Schine Bi-weekly Q&A - 15th of March

[DukeofRealms]

Welcome to our first bi-weekly Q&A!

We are no longer accepting questions or votes (likes priotising the question), see you at the next Q&A

Ask any question about StarMade or its development, and we'll try out best to answer it in a forum answer thread posted every two weeks (provided it's not a secret ). Depending on how many questions are asked, we may have to move questions from this session to be answered in subsequent sessions (or, skipped).

We will prioritise questions which have more likes, so make sure to like if you want an existing question answered!

Please ensure that your question has not been asked previously Keep responses on this thread to: posting questions, notifying an author of a question that it has already been posted, and expanding on already asked questions.

 

[NuclearFun]

1st of april is coming again soon, as is tradition i expect a glimpse on new planets - is there any news about what we got teased last year?

 

[Valiant70]

Will the weapons update change or remove the weird "firing arc" feature that lets guns fire sideways and makes evasive action pointless anywhere in front of a larger ship?

 

[Crimson-Artist]

At the end of the Power 2.0 news post in the weapons update overview you guys mentioned that weapons will have an AOE type of effect based on the dimensions of the array. Does this mean that the visual projectile/beam will become larger based on the arrays dimensions? (ex. a damage beam array that has a Y-radius of 10 and a X-radius of 10 will fire a much fatter beam).

What are the plans for integrity at the moment? Currently there's a lot of discussion on its problems.

Will the weapon's update include changes to some of the support systems? Will the Astrotech finally get a rework/buff?

Will manual turret aiming allow for support tools to be used? For instance creating mining turrets with the salvage system or repair turrets with the Astrotech system.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Will the thruster plume also undergo any update? Like longer trail for larger arrays of trusters. Or a visually large thruster look. I remember a wee while ago there was mention of development in multiple blocks together combining to become a single entity or something. Which would be useful for thrusters, weapons barrels and lights.

 

[Skwidz]

Will the framebuffer graphics setting get any optimizations?

 

[Calhoun]

This is my question to the entirety of the Schine team, but is primarily directed at Schema.

I believe I speak for at least a majority of the veteran playerbase when I say that your development has placed our confidence in your companies ability to deliver a product that some of us have spent years supporting in question.

Throwing away years of development into what some have described as "Soup of the day design choices", closing the forum during a time where a wave of criticism would have occurred following the release of power 2.0 and some of your developers having demonstrated not knowing to much about the game they are developing (Lancake has not played the game outside of bugtesting for several years according to him!) has caused a significant amount of your playerbase to leave for other games.

While most have discarded this game, I myself still have at least some hope that a miracle will happen but the reality of the situation is that your playerbase is a skeleton crew who is mostly made up of inexperienced aesthetic builders who seldom ever interact with game balance and mechanics in general, less people testing your game and no new players coming in. Unless you somehow have an emergency fund that can last for several years it would seem clear that Schine is not earning enough money from sales to sustain its own development, I myself am not sure how your developers are paid but rumours have circulated that most are not even paid at all.

My question to Schine is that with all things considered, what is your plan to ensure you are getting sufficient funds to sustain your development to a point where you claim to be able to start advertising campaigns if you have one at all?

Regards RedAlert_007

 

[JumpSuit]

Will the StarMade Development Timeline Thread started initially by bench be revived or continued? I believe that is a good representation of the current features status and what not.

 

[Jeffenuva]

It doesn't seem possible at the moment to create a perma-cloak +jam ship, even if 100% dedicated to that purpose. Is this by intent? Will specialized perma-cloak + jam be possible in the future?

 

[Ithirahad]

Is there any particular reason why a block with 0 health is deleted from the entity? It seems like things such as ship repairs/useful astrotech beams would be far easier to implement if a zero-health block was simply 'ghostified' (like a ship core, but also made invisible) rather than being deleted entirely. Also, I'd imagine that not completely removing (instead just state-changing) tons and tons of blocks in combat would perform better.

 

[Jeffenuva]

When will we get chairs? Space monsters? Mirror balls?

 

[NTIMESc]

What kind of limits will there be on mine-laying?

 

[alterintel]

Are there any plans for controlling Menu GUI stuff such as thrusters, chambers, etc with Logic Blocks?
IMHO all aspects of a ship should be controllable and readable via logic blocks.

 

[xX_Tyvier_Xx]

This has basically been asked in an earlier post, but what are schema and the schine team's plans for realistically finishing this game? I have played starmade for YEARS and for the most part have thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I feel compelled to make a post out of concern for it's future.

The development team has distanced themselves from their fan base that cares incredibly for their creation. There are grandiose plans for it's future: new power, new weapons, new universe...

The game is buggy and shaky as is. I could care less about the "amazing future plans". How much time will the team be planning on putting into bug fixes and stabilization of current features? If this game is to make it past alpha... It needs to start holding it's shape, not twist and bend until it snaps...

