PVP focused gameplay is the majority over all the other playstyles

Zoolimar said:

Why? Unless the server specifically has harsh limitations on the mining the only problems you will have will be initially when you don't have a proper miner. The moment you have a miner with 200-300 beams you could bath in resources. Or more likely drown. Yes spamming 250k mass ships and losing a couple each day may put a strain on you. But in this case you are basically losing equivalent of major battleship fleet detachment.

And as long as you have resources you could just spawn ships from blueprints.

Click to expand...

Not having a proper miner is exactly how it is at the start, that's the problem. The game really makes the first hour or ten a chore. Players get bored easy unless there's decent starting content. Starmade right now is basically just empty space, PvP that's not fully in, and shipbuilding. It needs more to get new players to come and stay so that PvP has people to fight.

JinM said:

That's just not true.

What got added:
New turrets, shootout rails, fleet ai, reworked shields, chambers, fixes for the vagyr exploits.
What gets added now:
New block destruction damage models, reworked old weapons, new weapons: mines + tracktor beam, different armour, fix for shipyards (pvpers use them too).

Please calm down.

Click to expand...

I really don't get the whining that StarMade is trying to neuter PvP by giving things only to RP playstyles when the majority of features recently changed or added only matter in PvP. Not that Schine did a great job with power 2.0, but they're clearly trying to make PvP good before RP.

Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW said:

Not that Schine did a great job with power 2.0, but they're clearly trying to make PvP good before RP.

Click to expand...

If this was even remotely true then Power 2.0 would be drastically different.

The Judge said:

If this was even remotely true then Power 2.0 would be drastically different.

Click to expand...

It very nearly was. It was originally some heat-based system. Ultimately, Schine has good ideas, but they implement them poorly. Power 2.0 as-is hurts RP ships quite a bit in my experience (huge reactors just to be able to move, little room to put sufficient stabilizers, and annoying streams to them too). I'd prefer Power 1.0 with chambers for RP ships.

Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW said:

It very nearly was. It was originally some heat-based system. Ultimately, Schine has good ideas, but they implement them poorly. Power 2.0 as-is hurts RP ships quite a bit in my experience (huge reactors just to be able to move, little room to put sufficient stabilizers, and annoying streams to them too). I'd prefer Power 1.0 with chambers for RP ships.

Click to expand...

Schema was reluctant to restart development of Power 2.0 a second time, despite the PvP community's objections, and as a result we just got the second take.

pvpers need core game mechanics to satisfy their gameplay requirements.

rpers need added features to satisfy their gameplay requirements.

stop making this out to be some kinda 12 yr old its not fair us vs them content argument.

besides... pvp died with 2.0, so idk what leg youre leaning on anyway.

TheDerpGamerX said:

Make no mistake, Power 2.0 was made for RP players at the request of RP players, like Rasinbat said. It somehow both dumbs down the system and makes it needlessly complex at the same time. Take stabilizers for example. They literally serve NO purpose, and yet they were put in anyways. With reactor lines, people would compete for the best design, using charts and graphs. You actually had to put time and effort into researching stuff, and that was great, as it added depth to the game. Anyone who says Power 2.0 was for PvPers clearly is not a PvPer, as the entire PvP community disagreed with the update and hated it. Part of the reason for this was that every single design they had perfected over the years was now useless, and all the depth was removed. Because of this, and Schine not wanting to listen and cooperate with the PvP community, most of them left the game.

Weapons update is sorta similar. While on one hand, it adds cool new weapon blocks and such, it needlessly removes effect blocks and tries to replace them with different system. The problem I have with both Power 2.0 and Weapons 3.0 is not the system itself. It is actually a somewhat decent system, it just needs a bit of ironing out. My problem is that Schema decided to make HUGE changes to the game this late in the dev cycle. And the "It's in Alpha" excuse doesn't work, considering this game has been in "Alpha" for over 6 years now. Let me put it like this. Say, you were playing Minecraft right? And one day, Mojang announces that they are going to replace the entire crafting system with a new completely different one. Don't get me wrong, their new system may be cool and stuff, but you cannot make such huge changes to a game so late in development and not expect negative responses. If Power 2.0 had been implemented much earlier, like let's say 2013 or even 2014, people wouldn't be as mad.

