Power System Overhaul Proposal

some accidential post here

I enjoy the idea of a generator system, but I dont think people are really understanding how ridiculous the main post sounds.

No more power regen / capacity. Things generate heat. Not only is this silly, it is also a further step away from something that can even be considered to be realistic.

Generators... reduce heat? wtf?

oh and instead of using a couple layers of shielding to protect against the... heat.. generated by the.. heat dissipating generator...? you get to have a AOE debuff to ship systems instead.

Cmon guys, I thought better of the community than this, lol.

What came to my mind:
I do not think, that its possible to change that ships are flying generators, because power is always what powers your ship, that does not change with renaming and refitting it to heat. Also, certain designs are always superior to others, because there is always an optimum use of the values you got. So you just might change the way the optimum looks.
Why shoud it be changed that ships are mainly systems, it would be like that on every real and somehwat built for purpose spaceship, because empty space is useless space and therefore more hull(more surface area so more weight to move). I would prefer to make some real ingame use of interiors as an incentive to have them(crew for example) gamewise. Most futuristic/science fictional designs are just not effective designs whatsoever, they just look that way to look nice. If you want something nice like shape or interior,. It will increase the volume of your ship, therefore decrease your turn speed, and possybly the armor/systems ratio. I think thats a price worth to pay and i personally do not care if someone else with his death cube comes and destroys my ship, at least not for the fact that it was a death cube(which stilll has to be planned somewhat well to be a real dice of destruction). Forcing empty spaces just limits your design possibilies, because it limits the way you can incorporate your systems into your design.
Having power recharge and power capacity is a quite good setup, it is very realistic to any possible power(not necessaryly electricity) source.
But I like the idea of having more complex systems in general including power and having diffferent parts for your generator which make it more effective.
If the energy system should be a waekpoint, which it should, it should be most effective if most compact so a specific point is created.
Having different chambers you have to connect just spreads it around the ship, therefore no waek point is created(but i like the idea of increasing your power output by connecting different generators).

tl;dr
Do not force empty space

I haven't played very much of the new Starmade. I played along time ago before the Sub-System update happened. However, I recently picked the game up and have enjoyed playing the new Starmade. Therefore I shall respond as a slightly less educated contributor so forgive my misconceptions of the current systems.

I agree that ships favor large blocks of systems. More is better. In my current world I have built a salvager that has no aesthetic appeal but works well. Right now, all you have to do to make a good ship is slap tons of power modules together (more on that later), shield capacitors/rechargers and your weapon or utility system. My salvager has a gigantic salvage module grid at the front and then banks of shields and then lots of 5x5 power reactors. It has no hull or structural consideration. This ship inhales asteroids and can compete with planets. I do think that this way of shipbuilding should be discouraged. Slapping together thousands of blocks should not make a good ship.

I disagree with the implementation of Heat Boxes. I feel like this, more than the current power system, will limit aesthetic builders. This will force them to place their interior in a certain place. It will also dictate a shape that they must build. Who wants to make space for a gigantic space of nothing and then more space for systems. People who want to build compact ships with very condensed systems and no interior will be at a disadvantage as well. Someone who doesn't want to build an interior is forced to put what seems like useless filler into their ship or have large holes so their reactor can cool off.

Actual ships with minimal interiors are stronger. Since there is less interior there are more systems, more armor etc. Realism says that interiors are weaker. I think instead of forcing interiors on to designers interiors should be given a purpose. Certain attributes should be applied to interiors that a designer would have to pick between. Interior buffs or more systems? Perhaps a crew that get buffs with certain types of interiors? A structural integrity system that forces people to space out their systems and put braces or struts? I do not think creating a void in a ship for what is useless (which interiors are from a practical point of view) is the best idea. Like I said earlier, making interiors a necessity or at least having a practical application rather than forcing this on people.

The current power system is not 'uncomplicated.' The other day I tried to explain to my friend how it works and he had a very hard time realizing what I meant. The initial comprehension of optimal positioning of power modules is difficult to grasp. Once you have figured that out there is the challenge of having that optimal positioning in the space provided by the shape of your ship. In my opinion that is more complicated than slapping 1,000 shield capacitors together and having shields. If anything the power system placement is more complicated than any other system. The only system that would compete with it would be the secondary and tertiary systems. Instead of trying to change the power system, while I wouldn't be opposed to a change, perhaps systems that are lacking or need more improvement/balancing should get priority.

