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Devs need to review the stated V2 objectives and tell us how that compares to the current reality of V2... either that or give me some of what you're smoking. It must be pretty far out stuff...
I know they're busy digging holes so I'm going to review the stated V2 objectives from my perspective...
There's a lot to say and I really have to say it before it sends me insane(r). Here goes.
Lets review... from the power system overhaul proposal thread. Power System Overhaul Proposal
Reasons for power overhaul.
Forced Design Choices.
"StarMade has a great build system with endless options when it comes to decorating your structures or creating complex interiors, yet making a ship functional with all our systems can take a while and is usually a less creative process."
In V1 I could build any ship shape and fit a power system in it that was reasonably competitive with any other ship of comparable dimensions. Ship size approximately correlated to ship power. (Up to the 2mill point at least.)
In V2 I can build a long tube. That is the power system. Done. Ships are still approximately equal powered if they're the same dimensions with the caveat that if they deviate from the meta tube power system they get dramatically less power. So, a tube it will be. As far as design choice is concerned the only thing that has changed is that I now have to build a tube instead of any shape I want... wha? No really W.T.F?!
"Filling your entire ship with systems is the most optimal way to make a ship. Making any interior or extra decoration creates weaknesses on your ship. It also favours one ship shape over another, in order to fill it with as many systems as possible; Doom cubes."
Ummm. I worked at a shipyard for a few years, a shipyard with real life military ships... Did you know that this little fact applies to them as well? Adding stuff that is not armour or systems is detrimental to the integrity of your design. Welcome to the real world. News at 11.
Having pointed the facts of life out to you all, I've gone and made a couple of meta tube ships now in V2. None of them have any interior space except for cockpit. Doom TUBES are still quite possible in V2. So this hasn't changed at all afaict except that they're no longer cubes, they're tubes.... BTW, in V1 I could make a doom cube, or a doom sphere, or a doom rectangle or a.... you get the picture? Yeah, again... W.T.F?!
"More systems and power means a better ship, and there is no incentive or mechanic that would ever make a pretty ship with interior as good as one filled with systems."
This hasn't changed at all. The incentive is still there. The doom tubes will still be built. You can still build a ship with no interior space and it will still be better then one with interior space. At least a doom cube has a nice big surface area to shoot and there was the possibility that it might be a doom sphere for a little variety in our doom ships! /s...
In summary; "Forced Design Choice" has INCREASED DRAMATICALLY! Build a tube. Done.That is all.
Objective: FAILED.
Lack of complexity.
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and increases the total number of blocks."
(I personally really don't get this. Some of the power knots and layouts that I came up with in V1 were plenty complex IMO.)
If I do accept the dubious claim of a lack of complexity, has this changed at all? I reckon it's actually gotten much worse. In V2 you now put one big, boring, ugly, lump of blocks at one end and another big, boring, ugly, lump of blocks at the other. Done. Where is the complexity in that? I don't see it? It is less complex. It is less useful and worse for design as instead of being able to thread your power through an intricate build shape you have to have a big lump of boring blocks so it follows that your ship is also going to look like a big boring lump of blocks. And here we have the dumbbell meta. If you can't see why this is bad may I suggest finding a train track to play on?
"Oh but complexity comes from chambers," you say?... Bullshit. If you drill down into the chamber mechanic it is also essentially, place a big, boring, lump of blocks... but do it a couple of times over... oh and place another block to connect the big lumps of blocks to each other... meh! When you add this to the dumbbell meta, it means the chambers are all going to be the next group of blocks inwards from your reactor. There is no real choice in this. It is forced by the tube shape of your ship. So we have big block of reactors one end. Big block of stabs the other. Chambers next in line up the tube from the reactors. Done. Ohhh the complexity! pfffft. There is none. Who needs scanners when you know how every ship is going to be built?
To add to my criticism of chambers, once you start to understand the chambers you come to the realization that for a combat ship, there's only really a couple of viable choices. Most of the chamber choices are just not appropriate for combat. The ones I've picked out initially for my combat drones are one power chamber and six shield chambers. They add up to 100RC nicely, unless I missed something, for a drone that's the only useful combo I can see from my preliminary mucking around. Once you've figured this out, it is a cookie cutter reactor system. There is no complexity. It is certainly less complex then threading a bunch of power lines through an intricate ship shape. It may initially appear complex but that is only superficially so due to unfamiliarity. Now if you take into account the things the new system removes.... say like radar jamming for drones... well, less.
