Why I think the power system update shouldn't upset us so much

Introduction
As many people again and again and again adress the power update proposal as something that hinders them from building I want to try to share my point of view on this matter.

To be more precise I am really annoyed by the people who constantly claim that they can't build any longer, because they would have to meticulously refit the systems of their ship.

That is just not true. And that isn't a question of playstyle. There are many reasons any power change isn't as bad as anyone is talking about it:

Reasons
Transition time. Take the example of the old turret systems. They were still in the game for over a year. Even if we assume a small transition time, I would say at least 4 months - I repeat: FOUR months - will there be time to redo any ship you think that is worthy to keep in your inventory.

Development time and estimated future of your own Starmade consumption. When do you guys think this power change will happen? From what I felt when I read the developers forum entries: I doubt that it will happen within the next 3 months. First there will be planets, so much is pretty sure. And the music is a near future thing too. So 3 months dev time and 4 months transition time. Speaking from my own experiences, I can't really say if I play any game in 7 months. And this is the worst case scenario, where Shine did the power change in an inhuman speed and on top of that made a very small transition time of four months. I think it's not natural to brag about any gaming stuff (ey this is not your workplace lol) that will happen in 7 months or later. Who knows if you are still playing, and what can happen in that time? And maybe your gamestyle changed too. 7 months minimum is a long time.

Time needed to refit a ship. I don't know how you good guys are at building, but for me the following steps don't seem too unrealistic for me:
- Replace tool: power regen modules with shield capacitors
- Make a hole (why not in some shield capacitor arragements?) where you want to put your new power generator space
- Oh. That might be it.
So I know it might be more difficult. But what is the concrete worst case? How long do you think would that take for one ship? I might need less than 30 minutes for any ship below 200m length. Yes titans might need some serious refitting. But I doubt anyone has more than 2 titans and spending two hours to make some room for the new generators for one titan each is nothing that prevents you from playing Starmade for the next 6 months. Yes, if one system changes, the other might change too. But I think this is also a bit about a positive perspective and not expecting the worst.

The proposed details of the new system. They say, that ships will have more interior room. That's is the point of the new power systems. So for me this means, that your ships will have less weigth, and will need less power capacitor and regen blocks. I really doubt, that Shine is making it in a way, that ships with the new power have a disadvantage, and thus the same amount of space or less will be needed for put in new systems. (My english isn't that good use your imagination to understand me on this one please.)

Purpose of systems and the ever changing meta in alpha. To put it in easy words: If your ships are all about systems and nothing else, then I really don't understand why you are playing Starmade. Starmade is about pvp, and thus systems, yes. But we all know, that Shine will redo pvp in the future. The meta will change. Even if they wouldn't do the power change, the systems will change anyway. You are forced to make system changes as long as Starmade will be in alpha anyway. Minimum alpha, why not even beta??? Meta is constantly changing in any competetive online game. Name me one competetive online game except chess where this isn't true. And in a gamestate where new features get added constantly, the meta changes should be way stronger than we are experienced them up to now in Starmade. Expect the change guys even after the power and maybe even before the power.

Purpose of building ships in a sandbox game . When I read people here or ingame, that they can't have fun anymore and their ships they build are feeling meaningless, I really ask me: What are you building, that it is all about the power? For me building a ship is about so many things: Hullshape, design, purpose within my fleet, weapons, walkways and inner layout, docking, logic, and so on. If a player tells me, that Starmade lost all its appeal for him, because he feels that building is now meaningless, I really doubt that his ship ever was more than a bloddy brick. That's a total exaggeration: Every ship has so much more to offer than a power system. Yes: Many guys might be focused on pvp and thus systems are 90% of those ships. But Starmade never was and never will be this sort of engineering only game. The games entire game mechanic focus is about a broad range of creative and pvp possibilities, and not only about engineering for pvp.

