Prerelease v0.200.250

[Non]

I can't even begin to see the problems that Schema sees if we removed stabilizers entirely.

You are amazing, pls, get a better excuse.

 

[Valiant70]

This I agree with. I will see why changes were made that rendered them useless.

They're going to say something about "volume tanking," which I'm not sure is even a problem. It sounds a lot like spaced armor, which also shouldn't be removed because the spaced armor concept helps RP ships that have interior spaces around important things.

 

[Ithirahad]

For instance; Ithirihad showcased a stabilizer ring around their power core, and claimed it was a work-around for the new energy beam system. The stabilizer ring is easy to hit since it's a giant ring, and hard to shield since it isn't localized. If the player has a knowledge of the mechanics, they will know the reactor is dead center of the ring and will fire on that area.

That wasn't me. In any case, that particular arrangement doesn't really align with a 'meta'. I remember someone posting a stabilizer ring and insisting that it's some kind of good alternate arrangement, that we should be 'creative' in using the stabilizers, and that it's not a sign of the mechanics being bad, which (predictably) ended in more experienced players jumping on him/her. :P

 

[Non]

That is not how the system would work. It would be too heavy on performance to read what blocks a wall is made of. There is a good chance areas on the ship will be designated in a similar manner to how the new copy paste works. That's a guess however, based on our last discussions on it, and whether we find a better system.

I was not being serious about that as a system, I was making an example of this concern:

You don't know what the final balance for crew will be, and WE certainly don't. WE are going to have to refit our ships again anyway.

Which you did not acknowledge in the least.

We aim to reduce the blocks needed in order to be effective, in both their power and how damage is distributed. Perhaps these should have been introduced in tandem, but that is sadly not the case.

Pls dont be dumb, actually talk to pvprs about this.

return to a meta where ships are filled to the brim with system blocks.

But thats not meta.

I can't just turn around and say "You're 100% right" and change things without looking at potential consequences.

Yes you can, which is what I'm assuming happened with this update.

 

[Ithirahad]

The problem is that removing or reducing stabilizer requirements on a ship means we return to a meta where ships are filled to the brim with system blocks.

...Yeah, I wasn't going to respond to this, but actually filling ships to the brim, while common, isn't really 'meta'. Leaving open spaces helps a lot with mitigating missile damage, and often a ship that's less filled is no less viable than one that's completely filled. Maybe it's nominally less powerful, but against another ship of the same mass it may well perform better if anything, at least if it's well designed.

 

[Lecic]

Lecic, I can't just turn around and say "You're 100% right" and change things without looking at potential consequences. I can't even begin to see the problems that Schema sees if we removed stabilizers entirely. I have brought information to them, and they've explained why certain suggestions break things or how certain meta isn't as clever as you claim it to be.

Give us the consequences. What breaks if you remove stabilizers? Plenty of people have been testing configs that remove stabilizer distance or even completely remove the need for stabilizers with no ill effects, and they haven't noticed anything breaking. So please, enlighten us.

You know what? I had a whole post written up but you were going to pull one line like before, so I'm just leaving this. Respond to it. It was the most important part of my post anyway.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I'm not opposed to this. The problem is that removing or reducing stabilizer requirements on a ship means we return to a meta where ships are filled to the brim with system blocks. There will be no cap on power inside a confined volume until you fill that volume. That is why Schema does not remove them. It's the exact opposite of the goal we set out to accomplish.

Filled to the brim? Unlikely. However, it would allow more than one option for reactor placement while still allowing efficiency. How the new power works and how systems were "compressed" (meaning you can reach the same result in a much lower block count in both the shields and guns department), filling ships to the brim with systems is already unnecessary or downright impossible if someone wants to be able to power all said systems.
But then again, what's wrong with a hull "filled to the brim" with systems? That was never the problem. A giant blob of systems could be dealt with. Hell, most veteran PvP players here take pride in making their ships presentable. The problem was always the ships that ignored any and all aesthetic aspects and focused on sheer efficiency and breaking the game. Docked hull, missile spam, docked power/shield, spaghetti, all were designs that already ignored aesthetics and thus interior space. This time, they will still build needles and dumbbells, because that's what's most efficient, while players who still give a damn about how their ships look, will struggle. Yes, it does sound counter-productive.

