Balancing Mega ships without nerfing mega ships

[damiac]

Right now, as a player, you can drive one ship. So naturally, you want to drive the best ship possible, right? Best usually meaning most powerful, and most survivable. This means most players who are trying to be as effective as possible end up building themselves giant ships, because, why wouldn't you? Bigger ships have more weapons, more shields, and more energy.

However, what if that energy actually had to come from somewhere, rather than magically generated from reactor blocks? What if you actually needed some kind of base to power these ships?

What I was thinking is this: A faction's base can 'support' a certain number of energy reactors, up to 1 system away. So that faction can use that amount of support for many small ships, or for one or two large ships, but if they are trying to support too many reactors, they suffer from decreased performance.

This also opens up a territory capturing game, because you need bases to support your ships, and your ships are only really effective within one system of your base.

There would also be a certain amount of free energy reactors, so people without factions or bases can still fly, however you'd need to have a base to support really large ships, or fleets.

The idea of one system worth of coverage may be way too large, but it seems that right now that's how faction ownership works. That could be tweaked as needed, but the basic idea is that you need to support your ships, and this acts as a limiter for ship size, without making large ships worse, only rarer.

 

[karkinosz]

Also add that the trade guild provides a certain amount of energy as a baseline for the smaller freelance ships in the universe. Haven't formed an opinion yet on this, want to mill it over.

 

[damiac]

That makes a lot more sense than just having free energy, I like that karkinosz.

 

[CaptainTaz]

sounds like an interesting idea.

But what happens if you accidentally leave the range of energy? how to ya get your ship back?

 

[Effane]

I like to look for solutions within the block dynamics of the game. IMO the best solutions are generally withing the systems that are needed.

Mining is a game context, and so are factories. So maybe requiring fuel for ships. Couple ways to process that fuel.
1. Convert existing materials into fuel material that fuels
2. Build replacement power reactors
3. Build a charge system that charges very slowly

Not a big fan of the charge method, and block replacement needs the planned drydock features.
option 1 seems like the best bet.

Now you need to store the fuel.
1. Storage blocks, already exist
2. Storage derive from another block. This would become a ship Stat
3. A specialty fuel block

Option 1 is easy enough. Current reactors can be linked to storage boxes for this. Option 2 takes you out of the block solution, which I am not a fan of doing. Option 3 adds more complexity to the ship build which makes retrofit harder.

Now what is the fuel made from? How about all this alloy and crystal composite that keeps piling up? Since reactors are made from it I think it's a logical fuel source. Also newbies can make small amounts of it in their pockets, so little need to call for a tow space ship because you are empty in the tank.

Just some thoughts.

 

[BiGEdge]

This is often suggested,
Fuel for Ships.
Remember Startrek for example they needed deuterium to fuel ships or to fuel theyr antimatter cores
Something like that could be implemented in Starmade.
You still need Energy for your Ships, but you need also Fuel to keep your Ships running.
And the more mass a Ship has, the more Fuel it needs.
I think this could be a good solution.
Greez

 

[damiac]

Well, I wasn't thinking of fuel, that's a lot more complicated than what's already in the game. Just that each system would have a certain amount of energy blocks it can power, per faction, and that number comes from faction bases, and also a small amount from the trader's guild.

So if you accidentally wandered out of range, you'd still have energy, just much slower regeneration, because you'd only have the small amount from the trader's guild. Yeah, you'd be slow, and your weapons wouldn't be very usable, but you could still get back to your own system.

The basic idea is that this energy supply inherently limits the ships the faction can field in any given system. So you can have your doom cube, but maybe that uses up your entire supply. Or you could have a fleet of smaller ships.

This also leads to territory conquest. I need a base within one system of anything I want to attack. I want to keep expanding my area of influence, so this gives other factions something to attack, and of course they'll be doing the same thing, building bases and expanding their influence.

I'm trying to solve two problems at once with this.

The first problem being, why would anyone build anything but the largest possible ship they can? Now there is a supply limit, so everyone in the faction can't fly a doom cube around at the same time, otherwise they'll all be operating with severely reduced energy regeneration.

The second problem is, why should I go out and build bases that aren't invulnerable? Well now you have to, if you want to operate further from your home base.

 

[CaptainTaz]

I'm on-board with this idea then! I would hope the default power level (And maybe even a power cap) could be config-settable so that admins can use it as a sort of anti-titan deterrent if they so wish

 

[damiac]

Yeah, I can't see any reason why it couldn't be per server configurable.
One setting for the 'free' energy the traders provide, and then another setting for how much the faction base provides.

