Multiplayer Control Over Different Systems

[Shadow18000]

One thing that I love about Space battles in TV shows and movies is that there must be collaberation of multiple people to succeed. But as of right now, one person does everything. Weapons, Repairs, Flying, etc. Wouldn't it be cool if multiple people could man a single ship to increase its effectiveness?

Here's how my idea would work. If a sinlge person flies a ship, things would stay as they are, but if individual players manned different parts of the same ship, aka the differing systems, then the total effeciacy of each system would increase by lets say 10-20%.

Here's some Ideas friends and I have had

- The Ship Core controls all systems that aren't occupied as normal
- A person can enter a Weapons computer, and thus increases all damage, fire rate, and so on by lets say 20% for that specific Weapons.

- A Engineering block can allow a single player to control the power flow from the power blocks and send extra power to a specific system. Boosting its power anywhere from 10-50% more, but that would take power from other systems such as Thrusters, shields, etc., or you could overdrive the whole system, which would cause damage to the power system and need to cool it down/get repaired after a battle before you can use 100% power again.

- A shield command block that allows a person to concentrate shields to the front, back, port, or starboard by increasing the shields up to 50% in on area, and decreasing it by 50% from the opposite side.

Stuff like that basically. What do you think?

 

[ltmauve]

Yeah, I like this idea.
What about if you want someone to have control over multiple weapons systems? Would they still get a bonus?
Also, how would shields be increased/decreased by 50%? (I'm thinking this would have to do with the percent of shields lost per damage compared to the total damage)
How does the powerboost/penatly work? (After all, if someone has a small enough ship that they can have a power surplus even during combat, then they could boost weapons power with no ill effects.)

 

[jayman38]

I love this idea and I think the dev team loves it too. In order for it to work, a critical problem needs to be resolved. Namely, astronauts need to be able to align themselves with the inside of a ship, so that speed, sudden changes in velocity, and sudden exits out of control computers won't cause the astronaut to "fall out of an airlock", watching the ship drift off into space without them. Until this is resolved, support crew will be regularly marooned.

Edit:
One of many threads discussing this issue:
http://starmadedock.net/threads/save-player-relative-to-ship-upon-logout.1804/

 

[Keptick]

Have you ever tried sitting in a weapon computer or someone else's turret? It's

EXTREMELY BORING!!!!!!!!!

Apart from that, good idea. But even if it's implemented good freaking luck getting people to man systems on you ship :P

 

[Snk]

YES! I have been wanting something like this ever since I've STARTED playing Star Made. You have no idea how happy I am someone finally gets this. Keptick, you couldn't be more wrong. Just being on someone else's ship is nice, no matter what you do, because you can't help but feel a sense of teamwork and comradely and satisfaction. It isn't that hard to get people aboard your ship. You just gotta recruit and be nice. Please see this thread: http://starmadedock.net/threads/the-figurehead-captains-log.1363/

 

[Shadow18000]

Yeah, I like this idea.
What about if you want someone to have control over multiple weapons systems? Would they still get a bonus?
Also, how would shields be increased/decreased by 50%? (I'm thinking this would have to do with the percent of shields lost per damage compared to the total damage)
How does the powerboost/penatly work? (After all, if someone has a small enough ship that they can have a power surplus even during combat, then they could boost weapons power with no ill effects.)

I would say a single weapons system controlled would equal 20% boost to stats where if yoy have two or more it would be only 10%. Also I would make it so NPCs who use the systems only give you half the bonus.

And the way shields would work is you redirect shield via some kind of slider in the Engineer Console from one end of the ship to another...thus making one side easier to penetrate, and one side harder. So if you were to do a 1v1 battle, it would be be super smart to shift your shields to to front to increase how much damage you can take, or shift them to the back to run away longer. Although if you happened to be in what you assumed to be a 1v1 battle, and then several ships come out of cloak from behind you, your in trouble.

As far as how you would write the code, I don't know enough about code, but I would separate the shields into 4 sections. Front Left, Front Right, Back Left, and Back Right.[DOUBLEPOST=1416293194,1416293124][/DOUBLEPOST]

YES! I have been wanting something like this ever since I've STARTED playing Star Made. You have no idea how happy I am someone finally gets this. Keptick, you couldn't be more wrong. Just being on someone else's ship is nice, no matter what you do, because you can't help but feel a sense of teamwork and comradely and satisfaction. It isn't that hard to get people aboard your ship. You just gotta recruit and be nice. Please see this thread: http://starmadedock.net/threads/the-figurehead-captains-log.1363/

Yes I agree its super fun. I played Artimis Bridge Simulator and I liked it, but it doesn't have enough personal touch to it. Its very limited. With Starmade, the options are limitless. You tube it. Its cool.