While Power 1.0 had it's problems, the worst possible thing Schine could have done was to completely uproot and redo the whole system. It was a complete waste of dev time that should have been spent polishing the game and fixing fleets and npcs. Why did Schema spend a year making a new power system instead of fixing Starmade's memory leaks and gamebreaking bugs?

Click to expand...

I've heard the exact opposite criticism too, that Schine spent too much time fixing bugs instead of just getting on with powed and weapons 2.0. I think the real problem is development is glacial and largely unresponsive to the userbase. Nobody wants power 2.0 in its current form, but getting even mild changes takes months if ever.
Also, Schine may have made it for RP, but it's not at all what RP really wants nor needs; Power 1.0 was better for RP builds because you were rarely being held back on power compared to other things.

JinM said:

That's just not true.

What got added:
New turrets, shootout rails, fleet ai, reworked shields, chambers, fixes for the vagyr exploits.
What gets added now:
New block destruction damage models, reworked old weapons, new weapons: mines + tracktor beam, different armour, fix for shipyards (pvpers use them too).

Please calm down.

Click to expand...

Well, not sure if I have any right to argue since I am still a greenhorn at this game, and might have also been confused alittle while reading through everyone's arguments....

So, I noticed that there was mention in a previous comment on this thread that schine is focusing on performance so that players can make bigger ships......
I believe that this actually benefits both parties, as there will be better performance for every ship sizesize a each performance upgrade. Just think about smoother battles with titans....

Now, if there will ever be more content like astronaut gear in terms of weapons and armor, as long as they make some sort of capture point like base, it will also cater to pvpers.... The game might not even need an update that could introduce capture points for it to cater to pvpers, as long as someone figures out how to board opposing ships while in battle safely, there will be fps combat. (But let's be honest here, when was the last time you heard of anyone forcing their way into another person's ship to comadere it? Probs never cuz ppl are busy shooting from ships at ships)

Now as for the power update, I am not gonna bother arguing with you guys about that cuz I have never used any former power systems aside from 2.0, it's interesting. Just gonna state my opinion about how it can be applied to both types of players....... So for the roleplayers, you can fully utilize the energy stream from the reactors to stablizers for astetic purposes, that way you can have a reactor look like it's actually fuctioning rather than just at a standstill, without using any logic. U just need to guide the stream using nodes to make anysort of layout you want... And if you place a stablizer close enough to the reactor, the stream will be purple with pulses of red going through it.

Now for the pvpers, power 2.0 opened up alot of space in the ships for other systems because it does not involve any sort of heat boxes. So you have more choice in the shape and size of your ship. The energy stream will be a weakness that is want to protect, but your enemies will also have them, so you can always stun their battle capabilities breifly enough to deal more damage, adds more risk which can add to the fun. I'm just confused on why so many didn't just adapt. Yes they have the right be to pissed off cuz all their efforts before that update are now piles of trash (in my opinion, probs were trash to begin with if they aren't that versitile enouph for players to get it working after gutting it and reworking the ship.) But y are they that butthurt that they don't even bother to completely understand and utilize the newer "simpler" systems?

As for the power update, I like how it specializes weaponry and makes defences more specific. Along with introducing newer damage systems.

So first off, for non pvpers and pvpers alike, this makes it so that no ship is impe4vious to everything, now you can make counter builds to opponents wether they're players or ai. This imho promotes adaptability in circumstances, making the power struggle for first place even harder and reliant on intelligence rather than point and click. Not for cannon recoil, people would definitely wander why the hell is the purpose of the thing, well give missiles a chance of making it to ships. Think about it, if the hardest hitting weapons ingame can't even make it to the target, what's the point of having them. Cannon recoil also adds realism to the game as you are launching a mass at high-speed away from you in space. (I wonder if you can move your stations using recoil). Now, not only does it add a bit more realistic to the game, it also makes it so that people are not just leading the target, they also have to compensate for recoil making it so that if you want to be successful with cannons in combat, you need skill. But let's be honest here, those cannons arnt gonna be your main weapons anyway, missiles are you Trump cards. But lucky for you recoil is a double sided sword, yes you can't get great shots at your targets, but so can't your enemies. So now when their target is your missiles, you have a chance at actually hitting their ship with a smaller volley. That way you don't have to lag the server to have a successful shot.
[doublepost=1527648543,1527648434][/doublepost]Plz correct me if I am wrong about anything and I will revise my arguement

Briaireous said:

Now for the pvpers, power 2.0 opened up alot of space in the ships for other systems because it does not involve any sort of heat boxes. So you have more choice in the shape and size of your ship. The energy stream will be a weakness that is want to protect, but your enemies will also have them, so you can always stun their battle capabilities breifly enough to deal more damage, adds more risk which can add to the fun. I'm just confused on why so many didn't just adapt. Yes they have the right be to pissed off cuz all their efforts before that update are now piles of trash (in my opinion, probs were trash to begin with if they aren't that versitile enouph for players to get it working after gutting it and reworking the ship.) But y are they that butthurt that they don't even bother to completely understand and utilize the newer "simpler" systems?