I think the community's main problem here, especially the veterans', is that back in the day, we started playing a game that let us do whatever the hell we wanted with the blocks present, and are arriving to the point where the options are getting more and more limited if we want designs that are good both for display and for gameplay. Of course anyone can correct me on that, and they are welcome to.

 

[HerrColonel]

I'm not opposed to this. The problem is that removing or reducing stabilizer requirements on a ship means we return to a meta where ships are filled to the brim with system blocks. There will be no cap on power inside a confined volume until you fill that volume. That is why Schema does not remove them. It's the exact opposite of the goal we set out to accomplish.

Stop thinking in terms of volume, think about maximum power gen (aka combat potentia) per mass. You're not going to be able to "force" people designing their ships the way you think they will.

Like I said: more power = more damage output + more mobility + more defense
To sum it up: more power = best combat ship

A ship with lower power efficiency is basically worst than a smaller ship with 100% efficiency in terms of capability. Which is why you seen absurd design like spaghettis appear.

Adding punishing mechanics for this specific design is not going to solve anything, people will go around them because it does not address the reason why competitive players abandoned the idea to use common spaceships designs in the first place. That's exactly what you guys tried to do with system integrity, and thus you guys buffed islands ships. So now you have to work on a power conduit feature to punish those. So people will go back to spaghettis with 2x2 lines. You're just trapping yourself in a development loop to counter what ideas we have for best meta ships. You're not going to be able to work on anything new and fun because of this (believe me we're creative beings). It's going to go on over and over until the mechanics are so dumb that they even penalize the designs you wanted to promote in the first place. Let me make a scheme to explain that

A hint about the common goal of both schine and competitive players: being able to make ships which are both aesthetic and good at combat like in the old system. We do care about that. Only a ship which is both strong AND nice will be praised and reconized as a genius design. Way over "dumb and lazy" ships like weapons boxes (example: http://i67.tinypic.com/4qk55j.png no offense to the author). But if asked to choose between aesthetic and performance we'll choose performance because it enable us to defeat other ships. Remove stabilizers, let the power go up linearly with power block count (power gen cap never achieved anything in the old system that's why we used more entities and turrets to power up craziest dmg output, and that's why you had to add auxiliary power to make titans viable) The meta will then shift to whatever % of each systems you put on your ship without any penality or buffs to certain shapes. And also remove system integrity and this stupid power conduit thing, you won't need that anymore because players will have no reason to go spaghetti or island or godknowswhat meta shape fits the best in the first place.

Don't belive me? Fine I'm also someone which sticks with facts. -->Just ask Lancake to send his ships to me or upload them<-- since they're what you THINK performs good with your own mechanics ((Lancake hey lancake)he seems to have not posted anything for weeks so I'll ask you to contact him so he doesn't just ignore me). I'll study them and come up with a same mass design (spoiler alert: certainly a 8 or 16km stick or cross very thin with full axis turrets) which can't be outperformed by a nicely designed ship and CAN'T be nerfed without limiting how big you can build a ship, or other limitations that will screw up everyone. So then you'll have to claim blind if you don't admit your system is flawed.

Starmade for me is like a girlfriend going stupid and me not being able to keep up with her bullshit. I really want to dump her but since I love her in the first place, I'll give a couple tries fixing her. I'm almost out of patience and I want to quit. You have no clues how much players think like me

 

[Dire Venom]

What game are the devs playing btw:? It seems completly different to what I have ....
Seriously though.
Run a poll. Do a survey.
The vast majority of players will mod out the Stabilizor Distances on release, and the rest of the players will likely not even bother to update.

>>Creative building and even interiors are blatenly discouraged by stabilizor mechanic. Why the hell would a player add dead weight to their ship?
>>Answer: They won't. Players will only add interiors where they want to and leave the rest as dead space/sticks if they want a decntly performing ship. Short stubby fat ships still work, but only for Role playing. They simply do not have the power to be compedative.

I add interiors becuase I want to. Not because I'm being forced to put my interiors "here" and "here" and "here" with the reactor always at the back and the stabilizors upfront.

The simple fix is to remove stabilizor distances. We don't want stick, spaghetti or supermeta dumbells either. Please stop trying to take the most peverse and convulated path possible.

