A Discussion About Power & Cloaking.

[Spartan4845]

Since the drop of the patch and the changes to power generation and the power generation softcap several concerns have been raised. Most of the concerns that I have heard deal with Cloakers and I felt the need to talk about it and ask the thoughts of our fellow players. I would also like to make a few general suggestions on cloaking in general if I may.

First though, power.

Since the change in the latest patch the softcap has been moved from one million power to two million power. Now I haven't heard much if anything about this other than the increase from it, but this seems to be more of an issue with power generation having been increased as well. It seems some ships have "too much" power.

I hope I'm not rude in saying this, but if your ship has too much power then remove some of it. Use the space for shields, or thrusters, cargo, or even a break room for your crew. There is so much that can be done if there isn't as much space being taken up with power, but I don't believe that power is broken in its new state, I believe that it is just more condensed, not to mention that server settings can be adjusted if needed.

Now onto a though about cloakers that I'd like to talk about, but without making a suggestion more of talking out loud.

I believe that cloakers need a slight change if not a major. I believe that they need to move beyond their current power/mass state to a more creative form. Perhaps we should have to build them similar to the docking extenders of old so that they create a field around the ship. Perhaps they work easier on smaller ships but still allow larger ships to hide... unless a crew member sings the Soviet National Anthem.

I think that the biggest benefit to cloakers could come in the form of easy for small hard but not punishing for big ships, maybe make big ships really slow, kill the radars, kill the lights... or do the Klingon thing and kill the weapons and shields and make them have to cycle after dropping cloak.

I know this post is disjointed and a mess, but it is Four AM and I am a little crazy.

Please forgive me if I was rude, and happy building to all.

 

[alterintel]

I am mixed about the new power cap. I like it, because it gives me more options with building ships. I don't like it because now I have options when building ships, if that makes sense. Before it was easy to max out power, and then build weapons/cloak/jump system that would use them. But now I have to consider whether or not I really need 2 mil power. It's a good problem to have, but a problem non the less.

About Cloaking:
I 100% agree they need some additional thought. Before everybody used to complain (me included) that cloaking was pretty much worthless because it was near impossible to achieve a cloak on anything but a small scout. But now we kind of have our wish, as it's been inadvertently tweaked with the power change. But this is the same problem we would have had once the cloaking got fixed anyways. Now we need to develop new strategies to counter the new cloak threat

 

[Andir]

Agree all around, but I think it's a hidden blessing because everyone was complaining about small ship viability in battle and now with Cloaking you could have a small ship confront a titan and provide a challenge because it would be able to cloak and counteract some of the AI turrets on the bigger ships. So it could be a good thing for those that like to fight?

 

[Winterhome]

It's not cloaking that's the problem specifically. It's that cloaking is a metric for how incredibly much power your ship has or is wasting.

If you can cloak your armor tank, then there is absolutely nothing you can possibly do to make a ship under power softcap run out of power otherwise.

As for "make your power system smaller" - that's a bullshit argument because it's generally only a matter of fifty to five hundred blocks (out of twenty thousand) that you'd be saving by intentionally crippling your own ship. Nobody will do that, because there is no benefit to making your already miniscule power system smaller. You don't even get enough extra block space to add anything worthwhile.

The entire problem is caused by the devs/council doubling power softcap without reading the power formulas. By doubling the softcap without adjusting the formula, they also accidentally doubled the power regen bonus, which effectively destroys any and all power consumption balance that had been in the game previously. Until this change gets rolled back, feel free to put overdrive on the main guns and turrets of all of your subcapitals.

 

[Winterhome]

Okay, I fixed it. Reactors that produced 1mil e/s produce a tiny bit more than that with this, and the softcap is now 2 million as intended. I'm posting this in every thread where people are concerned about power generation.

With the PowerGrowth value halved, my 1mil e/s reactors still produced 1.4mil e/s rather than 1.05mil. The setting I chose gives the reactor I'm using for testing a power regen value of 1.2mil e/s.