"This gets very tedious at larger scales. Fitting a bigger ship with power blocks is just a matter of finding the space for it. There doesn’t have to be any thought about placement and possible consequences. Additionally there is no way to customize your ship’s power systems."
FACT: "The bigger the ship the harder it should be to build." Tedious? Good! You want people using fighters and drones not frickin' death stars! If everyone can build death stars (death tubes,) easily, servers around the StarMade ecosystem are going to melt and make the game experience even more laggy and shitty for everyone. You do not want big ships to be easy to build! A big ship should be tedious, (I prefer the term 'time consuming,') to build! Heaven forbid, fucking difficult! Both for server performance and general fun for everyone who doesn't have the time to build them, which is most people! Other then the instant gratification, low attention span, min/max super builders, time consuming big ship builds is a big plus, so screw those guys. Let them cry in their cornflakes.
"Fitting the ship with bigger power blocks is just a matter of finding the space".... I singled this quote out again because ROFL!!! WTF is V2? More power? Make it longer and bigger. Done...!? Thought in placing the blocks? Put them at either end. No really. You have to. Done. lol, W.T.F? There is less thought in where and how you have to place power in V2 then there is in V1. PERIOD! At least in V1, up to the 2 million mark you could choose how your power system was going to be laid out. In V2 this choice has been removed all together and it's now place blocks each end, done... to make matters worse, how is having my entire stabilizer block in one big chunk at the most vulnerable extremity of my ship better then having my power system safely spread out and dispersed through my ship?!
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and increases the total number of blocks."
And V2 fixes this how? Game of ratios you say? So having 'x' reactors one end and 'x+c' chambers at the other end is not a game of ratios? So increasing your chamber size by 'c' for every increase in reactor size 'x' is not a game of ratios? So you don't now increase your power by adding blocks? .... ummm, are you guys paying attention? I'm beginning to wonder.
Summary; "Lack of complexity." Complexity has DECREASED DRAMATICALLY! Build your reactor/stabs at either end of your tube. Put your cookie cutter preferred chambers next to your reactor. Done. That's it. Adjusting the power system to a ratio is also still very much there, only the system is now linear rather then exponential hence, less complex.
Objective: FAILED.
Too many blocks involved (number, not types)
"As the system forces you to balance the amount of blocks placed on your ship between 3 power block types, you constantly end up removing one type to replace it with another unless you calculate the amount of blocks needed for each type. Even then you have to roughly know how many blocks your ship can fit."
With my experimenting with the new power system I found myself constantly adding and removing reactors/stabilizers to each end of my tube until it was balanced optimally.... so I've gone from balancing 3 block types to balancing two block types... hmm? As far as I can tell everything about this comment line still applies to V2. Except it's two block types instead of 3. Less complexity. The old system you couldn't simply swap out reactors either. Their layout was the opposite of aux and caps and just swapping them in/out was not possible unless you wanted to fubar your power. Unlike the new system where you literally take blocks off one end and add them to the other... The old system took more thought, more care and more planning then the new system by a at least a couple of orders of magnitude.
"This is fine for ships where only a few hundred blocks are involved. You usually remember where you placed them and changing ratios isn’t a long process. Each system block matters a lot more in this case. It’s not fine when your ship size becomes larger. Most ships have more than 100,000 blocks and it’s impossible to know where you placed all your blocks down. Filling your ship with the correct amount of blocks per type is a tedious and long process. Not to mention that changing it afterwards is even more frustrating where you have to dig for specific block types and you end up with a complete system mess."
See my previous point on making big ships 'easy'. You do not want big ships to be easy to build. All the devs need to say this every time they look in the mirror! Every time they wake up. Every time they go to bed. Every time they even look at code! You do not want big ships to be easy to build!
This makes me laugh and cry at the same time as this is one thing V2 actually does achieve, does make easy... FFS. Big ships. Easy to build. FFS. Anyone at the helm see a possible problem with this? Please? The mechanic for building big is identical to the mechanic for building small. IDENTICAL! Same process. Reactors one end stabilizers the other. IDENTICAL. You just scale it up. IDENTICAL. Linear. Unimaginative. Easy. Any weekend warrior who spends a few minutes on V2 power is going to realize this and build massive! Kiss your servers goodfuckingbye people. Meltdowns imminent and unavoidable. Gameplay in the shitter. Lag through the roof. Players out the door... /cry. I'm going to say it one more time. BIG SHIPS SHOULD BE HARD TO BUILD!!! V2 makes them much easier to build. As a server admin, Fuck That Shit with a Chainsaw.