Since removing stabilizors will Destroy the world, and removing stabilizor distance will break your heart why not try a simple alternative? Addative stabilizord distances or the such.

Why should a rectangle Ship get Significantly more power than a Sphere shaped Ship Criss ???? WHY do you hate Spheres so much??? Why the love of rectangles ???????? Why the love of sticks???

 

[Magrim]

If we make changes, then add crew, we will need to revert those changes.

If you guys would just build a solid power system, adding crew (or any other mechanic for that matter) should not necessitate any major revisions. Only minor number adjustments.

The problem, or at least one problem here seems to be that we are forced to waste space between stabilizers and reactors.

I honestly do not believe that power 2.0 was intended to force interiors on anyone. It is however definitely a consequence of its implementation. No, I believe it was supposed to be a way to limit energy output relative to ship size. A bigger ship producing more power than a smaller ship is naturally the way things should behave but the root cause of ALL problems with power 2.0 is the devs' definition of "size."

According to some of the devs the "size" of a ship can be defined accurately enough by using the length of a ship. They believe that balance can be achieved if stab distance is tweaked properly. We are telling you balance can never be achieved with this system. If distance is far, you get sticks. Too short, stabs become pointless. Some perfect spot in the middle, you get dumbells.

The point is there will always be an extreme meta with this system, there is no perfect distance for stabs because no one can say with a straight face that two ships are comparable because they are the same length. One could outweigh the other by a factor of 10 or have 10x the block count. Why would anyone in their right mind make the more massive ship if they can have the same energy output and thus the same capabilities as the other without the mass? The answer is they wouldn't and this is the forced design choice people are actually talking about. Incidentally, crew will never fix this problem because it has nothing to do with wasted space or forced interiors.

There is just no balance with power 2.0. These two ships can not be balanced with dimensional based power. Not without further restrictions to creative freedom that favors one shape over the other.

Plenty of people have been testing configs that remove stabilizer distance or even completely remove the need for stabilizers with no ill effects, and they haven't noticed anything breaking.

Can confirm this to be true and I will continue to do so if power is implemented the way they want it. At least until the moding api is a thing and someone mods in a proper power system.

But then again, what's wrong with a hull "filled to the brim" with systems?

Lancake says so:

Spoiler

The current meta has always been to fill most of your ship with systems, as empty space would be a waste if it could hold more systems (or armor).


We moved away from that with this power system, as it's impossible to get a good oversight what is in your ship and where all of the groups are if it's filled to the brim. Adjusting the end result of your systems is also a frustrating experience as you need to find a specific system (which could be placed in multiple locations, in different amounts) and either removing them, or replacing them with other systems till you find the proper balance.


The stabilizers allow us to up the regeneration per block for reactors without allowing people to fill their ship with as much power and power consuming systems it can fit.

Now you're limited by the dimensions of your ship and this would define the "maximum" regeneration of a given ship. Allowing us to define that, if a ship has all of its systems inside, you can only use 20% or so of its volume dedicated to systems before running into power problems.

 

[Dire Venom]

The stabilizers allow us to up the regeneration per block for reactors without allowing people to fill their ship with as much power and power consuming systems it can fit.

*Sigh*.........
"Without allowing.... *
I'll stop you right there Lancake.

The old system:

Encourages players fill their ship with as much power and power consuming systems it can fit

The new system:

Encourages players to maxamise one ship dimension to get as much power and power consuming systems as it can fit

DO YOU SEE A RELATION!!!!!!!???????

 

[HerrColonel]

Why the love of sticks???

No puns intended for sure =P

Come on Criss just answer now you're connected

 

[Dire Venom]

Schema Schema Schema!!!!
We demmand the Cat God's appearance! schema

So much development time is being wasted, and the community alienated.
Sure, it's your game. Your rules.
We just also care about and want to support your project.
We worry that your time is being wasted developing systems that do not head in the direction you set out in the end-goal documents.
We want ships of all types to... you know actualy look like ships XD
We want to work with you. Please give us a chance.

 

[Magrim]

I hold little hope that it's actually going to change. We have been beating the forums to death for a while now with our grievances and all we've ever gotten is: "Everything is fine. Move along."

To be fair, I'm glad Criss is at least communicating with us but it sounds like he's the middle man and the other devs are the ones now telling him everything is fine.

