[12th of May] Schine Q&A Answers

[DukeofRealms]

Hello, here's the answers from the last QA.

Are you going to force players into running around as characters or can we play the game entirely from our cockpits?

A: You will be able to control most of your ships and stations in some sort of remote commands, like fleets for example. However, some actions may still require your personal presence to be properly executed. - AndyP

What exactly are you visions for this game in the aspects of pvp, pve, exploration, suvival aspects, optimization, and planets respectively.

A: We’ve sort of replied to this question already in a previous QA. - DukeofRealms

This answer would be a bit long to answer here. We will introduce how the endgame will look like with the universe update - schema


---


We do have an end goals document here: StarMade Endgoals (All Parts)


That might answer (or partially) answer your question. - DukeofRealms

Is there any plans to make teasers for every item in development? (Cause teasers get me excited)

A: We will likely do a lot of that towards the middle/end of the universe update. - schema

Are there any plans to make an official discord server?

A: Yes, we currently have an invite-only community Discord, which we’ve used as a limited test trial. It’s done well and we will be opening it up to the public not too long from now. (We are not currently adding any new members.) - DukeofRealms

Is there any chance of getting more developers in the group to help with the speed if updates?

A: We are always looking for skilled people. However, since we are a small company we always want to make sure to ensure longevity and financial stability, it isn’t easy to find and especially keep people in this market. Especially since there is a lot of initial investment in time to work them into the code. - schema

Are there any plans to add a donation button somewhere on the website? If not, why?

A: There’s one already on our main site: StarMade - DukeofRealms

Are there any plans to add arm actions that are visible in first person mode? (Not important)

A: It is unlikely. Maybe something incredibly simple, like seeing a weapon in your hand. But beyond that there are no plans to focus on first person animation like that. - Criss

Are there any plans to increase the importance of planets? For example, adding a block that allows players to yeild resources over time when placed on a planet.

A: Planetary mining will be altered with the universe update. We plan quite a lot of changes to the resource gathering and automating it for the late-game, especially asteroids, planets and so-called points-of-interest that provide resources. - AndyP

Will there be gasses in the game? Like nebulas and oxygen?

A: They are planned for visuals and effect modifications, for example nebulae that influence shields, sensors or other systems of your ship. Full handling of life-support, oxygen or pressure management would require a ton of calculations and may restrict the building options and designs. - AndyP

What's the purpose of levels for a reactor?

A: They allow comparing systems that counter each other (like scan and cloak) to be compared in defined steps instead of long floating point numbers based on block count. It also prevents the need to reconfigure and adjust chambers every single change to the reactor block count. - AndyP

Will food, hydration, or life support nessesity ever be added?

A: Not in the sense that without it you would die. We want to focus on the larger aspects of galactic adventures and these elements are best reserved for a game that is much smaller in scale. With NPC populations, we may need to look into arbitrary resources that will sustain them, but not much beyond that. - Criss

Will there be substantial changes to reactors, stabilizers, integrity, or the chamber system in the future? Substantial enough to require ship redesigns?

A: The plan is to avoid any further changes to the reactor, stabilizer numbers after finishing the weapons update. Integrity may go through small changes to adjust it to the weapon-damage-model that may need its own slight changes to balance them. So ideally, they will only require small adjustments from now and then stay the way they are for a very long time. - AndyP

When is logic interaction with reactors and chambers planned to be implemented?

A: Likely as a followup update to the weapons update. We are planning to do some completion of items on our todo list and some cleanup, while we already start with the universe update - schema

I felt like secondary power generators were somewhat encouraged so it is irritating how inactive power generators play a part in the efficiency by range calculations for all stabilizers - is this a bug/oversight or by design?

And even if it is by design, can we have that fixed soon? (btw. switching power generators also feels very clunky with the chamber and weapons recharge)

A: Part of this decision was to uncertainty of the overall performance for stabilizer distance calculation. If there is no issue in terms of it being exploitable, it should be no problem to implement. - schema

There once was talk about adjustments and balancing to chambers but nothing ever happened as far as i saw, now with the weapons update balance will change and ship building start again -> do we get some solid information on balance (dev blog or patch notes) or even a discussion (preferably an official one) before the update hits?

A: The weapons is mostly done the dev build is in a functional state. We might do a preview that hits all the important points. - schema

Would Schine be open to uploading the blueprints of the ships used to test the dev builds, particularly the ones used for the recent power and weapon updates? I think it'd be interesting to see what the devs consider an ideal ship, the kind of characteristics that the game is currently focusing on and just generally how well the somewhat-divisive components of updates work with the ship they were designed around.