I do agree that if more space on the interior of ships is wanted that the blocks should be less necessary or individually stronger. I understand that this needs to be balanced otherwise people will still make doom boxes that will be even stronger. Perhaps power necessity should scale harder with bigger systems. Maybe a system should be implemented where you can allocate power to a system's computer and the more power it has the more damage, healing, pushing, etc... it does. This could scale with more modules or perhaps more modules affects something like accuracy or range effectivity. You could under power a system and take the negative bonuses or over power it and strain your power system. This would make a ship's power systems more important and that power system could be implemented in whatever way. This would make system modules like shield capacitors and weapon systems less intensive on the blocks and more on the power behind the block. This system could be furthered by altering shields to something like thrusters where they can be directionally configured to where there is more need or less armor. You could then allocate more power to whatever system mid combat to whatever system was lacking or needed priority.

In short, I think that the this is the wrong way to implement the idea. I support the concept of relaxing off the the blind slapping together of systems because more is better and making it more strategic or based on a more centralized system. This proposal will make building more difficult and forcing people to have space in their ship that is useless in combat or performance.

Synopsis:
-Current Build System:
-Heat Boxes
-Current Power System:
-Implement this Concept Another Way

Thanks for your time,
~Aurthus

NuclearHolocaust said:

Why shoud it be changed that ships are mainly systems, it would be like that on every real and somehwat built for purpose spaceship, because empty space is useless space and therefore more hull(more surface area so more weight to move). I would prefer to make some real ingame use of interiors as an incentive to have them(crew for example) gamewise.

Click to expand...

If you need 10'000m³ cargo bays, you can easily have 200m³ crew space without caring about 50m³ more or less.

And you could have rooms outside the primary armour layer:

1. A training hall (sports) which isn't used during combat.
2. A large garden on luxury ships which can be evacuated if pirates attack

But there is a very good solution:

Also... I've been really enjoying the native styles induced by StarMade systems. As in, what you can do when you start out from a practical systems perspective then attempt to beautify what's already there rather than try to make it look like something somewhere else. It's unique and attractive. Perhaps not as conducive to regurgitation of ships from TV shows and movies and other games, but compelling in its own right. I'll be sad to see this native uniqueness vanquished in favor of a system designed to facilitate even MORE making StarMade ships nothing more than unoriginal clones of ships that exist in other sci-fi. I'm sure the fanbois will be overjoyed at having even MORE enterprises, fireflies, battlestars, and x-wings on every server but something unique - something that has taken years to evolve - will certainly be lost.

We won't even be able to replace some of the existing native styles because they'll be too lean to accommodate heat boxes chunky enough without making major functionality sacrifices.

[doublepost=1487019599,1487019503][/doublepost]

NeonSturm said:

If you need 10'000m³ cargo bays, you can easily have 200m³ crew space without caring about 50m³ more or less.

And you could have rooms outside the primary armour layer:

1. A training hall (sports) which isn't used during combat.
2. A large garden on luxury ships which can be evacuated if pirates attack

But there is a very good solution:

Have something that weights a lot more than everything else on your ship.

If shield projectors and the generator is 80% of a ship's weight, you don't care about your hull's weight.
Armour-Tanks (as opposed to shield tanks) however do care about it.​

Click to expand...

Its about proportions and use.
If you have to build and maintain a ship its better to keep costs small, therefore having less wasted material There is a caertain tolerance to wasted space i would say, which in your example is ok.


Crew space or a training hall is not unused.A luxury garden is luxury, so something you are willing to afford even if you don´t need it.
Rooms have walls, even when otside of the main wall, where is the point?

NeonSturm said:

Depending on if you enjoy PvP or RP:
PvP:

SM is a voxel based game which lets you build your own ships, StarTrek, StarConflict, … they are not.
You might want your own ships but the combat mechanics of another game.
​

RP:

Why should I not make an Enterprise ship and modify the warp engines to Vulcan-ship style?
The StarTrek game I would play if SM didn't exist may not allow that.​

Click to expand...