Maybe when 80% of the servers are running custom configs they will realize that everthing is not fine.

It's a shame though, to think of all that wasted time.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Starmade for me is like a girlfriend going stupid and me not being able to keep up with her bullshit. I really want to dump her but since I love her in the first place, I'll give a couple tries fixing her. I'm almost out of patience and I want to quit. You have no clues how much players think like me

This is very, very accurate. And even sadder. Funny and sad enough, the metaships never caused an uproar nearly as large as the measures intended to eliminate them. That is because it puts more limits on the non-meta builders than on the meta builders. But oh well.

 

[Kelpaz]

Is this a joke? Are we really doing this now:

Streams are an abomination I tried rerouting it with some node things and:

WHO thought that this was an amazing idea?
Does it even solve islands, let's look at my "Geometric overlord":

NOPE not really, it also has three shield bubbles so trying to hit the streams will let the other shields recharge.
Please don't do this, I know what you guys are trying to do but this will end up hurting more than helping.

Stop trying to "fix" meta, meta is figuring out how the system works and maximizing potential of that system.
Changing the system changes the meta but it will never make it disappear.

 

[Jeryia]

If I may,
I see Criss/Schine coming at this from the perspective of wanting to promote ship interiors by making efficient design requiring that free space. Which I think sounds like a reasonable goal.

I also see those who want to min/max their ship builds seeing the mechanisms in the pre-release causing these issues:
* Efficient ships are overly constrained to be elongated 'Dumbels'; Which is unappealing aesthetically and limits design choices more so than the currently released system.
* Efficient ship design is also constructed in a highly vulnerable fashion. Each 'end' of your ship must have a system critical to it's function. Thus this limits the ability to protect those areas in a way that helps ship efficiency.
These also look like reasonable concerns.

Requirements from this Topic

From looking at the desires and concerns, I don't think they are mutually exclusive.

So our requirements for ship systems are (as I see them from reading this thread):

• Efficient design should promote design of a wide variety of ship 'shapes'
• Efficient design should discourage excessive use of empty space.
• Efficient design should innately provide some amount of free space in ship
• Efficient design should be buildable in ways that protect critical systems
  
• The general mechanics of said system should be relatively strait forward, and not require a great deal of reading for a new player to build a basic ship.

Please let me know if anyone disagrees with these goals or thinks something should be added to it.

Original Design Goals

For reference the original design goals(from Power System Overhaul Proposal):

• Systems (weapons, thrust, power, etc) will take a considerably smaller amount of space on your ship. This could be ranging from 5% (large ships) to 50% (small ships) of your total block count. The way we will achieve this is described in the section below.

• Due to systems being a lot smaller, there will be a lot more empty space the larger a ship gets. The player is free to leave it empty, or put in decoration and interior at a very low cost to mass.

• We will also offer a block to serve as an “inner hull”, which will be a low mass, low HP block. You could use it to fill empty areas in your ship, or replace it with real interiors without making the ship weaker by doing that.

• Normal hull (armor) will add enough mass so it would not be viable to fill your ships with it.

• Making sure that most systems are usually clustered together and not spread out all over the ship in small amounts. This makes defending specific areas of your ship more important and could be incentive to add more inner armor to those locations.

• As the amount of blocks involved is a lot less than before, we can add extra mechanics to the placement of system blocks. That will introduce complexity on a small scale since every block you place is equally important.

• Provide context based information to the player and add “logical” mechanics to a ship to make it easier for players to get started. Also keeping the new system easy to use for small ships.

• Change armor so that it scales accordingly for weaker and larger ships, without adding extra thickness to your ship.

• Weapons will also be adjusted although that’s for another thread.

Strawman Solution

With the above goals in mind. Let me throw out a straw man that I believe would meet all of the mentioned goals, and people can tear it apart:

First off I would remove current stabilizer distance requirement. Then we add a general system distance requirement between all of the different types of systems. For example shield capacitors would need to be x distance from thrusters, reactors, chambers, etc but not other shield blocks. We would use the current structural integrity system to keep system blocks of the same type grouped together so our ships don't turn into a mad attempt to fit blocks in lots of different groups(Should also help with processing time). The distance between the said systems would be based on either the total number of system blocks on the ship, or perhaps the number of blocks in the given system.

