Don't forget to BUFF THRUSTERS for Power 2.0!

Exozen · Jun 5, 2017

Thrusters are still TERRIBLY under powered.

I did some testing, only when my 15k Mass frigate is completely 100% (One Hundred Percent)
filled with thrusters with NO ROOM for any systems (weapon modules, shield rechargers+capacitors, jump drives, or interior) can I achieve 2.5 TMR

That's 47K out of 101K blocks being thruster modules to achieve maximum efficiency, just for a 225m long ship. (Granted it has double layered (2m) adv. armor on the front half) which is basically paper anyways.
(Armor being Under Powered is a story for another thread.)

I don't think low-mid sized ships should need to be literally 50% thruster with an insatiable 1.5 mil e/s power consumption to be going fast.

Going by the rule of 10% (A systems group around 10% of the total ship will have max efficiency) Thrusters need to be FIVE TIMES more powerful, or AT LEAST 2.5 to 3x more than they currently are.

Please, for the love of Chyr and all things holy, DON'T FORGET TO BUFF THRUSTERS WITH THE POWER UPDATE.

Sachys · Jun 5, 2017

this is when you learn to use overdrive

Zerefette · Jun 5, 2017

Or not to use it, IIRC they plan to remove defensive effects like they are now.

Dvaren · Jun 5, 2017

Sachys said:
this is when you learn to use overdrive

Yet overdrive only increased one's maximum speed, not the rate of acceleration or deceleration.

Sachys · Jun 5, 2017

Dvaren said:
Yet overdrive only increased one's maximum speed, not the rate of acceleration or deceleration.

yeah, but hes complaining about the speed - on a fairly large ship as well.

Deserea · Jun 5, 2017

Sachys said:
yeah, but hes complaining about the speed - on a fairly large ship as well.

Thats...not even that large...

Look, thrust is stupid weak right now, you have to dedicate so much space to thrust modules(Unless you use docked thrusters(if thats still a thing? ive never used them) to get anything larger than 50k mass to move that its stupid. Yes Large ships should be slow, but the curve is so harsh right now, that i think engines could use a buff, to the curve, not overall power per block, actually you know what, i take that back.

They need a buff. I dont know how much, but they need one.

Sachys · Jun 5, 2017

Deserea said:
Thats...not even that large...

I agree, but:
It IS large enough to be slow and large enough for him to complain about the speed. The speed being low enough for my initial comment about overdrive to be correct enough to post, and then post again to say the ship is fairly large further down the thread and now reply to yourself with this magical little loop.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a quantum paradox to fix over on reality #46175

*steps through portal and vanishes

MrFURB · Jun 5, 2017

I wouldn't be against a straight buff to the thrust and power consumption of thruster blocks. With the current systems and diminishing returns on thrusters a large ship with more than 0.5 TMR has to dedicate far more space to thrust than seems necessary.

Deserea · Jun 5, 2017

Sachys said:
I agree, but:
It IS large enough to be slow and large enough for him to complain about the speed. The speed being low enough for my initial comment about overdrive to be correct enough to post, and then post again to say the ship is fairly large further down the thread and now reply to yourself with this magical little loop.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a quantum paradox to fix over on reality #46175

*steps through portal and vanishes

I dont get the sarcasm here but okay.
I guess what im getting at, is that a 15k ship shouldnt need overdrive in the first place.

MrFURB puts it in better words than i do.

Sachys · Jun 5, 2017

Deserea said:
I dont get the sarcasm here but okay.

no sarcasm involved. merely stating the facts, then making a joke about the loop involved.

Deserea · Jun 5, 2017

Sachys said:
no sarcasm involved. merely stating the facts, then making a joke about the loop involved.

Ah, my apologies then!

Benevolent27 · Jun 5, 2017

For me, the problem lies in that StarMade doesn't have anything like ship tear and structural integrity. For example, if you place a really large thruster on a ship, it would need to be anchored very well, and the rest of the ship would need to be reinforced, otherwise it would tear the ship in half or potentially crumple the ship from all the force being applied. There is no such game mechanic in StarMade.

Another thing to consider is that with a large vessel, if force is being applied evenly, then this would help a lot, until some of the thrusters gave uneven thrust, then it would compromise the integrity of the ship. It would also take more time to initialize and calibrate all the thrusters to apply even force to maintain hull integrity. Then when the larger ship turns, force would be unevenly distributed amongst the ship, putting strain on the hull. The larger the hull, the more reinforcement would be necessary, otherwise it would tear itself apart when turning. Smaller ships need less reinforcement simply because the force from one end to the other is less.

