Simple and simplifly

[Ciggofwar]

I wonder why all the unnecessary blocks of adding blocks to make designs of balance work.
For instance current in order for a gun to work I need to increase the size of the gun 2/3 the size of it to maintain the original stats, than everything else also has to be increased relative to that single increase of making the gun bigger because it uses more energy and mass and size.

Why is this important it is relative to the design of the intended ship. ship design and flow, you end up pewering out the flow of the original design to 2/3 bigger in relationship of the actual intended craft.
Going from a sleek laptop back into a industrial complex building taking up a city block to do the same job.

Support and effect could be reduced down to few blocks as there only enhancements Than a slider system can be used again. For more powerful or bigger than there is increasing demands from the supportive aspect of the crafts system relative to it's size.
The other problem is player visual vs ai, what the ai can do that the player can not do when it comes to visual attacking or that is rendered to the player, as it stands we need a double view of my ship and the other players ship to see what is occurred for in game play, the other is standardize ranges setting maximums ranges than capping for said range. If my big guru weapon need's to hit an object at distance than I need a bigger radar system to reach out so the ai can sense it, and where anti radar would come into play in jamming from being detected. The weapon's range now becomes based on the ability of the radar for distances which is relative to the ship. Current the weapon has a set range independent of radar? I would rather see a relationship between the systems and there uses. Instances of different radars for tracking say of missiles which would be relative for the point defense of distance investment and intercepting tracking and the investment involved in the weapon responsible for destroying it

I enjoyed the slider ruler for tweaking vs unknowingly adding more blocks to accomplish the same task of trying to find a playable middle ground, in the slider your already taking what is there and micro managing for the desired operation without changing the intended design of the ship or the flow of the ship. It 's not crazy unbalanced as there are pro vs con in the adjustment of the slider itself, vs the con of now having to re-alter the entire ship design, because you have to add a block or thousands of blocks just to tweak the system.

I just don't see the gameplay improvements in any of the systems implemented as everyone is going for big missile (nukes) than warp away once lunched using ion shield defense for the closest launch point or people than just warping away from it, not very dynamitic in my opinion, again as the server comes into play as well as to what there settings are intending for game play. I would prefer to see more tactful that overcomes the cheap easy builds because it's not there.

 

[Criss]

The devs have included more systems in order to force the player into a choice. Sliders allowed instant changes in weapon stats at any point in time that they wanted. As I hear it, the more systems a player needs on a ship, the better. After building ships that feature a number of systems and balancing them with each other I am finding it to be a more enjoyable experience in combat. The fights rely less on the number of blocks and more so on the skill of the player.

And frankly, it is not the games fault if you cannot design a ship with weapon ratios that you desire.

 

[Ithirahad]

Except, Vanhelzing, that when players need more systems on their ship, they don't get more creative, they just BUILD BIGGER SHIPS. Which is counterproductive. And annoying.


...As for the original post, the return of sliders is about the last thing I want to see, however I do agree that something has to be done about the amount of space all these different systems take up. I understand that it's designed to make players specialize their ships, but fact is, nobody REALLY wants to specialize if there aren't billions of other players around constantly to fly all the other specializations, and unless this becomes a single-server MMO there never will. As a result, more systems taking up more space just results in massive ships, and more doomcubes (and boxy designs) as people get fed up with trying to stick all of these hunks of overinflated systems (I'm looking at you, shields and thrusters) into their ship just so it can do what they want it to.

 

[xlBlackhawklx]

I agree with Ithirahad, the current updates the development team are implementing are completely counter productive. Fighters on this game are becoming the size of corvettes, destroyers even. How are we supposed to have ships without crashing even the best of servers, without dominating a game with ships that are nowhere near as big in scaled models.

