A Shipwright's Alpha Game Rant

[Crusade]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how huge, solid masses of systems can possibly look or feel better than a ship that has lots of detail. Sure it might be more powerful, but they are so much easier to build. I spent 15 minutes placing missile tubes and got literally the most powerful missile Starmade has seen (1 billion damage).

I've also spent months working on a ship that's extremely detailed and even more fun to use.

Don't be an advocate for doom-cubes (read huge chunks of systems), you'll find most of the active community will disagree with you.

Core placement IS dumb, the core decides your center of gravity, which is just dumb. This needs a fix. A simple chunk based center of gravity calculation is all that's needed.

Ship turning also needs a fix, currently you can have literally no thrust on a 2.7 million mass ship and it'll still turn. Personally I'd love to see directional thrust and turning based off that - but I'm aware that Schine is somewhat against it. We need fixes to many problems, and they will come. Eventually.

 

[CyberTao]

I always thought the plans for changes to turn speed/strafe speed/Titan-fighters were in the stickied thread in General, did something happen late in the thread that made it invalid or is it just being ignored? I dunno about you lot, but strafe speeds are far bit more serious state than turn rates right now in my opinion.

 

[MeepMoop]

1 is true if your focus is LOOKs. I didn't realize that appearance was your point. It sounds like you're talking about whether you can make ships LOOK like the ships you see in movies...
3 is still false. A cube of 1M mass extends farther in length and height than does a horizontal cylinder of 1M mass, and since extension into Length and Height are the only factors affecting optimal maneuverability a cube can NOT turn as quickly on either axis as can a horizontal bar. The accepted popular wisdom that "cubes are best" does not change the reality of the game engine. L100H100W100 DOES turn far slower on both axes than L50H50W400, and both are 1M blocks.

IRL every bit of decor and extra space you add to, say, a seagoing vessel or aircraft, also gets nerfed by physics. There aren't any tennis courts on the ISS. Battleships don't have big luxurious mess halls that just look awesome. Jets are not covered with bling and glowing panels and weird things sticking out that make them LOOK dangerous. They naturally look dangerous because they're designed around exploiting physics, and not star trek mock-ups with systems stuffed in after the fact. I don't see any military submarines out there built to look like frogs because someone thought it would LOOK cool. Subs look cool because we all know how powerful and dangerous they are, not because they were designed based on looks.

Your ship will naturally look cool as it vanquishes all your enemies with shields and power to spare because you only made a tiny cockpit for your toon. If no one has ever seen anything like it - all the better. Shock & awe.

If you lay down a 600-unit primary power core horizontally and wrap it with a few secondary generator cores, you'll have enough power to support not only a ton of firepower, but also a reasonably sized interior space (modest bridge, cramped crew quarters, and small engineering section). As long as you aren't trying to cloak it - you should be able to place plenty of stuff on it and not hurt your turn radius much as long as you cling to the horizontal axis as much as possible. You can pack a lot of material into a space roughly 600 wide and no farther than 20 or 30 blocks in any direction from the central power core.

Star Trek ships have a certain flavor to their design, so you can usually recognize one as belonging to ST even if you've never seen that model before. Eve ships also have a certain specific look and flair to them. Ships built to be effective and attractive in Starmade will also have a distinctive flair to them, influenced by the rules of the game. I'm like that - I don't think we need to fit every new game/show into the artistic boxes of what has gone before.

If flying a reproduction of a ship from a movie you watched is what's most important to you - I mean no disrespect. That's totally cool. There are games that let you do that already out there. I have just never seen any indication that Starmade was being designed to be a movie space ship simulator and don't understand why so many people get upset that their Millenium Falcon can't hold a candle to a ship designed based on knowledge of the game engine gained through testing, and a desire for excellent performance first and foremost. I've boarded a few reproduction ships and most of them are huge pointless wads of hull with a lot of non-functional interior space and decoration and few crammed-in systems. If those ill-considered hunks of metal could match well thought out, system-oriented craft I probably would have quit months ago.

What?

There is an easy solution that will not nerf doomcubes and will make it so that pretty ships can exist in Starmade without being at an unrealistic and non-sensical disadvantage from some strange law of physics* that only disrupts gameplay and encourages ugly ships. Of course nobody is asking that Schine make 90% decoration ships equal to or greater than 100% functionals.

And it's my belief that the players want to be able to make amazing ships without having imaginary, unrealistic laws of physics limit their beautiful handiwork- I'll be damned if most of the players of Starmade want their ships to have Starmade's "distinctive flair" of "monotonous rectangular polygon".

Spoiler: Disclaimer

*I know that IRL ships with IRL physics would be uglier, but that's not the point- the point is that these turning physics are not only non-sensical and unrealistic, but they also damage the gameplay and fun factor.

Spoiler: Easy to read proof that cubes are always better than non-cubes of the same dimensions

Here, the fighter on the left should be more agile, because there is less mass and density. Too bad it's not.
Oh, when you read the "very low turning rate" on the left one, it should say "turning rate comparable to the cube, amazingly enough."

 

[LordVe]

For the OP's complaints, I can answer #1 rather easy. A core is a fixed point, unless it is destroyed it will never move relative to the surrounding ship. Doing from a fixed point to a Mass based system would put untold stress on any server. You would have to calculate the new COM every time a block was placed or removed, every time a ship docked or undocked, any time a turret turned, it would be endless. Better, for now, than COM would be COD, Center of Dimensions. You would of course have the same complaints, but it would be less resource heavy to implement. For Titans, it would be rather annoying, since having a non-stubby ship would mess with your Turn point, but for smaller ships, it would almost be the same as a COM based Turning point.