This is why a larger ship would never be able to be as fast on takeoff as a smaller ship or be able to turn as fast as one, unless it had a heck of a strong hull and the same proportion of thrust, and this is only assuming that the system did not need to synchronize the thrusters and dynamically respond as different stress was placed on various portions of the hull, in order to maintain hull integrity.

Broomsage · Jun 5, 2017

Weve got ship hp, that ought to be fine for a measure of ship integrity. we even have debuffs for things like that, ie the ship hp is down and thrusters get slowed, be that because it makes sense that things ought to stop working as you take damage or because the ship cant properly handle fully powered thrust because the forces in play would tear it apart, either way could make sense. we just assume that 100% ship hp means that your thrusters are OK. but to have bits rip off because of physics would be asking too much. we might have systems "over tolerance of structure strain" that damages thruster blocks or just parts around the thrusters making builders interested in adding logic or some other control to manage it. large ships having to limit thrust when accelerating to prevent damage due to something like actual physics would be super cool though, but it would be easier to just limit acceleration.

Anyway, yes lets go faster. more thrust for everybody.
Or better yet, add a "Super Thruster" block that supplies more thrust but is considerably less power efficient when not in enormous groups.
Or even most betterlier yet, make a completely new system for thrust built on the same concepts but what still manages to be completely different from the new power system.

Scypio · Jun 5, 2017

Benevolent27 said:
For me, the problem lies in that StarMade doesn't have anything like ship tear and structural integrity. For example, if you place a really large thruster on a ship, it would need to be anchored very well, and the rest of the ship would need to be reinforced, otherwise it would tear the ship in half or potentially crumple the ship from all the force being applied. There is no such game mechanic in StarMade.

Another thing to consider is that with a large vessel, if force is being applied evenly, then this would help a lot, until some of the thrusters gave uneven thrust, then it would compromise the integrity of the ship. It would also take more time to initialize and calibrate all the thrusters to apply even force to maintain hull integrity. Then when the larger ship turns, force would be unevenly distributed amongst the ship, putting strain on the hull. The larger the hull, the more reinforcement would be necessary, otherwise it would tear itself apart when turning. Smaller ships need less reinforcement simply because the force from one end to the other is less.

This is why a larger ship would never be able to be as fast on takeoff as a smaller ship or be able to turn as fast as one, unless it had a heck of a strong hull and the same proportion of thrust, and this is only assuming that the system did not need to synchronize the thrusters and dynamically respond as different stress was placed on various portions of the hull, in order to maintain hull integrity.

It's not like it is the case right now. Rotation get worse the larger your ship become, same for acceleration and mass, except if you get a ridiculous amount of thrusters but at this point your ship is just a giant reactor with power and nothing else.
The reasoning for the ship's integrity is... I mean, it's okay, i like this type of consideration but... It's too performances heavy to implement in starmade, especially if you need to check everytime you move, especially with battle damage. Remember about the old possibility where you ship would detach when it was cut in half ? Same here, it's just too damn heavy.

Personnaly i agree with the fact that there is a few problems with thrusts. First being the curve on it and the second one being docked thrusts. The last and most important one being the fact that armor is too damn heavy for what it gives but that's not directly thrusts.

NaStral · Jun 5, 2017

As it is, the system works fine provided you actually build to the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The major issue is one where players, who may have a specific aesthetically pleasing shape they desire may find themselves unable to maintain that due to running into these systems based roadblocks. Actually, I think a really great option would be to have multiple grades of system block of different strength but with some kind of balancing drawback, like increased power consumption, or stress on the vessel from use like Benevolent spoke of. Vanilla blocks for the regular old reliable and standard performance characteristic and then more expensive, delicate but higher performance blocks to be used judiciously to save on mass and be able to be fit into a smaller/wider variety of spaces.

Lecic · Jun 5, 2017

Have you considered that perhaps the developers and the players have different ideas of what a "big ship" is? Think for a second about the biggest AI ships in the game. That is about what the devs think is a medium sized player ship. And frankly, when thrusters were originally balanced, they would be right. Player's ideas of what the maximum acceptable ship have ballooned with every optimization update. The reason this game is still so laggy and all the systems seem balanced around "undersized" vessels is because they WEREN'T when it was first done. Back in 2013, a million blocks was an unheard of size for a ship. 100k mass was seen as the unholy gargantuan that only crazy people flew. Now it's middling to many PvP players.