The average fighter on EVE ONLINE

Ultimately the bigger factions have began to give up on intricate designs and just begun to make giant doomcubes. As every single time a person completes a ship for fleet use another system is added where the ship must either A. Be increased in size to accommodate the new systems or B. Start from scratch, completely obliterating the time and effort put into the ships. This either does one of two things. Drives your builders/fanbase away or encourages them to take easier solutions to conduct faction warfare aka

This generally makes the game completely undesirable and destroys the creative minds that want to enjoy the game. Can we please have some revamps of the systems and keep them this way. Something along the lines of shield output based upon size of the ship. Clearly battleships at 700m size are going to have more shields than a 100M long ship. This shield block could perhaps draw off power continously. More than likely designs inside the ship would be more like this

That is when you begin to see builders more interested in designing ships such as these, and less like borg cubes on steroids. I feel that continuance of these stat shattering updates would only frustrate this community more and destabilize the route the game is taking.

 

[Criss]

Except, Vanhelzing, that when players need more systems on their ship, they don't get more creative, they just BUILD BIGGER SHIPS. Which is counterproductive. And annoying.


...As for the original post, the return of sliders is about the last thing I want to see, however I do agree that something has to be done about the amount of space all these different systems take up. I understand that it's designed to make players specialize their ships, but fact is, nobody REALLY wants to specialize if there aren't billions of other players around constantly to fly all the other specializations, and unless this becomes a single-server MMO there never will. As a result, more systems taking up more space just results in massive ships, and more doomcubes (and boxy designs) as people get fed up with trying to stick all of these hunks of overinflated systems (I'm looking at you, shields and thrusters) into their ship just so it can do what they want it to.

They can only build so big and once they cant handle those ships anymore then well it might not matter. Those types of ships tend to be little death stars that can take on anything. You underestimate the number of players that build under 300 meter long ships. Players want fleets you know? I don't hear anything about titan ship tournaments or competitions. I hear about frigate and fighter tournaments. If we want players build specific ship types, then maybe the game should force that on them. Perhaps a ship will be granted bonuses based on the largest systems installed. Maybe NPC missions can be specifically designed to tear apart ships that are not properly equipped. It's hard. But this is what we have to deal with when we give all these blocks, put them in a sandbox and don't force a guideline for ship building.

 

[aceface]

Ugh, I hate ugly system cubes.

 

[Ithirahad]

Ugh, I hate ugly system cubes.

Don't we all?

And as for you, @xlBlackhawklx , while I don't agree with your shield suggestion, I certainly agree with the general jist of your post.

 

[DivineEvil]

The fights rely less on the number of blocks and more so on the skill of the player.

Well, not entirely on the skill of the player at the moment, but on player's engineering expertice. Variety of weapons and systems allow to use different aspects to gain an upper hand in combat in different circumstances.

Except, Vanhelzing, that when players need more systems on their ship, they don't get more creative, they just BUILD BIGGER SHIPS. Which is counterproductive. And annoying.

Which is not an argument to blame anyone but players. It is logical when you've got resources required you'd build bigger. The whole system just turns into the shape where you should build ships with specific sizes, rather than continuosly stick addons to the existing ones, while nothing limits people in developing a modular design philosophy to make ships that are easier to repair and modify without affecting their original visual makeup in any detrimental way.

I understand that it's designed to make players specialize their ships, but fact is, nobody REALLY wants to specialize if there aren't billions of other players around constantly to fly all the other specializations, and unless this becomes a single-server MMO there never will. As a result, more systems taking up more space just results in massive ships, and more doomcubes (and boxy designs) as people get fed up with trying to stick all of these hunks of overinflated systems (I'm looking at you, shields and thrusters) into their ship just so it can do what they want it to.

They don't want to specialize? Why?

Again, massive ships arise from a notion of very liberate, alpha-test economy state, where taking up on a enormous rise ramp is reached withing first 4-5 hours of playing solo. It's basically impossible to have even half of effect modules working on 100% efficiency on a single ship no matter how big it is, and declining benefit of shield capacity, maneuverability and thrust impact also makes larger ships less desirable, yet major faction managers are just too limited and stubborn to wrap their heads around that fact and keep preferring larger ships for no viable reason other than it allows them to abuse their status.

