A few approaches to Ship Weaknesses/Integrity, Cargo Framework and Resources

[FullMetalFox]

Interceptor is quite an odd name. I thought interceptor were usually short range all-weather fighters, used mostly for taking out bombers then ballistic missiles. But whatever XD

Well EVE has some more mechanics that come into play on this those ships role, what i described is only how they fight, other than that they are immune to many inderdiction systems, warp faster than other ships, can lock onto targets extremely fast, and they have bonuses to scrambling their warp and sublight engines, so in ganking they literally do what the name says, they intercept enemy ships before they can escape of reach their destination. And Interceptor the name itself, its true that a class of fighter has been called interceptor, but many other things are also called like that, what they all have in common is simply that they are designed to intercept something.

That sounds a lot like a corvette.(Well, at least in several space games) 100-150m, really fast and nimble.

Nearly, althou that would be true for all Frigate Size Ships in EVE, Interceptors (And 2 Faction Frigates) are just the kings of speed, like most Frigates move betweet 400 and 600ms, or 3000 to 7000ms with micro warp drives, Interceptors (and said faction frigates) can reach 10000 to 14000ms if i remember right. Although in EVE there are a couple more mechanics like Signature Size used in Combat that also benefit Interceptors, but kinda hard to explain in a few words :x

I can see how that could be an issue then. :/
The annoying thing in starmade is that you have only one thing you can use to make simple enough calculation and determine the ship's class. That would be the volume.
If we don't use that as our variable in our equations, we'd probably need the player to tell us what class the ship is. But that would be pretty limiting.

Honest question, do we need Ship Classes? I mean in the end those are all over the Place same as with how Manufacturers Classify their Products. If its about seeing what an enemy ship might be, well you do have its Mass and Name, so that might be an Indicator, for example if i fly around with a 50k Mass ship will be cautios if i see something above that, if i see something below it, meh lets blow it.

There is also however, something else that could be done. Or at least something I thought about.
This tiering idea for systems that I brought up earlier, was partly born out of a desire to make fast corvettes to take out bombers and fighters, just like they do in Sins of a Solar Empire, or well something like the SpringBlossom in X3 (love that ship :D ).
It revolves around having to install a larger higher tier multi-block system thruster on something that's barely big enough to have it, like the kind of ship you're talking about. That means, based on the tier and weight, and output of the system, it might be much easier to get a better approximation of the top speed the player is looking for. And the sheer size of the multi-block structure implies the ship will be of the right class automatically by fitting it. Think of it a little like ship Meta-data, if that makes sense ^^;
(I was considering adding that in this thread, but I thought that with the thruster update eventually coming I'd get even more flak, and well, I'm don't really know much about that update yet frankly..) What do you think about something like that ?

I honestly dont like Tier based Mechanics in such open environments, when it could be done much simpler.
Okay this would be a large rant on game design, but to make it short:
In my opionion Starmade needs an "Average Flow", that means you take an average ship and look out of how many blocks its made viewed in percentages, that should create a rather ballanced and average jack of all trades like ship. What that average is also does depends on how players build, so you cant just take a currently average ship as those are based on a borken flow. Now say the average would be 10% of a ship is Thrusters, if something deviates from that Average Flow, it will lose and gain, say a ship now spots 30% Thrusters, it would be much more agile and faster, but for that it would need to sacrifice other blocks. Its pretty simple in theory, but highly complex in practice. The reason why this currently doesnt work is because Starmades Blocks arent ballanced against each other, some are basically just much more worth than others, and some soft and hard caps do even make it impossible on some blocks, like thrusters for example.

Would you think that making ammunition stores containing to scale missiles could help then ? And I mean by that, the missile tubes would be only that, tubes. And the missiles would be stored in a similar way as the cargo in the cargo system I mentioned, only the missiles would have to be full-size within the volume of the ammo store. So in essence, you could carry more less powerful missiles, but fewer really powerful ones, and you'd have to sacrifice space for it.
I know space might be an issue, and people can always build bigger. But a constraint like this is much more crippling because you'd need for each missile in stock a volume equal or lesser to your missile tube system, and the size would determine power more or less.

Like i explained earlier, in their current scale, ammo wouldnt make a difference in PVP, only PVE. So i think its not a viable solution,

I'm glad someone mention the "golden factor" XD
That something I noticed a lot of people seem to forget really often. People trying to punish the player instead of rewarding them and use positive reinforcement.
However, I tend to wonder if simulators aren't an exception sometimes.. Lots of tedious stuff, but what's really fun and seems to keep people playing, is the payoff or all their effort and the chores they had to put up with. I'm not saying that's an absolute truth for everyone though

Exceptions make the rule so to say XD
Joke aside, this is a good example for the fact that different people enjoy different things. I for exmaple know a few people in EVE who dont like any kind of combat, but they enjoy sitting in asteroid belt, mining the fuck out of some roids for hours, figuring out market trends in the Ingame market, producing stuff and selling it, they literally do nothing else since years... PVP, Exploration, Mission Running, nah they dont like that. For me personally thats like "WTF, that boring", for me as hobby game designer its an intriguing factor that such people do exist and actually are a very very important part of EVE community, without them EVE would not work. Same as with that there are different reasons why people play a game, most people do it for Fun, many still do it for fun but also other reasons, some do it for entirely differnt reasons. But yeah, before i ramble on this, this goes deep into Player Psychology and offering Game Play Diversity.

The more I read this the more I'm thinking its true that a one-size-fits-all solution won't work out very well.. But that's apparently what the devs are aiming for themselves :/
Its annoying how there are so many things interfering with each-others right now. Its as if everything was put together without considering how it would mess with the rest.

The funny thing is, the one-size-fits-all solution does exist, but its complex. Its called Game Design.
And all those many things interfering with each other, well thats were Starmades Game Design currently fails, because its not just inventing differnt Game Mechanics and throwing them into a pot to create a game, no its also making all those Mechanics work together to form an engaging and fun experience for the player. I dont know if Schine actually has somebody with Game Designs experience, but i have the feeling that they dont.