Thrust is not underpowered. Your ships are just big.

Deserea · Jun 5, 2017

Lecic said:
Have you considered that perhaps the developers and the players have different ideas of what a "big ship" is? Think for a second about the biggest AI ships in the game. That is about what the devs think is a medium sized player ship. And frankly, when thrusters were originally balanced, they would be right. Player's ideas of what the maximum acceptable ship have ballooned with every optimization update. The reason this game is still so laggy and all the systems seem balanced around "undersized" vessels is because they WEREN'T when it was first done. Back in 2013, a million blocks was an unheard of size for a ship. 100k mass was seen as the unholy gargantuan that only crazy people flew. Now it's middling to many PvP players.

Thrust is not underpowered. Your ships are just big.

If seen people say ships are to big if they are longer than 100 meters.

This game has evolved in such a way that allows for people to build such "Massive" vessels, and honestly, its would be the best game ever if it wasnt so laggy when more than one of (of my scale) Large ships was engaged in combat with each other. Hopefully that day comes.

You are right though, every player has different sizes of what a ship is. and just for an example, heres mine.

small (Fighters, bombers, Corvettes)0-100 meters or 10k mass or less.
medium(Frigates of all sizes, Light destroyers) 101-225 meters. or 30k mass or less.
large(Destroyers and cruisers.) 226-356 meters, or 75k mass or less.
Extra Large (Heavy Cruisers, and battleships) 357-456 175k mass or less.
Titans. Anything larger than the above.

And honestly, those arent to big for realistic space vessels, with all the systems on board. are they bigger than alot of SCIFI, possibly, but not entirely. The Enterprise D for example is over 600 meters, and i use that as a benchmark for realism in space. But this is the only voxel game ive really seen where i can even build that big without encountering problems, Or it just being pointless, and i dont want that to go away. It would be nice to be able to build a battlecruiser again, and have it function as such.

The Ravens Call for example, before the thrust update, was able to outrun most of the Cruisers id encounter(i believe it had a speed of 89M/S base, at 76k mass, with overdrive on top of that. Nowdays, it struggles to reach its max speed, and ive docked it, almost permanently, because it cant function anymore(its thrusters drain so much power, that i cant turn and fire at the same time). Id like to see it able to be used as i intended someday.

Exozen · Jun 6, 2017

Lecic said:
Have you considered that perhaps the developers and the players have different ideas of what a "big ship" is? Think for a second about the biggest AI ships in the game. That is about what the devs think is a medium sized player ship. And frankly, when thrusters were originally balanced, they would be right. Player's ideas of what the maximum acceptable ship have ballooned with every optimization update. The reason this game is still so laggy and all the systems seem balanced around "undersized" vessels is because they WEREN'T when it was first done. Back in 2013, a million blocks was an unheard of size for a ship. 100k mass was seen as the unholy gargantuan that only crazy people flew. Now it's middling to many PvP players.

Thrust is not underpowered. Your ships are just big.

While many players do build very large (last time I checked most battle ships were 500-700m), my ship is only 15K mass, not 100K (which should be cumbersome), and it has/will have major thrust problems under the current system.

Though to be fair, basing off the Official Schine ship sizes, the Tradeguild's Bahtra B190 Frigate is 141m/4,258.7 mass. (with 950m/??? being their Titans)
Compared to my Chyron-Delta's Spearhead Frigate at 225m/15,000~ mass, which is comprised of advanced/standard armor, is 1.6x longer and 4x heavier.

Lancake · Jun 6, 2017

Hard to say what we'll do with them. We'll have to change the values either way, considering that there will be less systems for existing ships (less mass) but probably a lot a lot more armor (more mass). Impossible to determine whether the thrusters will need to be buffed or nerfed per block.

Big ships should feel heavy, and slow acceleration for them is the way to go if you try to achieve that. As I only make big ships most of the time, mixed with some tiny ones in between as variation, it's hard to tell from my perspective if it's imbalanced or not. Most of the time I move with /teleport_self_to anyway

To me the transition from a lot of TTW ratio to ~0.5 happens extremely fast when going up in ship size. I would say it's too fast but so far that's just my opinion, not based by facts and a thorough investigation of the ship size <-> thrust to weight ratio correlation.