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and only gets worse with a higher total block count. Also, the volume to surface area does not scale favourably for balance, and there is no incentive not to fill up a ship with systems. The larger your ship, the more volume you usually have compared to your surface area."
The new system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which are extremely easy to work out and upscale and decrease complexity dramatically. The volume to surface area still scales the same way as the old and there is still no incentive to not fill up a ship with systems. The larger your ship the more volume you usually have compared to your surface area... that last sentence... schema did you read that through after you wrote it or is there a plan to make changes to the fundamental mathematics of reality?
One more time people, say it with me out loud so everyone can hear! BIG SHIPS SHOULD BE HARD TO BUILD!!!
Summary: Blocks have been shuffled around from long lines to big cubes, less complexity. They have been reduced in type, not number, (literally the exact opposite of the stated objective,) made easier to place and made much easier to scale up to ridiculous sizes.
Objective: FAILED. Terminal secondary failures imminent.
Focused on regen.
"Currently you will always care more about power regen than capacity, mostly because it’s scaled that way. In almost every case, you want to equalize your power regen with your total consumption during combat. Your capacity would be increased to have a small reserve that equals this consumption so that you can use all your systems at once and regen the power within a few seconds."
I don't know how you were building ships in V1 but what? The only time I tried to equalize regen with cap was when building beam ships or general purpose ships. In V1 if you wanted missiles you went for caps, if you wanted guns you went for regen, if you wanted beams you went for a balance between the two. In V2 you will always care more about total power rather then capacity as capacity has been mushed into regen and effectively no longer exists! Instead of two separate and independent systems with a balance mechanic you have one non-adjustable static system.... it can't be adjusted. This is NOT a plus mkay?
V1, build a missile frigate - build power system with lots of cap. Build a gun ship - build a system with lots of regen. Build a beam ship - balance regen and cap. Maybe not super exciting but at least there's a mechanic to play with.
V2, build a missile frigate - build power system tube. Build a gun ship - build the same tube. Build a beam ship - you got it, same tube!... hmmm? I'd say WTF again but I think it's getting a bit redundant.
In V2, I build my power system, I add shields and thrusters up to a certain % of power. Then I add guns to about the 90% consumption mark so as I have a little left over... basically no different from what I did in V1... except in V1 I could adjust regen with caps depending on my weapon layout. So less choice in V2... again. V2 is a less dynamic and less varied system. V2 is being forced into a meta one type fits all power train and you have no design choice at all. NONE AT ALL!
"This results in a boring way of building ships since there’s little difference in power systems for any ship you create, it’s a simple equation and can result in a lot of frustration to achieve that goal."
This is an opinion on V1 that I heartily disagree with for reasons as stated above. Ironically the statement applies much more to V2 then V1. In V1 different weapon layouts required different power layouts. BUT, V2 has not remedied any of the stated "problems" and has demonstrably made them worse! It's gone from a balancing mechanic to no mechanic at all! It's gone from needing 3 different power layouts depending on weapon layout to one size fits all. It's gone from 3 types of independent, adjustable systems to 1 non-adjustable meta. FFS how is this not obvious? I don't know, maybe the fact that different weapons needing different power types is completely missed in the declaratory statement has something to do with the devs completely missing this point? /shrug.
"Not to mention that it’s hard to make the AI use this system when their capacity is always too low to work with."
wha?
Summary: One static power system for every ship. No adjusting it. No balance. No optimizations. Missile ships will be identically powered to a cannon ship. Cap/recharge balancing removed completely. It's a much simpler equation and a much more boring mechanic then V1 ever was by many orders of magnitude.
Objective: FAILED.
I've gone and spent most of my day compiling this little rebuttal/rant. Thank you for reading this far if you've made it. I've tried to remove my snark, sarcasm and swears but geeze it hasn't been easy.