That's actually a pretty steep requirement IMO. 0_o
Well, for survival anyways..
I can't help but wonder if the average joe will really want to build into the 1,000,000 blocks ships, considering its so time consuming..
And I wonder if people playing the survival game mode, and having fleet battles either in PVE or PVP would have smaller ships than people playing something like battle mode or creative mode ?
Because that would really change everything about balance, because the costs and returns are different between survival and creative for example.. :/

Well all those servers were Survival XD
Let me tell you the story of one of my faction members, he joined, never played Starmade before, i explained him some stuff, he did go fly off with a small auto miner, mined some planets, build his first 15k mass ship, didnt work that well against the servers pirates, he lost and replaced it 2 times, bit later he replaced it with a 55k ship and upgraded it to a point were it was nearly 60k. That happends in les than 2 weeks, with a player that never played the game before, and maybe was 2-3 hours active a day. So right now, if you do the overpowered Planet Mining (or some other things work too), you can gain resources at stupidly high rates.

The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if Schine would cap ship size eventually..
I truly wonder what modern science would have to say about ships being the size/weight of a planet or something bigger trying to move around within a star system. (In starmade scale, those huge ships are larger than stars.. And thus weight more, if volume==mass applies to everything else.. )
The physics issues linked to that gotta be interesting.. You'd travel with your own star system orbiting your ship? Or maybe the ship would collapse on itself, given the strength and density of the material used probably wouldn't be enough to hold its own weight.. ಠ_ಠ

Well they already said they wont put a cap on that, but that we propably will gain a server config for it, so server owners can decide.
And honestly, Starmade is not really a good example for Physics, stuff in that game is so small, the suns and planets wont even have enough core mass to stay together. XD

 

[Psy_commando]

Well EVE has some more mechanics that come into play on this those ships role, what i described is only how they fight, other than that they are immune to many inderdiction systems, warp faster than other ships, can lock onto targets extremely fast, and they have bonuses to scrambling their warp and sublight engines, so in ganking they literally do what the name says, they intercept enemy ships before they can escape of reach their destination. And Interceptor the name itself, its true that a class of fighter has been called interceptor, but many other things are also called like that, what they all have in common is simply that they are designed to intercept something.

That sounds like it must be a little overpowered though, no ?

And true, I tend to forget space sims aren't only inspired from real-life navy and airforces ^^;

Nearly, althou that would be true for all Frigate Size Ships in EVE, Interceptors (And 2 Faction Frigates) are just the kings of speed, like most Frigates move betweet 400 and 600ms, or 3000 to 7000ms with micro warp drives, Interceptors (and said faction frigates) can reach 10000 to 14000ms if i remember right. Although in EVE there are a couple more mechanics like Signature Size used in Combat that also benefit Interceptors, but kinda hard to explain in a few words :x

That's pretty fast ! XD
Most capitals in X3 can only go up to a little under 200 m/s for the fastests. The largest capitals usually can't go much faster than a painfully slow 50m/s.
The fastest corvette in the game the Springblossom tops at 350 m/s, and it packs a big punch too. But that's a single player game only, and well, you can speed up the flow of time at will.

Honest question, do we need Ship Classes? I mean in the end those are all over the Place same as with how Manufacturers Classify their Products. If its about seeing what an enemy ship might be, well you do have its Mass and Name, so that might be an Indicator, for example if i fly around with a 50k Mass ship will be cautios if i see something above that, if i see something below it, meh lets blow it.

We don't really need them honestly. I don't really like how its applied to starmade by the community either. Just based on mass. That's too vague.
Going by archetypes for qualifying ships would do a better job IMO. You can combine archetypes, and it reflects better how the ship would behave than just some weight based classification. However, some kind of quantifier for knowing the firepower/threat level of a particular ship that follows one or several archetypes might be necessary in that case.

I honestly dont like Tier based Mechanics in such open environments, when it could be done much simpler.
Okay this would be a large rant on game design, but to make it short:
In my opionion Starmade needs an "Average Flow", that means you take an average ship and look out of how many blocks its made viewed in percentages, that should create a rather ballanced and average jack of all trades like ship. What that average is also does depends on how players build, so you cant just take a currently average ship as those are based on a borken flow. Now say the average would be 10% of a ship is Thrusters, if something deviates from that Average Flow, it will lose and gain, say a ship now spots 30% Thrusters, it would be much more agile and faster, but for that it would need to sacrifice other blocks. Its pretty simple in theory, but highly complex in practice. The reason why this currently doesnt work is because Starmades Blocks arent ballanced against each other, some are basically just much more worth than others, and some soft and hard caps do even make it impossible on some blocks, like thrusters for example.

Well, its not truly "tiers", in that, each tiers has still something worthwhile about it even in comparison to higher ones. Even though higher ones would have much improved output. And well, its not really very complicated. I mean in comparison to other approaches.

And if I understand correctly, you mean basically making a template ship, and comparing it to what the player made ? That's one way of doing it, but wouldn't that pretty much end up being the same as using a curve for all individual parts ? And well, if you use percentages of the ship's total blocks for calculating effectiveness of a system, that means people will be more prone to "min/max-ing" and just cram the whole thing with systems, no ?

I really wish we'd have access to the game's source, it would make testing things like that possible XD

Like i explained earlier, in their current scale, ammo wouldnt make a difference in PVP, only PVE. So i think its not a viable solution,

Well, its wasn't the exact same thing. Given the space needed by the modules for firing at max damage output the weapon is multiplied by the amount of shot a ship can fire before refilling its ammo store.

But, yeah.. I guess someone could still make a gigantic single shot missile launcher of doom... So nvm mind that..

Exceptions make the rule so to say XD
Joke aside, this is a good example for the fact that different people enjoy different things. I for exmaple know a few people in EVE who dont like any kind of combat, but they enjoy sitting in asteroid belt, mining the fuck out of some roids for hours, figuring out market trends in the Ingame market, producing stuff and selling it, they literally do nothing else since years... PVP, Exploration, Mission Running, nah they dont like that. For me personally thats like "WTF, that boring", for me as hobby game designer its an intriguing factor that such people do exist and actually are a very very important part of EVE community, without them EVE would not work. Same as with that there are different reasons why people play a game, most people do it for Fun, many still do it for fun but also other reasons, some do it for entirely differnt reasons. But yeah, before i ramble on this, this goes deep into Player Psychology and offering Game Play Diversity.

That's true, there are people playing the same game for a lot of reasons XD
And it often even creates conflict in the playerbase too.