Nobody is willing to embrace the limitations upon themselves nor their ships. You want to make a fast ship? Maybe you'll have to limit the amount of shields it has. You want a very sturdy shielded ship? Cool, but it has to be slower. Does those lack weapon power? Sure, bring bigger guns, but you'll have to place less equipment and deal without a Jump Drive, relying on Warp Gates to move around the space. But no man, we want everything in excess so we be the ultimate bullies, and no one even consider fighting us a fair game in any degree.

The only reason we're up with juggernauts and titans flying around is that - we have large Factions, than can easily get resources to build, or credits to purchase, those enormous ships into the game, and we also have lesser forces and solo players, that can't offer much resistance against that. It's all rounds up to a current economy that allows to those ship to exist without any upkeep, but the time spent to actually build a thing with all the resources available.

No particular weapon or equipment mechanics has much space in a situation.

I agree with Ithirahad, the current updates the development team are implementing are completely counter productive. Fighters on this game are becoming the size of corvettes, destroyers even.

Have we had much fighters before those changes? Nope, people who can handle the bigger ship with get a bigger ship. Does fighters need a lot of system blocks to function as expected? Nope, they scale with the ship. Does they need all of those systems? Nope, it depends on what a fighter suggested role is. Fighter is merely a size tag you place on a ship relative to a game's general scale, like any other size class. Updates has nothing to do with it. I can have a fighter with any system or weapon with good efficiency.

How are we supposed to have ships without crashing even the best of servers, without dominating a game with ships that are nowhere near as big in scaled models.

Dunno, but maybe having more ships, that work in tandem to perform even better than a big-ass chunk of lag piloted by a single bigot? Especially since large factions can actually do that? Larger factions are already in a dominating position just due, they can handle losses and lead a larger force into combat. Why then? Because they won't accept a challenge, and overally lack empathy to the community they play with, despite they neither need to use enormous ships to win a battle nor they're unaware about lags their titans put on any given server.

Ultimately the bigger factions have began to give up on intricate designs and just begun to make giant doomcubes. As every single time a person completes a ship for fleet use another system is added where the ship must either A. Be increased in size to accommodate the new systems or B. Start from scratch, completely obliterating the time and effort put into the ships. This either does one of two things. Drives your builders/fanbase away or encourages them to take easier solutions to conduct faction warfare aka

That's really to faction's decision whether it's more important to maintain their image or to make strong ships. Missing a new system does not makes a ship inherently useless. Even the change to weapon systems haven't broke any ship to no-return state - swapping some blocks for other blocks with replace function. Nonetheless, designing new ship also has nothing negative to it, it's a bread and butter of Starmade - to build ships freely to work the way you want them to with reasonable limitations. Whether you modify existing ships is up to you if it worth the time, it does not take as much time than making a ship from scratch any possible way. What's conducts a warfare is a conflict over something. Starmade doesn't provides it yet. It's all finger-sucked fun-struggle, which starts and ends by faction with larger credits stomping over a lesser faction and that's it. Ship's design is irrevelant, it merely a product of faction's willing to have a pretty public image or not.

This generally makes the game completely undesirable and destroys the creative minds that want to enjoy the game. Can we please have some revamps of the systems and keep them this way. Something along the lines of shield output based upon size of the ship. Clearly battleships at 700m size are going to have more shields than a 100M long ship. This shield block could perhaps draw off power continously. More than likely designs inside the ship would be more like this

There are limits on ship's sizes on servers. If server provides freedom in lagging itself into oblivion and dumbing the combat into cube wars, it's an issue with owners and not with developers, who just try to make game better for everyone. Shields already drain power even when full, in case you didn't knew somehow. Your perception of shields is misfigured by the fact that large ships rarely has much effort surviving fights clearly biased in their favor.

Creative minds can't be destroyed until they're not really creative. There's always something new you can build. That's up to what you get your enjoyment from. I don't really see what part of enjoyment is decimated by providing new mechanics, and love to hear your answer for that.