Click to expand...

Because it's not interesting?

Good weapons were able to dig for dozens of meters into the ship on a hit. But before update there were shields with regen that sometimes actually could regenerate, even though game still heavily leaned in the direction of the ship that kept its shields up longer. Now shields do not regen in combat. Which means that the ship that lost its shields have no chance to get them back up and doesn't even get damage reduction from shields constantly trying to regenerate - which leads us to the fact that armour is still shit.

A ship that lost its shields first is going to lose. It doesn't matter if there is a reactor stream or not because by the time the stream comes up shields are dead and the ship in question is losing thousands of blocks to enemy fire with miniscule chance of a comeback.

What's the point of a reactor stream if it is relevant when you have already lost and makes your chances of resisting your demise even lower ?

Zoolimar said:

Because it's not interesting?

Good weapons were able to dig for dozens of meters into the ship on a hit. But before update there were shields with regen that sometimes actually could regenerate, even though game still heavily leaned in the direction of the ship that kept its shields up longer. Now shields do not regen in combat. Which means that the ship that lost its shields have no chance to get them back up and doesn't even get damage reduction from shields constantly trying to regenerate - which leads us to the fact that armour is still shit.

A ship that lost its shields first is going to lose. It doesn't matter if there is a reactor stream or not because by the time the stream comes up shields are dead and the ship in question is losing thousands of blocks to enemy fire with miniscule chance of a comeback.

What's the point of a reactor stream if it is relevant when you have already lost and makes your chances of resisting your demise even lower ?

Click to expand...

Well, please note that they are still working on the the weapons update, but I do see your point. Currently the defeseive system is shit.

We must have different meanings for interesting, cuz I'll have fun maneuvering small crafts in this sort of combat

JinM said:

Seems like we two talk about two different games then? I am talking about Starmade that gets a weapon overhaul, and recently got a power update. Booth doesn't help non-pvpers. But new weapons definitely will help pvpers.

Just because rpers can now build ships that are pvp capable, doesnt mean that this helps rpers in their gameplay. You think rpers want the power update. It marginally makes their day easier, but it's not like having an easier day allready means the game is fun for non-pvers. In fact non-pvpers would like actuall added gameplay. Stop making up a narrative about rpers and pvpers and how someone benefits more of the power update.

Non-PvPers would actually benefit from working trading, shipyards, astronaut gameplay, or any gameplay content. If you think rpers have more fun in the game, just because they now have to build reactor blocks differently, then I have to tell you: Wake up! Fun for Non-pvpers is something like trading, missions, minigames, faction relations, politics, items, astronaut weapons. Just because rpers have it easier to build ships now, doesnt mean they have anything more to play within the game. Just stop this focus on the "power 2.0 benefits the rpers" narrative, because how the power mechanics are is absolutely secondary for non-pvp gameplay.

For non-pvpers it matters how pve and trading and all the other allready listed things is.

Click to expand...

Weapon overhaul REDUCES the weapons and weapon combos available and due to unneeded and immersion-breaking recoil, a useful weapon goes down the drain. The power update did not really hurt people who have large empty or RP spaces in their ships, but made building compact/PvP ships impossible.

So, you wanted to say SM updates are focusing on screwing PvP and PvPers and only them for almost a year now. That is correct.
[doublepost=1527664675,1527663691][/doublepost]

Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW said:

Not having a proper miner is exactly how it is at the start, that's the problem. The game really makes the first hour or ten a chore. Players get bored easy unless there's decent starting content. Starmade right now is basically just empty space, PvP that's not fully in, and shipbuilding. It needs more to get new players to come and stay so that PvP has people to fight.

