A Radicaly New Approach for Viable Planets:

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    YES PLEASE. I would go as far as to say that functional planets are probably the #1 most wanted thing from most players.

    This is a fantastic idea, and I see no reason why it could not be implemented. Orbital bombardment is a nitpick, and let’s be honest, there is no reason to bombard planets in the current game anyways. This would at least make planets interesting, and I think it is absolutely the way to go. Things could be added over time to make the planets better, but at least this would allow people to treat planets like... well.... planets.

    And not horrible lag infested asteroids.
    [doublepost=1516053537,1516053323][/doublepost]
    If there is theoreticaly no limit to the size of something entering an irl atmosphere then why is it a limit in starmade? Once you reach a size limit you start removing the ability for players to be creative. no matter where you put a limit someone will be irritated. I'd rather not have a notification popping up saying "You are 10.3 mass to heavy to enter this atmosphere!", forcing players to remove detail just to access a function.
    For the same reason that you can’t build spaceships in gta, or raise armies in skyrim, or make realistic choices in a linear campaing like those of CoD.

    It is game breaking.

    Realism must be put aside to make a game playable and fun sometimes.
     
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    The_Owl

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    You are so right.

    The game should totally allow people to maliciously crash multiplayer servers at will - and there should be absolutely NO OPTION for servads to control this in the settings!!

    Because IRL a rogue planet could come crashing through our atmosphere at any second.

    That would totally make the OP suggestion way, waaay more fun and functional than current planets.
    If you want to crash starmade it's as simple as spamming the spawn shopkeep button. Or undocking a bunch of stuff into a ship, or just simply having more RAM than the other player does so you can handle more shit than them. Etc, Etc. I fail to see how a controlled landing and then some sort of docking mechanism to a planet will cause the sheer scale of lag needed to crash the game.

    You also seem to have ignored the main point of What is wrong with Hard mass limits. Sure, if a server wants to add some stupid limit of like 1k mass or something. But then the issue is actually worse when involving planets than just a server having a flat mass cap, which is something else i dislike.

    If you cut the sarcasm and over exaggeration one the rouge planet point you'd see that what i said has nothing to compare with a rouge planet crashing into our atmosphere.
    One is possibly the same size as the earth and traveling at around 70km a second, whereas the ship is almost definitely smaller and can use a controlled burn to keep it's speed under the threshold for friction to start burning up. This is applicable in real life and should also be in starmade.

    I fail to see how not having a default, which is what you directly suggest with the "1 1/2 plate " limit, which makes little sense as it also implies a SIZE limit, not a MASS limit. Size limits are even more useless than Hard mass limits imo.
    devs not wanting limits
    Gonna be honest, this point becomes moot with power 2.0 on the horizon.

    And for these "small craft" to be viable, you'd Have to make planets a necessary. why visit a planet when you can just dock all your shit in space. Which then leads to the issue of needing reasons to settle and build on planets, instead of just visiting and carting off stuff via a line of cargo lifters to a bigger ship in orbit. I can't see an actual scenario where small ships become viable except "inter-atmosphere combat", which would be fun potentially, but then leads to possibly more lag than just a large ship landing on a planet. Never mind the fact that you could just cover your base in shields that can't be penetrated due to ship size on planets.
     
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    Warheads ignore shields...

    Warhead bombs could easily destroy a base on a planet, no matter the size of its shields lol

    Also, can shields even be used on cirrent planets?
     

    The_Owl

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    For the same reason that you can’t build spaceships in gta, or raise armies in skyrim, or make realistic choices in a linear canpaign like those of CoD.

    It is game breaking.

    Realism must be put aside at to make a game playable and fun sometimes.
    I'd argue that the Flying car in GTA is pretty much gamebreaking, along with all the other nonsense it has.
    The army argument in skyrim is that it is a single character RPG, like the witcher, where raising an army would be pointless compared to how the game plays. Also still possible via raising the undead over and over.
    CoD is an on rails shooter. It's not meant to be anywhere near realisitc, even if it markets itself as so.

    This works in a NON-SANDBOX game. Starmade, unlike the rest of those games, IS a SANDBOX. It is marketed as "The Ultimate space sandbox"

    If we removed realism to make the game fun we'd remove Stardamage.
    If we wanted to go even further we'd remove tedious mining, Give actual reasons to fight, etc etc. All of these are more important than both planets and power 2.0 if the game is to somehow sustain the community for the even longer amount of time the game seems to be going to take.

    Warheads ignore shields...

    Warhead bombs could easily destroy a base on a planet, no matter the size of its shields lol

    Also, can shields even be used on cirrent planets?
    Try bombing it with warheads when you have Anti personal and anti vehicle turrets shooting you.