That is when you begin to see builders more interested in designing ships such as these, and less like borg cubes on steroids. I feel that continuance of these stat shattering updates would only frustrate this community more and destabilize the route the game is taking.

When what exactly? Why it is a bad idea to get rid of outdated and ineffective designs by blowing them against another faction, that has the same issue? Blueprints are saved any way? Maybe making some AI fighters launched by small push weapons and frigates using Push module instead of thrusters and sending them on standoffs? Builders are defined by building cool ships, so i don't see where game's route conflists with it.

No, seriously, I don't get it at all. If a guy want to build a doomcube, he'll build a doom cube. If he wants to build a delicate design, he'll build it vigorously. If he want to change anything in existing design - he'll do that, Schema gone a long way to provide you with all the tools necessary to make it reasonable in time department. What is your goddamn problem??? This is the community, mainly the long-living factions that are on destabilized route, and that's their self-righteousness and stubborness is what causes frustration. Community in general is FINE. You've given all the tools to have f****g fun your way as game's developed! What is wrong with YOU that you cannot even decide what is your way to have fun in a friggin sandbox game?! Are you really that undecisive that you cannot get fun without somebody telling you how to play?

 

[Criss]

It's funny. Players often complain about things like armor blocks and how they are currently useless. If anyone has been following my EVE ship thread, you will know that the systems on those ships are relatively weak. Most players build equal sized ships of greater capabilities. Certainly so with the weapons they install on them. It amazes me to see just how large of a turret players are willing to put on a ship.

I just finished the Impairor. It is a Rookie ship. It has very little shielding but the most armor out of the rookie ship types. Even so, I did not place advanced hull on the entire ship. Just in obvious bulky areas. The ship in EVE has an 8% bonus to armor resistances. I applied that to the Impairor with an 8% armor piercing effect. The ship I used had 32 cannon blocks split up into 12 groups, with 50% overdrive attached to the system. This represented the turrets of an enemy ship.

The Impairor lasted longer than any shielded ship I had created to date. Keep in mind the shields on these ships are low enough already, and it lasted LONGER.

There is nothing the devs can do about players building bigger guns. If you want balanced gameplay and balanced fights then do it yourself. I put the effort in to make my ship compare nicely to shielded foes, and it came out better than most people were willing to bet on.

Please do not tell the community that the devs are making backwards decisions in terms of gameplay. The only reason you are not experiencing a balanced system is because you are not willing to put in the effort to get that experience.

There are empty space inside of that ship, where I could fit even more armor modules or any other system I desire, but I won't. That's not the point. I balanced my ship. It works and I am satisfied. All you do when you fill a ship with systems is give a doomcube a pretty hull design.

 

[blurb357]

I just finished the Impairor. It is a Rookie ship. It has very little shielding but the most armor out of the rookie ship types. Even so, I did not place advanced hull on the entire ship. Just in obvious bulky areas. The ship in EVE has an 8% bonus to armor resistances. I applied that to the Impairor with an 8% armor piercing effect. The ship I used had 32 cannon blocks split up into 12 groups, with 50% overdrive attached to the system. This represented the turrets of an enemy ship.

The Impairor lasted longer than any shielded ship I had created to date. Keep in mind the shields on these ships are low enough already, and it lasted LONGER.

yeah, you should see what @Chances_Ghost and @jan_spaceman can do!

 

[Ithirahad]

Nobody is willing to embrace the limitations upon themselves nor their ships. You want to make a fast ship? Maybe you'll have to limit the amount of shields it has. You want a very sturdy shielded ship? Cool, but it has to be slower. Does those lack weapon power? Sure, bring bigger guns, but you'll have to place less equipment and deal without a Jump Drive, relying on Warp Gates to move around the space. But no man, we want everything in excess so we be the ultimate bullies, and no one even consider fighting us a fair game in any degree.