Alternatively, would there be a chance for the community to design a few test ships that could be used alongside the current test ships when balancing future builds?

A: We have no completed major refits for our in game fleets. With the weapons update, we will have to strip ships down again and start the process over, so any work we did with our ships beforehand was for testing purposes. In the future there will absolutely be a chance for players to contribute designs to the game. We will do these through community contracts. We have talked about these contracts a bit on our livestream, and are ready to test out the contest when the weapons update drops. - Criss

Based on what has been announced so far I would guess the universe update will probably be the most feature-full update this game ever received. Since the power and weapon systems revamp already took a lot of time and will probably still take some till they are fully realized I would also guess the universe update will probably take the longest development time before a release in the history of StarMade.

Are there any plans on making sure the game is in a semi-playable state with an amount of fixes (considerable optimizations for example of integrity calculation, band-aid fixes to certain features like shipyards, extra quality assurances, etc.) after the realization of the new power and weapon systems but before the universe update?


Is home station invulnerability a feature which is planned to be removed/changed in the future and if so will it be part of the universe update? (Asking in name of MacThule as well.)

A: We will definitely further work on the current state of the game while we start on the universe update to have it in a good playable state while the universe update commences. - schema

When will i be able to have access to formulas of the game through configs, like the stab one for example ?

A: Most of it should already be in the blockBehaviorConfig in the general section. If there is a particular wish or missing value, I’ll gladly add it to the config. - schema

Are you going to implement a battery feature and the option to turn systems on/off during combat so we can build alpha oriented ships again?

A: We are definitely looking into having the ability to switch power consumers on/off. It will either be in the weapons update or in the follow-up updates - schema

Will some of the graphical bugs with intel graphics be fixed?

A: I’ll do my best when they are reported, but unfortunately a lot of the bugs cannot be fixed since they are in the drivers themselves. The only alternative a lot of times is to switch off some optimization and graphics elements, which will put additional strain on the card. - schema

What happened to the tertiary effects? In the dev build v201.029 I can't find them. Are they still on the workbench or abandoned?

A: Tertiary weapon effects are being replaced with various options in your chamber trees. Other effects such as stop, push, and pull will be implemented with the new tractor beam systems. - Criss


StarMade News - StarMade v0.200.311 - Power 2.0

Why are all the weapons ranges still tied to sector range? It makes combat inconsistent. For example if I play in very small sectors (like 2km) cannons are pretty much on par with missiles and beams. If I play with moderately large sectors like 10km cannons fall behind missiles and beams. And finally if I play with very big sectors (20km or more) beams fall behind missiles. How is that possible for you to balance weapons on top of that? I'd like to know your plans about that.

A: originally it was meant to balance with flying speed. The weapon update will already balance a lot of these factors, but ill definitely look into the config option to make distances a fixed amount. - schema

Hello, how are you?

A: Hello. I’m good, thank you :D - schema

Will AI controlled ships - player coordinated, or from the NPCs - get the ability to use their FTL drives in future updates?

A: Most definitely - schema

 

[Briaireous]

Thanks for answering most if my question, i kinda learned half of the information about a week after I asked them...

Well, the donation button I found 2 days after.

I also should have specified my question about hiring more developers, because I ment it as a volunteering option.

And I'm half relieved that there won't be a need for survival related hunger and things like that, but also half saddened ..... Not sure which cus I'd probably die very often unless there is an ability to farm or food will sustain for a long time.

For the vision of the future, I ended up stumbling on a Post in the schine section of the forums, and was mostly satisfied by your visions for general roles.

Love the idea about the nebulas having strange interactions with the ships, maybe there could be one where it boasts reactor output?
[doublepost=1528077676,1528077246][/doublepost]And the part about automated mining on planets, astroids and "points of interest" is perfect for me. I just love diving into building things and have wanted to make a large settlement planets in a section of a station idea... So now it's actually going to be worth it to keep planets whole! Just hope that the automated mining will be able to generate infinite amounts of resources

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Because Duke apparently forgot (I hope) here's the link to the next Q & A thread.

[24th of May] Schine Bi-weekly Q&A

Just thought I'd posts this since we already had an instance where a previous Q & A thread went almost completely unnoticed.

 

[Scypio]

A: Most of it should already be in the blockBehaviorConfig in the general section. If there is a particular wish or missing value, I’ll gladly add it to the config. - schema

Where do i go ? Directly asking in the discord or a suggestion post ?

 

[JinM]

Nice, very satisfying answers in all aspects of the gamemechanics and how they ought to be executed.

