Starmade Systems, but Rational

[Mered4]

Hello there!

Before I begin breaking down each part of Starmade's systems, from crafting to fighting, I would like to lay out some first principles that guided me to these conclusions and shaped my idea of what Starmade should be. This is more of an idealistic dream of what Starmade should look like, despite it being well within the capabilities of Schine's programmers.

Principles:

1. All systems and design choices must be based on the metaphysical reality of Starmade. Essentially, they must make sense. Example: yellow and red mix to make orange.
2. Systems must built in a natural fashion, without artificial limitations to limit extreme cases. Example: logarithmic power curve based on group size and shape with no soft caps
3. The goal of each system should be to encourage players to build what they want and to experiment and try new things. Example: an equal mass ISD-2 and USS Enterprise should not automatically have an inherent mathematical advantage over the other due to their shape.

System Design:
Crafting:
Get rid of all ore types. There are now only three types of ore: Matter, AntiMatter, and Dark Matter.

• Matter. All blocks will cost two Matter as a base price. Wedges and other shapes will cost only one. This will be a plentiful resource and will be minable from all old ore blocks.
• AntiMatter. Basic Support and Weapons systems will cost AntiMatter to make. It will be scarce everywhere, but will be easier to find outside of systems with stars. (Or in certain stars)
• Dark Matter. Exotic systems and blocks (i.e. force fields) will cost dark matter to make. It will be near impossible to find in systems with stars, and will be scarce and concentrated in dead systems. It will also be harder to find the farther out one goes from the galactic center. (This could be reversed)

No block will require more than two types of resources to build. Maximum requirement will be five resources to create one block (ftl and teleporters). Deconstruction of any block will provide all of its components.

That's really it for crafting. Everything else is already in the game, just not all of it is working properly. Gathering resources to create a ship or station is tedious and unfun as it is, so let's make it the shortest part of the Mine Build Destroy Salvage Die gameplay loop.

Ship Systems:
Reactor based systems for Power and shields. This means that the system produces diminishing returns based on block count and reactor shape. Any shape will do and it is possible to test any shape mathematically using only xyz and volume dimensions per group. I like using spheres as a metric for these systems, personally. No penalties or bonuses will be given for having multiple groups.

Weapons will be insanely powerful. I would like to increase their DPS and power used per block by at least two orders of magnitude. This will buff turrets on large ships and smaller drones. The goal of this change is to reduce the space needed for weapon systems, and free up space for either more weapons in each ship or more support systems. Essentially, it opens up more options for players, and decreases server lag. (Debatable on the lag part).

Power Regen and system power use will need to be standardized around a base 100 system. One power block = 100 power Regen, for example. This is to improve readability and make balance changes much easier to calibrate.

As an abstract, any given ship possesses 10 units of power Regen. Each system, if used in moderation, will use 1 of those units. This leaves each ship (after essential support systems, like shields, thrusters, scanner, and jump drive) with about 5 units of Regen to play with. This will allow for immense customization and experimentation. Remember, weapon systems only use power to reload if we cut out power caps and aux power entirely. You can stack alot of different weapon types into this system.

Thrusters will also use diminishing returns, with the express goal of hampering the speed of larger ships in respect to smaller ones. This is inherently necessary to promote server stability and keep fights clean and enjoyable. It will most certainly be possible to make a big ship as fast as a much smaller one, but at great cost to the other systems on the ship.

Stealth systems will be made cheaper to use for power, especially jamming. Jamming should be a given for many ships, as lockons are and should remain a powerful tool. Cloak will still be nigh impossible for larger ships (battleships) but permacloaking destroyers and the like will be possible. There will need to be some limitations to ensure that cloaked ships don't become the only meta, and it should be a massive trade-off to make a cloaking ship. I don't have any good math research yet on Cloak. Rationally, however, this makes the most sense and gives cloaking a place in Starmade's PvP meta. The stealth distance idea that has been thrown around recently seems a good fit for this system as well, since it uses the metaphysical universe of Starmade as a game mechanic.

Other Systems:
Crew:
Adding NPC crew to a ship is an interesting idea on the surface, but it adds too many additional layers of complexity for players. It also does not make metaphysical sense. We have AI modules, what extra functionality do clumsy NPCs add to Starmade? The focus for processing power should be put on controlling turrets and fleets in a much more organised fashion, which helps keep the balance between large ships and small ship swarms.
Crew Chambers are similarly unnecessary, and add even more tedious complexity. If I want to add an interior, I will add an interior, and by God it will be made for octopus pilots and thus be composed of a series of dodecahedrons. Or I'll just use teleporters.

FTL Systems:
On principle, interdictors should far outweigh jumpdrives in effectiveness. Smaller ships should be able to stop bigger ships from jumping away, and big ships should be able to utterly devastate small FTL drives. In addition, interdictors should also stop gate use completely. No energy calculation, just if interdictor is on - gate is off. The only way to escape a bigger ship using interdictors would be to run away with superior speed and jump out.
Any interaction with FTL, be it an interdictor or a jump drive or a gate, should be power heavy and difficult to maintain in a head to head combat situation. For example, if one ship is blocking another's escape route, the victim could attack the enemy to force them to stop burning their power on interdictors and defend themselves.

Player interaction and Faction Systems:
The small population of Starmade's servers makes any serious discussion about player driven faction systems essentially moot. Most are individuals or 2-3 players working together. In that context, any system that governs player interaction should be focused on driving them together in conflict or peace. Not dependency-based, but demand-based. To that end, ships should be sellable as completed blueprints or as blueprints in the catalog for credits. Ships are the unique resource that players create, not their locally farmed Nacht ore or dark matter. Let's focus the market place on that idea, instead of individual blocks or ores.

As for AI factions, it is a great idea on paper, but if reports are to be believed, they do not mesh well on a multiplayer server.

Where we go from here:
Let's say schine implemented all these ideas by the first of next month. What is the next step to a better Starmade?

I think the only rational answer is AI development and smoothing the multiplayer experience, including reducing all cases of rubber banding and desyncing that have plagued this game since the start.
The AI code in Starmade is its true foundation. With good AI pilots and gunners, pirates would be challenging, drone fleets would be terrifying, and large ships that rely on turrets would be truly deadly. The AI faction system and fleet control would be more flexible and engaging for the player. Starmade's greatest strength is in the creativity of its pilots, and its greatest weakness is the AI supporting them. Let's get out of this system development hell and look forward to a better Starmade.