EDIT:
Right now, filling your ship with 50% thrusters can be cumbersome, especially when the power consumption of this many blocks is crazy.

Considering that pretty much every system group in the new ship system will be substantially smaller, you'll be limited by the power consumption of your thrusters and not by space.

Power priority queue will help a lot to allow fast ships, yet also allow a substantial amount of defenses and weaponry...You just can't power them all at the same time.
You could prioritize thrusters and get somewhere fast, but unable to do much more than that. Or you could switch to the combat queue where weapons and shields are being prioritized, thrust would still be there but at a fraction of what you had at the start.

A lot will change, just putting some restriction on power priority queue switching on the fly, would already cripple any ship relying on this for fast movement + great weaponry.

Exozen · Jun 6, 2017

Lancake said:
...Impossible to determine whether the thrusters will need to be buffed or nerfed per block.

Big ships should feel heavy, and slow acceleration for them is the way to go if you try to achieve that... hard to tell from my perspective if it's imbalanced or not...
To me the transition from a lot of TTW ratio to ~0.5 happens extremely fast when going up in ship size. I would say it's too fast but so far that's just my opinion... a thorough investigation of the ship size <-> thrust to weight ratio correlation.

EDIT:
Right now, filling your ship with 50% thrusters can be cumbersome, especially when the power consumption of this many blocks is crazy.

Considering that pretty much every system group in the new ship system will be substantially smaller, you'll be limited by the power consumption of your thrusters and not by space.

Power priority queue will help a lot to allow fast ships, yet also allow a substantial amount of defenses and weaponry...You just can't power them all at the same time.
You could prioritize thrusters and get somewhere fast, but unable to do much more than that. Or you could switch to the combat queue where weapons and shields are being prioritized, thrust would still be there but at a fraction of what you had at the start.

A lot will change, just putting some restriction on power priority queue switching on the fly, would already cripple any ship relying on this for fast movement + great weaponry.

Please Chyr no, don't nerf thrusters even further. Why do I get the feeling you either misunderstood or don't comprehend :/
Honestly, a thorough investigation of the ship size <-> thrust to weight ratio correlation is exactly what we need. I'm sure one could be organized.

This isn't... filling my ship with 50% thrusters... it's filling my ship with 100% thruster... just to achieve that 2.5 TMR. Filling it with 50% thrusters would mean, of the entire ship, it would be 25% thruster. Since the hull is around 50% of the entire ship.

Somehow I get this feeling I'll still be limited by the space AND power for thrusters in systems 2.0...

"Power priority queue will help a lot to allow fast ships, yet also allow a substantial amount of defenses and weaponry...You just can't power them all at the same time."

Getting somewhere fast... like jump drives? or more overdrive 2.0? Anyways, how fast are we talking? To be honest I'm not to clear on things myself, top speed vs. acceleration is a blurry place for me. All I know is, with absolute certainty, that achieving that top speed and acceleration shouldn't cost a (probably) frigate/destroyer sized ship literally all it's systems and interior space.

Also, are you saying in the future, it's probable to suspect that thrusters will be even worse? With all this talk of either being able to shoot, or be maneuverable. I find it sounding a little ridiculous(!)
Can you think of any space/naval/air game where you can ONLY either move fast, or fight? This isn't exactly an FPS here in Starmade, with fast sprinting and slow Aim-Down-The-Sights. Ships function differently, they need to function differently! Because right now literally anything above 50 meters is either dayum slow, or hella slow.

I think it's safe to say in the current state all ships are pretty crippled, and not just crippled, senile! For the love of Chyr and all mankind, I do hope Systems 2.0 doesn't handicap us farther.

(Had to heavily edit since I accidentally clicked post 30 minutes too early)

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Don't forget to BUFF THRUSTERS for Power 2.0!

Exozen

C-D SOLDIER

Sachys

Hermit.

Zerefette

<|°_°|>

Dvaren

Sachys

Hermit.

Deserea

Sachys

Hermit.

MrFURB

Madman of the Girders

Deserea

Sachys

Hermit.

Deserea

Benevolent27

Join the Dark Side

Broomsage

Scypio

NaStral

Lecic

Convicted Lancake Abuser

Deserea

Exozen

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Lancake

Head of Testing

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