Returning player feedback on power 2.0

    Edymnion

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    the latest change with the lesser distance just made it worse LUL befor I had 100% stabilization now 30 the minimum distance just was innreased by 6 CAN U FUCKING STOP LIMITING CREATIVITY
    It shouldn't have increased anything. It sounds like you've encountered a bug. Export a copy of the blueprint and send it in to the bug report phab site so that the devs can review it and see what and where the bug is so that they can fix it.
     

    Non

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    Many of the "pro-pvp" players held back the design details of their own ships just like you.
    Yes.
    This one of the reasons the majority of the gamers and developers did not have a deeper clue about the possible complexity, this game actually had for you guys.
    No. I've posted two CC designs, either one shows a decent amount of complexity, Nastral has posted a lot more than I have, and they are all very high-quality complex designs, though none of them reach what I described earlier. The information, the proof of what pvprs were saying was out there, its just that various parties were too lazy to listen to the community and asked to be spoon fed the meta.
    I don't want to say, that you guys missed out an opportunity for a good argument point. But it would have helped the not-veterans to understand you guys easier.
    As said, information has been out there for a while, and if this is a community that needs me to commit pvp suicide by describing my process in depth every time the devs get a bad idea, then I don't want to be a part of it.
    And I just noticed that this is the first time I see a really big pvp ship in its design details. I am just asking why the motivation to keep design-details secret has a higher priority, than the potential to influence the game with facts (and to help other players in keeping up) about the complex meta-mechanics?
    I've put out at least 75% of this information before, not all in one place, but literally anyone who asked me how to do X would get as good of a response as I could give, even many people who didn't ask got information dumped on them. Nothing has been hidden, it's just that I didn't think it needed to be in one big wall of text.
     
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    Edymnion

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    As said, information has been out there for a while, and if this is a community that needs me to commit pvp suicide by describing my process in depth every time the devs get a bad idea, then I don't want to be a part of it.
    Its an alpha. The focus at the moment should be to help the community and the devs get as much feedback on how the system is working as possible. Its not a finished game, and details are going to change, so honestly its not even like the current builds will remain relevant in the long run.

    I would definitely place "the good of the game" ahead of "committing PvP suicide".

    Hiding what you're doing does not help the game as a whole, it just makes things harder for everyone, as we can't really take into account what hurts your build style if we don't know what your build style is.
     
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    spoon fed the meta.
    The thing is: I don't ask for this informations on competetive designs, because the competetive part of Starmade isn't big enough for me.

    If there would be enough players that played pvp and I could find equal matches fast enough: Yeah I would have asked. I just think many other pvpers should take an example on you, and reveal their good designs in the future. Until we have enough people playing pvp. :)
     
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    I've put out at least 75% of this information before, not all in one place, but literally anyone who asked me how to do X would get as good of a response as I could give, even many people who didn't ask got information dumped on them. Nothing has been hidden, it's just that I didn't think you were all foolish enough to require me to put it all in one big wall of text.
    Thanks for sharing, so may others are not strong enough to share.
     
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    This is a major flaw of games with this kind of release model. Most players don't care about testing a product for free so naturally if they stick around they are going to get something else out of it.
     

    Non

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    I would definitely place "the good of the game" ahead of "committing PvP suicide".
    And you're implying I don't?
    Hiding what you're doing does not help the game as a whole, it just makes things harder for everyone, as we can't really take into account what hurts your build style if we don't know what your build style is.
    Pls, reread:
    I've put out at least 75% of this information before, not all in one place, but literally anyone who asked me how to do X would get as good of a response as I could give, even many people who didn't ask got information dumped on them. Nothing has been hidden, it's just that I didn't think you were all foolish enough to require me to put it all in one big wall of text.
    And just to clarify, the other 25% is because people don't know enough to know what to ask.

    Do you know how I got as good as I am?

    I asked other pvprs (primarily Veilith) questions, many questions, and tested what they told me. I have not encountered a pvpr who is unwilling to share their knowledge when asked. Even Nosa, who I was at war with, would partially clarify how he does what for me. If you have tried asking nicely, and find this not to be the case, then perhaps the problem isn't them.
     
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    It shouldn't have increased anything. It sounds like you've encountered a bug. Export a copy of the blueprint and send it in to the bug report phab site so that the devs can review it and see what and where the bug is so that they can fix it.
    Dont care anymore uninstalled the game sick of creativity limitation shit
     
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    This one of the rare cases, a dedicated pvper explains in depth how his ship works, to prove that the old meta was better than the new power.

    Many of the "pro-pvp" players held back the design details of their own ships just like you. This one of the reasons the majority of the gamers and developers did not have a deeper clue about the possible complexity, this game actually had for you guys.

    I don't want to say, that you guys missed out an opportunity for a good argument point. But it would have helped the not-veterans to understand you guys easier.

