Thoughts on Gigantism

[The Wozard]

WARNING: This is an opinion/discussion page. This is not fact, just my opinion. If you don't like it that is fine, just don't even try to tell me it is wrong. Cause you won't win.

Having read a lot of complaints about gigantic ships, peoples opinions on their over powered capability, how they need to be balance, and their overall usefulness, I decided to put my on bit of opinion in on the mater.

[First] Aesthetics

Smooth:
One of the biggest early improvement to graphics came with anti-aliasing.

It smoothed out text and rough edges.

Sadly Starmade has no way of Anti-Aliasing your ship so if you want cleaner lines, guess what. You have to make it bigger. If you can fit more blocks in it "smooths" out your edges and angles.

Starmade blocks only support 45 degree angles, so to get good looking smooth odd angles, you will need more space. Something that requires a bigger ship

Details:
Simple, more space = finer details.
Lots of ships have interesting fine details all across them. Armor plates, vents, hatches, groves, pipes, and other small details. You can fit fine details on a "small" ship. This is similar to the effect of focusing a camera. Its impossible due to the size restrictions of voxel based building to make fine details on a small ship. There is a limit to the detail that smaller ships can attain. If you want better looking finer details, it has to be bigger to accommodate them.

Conclusion:
If you want a really nice looking ship in a voxel system, it has to be bigger. You can fit more into the details every time you make it bigger.

[Second] Over All Power

Square Cube Law:
The major misconception about massive ships is the power behind them. If you have a ship that is twice as big as another ship, it has 4x more system power in the ship, not double.

So a ship twice the size of a smaller sized duplicate would take 4 of the smaller ships to equal out the power of the larger ship.

Imposing Restrictions:
Imposing Restrictions of block would cause more power problems. It could either simply make an optimal ship size that would standardize the ship sizing and decrees the overall power of all ships.

It simply is what is should be:
The power of larger ships is (Warning incoming opinion) as it should be. People ask for round planets and more realistic this and that is Starmade. Well this is a realistic law that governs the real world and is exactly how things work. You will never be able to complete and objective bigger then you with out help.

Hull to system ratio:
The Average Ship has a consistent hull thickness of 1 block. When you build larger ships, the ratio of the amount of interior space to exterior covering increases. In a simple 1D explanation

So doubling the ships total size makes the interior space ratio much higher allowing for more systems to be added beyond the normal expected amount from the square cubed law. this is where the power problem gains some traction. because of this. a ship double the size of a smaller one would actual require more then 4 of the normal versions to equal its power. This is because the smaller ones attribute more of the total space to hull the the larger ship has to.

[Third] My Opinion
(Warning major incoming opinion) Larger ships are often show pieces or stat busters. Making very large ships takes time, but does pay out possibly over its intended amount. With more open space on the interiors of slightly larger ship can make enormous difference in the overall power of a ship. The problem is this is how things work it real life, and because of that I think it is EXACTLY as it should be. I am not saying all thing are balance, I am merely saying that the amount of power of larger ships is done correctly.

[Last] Conclusion
There are lots of other problems not considered here. These are simply problems I have not heard about and thought they should be pointed out. If you have any additional concerns for larger ships, or a dispute to one of my claims above, feel free to comment and tell me.

Thanks,
The Wozard
[DOUBLEPOST=1418494600,1418494463][/DOUBLEPOST]Wow. That is embarrassing. The title is miss spelled, and I can't find a way to fix that.

oops

 

[Keptick]

I think that people should start relying on mass (or block count) for ship power, not dimensions. You then start to realize that some bigger ships have 10x the mass (and cost) of smaller ships. Is it normal that they destroy those smaller ships? Yes. Besides, smaller ships IN NUMBERS can faceroll bigger ships, even with a fraction of the combined mass. What we really need is a system to control those drone swarms. I've said this in the past and I'll say it again: "Gigantism" is only a thing if you want it to be. It's relative to the point of view. As in, a ship that might be considered gigantic for someone may be small for an other person.

I've also come close (and have) killed ships over 7x my mass. If someone is constantly flying in something huge they're probably compensating for something else (like piloting skill), so use that to your advantage.

To be honest, with the new economy and buy with blocks big ships will become a LOT less common. If someone is flying around in some 600k mass monster then they worked their ass off for it and deserve to fly it.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'll just leave this here:

 

[The Wozard]

I'll just leave this here:

I completly agree, but I purposly never stated how long a Fighter/Capital/Titan/Super Titan ship should be because of the first statement. Dalmont is a very aesthetic builder who loves details. Because of that fact he would build his ships larger so he could fit all the details in he wants. When you get in to the artistic approach to ship building, size comparisons to the character are less and less important.