Please note that I am intentionally vague in some of these topics or ignored others, as any solution based on the principles outlined will work. My ideas to fit those principles may not be the best ones. That being said, watching schema and lancake try to implement and iterate on an obviously flawed system like the stabilizers is depressing. It's not based on a set of concrete principles, and is simply a symptom of trying to use community sourced ideas as a foundation for progress.

 

[Brokengauge]

Hello there!

Before I begin breaking down each part of Starmade's systems, from crafting to fighting, I would like to lay out some first principles that guided me to these conclusions and shaped my idea of what Starmade should be. This is more of an idealistic dream of what Starmade should look like, despite it being well within the capabilities of Schine's programmers.

Principles:

1. All systems and design choices must be based on the metaphysical reality of Starmade. Essentially, they must make sense. Example: yellow and red mix to make orange.
2. Systems must built in a natural fashion, without artificial limitations to limit extreme cases. Example: logarithmic power curve based on group size and shape with no soft caps
3. The goal of each system should be to encourage players to build what they want and to experiment and try new things. Example: an equal mass ISD-2 and USS Enterprise should not automatically have an inherent mathematical advantage over the other due to their shape.

System Design:
Crafting:
Get rid of all ore types. There are now only three types of ore: Matter, AntiMatter, and Dark Matter.

• Matter. All blocks will cost two Matter as a base price. Wedges and other shapes will cost only one. This will be a plentiful resource and will be minable from all old ore blocks.
• AntiMatter. Basic Support and Weapons systems will cost AntiMatter to make. It will be scarce everywhere, but will be easier to find outside of systems with stars. (Or in certain stars)
• Dark Matter. Exotic systems and blocks (i.e. force fields) will cost dark matter to make. It will be near impossible to find in systems with stars, and will be scarce and concentrated in dead systems. It will also be harder to find the farther out one goes from the galactic center. (This could be reversed)

No block will require more than two types of resources to build. Maximum requirement will be five resources to create one block (ftl and teleporters). Deconstruction of any block will provide all of its components.

That's really it for crafting. Everything else is already in the game, just not all of it is working properly. Gathering resources to create a ship or station is tedious and unfun as it is, so let's make it the shortest part of the Mine Build Destroy Salvage Die gameplay loop.

Ship Systems:
Reactor based systems for Power and shields. This means that the system produces diminishing returns based on block count and reactor shape. Any shape will do and it is possible to test any shape mathematically using only xyz and volume dimensions per group. I like using spheres as a metric for these systems, personally. No penalties or bonuses will be given for having multiple groups.

Weapons will be insanely powerful. I would like to increase their DPS and power used per block by at least two orders of magnitude. This will buff turrets on large ships and smaller drones. The goal of this change is to reduce the space needed for weapon systems, and free up space for either more weapons in each ship or more support systems. Essentially, it opens up more options for players, and decreases server lag. (Debatable on the lag part).

Power Regen and system power use will need to be standardized around a base 100 system. One power block = 100 power Regen, for example. This is to improve readability and make balance changes much easier to calibrate.

As an abstract, any given ship possesses 10 units of power Regen. Each system, if used in moderation, will use 1 of those units. This leaves each ship (after essential support systems, like shields, thrusters, scanner, and jump drive) with about 5 units of Regen to play with. This will allow for immense customization and experimentation. Remember, weapon systems only use power to reload if we cut out power caps and aux power entirely. You can stack alot of different weapon types into this system.

Thrusters will also use diminishing returns, with the express goal of hampering the speed of larger ships in respect to smaller ones. This is inherently necessary to promote server stability and keep fights clean and enjoyable. It will most certainly be possible to make a big ship as fast as a much smaller one, but at great cost to the other systems on the ship.

Stealth systems will be made cheaper to use for power, especially jamming. Jamming should be a given for many ships, as lockons are and should remain a powerful tool. Cloak will still be nigh impossible for larger ships (battleships) but permacloaking destroyers and the like will be possible. There will need to be some limitations to ensure that cloaked ships don't become the only meta, and it should be a massive trade-off to make a cloaking ship. I don't have any good math research yet on Cloak. Rationally, however, this makes the most sense and gives cloaking a place in Starmade's PvP meta. The stealth distance idea that has been thrown around recently seems a good fit for this system as well, since it uses the metaphysical universe of Starmade as a game mechanic.

Other Systems:
Crew:
Adding NPC crew to a ship is an interesting idea on the surface, but it adds too many additional layers of complexity for players. It also does not make metaphysical sense. We have AI modules, what extra functionality do clumsy NPCs add to Starmade? The focus for processing power should be put on controlling turrets and fleets in a much more organised fashion, which helps keep the balance between large ships and small ship swarms.
Crew Chambers are similarly unnecessary, and add even more tedious complexity. If I want to add an interior, I will add an interior, and by God it will be made for octopus pilots and thus be composed of a series of dodecahedrons. Or I'll just use teleporters.

FTL Systems:
On principle, interdictors should far outweigh jumpdrives in effectiveness. Smaller ships should be able to stop bigger ships from jumping away, and big ships should be able to utterly devastate small FTL drives. In addition, interdictors should also stop gate use completely. No energy calculation, just if interdictor is on - gate is off. The only way to escape a bigger ship using interdictors would be to run away with superior speed and jump out.
Any interaction with FTL, be it an interdictor or a jump drive or a gate, should be power heavy and difficult to maintain in a head to head combat situation. For example, if one ship is blocking another's escape route, the victim could attack the enemy to force them to stop burning their power on interdictors and defend themselves.

Player interaction and Faction Systems:
The small population of Starmade's servers makes any serious discussion about player driven faction systems essentially moot. Most are individuals or 2-3 players working together. In that context, any system that governs player interaction should be focused on driving them together in conflict or peace. Not dependency-based, but demand-based. To that end, ships should be sellable as completed blueprints or as blueprints in the catalog for credits. Ships are the unique resource that players create, not their locally farmed Nacht ore or dark matter. Let's focus the market place on that idea, instead of individual blocks or ores.

As for AI factions, it is a great idea on paper, but if reports are to be believed, they do not mesh well on a multiplayer server.

Where we go from here:
Let's say schine implemented all these ideas by the first of next month. What is the next step to a better Starmade?

