering the input lag and fps drops that players will suffer from but AI will not.
    It's unfortunate that these entities also make the game damn near unplayable the moment they reach a problematic number, and so damn near undocumentable as a result."

    this is a problem, i agree Az14el .

    (my point above was more about how some of the balancing between players with 'very powerful assets' vs the the rest might achieved through 'diplomacy' systems and faction points, so that destroying much weaker opponents might involve a cost, and therefore a strategic ramification, rather then just because of a whim. And also that the presence of 'unregulated' serial server terrorists can effect perceptions of new players of the whole game, especially what they need to build to 'feel safe' . Also it should not be impossible to be a 'server terrorist', just hard enough that it takes continued thought and effort, and can not be done on simple whims, or by completely neglecting other aspects of multi-player interaction)
     
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    Napther

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    for me, and also in other threads, the problem is more often 'op large ships' > both sides seem to want balance...a situation which seems, well, strangely balanced.
    In short, RP VS RP, bigger ship wins, Hands down, economics of scale.
    Unless the larger RP/General type ship lacks the weapons required to take down the other, smaller vessel which might have an amazing anti-shield beam, or the larger RP ship uses an immense amount of armour to the point where its actually "Falsely increasing" its apparent power based on mass alone. My latest NPC Cruiser is 650k blocks on the hull alone, yet weighs in at over 100k mass in total. It barely has the power required in it to shield DPS something that is a shield regen/tankeven when adding 10-20k mass of docked turret...

    it is common now to see larger ships employ batteries of missiles to the point that they can almost 1-shot disable any enemy craft that gets near them that doesnt have so much sheidls that they arent broken on the first volley. These ships will generally 1-shot to Overheat most RP class ships that are even just 1/2 their mass, and will easily deal with an RP based fleet that doesnt plain outmass it 2-1 and have good shields DPs and block DPS rates.


    That said, in multi-player context, i find the biggest limitation still to be the behavior of some players when they find an exploit, or build a big death-dealer, which is used to systematically and continually terrorize whole servers, often against targets which pose no realistic challenge whatsoever. Not only is this annoyingly tedious both to be subject to and to observe, but it it induces a Bad Vibe which begins to effect how the players view the whole Game.
    yes yes yes yesyes
    yesyes yes yes yes yes.
    I find it abhorrant what more experienced players do to new ones, or ones that just plain follow a "killer" player type. Theres nothing newer players can do to counter it since their miners are generally smaller than most factions use, they build slower, less efficiently. And by the time a call for help goes around and a friendly experienced player comes around in his equally-powerful ship, the other has already flown the coop and gone to terrorise another player as theres little you can do to track them down once they hit jump with a decent main drive and/or chain drive without inhibitors
    [doublepost=1499953032,1499952093][/doublepost]
    On the topic of defensive systems, there are changes to shields (some armor to) we'd like to test when chambers come around. Chambers divorce function from block count so, as designers, we are given more options then in the current system. As you've pointed out, lots of the issues are not truly bugs but systemic issues that were hampered by the tie to ratios and block count. We believe the new power system will help alleviate many of those. Testing will show though. The underlying system for chambers is also laying the foundation for the universe update as well. A quick peek into it would be the ability to diminish or increase jump distance in systems/sectors. More on that in later dev updates.
    YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

    In the current game as mentioned elsewhere in this mess of posts, weapons BY FAR outclass defences. It will be nice to see that gap get rebalanced and made more manageable and make armour tanking an actually viable thing to do.

    The change with the Block HP's a few patches ago made ADV armour swiss cheese to piercing missiles when the AHP was depleted since pierce ignores about 50% of base block armour %, when AHP is depleted, ADV armor has 1000 Effective HP without the AHP.

    In the old block HP system, ADV armour had an effective HP of 400 to piercing effect without AHP, and 800 with it.

    Nowadays, ADV armour barely has 181HP when its AHP is down to a piercing missile. THis is ONLY roughly equivilant to 2 of the highest HP system blocks, Weapon modules at 100HP a piece, to this missile.
    With the AHP still up, this is still a paltry 363Effective HP to a missile, which isnt even as strong as Old BlockHP value of 400 effective HP WITHOUT the AHP bar. Standard armour in the same case has about 142HP and 284HP. Not a great improvement standard to ADV according to raw values.
     
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    Well this sure seems to be a heated topic, but I'm grateful that Schine at least offers us the opportunity to discuss it in a forum they actually read and respond to. Most developers do not, which is why most games are only saved by the modding community. Perhaps Schine should focus more on creating robust modding framework so they, or the community, can tailor the core experience to more specific desires? Any game I currently play is a game that easily incorporates modding, whether it be Minecraft, Skyrim, Fallout 4, ARK, the list goes on. In fact the vanilla game, in most cases, is almost unplayable without mods and/or severe config tweaks.