This would be balanced to say have fighter sized ships have no space requirement (as hey all fighters really need is a cockpit anyway). A frigate sized ship would have a space requirement of 5-6 blocks (enough for rather spartan but usable interior). Likely have it level off at about 10 blocks for your really bug ships so you don't have stupid amounts of free space if you build that full sized super star destroyer you've always wanted. I'm being intentionally vague on exactly what a fighter/frigate/titan in size would be, but from the mechanic's of the game perspective, It would be determined by the total number of system blocks. These numbers mentioned here may need to be tweaked depending on testing.

I would also suggest making the space requirement a soft requirement similar to what the stabilizers do now. So if a player did place two different types of systems immediately next to each other on a non fighter, they would be penalized, but not heavily. Perhaps a 20% hit in the system's effectiveness when immediately next to each other scaling down to 0% when reaching the correct distance? Again that number may need to be tweaked.

Advantages:

• Players would be able to build any shape of vessel they deem fit
• Empty space would no longer be determined by how 'thin' a ship is. This would be more constant for efficient ships of different shapes.
• Ships would need to have the free space available to it to maintain full efficiency that could easily fit interiors
  
• Critical Systems could be buried and protected in any way the ship designer wanted
• New players could build a functional ship ignoring this mechanic, it just wouldn't be as efficient as it could be.

Things to keep in mind:

• Armor/hull would need to be effective enough to warent players wanting to surround their ship with it.
• Distance between systems would need to be small enough to not make players just want to wrap their individual systems in armor instead of around the entire vessel.
• Once systems are large enough to require a distance between them, we may wish to consider having that distance have a starting number of something like 3, because a 1 or 2 block distance requirement wouldn't really promote interior and may just be awkward.
• I'm not familiar enough with starmade or even any real game design to know if this would be difficult to implement or a performance issue.

I think all of the mentioned goals are good ones. Even the free space. I've always thought it a bit odd to fill ships systems in like insulation in a house. Generally if these where real spacecraft, I would expect said systems to be fragile pieces of equipment that would need repair or maintenance and thus need human accessibility. I suppose it could be some sort of foam that one puts a hole in the wall and pumps into it, and vacuums it out when it's broken. (not promoting required ship maintenance more than what'a already there, more just promoting fee space).

 

[Lecic]

If I may,
I see Criss/Schine coming at this from the perspective of wanting to promote ship interiors by making efficient design requiring that free space. Which I think sounds like a reasonable goal.

I also see those who want to min/max their ship builds seeing the mechanisms in the pre-release causing these issues:
* Efficient ships are overly constrained to be elongated 'Dumbels'; Which is unappealing aesthetically and limits design choices more so than the currently released system.
* Efficient ship design is also constructed in a highly vulnerable fashion. Each 'end' of your ship must have a system critical to it's function. Thus this limits the ability to protect those areas in a way that helps ship efficiency.
These also look like reasonable concerns.

Requirements from this Topic

From looking at the desires and concerns, I don't think they are mutually exclusive.

So our requirements for ship systems are (as I see them from reading this thread):

• Efficient design should promote design of a wide variety of ship 'shapes'
• Efficient design should discourage excessive use of empty space.
• Efficient design should innately provide some amount of free space in ship
• Efficient design should be buildable in ways that protect critical systems
  
• The general mechanics of said system should be relatively strait forward, and not require a great deal of reading for a new player to build a basic ship.

Please let me know if anyone disagrees with these goals or thinks something should be added to it.

Original Design Goals

For reference the original design goals(from Power System Overhaul Proposal):

• Systems (weapons, thrust, power, etc) will take a considerably smaller amount of space on your ship. This could be ranging from 5% (large ships) to 50% (small ships) of your total block count. The way we will achieve this is described in the section below.

• Due to systems being a lot smaller, there will be a lot more empty space the larger a ship gets. The player is free to leave it empty, or put in decoration and interior at a very low cost to mass.

• We will also offer a block to serve as an “inner hull”, which will be a low mass, low HP block. You could use it to fill empty areas in your ship, or replace it with real interiors without making the ship weaker by doing that.

• Normal hull (armor) will add enough mass so it would not be viable to fill your ships with it.

• Making sure that most systems are usually clustered together and not spread out all over the ship in small amounts. This makes defending specific areas of your ship more important and could be incentive to add more inner armor to those locations.