For some reasons, sometimes I keep playing games even though I'm not really having fun or I'm not being entertained.. And yet, I just keep playing.. Harvest Moon on the SNES was a good example of that.. That game feels so pointless to play, but its somewhat addictive, and you just go along with it.. XD

The funny thing is, the one-size-fits-all solution does exist, but its complex. Its called Game Design.
And all those many things interfering with each other, well thats were Starmades Game Design currently fails, because its not just inventing differnt Game Mechanics and throwing them into a pot to create a game, no its also making all those Mechanics work together to form an engaging and fun experience for the player. I dont know if Schine actually has somebody with Game Designs experience, but i have the feeling that they dont.

Well, when I said one-size-fits-all, I was thinking more of a single model for rating ship performances. Because small crafts have needs that larger crafts do not share implicitly, and vice-versa. And so do medium sized ships. And then, you need to factor in the intended role of the ship...
The only things that the devs can use to know some of those things are what blocks are used on the ship. But, they're reusing them and making them extremely generic, so that, the presence of blocks can't indicate for sure what kind of ship is being built.

And well, I don't think its really a question of experience, but maybe more a question of approach. Or maybe, the skipping of a bunch of important game design steps. Like coming up with a more or less definitive set of features.
And, the fact that the devs are so reticent in giving us an actual long-term roadmap leads me to believe there is no design document, or anything planned for the long term :/
And, well, IMO if that keeps on, the game might end up with some serious feature creep issues.

And, yeah, they'd definitely need to look at the bigger picture a little more if they want to make the game engaging !
Its sad though, because the first 5 minutes of the game are really interesting. Being dropped in the unknown with just a little money and some parts. But then everything becomes blurry because you don't really have any immediate pressing issues to deal with. Or well, you don't have an obvious next step I mean.

Well all those servers were Survival XD
Let me tell you the story of one of my faction members, he joined, never played Starmade before, i explained him some stuff, he did go fly off with a small auto miner, mined some planets, build his first 15k mass ship, didnt work that well against the servers pirates, he lost and replaced it 2 times, bit later he replaced it with a 55k ship and upgraded it to a point were it was nearly 60k. That happends in les than 2 weeks, with a player that never played the game before, and maybe was 2-3 hours active a day. So right now, if you do the overpowered Planet Mining (or some other things work too), you can gain resources at stupidly high rates.

Yes, but I meant survival without infinite resources XP

That's an interesting story. I never did planet mining, because planets are a lag fest for me when in orbit around them. The chunks are loaded and unloaded over and over again, and once I start salvaging I get a whole lot of ghost blocks and blocks get mined unevenly. And, I never completed an automated miner, because all my attempts got blown up in pirate raids.. So I had to do it manually.. >_<
Its not nearly as lucrative to say the least.

And as for building larger ships, since I had no resources to make armor/hull, I had to buy it by selling pirate loot, but shops never ever restock nearly enough armor or hull for it to be useful :/

I guess I really should give a try to playing on properly modded servers if I want to have a better paced experience.. But, I'm not usually in the mood to deal with griefing, overly aggressive players, losing my stuff somewhere deep in the void, and etc.. (I wish the galaxy map would show owned ships or sighted ships..)

Well they already said they wont put a cap on that, but that we propably will gain a server config for it, so server owners can decide.
And honestly, Starmade is not really a good example for Physics, stuff in that game is so small, the suns and planets wont even have enough core mass to stay together. XD

Yeah, I saw them answering that in some QA. But since they're pretty much aiming for a very small limited scale, like the dodecahedron planets approach, the "tiny" systems, and etc seems to indicate, they haven't really enhanced anything to make things possibly bigger. And well, arms races always tend to create a snowball effect.. I wonder how many system-sized ships the game could take at once ? XP

And yeah, its not really a perfect recreation of the laws of physics to say the least..
I was just more or less pondering on how much reality should be taken into account in ship design XD

 

[FullMetalFox]

That sounds like it must be a little overpowered though, no ?

Nah, they are pretty vital to fleet operations and ganking, but not overpowered, for example in my Alliance days i used to fly interceptors in fleet ops, there my job wasnt tackling anything or what so ever, but to quickly approach enemy artillery formations, and let my group jump out of warp right on top of them. Other ships would have a hard time doing that, unles they can cloak, and cloaked ships are slower. In the end, they are as more of a support role, while being hard to hit due to their size and speed, and being able to tackle stuff better than most other ships, they do suffer from a rather poor performance in DPS, and should they get hit, well say good night.

That's pretty fast ! XD
Most capitals in X3 can only go up to a little under 200 m/s for the fastests. The largest capitals usually can't go much faster than a painfully slow 50m/s.
The fastest corvette in the game the Springblossom tops at 350 m/s, and it packs a big punch too. But that's a single player game only, and well, you can speed up the flow of time at will.

The X-Series is one of the slowpoke space games IMHO :P
But yeah, in EVE stuff can go pretty fast, but thats also a requierement when ships fight on distances ranging from a few kilometers to hundrets of kilometers.

We don't really need them honestly. I don't really like how its applied to starmade by the community either. Just based on mass. That's too vague.
Going by archetypes for qualifying ships would do a better job IMO. You can combine archetypes, and it reflects better how the ship would behave than just some weight based classification. However, some kind of quantifier for knowing the firepower/threat level of a particular ship that follows one or several archetypes might be necessary in that case.

Mass gives you a good idea of the size of a ship, and when you do know how ships are build in starmade, you can guess what they could be capable of. This actually gives collecting intel on your enemy a value
So you want some designation system to make it easier to see what a ship might be? How do you imagine that?

Well, its not truly "tiers", in that, each tiers has still something worthwhile about it even in comparison to higher ones. Even though higher ones would have much improved output. And well, its not really very complicated. I mean in comparison to other approaches.

Im all open for different types of systems, say different types of thrusters with different benefits and drawbacks, but i dont really like tiers, and "improved output" kinda hinds at tiers :P

And if I understand correctly, you mean basically making a template ship, and comparing it to what the player made ? That's one way of doing it, but wouldn't that pretty much end up being the same as using a curve for all individual parts ? And well, if you use percentages of the ship's total blocks for calculating effectiveness of a system, that means people will be more prone to "min/max-ing" and just cram the whole thing with systems, no ?

