StarMade Dev Blog 17 November 2017

[Dire Venom]

Just a question to those concered about docked hulls/shields:
Consider me a completly new player, and please explain how you feel the proposed shielding system favours docked shielding?
Not intending to be offensive, I would just really like to understand your view-point. Thanks!
(Personaly I've quite enjoyed using multiple shielding layers for ship components in the past, but I don't see how I can really do that here).

From what I understand:
-Shields can have some over lap, but only like such where they cannot have significant overlap or the smaller shield will be disabled.

-Shield placed on docked entities will not protect blocks on the mother, however the shield will still be disabled if it intersects a shield on the same, mother, or another entity that is bigger than it.

Therefore, the closest you could get to the old shield stacking would look something like this:

-From what we understand shielding groups will gain bonuses the more blocks they have, making less groups have a greater total shield strength.
-For example, as above with the three protected zones, each could be 100k shielding each, providing 100k, 200k, and in the middile 300k worth of shielding (I cannot recall how excess damage is carried over after depleting a shield, would it be applied to the next shield covering the block?
-OR You could just cover the whole area with a 400k shield that takes up the same number of shield blocks as the three seperate groups.

If I have mucked up some part of my understanding please fill me in!

 

[Ithirahad]

As said, the reactor distances are in no way final. Unless we see different builds and what exactly they are capable of we can only kind of calculate it based on the formulas and tests. We will of course adapt balance when necessary.
[doublepost=1510980429,1510980327][/doublepost]Lecic what exact difference does this make over a global shield in the same situation? In that case you would take out the shield first and then the armor. you would go through the same amount of damage.

Not if the ships in question are moving. If the shield is under the armor then all the moving around to different angles, coupled with server latency and other factors of uncertainty, then the shield (and everything in it) will take very inconsistent and reduced damage as different armor blocks get in the way of the beam or cannon.

 

[Non]

Our current approach tries to span the distance between non pvp and pvp building.

This bothers me so much. Why do you want to do this? The pvp community likes your game because of the ultra-high skill cap, if it didn't have that, and the large scale building, we would be long gone. Why should the input of hundreds of hours into testing systems not be rewarded? Why should someone who spends 30 hours making a ship pretty be able to compete with someone who spends those 30 hours making their ship deadly? I think this is a failure in your philosophy in creating this game. It is wonderful that you allow for such varied types of gameplay, but to try and make the game in such a way that the people who play in one way are automatically good in another is disappointing.

Basically the main idea behind the stabilizers is to tie ship size to reactor size

This accomplishes nothing, people who need more power will build their ships larger, at the same mass, people who need their ships to fit within a premade hull will only be hurt by it (primarily the rp/pve people).

 

[bigdude601]

what lecic is saying is that you will have to shoot through the hull, then the shield, then more ship instead of just going shield then blocks. Basically getting rid of docked armor by making the part of the ship that extends outside the shield an armor layer. But if all you need is to see builds and how they will interact with the way the dev build works now, then why don't you open the dev test server up to the public and start encouraging people to do their testing there?

 

[schema]

Dire Venom You got it pretty well. There are still some option we can look into should there be a balance problem. Like not allowing shields on docked structures to be active while they are docked.
[doublepost=1510980794,1510980728][/doublepost]Ithirahad I'm not sure I understand. I'm not factoring in eventual bugs as they should and will be fixed eventually.
[doublepost=1510980875][/doublepost]Non it's not about limiting ship size. it's about limiting reactor size. If you want to make a big ship you can still make it. But with the new system we can balance it that the difference between small->big makes sense in terms of balance.

 

[Dire Venom]

As said, the reactor distances are in no way final. Unless we see different builds and what exactly they are capable of we can only kind of calculate it based on the formulas and tests. We will of course adapt balance when necessary.
[doublepost=1510980429,1510980327][/doublepost]Lecic what exact difference does this make over a global shield in the same situation? In that case you would take out the shield first and then the armor. you would go through the same amount of damage.

I think what he is saying is the order in which various defensive systems take damage?
E.g saying that having an armour block take the brunt and the bleedthrough be soaked by the shield while it regens is more effective than having the shield depleted by ion/alpha in the opening volley and then have the armour take the hits?
Not too sure myself how effective it is

 

[Ithirahad]

[doublepost=1510980794,1510980728][/doublepost]Ithirahad I'm not sure I understand. I'm not factoring in eventual bugs as they should and will be fixed eventually.

