[14th of April] Schine Q&A Answers

[Nosajimiki]

So pushing low density, became an issue briefly on one server. Once, a while back. Not even actual spaghetti, just people pushing the low density envelope. Sounds like it kinda-sorta qualifies as one acute incident. I assume that NaStral was able to handle it? I also assume that it hasn't happened again since?

And individuals have exploited it to harrass on a few others. Of course. I assume none of those ventures precipitated a collapse of the server's meta into pure spaghetti.

I'm not saying that spaghetti is great, or that it wouldn't be a problem if it actually were a meta or even ever could be. I'm saying that it's not actually an issue and could not be an issue as things stand now except on a completely un-moderated MP server.

Okay, trying to push this point is just making you sound ignorant now. The spaghetti and related low density metas only became common knowledge just before the power 2.0 update. Power 2.0 was already in Dev build. It was escalating and it stopped because Power 2.0 is a broken unplayable mess, not because people just gave up on it. Also, people were learning how to exploit spaghetti mechanics on "solid" ships. So, people were not understanding why they were losing so bad.

Since disruptors seem fully patched now, I guess it doesn't hurt to explain them now. SURPRIZE! It's spaghetti. You want an aesthetic ship, you just need to know how to manipulate AI targeting. I had ships that could divert 70%-90% of incoming fire into missing just by having a few floating blocks off to the sides of my ships. They looked great, but could not be touched because the blocks that all your turrets would aim at were 1x1x1 targets that were too small for AI to hit.

(PS: Sorry Non for giving you such a hard time, but you were right, the Skink was using hidden spaghetti just like you suspected, I did not realize when I designed it how OP it was gonna be, and I didn't want that toxic shit to spread.)

Relying too heavily on admins results in burnout and disengagement. The community shouldn’t even think about admin intervention for anything. I’m honestly sick of dev mistakes rolling down hill to the servers and then players expecting us to clean up the mess. Nope, not happening. You play it as is and make your bug reports in phabricator and raise major issues on the forums and discord.

The spaghetti thing was stupid and the only reason why it was dragged up time and time again was because certain people were mad and wanted attention. It was never a disruptive thing on LvD. Even really meta minded players cared about personal aesthetics enough to not go that far.

That was not my experience. Yes, meta minded players had their aesthetics for most conflicts, but many also built and "live tested" their spaghetti ships without warning. Then some people like Flying Debris were pretty shameless about it.

Also, keep in mind that large low density (not spaghetti) ships are just as toxic and game breaking. I really don't like bringing up the Baal Berith/Anniel all the time, because I know that you did not intend for it to be an exploit ship, but it is a good example of what happens both when you over extend surface area and how a toxic meta can spread. I know you only designed it to mitigate explosive and punch through damage, but it came with the extra exploit that all those chucks and surfaces took a long time for the game to load in.

Meta players were beginning to notice they did not need to even make bullets miss as per traditional spaghetti or disruptor tech because they had a window of time after jumping in of 100% invincibility. Basically, if you jumped one next to someone and started shooting, the combat lag plus surface area meant that it you would be untouchable for several minutes while the game loaded your ship which was more than long enough to finish someone off at short range. The Baal performed "so well" that it was quickly adopted by nearly half the factions across every server in StarMade, even though most people had not yet even realized why it was wining so many fight.

In summation, true spaghetti saw limited use (thought it was still used often enough to make problems), but it was also a spring board for more creative uses for the same mechanics to make ships that are just as OP.