The new power system objectively fails on every one of it's stated goals. (I'm more then open to hearing where my appraisal is incorrect?) What's worse, it makes a whole bunch of other things, that while not perfect were a least usable, much more broken then they were. The new game, because it is an entirely new game, is quite frankly crap when compared to the old. There's no nice way to say it. I know the devs have sunk a huge amount of effort into it but unless there's a fix for the one dimensional, boring tube power, dumbbell system, this power 'update' is still born. If it goes ahead I will be playing on a server that eliminates the reactor stabilizer distance mechanic entirely. That will give me one large block for power that I can at least properly protect in the middle of my ships and completely remove the power tube mechanic that has been added. It will be a less elegant system then V1. It will be less fun to play and much easier to abuse as there will be no restriction on the percentage of power a given sized ship can contain other then it's volume. But it will be more fun then playing dumbell-dongs. A big block of blocks in the centre of my ship for power is admittedly not very imaginative for a power system but it's better then the alternative by a country mile.
To fix the problems?
To eliminate the tube meta; The reactor must be able to be placed in the centre of separate groups of stabilizers without penalty when compared to one reactor opposite one stabilizer group. A reactor in the centre of a symmetrical ship must be a viable build. Ship x length with reactor/stabs at opposite ends MUST be equal to a ship with x length and a reactor in the middle with two half sized groups of stabs each end. Likewise this should also enable 4 and 6 directions of symmetry with the reactor in the centre. This would remove the need to put your most vulnerable and important system, your reactor, on the outside edge of your ship AND it would allow designs that are not a tube. Designs that are not a tube, believe it or not, are most of them!
In combination with the above, to eliminate the dumbell meta the stabs must not be restricted to big blocks. You should be able to build them in thin veins or planes out on the peripherals of your ship. So eliminate any sort of penalty for making thin stabilizer groups. You know, just like stabilizers on real aircraft? Big block of reactors, the power system, in the middle of your ship, thin veins of stabilizers out on the edges. This I could do. This I could work with. This would again eliminate the need for the other large block on the outer edge of your ship. A dumbbell is a stupid design for a ship. I shouldn't have to say that. Placing a large group of blocks on the edge of ships should have been a non-starter... but here we are...
Huh. I feel a little better now that's off my chest.
Sincerely.
MrG.
I know they're busy digging holes so I'm going to review the stated V2 objectives from my perspective...
There's a lot to say and I really have to say it before it sends me insane(r). Here goes.
Lets review... from the power system overhaul proposal thread. Power System Overhaul Proposal
Reasons for power overhaul.
- Forced design choices
- Lack of complexity
- Too many blocks involved (number, not types)
- Focused on regen
Forced Design Choices.
"StarMade has a great build system with endless options when it comes to decorating your structures or creating complex interiors, yet making a ship functional with all our systems can take a while and is usually a less creative process."
In V1 I could build any ship shape and fit a power system in it that was reasonably competitive with any other ship of comparable dimensions. Ship size approximately correlated to ship power. (Up to the 2mill point at least.)
In V2 I can build a long tube. That is the power system. Done. Ships are still approximately equal powered if they're the same dimensions with the caveat that if they deviate from the meta tube power system they get dramatically less power. So, a tube it will be. As far as design choice is concerned the only thing that has changed is that I now have to build a tube instead of any shape I want... wha? No really W.T.F?!
"Filling your entire ship with systems is the most optimal way to make a ship. Making any interior or extra decoration creates weaknesses on your ship. It also favours one ship shape over another, in order to fill it with as many systems as possible; Doom cubes."
Ummm. I worked at a shipyard for a few years, a shipyard with real life military ships... Did you know that this little fact applies to them as well? Adding stuff that is not armour or systems is detrimental to the integrity of your design. Welcome to the real world. News at 11.
Having pointed the facts of life out to you all, I've gone and made a couple of meta tube ships now in V2. None of them have any interior space except for cockpit. Doom TUBES are still quite possible in V2. So this hasn't changed at all afaict except that they're no longer cubes, they're tubes.... BTW, in V1 I could make a doom cube, or a doom sphere, or a doom rectangle or a.... you get the picture? Yeah, again... W.T.F?!
"More systems and power means a better ship, and there is no incentive or mechanic that would ever make a pretty ship with interior as good as one filled with systems."
This hasn't changed at all. The incentive is still there. The doom tubes will still be built. You can still build a ship with no interior space and it will still be better then one with interior space. At least a doom cube has a nice big surface area to shoot and there was the possibility that it might be a doom sphere for a little variety in our doom ships! /s...