A shield is a shield. It's a large area. No matter where you hit it, it drains from one pool. Armor, on the other hand, has AHP, but other than that the blocks stand alone. If you're not hitting the same place consistently, and you won't be if ships are moving, you won't punch right through the armor and do consistent damage to the shield layer under it.

 

[schema]

bigdude601 afaik the test server is usually open for public. you only need to install the dev build to play on it.

You will have to shoot through shields armor and blocks in both versions with the same amount of total damage. just that in the local shield version you actually lose blocks sooner

 

[Non]

it's about limiting reactor size. If you want to make a big ship you can still make it. But with the new system we can balance it that the difference between small->big makes sense in terms of balance.

Why would you balance it in such a way that it punishes the players who need the most help in combat?

 

[Ithirahad]

You will have to shoot through shields armor and blocks in both versions with the same amount of total damage.

No, because shield regen exists. Armor block regen doesn't. (AHP regen chamber is not the same thing)

While the armor sponge is soaking up damage and being drained away, the shield damage is being rendered irrelevant by regen.

 

[schema]

Non I'm not sure I understand.
[doublepost=1510981154,1510981087][/doublepost]Ithirahad wouldn't that make the local shield version weaker then, because you are hitting hp that don't regenerate first?

 

[Non]

I'm not sure I understand.

Balancing power by dimensions hits rp/pve people the hardest because they cant always just expand their dimensions like a pvp player would, and since rp players already do very poorly against pvp players, this just widens the gap that you want to close.

 

[schema]

So if i understand correctly you mean the situation in which your shield gets hit and you point toward the one shooting at you to soak up the damage?

 

[bigdude601]

My point is that the large majority of the player base is dormant, Either in fear of losing thousands of hours of gameplay to this update or stagnating on the preupdate build that's out now. some political effects may be out there too though. But encouraging the player base that is left to play on the test server instead of just saying "Sometimes its open". Now given I haven't checked in awhile, but the last I did check it wasn't open, it was whitelisted. The only real alternative is to push the content out and let it play out by trial by fire on the current servers. You won't really see the balance issues and bugs that are gonna pop up till it goes live anyway without some serious playtesting.

 

[schema]

Non that's why we didn't do it in dimensions, or tie it to mass. It is a general size dependency on power that aligns better with entity scaling

 

[Non]

It is a general size

I'm lost, how are you measuring size without dimensions, mass, or volume?

 

[schema]

The only reason we ever whitelisted it would be if there was intentional griefing (performance gifing. we dont care about the builds) going on.

 

[Lecic]

Lecic what exact difference does this make over a global shield in the same situation? In that case you would take out the shield first and then the armor. you would go through the same amount of damage.

Shields can regenerate more damage if armor has to be damaged first. It also makes piercing and ion weapons worthless, because an ion weapon cannot hit the shields through the armor, and the piercing weapon will be blocked by shields.

Not too sure myself how effective it is

There is a reason why every major faction in the past year outfits their ships with frontal docked forcefields, and it is because it has proven itself extremely effective at blocking ion weapons and extending the lifespan of a ship. FCM, Thryn, NFD, Aethi, and Vaygr, just to name a few, have all used these.

 

[schema]

By dimension i mean not a specific shape. The reactor itself doesn't scale with ship dimensions. You are free to chose the shape. Anything else would cause exponential block growth.

 

[Ithirahad]

Non that's why we didn't do it in dimensions, or tie it to mass. It is a general size dependency on power that aligns better with entity scaling

?

But you did do it in dimensions... specifically, one dimension. As far as RP ships go, this means a more stick-looking ship, especially with more space at the ends, like this Honor Harrington universe ship:

...will have more space to work with for interior (as it's not taken up by stabilizers), and more options for things like redundant reactors, as well as more flexibility in reactor placement if they're not worried about getting the maximum power out of their setup. This ship also accommodates the maximum power per volume and block count ('true' size for RP/creative building)... not to mention a generally higher achievable TWR, which is noticeable even if you never do PvP.

If we really want to optimize, then this configuration gets the most potential power for the mass ('true' size for competitive PvP) of the ship. And given armor's (current) ineffectiveness as anything but a weakish sponge, the loss of potential reactor armor is irrelevant.

The config may not be final, but I can't think of any stabilizer config that mitigates this. This's a mechanical issue.