A: originally it was meant to balance with flying speed. The weapon update will already balance a lot of these factors, but ill definitely look into the config option to make distances a fixed amount.

Yes please consider this. A server option for fixing weapon distances would be handy, but I suggest to make weapon distance fixed as default. Server owners tend to have some experience, but sometimes mess up critical balancing parts (they simply are not gameplay designers).

And if the distance is not defaultly set as fixed, I can imagine half of the servers will just use a 10km sector distance and don't activate fixed weapons range.

 

[Raisinbat]

A: You will be able to control most of your ships and stations in some sort of remote commands, like fleets for example. However, some actions may still require your personal presence to be properly executed. - AndyP

That's not what i asked. I asked if we will be able to play the game without being forced to leave our cores, as in forced astronaut-on-astronaut interactions. Do i have to walk around some stupid interior and talk to some mouthbreathing NPC in order to do something like hiring crew or setting up fleets/stations? You're so determined to force interior in shipbuilding, i'm sure you're already plotting some bullshit to force us into walking around them.

Why are all the weapons ranges still tied to sector range? It makes combat inconsistent. For example if I play in very small sectors (like 2km) cannons are pretty much on par with missiles and beams. If I play with moderately large sectors like 10km cannons fall behind missiles and beams. And finally if I play with very big sectors (20km or more) beams fall behind missiles. How is that possible for you to balance weapons on top of that? I'd like to know your plans about that.

A: originally it was meant to balance with flying speed. The weapon update will already balance a lot of these factors, but ill definitely look into the config option to make distances a fixed amount. - schema

schema So you still don't get it. This is about as reasonable as having an option in the config for crashing the game on startup. You CANNOT produce a reasonable ballance for the game as long as this is the case because there are hard limits to how far certain weapons are effective at, which you just axed by about 80% with the recoil nonsense. Cannons are at most effective about 7 km out, against sensible targets ie not-stationairy, and that's can/beam in the old system with its bonus to projectile speed. With 12km sector size, beam/beam can deep-fry the inside of your urethra at 18km range, what the hell do you expect to do that will make a weapon with 3x the range stop being the obvious choice, especially now that combat regen isn't a thing? That was the fucking counter to reliable long range damage and you just fucked it up; is the whole plan here that the long range weapon will go from "guaranteed to win fights 100% of the time unless opponent uses the same weapon" to "guaranteed to win fights 100% of the time unless opponent uses the same weapon in 20 minutes" and that people will simply get bored using the easy win option because it takes too long?

You aren't looking at a ballance issue that you can fix by tweaking numbers a bit; high speed + high weapon range always beats every other setup and the only thing that can challenge it is another high speed + high weapon range design. It's a universal winning strategy. We need things in the game that let us exchange weapon range for other things(You know, like actually designing our own ships); how is that going to work if weapon range is some arbitrary floaty rubbish???

In case you haven't picked it up, and i'm pretty damn sure you haven't at this point because you literally pick up nothing, long range beams are what enabled spaghetti. Taking up 8km*8km*8km of space isn't an issue when your weapons have 20km range, but if they were limited to 5km suddenly you can no longer cover your own ship and basic combat mechanics would've rendered spaghetti ineffective, that's why it only showed up after you fixed the beam weapon glitches so they could actually be used. Constructing spaghetti ships were viable 4 years ago, but they couldn't possibly function with no reliable long range weapons.

Man i used to be able to fly small ships in combat, like 15k mass and pick on cruisers and other big fat targets like half the larpers love to fantasize about. You could duck in under turret fire and maybe take out a turret or two before having to pull back and recover shielding, then dive in again and every time you nicked off a turret you bought yourself a little more time. Well designed ships could withstand your diving in and repel you without suffering damage, but if you found a blind spot to hide in and you could beat their shield regen it was great taking them down. All the twats saying that combat in this game sucks have never flown a good ship before beams got fixed, it was tense and amazing flying some deathmachine you built yourself against someone elses deathmachine picking apart how they worked and looking for weaknesses to exploit.

Now? If you are smaller than your opponent you get vaporized by long range beams the moment you're in range. Maneuvering, turret arcs and locality doesn't matter since combat distance is so far away now, flanking is impossible regardless of turn speed. And since you disabled combat regen (why did you even do this, i have no fucking clue what the hell you think you're doing) any ship without long range beams you just fly around while picking your nose at 15km range and slowly widdle them down, because the ships without the mobility advantage have no cutoff point where you deal too little damage to eventually kill them.

Get a fucking clue.