And the central idea is that only the owner of the system generates this energy. So it also adds a reason to join a faction, rather than just starting your own.

 

[Ptotheextreme]

I like this idea alot!

Maybe add the feature that we have to build our own 3d reactors more logically than just the 3 axis system.

 

[damiac]

Hah, well usually you want to stay with just 1 change at a time, rather than just cramming every energy related thing into the same suggestion. Not that I have any control over whether any part of the suggestion gets implemented anyway.

I mean, the central idea here isn't really anything unique, it's the same reason you can't have a fleet of 200 battlecruisers in starcraft, or why you can't field 20 capital ships in starsector. It's a very standard method of keeping some semblance of balance in large battles, without forcing everyone to just use the exact same ships. If your faction can only support a fleet with (pulling a number out of thin air here) 2000 power reactors, it's up to your faction to decide whether all those reactors go on one giant ship, or onto 20 smaller ships.

 

[AtraUnam]

And the more mass a Ship has, the more Fuel it needs.

That would cause issues if I built a ship that was just one core and 100,000 mass worth of rock. A ship with no systems would be using up a significant amount of fuel.

 

[damiac]

This suggestion has nothing to do with fuel, while it's an interesting idea I'm pretty sure it has its own thread. Please try to stick to the topic in the OP to avoid derailing the thread completely.

 

[whooplaah]

I read the post had and had a huge brainstorm of ideas and how this could change gameplay. I'm also a little sad that I didn't think of it.

It's a great idea. I think that re-balancing energy consumption would be the most straight-forward way of fixing the big-ship-vs-small-ship problem. It would be best if certain ship sizes were self-sustaining (lets say up to 25K blocks) that way small ships become the main forces outside of controlled territories. Once you start going past that point, your ship won't be able to produce enough power to sustain thrust/weapons/shields and will have to be near a faction-owned system/sector to operate at 100%. If a large ship were to get stranded it would have to be able to move itself (slowly), but would probably be better served getting towed by a 25k galactic tug-boat. Yay, the push-pull weapons would have more use!

The real question would be how the faction manages there reactors. Who determines which ship counts towards the reactor limit? Can any member place the faction reactor, or only members of a particular rank? How does the game determine the number of reactors a faction can have? Is it based on money, territory, allies, or members?

I'm going to suggest that a faction reactor cost FP every faction tick based upon the size of the ship to which it is attached. Do you want to have the FP dedicated to sustaining one capital ship, or many smaller ships? Build a small number and the faction can sustain it, but won't accumulate FP as quickly. If you build a lot of ships, you'll drain your FP reserves. But if you have a lot of reserved FP, then you can temporarily sustain a large armada. When laying siege to an enemy faction you'll drain FP quicker if you capture ships rather than destroy them, and the larger the enemy ship is the more FP it will drain over time.

Though damiac will probably not like this, I think the absolute best way to implement this idea is to make a fuel system and tie it into an expanded astronaut mode. Grow plants and carbon-based animals, refine them into fossil fuels, and use the fuels to make power reactors more efficient at large scales.

 

[FullMetalFox]

I cant find (short) words to describe how much im against this, or rather it would end up as a wall of text.
Im on board with Fuel Systems, but not this "Magically transferes energy to ships across the void" thing.

 

[ne3zy]

This is not the way to go in my opinion, first of all the purpose of carriers is to have a lot of other ships docked on them which is not compatible with your suggestion. Second of all it removes a lot of liberty from the player in a no-fun way limiting their movement. And also, what if I don't want to have a base?
I don't have any preferences between big and small ships since I have both and all I want is a fun game, but I don't think this is the correct way to do it.

 

[CaptainTaz]

"Magically transferes energy to ships across the void" thing.

AI War; Fleet Command does a beautiful job with this kind of mechanic though.... too many ships? Can't operate any more. It keeps you from spamming everything and actually strategizing what you should field.

 

[FullMetalFox]

AI War; Fleet Command does a beautiful job with this kind of mechanic though.... too many ships? Can't operate any more. It keeps you from spamming everything and actually strategizing what you should field.

In that case its a command limit, aka you cant direct more ships than that due to the amount of data and coordination, a mechanic that is used in many many RTS games, and at least that would make sense, if Starmade would be a RTS. But Starmade is not an RTS.

And there are already multiple limitation factors ranging from simply player count to resources and time available to invest, all which are based on the players actions. More limitation factors might even be included in the future such as a Fuel System or drone carriers having to remote control drones, or similar mechanics. But ffs not something as contra-innovative, restrictive and plain broken as this suggestion.