I think the only rational answer is AI development and smoothing the multiplayer experience, including reducing all cases of rubber banding and desyncing that have plagued this game since the start.
The AI code in Starmade is its true foundation. With good AI pilots and gunners, pirates would be challenging, drone fleets would be terrifying, and large ships that rely on turrets would be truly deadly. The AI faction system and fleet control would be more flexible and engaging for the player. Starmade's greatest strength is in the creativity of its pilots, and its greatest weakness is the AI supporting them. Let's get out of this system development hell and look forward to a better Starmade.

Please note that I am intentionally vague in some of these topics or ignored others, as any solution based on the principles outlined will work. My ideas to fit those principles may not be the best ones. That being said, watching schema and lancake try to implement and iterate on an obviously flawed system like the stabilizers is depressing. It's not based on a set of concrete principles, and is simply a symptom of trying to use community sourced ideas as a foundation for progress.

I don't like all of this, but I like enough that I'm going to save this thread for my own personal later use at some undetermined point in the future...

 

[Dire Venom]

Creative post, thanks for sharing!

There certiantly do need to be some changes with mining and crafting atm.
I's just not a very engaging aspect of gameplay, spending 2 hours jumping around till you find the right asteroid in identical systems isn't terribly exciting either. I'm not quite sure what the best solution to that would be.

I would like to see the same principle mentioned applied to crafting as well, it's ridiculous and un-nessacery to have to craft induvidual stacks of 5 types of blocks per colour, resulting in easily having to craft over 60+ induvidual item groups just to have some colour variety on your ship.

• Having colour not be part of the crafting, but rather something you select when placing blocks. Simply make it require paint or whatever, another resource. That way instead of having to craft 60+ different items, you just have to craft 5 and then 5-10 paint cans imo, and are able to select whatever colour you have access to when placing hull blocks.
• Alternativly it could be simplified even further, you only need to produce ONE hull stack, and when on your toolbar you can cycle through each shape, placing a shape reduces your hull type count by 1, and with all hull blocks having the same stats I don't see this being an issue.

Phew.
Good post though, it certiantly got me thinking.
Minamalising weapon systems does seem to be a bit of a contraversial idea, on one hand I would like to be less restricted in turret size for effective weapons, but on the other if they become too small they are more difficult to take out and promot small, floating sphere turrets dettachted from the main ship.

 

[Skwidz]

I like these ideas but the crafting seems too basic. I can't think of much a solution to that either but maybe two or more ore types can be found in asteroids and plates and maybe when the player advances enough (does a tech advancement system sound like a good idea?) they can start crafting matter deconstruction beams which turn blocks into generic matter when mined. Then they could start crafting things with a replicator of some kind which can form all blocks and basic materials from gathered matter. I don't know what to think about dark and exotic matter though; they sound like fuels.

 

[Lecic]

Great principles. Pretty meh suggestions.

Get rid of all ore types. There are now only three types of ore: Matter, AntiMatter, and Dark Matter.

You can't have a good, galactic trading economy with only 3 resources, especially one where those 1 of those resources is a generic.

Matter. All blocks will cost two Matter as a base price. Wedges and other shapes will cost only one. This will be a plentiful resource and will be minable from all old ore blocks.

Hell no. We have already made the less complex and more sane choice of giving all shapes of a block the same stats, cost, and inventory slot. There is zero reason to complicate things like this, and makes no sense considering the reason you made these suggestions.

Crew:
Adding NPC crew to a ship is an interesting idea on the surface, but it adds too many additional layers of complexity for players. It also does not make metaphysical sense. We have AI modules, what extra functionality do clumsy NPCs add to Starmade? The focus for processing power should be put on controlling turrets and fleets in a much more organised fashion, which helps keep the balance between large ships and small ship swarms.
Crew Chambers are similarly unnecessary, and add even more tedious complexity.

Crew chambers are literally just empty rooms for you to decorate as you please, so that all ships are encouraged to have an interior in a way that isn't harmful to ship design. They don't even require crew to be implemented.
It's not even "tedious complexity."

Player interaction and Faction Systems:
The small population of Starmade's servers makes any serious discussion about player driven faction systems essentially moot. Most are individuals or 2-3 players working together. In that context, any system that governs player interaction should be focused on driving them together in conflict or peace. Not dependency-based, but demand-based. To that end, ships should be sellable as completed blueprints or as blueprints in the catalog for credits. Ships are the unique resource that players create, not their locally farmed Nacht ore or dark matter. Let's focus the market place on that idea, instead of individual blocks or ores.

This is terrible for a multitude of reasons.
1) You are missing context. If this was 2013 when there were dozens of 20+ man factions, could you make this argument? No. Factions are small because the game population is small. If your hope is that the game stays that way permanently your balance will break if the population ever rises again.
2) People need a reason to fight. Ship blueprint sales will not be a reason to fight.
3) You cannot have an economy based entirely on ship sales! There are only 3 types of players who buy ships. Those who are too incompetent to build their own, those who are too busy to build their own, and those who are buying (usually on an alt) from an enemy to examine the systems.
Ship sales as the economy do not encourage conflict and do not scale with a growing population.


A little bit of complexity is good for a game. Complexity is not a bad thing, and is required to keep the game interesting if you have a lot of players. If your opinion is that the Starmade community consists solely of 2 dozen drooling baboons and should thus be as simple as possible, I don't agree.

 

[Mered4]

Great principles. Pretty meh suggestions.



You can't have a good, galactic trading economy with only 3 resources, especially one where those 1 of those resources is a generic.

I think that's hyperbole, but if we stick with the same old ores and such, can we at least make straightforward and simplistic rules on where ores spawn that is based on GALACTIC scale and not on SYSTEMIC scale? For example, Nacht ore rarely spawns outside of dead systems.

Hell no. We have already made the less complex and more sane choice of giving all shapes of a block the same stats, cost, and inventory slot. There is zero reason to complicate things like this, and makes no sense considering the reason you made these suggestions.

Oh thank God. I haven't used crafting in months and had no idea. That makes things so much more straightforward.

Crew chambers are literally just empty rooms for you to decorate as you please, so that all ships are encouraged to have an interior in a way that isn't harmful to ship design. They don't even require crew to be implemented.
It's not even "tedious complexity."