 

[God mode]

So you still don't get it. This is about as reasonable as having an option in the config for crashing the game on startup. You CANNOT produce a reasonable ballance for the game as long as this is the case because there are hard limits to how far certain weapons are effective at, which you just axed by about 80% with the recoil nonsense. Cannons are at most effective about 7 km out, against sensible targets ie not-stationairy, and that's can/beam in the old system with its bonus to projectile speed. With 12km sector size, beam/beam can deep-fry the inside of your urethra at 18km range, what the hell do you expect to do that will make a weapon with 3x the range stop being the obvious choice, especially now that combat regen isn't a thing? That was the fucking counter to reliable long range damage and you just fucked it up; is the whole plan here that the long range weapon will go from "guaranteed to win fights 100% of the time unless opponent uses the same weapon" to "guaranteed to win fights 100% of the time unless opponent uses the same weapon in 20 minutes" and that people will simply get bored using the easy win option because it takes too long?

You aren't looking at a ballance issue that you can fix by tweaking numbers a bit; high speed + high weapon range always beats every other setup and the only thing that can challenge it is another high speed + high weapon range design. It's a universal winning strategy. We need things in the game that let us exchange weapon range for other things(You know, like actually designing our own ships); how is that going to work if weapon range is some arbitrary floaty rubbish???

In case you haven't picked it up, and i'm pretty damn sure you haven't at this point because you literally pick up nothing, long range beams are what enabled spaghetti. Taking up 8km*8km*8km of space isn't an issue when your weapons have 20km range, but if they were limited to 5km suddenly you can no longer cover your own ship and basic combat mechanics would've rendered spaghetti ineffective, that's why it only showed up after you fixed the beam weapon glitches so they could actually be used. Constructing spaghetti ships were viable 4 years ago, but they couldn't possibly function with no reliable long range weapons.

Man i used to be able to fly small ships in combat, like 15k mass and pick on cruisers and other big fat targets like half the larpers love to fantasize about. You could duck in under turret fire and maybe take out a turret or two before having to pull back and recover shielding, then dive in again and every time you nicked off a turret you bought yourself a little more time. Well designed ships could withstand your diving in and repel you without suffering damage, but if you found a blind spot to hide in and you could beat their shield regen it was great taking them down. All the twats saying that combat in this game sucks have never flown a good ship before beams got fixed, it was tense and amazing flying some deathmachine you built yourself against someone elses deathmachine picking apart how they worked and looking for weaknesses to exploit.

Now? If you are smaller than your opponent you get vaporized by long range beams the moment you're in range. Maneuvering, turret arcs and locality doesn't matter since combat distance is so far away now, flanking is impossible regardless of turn speed. And since you disabled combat regen (why did you even do this, i have no fucking clue what the hell you think you're doing) any ship without long range beams you just fly around while picking your nose at 15km range and slowly widdle them down, because the ships without the mobility advantage have no cutoff point where you deal too little damage to eventually kill them.

Get a fucking clue.

In-combat regen appears to have been reenabled in the dev build.

 

[Zoolimar]

A: originally it was meant to balance with flying speed. The weapon update will already balance a lot of these factors, but ill definitely look into the config option to make distances a fixed amount. - schema

Let me expand upon what Raisinbat said to make a point more clear. While it is possible, in theory, to balance it by projectile speed (I will ignore recoil for a moment) it is extremely hard to do so over a range of distances and speeds. Main problem is ship cross-section that stays the same no matter your speed and sector size.

Let's take for example 2 spherical ships in vacuum with 10 and 100 meter cross-sections. Now let's say they try to dodge enemy shots with maximum speed being 50 m/s (let's even ignore acceleration for a minute). Within a second small ship could displace itself by 5 diameters, while larger ship could displace itself only by half of a diameter. Now let's say server max speed is upped to 200 m/s, ranges are increased the projectile travel time is still 1 second to target. Oh my! What do we see - small ship could displace itself 20 diameters, but now even large ship could have 2 diameters displacement making shooting at it more reliant on luck than skill. You need to get within 1/4 (0.25 sec projectile flight time to target) of the range to have a chance to hit it be more or less the same as previously.

And beams? Beams are like honey badgers, they don't fucking care and just plunder what they want. 200 m/s? 500 m/s? As long as the hits are detected by the system properly beams do not care about distance or target speeds and ability to dodge. Even missiles get problems due to their maximum turn rate at higher speeds. Beams? Not so much.