There is a game that allows that it is called Star Trek Online.

I play it all the time.
That also is where I get all of my Star Trek ship blueprints and files for my ships in the Star-made Brierie server also in single player.

NeonSturm said:

Depending on if you enjoy PvP or RP:
PvP:

SM is a voxel based game which lets you build your own ships, StarTrek, StarConflict, … they are not.
You might want your own ships but the combat mechanics of another game.
​

RP:

Why should I not make an Enterprise ship and modify the warp engines to Vulcan-ship style?
The StarTrek game I would play if SM didn't exist may not allow that.​

Click to expand...

As someone who uses SM as digital lego blocks, to experiment with shapes that would be to tiresome to make in other ways, I can identify with the RP player. I could probably keep building my ships even with the new reactor system, but I doubt I'd put in the effort to make them functional. I will miss pew-pew'ing pirates, that's for sure.

In my opinion, the proposal seems to complicated for the type of play I want, and I urge Schine to follow the KISS principle.

A while ago, before playing Starmade, I tried to conceptualize what my ideal space game would be because I was not happy with the ones I was playing as a whole. I liked components of a bunch but none really met my fancy.

One of the ideas I had considered was a heat based power system as my lore uses tech that directly converts heat into power so all you need is a heat source to power your ships. Your generators can produce as much power as you could ever need but if you push them too hard for too long they wouldn't be able to convert the heat to power fast enough and would eventually fail... so as far as a heat based system were generators reduce heat I can get behind that idea.

On of the biggest problem with the current system is it creates an unbalance in other systems already, if you want t high damage long reload weapon you have to dedicate a lot of mass to capacity where an identical sized weapon array that has a fast rate of fire and low damage can get by simply on regeneration therefore taking up less space and dis-incentivizing pretty much all pulse slave weapons. This of course could be remedied simply by removing capacity and make every weapon system consume power as they reload instead of when they fire much like the sensors.

NeonSturm said:

Depending on if you enjoy PvP or RP:​

Click to expand...

No - not depending on that at all. Where are you finding that in my post? Those ships all have decorated interiors, by the way...

Those are all from one small frigate, BTW. A frigate I designed for PvP use. It works great. The interior spaces don't slow it down - they cushion the command center against missiles because I designed it so the crew space would wrap around the ship's heart.

We need to end this false dichotomy between form and function and insisting that those in favor of building for performance first simply cannot conceivably build with style or that a style based on performance is somehow "inferior" to styles based on popular media (making models of famous ships and flying them around for everyone to look at isn't roleplaying; it's more like... cosplay. RP occurs in dialogue and action, not purely in appearance.).

The post of mine you responded to is not about PvP or 'RP', it's about style. It's about appreciating and accepting a variety of styles even if you've never seen them on a movie before. It's about not being a media otaku that thinks things 'only look good' if things look like what they see in the movies. I'm so tired of hearing that everything that isn't a reflection of an existing style from a show, anime or game be called ugly. It's literally anti-creative and discourages Starmadians from evolving styles unique to Starmade. I've seen many ships that were clearly built to optimize performance in the REAL starmade (not theoretical, not based on a show that has nothing to do with starmade) that are super cool looking and unique - there's nothing like them in other games and media. That's a good thing. A great thing. My post was about how much of Starmade's unique style will be lost if the systems are redesigned in a way that makes them have no influence whatsoever on style.

I'm tired of players who spend weeks of time putting neon lights and thruster modules inside their ships to pretend it's stuff it isn't acting like their designs are so damn 'beautiful' (when so many of those overdecorated parade floats are just gaudy and ridiculous looking) and that the spartan, functional designs of others based on extensive experimentation and experience with actual gameplay are inferior because they've never seen anything like them before. I doubt many would argue that a traditional Samurai sword (katana) is not beautiful, and yet it is built entirely for function, with a beautiful exclusion of frills or ostentation. Some things are beautiful exactly because they are things of pure function with no concern for superficial decoration. I'm sick to death of hearing that such ships are somehow cheating or 'missing the point of the game' or are just plain ugly. That's just sour grapes.