    And I just noticed that this is the first time I see a really big pvp ship in its design details. I am just asking why the motivation to keep design-details secret has a higher priority, than the potential to influence the game with facts (and to help other players in keeping up) about the complex meta-mechanics?
    He released those details because it no longer a benefit. If he said how he did it, it would be easy to make ships balanced to kill him. Many high end pvp ships actually look better than that and use at least as much complexity in their designs. A lot of what PvPers do is not exploits, but optimisation to a razors edge that makes it feel exploited. These are what my 500k Scylla MK-3 looked like just before the power update... most turrets are still floating because the wings on the new configuration never got finished (thanks power 2.0).



    This ship is very different than the MK-2(see below) that I used for killing most of ppl in that it included tech designed to kill other exploity ships with zero regard for what I would normally consider unethical.
    upload_2018-2-6_14-37-26.png

    Both ships designs utilized the same docked armor, but it was a completely different kind of docked armor than Non. Whereas his was designed to maximize shields and enable speed tanking, this ship was designed to maximize armor. So even if it got ambushed by a ridiculous amount of shield alpha, it features two plates of mostly advanced armor that could be docked on top and bottom with full armor passives. Since it layered with the ion shields on the main hull, it gave the effect of both armor and ion passives; so, the second you broke shields you were hitting blocks with an effective 4000 HP each. This meant that even max radius missiles only put holes a few blocks wide in the armor allowing to to soak in excess of 1 billion missile damage without leaving big holes for a lot of other missiles to fly into. Since most people agreed that "armor and high density was shit", no PvPers built their weapons to break passived adv armor anymore or have deep penetration anymore, so most direct fire weapons could not penetrate it in one shot. The 25% threshold on shield protection also meant that the underlying shield was always regenerating even while I was taking damage so Pierce weapons were highly ineffective at draining my armorHP and weapons that did penetrate the armor would still have to work to harm the the ship underneath. Because the armor plates were top/bottom, they could distribute damage equally so they were just as effective as a single continuous docked hull. They had thrusters lining the inside of the back 50% of the plates where they rarely took damage which pushed mass out of the main entity and reinforced the plates with extra systemHP so that the armor could get absolutely shredded without overheating/undocking They also had hull blocks in a lot of less vulnerable spots to reduce weight and add cheap, lightweight armor HP.

    The nose of the MK-3 ship was laminated with a secondary ion-shielded plate in a way that caused beam weapons to glitch out and be pretty much useless as well as negate all explosive damage. (I would not do this to most ppl, so this was just a MK-III feature).

    Because the armor was heavier, the interior was high density to minimize surface area. The reactors were encased in armor so I did not have to space them from systems to prevent them from exploding out into them. That said they were several hundred blocks deep and guarded by secondary bulkheads which also protected the main weapons... so if these were getting hit, it meant I was already dead 99% dead.
    The MK-2 version of this ship was slower than many other PvP ships (.8 mtt), but used staged out beam/beam/stop waffles that created a continuous stop effect at maximum sensor range so that it could even hold same-mass speed tanks still. I coupled this with docked armor penetrating technology so it would still work on most high-end speed tanks. It had more than enough sniper lances to drop most docked armor ships down to 25% shields with the opening salvo. The MK-III version was spec'd out to speed tanks itself at (1.4mmt + overdrive) so it could still range control against other players who used laminated armor to block stop weapons. At those speeds, it also meant that when strafing, 80% of weapons that would normally hit me would miss.

    The big turrets were also designed in such a way that the barrels included a plate that helped shield the base, and the base had a small shield in it granting each turret a small docked armor effect making them way harder to target and shoot off because the turret iself functioned a lot like that laminated front plate.

    The MK-3 (and I reiterate, this one is an exploit ship killer) also featured a combination of systems that interfered with AI targeting making 90% of weapons fire out-right miss it even when moving at very low speeds, so when strafing at high speeds, you could pretty much count any AI fired turrets as non-existent; so, the only ships that could realistically harm it are ships that knew how I did all of the above to design a hard counter weapon's platform.

    The weapon systems and other aspects of this ship were equally complex, but still may be viable in weapons 2.0; so, no since in blurting them out yet, but the reason PvPers are so secretive is that most of the above stuff took a LOT of tinkering to find, and gives each faction UNIQUE technologies that add to the game's culture. It is easy to think of these things as unfair, but it is no different than running around in an MMO, and seeing a LvL.10 get crushed by a LvL.60. The high level players have played longer and worked harder to build ships like this. Power 1.0 experience points were measured in actual game experience, not in a skill tree or slider bars, it was something earned, and your advantages were maintained through secrecy.

    Don't get me wrong, I report real bugs when I find them, but these "exploits" are not bugs. They are the esoteric nuances of a system that no longer exist. This is why so many Veterans don't like Power 2.0.
     

    Non

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    The thing is: I don't ask for this informations on competetive designs, because the competetive part of Starmade isn't big enough for me.

    If there would be enough players that played pvp and I could find equal matches fast enough: Yeah I would have asked. I just think many other pvpers should take an example on you, and reveal their good designs in the future. Until we have enough people playing pvp. :)
    What?
     