In summary; "Forced Design Choice" has INCREASED DRAMATICALLY! Build a tube. Done.That is all.
Objective: FAILED.
Lack of complexity.
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and increases the total number of blocks."
(I personally really don't get this. Some of the power knots and layouts that I came up with in V1 were plenty complex IMO.)
If I do accept the dubious claim of a lack of complexity, has this changed at all? I reckon it's actually gotten much worse. In V2 you now put one big, boring, ugly, lump of blocks at one end and another big, boring, ugly, lump of blocks at the other. Done. Where is the complexity in that? I don't see it? It is less complex. It is less useful and worse for design as instead of being able to thread your power through an intricate build shape you have to have a big lump of boring blocks so it follows that your ship is also going to look like a big boring lump of blocks. And here we have the dumbbell meta. If you can't see why this is bad may I suggest finding a train track to play on?
"Oh but complexity comes from chambers," you say?... Bullshit. If you drill down into the chamber mechanic it is also essentially, place a big, boring, lump of blocks... but do it a couple of times over... oh and place another block to connect the big lumps of blocks to each other... meh! When you add this to the dumbbell meta, it means the chambers are all going to be the next group of blocks inwards from your reactor. There is no real choice in this. It is forced by the tube shape of your ship. So we have big block of reactors one end. Big block of stabs the other. Chambers next in line up the tube from the reactors. Done. Ohhh the complexity! pfffft. There is none. Who needs scanners when you know how every ship is going to be built?
To add to my criticism of chambers, once you start to understand the chambers you come to the realization that for a combat ship, there's only really a couple of viable choices. Most of the chamber choices are just not appropriate for combat. The ones I've picked out initially for my combat drones are one power chamber and six shield chambers. They add up to 100RC nicely, unless I missed something, for a drone that's the only useful combo I can see from my preliminary mucking around. Once you've figured this out, it is a cookie cutter reactor system. There is no complexity. It is certainly less complex then threading a bunch of power lines through an intricate ship shape. It may initially appear complex but that is only superficially so due to unfamiliarity. Now if you take into account the things the new system removes.... say like radar jamming for drones... well, less.
"This gets very tedious at larger scales. Fitting a bigger ship with power blocks is just a matter of finding the space for it. There doesn’t have to be any thought about placement and possible consequences. Additionally there is no way to customize your ship’s power systems."
FACT: "The bigger the ship the harder it should be to build." Tedious? Good! You want people using fighters and drones not frickin' death stars! If everyone can build death stars (death tubes,) easily, servers around the StarMade ecosystem are going to melt and make the game experience even more laggy and shitty for everyone. You do not want big ships to be easy to build! A big ship should be tedious, (I prefer the term 'time consuming,') to build! Heaven forbid, fucking difficult! Both for server performance and general fun for everyone who doesn't have the time to build them, which is most people! Other then the instant gratification, low attention span, min/max super builders, time consuming big ship builds is a big plus, so screw those guys. Let them cry in their cornflakes.
"Fitting the ship with bigger power blocks is just a matter of finding the space".... I singled this quote out again because ROFL!!! WTF is V2? More power? Make it longer and bigger. Done...!? Thought in placing the blocks? Put them at either end. No really. You have to. Done. lol, W.T.F? There is less thought in where and how you have to place power in V2 then there is in V1. PERIOD! At least in V1, up to the 2 million mark you could choose how your power system was going to be laid out. In V2 this choice has been removed all together and it's now place blocks each end, done... to make matters worse, how is having my entire stabilizer block in one big chunk at the most vulnerable extremity of my ship better then having my power system safely spread out and dispersed through my ship?!
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and increases the total number of blocks."
And V2 fixes this how? Game of ratios you say? So having 'x' reactors one end and 'x+c' chambers at the other end is not a game of ratios? So increasing your chamber size by 'c' for every increase in reactor size 'x' is not a game of ratios? So you don't now increase your power by adding blocks? .... ummm, are you guys paying attention? I'm beginning to wonder.
Summary; "Lack of complexity." Complexity has DECREASED DRAMATICALLY! Build your reactor/stabs at either end of your tube. Put your cookie cutter preferred chambers next to your reactor. Done. That's it. Adjusting the power system to a ratio is also still very much there, only the system is now linear rather then exponential hence, less complex.
