StarMade Ship Systems 2.0

DukeofRealms said:

Yea... tech points, I think we were sick of trying to find a name and just went ahead with whatever we had. Suggestions are appreciated

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"Auxiliary Power Channels" or APC.

DukeofRealms said:

Yea... tech points, I think we were sick of trying to find a name and just went ahead with whatever we had. Suggestions are appreciated

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How about "Overflow Distribution Dynamics", ODD for short.

Greets,

Jan

It may not have been apparent when I made my first post in this thread, so I will clarify now. This system seems much more balanced and useful than the first system, from a design POV and a combat POV. I like the way this system seems to work from its description and would like to see it implemented in the game to at least test.

Also, I really don't care about roleplay or PVE, I like killing people; this system seems much better for those who wish to PVP than the first proposal. I can see this system working fine for everyone who plays the game at this point. The earlier system proposal leaned too heavily towards the fluffy everyone is nice to each other and makes pretty ships side of things.

Jananton said:

How about "Overflow Distribution Dynamics", ODD for short.

Greets,

Jan

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"Auxiliary Distribution Dynamics" ADD

Ithirahad said:

Without tech points, bigger is better. Larger ships could fit more chambers and do more things easily.

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I don't think it's true as long as they cost enough power. Well, some ships might be able to use more chambers at the expense of more basic systems like weapons or shields or whatever, but that doesn't seem problematic to me.

Ithirahad said:

Wait, chambers must be at least as big as your reactor? Apparently I missed that :\

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Yeah, it isn't actually exactly what they said, I unintentionally warped it (the general idea is the same though, and its likely to be within a constant factor anyway):

schema said:

It needs to reach a certain size compared to the biggest reactor group on the entity in order to function. It does not matter if the biggest reactor group is inactive or active.

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Ithirahad said:

It's possible to have multiple conduits, and so this was added to counterbalance the potential for people to create huge conduit spam and make their systems impossible to disconnect.

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Well, yeah, but connections themselves doesn't really add anything stat-wise, cost material, and don't prevent the system itself from being destroyed (which is worse than just being disconnected I guess). So that doesn't sound like something that could be abused a lot. Besides, disconnecting chambers with a shot sounds more like a fluke than an actual and intended surgical strike (I'll definitely brag about my incredible aiming skills if I ever accidentally pull it off though), and wrapping 2 or 3 connections would probably have a similar effect without the power cost anyway...
...bah anyway, it's unimportant. I'm more confused by the reactor/stabilizer interaction than by conduits consuming power.

I got a name for that, System Ramification.
If the reactor system gets too ramificated you can't add more chamers the way how it's supposed to work.

Ithirahad said:

That's not what that word means...

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No?

Haalon said:

So, since all weapons will have inner power storage enough to fire it once, what will prevent players from building One-Strike Ships - ships with huge alpha strike weapons that uses that inner charge to fire them once and easily annihilate any ship of your size or even bigger.

Especially since you only need to destroy the reactor of your enemy.

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im fine with this, they can shoot once then gtfo or spend minutes recharging while dps boats whittle them down. And with fleets, you can always teleport to another friendly ship to take control if your ship is shot out from underneath you.

Ithirahad said:

A ramification of having more systems chambers is that your ship won't have any tech points left over for future upgrades, and might have more weakpoints that can blow up when you shoot at them.

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I don't know why but I think it fits more than before you said it.
I think it's one of the cases where we are both right, because it also refers to this:
Definition of ramification

1. 1a : branch, offshoot
   
   
2. b : a branched structure
3. 2a : the act or process of branching
   
   
4. b : arrangement of branches (as on a plant)

Also ramification in my language is more used in it's "solid" meaning.

if that damned 2mill power cap is now gone with the new linear power generation system, then I wont need reactors on turrets, cause the whole point of that was to provide power to the gun and get around the 2 mill power cap with minimal mass usage.

And I am okay with that (thank god)

Overall , I like this proposal a lot.

With respect to the 'tech points' system (and I'm not just going to complain about the name):

I would propose that instead of a simple hard limit on the number of allowed chambers, the minimum size of a chamber scales with the number of active chambers, with some suitably punishing function like an exponential. That way players who really want those extra 1 or 2 effects can have them, at a nontrivial mass penalty, and ships built with only a couple of chambers will be able to make them very light.

Here are some very rough graphs:


The minimum chamber size would still scale with reactor size, this would just be an extra factor.

The main problem I can see with this system is that it might not be very intuitive to use when building, as you would either need to predetermine how big your chambers need to be based on how many you want, or keep adjusting their size as you add or remove chambers. However this problem is somewhat present in the original proposal anyway, as changes in reactor size will likewise change your minimum chamber size.

As a final somewhat related suggestion, why call them chambers? their only relation to the reactor is that they need to be connected to it, they have nothing to do with power consumption or production (except in specific cases when you pick those buffs). How about calling them mainframes instead? It makes sense relative to their effects, and you can justify their connection by saying they need lots of cooling, which the reactor provides.

alterintel said:

Hold on... this is sounding like Chambers could replace what Crew was supposed to do.
Are Crew still going to happen?

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Chambers looks really better than crew. Never liked crew idea anyway - I ll rather boost my ship systems with a solid placed blocks, than with a crew members, which will probably bring lots of boring micromanagement with them. NPC are good for quests/factions/fauna/pilots maybe, but not for ship enhancement, I think.

Haalon said:

Chambers looks really better than crew. Never liked crew idea anyway - I ll rather boost my ship systems with a solid placed blocks, than with a crew members, which will probably bring lots of boring micromanagement with them. NPC are good for quests/factions/fauna/pilots maybe, but not for ship enhancement, I think.

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Amen