A Radicaly New Approach for Viable Planets:

[MacThule]

problem is that the lag from big planets is probably even more immersion breaking than any kind of "loading screen"

Exactly. The current game-killing lag is exactly what drove the creation of load screens to begin with. If the game must load chunks, it must load chunks. The only decision is what experience you can offer your players while the inevitable takes place.

 

[nogg]

this is a great idea, as this will cut down on planet lag and actually make them viable for use. Also in my opinion the loading screens are found everywhere, just in smaller amounts then in other games. with a good enough animation covering a loading screen it will have the effect of being a seamless transition... which is what Starmade is about anyways.

 

[El_Poulpy]

Well that is a nice try at solving planet problem. It reminds me of an idea posted a long time ago. The main problem with the instanced planet is the correspondence table that is used to tp entities (ships, weapon fire) from the universe to the planet.

personally i stay on the cubic planet idea, it works : Technical details about Stellar Overload video game

Are there any news on the things auburn worked on ?


http://www.stellar-overload.com/the-game/technical.html

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Considering the fact that Schema already compromised his policy of "Everything should be block based" with power 2.0 I wouldn't be surprised if he also reverses his stance on instanced planets.

 

[MacThule]

Considering the fact that Schema already compromised his policy of "Everything should be block based" with power 2.0 I wouldn't be surprised if he also reverses his stance on instanced planets.

We can certainly hope. We got those cool light bars and computer consoles too, don't forget.

 

[FlyingDebris]

tbh the idea that planets could be instanced and not fully part of the game world has grown on me. This seems nice, if possibly laggy.

 

[MacThule]

Would missle weapons pass through the transition somehow for orbital bombardments, or would warhead-based ordnance finally become a necessity for something??

Would destroying entire planets still be possible, or would that be done with?

 

[Ithirahad]

Would missle weapons pass through the transition somehow for orbital bombardments, or would warhead-based ordnance finally become a necessity for something??

Missiles could be made to pass through, but I for one don't see why this is desirable. Glassing and large-scale bombardments are 'badass' in stories, but in StarMade it effectively amounts to zero-risk griefing. I'd like to avoid it if possible.

Would destroying entire planets still be possible, or would that be done with?

I hope it'd be done with.

 

[Magrim]

Hopefully they can see that this idea has no more of a transition than activating your warp drive. Your ship doesn't actually travel the distance when jumping, it teleports and the jump animation is the trick they use to hide this. I don't se how the op would be any different.

Would missle weapons pass through the transition somehow for orbital bombardments, or would warhead-based ordnance finally become a necessity for something??

Orbital bombardment might be difficult for the game to get right through a transition but the scanner could aid in that by displaying ground targets through an overlay or something allowing you to lock on.

 

[MacThule]

Missiles could be made to pass through, but I for one don't see why this is desirable. Glassing and large-scale bombardments are 'badass' in stories, but in StarMade it effective amounts to zero-risk griefing. I'd like to avoid it if possible.

I hope it'd be done with.

Honestly, I'd hope so too. Perhaps later a method of destroying planets could be introduced, but it should be prohibitively expensive and difficult. And I agree about missiles. Standard missiles wouldn't pass through a real atmosphere anyway. But a re-entry vehicle could... which would allow players to bomb with warhead drones, but of course these could be shot down as well, creating a nice balance. If we ever find a way to finally resolve the issue of warheads on neutral entities, like a faction setting to treat all entities with deployed warheads as hostile, regardless of allegiance (basically a nuclear non-proliferation setting)... then un-nerf the warheads...

I suppose PTS (Planet-To-Space) weaponry would not be viable. Shame. It's pretty essential if we ever wanted to have interplanetary conflicts, invasions and the like. We would just have to rely on orbital defenses and fleets, which isn't terrible, I'm just sort of keen on PTS weapons, bombardment and planetary invasion dynamics - Emperor of The Fading Suns (which I believe is now free to download as abandonware) was one of my favorite games, and it is the only game that has ever really dealt with the nightmarish logistical and strategic issues that should be involved in a planetary scale invasion. That's just a fetish of mine though! SM can totally be amazing without gnarly planetary assault and invasion dynamics.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Would missle weapons pass through the transition somehow for orbital bombardments, or would warhead-based ordnance finally become a necessity for something??

Would destroying entire planets still be possible, or would that be done with?

Missiles could be made to pass through, but I for one don't see why this is desirable. Glassing and large-scale bombardments are 'badass' in stories, but in StarMade it effective amounts to zero-risk griefing. I'd like to avoid it if possible.

I hope it'd be done with.

I too hope shooting and killing planets from orbit will be done with. I'd like to see ground/aerial based assault become a necessity to take over a planet. HOVER TANKS.

To add to this, I'd also hope for a mass limit on entities that could enter the atmosphere of a planet, which would make small dropships, and assault craft like gunships and anti-gunship suborbital fighters, a viable method of fighting over a planet. Oh, and to reduce lag on said planet too.

 

[aceface]

To add to this, I'd also hope for a mass limit on entities that could enter the atmosphere of a planet, which would make small dropships, and assault craft like gunships and anti-gunship suborbital fighters, a viable method of fighting over a planet.

this so much

 

[MacThule]

HOVER TANKS

HOVER TANKS

 

[Coyote27]

A+ suggestion. This is a fundamentally better idea than anything else suggested to "fix planets", being an out-of-the-box approach that avoids so many problems that other ideas retained. I just hope Schine reads this and takes it seriously because it blows everything else out of the water.

 

[Scypio]

I am fairly certain the new planets they are polishing up for us

Moot. They're already done and just waiting to be implemented. Because all of this power stuff is more important y'know.

 

[MacThule]

Moot. They're already done and just waiting to be implemented. Because all of this power stuff is more important y'know.