 

[Lucid Deepwatcher]

How does your vision of the fully completed version of StarMade ai look like and what role should ai play in starmade's final state of gameplay? For example ai ships seem to do specific tasks and not really much more. How in depth do you want to go with them? For example lets say an npc miner, to what degree do you plan to have us be able to interact with them? Right now if you shoot one they just hover around and get murdered. Do you plan to have them react? Maybe contact the player with threats, maybe surrender, maybe offer cargo in exchange for their life, maybe offer ship and the npc crew ejects in a shuttle etc etc. What I'm curious is your version of fully finished ai in starmade in general and your ultimate vision with it and the player experience.

 

[MacThule]

Get a fucking clue.

Speaking of which - when was the last time you even played the game you think you're ranting about? A month ago?

Recoil is almost completely gone.

There are combat regen percentages now.

You're raging hard about some stuff that isn't even an issue at this point.

In case you haven't picked it up, and i'm pretty damn sure you haven't at this point because you literally pick up nothing, long range beams are what enabled spaghetti.

Spaghetti is not, was not, and never has been a problem outside of theory. You're attacking straw dummies just to try and stir up trouble about a game you obviously don't even play right now (since you're ranting about recoil and combat regen) and so aren't even up to date about. Bring us the server admin who will testify that spaghetti was ever a problem on their server.

[doublepost=1528483497,1528482127][/doublepost]

Let me expand upon what Raisinbat said to make a point more clear. While it is possible, in theory, to balance it by projectile speed (I will ignore recoil for a moment) it is extremely hard to do so over a range of distances and speeds. Main problem is ship cross-section that stays the same no matter your speed and sector size.

Let's take for example 2 spherical ships in vacuum with 10 and 100 meter cross-sections. Now let's say they try to dodge enemy shots with maximum speed being 50 m/s (let's even ignore acceleration for a minute). Within a second small ship could displace itself by 5 diameters, while larger ship could displace itself only by half of a diameter. Now let's say server max speed is upped to 200 m/s, ranges are increased the projectile travel time is still 1 second to target. Oh my! What do we see - small ship could displace itself 20 diameters, but now even large ship could have 2 diameters displacement making shooting at it more reliant on luck than skill. You need to get within 1/4 (0.25 sec projectile flight time to target) of the range to have a chance to hit it be more or less the same as previously.

And beams? Beams are like honey badgers, they don't fucking care and just plunder what they want. 200 m/s? 500 m/s? As long as the hits are detected by the system properly beams do not care about distance or target speeds and ability to dodge. Even missiles get problems due to their maximum turn rate at higher speeds. Beams? Not so much.

I think beams need their range cut down seriously to something under 1 sector. I'm all about them being insane weapons, but that should be balanced by checking the range hard core so that you have to close to engage with them, giving opponents the opportunity to counter you with standoff strategies employing fields of missiles and cannon defense.

 

[Raisinbat]

Speaking of which - when was the last time you even played the game you think you're ranting about? A month ago?

Recoil is almost completely gone.

There are combat regen percentages now.

You're raging hard about some stuff that isn't even an issue at this point.

What the fuck is your point? They DID add recoil. They DID remove shield regen in combat. Both of these things are completely retarded; massive undue nerf to the weakest weapons in the game because schine doesn't understand combat enough to understand how detrimental recoil is; a single PIXEL worth of recoil and gunstacking doesn't work anymore, the one advantage cannons had over everything else. Why remove shield regen? It oozes of larper pandering; "my shitty ship can't beat the shield regen because 90% of my ship is made of star trek! get rid of shield regen so i can beat those ebil pvppers waaah"

I reverted to 1.99 and i'm fucking staying there. I don't care what the actual starmade is like at this point, nor should you, because all of the fucking problems stem from schine having ZERO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING. Unless they change THE WAY THEY ARE DEVELOPING THE GAME talking about whats wrong with the game is a waste of time; You're never going to make a fun game if you aren't trying to make a fun game, and they aren't.

I am complaining that schine keeps trying to fix the game when they have no clue what is wrong with it, or what they want it to be. Having them fuck up, then atttempt to rework the fuckup when people complain about only to fuckup again next week is exactly what i'm sick off.

Spaghetti is not, was not, and never has been a problem outside of theory. You're attacking straw dummies just to try and stir up trouble about a game you obviously don't even play right now (since you're ranting about recoil and combat regen) and so aren't even up to date about. Bring us the server admin who will testify that spaghetti was ever a problem on their server.

Then WHY THE FUCK DID THEY SHIT UP THE GAME TRYING TO PATCH IT OUT??? Dude, if we agree that shitting all over the game to fight some imaginary bullshit boogeyman, whether its spaghetti, gigantism or doomcubes, WHY ARE YOU NOT COMPLAINING TO SCHINE ABOUT THEIR SHITTY APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN???