No, this the "basic template ship" would just be a mathematical equasion to gain an overview of what an average ship is made out of, then scale the blocks so that they do work with it. If a player now deviates from that equasion, his ship naturally will have a different performance profile, simply be the blocks his ship is made out of. Again the 10% of a ships blocks being thruster blocks example, say thats the average, now if a player uses more thruster blocks, he will have to sacrifice other system blocks, so he gets a more agile and faster ship, but for that it will be lacking in other departments.

In essence this is happening right now, but it doesnt work as it should because the blocks are not ballanced. Weapons blocks for example are currently just much more usefull and valuable than shields, thruster or defensive effects, so everybody cuts back on those to fit more weapons, because what use is a tiny bit more shield? What use is accelerating a bit more if your still so slow? What use is some lame defensive effect that needs 5 or 10% of your ships block count? (Exceptions are only Ion and Overdrive on Combat Ships)
What use is all that when your weapons are so mighty, that they outweight everything else?

Well, when I said one-size-fits-all, I was thinking more of a single model for rating ship performances. Because small crafts have needs that larger crafts do not share implicitly, and vice-versa. And so do medium sized ships. And then, you need to factor in the intended role of the ship...
The only things that the devs can use to know some of those things are what blocks are used on the ship. But, they're reusing them and making them extremely generic, so that, the presence of blocks can't indicate for sure what kind of ship is being built

"single model for rating ship performances"?

Its true that different ships sizes have differnt needs and qualities, at least in a nearly perfect game. I have some ideas how this could be done in an intuetive and fluent way, but i honestly wont disclose those ideas right now after some experiences with some members of this community.

And well, I don't think its really a question of experience, but maybe more a question of approach. Or maybe, the skipping of a bunch of important game design steps. Like coming up with a more or less definitive set of features.

Like i said, i dont know if thats the case or not, but it does feel like it.

Yes, but I meant survival without infinite resources XP
That's an interesting story. I never did planet mining, because planets are a lag fest for me when in orbit around them.

Um, those were all without infinite resources XD
Most of them even had the default configs on Salvaging and Bonuses, some even had restrictions in terms of Maximum amount of Salvage Beams per ship, so i could never use one of the really big salvagers.
Well since youve never were able to do large scale planet mining, planet mining is the main reason for the abundance of blocks, as its quiet easy, 8-16 hours (depending on luck) on default settings and i can build a salvager than can eat whole planets in les than half an hour. 1-2 more planets and it could become a salvager that can eat planets in minutes, and lag servers to death XD

So yeah, right now, asteroid mining is very low in its yield, and planet mining is stupidly overpowered. Also, i do hope you did make a faction and claim the system, this even works in Single Player, and grants you a mining bonus of 12x (on default configs) in your own claimed systems.

Yeah, I saw them answering that in some QA. But since they're pretty much aiming for a very small limited scale, like the dodecahedron planets approach, the "tiny" systems, and etc seems to indicate, they haven't really enhanced anything to make things possibly bigger. And well, arms races always tend to create a snowball effect.. I wonder how many system-sized ships the game could take at once ? XP

And yeah, its not really a perfect recreation of the laws of physics to say the least..
I was just more or less pondering on how much reality should be taken into account in ship design XD

I guess this is more something like: They did not expect this scale.
Simply, player took their game to levels they didnt imagine, and they rather should adapt to the average, embrace the new level players took the game too, or even better, suprise them and give them something even greater... (And no, im not talking about ship sizes :P)

 

[Psy_commando]

Nah, they are pretty vital to fleet operations and ganking, but not overpowered, for example in my Alliance days i used to fly interceptors in fleet ops, there my job wasnt tackling anything or what so ever, but to quickly approach enemy artillery formations, and let my group jump out of warp right on top of them. Other ships would have a hard time doing that, unles they can cloak, and cloaked ships are slower. In the end, they are as more of a support role, while being hard to hit due to their size and speed, and being able to tackle stuff better than most other ships, they do suffer from a rather poor performance in DPS, and should they get hit, well say good night.

That's interesting to see how far devs can go to make some really intricate strategy possible, and maintaining balance at that. I wonder if the EVE devs ever wrote articles about how they balanced that game ? It sounds like it would be an interesting read !

The X-Series is one of the slowpoke space games IMHO :p
But yeah, in EVE stuff can go pretty fast, but thats also a requierement when ships fight on distances ranging from a few kilometers to hundrets of kilometers.

That is so true XD The fastest ship in the game has no weapons and it flies at 1,400 m/s I think? The fastest one with weapons is the pirate kestrel that can go up to ~600 m/s. And its just a light scout.
It has to be the slowest space game I ever played.. But it somehow still manages to redeem itself even though its clunky, and tedious, and etc..

I'm hoping the devs will eventually fix the physics and chunk loading issues that prevent higher speeds in starmade. Because if not then, starmade would be even slower than X3, but without SETA XD

Mass gives you a good idea of the size of a ship, and when you do know how ships are build in starmade, you can guess what they could be capable of. This actually gives collecting intel on your enemy a value
So you want some designation system to make it easier to see what a ship might be? How do you imagine that?

Of course. But I mean, if you've got a huge "freighter" or scavenger, its not exactly as threatening as a warship of the same size. Yet its mass would leave you with the wrong impression. Of course, that's probably not the best example..
But I mean, in real-life, certain types of warships have usually a role that comes with their designation. And that roles is tied to the way it fights, its defenses, and etc.. Its changes over time and a little between navies, but its generally very similar. While in starmade, those roles may vary much more as the game becomes more "flexible". Especially once something is done about the weapons.

And, I'm not sure a designation system is really going to work out too well.
But maybe just insist more on what are the ship's capabilities and/or have some kind of quantifier for that ? Like, most Isanth in the game have a few extra letters next to their names that indicates what weapon they're using. And that's a good start but it lacks a "quantifier".. Maybe try something a little like "hashtags", or other meta-data the game would attribute to ships ?

Perhaps a firepower unit to determine the total firepower of a ship could be useful ? Maybe based on the strongest Isanth or something ? I mean, we're still using horse power to determine the power of an engine XD

I didn't really give all this much of a thought to be honest. I just feel it would make communication easier sometimes. Either between players, or between the game and the player. And I just don't like the idea that people are using weight alone to determine a class of ship. Historically, they've been considering lengths and weight, probably because of the advent of the ironclad warships. And its pretty likely block weights are going to change eventually. Partly considering the upcoming more physic based approach for the center of mass and etc..