 

[Benevolent27]

Will the weapons update allow admins to create new custom weapons (in addition to the default weapons)?
For example, perhaps we could configure chamber-like effects to the custom weapon, set the values, and then set the damage pattern (including depth), and possibly the in-game graphics for it. (Maybe not set the graphics, but that would be rather awesome)

 

[splatthecat]

Ever since its introduction I have been a dedicated user (and champion) of Fleet Mining along with fleets in general. Apart from the obvious flaws in the system such as ships that simply spin in space when told to get into formation, carrier recall that turns your drones into over excited puppies that just race to the mothership and usually bump into it multiple times until they give up or fleets that apparently look at their orders and think "bugger that" and go on a random jaunt somewhere.

Can we hope to expect that, at the very least these issues are resolved but can we also expect further embellishments? Based on my wishes and those I have read other players request over the last couple of years...

1. Being able to command ships to dock to stations.
2. To be able to spread a mining fleet over an entire cluster rather than have them crowd around a single one.
3. To be able to send out scout ships/probes and report back their findings providing they are fitted with the appropriate scanner systems.
4. To task fleets with special roles such as CAP, attack, etc or to task them with attack/defend a certain target.
5. To be able to group a set of ships in a fleet and give them individual tasks. So for example, if a ship carries 10 fighters, 4 can be set to defend the carrier the rest can be set to attack a particular target.
6. Auto recall if a ship suffers too much damage or the storage block is full.
7. Tasking salvage ships to go after asteroids, derelicts or overheating ships.
8. To be able to group fleets and give them all commands rather than have to do it individually.
9. For fleets to be able to use jump drives!
10. To be able to set specific target priorities such as specific systems (reactors/turrets/weapons/engines) but for them to fall back to an "any" if there are no viable targets left or return to holding point.
11. A simple "comms" system would be good to allow players know what is going on. This can be a semi-opaque chat box that can remain open, resized or moved and allow the player to monitor fleet messages and even have a couple of short cut links to allow commands to be issued on the fly.

I am sure there are more ideas floating around but these would be good for getting along with.

 

[YamiHikari]

What is the fate of AI/fleets? Currently, I think of fleet mechanics as one of the most buggy and nonfunctional features of the game. Should we expect some work to be done on this in the weapons update? Or will that wait until the universe update?

Has any further work been done on the stabilizer streams' aesthetics? My personal suggestion would be to turn the purple blue and keep the yellow animation, but any work to improve them would definitely help.

Asteroid bases. Is there any final verdict on those? I see the benefits of having a station set up on an asteroid, but the problem I see is that asteroids are, of course, mobile in the game and can be pushed around. Will they ever come to be a thing, or should we give up on the possibility?

When will the power 2.0 demonstration/tutorial stream happen on Twitch? We have been waiting for this for a while and I'm curious as to whether it will occur before or after the release of weapons 2.0.

Going back to fleet mechanics, will we ever get the possibility for chained fleet commands? It would be very interesting to be able to give a fleet a list of commands to complete in a certain order, as it could allow the player to leave the fleet to its own devices while they go about their own business.

I've heard a few things about the planned minelayers in a private chat, but could you give a detailed layout of the planned upgrade possibilities for them? What I'm hoping to see is a list of what kinds of features are being included and how they are intended to function.

In the upcoming update, damage types will be introduced to the game. From what we've heard so far, each weapon will have a primary and secondary damage type (with none of the third type being inflicted). Will there ever be an option to change/modify the damage type of a weapon? I'm not suggesting a full restructuring of the damage type, but something along the lines of reallotting some of the damage from one type to another (probably max 10% of total damage).

 

[GnomeKing]

What is the fate future of AI/fleets?

...also is Pulse being dropped? i know it has got a bad press, but it is only way to increase damage without increasing range -(therefore clear use as part of a battery of AI weapons, for example on a turret...)...what replaces that without just spamming blocks for the extreme-damage end of slow-fire ballistics and nuke-type torpedoes?

 

[OmegaGame]

Will integrity values be altered at all? Considering the fact that it was originally implemented as a stop gap fix for spaghetti ships. Is there any hope that its implementation will be relaxed or removed from everything aside power blocks (which are the only blocks that really need it to prevent spaghetti). Or will it remain the same as it is now?

Also, will any attempt be made at updating the game to a state in which the majority of currently implemented features will actually be in a working state? To make playtesting the game at least as enjoyable as it was prior to power 2.0? Basically, will you get shipyards, missiles, logic blocks and a myriad of other issues that were working pre 2.0 back to a working state in this update?

 

[Valiant70]

Also, will any attempt be made at updating the game to a state in which the majority of currently implemented features will actually be in a working state?

THIS. So much this.

Would it be possible to fix the problems with shops and the trade network during or immediately after the weapon update? Or do we have to work with the mostly-broken shops until the universe update?