#2: No turret is perfect. But if we get the joints stated awhile back, they will be close to it, since you could create a turret that rotates on the y-axis and then add a rotating joint to either side of a stem and have two separate 'turrets' that rotate on the x-axis. That would eliminate all but ship-shadowing (Assuming we ever get turrets not attempting to shoot through the attached ship) , plus if the turrets are built right, all the clipping issues.

#3: Turning... Yes, it sucks. But it is realistic. Load up Kerbal space program and make a long ship without any RCS. You get the same responsiveness.


(Note: Not Directly Related)

Most of the things we, the players, complain about will never be resolved until we get a ModAPI. Now, since I have gone through the whole official modapi thing with Minecraft, we were promised it over 2 years ago, I don't expect it anytime soon. I am currently waiting for SM's version of Forge. There are several things I plan to add to SM, Magnetic Docking ports, a Sane power system, and Transporters to name a few. Once there is some sort of ModAPI, ~90% of SM's complaints would be able to be solved.

It will of course give rise to new complaints, mostly how long it takes to update a mode after a update, Some mods in MC are 4 or 5 updates behind... ^_^

 

[Ithirahad]

#3: Turning... Yes, it sucks. But it is realistic. Load up Kerbal space program and make a long ship without any RCS. You get the same responsiveness.

One, realistic is never an excuse for terribad game mechanics... and two, this is Starmade, far more advanced than KSP by miles. And even in KSP, you can mount RCS all over the place if you want.

 

[LordVe]

Maybe I should clarify. I was attempting to say that, until we get Directional Thrusters (RCS), there is not much we can do, well you could turn down the rate penalty in the configs, but that doesn't solve the issue.

 

[MacThule]

I apologize - I don't mean to hijack the thread with contradiction. The amount of efficiency lost by adding even minor decoration is sometimes annoying.

I've just never found the turning to be a big problem. I agree that giant cubes or rods aren't as fun to fly. I don't build those, either. I do build based on mostly-optimal design though. So my ships aren't boring rods, but are often very wide and thin with very spartan interiors. I do still usually add logic, chairs, and a few decorative computers and panels to give a little atmosphere. I think a healthy balance is possible.

 

[Valiant70]

1 is true if your focus is LOOKs. I didn't realize that appearance was your point. It sounds like you're talking about whether you can make ships LOOK like the ships you see in movies...
3 is still false. A cube of 1M mass extends farther in length and height than does a horizontal cylinder of 1M mass, and since extension into Length and Height are the only factors affecting optimal maneuverability a cube can NOT turn as quickly on either axis as can a horizontal bar. The accepted popular wisdom that "cubes are best" does not change the reality of the game engine. L100H100W100 DOES turn far slower on both axes than L50H50W400, and both are 1M blocks.

IRL every bit of decor and extra space you add to, say, a seagoing vessel or aircraft, also gets nerfed by physics. There aren't any tennis courts on the ISS. Battleships don't have big luxurious mess halls that just look awesome. Jets are not covered with bling and glowing panels and weird things sticking out that make them LOOK dangerous. They naturally look dangerous because they're designed around exploiting physics, and not star trek mock-ups with systems stuffed in after the fact. I don't see any military submarines out there built to look like frogs because someone thought it would LOOK cool. Subs look cool because we all know how powerful and dangerous they are, not because they were designed based on looks.

Your ship will naturally look cool as it vanquishes all your enemies with shields and power to spare because you only made a tiny cockpit for your toon. If no one has ever seen anything like it - all the better. Shock & awe.

If you lay down a 600-unit primary power core horizontally and wrap it with a few secondary generator cores, you'll have enough power to support not only a ton of firepower, but also a reasonably sized interior space (modest bridge, cramped crew quarters, and small engineering section). As long as you aren't trying to cloak it - you should be able to place plenty of stuff on it and not hurt your turn radius much as long as you cling to the horizontal axis as much as possible. You can pack a lot of material into a space roughly 600 wide and no farther than 20 or 30 blocks in any direction from the central power core.

Star Trek ships have a certain flavor to their design, so you can usually recognize one as belonging to ST even if you've never seen that model before. Eve ships also have a certain specific look and flair to them. Ships built to be effective and attractive in Starmade will also have a distinctive flair to them, influenced by the rules of the game. I'm like that - I don't think we need to fit every new game/show into the artistic boxes of what has gone before.

If flying a reproduction of a ship from a movie you watched is what's most important to you - I mean no disrespect. That's totally cool. There are games that let you do that already out there. I have just never seen any indication that Starmade was being designed to be a movie space ship simulator and don't understand why so many people get upset that their Millenium Falcon can't hold a candle to a ship designed based on knowledge of the game engine gained through testing, and a desire for excellent performance first and foremost. I've boarded a few reproduction ships and most of them are huge pointless wads of hull with a lot of non-functional interior space and decoration and few crammed-in systems. If those ill-considered hunks of metal could match well thought out, system-oriented craft I probably would have quit months ago.

Have fun building sticks. The rest of us will continue to advocate ships.

 

[Valiant70]

I apologize - I don't mean to hijack the thread with contradiction. The amount of efficiency lost by adding even minor decoration is sometimes annoying.

I've just never found the turning to be a big problem. I agree that giant cubes or rods aren't as fun to fly. I don't build those, either. I do build based on mostly-optimal design though. So my ships aren't boring rods, but are often very wide and thin with very spartan interiors. I do still usually add logic, chairs, and a few decorative computers and panels to give a little atmosphere. I think a healthy balance is possible.

I see. I thought you were one of those strange players who build 500 mass sticks and troll people with them. Yes, a balance is possible. Most of my builds aim for that balance. The annoying thing is how sub optimal that balance is from a performance standpoint. That was my complaint. I'd enjoy the game more if I could fuse function and aesthetics without nerfing either.