PVP: The power system and combat systems need to change. So the power system, with this 2 million power regen pvp meta...I really don't like it. You guys might not have noticed it, but your oh so great pvp is about 10k massor bigger ships, because there the 2million power regen is easily to fit into any ship bigger than 5k mass. Try to build an odd shaped ship with dimenions of 40x40x80 meter plus minus 20, and fit the systems for 1.5 million regen into there. You will have a hard time and it will take you ages.I really despise this: Because I build smaller ships, I have a way harder time putting in effective systems. It should be the other way around: big ships should be complex with the power line knots, and small ships shouldn't care about this strange knot time waste.
And the combat system...Well seriously it sounds fun on paper, but atm. for me the cannons and the missiles...Well once I broke a ships shields with my beam only ship the damage needed to destroy the blocks is not that big of a deal. I wouldn't call that balanced and complex pvp...

PvP: Forced to "keep up". Yes, for this one I don't have a strong counter argument. I agree on this one, that it might or might not force people to refit any ship that want's to do pvp, because the old system might be inferior. But here I want to repeat: we don't know that jet. This is pure speculation, and I don't orient my actions on speculations about stuff that maybe is ready in 3 or more months. Also I want to repeat: the meta will change anyway in this game, and so you are forced to refit ships anyway for pvp often enough.

Closure
I wrote this text, to inspire people to play the game even though there will be changes in the future. Yes, we will be forced to rebuild our ships. But I think this is a good thing too. And because it is not in the next few months, we will have a reason to give our old rustbuckets some new glance and shimmer. I like to redo systems from time to time on my ships, so they don't feel like same old stuff anymore. And I think if I have to redo my ships, 4 months transition time or even longer, will be perfectly fine.

Lastly I want to state, that I understand, if some people are still upset by the power change. There are overall some justified reasons to be that too. I hope to give some guys a different point of view to this thing, and don't expect you to share my opinion on this one. I would just be happy if one or two guys don't see it that badly anymore.

Nettiquette
Please bear in mind, that this is a very sensitive topic for some people, and many guys on this forum are incapable of talking constructive. Example: Calling statements dumb is the biggest bullshit that gets accepted as discussion culture here on this forum, and really: Please don't do it, even though the mods seem to ignore that kind of anarchy.

And please don't cherrypick sentences. Understand a whole argument, and maybe even how some of them interact and support each other.

And please don't fight about the one truth. Everyone has the right on his own opinion. If you disagree with something, it's fine to say that. But it's not fine to expect an answer on a question, that actually just wants to proof your own disagreement. You might be right, but the overall opinion of a dude might not change by annoying cherrypicking questions guys.

Crashmaster said:

I disagree. I meticulously fit the original systems, replacement systems will surely be fitted in the same manner. I don't just stick it in some random hole.

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Ofcourse you are upset by that exta work. My text was not about denying this, I just hoped to give some positive thoughts about the matter, so people maybe reffering a little bit less to the power change. And I hoped to change some person's perspective on it too, as I haven't read many simmilar thoughts like my arguments on this forum up to today.

Crashmaster said:

I don't think denigrating the build style of people whose opinion differs from yours is well inline with your pushing of 'nettiquette' and 'talking constructive.' These sort of double standards are what annoy me.

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I am sorry if that sentence annoyed you. I hoped that one or two percent "a little rude stuff" of an overall not rude text would be ok for anyone to bear. I was reffering to people who are mainly writing in this style like you pointed out in my one sentence ("bloddy brick etc"). I thought one or two harsh side remarks that are not aimed to make a big hurtfull statement in a text of like 100 sentences are acceptable. After all I didn't call one person's ship a bloddy brick, and tried to point out an example. If you call on me for one sentence, I hope you are calling on others who call my stuff dumb too. If you are not I doubt that the nettiquette of our forum is really important to you and you just want to find some logical mistakes in my texts you can be annoyed about.
Still I consider changing some stuff in my text so it has a higher impact and is less about my emotions towards the constant power nagging that happens everyday here since the proposal was written.

GRHayes said:

I really haven't seen anyone complaining to much about the new power system itself primarily because no one has any clue what it will end up as.

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Maybe I am just focusing too much on some small percentage of the players. ^^

GRHayes said:

However, just looking at the new proposal a lot of ship designs that made use of the small space requirements up to 2 million power will have trouble fitting in the new power system. Take a ship that relied on the ability to use the run length of various hulls to create a long power reactor. That same ship may not have the compressed cubic space to put a single square block of that nature.
Larger ships will certainly fair better because they have more internal space to build and rearrange stuff.