• As the amount of blocks involved is a lot less than before, we can add extra mechanics to the placement of system blocks. That will introduce complexity on a small scale since every block you place is equally important.

• Provide context based information to the player and add “logical” mechanics to a ship to make it easier for players to get started. Also keeping the new system easy to use for small ships.

• Change armor so that it scales accordingly for weaker and larger ships, without adding extra thickness to your ship.

• Weapons will also be adjusted although that’s for another thread.

Strawman Solution

With the above goals in mind. Let me throw out a straw man that I believe would meet all of the mentioned goals, and people can tear it apart:

First off I would remove current stabilizer distance requirement. Then we add a general system distance requirement between all of the different types of systems. For example shield capacitors would need to be x distance from thrusters, reactors, chambers, etc but not other shield blocks. We would use the current structural integrity system to keep system blocks of the same type grouped together so our ships don't turn into a mad attempt to fit blocks in lots of different groups(Should also help with processing time). The distance between the said systems would be based on either the total number of system blocks on the ship, or perhaps the number of blocks in the given system.

This would be balanced to say have fighter sized ships have no space requirement (as hey all fighters really need is a cockpit anyway). A frigate sized ship would have a space requirement of 5-6 blocks (enough for rather spartan but usable interior). Likely have it level off at about 10 blocks for your really bug ships so you don't have stupid amounts of free space if you build that full sized super star destroyer you've always wanted. I'm being intentionally vague on exactly what a fighter/frigate/titan in size would be, but from the mechanic's of the game perspective, It would be determined by the total number of system blocks. These numbers mentioned here may need to be tweaked depending on testing.

I would also suggest making the space requirement a soft requirement similar to what the stabilizers do now. So if a player did place two different types of systems immediately next to each other on a non fighter, they would be penalized, but not heavily. Perhaps a 20% hit in the system's effectiveness when immediately next to each other scaling down to 0% when reaching the correct distance? Again that number may need to be tweaked.

Advantages:

• Players would be able to build any shape of vessel they deem fit
• Empty space would no longer be determined by how 'thin' a ship is. This would be more constant for efficient ships of different shapes.
• Ships would need to have the free space available to it to maintain full efficiency that could easily fit interiors
  
• Critical Systems could be buried and protected in any way the ship designer wanted
• New players could build a functional ship ignoring this mechanic, it just wouldn't be as efficient as it could be.

Things to keep in mind:

• Armor/hull would need to be effective enough to warent players wanting to surround their ship with it.
• Distance between systems would need to be small enough to not make players just want to wrap their individual systems in armor instead of around the entire vessel.
• Once systems are large enough to require a distance between them, we may wish to consider having that distance have a starting number of something like 3, because a 1 or 2 block distance requirement wouldn't really promote interior and may just be awkward.
• I'm not familiar enough with starmade or even any real game design to know if this would be difficult to implement or a performance issue.

I think all of the mentioned goals are good ones. Even the free space. I've always thought it a bit odd to fill ships systems in like insulation in a house. Generally if these where real spacecraft, I would expect said systems to be fragile pieces of equipment that would need repair or maintenance and thus need human accessibility. I suppose it could be some sort of foam that one puts a hole in the wall and pumps into it, and vacuums it out when it's broken. (not promoting required ship maintenance more than what'a already there, more just promoting fee space).

Or... Instead of forcing empty space between all our systems...

We could just have crew, which are a positive encouragement for having interior that actually makes the game more interesting rather than the random attempts at forced open space, which exist for no positive reason.

 

[Raisinbat]

I see Criss/Schine coming at this from the perspective of wanting to promote ship interiors by making efficient design requiring that free space. Which I think sounds like a reasonable goal.

WHY?

Because you like interiors everyone must be forced to do that? What if someone just wants to build a ship to fly around and fight/mine/trade in it, why must they be forced to add interiors that they wont use?

 

[Matt_Bradock]

We will also offer a block to serve as an “inner hull”, which will be a low mass, low HP block. You could use it to fill empty areas in your ship, or replace it with real interiors without making the ship weaker by doing that.

Instead, they added extra mass to motherboards and normal/charged curcuits which were already serving that purpose. Making interiors ACTUALLY COST MORE MASS THAN THEY USED TO.