Objective: FAILED.
Too many blocks involved (number, not types)
"As the system forces you to balance the amount of blocks placed on your ship between 3 power block types, you constantly end up removing one type to replace it with another unless you calculate the amount of blocks needed for each type. Even then you have to roughly know how many blocks your ship can fit."
With my experimenting with the new power system I found myself constantly adding and removing reactors/stabilizers to each end of my tube until it was balanced optimally.... so I've gone from balancing 3 block types to balancing two block types... hmm? As far as I can tell everything about this comment line still applies to V2. Except it's two block types instead of 3. Less complexity. The old system you couldn't simply swap out reactors either. Their layout was the opposite of aux and caps and just swapping them in/out was not possible unless you wanted to fubar your power. Unlike the new system where you literally take blocks off one end and add them to the other... The old system took more thought, more care and more planning then the new system by a at least a couple of orders of magnitude.
"This is fine for ships where only a few hundred blocks are involved. You usually remember where you placed them and changing ratios isn’t a long process. Each system block matters a lot more in this case. It’s not fine when your ship size becomes larger. Most ships have more than 100,000 blocks and it’s impossible to know where you placed all your blocks down. Filling your ship with the correct amount of blocks per type is a tedious and long process. Not to mention that changing it afterwards is even more frustrating where you have to dig for specific block types and you end up with a complete system mess."
See my previous point on making big ships 'easy'. You do not want big ships to be easy to build. All the devs need to say this every time they look in the mirror! Every time they wake up. Every time they go to bed. Every time they even look at code! You do not want big ships to be easy to build!
This makes me laugh and cry at the same time as this is one thing V2 actually does achieve, does make easy... FFS. Big ships. Easy to build. FFS. Anyone at the helm see a possible problem with this? Please? The mechanic for building big is identical to the mechanic for building small. IDENTICAL! Same process. Reactors one end stabilizers the other. IDENTICAL. You just scale it up. IDENTICAL. Linear. Unimaginative. Easy. Any weekend warrior who spends a few minutes on V2 power is going to realize this and build massive! Kiss your servers goodfuckingbye people. Meltdowns imminent and unavoidable. Gameplay in the shitter. Lag through the roof. Players out the door... /cry. I'm going to say it one more time. BIG SHIPS SHOULD BE HARD TO BUILD!!! V2 makes them much easier to build. As a server admin, Fuck That Shit with a Chainsaw.
"The current system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which doesn’t offer much complexity and only gets worse with a higher total block count. Also, the volume to surface area does not scale favourably for balance, and there is no incentive not to fill up a ship with systems. The larger your ship, the more volume you usually have compared to your surface area."
The new system makes power and systems purely a game of ratios, which are extremely easy to work out and upscale and decrease complexity dramatically. The volume to surface area still scales the same way as the old and there is still no incentive to not fill up a ship with systems. The larger your ship the more volume you usually have compared to your surface area... that last sentence... schema did you read that through after you wrote it or is there a plan to make changes to the fundamental mathematics of reality?
One more time people, say it with me out loud so everyone can hear! BIG SHIPS SHOULD BE HARD TO BUILD!!!
Summary: Blocks have been shuffled around from long lines to big cubes, less complexity. They have been reduced in type, not number, (literally the exact opposite of the stated objective,) made easier to place and made much easier to scale up to ridiculous sizes.
Objective: FAILED. Terminal secondary failures imminent.
Focused on regen.
"Currently you will always care more about power regen than capacity, mostly because it’s scaled that way. In almost every case, you want to equalize your power regen with your total consumption during combat. Your capacity would be increased to have a small reserve that equals this consumption so that you can use all your systems at once and regen the power within a few seconds."
I don't know how you were building ships in V1 but what? The only time I tried to equalize regen with cap was when building beam ships or general purpose ships. In V1 if you wanted missiles you went for caps, if you wanted guns you went for regen, if you wanted beams you went for a balance between the two. In V2 you will always care more about total power rather then capacity as capacity has been mushed into regen and effectively no longer exists! Instead of two separate and independent systems with a balance mechanic you have one non-adjustable static system.... it can't be adjusted. This is NOT a plus mkay?