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Well lets hope the best. I think the same about larger ships.They maybe will have an easier time here.

Captain_Stripes said:

Since apparently new thread rules forbid us to base responses on exact sentences, I guess i'll give a half-assed response to the argument presented.

I've already made a post regarding the difficulty of building in the light of impending change. Its a good summary of my initial thoughts on the change and still my stance on the change for the most part. And my half assed response to like 90% to your arguments. Basically we can speculate all we want on the change and what it entails but without exact certain ideas, no one knows at all how to focus their builds and how their building style will be in the future. Anything built now might not be meaningless, but equally meaningless. Any ship now is a Schrodinger's ship. Either completely dead or completely alive and thats a major turn off for anyone who wants to solidify their style and looking for long term commitment to their work. Yes refitting is a thing, but literally the most tedious aspect of this game and with no solid game play mechanics outside of simply building, the attrition is amplified.

To a degree I understand being annoyed by specific mindset by a community in a game, but a dismissal of opinion because it doesn't align with yours or is "annoying" is not a community friendly approach and its why schine tries to stay mostly communicative on the subject. There has been a few changes where the community had substantial outcry, a few weapon balancing changes for example, and if you read thru many of those responses it boils down mostly to "shut up the game is alpha". Schine has learn in early years that community involvement and sharing of opinions (including yes, differing ones) is whats needed to truly grow a game that is develop by one person alone. Opinions are welcomed, criticisms are welcomed, it makes good games.

Spoiler: And im sorry, I do have to "cherrypick" one thing.

This is one fucked up paragraph. Fist it took me a while to correctly understand your meaning of the first sentence and relation to the second. Im not a hard core grammar nazi, and I did read the part about how English is not your strong suit. But a simple comma instead of two differing sentences would clear up some initial confusion.



When broken up like this, the sentence appears as so: The "One Truth" you speak of only has relation to previous statements because there is no grammatical connection to the following sentence. So inherently a natural English reader will assume that the one truth is all of your previous statements, which makes it sound like you're stating that all of your opinions and speculations are the one truth. Followed up by the "everyone has the right on his own opinion, makes this an oxymoron.

Now stated like this:


Simply adding a semicolon connects the two different sentences to a single idea. Meaning that now the natural English reader will read that the one truth is that everyone has the right on his own opinion. I know to anyone not familiar with English will think of this as bizarre and extremely nit picky and in most cases this is. But this is a certain and rare case where grammar is everything in the communication. And why many people may read your post with an arrogant vibe, even if not intended so.

Onto the next part:


This part has nothing to do with your grammar but your ethic. This is a forum, with public conversations and public discourse. You may set your own rules but in the forum, the forums rules trumps all. Now there are no rules on disagreement so long as its not flaming. A question is not an attack on your opinions unless you only view it as an attack. People will ask questions about what ever strikes their curiosity not to "one up" you but to confirm understanding. It is how you answer these questions, no matter how challenging, that forms the opinion of others. To state that someone's questions is "annoying" is rude and dismissive and the foundations of your arguments will crumble if you decide to ignore thought provoking, challenging questions.

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Thx for the honest response, and the way you did it, is actually totally fine for me. I try to read through it again later, if I make another try to rewrite my stuff. Also, I agree with you that this quoted paragraph is kinda weirdly written by me.

To share with you my motive behind this stuff: I thought I don't need to be so carefull about that nettiquette part of my text, as it doesn't contain my actual arguments. Now, as like 50% of the responses to my OP are picking on that netiquette part, I just write about it: I know that it has some inner failures, and I want to point out here, that this text is not about teaching anybody, but telling everyone who responds two things: "Hey please, for me it matters how you are talking to me, and the other way around."; and: giving people a light idea why I might ignore them and not respond to them, because of rude or unconstructive talking.

This netiquette part was not so much about teaching, as I am not anyone's parent or a choosen teacher (or a mod), but a reminder and a small guiding sign to show people how this matter can be handled. I just wanted to show people, that it matters to me and I am not some icecool dude who can ignore everyone's insult.