That's forcing design choices. Not all ships are appropriate for interiors. I didn't phrase my argument well and I do appreciate the correction on the nature of crew chambers.

This is terrible for a multitude of reasons.
1) You are missing context. If this was 2013 when there were dozens of 20+ man factions, could you make this argument? No. Factions are small because the game population is small. If your hope is that the game stays that way permanently your balance will break if the population ever rises again.
2) People need a reason to fight. Ship blueprint sales will not be a reason to fight.
3) You cannot have an economy based entirely on ship sales! There are only 3 types of players who buy ships. Those who are too incompetent to build their own, those who are too busy to build their own, and those who are buying (usually on an alt) from an enemy to examine the systems.
Ship sales as the economy do not encourage conflict and do not scale with a growing population.

You've mentioned two very different goals for player interactions in this post. You want to encourage conflict and nurture a galactic economy. Now, conflict will naturally arise in any system of interaction between human players. It happens voluntarily, even in a sandbox environment. Thus, the economy side of this should be the focus.
To that end, all free market economies work on the principle of creating value for all involved in each transaction. In Starmade, this translates to having a higher local supply of a resource that is difficult to obtain elsewhere. This resource can be ships or blocks or ore - it's all tradeable. Ships are the easiest of those three to create a local supply, and they also add the most value. Ore, as it currently stands, is incredibly easy to find and mine. It's still tedious, but the part where you think about the process is quite simple.

Also, people don't NEED a reason to fight. I'm totally in favor of adding objective based gameplay to the Galaxy, but trying to artificially starve the populace of resources will only encourage stagnation and not conflict. People don't play survival near as much anymore because, without some serious config changes, it just isn't fun.

A little bit of complexity is good for a game. Complexity is not a bad thing, and is required to keep the game interesting if you have a lot of players. If your opinion is that the Starmade community consists solely of 2 dozen drooling baboons and should thus be as simple as possible, I don't agree.

That's not my reason for keeping things as simple as possible. Complexity is necessary, yes, but the current systems are entirely too complex. It's a brick wall, not a learning curve. Keeping players around DOES NOT MEAN complexity is necessary. It means the interaction between the game's systems must encourage experimentation. Unnecessary complexity doesn't keep players around, it drives new players away.
[doublepost=1515593809,1515593013][/doublepost]

Creative post, thanks for sharing!

There certiantly do need to be some changes with mining and crafting atm.
I's just not a very engaging aspect of gameplay, spending 2 hours jumping around till you find the right asteroid in identical systems isn't terribly exciting either. I'm not quite sure what the best solution to that would be.

I would like to see the same principle mentioned applied to crafting as well, it's ridiculous and un-nessacery to have to craft induvidual stacks of 5 types of blocks per colour, resulting in easily having to craft over 60+ induvidual item groups just to have some colour variety on your ship.

• Having colour not be part of the crafting, but rather something you select when placing blocks. Simply make it require paint or whatever, another resource. That way instead of having to craft 60+ different items, you just have to craft 5 and then 5-10 paint cans imo, and are able to select whatever colour you have access to when placing hull blocks.
• Alternativly it could be simplified even further, you only need to produce ONE hull stack, and when on your toolbar you can cycle through each shape, placing a shape reduces your hull type count by 1, and with all hull blocks having the same stats I don't see this being an issue.

Phew.
Good post though, it certiantly got me thinking.
Minamalising weapon systems does seem to be a bit of a contraversial idea, on one hand I would like to be less restricted in turret size for effective weapons, but on the other if they become too small they are more difficult to take out and promot small, floating sphere turrets dettachted from the main ship.

Let's follow that thread rationally. What's the obvious counter to lots of small turrets with oversized power systems that are detached from the ship? The first one that comes to mind is lots of lock on missiles. The turrets would thus have to be protected by a PD element, and are MORE vulnerable to missiles because they are farther outside the ships hull.

That said, I haven't done PvP in a while.
But, I much prefer it to the hilariously true memes about building turrets bigger than your ship to get an effective weapon system.

 

[Zoolimar]

Reactor based systems for Power and shields. This means that the system produces diminishing returns based on block count and reactor shape. Any shape will do and it is possible to test any shape mathematically using only xyz and volume dimensions per group. I like using spheres as a metric for these systems, personally. No penalties or bonuses will be given for having multiple groups.

Does it mean that the most effective reactor layout is multiple groups built up to effectiveness cap, after which you get hit by diminishing returns, or even thousands of 1 block reactors - because they are the most effective?

 

[Mered4]

Does it mean that the most effective reactor layout is multiple groups built up to effectiveness cap, after which you get hit by diminishing returns, or even thousands of 1 block reactors - because they are the most effective?

No soft caps. No effectiveness caps. The ideal reactor system would be (if we used spheres) one or multiple perfect spheres of reactor blocks. Either way works. Dininishing returns apply immediately upon placing the second block, but I can easily see this getting pushed down the line to, say, the 50th or 100th block.

As for single block reactors, it is certainly possible and would help spread out the damage dealt to power systems. This may not be desirable, however. I am not super keen on the specifics of these systems - some of the specifics are balance issues that need to be worked out via qa and player testing.

 

[Zoolimar]

Dininishing returns apply immediately upon placing the second block, but I can easily see this getting pushed down the line to, say, the 50th or 100th block.

As for single block reactors, it is certainly possible and would help spread out the damage dealt to power systems. This may not be desirable, however. I am not super keen on the specifics of these systems - some of the specifics are balance issues that need to be worked out via qa and player testing.

Well, then welcome to the mushed systems. Where reactors, shields and so on are made out of 1 block groups. Thousands upon thousands of them. You basically introduce HP to ships by removing most parts that are worth shooting at.

 

[Lecic]

I think that's hyperbole, but if we stick with the same old ores and such, can we at least make straightforward and simplistic rules on where ores spawn that is based on GALACTIC scale and not on SYSTEMIC scale? For example, Nacht ore rarely spawns outside of dead systems.

That's the intention, to make galactic distribution of resources so people fight over areas.

That's forcing design choices. Not all ships are appropriate for interiors. I didn't phrase my argument well and I do appreciate the correction on the nature of crew chambers.

Forced design choices are not a bad thing when they benefit the player and make the game more interesting.

Having interiors and chambers be integrated is a great way to pave the way for crew if they ever decide to implement them, while also making boarding a more possible mechanic. It also benefits players by making interior no longer be any sort of detriment to a ship. While you can work around this, it's difficult and unnecessary when it could be like this.