<PowerCeiling>2000000.0</PowerCeiling>
<PowerGrowth>1.000278</PowerGrowth> <!-- 1.000696 normal, 1.000348 halved, 1.000278 2/5ths-->

The halved value is the safest for small ships - the value I chose is only valid if you're using 1mil e/s and 2mil e/s reactors as the goal post.

I'm thinking 1.000348 may be ideal.

Merry Christmas. I fixed it for everyone by tweaking one extra value.

 

[Andir]

FYI: That's in \data\config\blockBehaviorConfig.xml for those looking.

 

[PriZm]

still dont understand the drama... even with the wrong 2 mil/ sec regen, it was far from being what some users claimed. ofc you could (still) build a big ship with some docked reactors, thats able to cloak/jam, but it wouldnt be able to do much besides cloaking/jamming. you basically would add more power regen (and tons of power supply beams as well as pwoer tanks to buffer the power generated) to maintain the mass the reactor brings with it. It just seems like with every change the developers make, some kiddies start to cry. The new power cap is fine! It was even before the 2nd hotfix, and ofc is with slower power regen increase. There is so much more passive systems that consume power now than there have been when the 1 mil/sec cap was introduced. Also, the armor/block mass update as well as the cargo update changed mass of ships, making them need more thrust, more blocks for passive effects to get the same efficiency etc. And the last thing i am worried about is cloakers becoming overpowered -.- i mean, really? we are talking about a system that need ~ 2 mil power /sec to cloak a ~1.2k mass ship... you can counter it with a 2 block scanner (scanner computer, scanner module) and clicking once, which forces a quite long cooldown for the cloaker to be able to cloak again. And, since the cloaker uses most its power/mass for the sake of cloaking, it wont have much more than some basic hull and a small shield for protection. How the **** is cloaking supposed to be/become OP with the actual cloaking system? Please stop crying about it. If you are worried about your big ship being harmed by an 1.2-1.4k mass cloaker, then i have to disappoint you. with some simple warhead carrying cloaker, you can harm a big ship with shields even with a MUCH smaller cloaker. Sorry if tldr... but i had to say that. Just read the main thread about the power regeneration and it still hurts to remember, what some players wrote there :/

 

[Winterhome]

still dont understand the drama... even with the wrong 2 mil/ sec regen, it was far from being what some users claimed. ofc you could (still) build a big ship with some docked reactors, thats able to cloak/jam, but it wouldnt be able to do much besides cloaking/jamming. you basically would add more power regen (and tons of power supply beams as well as pwoer tanks to buffer the power generated) to maintain the mass the reactor brings with it. It just seems like with every change the developers make, some kiddies start to cry. The new power cap is fine! It was even before the 2nd hotfix, and ofc is with slower power regen increase. There is so much more passive systems that consume power now than there have been when the 1 mil/sec cap was introduced. Also, the armor/block mass update as well as the cargo update changed mass of ships, making them need more thrust, more blocks for passive effects to get the same efficiency etc. And the last thing i am worried about is cloakers becoming overpowered -.- i mean, really? we are talking about a system that need ~ 2 mil power /sec to cloak a ~1.2k mass ship... you can counter it with a 2 block scanner (scanner computer, scanner module) and clicking once, which forces a quite long cooldown for the cloaker to be able to cloak again. And, since the cloaker uses most its power/mass for the sake of cloaking, it wont have much more than some basic hull and a small shield for protection. How the **** is cloaking supposed to be/become OP with the actual cloaking system? Please stop crying about it. If you are worried about your big ship being harmed by an 1.2-1.4k mass cloaker, then i have to disappoint you. with some simple warhead carrying cloaker, you can harm a big ship with shields even with a MUCH smaller cloaker. Sorry if tldr... but i had to say that. Just read the main thread about the power regeneration and it still hurts to remember, what some players wrote there :/

Jesus christ, man, for the tenth time, it's NOT about the CLOAKING. It's that Cloaking is a valid metric for how ridiculously overpowered something is.