Yeah, but it feels like right now, those things have to be taken to the extreme to have even one system be satisfying (Ignoring turrets, which, if built huge, can give you a LOT of essentially free attack power)

The only reason we're up with juggernauts and titans flying around is that - we have large Factions, than can easily get resources to build, or credits to purchase, those enormous ships into the game, and we also have lesser forces and solo players, that can't offer much resistance against that. It's all rounds up to a current economy that allows to those ship to exist without any upkeep, but the time spent to actually build a thing with all the resources available.

That, and the fact that there's nothing useful that small ships can do that big ships with massive turrets can't do too.


No particular weapon or equipment mechanics has much space in a situation.

Have we had much fighters before those changes? Nope, people who can handle the bigger ship with get a bigger ship. Does fighters need a lot of system blocks to function as expected? Nope, they scale with the ship. Does they need all of those systems? Nope, it depends on what a fighter suggested role is. Fighter is merely a size tag you place on a ship relative to a game's general scale, like any other size class. Updates has nothing to do with it. I can have a fighter with any system or weapon with good efficiency.

Dunno, but maybe having more ships, that work in tandem to perform even better than a big-ass chunk of lag piloted by a single bigot? Especially since large factions can actually do that? Larger factions are already in a dominating position just due, they can handle losses and lead a larger force into combat. Why then? Because they won't accept a challenge, and overally lack empathy to the community they play with, despite they neither need to use enormous ships to win a battle nor they're unaware about lags their titans put on any given server.

Not true, it's a lot harder to eat through a HUGE hunk of shielding that's also shooting uber-nukes at you than several smaller ships moving around, since once a smaller ship is down, they just lost a massive part of their DPS... Unless the titan doesn't have giant missiles and other fixed capital weapons to fire at you, it's going to be a whole lot harder to take that down. But that's "big ship balancing," a topic for another day.

That's really to faction's decision whether it's more important to maintain their image or to make strong ships. Missing a new system does not makes a ship inherently useless. Even the change to weapon systems haven't broke any ship to no-return state - swapping some blocks for other blocks with replace function. Nonetheless, designing new ship also has nothing negative to it, it's a bread and butter of Starmade - to build ships freely to work the way you want them to with reasonable limitations. Whether you modify existing ships is up to you if it worth the time, it does not take as much time than making a ship from scratch any possible way. What's conducts a warfare is a conflict over something. Starmade doesn't provides it yet. It's all finger-sucked fun-struggle, which starts and ends by faction with larger credits stomping over a lesser faction and that's it. Ship's design is irrevelant, it merely a product of faction's willing to have a pretty public image or not.
There are limits on ship's sizes on servers. If server provides freedom in lagging itself into oblivion and dumbing the combat into cube wars, it's an issue with owners and not with developers, who just try to make game better for everyone. Shields already drain power even when full, in case you didn't knew somehow. Your perception of shields is misfigured by the fact that large ships rarely has much effort surviving fights clearly biased in their favor.

Yes, sure, designing a new ship has nothing negative to it... But yet it's just another thing to refit constantly or have rendered useless. And as for servers, no, that's not really an issue with the owners. Sure, there will always be lazy assholes who just build giant ugly cubes/blobs of systems and pick people off with them, but I get the sense that quite a few people would become more willing to build decent-looking hulls if they didn't have to worry about constantly moving stuff around.

Creative minds can't be destroyed until they're not really creative. There's always something new you can build. That's up to what you get your enjoyment from. I don't really see what part of enjoyment is decimated by providing new mechanics, and love to hear your answer for that.
When what exactly? Why it is a bad idea to get rid of outdated and ineffective designs by blowing them against another faction, that has the same issue? Blueprints are saved any way? Maybe making some AI fighters launched by small push weapons and frigates using Push module instead of thrusters and sending them on standoffs? Builders are defined by building cool ships, so i don't see where game's route conflists with it.

They can't be destroyed, but they can certainly be discouraged.

You've given all the tools to have f****g fun your way as game's developed! What is wrong with YOU that you cannot even decide what is your way to have fun in a friggin sandbox game?! Are you really that undecisive that you cannot get fun without somebody telling you how to play?