You've mentioned two very different goals for player interactions in this post. You want to encourage conflict and nurture a galactic economy. Now, conflict will naturally arise in any system of interaction between human players. It happens voluntarily, even in a sandbox environment. Thus, the economy side of this should be the focus.

Players fight in a sandbox game when they're bored because there's nothing else to do, and even that fighting itself quickly grows boring because it has no consequences and no effect. The #1 complaint I hear from other PvPers is the lack of things to actually fight for.
Furthermore, your economy proposal does nothing for PvP.

This resource can be ships or blocks or ore - it's all tradeable. Ships are the easiest of those three to create a local supply, and they also add the most value.

Ships are legitimately less valuable than the raw materials they are made of. It is always cheaper to produce an indigenous design and build that than buying a ship from someone else with credits or raw materials. The only server I see people buying ships on is LvD, which has a currency specifically for buying ships from admin shops and players.

Also, people don't NEED a reason to fight. I'm totally in favor of adding objective based gameplay to the Galaxy, but trying to artificially starve the populace of resources will only encourage stagnation and not conflict. People don't play survival near as much anymore because, without some serious config changes, it just isn't fun.

No, people are more likely to fight when they do not have all the resources. Survival isn't fun because everyone has everything from just one system and mining is boring and impossible to automate. Survival is a chore. Many make the mistake of assuming needing to use a factory to produce all your blocks is why survival has so loathed, and it is because you can't automate your resource collection. In old survival you just set up a factory on your base that would produce money for you to buy ships with, while you could do other things. New survival doesn't allow for this because you need to mine everything.

But, I much prefer it to the hilariously true memes about building turrets bigger than your ship to get an effective weapon system.

Whenever I read things like this I have to wonder how people are building their turrets so poorly. Or are their ships just microscopic so they need to make turrets comparatively huge?

Weapons already outscale defenses by a huge amount.

 

[Nosajimiki]

So some of this may be redundant of Lecic's response, but here are my own thoughts:

Crafting:
Get rid of all ore types. There are now only three types of ore: Matter, AntiMatter, and Dark Matter.

• Matter. All blocks will cost two Matter as a base price. Wedges and other shapes will cost only one. This will be a plentiful resource and will be minable from all old ore blocks.
• AntiMatter. Basic Support and Weapons systems will cost AntiMatter to make. It will be scarce everywhere, but will be easier to find outside of systems with stars. (Or in certain stars)
• Dark Matter. Exotic systems and blocks (i.e. force fields) will cost dark matter to make. It will be near impossible to find in systems with stars, and will be scarce and concentrated in dead systems. It will also be harder to find the farther out one goes from the galactic center. (This could be reversed)

No block will require more than two types of resources to build. Maximum requirement will be five resources to create one block (ftl and teleporters). Deconstruction of any block will provide all of its components.

That's really it for crafting. Everything else is already in the game, just not all of it is working properly. Gathering resources to create a ship or station is tedious and unfun as it is, so let's make it the shortest part of the Mine Build Destroy Salvage Die gameplay loop.

This is overly simplified. This level of simplicity only works on RTS type games where you need to power an entire economy within minutes of starting a game. Starmade needs a its diversity of resources, but less tedium in acquisition. Instead, more forms of passive income need to exist such as WORKING mining drones, planetary taxes, etc. so that a faction can grow past the survival level mechanics of mining, not eliminate them all together.

Ship Systems:
Reactor based systems for Power and shields. This means that the system produces diminishing returns based on block count and reactor shape. Any shape will do and it is possible to test any shape mathematically using only xyz and volume dimensions per group. I like using spheres as a metric for these systems, personally. No penalties or bonuses will be given for having multiple groups.

Weapons will be insanely powerful. I would like to increase their DPS and power used per block by at least two orders of magnitude. This will buff turrets on large ships and smaller drones. The goal of this change is to reduce the space needed for weapon systems, and free up space for either more weapons in each ship or more support systems. Essentially, it opens up more options for players, and decreases server lag. (Debatable on the lag part).

This will not lead to smaller weapons, but faster kills. Just makes fighting become all about the ambush and not about the piloting. It also does not reduce lag since a large part of compat lag comes from block attrition, not actual projectiles. If my missiles are blowing away 500k blocks per shot instead of 50k per shot, that will crash the engine very quickly.

Power Regen and system power use will need to be standardized around a base 100 system. One power block = 100 power Regen, for example. This is to improve readability and make balance changes much easier to calibrate.

As an abstract, any given ship possesses 10 units of power Regen. Each system, if used in moderation, will use 1 of those units. This leaves each ship (after essential support systems, like shields, thrusters, scanner, and jump drive) with about 5 units of Regen to play with. This will allow for immense customization and experimentation. Remember, weapon systems only use power to reload if we cut out power caps and aux power entirely. You can stack alot of different weapon types into this system.

Thrusters will also use diminishing returns, with the express goal of hampering the speed of larger ships in respect to smaller ones. This is inherently necessary to promote server stability and keep fights clean and enjoyable. It will most certainly be possible to make a big ship as fast as a much smaller one, but at great cost to the other systems on the ship.

All weapons already have a standardized power consumption of 100 power/block/sec All other blocks have different metrics because they don't make sense to be on the same power curve because it would break the balance of how big things would need to be or how much power they consume for their size/cost. Thrusters and shields also have diminishing return metics at play already.

Stealth systems will be made cheaper to use for power, especially jamming. Jamming should be a given for many ships, as lockons are and should remain a powerful tool. Cloak will still be nigh impossible for larger ships (battleships) but permacloaking destroyers and the like will be possible. There will need to be some limitations to ensure that cloaked ships don't become the only meta, and it should be a massive trade-off to make a cloaking ship. I don't have any good math research yet on Cloak. Rationally, however, this makes the most sense and gives cloaking a place in Starmade's PvP meta. The stealth distance idea that has been thrown around recently seems a good fit for this system as well, since it uses the metaphysical universe of Starmade as a game mechanic.

Jamming feels appropriately costly. Even big ships can use them, but maintaining them in combat isn't easy. If they were much cheaper, then everyone would just build combat perma jammers defacto. Where they are now, they are used tactically on bigger ships when you need to regen, and turned off to press an attack. It puts more value into good piloting IMO. Reducing cloaking costs and range based stealth could be good, but I'm ambivalent about them from a balancing perspective.