Im all open for different types of systems, say different types of thrusters with different benefits and drawbacks, but i dont really like tiers, and "improved output" kinda hinds at tiers :p

Well, if you look at the sidegrades in TF2, they managed to do it with even with an "increased output" to deal with.
The default rocket launcher for the soldier class has 4 rockets and fires them one at a time. And a sidegrade of that same launcher is called the Beggar's Bazooka. It basically has a magazine of 3 rounds, fires all 3 in quick succession, but you have to load it right before firing it, and if you hold the reload button after you've got all 3 rockets in, you damage yourself.
In essence, you get a huge boost to your damage output in a short amount of time, but you have to deal with the other issues that comes with it. This means that the default rocket launcher is still just as good, but maybe less in some situations where the BB would excel.

What's wrong with tiers ? I know you mentioned you didn't like them in more open settings, but I'm still not too sure what might be the issue with them ? ^^;
I mean, they're literally everywhere in gaming. Most of the time they're hidden though, but by digging a little you can notice them. And well, it seems other approaches to balance tend to end up working like tiers anyways.

No, this the "basic template ship" would just be a mathematical equasion to gain an overview of what an average ship is made out of, then scale the blocks so that they do work with it. If a player now deviates from that equasion, his ship naturally will have a different performance profile, simply be the blocks his ship is made out of. Again the 10% of a ships blocks being thruster blocks example, say thats the average, now if a player uses more thruster blocks, he will have to sacrifice other system blocks, so he gets a more agile and faster ship, but for that it will be lacking in other departments.

In essence this is happening right now, but it doesnt work as it should because the blocks are not ballanced. Weapons blocks for example are currently just much more usefull and valuable than shields, thruster or defensive effects, so everybody cuts back on those to fit more weapons, because what use is a tiny bit more shield? What use is accelerating a bit more if your still so slow? What use is some lame defensive effect that needs 5 or 10% of your ships block count? (Exceptions are only Ion and Overdrive on Combat Ships)
What use is all that when your weapons are so mighty, that they outweight everything else?

But, then, how do you determine the average ship ? Particularly because ships can have an unlimited size. That would possibly be biased either towards larger one or smaller ones, no ? And well, transport and exploration ships, and warships usually do not share the same needs in terms of blocks.

That's what I meant when I said a one-size-fits-all solution might not work out too well. And as the game evolves the differences will most likely become even more complex to deal with a single reference system.
Logically, I doubt there are really any ways around it. The devs will have to put some kind of limitation somewhere, or find a way of discriminating between ships types/roles to be able to set rules to balance them out..

That's where I trying to go with the "tiers" idea in my OP more or less. For example the power need is also a decent indication of the kind of ship a system is used on, and since higher tiers have a larger output but are larger because they're combinations of other blocks, it means intentionally smaller design are less likely to use higher tiers. And you could base some calculation on the presence of higher tiers on a ship to handle balance.
I can't say it if it would work, but I thought it was possibly a step in the right direction.

And yes, the blocks not being balanced are certainly a big problem right now. But, as we've been discussing, I'm thinking more and more having to chose one different system over another might not be the best "implicit cost" to use for balancing ships. Mainly because of the unlimited size, and well the way every parts are generic and so you don't have to adapt your overall design to the way more specific parts would work.
Or at least space should not be the only "implicit cost". Of course, power is another cost, but needing more power doesn't really ever feels like a big obstacle at all.. Probably because there is never any issues with constantly increasing the count of power reactor blocks. I mean, there is rarely a sweet spot size you'd want to be at, unless you're making a particular design. But I mean, in terms of statistics, there aren't all that many obvious downsides to adding up power blocks and making the ship bigger.

"single model for rating ship performances"?

I meant, one set of equations you apply to every ships built. And that even though some would work better with more specifics approaches perhaps. Like for steering a capital ship, you'd probably favor a different system than for a fighter, given how much longer it takes. Or maybe you'd want to approach missiles differently when used on capital ships. Or maybe, change the way thruster works but with some exceptions at certain sizes or for some kinds of ships.

A simple math formula will most of the time obey a curve, but some of those things might require a more customized handling.

Its true that different ships sizes have differnt needs and qualities, at least in a nearly perfect game. I have some ideas how this could be done in an intuetive and fluent way, but i honestly wont disclose those ideas right now after some experiences with some members of this community.

I really can't blame you for not wanting to share them.. <_<
I've been lurking for a while, before deciding to make an account, just because I had the feeling the community seemed a little "toxic". Or well, aggressive maybe.. The kind of place where some mentalities are enforced over others, by the members..

And now I somewhat regret it a little, because most of my posts here ended up being about trying to talk some sense into people being dicks to others under the guise of "debate". And well, you've seen how well this very thread got received XD
I wish the mods would try to attempt more to keep a healthy discussion environment. It could help avoid scaring off people with different opinions from discussing, because the locals gang up on them with bogus reasons, such as "you can't post your suggestions in a suggestion forum" XD

Um, those were all without infinite resources XD
Most of them even had the default configs on Salvaging and Bonuses, some even had restrictions in terms of Maximum amount of Salvage Beams per ship, so i could never use one of the really big salvagers.
Well since youve never were able to do large scale planet mining, planet mining is the main reason for the abundance of blocks, as its quiet easy, 8-16 hours (depending on luck) on default settings and i can build a salvager than can eat whole planets in les than half an hour. 1-2 more planets and it could become a salvager that can eat planets in minutes, and lag servers to death XD

Well, if you can get such quantities of resources nearly at will, that's pretty much infinite at this point. :p
But yeah, I guess, I should get to planet mining then XD

And now that you mention it, I wonder if using those salvagers on stations or ships cause as much lag ?
Because I'm under the impression planets have some serious issues with the way blocks are handled on them.. I can get close to stations and ships nearly 2 times larger than a planet, and they loads instantly or nearly. But a planet's chunks load time is ridiculous, nearly everytime you visit it.