Current Starmade systems don't force anyone's design choices. They DO reward certain kinds of design choices. This does not exclude anyone, but it does encourage some very unique building styles from those who want better performance from their ships. Whether you appreciate those styles or not is up to you and how open-minded you are.

If we re-vamp systems to deliberately NOT reward any particular building style, it will not bring any more advantage to those who are already building purely for the joy of decorating things, but I think it risks eviscerating a big chunk of Starmade's uniqueness, a part of what distinguishes it as a game and a community. That, to me, would be a sad loss.

MacThule said:

Current Starmade systems don't force anyone's design choices. They DO reward certain kinds of design choices. This does not exclude anyone, but it does encourage some very unique building styles from those who want better performance from their ships. Whether you appreciate those styles or not is up to you and how open-minded you are.

If we re-vamp systems to deliberately NOT reward any particular building style, it will not bring any more advantage to those who are already building purely for the joy of decorating things, but I think it risks eviscerating a big chunk of Starmade's uniqueness, a part of what distinguishes it as a game and a community. That, to me, would be a sad loss.

Click to expand...

I can't see a reason why the proposed system won't reward a particular style - i.e. PvP players will still min/max the new system.

DukeofRealms said:

This isn't Schine's official statement, but my personal opinion.

This is a misconception. As others have mentioned here, we should be aiming to simplify early game, avoid complexity that provides no strategy or "fun" factor to it, and make sure that there's a wealth of variety in late game to make building maxed PVP ships incredibly hard to master. I'm not alluding to the fact that I think this proposal would achieve that. In fact, I have no opinion on any of the suggestions and criticisms made here.

The issue with thinking an entire game set needs to be simple is that it's ignoring valuable late-game mastery. I personally think that ship design should get considerably harder to achieve mediocrity the larger the ship is, but at the same time, ensuring that the mastery of all ship types is equally as hard.

It's not one or the other, development should be aiming to achieve a system that's easy to get into for beginners, but takes time and skill to build better and bigger. I don't think someone should be able to master shipbuilding in a small amount of time, equally, I don't think it should take a new player very long to create an ok small craft. I don't think we should sacrifice one playstyle for the other, I don't think anyone at Schine thinks that.

Click to expand...

Please don't put words in my mouth. If you're confused I'm more than happy to explain. But the system should be as simple as it needs to be. Not a step more. The whole game set doesn't need to be simple, but it should be rewarding, adding "fun" or "strategy" as you said in the first paragraph. Adding extra steps for the same payout exacerbates the tediousness problem you've already stated and it becomes bloated and cumbersome.

I think what you have proposed does this. I'd say take a look at dwarf fortress. Its systems are "fun" and provide strategy, but the issue is that the learning curve for beginners is way too high. The game has its niche and if Starmade's goal is a small hardcore community then fine. But if your goal is a large immersive universe with many players its better to have a shallower learning curve so that people of many skill levels can contribute. Not just those that demonstrate mastery. Now i'm not saying that those that master the system shouldn't be rewarded, but maybe we shouldn't make the system more complex just to spread out the player-pool based on building skill. I don't think your proposed system solves your problems.

Could be interesting, but why only 1 heat bar?

Reactor heat zones, efficiency penalization etc. is fine. I like this idea.

But please make reactors completely independent, no global heat pool for everything.
Don't mix their heat regen rate or heat pool = give me heat bars for every single reactorcomputer (new block) in the ship.

The idea is to have reactors for essential systems like thrusters, ship core maybe shields.
Of course every weapon could get it's own reactor system, a fitting reactor for a specialized weapon. Of course I could add more weapon computers to a reactor, it just adds more heat per click.
Finally there wouldn't be weapon timer anymore, there would be the heat capacity and cooldown for one specific reactor including his sub-systems.

Look at my ugly paint, just some thoughts and throwing numbers around. ;D



I think the reactor should be a risk, an explosive risk.
Build it big, get strong weapons/shields etc. If the reactor core gets damaged -> "BOOM" huge hole in the ship.
Needs to be protected. Adv. armor or whatever.