V1, build a missile frigate - build power system with lots of cap. Build a gun ship - build a system with lots of regen. Build a beam ship - balance regen and cap. Maybe not super exciting but at least there's a mechanic to play with.
V2, build a missile frigate - build power system tube. Build a gun ship - build the same tube. Build a beam ship - you got it, same tube!... hmmm? I'd say WTF again but I think it's getting a bit redundant.
In V2, I build my power system, I add shields and thrusters up to a certain % of power. Then I add guns to about the 90% consumption mark so as I have a little left over... basically no different from what I did in V1... except in V1 I could adjust regen with caps depending on my weapon layout. So less choice in V2... again. V2 is a less dynamic and less varied system. V2 is being forced into a meta one type fits all power train and you have no design choice at all. NONE AT ALL!
"This results in a boring way of building ships since there’s little difference in power systems for any ship you create, it’s a simple equation and can result in a lot of frustration to achieve that goal."
This is an opinion on V1 that I heartily disagree with for reasons as stated above. Ironically the statement applies much more to V2 then V1. In V1 different weapon layouts required different power layouts. BUT, V2 has not remedied any of the stated "problems" and has demonstrably made them worse! It's gone from a balancing mechanic to no mechanic at all! It's gone from needing 3 different power layouts depending on weapon layout to one size fits all. It's gone from 3 types of independent, adjustable systems to 1 non-adjustable meta. FFS how is this not obvious? I don't know, maybe the fact that different weapons needing different power types is completely missed in the declaratory statement has something to do with the devs completely missing this point? /shrug.
"Not to mention that it’s hard to make the AI use this system when their capacity is always too low to work with."
wha?
Summary: One static power system for every ship. No adjusting it. No balance. No optimizations. Missile ships will be identically powered to a cannon ship. Cap/recharge balancing removed completely. It's a much simpler equation and a much more boring mechanic then V1 ever was by many orders of magnitude.
Objective: FAILED.
I've gone and spent most of my day compiling this little rebuttal/rant. Thank you for reading this far if you've made it. I've tried to remove my snark, sarcasm and swears but geeze it hasn't been easy.
The new power system objectively fails on every one of it's stated goals. (I'm more then open to hearing where my appraisal is incorrect?) What's worse, it makes a whole bunch of other things, that while not perfect were a least usable, much more broken then they were. The new game, because it is an entirely new game, is quite frankly crap when compared to the old. There's no nice way to say it. I know the devs have sunk a huge amount of effort into it but unless there's a fix for the one dimensional, boring tube power, dumbbell system, this power 'update' is still born. If it goes ahead I will be playing on a server that eliminates the reactor stabilizer distance mechanic entirely. That will give me one large block for power that I can at least properly protect in the middle of my ships and completely remove the power tube mechanic that has been added. It will be a less elegant system then V1. It will be less fun to play and much easier to abuse as there will be no restriction on the percentage of power a given sized ship can contain other then it's volume. But it will be more fun then playing dumbell-dongs. A big block of blocks in the centre of my ship for power is admittedly not very imaginative for a power system but it's better then the alternative by a country mile.
To fix the problems?
To eliminate the tube meta; The reactor must be able to be placed in the centre of separate groups of stabilizers without penalty when compared to one reactor opposite one stabilizer group. A reactor in the centre of a symmetrical ship must be a viable build. Ship x length with reactor/stabs at opposite ends MUST be equal to a ship with x length and a reactor in the middle with two half sized groups of stabs each end. Likewise this should also enable 4 and 6 directions of symmetry with the reactor in the centre. This would remove the need to put your most vulnerable and important system, your reactor, on the outside edge of your ship AND it would allow designs that are not a tube. Designs that are not a tube, believe it or not, are most of them!
In combination with the above, to eliminate the dumbell meta the stabs must not be restricted to big blocks. You should be able to build them in thin veins or planes out on the peripherals of your ship. So eliminate any sort of penalty for making thin stabilizer groups. You know, just like stabilizers on real aircraft? Big block of reactors, the power system, in the middle of your ship, thin veins of stabilizers out on the edges. This I could do. This I could work with. This would again eliminate the need for the other large block on the outer edge of your ship. A dumbbell is a stupid design for a ship. I shouldn't have to say that. Placing a large group of blocks on the edge of ships should have been a non-starter... but here we are...
Huh. I feel a little better now that's off my chest.
Sincerely.
MrG.