If you are going for correctly sized ships you are going to lose a lot of detail.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I completly agree, but I purposly never stated how long a Fighter/Capital/Titan/Super Titan ship should be because of the first statement. Dalmont is a very aesthetic builder who loves details. Because of that fact he would build his ships larger so he could fit all the details in he wants. When you get in to the artistic approach to ship building, size comparisons to the character are less and less important.

If you are going for correctly sized ships you are going to lose a lot of detail.

I am apposed to any universal classifications, people can call their ships whatever they want and build them as big as they want. I'm going to look at you funny though if you call a ship a fighter if it is clearly not fighter scale. There is no way to compare ships in Starmade to their theoretical counterpart. None of them exists but current fighters and naval ships. It is theoretically possible that ships in the future will be much bigger than navel ships today but I doubt a single man fighter will be as large as some of the craft people call "fighters" and it's not just the fighter shown in the picture, I've seen ships up to 100M being called a fighter. I've also never seen any Scifi shows that have fighters anywhere near as big.

If your fighters are big, the support craft to carry those fighters will have to be much larger as well. I care more about accuracy in scale than detail. You can still build excellent small ships, and it really is a challenge to build decent looking ships on smaller scales. and if you really want the detail how about just not call it a fighter.

 

[Squirrel]

I'll just leave this here:

You and me Sven. You and me...
I made about 30 fighters and drones, all 20m and less, and I have to constantly see 75m fighters everywhere.

 

[KiloZulu]

I do worry that the developers are going to see the massive titans and restrict the resources to curb their production. Already with the system that is in place, I feel very stifled creatively. The days of just building and testing an idea for a ship are gone. I'm spending any and all game time mining asteroids or trying to automate factories so that I can build at all (some day.)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Already with the system that is in place, I feel very stifled creatively. The days of just building and testing an idea for a ship are gone.

This is why I have a creative universe and a survival universe.

 

[Viridis00]

This is why I have a creative universe and a survival universe.

This.

I have no problem with titans and giant warships, but they need to be harder to produce in multiplayer, and I think the way blueprints work now is the perfect solution to that. If you want it in multiplayer, you'll need to cooperate with your faction to produce the result. If you want to fly doombringing titans in singleplayer, you can do that too with either admin commands or revert to buy with creds.

I use admin commands all the time for my own creative pleasure. What I really would like to see is a mini-creative mode in game with infinite blocks to design blueprints without having to get resources in the first place. That would save us a lot of admin commands.

I can agree with OP on smooth edges though, but that's not so much related to large ships. More so the fact that we don't have blocks like that (yet). Same with flatter blocks for greebling smaller ships. I've seen a lot of small ships in the community content section with odd slopes using flat/wedge combos and they still look superb in my opinion.

 

[Keptick]

I do worry that the developers are going to see the massive titans and restrict the resources to curb their production. Already with the system that is in place, I feel very stifled creatively. The days of just building and testing an idea for a ship are gone. I'm spending any and all game time mining asteroids or trying to automate factories so that I can build at all (some day.)

Just go on SP and use buy with credits AND give yourselves credits. It's like creative. If you're just building for building then there's absolutely no problem with doing that and it isn't "cheating".

 

[Snk]

What do you, you know. What do you think dogs think of aircraft carriers?

 

[whiterhino16]

My whatever an opinions worth today:
I don't really care about overpoweredness of big ships. And TBH I find the whole idea of making the balanced is largely missing a more important point, basically, the economy, the crafting system, bananas or whatever it is makes them ridiculously easy to to make (excluding the building process). (WARNING: UNTHOUGHT SENTENCE INCOMING) Also, I have a feeling there's at least a *bit* of bias considering how blatantly overpowered they used to be.

EDIT: And for the record, I haven't really played starmade much recently, so chances are theres a solution already somewhere on the HUD in big fat comic sans letters that I haven't noticed yet.

 

[Andir]

I don't know if the engine could handle it, but I think having variable angle blocks would go a long way to enabling nice slopes on some vehicles. Maybe we'll see what can be done with the turret updates.

 

[Loadout]

This whole idea was the reasoning, quite some time ago, that I dropped any and all size based classifications off my ships. I went with role based classifications instead. ____ ship is meant to escort others or act as a swarm drone, it's not clear whether it's a fighter or a frigate or even a titan. I could theoretically make a 10k mass escort ship one day, or even make a tiny 100 mass carrier. The whole idea of, "..it's a fighter so it must be small." is so subjective to the individual I just gave up on it altogether.

That is my two cents on the issue, for what it's worth. I agree on the smoothness issue but power is what it is, more mass = more potential power, simple as that really.

One side note though, I double layer my hulls for extra protection so in my case my larger ships have more like 4:7 instead of 2:9. But that is just me being paranoid about shield failure and all. x)

 

[DukeofRealms]

Wow. That is embarrassing. The title is miss spelled, and I can't find a way to fix that.