 

[Briaireous]

What the fuck is your point? They DID add recoil. They DID remove shield regen in combat. Both of these things are completely retarded; massive undue nerf to the weakest weapons in the game because schine doesn't understand combat enough to understand how detrimental recoil is; a single PIXEL worth of recoil and gunstacking doesn't work anymore, the one advantage cannons had over everything else. Why remove shield regen? It oozes of larper pandering; "my shitty ship can't beat the shield regen because 90% of my ship is made of star trek! get rid of shield regen so i can beat those ebil pvppers waaah"

I reverted to 1.99 and i'm fucking staying there. I don't care what the actual starmade is like at this point, nor should you, because all of the fucking problems stem from schine having ZERO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING. Unless they change THE WAY THEY ARE DEVELOPING THE GAME talking about whats wrong with the game is a waste of time; You're never going to make a fun game if you aren't trying to make a fun game, and they aren't.

I am complaining that schine keeps trying to fix the game when they have no clue what is wrong with it, or what they want it to be. Having them fuck up, then atttempt to rework the fuckup when people complain about only to fuckup again next week is exactly what i'm sick off.



Then WHY THE FUCK DID THEY SHIT UP THE GAME TRYING TO PATCH IT OUT??? Dude, if we agree that shitting all over the game to fight some imaginary bullshit boogeyman, whether its spaghetti, gigantism or doomcubes, WHY ARE YOU NOT COMPLAINING TO SCHINE ABOUT THEIR SHITTY APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN???

Dang bro, u have never fail my expectations for you to be like Gorgan Ramsay on this forum. I love how u complain alot.

 

[MacThule]

I am complaining that schine keeps trying to fix the game

Which is why you are badly off base.

Schine wasn't and isn't trying to 'fix' it - it was never 'broken.' You, and others, so vocally hugging to the pre-reboot version is open testament to their achievement.

Your narrative is broken, not the game. You've lost the plot.

StarMade isn't some broken game with an incompentent bunch of 'repairmen' struggling to save it. It's an excellent sandbox game with a dedicated dev team hard at work on a deep revision based in a long history of experience, observation, community critique, and feedback. Which is why you are here, and why you loved Schine's game before they recently put up scaffolding around rebuilding its foundation to enable more enhancement and expansion by replacing 5 and 6 year old dynamics that were developed by an ambitious fledgling coder.

I don't see any need to get worked up about a little polish before you see the actual result - these are the same people who made the 1.99 you love so much, not perpetrators of a hostile takeover. If you have pertenent feedback and criticism from actual testing, pitch in. Awesome. Otherwise, maybe chill out and keep hiding in 1.99 until the rest of us help get 2.0 up to speed with the quality we typically expect from Schine (or not - your heart health, not mine).

 

[Raisinbat]

Which is why you are badly off base.

*Delusional white knighting nonsense*

When you're done fondling yourself take a look at this: 10 reasons why software development projects fail – Specstimate – Medium or any of the other "how not to develop software" guides floating around.

• Poor Communication

Checked and checked. Noone knows what starmade is supposed to be, not even schine.

• Resistance to change

And how! 2.0 has had one of the worst backlashes of anything i've ever seen and they don't even understand whats wrong with it. Sunk cost fallacy at it's finest. Continously botching every attempt at ballancing the game and new features containing nonsense and self contradictory elements highlight how bad their current development practice is, yet they have done nothing to address this. Just keep doing the same thing over and over.

• Unclear requirements

Literally no coherent requirements for starmade, or any rules for how the game is supposed to play or what makes it fun. None of the game's updates have had any clearly defined purpose to them, like what was the purpose of the weapons update? Just to fuck around with weapons apparently. 2.0 had a laundry list of things it was supposed to do, but didn't follow any of them (easier for new players intended -> much worse for new players in reality, allow for more designs -> exterminated all but one design)

• Unrealistic expectations

Tiny indie team without experience are going to make the most feature rich and dynamic sandbox universe ever seen? You seriously think they're going to implement some fantastic crew AI without fucking over the game's performance the same way factions did?

• The absence of a good project manager

Make that the absence of project management PERIOD. They don't even follow any kind of professional development strategy like agile or waterfall, they just fuck around like a bunch of amateurs.

• Working without purpose

Again, there does not exist a clear idea of what starmade is supposed to be. Neither in the physical sense nor in schema's head.

If/when you can show me a clear vision for starmade as expressed by schine i'll shut up and fuck off forever.