A weapon group (# of blocks) could require a reactor with an specific amount of rod chambers = energy level. Maybe 1000MW
So if you want to have a very strong weapon it would need a high energy reactor, more risk if it gets blown up.

A fighter would be easy to build, just a simple reactor; high "dakka", low damage but permanent damage over time.

On the other side a capital ship could still carry a superweapon, stationkiller nuke, whatever. It needs tons of energy, generates even more heat, heat cooldown takes forever. Huge alpha damage but maybe only fired 1 time in a big fight. If the reactor gets damaged with his 1000 rod chambers, say good bye ship.
Of course high dakka/low dmg weapons are still possible on big ships, just use small reactors.

I think it's not too complicated, pretty easy.
Just adapting 2 systems to each other.

Maybe it would be even easier for the engine to calculate smaller, isolated groups.

-

For shields and thrust it would need some balance. Maybe the shield only generates heat if it absorbs damage and the thrusters only if the ship accelerates/decelerates. (space, momentum).

Hm, I could my idea for shields, there could exist small shields with fast regen, high capacity shields with slow regen or something in between. Imagine only 1 shield computer(new block) on the ship allowed.

Lets put some values; If "bigger ship dimensions = more energy requirement", "more shield capacity = more coolant tanks followed by lower cooldown rate"+ heat from absorbed damage would get multiplied because bigger reactor = heat multiplicator.
Of course everything depends on the numbers, a shield on a giant ship could be much weaker because of its dimensions and energy requirements.
A "big ass one hit kill super ship" would be still possible, it turns automatically into a glass canons which needs support or a fleet on his side.

Finally; Bigger =/= Better, teamplay = win.

-

Just some thoughts...

Jojomo said:

I can't see a reason why the proposed system won't reward a particular style - i.e. PvP players will still min/max the new system.

Click to expand...

If beatboxes are a thing, there will be space that can't be used for minmaxing.
[doublepost=1487024092,1487022748][/doublepost]My thoughts so far:

• Heat boxes should be renamed "magnetic fields" because they do not harm crew. Scifi reason: Magnetic fields protect the crew from both cosmic and reactor radiation.
• All systems should be reworked as multi blocks with small magnetic fields around them.
• Magnetic fields are good because they leave an area that may be decorated without reducing ship function.
• To maximize creative freedom, it should be possible to reshape magnetic fields (cylinder, sphere, box, etc) and move them about the system they belong to, as long as the entire system is still inside the field. (field volume must remain constant)

Sven_The_Slayer said:

On of the biggest problem with the current system is it creates an unbalance in other systems already, if you want t high damage long reload weapon you have to dedicate a lot of mass to capacity where an identical sized weapon array that has a fast rate of fire and low damage can get by simply on regeneration therefore taking up less space and dis-incentivizing pretty much all pulse slave weapons. This of course could be remedied simply by removing capacity and make every weapon system consume power as they reload instead of when they fire much like the sensors.

Click to expand...

To fix this you could also nerf the power consumption of weapons with longer reload.
I like the idea of weapons consumig power while reloading, but you could still have capacitors for some extra power you need in some situations and to stabilize your power system in general.

Valiant70 said:

If beatboxes are a thing, there will be space that can't be used for minmaxing.

Click to expand...

Ok, sure, but the space around the heatbox can still be mixmaxed. PvP players will still mixmax everything.

Maybe magnetic/energy fields should work as a mechanic for grouping. The more benefits you gain from the field the larger the field gets. Different system blocks suffer a disadvantage when grouped together within another systems field. This would curb the stacking of blocks that get far stronger in large bricks. It should provide an opportunity for crew to provide a proper trade-off for the space between systems. Minimal Filler should be present to make for rather logical design decisions. You could put a strong block in the deadzone of your field and have it function as a frame for the ship overall.

These areas can most certainly be put to use but they must not be too limiting. I don't want huge areas where you are forced to build nothing but not have systems sandwiched on top of each other either. Right now we are on one end of that spectrum and I'd rather strike a balance. I'd rather be deciding my grouping sizes than figuring out how to decorate 1000m cubed worth of space.