I really don't get the whining that StarMade is trying to neuter PvP by giving things only to RP playstyles when the majority of features recently changed or added only matter in PvP. Not that Schine did a great job with power 2.0, but they're clearly trying to make PvP good before RP.

Click to expand...

No, they just prove how much they hate PvPers. They keep on fixing exploits, but they also consider exploits and fix what is pure efficiency resulting from a cost/risk/profit analisis, not an exploit. They seem to define "exploit" as "any successful strategy/engineering solution" and do remove these over and over again. Pow2 and soon W3 are a step forward in this direction: They are blocking any possible "combination nobody yet thought about" by simplifying all sistems that used to give people a way of making their ships' combination of advantages/disadvantages unique.

What happens to PvPers now is exactly what would happen to non-PvPers if all hulls would be gray and all rooms inside ships and stations would have a few standardized dimensions and no others possible. And this "game development tendency" is still going on, nothing seems to stop it.

Briaireous said:

Well, not sure if I have any right to argue since I am still a greenhorn at this game, and might have also been confused alittle while reading through everyone's arguments....

So, I noticed that there was mention in a previous comment on this thread that schine is focusing on performance so that players can make bigger ships......
I believe that this actually benefits both parties, as there will be better performance for every ship sizesize a each performance upgrade. Just think about smoother battles with titans....

Now, if there will ever be more content like astronaut gear in terms of weapons and armor, as long as they make some sort of capture point like base, it will also cater to pvpers.... The game might not even need an update that could introduce capture points for it to cater to pvpers, as long as someone figures out how to board opposing ships while in battle safely, there will be fps combat. (But let's be honest here, when was the last time you heard of anyone forcing their way into another person's ship to comadere it? Probs never cuz ppl are busy shooting from ships at ships)

Now as for the power update, I am not gonna bother arguing with you guys about that cuz I have never used any former power systems aside from 2.0, it's interesting. Just gonna state my opinion about how it can be applied to both types of players....... So for the roleplayers, you can fully utilize the energy stream from the reactors to stablizers for astetic purposes, that way you can have a reactor look like it's actually fuctioning rather than just at a standstill, without using any logic. U just need to guide the stream using nodes to make anysort of layout you want... And if you place a stablizer close enough to the reactor, the stream will be purple with pulses of red going through it.

Now for the pvpers, power 2.0 opened up alot of space in the ships for other systems because it does not involve any sort of heat boxes. So you have more choice in the shape and size of your ship. The energy stream will be a weakness that is want to protect, but your enemies will also have them, so you can always stun their battle capabilities breifly enough to deal more damage, adds more risk which can add to the fun. I'm just confused on why so many didn't just adapt. Yes they have the right be to pissed off cuz all their efforts before that update are now piles of trash (in my opinion, probs were trash to begin with if they aren't that versitile enouph for players to get it working after gutting it and reworking the ship.) But y are they that butthurt that they don't even bother to completely understand and utilize the newer "simpler" systems?

As for the power update, I like how it specializes weaponry and makes defences more specific. Along with introducing newer damage systems.

So first off, for non pvpers and pvpers alike, this makes it so that no ship is impe4vious to everything, now you can make counter builds to opponents wether they're players or ai. This imho promotes adaptability in circumstances, making the power struggle for first place even harder and reliant on intelligence rather than point and click. Not for cannon recoil, people would definitely wander why the hell is the purpose of the thing, well give missiles a chance of making it to ships. Think about it, if the hardest hitting weapons ingame can't even make it to the target, what's the point of having them. Cannon recoil also adds realism to the game as you are launching a mass at high-speed away from you in space. (I wonder if you can move your stations using recoil). Now, not only does it add a bit more realistic to the game, it also makes it so that people are not just leading the target, they also have to compensate for recoil making it so that if you want to be successful with cannons in combat, you need skill. But let's be honest here, those cannons arnt gonna be your main weapons anyway, missiles are you Trump cards. But lucky for you recoil is a double sided sword, yes you can't get great shots at your targets, but so can't your enemies. So now when their target is your missiles, you have a chance at actually hitting their ship with a smaller volley. That way you don't have to lag the server to have a successful shot.
[doublepost=1527648543,1527648434][/doublepost]Plz correct me if I am wrong about anything and I will revise my arguement

Click to expand...