So yeah, right now, asteroid mining is very low in its yield, and planet mining is stupidly overpowered. Also, i do hope you did make a faction and claim the system, this even works in Single Player, and grants you a mining bonus of 12x (on default configs) in your own claimed systems.

At first I didn't claim the system, because I was afraid it might trigger angry patriotic pirate raids or something. ^^;
But then I turned it on after reading it gave a mining boost.

However, after a while I just moved on to hunting pirates for resources and credits. I made like 50 millions in a few hours. I had to travel around the galaxy to sell stuff however, given the shops don't have much money XD
It really helps to have a relatively big ship with an automated sorting system ! (Even though the "pick up" system inside a ship is still annoying as hell..)

I guess this is more something like: They did not expect this scale.
Simply, player took their game to levels they didnt imagine, and they rather should adapt to the average, embrace the new level players took the game too, or even better, suprise them and give them something even greater... (And no, im not talking about ship sizes :p)

That's quite possible now that you mention it XD

I just wonder if its possible to take voxels further with their current setup. They're really computationally intensive and limiting in what you can do with individual voxels by nature. But I guess we'll see. They'll need to make a breakthrough and optimize everything yet again, if we want to see greater things done in the game IMO.

 

[FullMetalFox]

I wonder if the EVE devs ever wrote articles about how they balanced that game ?

They did many of those posts, i bet its in the hundrets after the game runs for over 10 years now. But finding and reading them all, from the beginning to the current, i guess thats a dauting task XD

Like, most Isanth in the game have a few extra letters next to their names that indicates what weapon they're using.

Hmmm, ill give this some though, i would like to revamp scanning and sensor feeds, as well as the whole targeting system, maybe i can come up with an idea that would provide this based on a ships block composition.

Well, if you look at the sidegrades in TF2

Oh damn, TF2, yeah i know those very well, i always have to restrain myself from not going Lochnload Demo, Boot Soldier or PuffNSting Pyro... in short, not only are Demomans, Soldiers and Pyros quiet a bit OP if players reach those classes Skill Caps, but those "Sidegrades" are very often nearly upgrades, some stuff i quiet situational, some stuff is simply stupid and unsuable, some stuff is just above everything else.
But yeah, thats what i meant with things that work differently, like for example the default pipe launcher vs the iron bomber, the overall performance is very similar. The Lochnload would be a good example of being slightly OP, if you can direct hit, Lochnload all day, not reason not too.

What's wrong with tiers ? I know you mentioned you didn't like them in more open settings, but I'm still not too sure what might be the issue with them ? ^^;
I mean, they're literally everywhere in gaming. Most of the time they're hidden though, but by digging a little you can notice them. And well, it seems other approaches to balance tend to end up working like tiers anyways.

There are some games that did a not so tier like balance, but this also all depends on the game. In some RPG, sure tiers all day. Some first person shooter, GTFO. Now Starmade is a voxel sandbox, many ways of doing stuff, but any Tier (Tier implies that something is higher than something else for a reason) would imply that there is some block that just outright better, if thats the basic blocks ships are made out of, well that could turn pretty ugly, i dont want to imagine some titan filled with *insert one of the 0815 tier blocks suggestsed for small ships*.

So sidegrades/alternatives are okay in my book, as long as they have valid benefits and drawbacks. For example a Thruster with more output but more engergy use, would not be okay, that would be a straight upgrade allowing you to squeeze more thrust in the same space, making it a tier2 thruster.

But, then, how do you determine the average ship ? Particularly because ships can have an unlimited size. That would possibly be biased either towards larger one or smaller ones, no ? And well, transport and exploration ships, and warships usually do not share the same needs in terms of blocks.

The unlimited size is actually the beatiful thing about this, block based + the thing i wont reveal until its done XD (Which takes care of the needs of different sized ships, so much i can at least share.)
And this theoretical average model is essentially a jack of all trades example, like if somebody would build a ship that can do everything, but nothing good, if a player than deviates from this his ship naturally will have a different profile. Say a pure combat ship, wont need much cargo space, fewer sensor/scanning equip, fewer jump drive modules, not much *insert other future blocks here*, so he will have more weapons and such than this theoretical ship, which makes his ship a combat ship. Should someone stuff a ton of cargo space in his ship and a big jump drive, well he will have les other blocks, that would make his ship a freighter.

In short, same as right now, this theoretical ship is just used as a base model to balance the single blocks.

Probably because there is never any issues with constantly increasing the count of power reactor blocks. I mean, there is rarely a sweet spot size you'd want to be at, unless you're making a particular design. But I mean, in terms of statistics, there aren't all that many obvious downsides to adding up power blocks and making the ship bigger.

Thats pretty wrong for larger ships. If you need a tiny bit more than 1 million e/S, well okay spamm a few reactor blocks to gain 25 e/S per block. If you need more than a tiny bit, docked reactors, much more space efficient. The reason for this is the reactors soft cap of 1.000.000 e/S, any block above this gives you only 25 e/S extra.

I really can't blame you for not wanting to share them.. <_<

Well the toxic part is one reason, the other is that people tend to take some idea they like, spent 5 minutes brain time on it, and then spam some idiotic suggestion thread on their 5 minute brain fart... Right now i dont have much time to work on it, but lets just say the basics of it is simple, anybody could take the base and make something out of it, but to make it work and actually benefit the game, you need a lot of time to work it out, yet even more to explain it as a whole. (you may have noticed, my not that good im explaining stuff)

Because I'm under the impression planets have some serious issues with the way blocks are handled on them..

Not only that, but also the issue of hit detection. No matter what you spam with a gazillion salvage beams, if its at an angle, the hit detection goes bonkers and it gets laggy as hell, on planets with all their plates at angles + their apparently already strange issues = oh god the lag.

They'll need to make a breakthrough and optimize everything yet again, if we want to see greater things done in the game IMO.

The thing about optimization is, do some minor optimization now, but keep the rest for later, if you make any large changes, youll have to do the whole optimization again...