Corrected

 

[KiloZulu]

My whatever an opinions worth today:
I don't really care about overpoweredness of big ships. And TBH I find the whole idea of making the balanced is largely missing a more important point, basically, the economy, the crafting system, bananas or whatever it is makes them ridiculously easy to to make (excluding the building process). (WARNING: UNTHOUGHT SENTENCE INCOMING) Also, I have a feeling there's at least a *bit* of bias considering how blatantly overpowered they used to be.

EDIT: And for the record, I haven't really played starmade much recently, so chances are theres a solution already somewhere on the HUD in big fat comic sans letters that I haven't noticed yet.

Since we don't really have PvP on the server I play on, there isn't the whole race for bigger ships. The players are all friends, and our main joy comes from building stuff. I build ships endlessly, but what I consider a dreadnought would barely reach cruiser status based on some of the classifications I've seen around here. I might have finally made one that would be near titan sized, but it is far from finished, and it is much more art than weapon. I'm sure most titans would wipe the floor with it. As such, I'd say our server's classifications are much more in line with what you suggest. My one distinction is that a fighter must be retain good maneuverability. It is the only craft I make that doesn't have to have an actual cockpit that players can step into, and will appear within upon exiting the core.

Rambling on:
Frankly, I think that the most important balance tool is the time investment put into building and maintaining a titan. Also, the fact that they are so unwieldy and impractical to fly. As much as I like my big ship, the fact that it takes two minutes to turn around really impacts how often I take it out for a spin. Even before the crafting system was put in place, and we were all playing in a defacto creative mode, none of us had the patience to build something massive. While make-believe is fine to a point, one gets tired of making crew quarters with useless beds, or messhalls with vacant tables (suggestion: make beds/food a useful thing in the game.) I can make so many more cool ships for the same amount of material and effort as that one flying brick.

 

[The Wozard]

I don't know if the engine could handle it, but I think having variable angle blocks would go a long way to enabling nice slopes on some vehicles. Maybe we'll see what can be done with the turret updates.

That would be fantastic, but seems ultimately impossible. The best I see happening would be some sort of half block like mine craft. It would be nice to see some more general aesthetic exterior pieces for more details in smaller area, but what we have now is still fairly good. It leaves it more of a puzzle to make it look just right.

Corrected

Thank You

Since we don't really have PvP on the server I play on, there isn't the whole race for bigger ships. The players are all friends, and our main joy comes from building stuff. I build ships endlessly, but what I consider a dreadnought would barely reach cruiser status based on some of the classifications I've seen around here. I might have finally made one that would be near titan sized, but it is far from finished, and it is much more art than weapon. I'm sure most titans would wipe the floor with it. As such, I'd say our server's classifications are much more in line with what you suggest. My one distinction is that a fighter must be retain good maneuverability. It is the only craft I make that doesn't have to have an actual cockpit that players can step into, and will appear within upon exiting the core.

Rambling on:
Frankly, I think that the most important balance tool is the time investment put into building and maintaining a titan. Also, the fact that they are so unwieldy and impractical to fly. As much as I like my big ship, the fact that it takes two minutes to turn around really impacts how often I take it out for a spin. Even before the crafting system was put in place, and we were all playing in a defacto creative mode, none of us had the patience to build something massive. While make-believe is fine to a point, one gets tired of making crew quarters with useless beds, or messhalls with vacant tables (suggestion: make beds/food a useful thing in the game.) I can make so many more cool ships for the same amount of material and effort as that one flying brick.

Second the idea of adding more usable items, but kinda still want major game play changes out first.

Another thought. Because the effect of bigger ships increases exponentially it could be moved to a linear growth by determining the effectiveness of a block based on a logarithmic curve. It should definitely be optional if you want this enabled, but it might make some battles more interesting and in small 1 carrier vs 1 carrier provide some more fun for the fighters or smaller ship. This is presupposing each side only has a hand full of active people so the dps output of the smaller ships would be limited and to make them more influential in these battles a more linear growth could help. This said I don't battle enough so my opinion here is not a good one, and I would still rather stick with the current exponential(If I placed that block I want it to be worth its full amount)

 

[Mered4]

Just want to throw this in here so NOONE is confused:

You cannot balance a game based on cost alone. Especially not one where the resources are essentially infinite. You must take into account how combat shapes the game and you must adjust the numbers and mechanics accordingly. Cost restrictions should be the last resort.

 

[Keptick]

Just want to throw this in here so NOONE is confused:

You cannot balance a game based on cost alone. Especially not one where the resources are essentially infinite. You must take into account how combat shapes the game and you must adjust the numbers and mechanics accordingly. Cost restrictions should be the last resort.

You must also take into account the BUILD TIME, which is also exponential with size.

Also keep in mind that bricks are not the norm.

 

[Lidren]

Also keep in mind that bricks are not the norm.

And thank every thing holy for that.