But I am currious: I think we have a different perception of cherrypicking: For me cherrypicking happens in response to longer texts consisting of many paragraphs that each of them make up one statement. As example we take my upper text: He has an initial motivational opinion (I am annoyed about the negative talking, and in my opinion you could try to have some positive thoughts on it), explaining people the reason why I wrote it, and he has then many statements in the following paragraphs. Now I have a statement, consisting of 10 sentences, that have the following structure: Statment S1 based on arguments a1, a2, a3. And some people make it to their personal sport, to respond to a statement in a way that you know "ok he disagrees on all that I've written, not just one statement", and he acts like his opinion is the only rightfull one because his texts sounds really emotional. My problem is the way of disagreeing and not even admiting one good thing about my stuff the opponent could agrees with: He just picks the easiest of the 3 arguments, a2, and then tells me this one sentence is wrong. And on top of that I allways get the feeling in this kind of responses, that the guy didn't even understand my full statement to that one sentence (not even the whole opinion or text). I mean I don't expect people to understand all statements in my text. But they often didn't even recognise the one statement to the one argument they disagree with.

Or do I have the wrong word, when I call this cherrypicking? Taking the easiest argument out of a whole statement and not even recognising the overlying statement just because the one argument out of three or more is wrong in the perception of the opponent.

I mean if someone cherrypicks my stuff I don't even have the motivation to actually respond to him, because I feel like he didn't even read my whole statement (not the whole text, just the overlying statement to the one argument he picks on), when he thinks that disagreeing with that one argument denyies my whole statement. Then I assume he didn't even understand my whole statement and only that one sentence. That's not a very satisfying type of discussion for me and it happens very often if a text is longer than 5 sentences.

For me it's totally fine if someone quotes my text line by line, it's just not fine if they didn't first understand the statement above the argument to this one sentence they respond to. I feel like people on this forum are more emotional instead of logical. They are annoyed by my opinion, and then they pick the one thing they don't like, and make a response that clearly shows me that they didn't even understand my motivations behind my arguments. Those responses show me that they disagree, but I can't argue about their opinion, because it's not bound to logical thinking based on mutal understanding.

And about "the one truth": It doesn't exist. If I say "that's not true" it means it's my opinion. But people on this forum now do the following: A discussion about this matter starts, responses get shared mutually. And then the magic happens by many guys: None of the responses try to understand my opinion, none of them are there admitting one or two things they can agree with me onto. I get a view into anothers person's view onto the matter, but it's in no way a converstation about mutual understanding. He just understands his own truth. Ok. Well I often enough understand your guys view and say "yeah its ok I understand that the power change is upsetting and there will be time needed to refit the systems". But some guys here can't even recoqnise just a small grain of my thoughts as okayish in return. And that's when I say: ok you just see your own one truth and the internet is big enough to find enough people who share this view with you - because those are sharing it with you it must be right no matter if you actually tried to understand the others or not.

I admit I don't understand every argument about why the power change might be bad. But I thought I understand enough from the people, to have an own opinion onto it. And I think that my opinion onto the power change has its strong points too. But if those strong points just get ignored by guys who respond, its for me like the other guys opinion is the one truth no matter what I say. Don't get me wrong: If some guys actually can talk in a nice way about it, like you did, I am actually open to read further about it and try to listen.

Panpiper said:

The OP's insistence that all our work and investment to date being destroyed is of no consequence, is frankly insulting.

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What's an alternative perspective that I could have, that's actually not insulting to old work and still wecloming change in a competetive environment? I just want to know if there is a opinion that's not against the power change, you don't feel is insulting.

In the end, if I would be upset about having to redo old ships, I can't be positive about the power change.

What comes to my mind as first counter to my argument is, that some people say, that the power change should be good, or not happening. This is right, but actually not an argument in itsself as it is just like: I like soup, but only if it tastes good. - Well who doesn't do that? :D So pls tell, is there any way where I can insist on my positive view on the power change without being insulting to old work? :D

I mean maybe I have just picked the wrong words, and I would be happy to listen to better stuff.