 

[Psy_commando]

Sorry for the late reply, this week has been pretty busy on my end. And well the E3 didn't help.. ^^;

They did many of those posts, i bet its in the hundrets after the game runs for over 10 years now. But finding and reading them all, from the beginning to the current, i guess thats a dauting task XD

Well, maybe I'll pass then ^^;
Knowing myself I'd probably read them all.... XD

Oh damn, TF2, yeah i know those very well, i always have to restrain myself from not going Lochnload Demo, Boot Soldier or PuffNSting Pyro... in short, not only are Demomans, Soldiers and Pyros quiet a bit OP if players reach those classes Skill Caps, but those "Sidegrades" are very often nearly upgrades, some stuff i quiet situational, some stuff is simply stupid and unsuable, some stuff is just above everything else.
But yeah, thats what i meant with things that work differently, like for example the default pipe launcher vs the iron bomber, the overall performance is very similar. The Lochnload would be a good example of being slightly OP, if you can direct hit, Lochnload all day, not reason not too.

They seriously nerfed the puffnsting pyro, the axtinguisher is much less effective now than it used to be.

And well, the splash on the loch and load and direct hit is pretty small, so against large numbers/sentry nests, its not very useful. And good pyros can make you regret using the direct hit/loch and load XD
Personally, I'm much more afraid of demoknights.. They can come in flying from everywhere and turn on a dime and one shot you.. They move faster than the speed of lag.. XP
The demoman is just a really scary class overall D:

But the funny thing with TF2 is that after all those years playing, it seems anything can be OP in that game depending on who is using it...

Of course, its very possible to do sidegrades better than TF2 did..

There are some games that did a not so tier like balance, but this also all depends on the game. In some RPG, sure tiers all day. Some first person shooter, GTFO. Now Starmade is a voxel sandbox, many ways of doing stuff, but any Tier (Tier implies that something is higher than something else for a reason) would imply that there is some block that just outright better, if thats the basic blocks ships are made out of, well that could turn pretty ugly, i dont want to imagine some titan filled with *insert one of the 0815 tier blocks suggestsed for small ships*.

So sidegrades/alternatives are okay in my book, as long as they have valid benefits and drawbacks. For example a Thruster with more output but more engergy use, would not be okay, that would be a straight upgrade allowing you to squeeze more thrust in the same space, making it a tier2 thruster.

Minecraft makes use of tiers a lot for one. Tools are tiered, and materials are tiered.
New materials unlocks access to new places through portals, and etc.. Which in turns allow access to new materials.

I guess I shouldn't have used the word tier in the first place.. But I'm not sure how to name those exactly..

The unlimited size is actually the beatiful thing about this, block based + the thing i wont reveal until its done XD (Which takes care of the needs of different sized ships, so much i can at least share.)
And this theoretical average model is essentially a jack of all trades example, like if somebody would build a ship that can do everything, but nothing good, if a player than deviates from this his ship naturally will have a different profile. Say a pure combat ship, wont need much cargo space, fewer sensor/scanning equip, fewer jump drive modules, not much *insert other future blocks here*, so he will have more weapons and such than this theoretical ship, which makes his ship a combat ship. Should someone stuff a ton of cargo space in his ship and a big jump drive, well he will have les other blocks, that would make his ship a freighter.

In short, same as right now, this theoretical ship is just used as a base model to balance the single blocks.

I'm really curious about how you're intending to do all that !
I'm really skeptical about that, but again, you seem to have a good understanding of the way the game works..

And I can already hear people yelling "muh creotivty !" at the prospect of having their ship's performances rated against another ship :p

Thats pretty wrong for larger ships. If you need a tiny bit more than 1 million e/S, well okay spamm a few reactor blocks to gain 25 e/S per block. If you need more than a tiny bit, docked reactors, much more space efficient. The reason for this is the reactors soft cap of 1.000.000 e/S, any block above this gives you only 25 e/S extra.

Yes, but even if it gives you only 25e/s past 1 million e/s, its nothing you can't fix by adding more of them, no ? Through docked reactors or otherwise.
Really, the downside is that you might need more blocks/space for blocks. And that's my point. In the end it seems all comes down to space. And well, you got as much space as you want, with no real incentive not to build smaller..
That was the reasoning there.

Well the toxic part is one reason, the other is that people tend to take some idea they like, spent 5 minutes brain time on it, and then spam some idiotic suggestion thread on their 5 minute brain fart... Right now i dont have much time to work on it, but lets just say the basics of it is simple, anybody could take the base and make something out of it, but to make it work and actually benefit the game, you need a lot of time to work it out, yet even more to explain it as a whole. (you may have noticed, my not that good im explaining stuff)

Well most people always seems to think about what they're going to post for about 5 minutes anyways. Its to be expected really. Nothing really worth getting annoyed over when you can just ignore it and move on IMO.

And that's fine. Though, if anything, I learned that it doesn't matter how much time you put into a suggestion around here.. It might still be a huge waste of time. Especially if its any longer than a single paragraph, since there seems to be a TL;DR epidemic around these parts..
I wish I could have made a prototype with my stuff, but writing a voxel engine from scratch isn't really something I'd like to do for submitting a suggestion, and well there is no mod API right now ^^;

Not only that, but also the issue of hit detection. No matter what you spam with a gazillion salvage beams, if its at an angle, the hit detection goes bonkers and it gets laggy as hell, on planets with all their plates at angles + their apparently already strange issues = oh god the lag.

That's really weird, because raytracing should be one of the fastest operation.. Angles shouldn't have any real impacts in this..
It might just have to do with finding out what block got hit in a chunk..

I read a couple of articles on voxel engines like minecraft, and they seemed to indicate that iteration was the main culprit for stealing CPU time. And depending on how your blocks are accessed in a chunk, pinpointing a single block could require a lot of iteration depending on how its made.
Couple that with a constant beam, potentially ray-tracing each frames or every few frames, and you got a recipe for a lagfest when you're using more than a single one! :/

So this might have to do with how the chunks are stored. I heard that starmade might be using octrees but apparently that's not exactly the fastest idea even if its fairly common : http://0fps.net/2012/01/14/an-analysis-of-minecraft-like-engines/

The thing about optimization is, do some minor optimization now, but keep the rest for later, if you make any large changes, youll have to do the whole optimization again...

Yes and no... Yes, you probably don't want to optimize prototypes, or little tests you're writing to try something out, because those will change and you'll have to re-write everything.

But no, unless you did some really hacky optimization on your "production" code, you won't need to re-optimize everything everytimes. And if you actually do optimize as you go, you won't need to optimize nearly as much after most things are coded.