    And even if the can't be used on current planets just build a ship with a giant glass dome to cover your base + shields and dock it to the planet.
     
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    Stardamage is not realistic. Anyway, the point of the OP is functional planets, not how to get bigger landers in the game. Let's get the planets, then talk about lander size.

    No one has suggested not having settings that allow you to land a ship on planets in your game that is like 15% of the planet's whole size, but arguing about making no safety limits the default is an argument for client instability as the default, not "realism."

    Looking at the size of the plates on the OP, if you landed a ship bigger than one plate IRL I'm pretty sure it would probably sink through the crust into the planet's mantle. Since we are talking about "realism." And while we are at it, let's nix jump drives, because FTL is a friggin' pipe dream. Shall I go on about the realism of SM? How about the reality of a ship the size you are suggesting being able to maintain its structural integrity within a serious gravity well? Not likely, unless you want to suggest some very unrealistic materials and forces. And how realistic is its ability to enter the atmosphere without burning up or succumbing to the planet's tidal forces? There is no practical realism in a default of "infinite," there is only an invitation for players to discover instability and be disappointed with the lack of polish & forethought in this game.

    I am against any default entry limit being small... I actually went with "1 plate" or half a plate because other people were suggesting limits of small landers, and I like the idea of a Battletech style dropship that can - as you say - deploy an armored brigade. Have you looked at the images in the OP? The plates are truly massive. My whole intent was to raise the bar on entry size from "small lander," because bigger landers should be fine, even very big, like the size of a plate that contains several mountains and rivers on itself... but infinite by default? I don't see that as ever being sensible in the context of this game.

    You make a good point about shields, but we already have invulnerable HBs... I think that any problem with planets being OP defensive hardpoints can be sensibly balanced out later in a STABLE development progression.

    Just getting decent planets would be nice. I think we should be open to them being stable by default... with the option to make them extremely unstable for fun on our own time.
     
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    IRL, airplanes are very limited by the quality of their materials to their size. It is why you can make a model airplane out of cellophane and balsa wood, but commercial aircraft have to be made out of aluminum.

    That said, there is likely a soft-cap mechanism that could be implemented like making it a function of your thrust to mass so that bigger ships need a higher TTM to be able to enter an atmosphere. That way your allert would be something more natural like "Caution: This ships does not have enough thrust to survive planetary entry". This would also mean, Highly specialized landing craft could be made larger creating the feeling of creative freedom, but still restricting their size enough to not be a huge issue.
     

    PLIX

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    [doublepost=1516099353,1516099091][/doublepost]On a more serious note there is one major problem, how would orbital bombardment work, I guess it could be removed making way for a new class of ship designed specifically for atmospheric combat or bombing
     
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    The core idea behind switching from "space" to "on-planet" is so that you don't have to have both loaded at the same time. Orbital bombardment at its core negates this because you would have to load the targeted plates to calculate block damage. Colonizing planets is also a lot less rewarding if other players can just come in and nuke them.

    So yes, this means you would NEED specialized drop forces to assault a planet with this system
     
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    Exactly. I am not sure why many people have a sort of orgasmic response to the idea of orbital bombardment. I mean, I suppose it would be cool, but it would basically just continue the trend of gigantism. Just build super mega computer breaking death stars and overwhelm opponent’s planet bases with sheer overwhelming firepower. Sounds pretty lame to me.
     

    Master1398

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    How would you handle having two factions homebased on the same planet if they go to war, then? If they can extend their homebase protection by claiming more hexes, one faction could box the other in and surround it with unkillable anti-astronaut turrets to make life hell for them.
    Whether a homebase would have enough room in a hex depends on the size of the hex. Realistically there's actually not a heck of a lot that you need in a homebase right now, and you can always build upward... but eh. In this case I think we should either only allow one homebase per planet even if hexes are claimed by multiple factions, or restrict homebase protection to one hex and allow others to be claimed as normal.
    How i would imagine it to work:
    • A faction claims a hex > homebase
    • All the hexes around it become faction territory
    • Things can be destroyed inside territories, but those can't be claimed by neutral and enemy factions (or the neighboring hexes if their territory would intersect with existing territories)
    • To reclaim territories one would have to depower/destroy the claimed hex
    • A faction can increase the invulnerable area of their homebase by claiming hexes next to one another. This could work up to only a certain - configureable - amount of hexes, so that homebases cannot eventually cover half the planet.
    • After that other claimed hexes gain a slight boost in shields and other systems. This configureable setting would define the maximum amount of hexes that can be chained together; perhaps claimed hexes could use Schemas beloved new Effect System. With the assigned effects getting better the more you have chained claimed hexes with the same assigned effect.
    • This would allow to create a large infrastructure that is more resilient in only a few places - yet, most of it can be destroyed.
     