• Over-promising just to close the deal

Just look at this QnA; barely ever saying "no" to features or twisting the answer to give the impression they are. I think schine are fucking scared of their community, and are afraid of putting their foot down to prevent a shitstorm.

7/10 nailed to a T and you could probably argue for 2 others also being the case, i just didnt put them up because it's more about internal process that i don't know what schine are doing with.

I'm seeing about 15-30% of ALL software projects failing, because it's really god damn dificult to pull through a successful software project. Schine are shitting the bed on every important front; if they do not start developing with a fucking goal in mind AND a solid project model they'll continue fumbling around until all the money is gone or they get so tired of backlash from their own mistakes they just give up and abandon the fucking project.

If any of the delusional diatribe you soiled the thread with was true WHY IS EVERYONE LEAVING AND NOONE ENTERING THE GAME, STUPID?
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How does your vision of the fully completed version of StarMade ai look like and what role should ai play in starmade's final state of gameplay? For example ai ships seem to do specific tasks and not really much more. How in depth do you want to go with them? For example lets say an npc miner, to what degree do you plan to have us be able to interact with them? Right now if you shoot one they just hover around and get murdered. Do you plan to have them react? Maybe contact the player with threats, maybe surrender, maybe offer cargo in exchange for their life, maybe offer ship and the npc crew ejects in a shuttle etc etc. What I'm curious is your version of fully finished ai in starmade in general and your ultimate vision with it and the player experience.

questions go here m8:

[24th of May] Schine Bi-weekly Q&A

 

[Ratchet Hundreda]

Raisinbat Man you are a pretty hardcore critic for sure. More like a raging critic than just a troll though.

You brought up some pretty valid points for sure I feel and I agree with most of what you said. Schine is just an amateur development team with big dreams they don't really understand. However I think that's fine. In our current times this is what indie game development is in a nutshell most of the time.

They are at least trying which is what matters. They probably have fun doing what they do as well. Just because they are not that good at it yet doesn't mean they are not getting a ton of experience and especially doesn't mean they are bad or stupid people. It's just a phase which will pass with time. For some it takes longer for some it goes faster. That's just how life is.

I think it definitely helps them a lot to have people like you around pointing out things which probably hurts them the most. However it doesn't help if you keep shouting your lungs out. Neither for you nor for Schine. It's fine to feel a bit frustrated when someone didn't get your point fully at first and say a couple words louder but man, what you do will hurt your own health :D. Which is why I also have to applaud your high fidelity. You are probably someone who saw the endless potential in StarMade's concept as well and probably feel bad to see it potentially go to waste. However I say do not despair. Keep on keeping on. Your inputs are invaluable and if they don't see much of it yet they definitely will once they make a success out of this game.

Felt like you deserved a pat on the back to calm you down a bit.
Cheers,

 

[dwwojcik]

WHY IS EVERYONE LEAVING AND NOONE ENTERING THE GAME, STUPID?

That's simple. Regardless of whether Starmade is better or worse, it's different now. Most people who used to play started playing because how it used to be appealed to them, but how it is now doesn't. This is true of literally anything people do that has ever changed, not just Starmade, not just video games.

People aren't joining the game because Starmade isn't being advertised, and because there is nothing to advertise. Pretty much the only thing to do is build ships and shoot at other ships, and you cant even do those very well right now because the ways you build ships and shoot at other ships are changing as we speak. Other than that, the game isn't really a game yet, it's near as makes no difference devoid of gameplay content.

 

[MacThule]

If any of the delusional diatribe you soiled the thread with was true WHY IS EVERYONE LEAVING AND NOONE ENTERING THE GAME, STUPID?
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questions go here m8:

Aaand straight to the totally unexpected (who knew?) name-calling for challenging your interpretation of the reboot as being off-base.

White-knighting? The agony! You hurt me... emotionally...



'M8'



You are right though that many have left, but obviously you would prefer to pin that on the development rather than admitting the real issue.

As others have recently observed elsewhere on the forums in greater detail; Schine made the grave error of compromising with a couple of known trolls very early in development, even going so far as to allow them into development circles and onto the council, etc. When that policy ended and the trolls lost influence over development, they engaged in a retaliatory smear campaign - focused on name-calling and personality assassinations against the development team itself, the forum mods, and every server admin and established player that still supported the game, stalking and abusing anyone who expressed a positive opinion about literally aspect of this game (durr, only fanbois an whiteknights like dis game - come over to the better game already, rtards!) - while relocating their actual productive energy to other, less successful games more desperate for support and over which they could assert more personal control (games with shit player bases because they are actually substantially inferior to SM, which is why they were willing to invest months of trolling and forum-swamping here to encourage as many players as possible to emigrate).