Most of the worthwhile optimization lies in each individual components/scopes. Not globally.

The only exception might be when you're working on something unpredictable/not planned out. For example, I've been doing reverse engineering lately, and since some things might work in a completely different way than you thought, you'll skip on optimizing anything until you're sure you've nailed the process.
But then again, there is a lot less code involved in that project, than in writing a game, so its much more manageable.

 

[FullMetalFox]

Sorry for the late reply, this week has been pretty busy on my end. And well the E3 didn't help.. ^^;

Dont worry, no need to appologize for something like that.
I know being busy pretty well as a freelancer, and yeah E3 and Steam Summer Sale didnt help XD
So many games, so little time...

They seriously nerfed the puffnsting pyro, the axtinguisher is much less effective now than it used to be.

True, but that nerf changed how Puff N Sting Pyros play, in the end making them more diverse, IMHO even more dangerously as they are not so much focused on hitting you with a Meele Weapon. Now 90% of the time you Double Puff with your Degreaser (Short Fire Burst + Airblast) and then Sting (Mini-Crit) them with your Flare Gun. Or, if you are in range for meele, dont Airblast, hit them with the Flaregun and then the Powerjack to get some HP back, or if youre Classic, Axtinguisher and Postal Pummeler still do Crits on hits on the back, and Mini-Crits on the front, quiet often somebody will turn around and try to flee after getting Puffed and Stinged, so full Crits are still very common.

And well, the splash on the loch and load and direct hit is pretty small, so against large numbers/sentry nests, its not very useful. And good pyros can make you regret using the direct hit/loch and load XD
Personally, I'm much more afraid of demoknights.. They can come in flying from everywhere and turn on a dime and one shot you.. They move faster than the speed of lag.. XP
The demoman is just a really scary class overall D:

But the funny thing with TF2 is that after all those years playing, it seems anything can be OP in that game depending on who is using it...

Lochnload isnt made for sentry nest busting, but for pure direct combat. True Pyros are the bane of Demos and Soldiers, but if your not a Pyro, well youll hate every good Demoman with a Lochnload, with a default grenade launcher its a bit difficult to hit a moving target on anything but very close distance, so normaly you will stay a bit away from a Demoman to make yourself a hart to directly hit target, if its a Lochnload Demo, yeah good luck with that, those Nades are fast, and they deal a pretty high amount of damage, so most classes that are agile enough to evade incoming Nades, will die after two hits unles overcharged. I love to use it, but i seriously hate being on the receiving end XD

Minecraft makes use of tiers a lot for one. Tools are tiered, and materials are tiered.
New materials unlocks access to new places through portals, and etc.. Which in turns allow access to new materials.

I guess I shouldn't have used the word tier in the first place.. But I'm not sure how to name those exactly..

Oh Minecraft, good example of how fucked up Tiers are in PVP XD
Ever done PVP on a normal survival server? Yeah, um, fully enchanted Diamond Armor and Sword + Potions = so fucking OP its not even fun anymore. And if you look at Mods that just go along that Tier system, well, Onehitting Withers and stuff isnt really fun.
So that was an good example why Tiers are not always a good thing

I'm really curious about how you're intending to do all that !
I'm really skeptical about that, but again, you seem to have a good understanding of the way the game works..

And I can already hear people yelling "muh creotivty !" at the prospect of having their ship's performances rated against another ship :p

It wouldnt change much about "muh creotivty!", as even right now the ships you build will be rated (or rather tested) against another ship if you engange in combat, or see some other ship doing something better than yours. But hey, thats the whole reason for this, if you want a ship that can do everything, dont expect it to be good at everything, its only natural that if someone specializes his ship that it will be better in some regards, while sacrificing in others.

(Know what? Ill send you an PM explainig it a bit, you dont seem like the kind of person who would just take it, twist it in some 5 minute thing and post it, but rather like someone who would like to talk about such things.)

Yes, but even if it gives you only 25e/s past 1 million e/s, its nothing you can't fix by adding more of them, no ? Through docked reactors or otherwise.
Really, the downside is that you might need more blocks/space for blocks. And that's my point. In the end it seems all comes down to space. And well, you got as much space as you want, with no real incentive not to build smaller..
That was the reasoning there.

Yes, you may just do that with just spamming blocks, but you will cut your own flesh with that. Bigger ship means its les manauverable, needs more effect modules for defensive effects, and more thrusters. Thats why i usually spent quiet some time otimizing my energy systems, to cut weight and cost of my ships. In the end, that and some other things allowed me to create some comparibly small ships that can dish out quiet a punch.

Well most people always seems to think about what they're going to post for about 5 minutes anyways. Its to be expected really. Nothing really worth getting annoyed over when you can just ignore it and move on IMO.

And that's fine. Though, if anything, I learned that it doesn't matter how much time you put into a suggestion around here.. It might still be a huge waste of time. Especially if its any longer than a single paragraph, since there seems to be a TL;DR epidemic around these parts..
I wish I could have made a prototype with my stuff, but writing a voxel engine from scratch isn't really something I'd like to do for submitting a suggestion, and well there is no mod API right now ^^;

True, but i dont need to feed a whole wave of more 5 min suggestions, dont i? And yeah, ill get that TL;DR thing a lot with my planed Proposal, as right now its 78k words (Im trying to slim it down, but its written so that hopefully even a person without any understanding of Game Design can understand it, which means more than half of it is just analysing and explaining stuff from the ground up) long, but im turning it into a format with crossreferencing and navigation to make it more easy to read, and hope that atleast some of the Devs and Councilors will take the time to read it.

That's really weird, because raytracing should be one of the fastest operation.. Angles shouldn't have any real impacts in this..
It might just have to do with finding out what block got hit in a chunk..

"Weird" is pretty much the perfect description of Starmade Hitscan, and at 40 of those per second per salvage beam, yeah... Do a waffle damage beam, it will have the same issue but les crazy as its les ticks per second.

Yes and no... Yes, you probably don't want to optimize prototypes, or little tests you're writing to try something out, because those will change and you'll have to re-write everything.

True, thats why i said if you make any large changes, large might have been not the right word. But yeah, depends on the scale of the change, change only something little, might need some tiny optimization change, change a large portion of it, and you might even have to redo the whole optimization and you did changes the the base functions.