If your ship can cloak, then you can safely put overdrive on every single weapon without running out of power - and in fact, to do so would be total lunacy. Every single weapon effect was totally worthless next to Overdrive because of this. EMP didn't work because there was no possible way to make a big enough gun to cripple a ship. Punch, Pierce, and Ion were worthless because their damage buffs couldn't hold a candle to overdrive. And don't even think about trying to defend against something with that much power - your shields will go in seconds, followed by your hull. And this was *every* ship's problem - not just a handful. It's like if all of a sudden an enemy army managed to give a one-man-crew battleship to every single soldier in the middle of WWII.

 

[PriZm]

i know. It simply isnt true. Show me the ship that has decent armour, good shields and weapons that you can permanently cloak and jam with the new power cap. I experimented a lot with both 2 mil/s configs. i managed to build a ship with ~1.2k mass, completely with basic hull, 100k shields (no ion effect, very low shield regen and a 320k damage nuke which i could use every 120 seconds and wasnt very effective due to the armor/ship hp update. And it also had a small jump drive and a tiny interior and lots of unused space cause of its dimensions being much bigger than needed for its mass/block count. That was with the 1st hotfix. With the 2nd this ship didnt work anymore (about 400k e/s missing). Any ship the same size that doesnt try to perma cloak/jam would have ripped this ship apart within seconds and tanked the nuke with ease.

If its about weapon/shield balance for you, then dont see my last post as adressed to people with your opinion. Indeed the first hotfix with super high power regen gain was too much (it was nice for cloakers but broke weapon power cost balance). But still, there wont be a weapon system with overdrive that is anywhere near efficient. Iirc it was 3 times damage for like 5 times power consumption. At least with the latest hotfix, overdrive weapons shouldnt be imbalanced anymore. They SHOULD imo be a good choice for smaller ships, making their weapons quite powerful for their size.

 

[Winterhome]

They SHOULD imo be a good choice for smaller ships, making their weapons quite powerful for their size.

I'm all for overdrive weapons being worth using on small ships, but I'm completely against them being the *only* choice for *any* ship size.

 

[PriZm]

They arent imo even since the recent update. i mean, you got 2x possible power regen for small ships, but overdrive costs 5x power. So you cant just make overdrive on all the weapons instead of the old effects used (at least not if it was an efficient ship - it would drain the power tanks). In fact, it would be more efficient to just double the weapon size and keep the old effect and not drain the ships powertanks. But anyway, they will change things concerning power within the next 2 weeks. Lets just wait and see what it will be like in the end. I think, what most people dont like about this change is, that everyone has to rebuild their old designs from the scratch. It is indeed a drastic change.

 

[Winterhome]

They arent imo even since the recent update. i mean, you got 2x possible power regen for small ships, but overdrive costs 5x power. So you cant just make overdrive on all the weapons instead of the old effects used (at least not if it was an efficient ship - it would drain the power tanks). In fact, it would be more efficient to just double the weapon size and keep the old effect and not drain the ships powertanks. But anyway, they will change things concerning power within the next 2 weeks. Lets just wait and see what it will be like in the end. I think, what most people dont like about this change is, that everyone has to rebuild their old designs from the scratch. It is indeed a drastic change.

The current state of things with the "normal" regen and the increased softcap is exactly what it needs to be. Power reactors, in general, though, aren't exactly a "major" part of a ship - they take up far fewer blocks than any other block type, unless we're talking about huge ships with reactor bricks. With the previous, broken regen values, the only option for refitting a ship was to rip out everything, downgrade to basic hull, and kit it out with high power overdrive machineguns.

 

[PriZm]

yeah, like in the other thread, i agree with the 1st patch being broken in terms of weapon power cost balance But i still wouldnt wanna fight with a ship that only has a big a** cannon... can be outranged too easily xD (i know it was more like an example)

 

[Master_Artificer]

I want to butt in on this topic so bad but I also know that I just shouldn't.

 

[PriZm]

why shouln't you? ^^

 

[Nickizzy]

I want to butt in on this topic so bad but I also know that I just shouldn't.

You just did, didn't you?

Cloakers can never have much of anything useful on them, everything would take too much power for it's size. I think cloaking should cost a lot less per mass (around 25)[I can just imagine everyone booing and hating me right now, just hear this out] but would have debuffs on every system but power(bc of the cost). Shields:2/3;Weapons:1/4;Thrusters:7/8.