The problem with a performance focus is that the game really isn't very fun when ships the size of sectors are dancing around sectors apart spewing as much firepower as possible; the game is much more fun at smaller scales. And with all the development effort put into making sure Titanmade is possible, not much is left over to make sure it's fun.
Thankfully Weapons 2.0 is pushing back towards the smaller scale, and that may eventually shift development priorities in turn.

Zoolimar said:

Because it's not interesting?

Good weapons were able to dig for dozens of meters into the ship on a hit. But before update there were shields with regen that sometimes actually could regenerate, even though game still heavily leaned in the direction of the ship that kept its shields up longer. Now shields do not regen in combat. Which means that the ship that lost its shields have no chance to get them back up and doesn't even get damage reduction from shields constantly trying to regenerate - which leads us to the fact that armour is still shit.

A ship that lost its shields first is going to lose. It doesn't matter if there is a reactor stream or not because by the time the stream comes up shields are dead and the ship in question is losing thousands of blocks to enemy fire with miniscule chance of a comeback.

What's the point of a reactor stream if it is relevant when you have already lost and makes your chances of resisting your demise even lower ?

Click to expand...

Reactor streams I think are meant to stop spaghetti, but there are many other things that do that and it's altogether overkill. They really serve no functional or æsthetic purpose otherwise and just get in the way a lot.
I'm also not a big fan of shields being weak to the point that you may be better off without them. I guess no regen in combat is a good idea, certainly simpler than the old system, but I've heard shields aren't even worth it anymore in proper PvP (would love to test this at some point, but it'll have to wait for Weapons 2.0 release).

Nosajimiki said:

All competitive games become about interacting with the game engine at the higher levels. In RPGs, it becomes about understanding how powers stack, AI agros, and predicting when yours and the enemies abilities will cooldown etc. In FPSs, it becomes about knowing how long you can hold down a tigger before recoil becomes more conterproductive than waiting for it to cool down at a given range, or being able to guess how far you need to lead a target based on muzzle velocity and lag. RTSs become about understanding unit ROI and synergies, manipulating Moral conditions, and manipulating AI preferences to your advantage.

Click to expand...

All the things you mentioned though are mechanics that you are meant to interact with. My point is that there are things in starmade you need to master that go WAY beyond what the devs intend you to interact with in order to properly play the game.

Nosajimiki said:

You say it is unfair to throw new players into the same servers as experienced players, but it is hardly the first online game where this has been okay. Pretty much every arena game ever has this limit. Think of how many FPSs there are out there where you expect to spend your first week getting head-shot over and over and over again until you learn the maps and weapons. These games are still fun. One mechanic Starmade could perhaps utilize would be a veteranship status bound to player accounts based on hours played so that servers could control what experience level of players they are allowing similar to how MWO uses tier level to sort players, but this feature would need to be coupled with some method of pushing players and their assets through the tiers without breaking up their factions which may be an unreasonable expectation

Click to expand...

Most games that are considered competitive have some sort of mode where you can play against someone of equal skill. I'm not saying Starmade needs this but it is something that for me keep it from being a truly competitive game.

Nosajimiki said:

This is already a thing. Larger factions still have 1 Homebase. This means they need to spread out to prevent from lagging themselves to death. There are also the limits of technology and pilots. Resources become moot after a certain point, and fighting becomes 100% about who has the better ships and pilots. This means that a hegemony with limitless resources can still be beaten by an up-and-comer with better tech and coordination, such as how most of the Odium factions started doing so poorly in 2017 when they continued to use all the same old strategies that made them unbeatable in 2016.

Click to expand...

The only reason that you can get an edge is because a lot of core mechanics of the game keep changing due to development. Eventually I expect the core mechanics to be solidified. When that happens having better tech will be a more finite state for the player. Then the only thing that could challenge a faction's supremacy is a faction that fights better. Resources and pilots will then be the deciding factor. I'm not saying this is a huge problem but there is very little stopping a faction from domination a galaxy aside from another faction of similar power. If that's how things are I'm fine with it, but it doesn't really create a truly competitive environment.

Briaireous said:

We must have different meanings for interesting, cuz I'll have fun maneuvering small crafts in this sort of combat

Click to expand...

Good luck manoeuvring against instant hit sticky lasers. The moment AI is able to hit anything again properly all those high mobility ships will die in droves.

JinM said:

Just like you think that the new meta is bad.

But there are two different mindsets hitting each other about what a good competetive game is about.