 

[ltmauve]

Um, as for shields, they don't have penetration. I was thinking that diverting power away from shields means that you lose shields faster than normal (for a given amount of damage)
The total distribution of shields you have would always multiply to 1. (So if I change one area up to 2, I have to change another area to 1/2)
The amount taken out of shields would be the damage divided by the shield factor for that area. (so if I increase the shields in front by a factor of 2, 100 damage will take 50 out of my shields, while in back 100 damage takes 200 damage out of my shields)

As for distributions, Calbiri mentioned shield computers in a talk a while back. You would set up a computer and connect some of your shields to it. Then you can control how much of the shields are in front/behind/left/right/above/below the computer (the location of the computer does matter, btw) I imagine having multiple of those would be pretty interesting.

 

[Lecic]

Agree on everything but directional shielding. This isn't Star Trek.

 

[ltmauve]

This isn't Star Trek.

But some people want it to be. Simply because it reminds you of something is not a reason to shoot it down. And if it adds complexity and stratergy to battles, why not?

 

[Lecic]

But some people want it to be. Simply because it reminds you of something is not a reason to shoot it down. And if it adds complexity and stratergy to battles, why not?

It doesn't add complexity and strategy to battles. It just continues to make people treat titans like jumbo fighters that smash into eachother head-on.

If you want directional "shielding", what we should really have is an improved armor system, where you can build your ship to have exactly as much armor in specific spots (instead of just "forward" or "backward" as you need.

 

[Snk]

It doesn't add complexity and strategy to battles. It just continues to make people treat titans like jumbo fighters that smash into eachother head-on.

If you want directional "shielding", what we should really have is an improved armor system, where you can build your ship to have exactly as much armor in specific spots (instead of just "forward" or "backward" as you need.

What is the basis behind this? How wold directional shielding lead titans to crash into each other? It would lead them to try and flank each other, yes, which is a good thing. It greats a larger need for pilot skill. The armor idea is irrelevant to this thread, which is about making it so people can effectively man each other's ships.

 

[Lecic]

What is the basis behind this? How wold directional shielding lead titans to crash into each other? It would lead them to try and flank each other, yes, which is a good thing. It greats a larger need for pilot skill. The armor idea is irrelevant to this thread, which is about making it so people can effectively man each other's ships.

This specific part of the suggestion is about directional shielding. I am posting my opposition to directional shielding, and an alternative that promotes more varied ship designs.

I have nothing against the majority of this suggestion. I am just opposed to directional shielding.

 

[Snk]

This specific part of the suggestion is about directional shielding. I am posting my opposition to directional shielding, and an alternative that promotes more varied ship designs.

I have nothing against the majority of this suggestion. I am just opposed to directional shielding.

Maybe instead of having a grid of shields, like in STO, you have the normal shield layout we have right now. However, when a person manning the shield console directs power to the area that is being hit, the damage against the shields decreases?

 

[ltmauve]

While armor is effective for small ships that can turn to present the armor to whoever it shoots at them, large ships cannot effectivly use armor, as enemy pilots will avoid shooting at the armored sections and instead shoot at the unarmored ones.
Redistributing shields means that an attacker will have to attempt to flank a target and hit the areas where the shields are diverted away from. This requires to skill to determine where the target is weak, and then skill to get into position to attack. Meanwhile, the shield distribution officer must attempt to predict the attacker's move and redistribute shields.
I do not support seperate areas of the ship having different shield pools, at is simply becomes a game of hammering through a single shield area, which does not take much piloting skill.
Instead, by adjusting which areas have resistance and which areas are vulnerable, the attacks must constantly attempt to target whereever is most vulnerable on the ship, making it more difficult to hammer through the shields.

 

[Andir]

Didn't Star Wars also have directional shielding? The whole trench run relied on it...

 

[jayman38]

Didn't Star Wars also have directional shielding? The whole trench run relied on it...

Poor Porkins.