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    I think Non's point here is that there was a huge and healthy PvP community before power 2.0 was announced. It was common on servers like LvD to have 10-15 PvP players online at a time. There were full scale wars, politics, tournaments, random skirmishes, etc. It shrank by about 20-40% after the announcement that it would be a major rebuild of the power systems. Then about 1/2 of the remaining PvP community left at about the time the first dev release hit and people realized just how badly it impacted PvP, (especially PvP players who also had good aesthetics). Now that Power 2.0 is part of release build, only a small handful of PvP players even still poke their heads in to see if things are even stable enough yet to be worth experimenting with.

    Frankly, even if I still wanted to PvP, the combat system is to unstable for that now, and there is no one left to shoot at that actually wants to fight.
     

    Az14el

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    I think Non's point here is that there was a huge and healthy PvP community before power 2.0 was announced. It was common on servers like LvD to have 10-15 PvP players online at a time. There were full scale wars, politics, tournaments, random skirmishes, etc.
    Agreed, also that the drop off began around the time that systems 2.0 update started being discussed.
    here's 'Starmade PvP' in youtube filtered for the last year
    , overall it was a pretty great year for the pvp elements of the game, soured by the second half as many of us just lost interest in continuously building soon-to-be-bricks
     
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    MeRobo

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    I'm not JinM, but I read his statement as follows (1st person pronouns in the next bit reffer to him, not me):

    "I have no interest in Starmade PvP because the PvP community is too small for my liking. If there was a larger PvP community which included a noticable number of members with a skill level similar to mine I'd be interested in PvP and therefor in a position in which I should be asking experienced players for information. If more PvP players would be as open with information as you are it would result in more people interested in PvP. With more people getting interested in PvP, the PvP community will at some point reach the size at which I get interested in PvP."

    Now I (Robo) have realized that this may be even less clear, so here is a potentially incorrect TL;DR:
    PvP community is too small to get JinM interested, if established PvPers would be less secretive more people would get interested in PvP resulting in PvP community growth which then again would eventually get JinM interested.

    I personally think that this stance is kinda counterproductive to it's own goal (a larger PvP community), as growth of the community is a prerequisite for actively helping the community grow.

    A thing I'm not sure about is the part where he mentions "matches" as this could be both a player who is a match for him in regards of skill and ressources or indeed a match like the matches in organized PvP events.

    I hope my overly lengthy interpretation of JinM's post is not too inaccurate and actually helpful.
     
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    some of the pvp crowd have been very open about how things work, if you choose not to associate, you will of course not share that information.

    regardless, we wrote in depth about old system, new system, potential problems, current problems, etc... and those opinions reflected understanding of the games mechanics.


    anyway, doesnt matter whether you liked old power or disliked it, or liked to pvp or not, the power update caused starmades pvp, and for the most part combat in general, to die.

    p.s. nosa scylla vs my 500k anytime baby =D
     

    MeRobo

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    some of the pvp crowd have been very open about how things work
    I can confirm, since I've been on the receiving end of information several times, sometimes after having asked, sometimes it was offered to me without me even having to ask.

    In case I didn't make it clear, I don't really agree with the whole secretivity bit, as that was part of summarizing JinM's post in an attempt to make it more clear.

    I kinda hope the weapons update (whenever that will come out) unscrews combat, because I started enjoying it not too long before the power update (no one but me to blame for not earlier actually doing stuff).
     
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    So, as for my perspective of PvP secrecy is that is was it was all on a sliding scale. Personally, I openly shared enough stuff that you could build a ship that could same mass most middle-tier ships, then I had a 20page long technical manual I would share with faction members with all sorts of in-depth explanations of weapons metas, various types of docked armors etc. which I kept secrete enough to keep my enemies from being able to overly predict my build style, then there is the really exploitative stuff that I suppress as much as possible because it is kinda game breaking, that I almost never share in full, but even with them, I've warned allies about doing things one way instead of another due to "countering possible exploits".

    Now here is the Key: You don't need to already be good to get good. I've got a guy in my faction who's only been playing less than a year, and probably knows more about making and using PvP ships than most 3-4 year vets because he joined an established faction, showed interest in learning, and always did what he could to not be dead weight while he got there. If you actually want to be good you have to put the time in one-way or another. Whether that be earning the trust of a mentor or though hundreds of hours of RnD and PvP is up to you.
     
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    Az14el

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    I've pretty much always just blabbed either in some forum thread or in SMD chat about my own take on the 'pvp meta' since i first started taking interest, just never really bothered backing it up much because its much more fun (and productive!) to elucidate people in survival mode than on the forum, it's ultimately a lot to ask of people to change their shipbuilding habits when they've been dedicated to them for a while, i had to make the same decision in order to improve at this.

    a lot of it likely seems unintuitive up until a point of skill with the old system in hindsight, and even simple testing does take real time to set up in this game, so it's pretty understandable that pvpers are thought of as 'secretive', as in keeping lots of tricks up their sleeves, can't speak for everyone but i never bothered with that, i like competition and tried my best to seed it :3
     
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    az and morviuz are my favorite pvpers, they hunt me in survival lol... i mean they did