    After a bit of reflection it seems obvious: everyone has a different vision of what the game they're playing should be. Most genres, including Sci-fi space, are so complex and varied that it is literally impossible to make a game that will appeal to everyone. Would it not make more sense to have a relatively "vanilla" base game, and then have a series of mods that significantly alter the game to specific playstyles? These mods can be developed by the community, or even by Schine, as addons to the base game. Want a combat heavy PvP style game? Add the "Advanced Combat" mod. Want a "grindy" tiered progression/production experience? Add the "Tiered Progression" mod. Want diversity in alien flora/fauna? Add the "Alien Ecosystems" mod. Don't want any of those things? Just play on default settings. The mods themselves could include a config file to further customize the experience


    As for the stated end goals, here is my feedback:
    ~ Builder - A lot of work has already been done in this area, it is all but complete. All that could be done is adding more blocks/textures for people to use creatively

    ~ Explorer - The universe is currently pointless to explore; there is a dire need for interesting content, and variable resource distribution. Planets and/or derelict stations should have a chance for diverse flora/fauna to spawn - perhaps even dynamic ecosystems, immersive music and sounds are needed, atmospheric (perhaps even scripted) events should occur, procedurally generated ruins on planets; Something, ANYTHING! needs to happen in this aspect. As it is, jumping from asteroid to asteroid to planet to planet is soooo boring... They are all the same. You can effectively explore every unique area of this game within a few hours and then there is literally nothing new to see (slight procedural differences aside)

    ~ Industrialist - The factory system is decent as-is, but for creative style building only - input easily obtained resources into a single storage chest, automatically pull out finished goods after a single production cycle. There should be much more complexity to make this feel important, you can currently get an efficient factory producing any block in the game within a couple of hours of starting. There is no R&D, there is no progression of technology, there is nothing gating advancement, there are no waste products to contend with or recycle into other materials, all items take the same amount of time to produce, etc. This is one area of the game that can, and should, take significant time to progress (all configurable of course) But this aspect alone could vastly change the entire way the game is played.

    ~ Trader - Unless you're going to go go full 4X space trader sim with various alien races to compete with, this role is irrelevant... players can already trade among themselves/shops. If you are planning to go full 4x then a huge amount of work is required in this area

    ~ Fighter - PvP and PvE content already exists, and is quite good for the average player (although not necessarily balanced against specific meta styles). Please move on for now. The problem here is that so many different playstyles exist, and you cannot possibly cover them all with default settings. Players will have to, at some point, change config settings to fit their style no matter how you develop combat for the base game.

    ~ Imperialist - What does this even mean? To build up and control fleets? To colonize planets? For what purpose? PvP? Trading? Exploration? Again, unless you're going to go go full 4X space sim with the ability to tailor your own race, have tech/R&D tiered progression, as well as various alien races to compete with, this role seems irrelevant

    In summary:
    I feel development of a robust modding framework is paramount so that unsatisfied players can modify the game to their specific vision. Official mods, as well as community content, is probably the best way to tailor the base game into something that can satisfy everyone. Those with specific needs/desires will never be satisfied with the "vanilla" system meant to appeal to a larger audience; and forcing changes to combat, tiered progression, etc is only bound to upset a large portion of players who do not care for or desire those changes.

    Regarding Shine's vision of end goals:
    It seems clear that many players are not satisfied with Schine's vision, and in a way I agree; a small development team, even one as involved with the community as Schine, even one that has produced an amazing groundwork product, cannot ever hope to satisfy the vision of what each of their players want. The truth is, Starmade has outgrown the initial vision of it's developers, and the expectations of a sandbox style game cannot be contained. The best they can do at this point is to have a decent base game for the casual player, and then develop, maintain, and support a robust modding community to encourage all of the different playstyles.
     
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    The challenge then becomed to predict what the enemy will use, which turns into fun strategy.
    Rock-paper-scissors doesn't have to do much with strategy - or with fun.

    How about the PvP game, or the PvE game, or the trading game, or the ship selling game? All of these are functional to some extent. I've done all of them, and they all have major flaws that would be immediately obvious to anyone who has actually played them.
    Isn't that the major flaw of StarMade? It tries to be too many things at once, to please too many different audiences with sometimes opposing interests. Oftentimes changes that are good for someone are bad for someone else.

    None of the previous whiners understand anything about developing a game with such a small team, very small budget and a community that whines about everything that happens. They think it's simple to construct and develop a game.
    Bad games aren't made because there weren't enough resources to make a good one. Bad games are made when the goals were set too high to reach them with the available resources. So limited resources is a rather bad excuse.