But seriously, I think it would be neat if another variation on altering shielding mid-combat would be to redirect energy to effect the combat recharge of shields. Example: I think the current combat recharge rate is 6 or 7%. Redirecting full power to shields: 12% or maybe up to 25% recharge under fire. No power to shields: 0%. It's a slight variation on the Freespace/X-Wing energy redirection mechanic.

 

[Lecic]

While armor is effective for small ships that can turn to present the armor to whoever it shoots at them, large ships cannot effectivly use armor, as enemy pilots will avoid shooting at the armored sections and instead shoot at the unarmored ones.
Redistributing shields means that an attacker will have to attempt to flank a target and hit the areas where the shields are diverted away from. This requires to skill to determine where the target is weak, and then skill to get into position to attack. Meanwhile, the shield distribution officer must attempt to predict the attacker's move and redistribute shields.
I do not support seperate areas of the ship having different shield pools, at is simply becomes a game of hammering through a single shield area, which does not take much piloting skill.
Instead, by adjusting which areas have resistance and which areas are vulnerable, the attacks must constantly attempt to target whereever is most vulnerable on the ship, making it more difficult to hammer through the shields.

Large ships can more effectively use armor. interior volume in higher than exterior surface area due to square-cube law, allowing for thick armor plating while still having enough systems inside to support movement with it.

Furthermore, it's pointless to aim at the less-armored sections of a ship. They're covering less essential shield generators (in that once shields are down they're worthless) instead of the actual important sections of the ship, namely the command centers and main weaponry.

I said nothing about separate shield pools. Only improvements to armor.

How do you plan to make directional shielding a possibility? The only way I can see to do it is to have it based around X Y Z coordinates of the ship. With the core becoming less important with the HP system coming up, it'd seem unfair to base the directional shields around the core. And yes, the core is the center of the X Y Z coordinates, and no, you can't change that. All this would lead to would be ships with their 0, 0, 0 coordinate at the very rear of the ship, allowing for huge amounts of frontal shielding.

 

[ltmauve]

First, shield computers - these would be used to provide centers for shield distribution. Second, you'd have to balance your shield resistances so that having an unequal distribution of blocks results in unequal distribution of shields. It would be simple to calculate the number of the blocks above, below, infront, behind, left, and right of a computer, and then easy to recalculate when the ship takes damage.

I said nothing about separate shield pools. Only improvements to armor.

I thought this was your objection to directional shielding. Apparently, you hate it just because. Do you honestly have a reason you think it will reduce the quality of multiplayer combat?

 

[Lecic]

First, shield computers - these would be used to provide centers for shield distribution. Second, you'd have to balance your shield resistances so that having an unequal distribution of blocks results in unequal distribution of shields. It would be simple to calculate the number of the blocks above, below, infront, behind, left, and right of a computer, and then easy to recalculate when the ship takes damage.


I thought this was your objection to directional shielding. Apparently, you hate it just because. Do you honestly have a reason you think it will reduce the quality of multiplayer combat?

What?

I do not support seperate areas of the ship having different shield pools, at is simply becomes a game of hammering through a single shield area, which does not take much piloting skill.

I was saying I never said anything about separate shield pools. Only armor boosts.

I don't agree with the suggestion because I don't think it will add anything to combat. Your system is even more exploitable, because you can have the core in a heavily armored center of the ship, while having the shield computer in the back of the ship, thus making the entire front of the ship the "front," and having ridiculous shield power there. Then, all you need is a docked shield plate over the rear of the ship with redirected shields protecting it, and you have a massive shield bonus with only a tiny sliver at the back of the ship with lower shields.

The way you are describing this, you either must have separate shield pools, or shield bleedthrough, neither of which I support.

 

[ltmauve]

Except no, I acknowledged that exploit, which you would notice if you read my previous post.

unequal distribution of blocks results in unequal distribution of shields

The reinforcement of the shield will be determined by the ratio of how many blocks are in front of the computer and behind the computer. If 90% of your mass is in front of the computer, then you will need to make the rear 2 x 10 = 20 times as vulnerable to damage as compared to the base value if you want to reinforce the front of your ship by 2x. If your computer is the last block, then guess what, you can't boost the forward shields, because there's nowhere to draw the shields from.

What?

Why do you not think this will contribute to ship-to-ship combat? While armor deserves its own topic, it is not useful here, as it does not add anything to combat. Armor is added entirely before combat begins, and while it may make shipbuilding more interesting or difficult, does not require any combat skill to use. Essentially, what you are saying is "No, this won't work, here, have something that doesn't work either"