Crew:
Adding NPC crew to a ship is an interesting idea on the surface, but it adds too many additional layers of complexity for players. It also does not make metaphysical sense. We have AI modules, what extra functionality do clumsy NPCs add to Starmade? The focus for processing power should be put on controlling turrets and fleets in a much more organised fashion, which helps keep the balance between large ships and small ship swarms.
Crew Chambers are similarly unnecessary, and add even more tedious complexity. If I want to add an interior, I will add an interior, and by God it will be made for octopus pilots and thus be composed of a series of dodecahedrons. Or I'll just use teleporters.

Generally I agree, but there are some really interesting "crewless crew" system proposals out there that could add a lot to the game.

FTL Systems:
On principle, interdictors should far outweigh jumpdrives in effectiveness. Smaller ships should be able to stop bigger ships from jumping away, and big ships should be able to utterly devastate small FTL drives. In addition, interdictors should also stop gate use completely. No energy calculation, just if interdictor is on - gate is off. The only way to escape a bigger ship using interdictors would be to run away with superior speed and jump out.
Any interaction with FTL, be it an interdictor or a jump drive or a gate, should be power heavy and difficult to maintain in a head to head combat situation. For example, if one ship is blocking another's escape route, the victim could attack the enemy to force them to stop burning their power on interdictors and defend themselves.

The only reason to use JDIs is if you are attacking someone, so trying to make ppl pick between JDI and combat defeats the point. That said, I've seen in the current system how not being power stable can make inhibiting hard. Using EMP weapons are actually a really good way to break JDIs even if they dont use a lot of power now.

Player interaction and Faction Systems:
The small population of Starmade's servers makes any serious discussion about player driven faction systems essentially moot. Most are individuals or 2-3 players working together. In that context, any system that governs player interaction should be focused on driving them together in conflict or peace. Not dependency-based, but demand-based. To that end, ships should be sellable as completed blueprints or as blueprints in the catalog for credits. Ships are the unique resource that players create, not their locally farmed Nacht ore or dark matter. Let's focus the market place on that idea, instead of individual blocks or ores.

As for AI factions, it is a great idea on paper, but if reports are to be believed, they do not mesh well on a multiplayer server.

Biggest problem with BP sales is that you can only sell a design once. Then ppl will just save it and start replicating it. For this to even have a chance of working, you'd need to make converting resources to cash way easier and make BPs lockable so that the thing is spawns can never be BPed or deconstructed to design. To make this even less likely to be successful is mentality. Most ships are either not good enough to be worth buying or contain too many technological secretes to be worth selling.

AI factions as a market force worked very nicely until the AIs started breaking and buy thing things for 1$ that were on sale for $500... basicly, the AI exploits so the AI market it broken. If it could be fixed, then it would work well again.

 

[Mered4]

Well, then welcome to the mushed systems. Where reactors, shields and so on are made out of 1 block groups. Thousands upon thousands of them. You basically introduce HP to ships by removing most parts that are worth shooting at.

If the specific proposal i gave leads to this, then it should be changed or overhauled completely. I don't like the idea of copypasta 10x10 shield and power chessboards any more than you do.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Ships are legitimately less valuable than the raw materials they are made of. It is always cheaper to produce an indigenous design and build that than buying a ship from someone else with credits or raw materials. The only server I see people buying ships on is LvD, which has a currency specifically for buying ships from admin shops and players.

I'd like to add that 90% of those ship sales are just so people can bring them back to their shipyards and deconstruct them for blocks to build their own ships with.

 

[Mered4]

So some of this may be redundant of Lecic's response, but here are my own thoughts:



This is overly simplified. This level of simplicity only works on RTS type games where you need to power an entire economy within minutes of starting a game. Starmade needs a its diversity of resources, but less tedium in acquisition. Instead, more forms of passive income need to exist such as WORKING mining drones, planetary taxes, etc. so that a faction can grow past the survival level mechanics of mining, not eliminate them all together.

I agree, and that's partly why i prefer such a simple, straightforward approach. It pulls the focus away from the whole *tedious miningad nauseam* part of Survival. Instead, we focus on the player interaction and construction side of things.

This will not lead to smaller weapons, but faster kills. Just makes fighting become all about the ambush and not about the piloting. It also does not reduce lag since a large part of compat lag comes from block attrition, not actual projectiles. If my missiles are blowing away 500k blocks per shot instead of 50k per shot, that will crash the engine very quickly.

You must not have read what I said. DPS and power consumption will both be increased a hundredfold. Thus, you will be power limited. It won't lead to a hundredfold increase in weapon power vs shields. More likely, it will lead to a tenfold increase, depending on how crappy people have been building their weapons (most of us are pretty good at it, me excluded). That said, just adjust shield power or base DPS to compensate. Preferably shield power so we don't have to mess with the armor values. It will lead to bigger weapons in some cases, but what it leads to is bigger guns on smaller ships.

All weapons already have a standardized power consumption of 100 power/block/sec All other blocks have different metrics because they don't make sense to be on the same power curve because it would break the balance of how big things would need to be or how much power they consume for their size/cost. Thrusters and shields also have diminishing return metics at play already.

Weapons, as you describe them here, are fine. The rest of it needs to be standardized to a base number. It can be a multiple, but it shouldn't be some crazy 78 per block or something random. Thrusters and shields are good too, just need some balance adjustments if the proposed changes go into place.
Break the balance? Sir, I mean to crush it with a hammer, throw it in a blender, and come out with a pretty swell smoothie.

Jamming feels appropriately costly. Even big ships can use them, but maintaining them in combat isn't easy. If they were much cheaper, then everyone would just build combat perma jammers defacto. Where they are now, they are used tactically on bigger ships when you need to regen, and turned off to press an attack. It puts more value into good piloting IMO. Reducing cloaking costs and range based stealth could be good, but I'm ambivalent about them from a balancing perspective.

I think jamming effectiveness is heavily tied into how powerful missiles are and how useful PD is. Balance-wise, that seems like a very clear cut set of levers. Stealth is a very touchy thing, and while I have this super simplistic vision for it, implementing it without screwing up the whole pie will be difficult.

Generally I agree, but there are some really interesting "crewless crew" system proposals out there that could add a lot to the game.