    That said, in multi-player context, i find the biggest limitation still to be the behavior of some players when they find an exploit, or build a big death-dealer, which is used to systematically and continually terrorize whole servers, often against targets which pose no realistic challenge whatsoever. Not only is this annoyingly tedious both to be subject to and to observe, but it it induces a Bad Vibe which begins to effect how the players view the whole Game.
    This isn't new. This happens in every single game in which it can happen. You simply can't have an open, persistent universe and fair PvP at the same time - at least not without player agreements or significant effort from admins. This is a fundamental problem that can neither be solved with moralizing nor with nerfing big ships or other short-sighted measures.
     
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    Bad games aren't made because there weren't enough resources to make a good one. Bad games are made when the goals were set too high to reach them with the available resources. So limited resources is a rather bad excuse.
    Exactly what high goals are set in Starmade?
     
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    Exactly what high goals are set in Starmade?
    The roles we will talk about are the following:
    ~ Builder
    ~ Explorer
    ~ Industrialist
    ~ Trader
    ~ Fighter
    ~ Imperialist​
    Making all these different kinds of players happy at the same time, including both PvEers and PvPers as well as including builders and users of both small and big ships.
     
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    I like the differentiation between fighter and imperialist. I interpret, that there will be fast action possibilities for people who just want to fight, like: load the game up and join a fast-pvp server where you have instant pvp; and the other gameplay, where players first engage in longer diplomatic work until they have some fights to influence their imperium like capturing sectors when booth factions are online.

    Maybe let the imperialists hire mercenary players? After a certain amount of preordered damage (a certain amount of block or shield damage, a certain amount of ships of a certain size class overheating, a certain time being present in a sector and holding some kind of captureable flag) done to the enemy faction, the contract is fullfilled, and the hired player gets the reward. Maybe even some tiered reward: For one ship destroyed you get 30% of the money, for 3 ships destroyed you get 100% of the money.
     
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    Making all these different kinds of players happy at the same time, including both PvEers and PvPers as well as including builders and users of both small and big ships.
    It's perfectly normal and needed. This is talking about the End Game, that means when the game is out of Alpha, Beta and has been actually released.
     

    Matt_Bradock

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    I like the differentiation between fighter and imperialist. I interpret, that there will be fast action possibilities for people who just want to fight, like: load the game up and join a fast-pvp server where you have instant pvp; and the other gameplay, where players first engage in longer diplomatic work until they have some fights to influence their imperium like capturing sectors when booth factions are online.

    Maybe let the imperialists hire mercenary players? After a certain amount of preordered damage (a certain amount of block or shield damage, a certain amount of ships of a certain size class overheating, a certain time being present in a sector and holding some kind of captureable flag) done to the enemy faction, the contract is fullfilled, and the hired player gets the reward. Maybe even some tiered reward: For one ship destroyed you get 30% of the money, for 3 ships destroyed you get 100% of the money.
    I certainly hope so. I also hope that the devs would consider the players who only play Starmade for the PvP, and tailor Battle Mode to offer exactly that. I would LOVE to have something like the old Ares mod, incorporated into battle mode, where upon joining the server you autimatically get assigned to a team(faction), given some credits to spawn in a starter ship (buy with credits ON, some default BPs provided but you can upload your own) and when there are enough people, the match starts, you're placed in a preset (or randomly generated) closed star system where you have to gain control of mining outposts defended by AI ships, for income to upgrade your ships, and the match ends when one of the heavily defended and shielded base stations loses its faction block, situated deep in its core, either to focused fire or to ships. Essentially, arena fights like Dreadnought and Fractured Space already has, because THAT is what Battle Mode should be, to be any relevant. I had more fun in Ares Mod than I ever had in random or arranged PvP on survival servers, because in these arena fights, the battles aren't happening before or after days of grinding to build up your fleet, then to replace your losses.
     

    Valiant70

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    The builder role in and of itself sounds like it will be supported well by a variety of features, and interact strongly with other aspects of the game. The catch is that one player can play multiple roles, like a merc who designs his own ships and commissions their construction with blood money.

    The use of roles in brainstorming is useful, and I doubt it will prove restrictive or detrimental as long as it is approached the right way. Roles are categories of features that may be reinterpreted or used however the player sees fit. They are not set-in-stone "character classes" that cannot mix. I expect most players will probably mix about three, favoring one or two over the others. Keep interactions in mind and things will work out; both interactions between multiple roles played by one player, and interaction between players playing the same or different roles.

    I was hoping for more detail than the dev blog revealed, but I can see why that is not practical. Knowing Schine's vision for the feel and flavor of the final game will help to tailor our expectations and suggestions.
     
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