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    How i would imagine it to work:
    • A faction claims a hex > homebase
    • All the hexes around it become faction territory
    • Things can be destroyed inside territories, but those can't be claimed by neutral and enemy factions (or the neighboring hexes if their territory would intersect with existing territories)
    • To reclaim territories one would have to depower/destroy the claimed hex
    • A faction can increase the invulnerable area of their homebase by claiming hexes next to one another. This could work up to only a certain - configureable - amount of hexes, so that homebases cannot eventually cover half the planet.
    • After that other claimed hexes gain a slight boost in shields and other systems. Perhaps it could only be the homebase hex that is chainable with other hexes, allowing to create a large infrastructure that is more resilient in only a few places - yet, most of it can be destroyed.
    I am not even a fan of HB invulnerability; so I feel like one hex is more than enough. Just deck it out with enough batteries that it can cover adjacent areas with heavy firepower and no one will want to come near it. Just like current invulnerable HBs - lonely, remote no-fly zones that rarely ever see an enemy.

    Unfortunately, any planet that sees serious warfare is usually going to be absolutely ruined. "Reclaiming" a hex by destroying facilities on it would ensure that what you claimed would be a wasteland of stoney craters that could only be rebuilt by hand at great cost in time (a cost most casual and even most hardcore gamers will not be willing to invest on an ongoing basis).

    Maybe to cushion planetary warfare, since terrain doesn't regenerate over time like IRL, there could be a server option (set to OFF by default) to make it so that hexes on a planet with at least one HB would have invulnerable terrain (whatever was originally generated and not removed) but not structures? Come to think of it, it might be cool if there was HB option that allowed docked entities with weapons to be destroyed, but not the main structure. Then at least HBs could be neutralized, and couldn't be used to camp or troll someone, but players would retain their storage and would never be totally blown back into the stone age.
     
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    orbital bombardment could be solved with having a high enough but not too high elevation for the transition from planet to space. that is a problem i have with the planets in Empyrion, the elevation needed to exit the planet is much too low. 500 meters or so. i would like to see an elevation of 2-5 km? adjustable in the configs. enough room for a dogfight and to react to incoming hostiles.
     
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    The_Owl

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    Orbital Bombardment is wanted because people Love Glassing, Exterminatusing, Destroying etc etc, Planets in Sci-fi and wish to repeat it.
     
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    Yeah; planetary bombardment is a "would be nice" thing, but functional planets are far more important.
     
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    I think claiming hexes is a bit ridiculous. If a planet is claimed, the whole planet should be claimed as a homebase. Sure we can argue over home ase invulnerability, but I don’t see how that is relevant to this discussion.

    Also, as cool as this idea is, do you guys think there is any realistic chance of this being implemented? (Not counting mods and fan made stuff). I mean, it seems that the dev team are pretty content with the current “not really a planet planets.” Also, I think the dev team is focused far more intently on the power update and npc factions and economy and such.

    This is a cool discussion, but this is like the 10th viable planet idea discussion, and I haven’t seen a dev comment on any of them. Until there is some sort of shout out from a dev that something like this might be considered, is it really worth discussing the intricacies of the concept?
     
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    Well, I for one prefer the idea of claiming by the plate/hex. Or at least an option for it to be that way. Otherwise meaningful surface combat is impossible.

    Not sure if they would implement any of the specific ideas here, but I think it is important to signal the devs that the playerbase would at this point be fine with instanced planets if it made them better. Because otherwise it isn't even an option - they said they wouldn't do it and the players agreed. Things change.

    But you make a good point.

    Detailed discussion about even how instanced planets could be implemented and all the fine details might be moot - we have yet to see the new planets at all.

    I wish they would show us the new planets and let us play with them. It's been a year. Not sure how anything practical is achieved by withholding them.
     
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    The core idea behind switching from "space" to "on-planet" is so that you don't have to have both loaded at the same time. Orbital bombardment at its core negates this because you would have to load the targeted plates to calculate block damage. Colonizing planets is also a lot less rewarding if other players can just come in and nuke them.

    So yes, this means you would NEED specialized drop forces to assault a planet with this system
    Orbital bombardment, or weapons firing back from the planet into orbit, might have to go - but that's not a terrible thing in itself. You can still defend a planet with orbital space station weapon platforms on the space side, and on the ground side with ground turrets and mobile hover-tank drones. Attacking a planet would mean needing to deal with both, secure the orbit first or take hits as you go in, and then deal with the ground defenses while you either fly through the atmosphere bombing or land to drop marines and ground vehicles. There's still plenty of interesting elements available with this, and I'd argue, potentially more variety and more interaction than what we currently have.
     
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    All this talk of Orbital Bombardment got me in the mood for some verbal exterminatus!