Be specific - what, exactly, is this crew system adding to the game? I've yet to see anything useful (but i'm biased), and it all adds extra steps to building ships that are essentially empty checkboxes.

The only reason to use JDIs is if you are attacking someone, so trying to make ppl pick between JDI and combat defeats the point. That said, I've seen in the current system how not being power stable can make inhibiting hard. Using EMP weapons are actually a really good way to break JDIs even if they dont use a lot of power now.

JDIs are a tackling tool, but ideally they would be balanced around the idea of a ship holding down an entire sector while his buddies carve up the enemy. Effective solo tackling ships never sat well with me, it's just too OP.

Biggest problem with BP sales is that you can only sell a design once. Then ppl will just save it and start replicating it. For this to even have a chance of working, you'd need to make converting resources to cash way easier and make BPs lockable so that the thing is spawns can never be BPed or deconstructed to design. To make this even less likely to be successful is mentality. Most ships are either not good enough to be worth buying or contain too many technological secretes to be worth selling.

I really need to think out the whole ships as commodity thing more before i start blabbing on it again. I have this wonderful picture in my head on how it would work, but reality continues to hit me in the head.

AI factions as a market force worked very nicely until the AIs started breaking and buy thing things for 1$ that were on sale for $500... basicly, the AI exploits so the AI market it broken. If it could be fixed, then it would work well again.

Maybe Schine should....I dunno......just build AI code for a while after implementing some simple fixes for their gameplay systems. I wonder......

The foundation for what I put in the OP is already there, in the game. It wouldn't take much programming time to finish the job on Schine's part. While it may not be the best suite of ideas if we had infinite development time, I think you can agree that is much preferable to the current system.

 

[Nosajimiki]

You must not have read what I said. DPS and power consumption will both be increased a hundredfold. Thus, you will be power limited. It won't lead to a hundredfold increase in weapon power vs shields. More likely, it will lead to a tenfold increase, depending on how crappy people have been building their weapons (most of us are pretty good at it, me excluded). That said, just adjust shield power or base DPS to compensate. Preferably shield power so we don't have to mess with the armor values. It will lead to bigger weapons in some cases, but what it leads to is bigger guns on smaller ships.

I don't think this makes nearly as much since as you think. Making them a bit stronger to allow for smaller turrets is one thing, but 100 fold increase in power would unbalance EVERYTHING else. It would also make those 2 block AMS turret guns do 2000 DPS! resulting in crazy amounts of friendly fire damage just to shoot down a missle. It would make armor of any sort 100% useless unless it also got a major buff at which case block HP just becomes a moot point. It would destroy the economy because you'd need 100x less Thren, Zernicur, and Haylite basically making ship construction rely on just the 4 materials for making shields which is already a stupidly high amount vs other resources. And these are just the problems I forsee off the top of my head.

Weapons, as you describe them here, are fine. The rest of it needs to be standardized to a base number. It can be a multiple, but it shouldn't be some crazy 78 per block or something random. Thrusters and shields are good too, just need some balance adjustments if the proposed changes go into place.
Break the balance? Sir, I mean to crush it with a hammer, throw it in a blender, and come out with a pretty swell smoothie.

Those strange numbers are the result of diminishing return. For example a shield capacitor stores 60*N^.995 shields. This is a specific balancing mechanics to make small ships more viable in the current system which is already one of your suggested goals. If you get rid of it, big laggy ships become undefeatable by swarms of smaller ships. Personally, I think the inverse should be true. The sum of your firepower should have diminishing return on big ships while shields and HP should be standardized, but that is way more difficult to implement without creating exploits due to how docked entities work.

Be specific - what, exactly, is this crew system adding to the game? I've yet to see anything useful (but i'm biased), and it all adds extra steps to building ships that are essentially empty checkboxes.

Right now big ships are almost as easy to design as little ships. I can knock out a fully optimized 500k battleship in no more than twice the time it takes to design a 2k gunship. If done right, crew has the potential to add complexity to the optimisation of big ships. What this means for game play is that a new player can come in and crank out a fully optimal fighter with minimal knowledge and time and begin fulfilling a vital role in fleet ops fairly quickly, but the bigger you go, the more work, experience, and nuance will need to go into your designs to be able to deploy those oh so coveted heavy warships without them being so suboptimal that they just get ripped apart by fighter swarms. This is more friendly to the learning curve by making noob small ships more viable in the big picture, and adds more end-game appeal to seasoned vets which helps maintain the game's community.

JDIs are a tackling tool, but ideally they would be balanced around the idea of a ship holding down an entire sector while his buddies carve up the enemy. Effective solo tackling ships never sat well with me, it's just too OP.

This is a fair opinion. While I like the concept of specialized e-war ships, I personally gravitate more toward the idea of multi-role ships as an option because they make a player's piloting skills far more relevant (knowing when to engage X system and when to turn it off) can make a huge difference in the outcome of a battle between two similarly capable forces. As a faction leader, I like that not all of my members are pigeonholed into needing to just be space engineers to enjoy this game. I have one guy in my faction that has never designed a single ship or mined a single rock for me, but that's okay because he's a decent pilot who wins fights.

 

[Sachys]

I's just not a very engaging aspect of gameplay, spending 2 hours jumping around till you find the right asteroid in identical systems isn't terribly exciting either.

If you're taking two hours to do that, you're doing something wrong. Most of the complaints I see about mining are from people who have never learned to make a decent miner. This however, is rather new to me, so I believe you are either not clear on what you mean, or you have something to learn.

 

[Mered4]

If you're taking two hours to do that, you're doing something wrong. Most of the complaints I see about mining are from people who have never learned to make a decent miner. This however, is rather new to me, so I believe you are either not clear on what you mean, or you have something to learn.

I agree with what he said, and I built miners meant to strip mine entire planets and chew through asteroids in seconds. Certain resources are extremely difficult to find in sufficient quantity within any given 10 cubed system space. It made mining a function of chance that the asteroids you needed spawned, instead of a function of how well you built your miner.
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I don't think this makes nearly as much since as you think. Making them a bit stronger to allow for smaller turrets is one thing, but 100 fold increase in power would unbalance EVERYTHING else. It would also make those 2 block AMS turret guns do 2000 DPS! resulting in crazy amounts of friendly fire damage just to shoot down a missle. It would make armor of any sort 100% useless unless it also got a major buff at which case block HP just becomes a moot point. It would destroy the economy because you'd need 100x less Thren, Zernicur, and Haylite basically making ship construction rely on just the 4 materials for making shields which is already a stupidly high amount vs other resources. And these are just the problems I forsee off the top of my head.