This would allow big cloakers, but all cloakers would have debuffs and limitations. Maybe debuffs would start low(1/5 of what they are up top) but jump higher with size(leveling off around 5x what they are up top). Small cloaked fighters would still be effective, but larger cruisers would only be able to work when they outclassed their opponent or as smugglers(a cloaked millennium falcum!)

 

[GRHayes]

Since the drop of the patch and the changes to power generation and the power generation softcap several concerns have been raised. Most of the concerns that I have heard deal with Cloakers and I felt the need to talk about it and ask the thoughts of our fellow players. I would also like to make a few general suggestions on cloaking in general if I may.

First though, power.

Since the change in the latest patch the softcap has been moved from one million power to two million power. Now I haven't heard much if anything about this other than the increase from it, but this seems to be more of an issue with power generation having been increased as well. It seems some ships have "too much" power.

I hope I'm not rude in saying this, but if your ship has too much power then remove some of it. Use the space for shields, or thrusters, cargo, or even a break room for your crew. There is so much that can be done if there isn't as much space being taken up with power, but I don't believe that power is broken in its new state, I believe that it is just more condensed, not to mention that server settings can be adjusted if needed.

Now onto a though about cloakers that I'd like to talk about, but without making a suggestion more of talking out loud.

I believe that cloakers need a slight change if not a major. I believe that they need to move beyond their current power/mass state to a more creative form. Perhaps we should have to build them similar to the docking extenders of old so that they create a field around the ship. Perhaps they work easier on smaller ships but still allow larger ships to hide... unless a crew member sings the Soviet National Anthem.

I think that the biggest benefit to cloakers could come in the form of easy for small hard but not punishing for big ships, maybe make big ships really slow, kill the radars, kill the lights... or do the Klingon thing and kill the weapons and shields and make them have to cycle after dropping cloak.

I know this post is disjointed and a mess, but it is Four AM and I am a little crazy.

Please forgive me if I was rude, and happy building to all.

The 2 million power cap isn't an issue in my book. In fact it was needed for ships to be able to haul cargo and have it take up any reasonable amount of space in the ship. Otherwise simply cargo ships couldn't work as cargo ships. A lowly new player starting out would never be able to get any stored material while mining.

The real issue with power was what the devs recognized and fixed already and that was the gain or efficiency and they reduced that curve.

I wouldn't mind cloakers being done like rail enhancers if they would do something like give them a 10x10x10 cloaking field or larger and allowed connecting more than one to increase radius size because maybe you can't put one in a certain area because of what is there or that space needs to remain open such as a hanger area. you wouldn't want to be sticking a cloaking enhancer in a hanger and not be able to park your ship.

A simple NO on all the nerfs you mentioned. Things are ass backwards enough in this game. We have power systems that get less efficient with size, and countless other things that follow no logic or reality. Its enough to make a scienctist and engineer gag.

 

[alterintel]

Its enough to make a scienctist and engineer gag.

I would be a good idea to have a Scientist, or Engineer on hand for the Dev team to ask questions. I'm sure you or I wouldn't mind fielding a few questions for the devs if they PM'd us.

Maybe there should be a new thread "Ask the Engineer"

 

[GRHayes]

I would be a good idea to have a Scientist, or Engineer on hand for the Dev team to ask questions. I'm sure you or I wouldn't mind fielding a few questions for the devs if they PM'd us.

Maybe there should be a new thread "Ask the Engineer"

Devs know I am here by now they have no interest in it in that manner. They have an idea for the game which is fair its theirs.

 

[Chrisomega123]

For cloaking, what about calculating power consumption for the cloak based on the surface area of the ship? That way, rather than buffing generators, or nerfing power consumption on cloaking computers, it would just need a change in the function of how it calculates consumption. It could be curved to make large ships more difficult to cloak and whatnot, and it would allow more options in the creation of cloaked ships.
Maybe this has been explored already and shot down?
I hope this doesn't sound pushy, I just wanted to put an idea out there.