That last thing that faction wants is to see Schine actually win this market battle now that it has shut off their influence.

So SMD became a burning pit of flaming and faction warfare and most of the wise people left the forums behind, which was exactly the goal. Unfortunately the mod team here didn't realize that there was an actual commercial attack in progress to seize the market (despite a couple of us trying to tip them off when the "hey, look at this other game seems to be beating SMD" posts alternating with "SMD sucks now" posts started issuing from a small sect of interconnected community members about a year ago, well before the big crescendo), and that someone was using proper alting techniques (proxies, VPNs, IPN masks), along with established forum control tactics like sliding, BP and mobilization to systematically demolish the SMD community. In the end even a couple of the senior players actually bought into the ploy and joined in the relentless and baseless Schine-bashing as well before eventually leaving.



P.S. Love the irony of you trying to bill Schine initiating the massive change that is systems 2.0 as Schine being "Resistant To Change." Love it - A for effort. Big Lie is usually a very strong play.

 

[Blodge]

Just because they are not that good at it yet doesn't mean they are not getting a ton of experience and especially doesn't mean they are bad or stupid people. It's just a phase which will pass with time. For some it takes longer for some it goes faster. That's just how life is.

Unfotunately this game has been in development for nearly 5 years. It's easy to see why some people are/have lost patience.

I, like everyone on here I'm sure, see this game as having vast potential. However, Shine do seem to be taking a long time re-iterating the engine basics and not pushing forward toward an actual game. I hope that the weapons and Universe updates are the last lot of revisions to existing features and after that, we start getting something to do other than blow up the things we've built in this potentially awesome universe.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Speaking of which - when was the last time you even played the game you think you're ranting about? A month ago?

Recoil is almost completely gone.

There are combat regen percentages now.

You're raging hard about some stuff that isn't even an issue at this point.



Spaghetti is not, was not, and never has been a problem outside of theory. You're attacking straw dummies just to try and stir up trouble about a game you obviously don't even play right now (since you're ranting about recoil and combat regen) and so aren't even up to date about. Bring us the server admin who will testify that spaghetti was ever a problem on their server.

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I think beams need their range cut down seriously to something under 1 sector. I'm all about them being insane weapons, but that should be balanced by checking the range hard core so that you have to close to engage with them, giving opponents the opportunity to counter you with standoff strategies employing fields of missiles and cannon defense.

I think beams as short range is bad for weapon balance because cannons will generally have trouble hitting sectors away, making them short range. One or the other just makes the other redundant. Having cannons the outright best at shorter ranges due to high DPS, but beams best at medium range due to good accuracy (falling off at longer ranges) would make for more weapon distinction. Long range then can be the realm of sniper cannons or lock-on missiles.

 

[Blodge]

I think beams as short range is bad for weapon balance because cannons will generally have trouble hitting sectors away, making them short range. One or the other just makes the other redundant. Having cannons the outright best at shorter ranges due to high DPS, but beams best at medium range due to good accuracy (falling off at longer ranges) would make for more weapon distinction. Long range then can be the realm of sniper cannons or lock-on missiles.

If by "accuracy (falling off at longer ranges)" you mean they lose the lock-on ability after a certain range, then this might work. AI accuracy is irrelevant if a human is aiming the weapon. Programmed-in accuracy on a manually fired weapon (e.g. recoil) is extremely irritating.
Having a long-range weapon that does higher damage than cannons, locks-on and instantly hits it target is very bad for balance, no matter how much power is required to fire it. At least one of those 4 behaviors has to go.

In my (not very experienced) opinion it should be:

Missiles
Damage: High
Range: Long
Pros: Area of effect damage
Cons: Countered by chance to dodge/intercept with AMS, long re-load time.
Summary: Good for damaging large, slow or stationary targets when fired in waves or when AMS have been taken-out. Good for distracting/scattering small, highly maneuverable targets. Makes big holes in things when the shields go down.

Cannons
Damage: Medium
Range: Medium
Pros: Acid damage, good against slow/stationary targets
Cons: Difficult to target small/agile targets at a distance
Summary: Good for applying continual damage against large and stationary targets at mid-range, and small, highly maneuverable targets at shorter ranges. Can strip armor once the shields have gone down.


Beams
Damage: Low
Range: Short
Pros: Instant hit, lock-on
Cons: No acid or AoE damage.
Summary: Great against shields and small, highly maneuverable targets when at close range. Not great against armor or larger targets with spread-out systems (unless you get a lucky penetrating shot).