The old meta was allready bad imo just for it's usage of docked reactors and self powered and self shielding turrets. Made shipbuilding more complex and more complicated, but didn't add any depth.

Click to expand...

It could have been removed through different means without need for scrapping the whole system. Like say making auxiliaries better than reactors under 2 millions (up to 5-7k mass ships) and thus making them the best choice on smaller ships and adding a rule to reactors that they must be crammed in as small a volume as possible to get the best regen, but also removing the 2 million total limit on them.

Now building small ships would have been easy - plop the auxiliaries down and you get both regen and capacity. Big ships? You'll need to actually think how to lay down reactors - will you spread them more to get better survivability, sacrificing power, or make them dense risking losing a good chunk of them in a single hit.

JinM said:

For the shield regen systems...I am not sure if regen tanking was so cool. The new no-in-combat-regen has the upside, that even very big ships can be hurt from constant fire of smaller ships. This has also some interesting upsides so I am not sure your no-regen complaint is valid.

Click to expand...

I don't care about regen tanking. I care about the fact that shields became just a HP bar with no depth. It's a measurement of how much damage you need to do before you start killing enemy ship. If your shields are better you also probably won't sustain much damage, because after the shields on the enemy go down he won't be able to get them back up and will start losing his combat capability very fast.

Also multiple ships were already very much capable of winning against single targets.

JinM said:

I would not have played Starmade for the old pvp meta. It had the classical complexity but no depth problem. But you will ofcourse defend the old meta. That's okay.

Click to expand...

And what depth you have now? Place as many lasers as you can cram on your ship?

JinM said:

Just get over it that other people have a different understanding about good tactics in a competetive game. We can talk about it. But this "I am a pvper and I know whats the holy grail of right meta" attitude is not evolving any dialogue between any of the participants here.

Click to expand...

I'm nowhere near a proper PVPer, I just like tinkering with ships. And there is not much left to tinker with.

JinM said:

Yes there are pros and cons for this new part of the meta, but it's a new part and it was not possible if regen didn't got this nerf.

Click to expand...

What I'm saying is that it is a retarded part. Allowing for smaller ships to beat bigger ships through their passive defences if they are not capable of actively defending themselves (or doing it effectively) is good. But doing it in the way it is done right now is bad. Because while it works for cases like fighter against unarmed freighter it starts to break down when combat ships go toe to toe with each other.

It may have been an Ok mechanic for a strategy game, but not for a space sim.

JinM said:

Would be a little boring if it would be forever the same setup right? I want to try it out with the new weapons. Just try to be open for a meta change here.

The question you ask about dpeth now can't really be answered propperly until the weapons are in a release state.

Click to expand...

I do not hope. I look at what is there and try to extrapolate. What I see doesn't show me a possibility of anything good in the future unless things change pretty radically.

JinM said:

So for the regen tanking:

It was not possible in the old meta, that a small ship of lets say 20% of the enemies ship size, can actually do damage. This is a huge difference now. If your big ship can't turn fast enough and his turrets are not set up propperly, a small ship, close combat or sniper, actually can and will damage any bigger ship, given enough time. Yes there are pros and cons for this new part of the meta, but it's a new part and it was not possible if regen didn't got this nerf.

You will probably say, that in pvp you will be able to faporize smaller ships with bigger ships. But I am talking about shield tanking freighters. In the old meta an 10% size fighter was not able to do any damage to a shield tanking freigther. It's not all about combat ship versus combat ship in Starmade meta. Would be a little boring if it would be forever the same setup right? I want to try it out with the new weapons. Just try to be open for a meta change here.

The question you ask about dpeth now can't really be answered propperly until the weapons are in a release state.

For one bet I allready know that big and slow turning ships will need escorts. Or lets say I hope so. I have allready seen some 50k pvp ships on Brierie that turn like a 10k because they are towers. But lets just see what people come up with.
Let's just hope there will be. I can't imagine that tinkering-Schema will not add in some more stuff to tinker with.

Click to expand...

Faporization sounds like a humiliating way to go.

Anyways, I hope that it's not too hard for fighters to break beam lock at longer ranges or highers speeds, otherwise it'll just be more TitanMade.

So from my understanding of the thread, and dispite my personal disdain for the mindset of the creatior, I have to agree that development focus is FUBAR and has been for around 2&1/2 years.