No, but I can't get fun if at least one aspect of the game (Weapon/system effectiveness) kind of has to be done within certain rules if I want to be reasonably competitive, and those rules start changing (pointlessly, in this case) in a way that has rendered me damn near unwilling to even put systems in new ships.

(I don't mind refitting to accommodate new mechanics... things like sensors, or the split of shield regen and shield capacity, which was cool, if a bit nerfy. But pointless changes? No thanks. I'll just leave until release, if things like this start happening repeatedly. I'm here to build ships and have them work the way I built them, not to spend my days endlessly tweaking systems blocks.)

 

[Lecic]

This entire thread is pointless.

You don't need more systems with the new update. You just need to redistribute.

Master + Effect = Slave

If your ship had a 20:20:20 system before, rearrange your ship to 15:30:15.

To find the number of blocks you need exactly, take your total system block count, divide by two, and then divide by two again. The first number is the number of slaved modules you need, the second number is the number you need for the effect and the master.

On systems without an effect, E = o, so M = S, making it the same as before.

 

[Leanson]

Ok, simple would be a bit better. Look at from the depths. Their cannon set up is such that they must be build with blocks that add properties, damage, gauge, and how the cannon behaves to the gun. Making custom cannon viable and reducing the block count, plus the added bonus of making sense. If SM would make it like the the cannon or the engine setup on from the depths. Omg it would clear up space on ships, making room for interior, specified rooms for RP and purposeful roles in a ship.i don't understand why SM doesn't try to be better and learn from the games that are around them and that are doing well. Once from the depth develops a constant universe for everyone SM is in trouble.

 

[DivineEvil]

Yeah, but it feels like right now, those things have to be taken to the extreme to have even one system be satisfying (Ignoring turrets, which, if built huge, can give you a LOT of essentially free attack power)

First, that depends on what you see as satisfying. A Titan with a mobility of Frigate is not 'satisfying', it's excessive. Any given ship has to have 5% of it's mass as Thrusters, 10% as Power supply blocks and 20% as Shield blocks with preffered C/R ratio, which gives satisfying stats and leaves 65% for weapons, modules and armor. Anything far exceeding these values is an overkill.

Not true, it's a lot harder to eat through a HUGE hunk of shielding that's also shooting uber-nukes at you than several smaller ships moving around, since once a smaller ship is down, they just lost a massive part of their DPS... Unless the titan doesn't have giant missiles and other fixed capital weapons to fire at you, it's going to be a whole lot harder to take that down. But that's "big ship balancing," a topic for another day.

Separate ships with equal amount of shield blocks always has much more shielding than a big single ship. Nukes are easier to avoid or shoot down, than a dosen of moderate missiles. Each turret blown off affects even more than just DPS of a large ship - it creates a blind spot in it's defences, which maneuverable ships can easily abuse.

Yes, sure, designing a new ship has nothing negative to it... But yet it's just another thing to refit constantly or have rendered useless.

Last change that might have made some designs useless are weapon rework. It's been a while. Nothing since then has rendered any ship useless.

No, but I can't get fun if at least one aspect of the game (Weapon/system effectiveness) kind of has to be done within certain rules if I want to be reasonably competitive, and those rules start changing (pointlessly, in this case) in a way that has rendered me damn near unwilling to even put systems in new ships.

Current change haven't affected weapon effectiveness - it fixed a balance issue. Manifesting over a balance issue has nothing to do with being competetive. I'm amused how some people see a current balance fix as a beginning of a mysterious chain of changes, which nobody has stated about. What dark place that statement has originated from?

Next change will most likely be a Thrust mechanic to address large ship balance, and of course large factions are going to stack double amount of engines upon their Titans upon that change. That is because they always refuse to embrace the flaws, just like as they refuse to adjust to mere possibility of game changes by making ships with modular designs, allowing easier swaps and additions. This is a result of childish desire to have undefeatable ships, and has nothing to do with competetiveness.

 

[TheBlueThunder]

yeah, you should see what @Chances_Ghost and @jan_spaceman can do!

I don't like showing off my ships anymore. . . Too much attention is not always good.