I remember.

Why they would leave such good content out if it was working properly though? That's my thought. I'm guessing that Auburn left us with some gorgeous planets... that lag SM to death and are basically unusable. Notice how limited the teaser is?

The alternative is too tragic to consider seriously IMO...

That something like proper planets would be withheld for no practical reason at a time when a big piece of the game's core functionality was being re-worked and for almost a year there the new planets could serve as a relief from the boredom and frustration of a core systems overhaul would be so monumentally foolish that I can't describe my thoughts on the matter. It is one of the big projects that never came out and a major factor in player discontent and the feeling that development is moving at a snail's pace.

We could all be pretty happy tearing into (unpowered, natural, and ruined) planetary feature competitions while the kinks with power were sorted. It would be self-damaging to withhold them if there wasn't some technical issue.

No, I could totally be wrong, but I firmly believe for myself that they are still struggling to make Auburn's Planets work smoothly in-game. The OP suggestion could even help them finish the job. If they take note and it looks like something that could feasibly be done. They might not be aware that it is an option, because player consensus before pretty soundly rejected any notion of instanced planets.

 

[jayman38]

...
I suppose PTS (Planet-To-Space) weaponry would not be viable. Shame. It's pretty essential if we ever wanted to have interplanetary conflicts, invasions and the like. We would just have to rely on orbital defenses and fleets, which isn't terrible, I'm just sort of keen on PTS weapons, bombardment and planetary invasion dynamics - Emperor of The Fading Suns (which I believe is now free to download as abandonware) was one of my favorite games, and it is the only game that has ever really dealt with the nightmarish logistical and strategic issues that should be involved in a planetary scale invasion. That's just a fetish of mine though! SM can totally be amazing without gnarly planetary assault and invasion dynamics.

This change would inevitably introduce a new way to have PTS combat. Specifically, I'm thinking about Star Wars Ep 5 ESB, where "our heroes" (tm) used a command center (command chairs!) to pick-and-choose "nearby" targets in space and shoot at them.

Example Starmade mechanic:
Whatever weapon you link to the targeting computer is firing straight up at the sky after you have selected the target in a tactical space map. The planet-side shot simply disappears when it hits the skybox.
On the space-side, immediately when it disappears against the planet-side skybox, that weapon output simply shoots out from the center of the planet billboard toon, flying straight towards the target at high speed.
Ships would lose the ability to "hide" behind the planet, on the side opposite the weapon, and the planet would automatically become more defensible when you can shoot out in any direction. However, ships can always retreat farther out away from the planet, out of the range of the planet-side guns and tactical maps.

 

[MacThule]

More brainstorm fodder, here:

Would the sector used to instance planets in this suggestion benefit from actually being a cube of 9 or even 25 sectors, with the planet itself in the middle, rather than merely 1 sector?

Reasons: for servers sticking to smaller sector dimensions (and probably even some with large sectors) this would create a larger region of navigable atmosphere. Particularly around a very massive planet that fills most of its primary sector, having atmospheric sectors around it would prevent it from becoming absurdly claustrophobic and ruining the effect of being on a huge planet.

It would also facilitate things like dogfights being not totally useless.

It would allow planetary defenses a reasonable opportunity to lock onto and eliminate inbound threats. Otherwise re-entry vehices for warheads and dropships and such could appear literally right on top of you with no real warning or time to respond. Not terribly realistic, and pretty likely formula for ragequits when some troll starts waving you with gunship drones that appear all over your home base out of nowhere.

Also... it would prevent warping into the planet's crust or core without needing a special function, because the region of the planet's wormhole in the main galaxy that you entered from could determine which of the atmospheric sectors you enter.
[doublepost=1515611006,1515610658][/doublepost]

This change would inevitably introduce a new way to have PTS combat. Specifically, I'm thinking about Star Wars Ep 5 ESB, where "our heroes" (tm) used a command center (command chairs!) to pick-and-choose "nearby" targets in space and shoot at them.

Example Starmade mechanic:
Whatever weapon you link to the targeting computer is firing straight up at the sky after you have selected the target in a tactical space map. The planet-side shot simply disappears when it hits the skybox.
On the space-side, immediately when it disappears against the planet-side skybox, that weapon output simply shoots out from the center of the planet billboard toon, flying straight towards the target at high speed.
Ships would lose the ability to "hide" behind the planet, on the side opposite the weapon, and the planet would automatically become more defensible when you can shoot out in any direction. However, ships can always retreat farther out away from the planet, out of the range of the planet-side guns and tactical maps.

I love it, but in practical terms how do we allow weapons to lock onto a ship that is a million sectors away?

At first glance I fear we would need a special PTS block or AI setting that would literally set the entity's weapon output (and computer location for target acquisition purposes) as being the center of the planet toon and just shooting right from there with essentially a decorative effect happening on the planet.
[doublepost=1515611475][/doublepost]LOL - can you imagine the solid stream of DPS pouring out of a planet equipped with a dozen, scattered heavy PTS weapons (v. large capital turret sized)???

 

[Scypio]

Why they would leave such good content out if it was working properly though? That's my thought.

You ask in a dev stream if you want to but they just wait for the universe update to add them and stated it many times.

Notice how limited the teaser is?

Notice how we never have teasers or almost none ? That's because they're too scared of making fake promises that they don't speak with the community about the game, to prevent themselves from it.

End of off topic on the subject. I'm just pointing out that new planets are just waiting for an update. Soon™.

 

[MacThule]

Should entities passing through the wormhole heading towards the planet be subject to a wave of re-entry damage (like sunburn)?

This would not only be realistic, but could help discourage abuse of drones not properly designed as re-entry vehicles with shields to protect them from the heat.