The basic building block of this game is...blocks. The ability to MAKE blocks is NOT streamlined, NOT fun, and NOT intuitive. This is the first hurdle that screws over "not only hardcore PvP players". - ever since they introduced the 3 factory types and replaced user-researched recipies with pre-defined recipes the crafting system has had NO depth and REALLY BAD implementation. Step 1: FIX THE BASICS. Re-implement researched/leveling recipes from Crafting 1.0 with SOME of the good things from 2.0 (like a basic this always works default recipie). THIS ALLOWS CRAFTERS TO HAVE THEIR NICHE.

The second part of the game is building ships/stations and customizing them to your personal preference. Systems 2.0 has really reach out and tried to make it easey to remove/replace/refit so that ships can be customised easily....but in doing so they have really cut the corners off the envelope instead of pushing them. Step 2: Actually fairly well implented with systems 2.0. but Fucksakes the scale is all-wrong. Needs less hard-caps, and less "tree".

The endgame is always going to be empire. Shipyards and fleets need to be actually functional for that to work. Fix them, or cut them off like the diseased gangrenous limb they are.

Comradecolonel said:

All the things you mentioned though are mechanics that you are meant to interact with. My point is that there are things in starmade you need to master that go WAY beyond what the devs intend you to interact with in order to properly play the game.

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This is exactly what people said about all these mechanics before they became mainstreamed as "part of the game". Everything you can interact with is intentional. How players decide to interact with it is not.

Let's take Rome Total War for example: It introduced a revolutionary new system of moral where units would flee based on enemy count, attrition, and the actions of adjacent units. The intention here was to make a system where battles would rarely result in 100% loses. What players did was realized that they could stack a giant army of calvary and jam their whole force into a single edge of the enemies army, before the enemy could maneuver their battle line to respond. This would cause a chain reaction of moral failures and the whole enemy army would route, and while running away, your faster cavalry could chase down and kill running soldiers with impunity resulting in guaranteed casualty ratios of 100:1.

Comradecolonel said:

Most games that are considered competitive have some sort of mode where you can play against someone of equal skill. I'm not saying Starmade needs this but it is something that for me keep it from being a truly competitive game.

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You can play against players of equal skill in starmade. You don't have to leave your homebase when a clearly stronger enemy shows up to challenge you. Worst case scenario, they get lucky and catch you out in the open while you are mining and you lose a bit of resources, but you can to that to high end players too just fine; so, it's not really unfair. Also, even if you are subpar, there is usually someone on a server who wants to kill the guy who is camping you... and can.

Case and point: first time I meet Vaygr, they camped my home base with an 80k ship just days after I started on Galaxies Ablaze. I sent out a distress call, and within minutes there was a 300k ship with docked armor chasing him off. Within the next month or so, I broke multiple Vaygr blockades of other new players.

Comradecolonel said:

The only reason that you can get an edge is because a lot of core mechanics of the game keep changing due to development. Eventually I expect the core mechanics to be solidified. When that happens having better tech will be a more finite state for the player. Then the only thing that could challenge a faction's supremacy is a faction that fights better. Resources and pilots will then be the deciding factor. I'm not saying this is a huge problem but there is very little stopping a faction from domination a galaxy aside from another faction of similar power. If that's how things are I'm fine with it, but it doesn't really create a truly competitive environment.

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Many of these edges took years to discover, and even when they were, there were many metas that were not compatible; so, players had to pick and choose which to use. A lot of people just took shortcuts by doing the same thing they saw other people doing and assumed it was best, but many of these things had hard counters and alternatives that were suited better under different circumstances.

Speed brawlers won every fight, except... for the ones where they got stop effected outside of weapon range and horribly murdered. Missiles boats were amazing too... except for when your enemy could waffle down 90% of your missile spam. Demi-ion turrets were instant death... except for vs docked armor that negated ion effects and ships voided thier center mass. Self Powered Turrets were more efficient... unless you were good at rotating out your weapons and abilities as needed. Staged weapons were OP ... until you get hit by a single EMP weapon that disrupts your whole weapon timing and forces you to fight in a perpetual state of power flooring until you can get your system reset.

Better tech was a relative term among high end PvPers. Victory was about knowing your enemy's preferences; so, even if I kept playing the exact system that existed for power 1.0 for the next 3 years and never learned a new tech, I'd still need to design new ships to face the ever changing eb and flow of player preferences for all the techs that do exist... not sure if the same will be true of p2w3, but we'll see.