Should have mentioned this earlier:. We increase the DPS by a hundredfold, and keep the cost/DPS and power/DPS numbers the same. You still pay the same amount for each DPS.

I'd rather not change armor, but if it needs to be done.....

We can also just say screw it, and throw the whole system out and start from scratch with the same goals. No real programming involved. Just number swapping.

Those strange numbers are the result of diminishing return. For example a shield capacitor stores 60*N^.995 shields. This is a specific balancing mechanics to make small ships more viable in the current system which is already one of your suggested goals. If you get rid of it, big laggy ships become undefeatable by swarms of smaller ships. Personally, I think the inverse should be true. The sum of your firepower should have diminishing return on big ships while shields and HP should be standardized, but that is way more difficult to implement without creating exploits due to how docked entities work.

My goal is not to make small ships more viable. That's like saying you want to make a job environment more diverse. Where does it end? The goal is to make the most strategies viable as possible in PvP. Dreadnoughts and fighter swarms, corvette fleets and long range kiting destroyers. A dreadnought should have a chance against a fleet of smaller ships, depending on the capabilities of both sides.

Right now big ships are almost as easy to design as little ships.

If that were true, everyone and their mother would be building them. Most people never finish those projects, and if they do, they are not well constructed or efficient.

I can knock out a fully optimized 500k battleship in no more than twice the time it takes to design a 2k gunship. If done right, crew has the potential to add complexity to the optimisation of big ships.

Yeah, meaningless complexity that adds tedium. What new weapon or system is crew required for? Human cannon? Drop pods for planetary invasion or station breaching? You want to add depth, not complexity, and that requires multiple systems that work together.

What this means for game play is that a new player can come in and crank out a fully optimal fighter with minimal knowledge and time and begin fulfilling a vital role in fleet ops fairly quickly, but the bigger you go, the more work, experience, and nuance will need to go into your designs to be able to deploy those oh so coveted heavy warships without them being so suboptimal that they just get ripped apart by fighter swarms. This is more friendly to the learning curve by making noob small ships more viable in the big picture, and adds more end-game appeal to seasoned vets which helps maintain the game's community.

I've yet to see a noob fighter that is at all viable against any ship of its weight class, including other noob ships. Realistically, new pilots will be given a ship or ship(s) to fly and try out before they dive into the building system.

This is a fair opinion. While I like the concept of specialized e-war ships, I personally gravitate more toward the idea of multi-role ships as an option because they make a player's piloting skills far more relevant (knowing when to engage X system and when to turn it off) can make a huge difference in the outcome of a battle between two similarly capable forces. As a faction leader, I like that not all of my members are pigeonholed into needing to just be space engineers to enjoy this game. I have one guy in my faction that has never designed a single ship or mined a single rock for me, but that's okay because he's a decent pilot who wins fights.

it is a matter of choice - do you want a certain level of specialization or a fleet of ships that are essentially the same and only differ in design and exact specs? I don't like the idea of hyperspecialization myself, but interfering with FTL must cost lots of power to remain balanced.

 

[jayman38]

...
Biggest problem with BP sales is that you can only sell a design once. Then ppl will just save it and start replicating it. For this to even have a chance of working, you'd need to make converting resources to cash way easier and make BPs lockable so that the thing is spawns can never be BPed or deconstructed to design. To make this even less likely to be successful is mentality. Most ships are either not good enough to be worth buying or contain too many technological secretes to be worth selling.
...

For preserving design security and sales profitability, BPs would not just need to be lockable. The BPs would need to be recognized as up to 98% equivalency, to avoid someone placing a potted plant in an open spot, and then blueprinting a 99.999% replica. Or placing a 10^3 cube of potted plants in the cargo hold to get a 99% replica. As you can see, it would not take much to create a similar design that is not a perfect match of the original purchase, so "fuzzy" similarity recognition would be important.

BP saving should probably be game-ified, so that not everyone can save a blueprint at first. It may involve some sort of design badge or permission that is given and activated only after the player has gone through some sort of process.

Something similar could be done with template sizes. (E.g. a new player starts out being able to save a 5^3 template, but has to work up to being able to save templates at the server's maximum multi-block placement size.)

Options are open on whether that process is an in-game series of missions or a semi-admin permission level on the server.

TL;DR: It would be easier to manage BPs and preserve BP sales if BP-saving, as a permission, was not given to new players right away.

 

[Nosajimiki]

For preserving design security and sales profitability, BPs would not just need to be lockable. The BPs would need to be recognized as up to 98% equivalency, to avoid someone placing a potted plant in an open spot, and then blueprinting a 99.999% replica. Or placing a 10^3 cube of potted plants in the cargo hold to get a 99% replica. As you can see, it would not take much to create a similar design that is not a perfect match of the original purchase, so "fuzzy" similarity recognition would be important.

BP saving should probably be game-ified, so that not everyone can save a blueprint at first. It may involve some sort of design badge or permission that is given and activated only after the player has gone through some sort of process.

Something similar could be done with template sizes. (E.g. a new player starts out being able to save a 5^3 template, but has to work up to being able to save templates at the server's maximum multi-block placement size.)

Options are open on whether that process is an in-game series of missions or a semi-admin permission level on the server.

TL;DR: It would be easier to manage BPs and preserve BP sales if BP-saving, as a permission, was not given to new players right away.

does not matter what % similarity you use, If I need to drop 5mil blocks of rocks on your designs to steal it, ppl will do it. (just delete them when you have a copy and resave) Instead a locked BP would need to place a permanent flag on all of the spawned entities saything that no matter what you do to it, you can never BP it.

 

[Sachys]

I agree with what he said, and I built miners meant to strip mine entire planets and chew through asteroids in seconds. Certain resources are extremely difficult to find in sufficient quantity within any given 10 cubed system space. It made mining a function of chance that the asteroids you needed spawned, instead of a function of how well you built your miner.

Unless you're very unlucky, or havent got a system with enough rings, you just go to the belt of the system they spawn in. They may not be the size you want, but you will find them there without spending two hours looking for them.