    OB is super fun. It's the pinnacle of mankind's destructive capabilities, annihilation at it's purest, most shocking, awesome form.
    It is glorious - WHEN done right!

    I loved calling down OB's in the Dawn of War series, or C&C Tiberian Twilight, but just how well would that go in Starmade?
    What WOULD happen if you unleashed a mighty OB salvo?

    - The game / server lags or crashes based on available PC / Server power.
    - Chunk by chunk the ground is updating, and drawing craters.

    Not quite as glorious.
    Even so, let's not sink the idea because of a perceived flaw; Indeed, there could be many ways to make Starmade handle OB's reasonably well, and drawing some fire and shockwaves is far from impossible.

    First solution that comes to my mind for projectile transition from space to planetary plate:

    -Projectiles fired in space hit fake planet sphere
    -Their damage and coordinates are saved into a variable, stored by the planet.
    -Impact sprites of fire, magma, and craters are drawn on the fake planet sphere at corresponding locations. Size depends on projectile's damage.
    -If / when somebody is down on the planetary plate, the saved variables are called, and the game calculates cratering according to those locations and damage values.

    Then we encounter the problem of facing a gajillion block updates that in it's current state can stop the game for some time, but we could introduce yet more methods to handle it; such as limiting the number of chunks the game will attempt to work on, thus hopefully not creating lag, just a very slowly updating surface. We can draw more fire and magma spouts on top of it all to hide the slowly updating surface until it's done.

    No doubt someone more qualified could refine the idea or come up with a better one if needed, but we're not there yet.

    Introduce planets that work properly, and then we can worry about orbital bombardment.

    However, as so many times in science(!) the real question might not be "can we?" rather "should we?"

    In any sci-fi world there is always something that holds back the people from going crazy and glassing every planet's surface with supermassive death lazors and vaporizing the remaining ball of bare rock with skyscraper sized warheads filled with the concentrated essence of the actual burning hells whenever a single resident of said planet mildly disagrees with them.

    .....Noooot so much in Starmade. The potential loss of life, resources, and territory would hardly bother a player or even a group of players as much as an actual flesh and blood civilization would feel about having permanently one less planet in their empire, even being the hardened and callous bastards they are.

    Indeed, I strongly suspect, as soon as planets would become a good, profitable, nice, and lag-free place to settle, there'd inevitably be players who'd go around nuking them one by one fer lulz' sake.
    Maybe they should have this freedom in a sandbox game? How would one defend against it? How would a fresh player defend against it?
    Does tracking criminal acts actually matter when one can have as many names as he pleases?

    And most importantly, why would players spend resources and time on deploying troops and equipment for surface warfare when they can just settle the whole deal with a few clicks from high orbit?
    Once again, they can always make up a good reason in our respectively beloved franchises, such as " Ten millenia ago, The Emperor lost one of his lucky socks on this very planet and we must recover it!" or "The locals make the absolute best banana shakes here!" but such concerns are unlikely to restrain a bored gamer who just wants to set the world on fire.
    Especially if they are concerned with efficiency.

    So this was the theory that let's you use OB's with the proposed planets, and the question of whether you should do so or not.
    To further disarm a lack of OB possibilities against instanced planets as a valid complaint, I'll raise my final point:

    Even if instanced planets made it into the game, and orbital bombardments were never made possible, you would not lose something you have ATM;
    True, you CAN shoot at the current planets and they will take damage, and eventually get destroyed.
    Except no enemies were present on the surface because it kills the server, it's small, ugly, and there's no good reason to settle there in the first place.
    On the rare occasion when somebody does, he's politely "persuaded" by the rest of the players to cease and desist.

    TLDR:

    Orbital Bombardment on instanced planet = possible.

    (Good planets - Orbital Bombardment) > (Useless planets + Orbital Bombardment)

    Balanced gameplay > Orbital Bombardment at all costs

    -edited in a last point for clarity
     
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    Soo... you seem to support OB, but feel like it would also devalue planets. How do you propose countering OB genocide being the easy defacto solution and making worlds actually worth settling to begin with if they are that easy to take out? In Other words. what balance would exist to make it either worth the risk of an OB to colonise, and/or the value of a planet being intact to be worth a ground invasion at least some of the time?
     
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    Well, I've seen a number of people attack the idea of instanced planets because they felt it'd make OB's impossible.

    I've put some thought into how could they be made to work together to ease some worries, but as you have probably noticed, I worded the same concerns as well.

    For the moment, I'd be happy with instanced planets that can't be popped from space, and when that's done this whole OB deal could be the next bear to wrestle. A low priority one at that. And if it turns out it doesn't work or can't be balanced, we still have working planets, which is more than what can be said atm.