Read by Council Bringing Starmade back up to SpaceSim+Sandbox standards

[Rynage]

Currently as of today:

Starmade has the lowest multiplayer population of any modern "Space-sim Spaceship-bulding" game to-date.

Comparisons are:
*Space Engineers
*Empyrion Galactic Survival

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"Why is this however?"
Here are some pointers:

*Starmade is:
Free
Runs on any computer
Been in development for a long time

*Space Engineers:
25$
Requires Mid-To-High range PC
Been in development for a single year

*Empyrion Galactic Survival
18$
Requires Mid range PC
Been in development for a few months

-----

So whats going on here? By all accounts Starmade should be the most populated.
It's also been in development the LONGEST!

Surely starmade should have the highest population, it's a free game that runs on any PC and has surpisingly good netcode with a fully fleshed out galaxy simulation!

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Right, so here's the thing:

Both Space Engineers and Empyrion have something Starmade doesn't.

It's NOT graphics.
It's NOT community.
It's NOT advertisement.

So what is it?

They both have a finished Shipbuilding, Combat and Survival gameplay system that is both fun and easy to use.

-----

Let me clarify:
In Space engineers and Empyrion the location at which you place blocks matters, especially system blocks matters, this encourages building rooms for each system block.

In Starmade you are encourage to fill (And brainlessly spam) your ship full of Shield, Gun, and Power blocks to make it magically more powerful than other ships.

This is the issue with starmade, there is no "Flavor" to the ship building, no tactics, no encouragement of good ship design, just spamming of "SystemBlocks" to make your ship the strongest.

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For this reason i have decided to come up with a new design system to make Starmade Unique, Promotes building good looking ships with interiors and Tactical by your choices.


You choose one ship core of 4 sizes.
The larger the size the more "Hardpoints" you get, but the lower your max speed. Small = 100s max

What are hardpoints you ask?

-Made by your's truly


Small cores allow you to choose any 8 of these to add to your ship, so you can make any kind of ship you want with any roles!

Example:
Want a dropship that attaches itself to an enemy capitalship so you can invade, board and capture it?
Respawn+Medbay, Melee(To breach), then docking clamps to attach to enemy ship hull.

If the guy in the capital ship was smart then he has his own Respawn+Medbay
This leads to an indoors battle between two forces for the control of the ship

The capital ship owner could counter this by having a crew member launch in a fighter to destroy the attached dropship to end the siege.
However the boarding party could act fast and destroy their fighters before they launch!

Then the capitalship would need someone to go out in space and destroy the dropship manually.
Then the dropship would need someone to defend it, though hopefully they added a turret.

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While using a Medium sized core and above all subsystem and hardpoints must abide by the "Subsystem Room Rule"

The same hardpoint can be selected multiple times.
Each hardpoint requires a room designated for it.
Each room requires the subsystem computer inside to control each hardpoint.
Each room requires a door, and each door needs to lead to the outside via another door.

This creates a system where creating ship interiors is promoted and required on larger ships, thus improving starmade to modern standards without starmade continuing to be a block spamfest.

-----

If starmade is to advance it /needs/ this implemented, otherwise people will continue to flock to Space Engineers and Empyrion where these features are already added, just in different form.

-LordRyn

 

[Reilly Reese]

Flock to SE lel.

Starmade does encourage smart placement of power blocks though mate.

 

[sayerulz]

This is either

A: a troll post
or
B: a post by someone that really needs to spend more time learning about shipbuilding.

There is a lot of strategy that goes into shipbuilding, probably more than in space engineers, in which using heavy armor means it takes 20 years to actually damage your ship.

 

[BJammin]

While I definitely find this to be an interesting idea, there are some issues with this.

First off, if we're talking about what causes people to choose other games over StarMade, let's not forget the big one: StarMade's learning curve. It's a fact that StarMade has a ton of meta-gaming to it. This idea (if implemented) has a high chance of getting lost in the mix, thus adding to the amount of effort new players must give in order to simply learn how to play.

Second, like Thadius was saying, there are some elements of system design already in place (e.g. power generation). Though it would be nice if other systems required a similar level of engineering for the most effectiveness.

Lastly, the only reason some players tend to fill their ships to the brim with systems is simply because they can. This is just what the game allows currently, and players are just taking what's given to them and optimizing their content for it. No one is forcing builders to do it, and no one is forcing them not to. In a game with this level of freedom, it doesn't make sense to add extra rules and restrictions for one mechanic just to arbitrarily improve another. That being said, I personally agree that it's nice for larger ships to have more emphasis on interiors and system placement. However, this decision is not up to me. Unfortunately, not everyone likes building interiors and planning systems (just yet another thing that might alienate certain players).

All this aside, I would love it for more direct interaction through clever engineering between players and their ships. I encourage you to keep working on this idea.

 

[kupu]

*Space Engineers:
Been in development for a single year

*Empyrion Galactic Survival
Been in development for a few months

When prefacing your suggestion with some statistical analysis, it's quite important to double check it.

There are a few interesting ideas within here that are almost being planned under different nomenclature.
Be sure to check out this thread if you've not already to get a larger scope on what's planned. It might help with the theory crafting.

StarMade Development Direction

While different core sizes have been rejected for the sake of unrestricted creativity, some aspects of your "hard points" are already being discussed with the future use of crews.

 

[Rynage]

While I definitely find this to be an interesting idea, there are some issues with this.

First off, if we're talking about what causes people to choose other games over StarMade, let's not forget the big one: StarMade's learning curve. It's a fact that StarMade has a ton of meta-gaming to it. This idea (if implemented) has a high chance of getting lost in the mix, thus adding to the amount of effort new players must give in order to simply learn how to play.

All this aside, I would love it for more direct interaction through clever engineering between players and their ships. I encourage you to keep working on this idea.

I fully agree to this, one of the reasons i created this system was to simplify the ship building much like SpaceEngineers and Empyrion to allow for easier ship building and design that allows people to choose what they want their ship to be used for and focus more on actually building the ship design itself and less on managing and balancing all the system blocks they need to fill their ship with.

Ship core, 4 computer blocks, then choosing 8 subsystems to add to their ship, they could choose the same subsystem again to add more of that specific block.

It's all just a gameplay theory though! Thank you for your comment!
[DOUBLEPOST=1461444898,1461444783][/DOUBLEPOST]

While different core sizes have been rejected for the sake of unrestricted creativity, some aspects of your "hard points" are already being discussed with the future use of crews.

As soon as i posted the thread i started reworking the ship core size idea, it didn't seem very helpful but the first thought was to give some incentive to create a room specifically to guard it in the event of a ship boarding, as if it were destroyed or tampered with it would mean the end for the ship in question.

 

[Lecic]

They both have a finished Shipbuilding, Combat and Survival gameplay system that is both fun and easy to use.

Now, I haven't played Empyrion, so I can't speak on it, but I've played quite a bit of SE, and, well... this is hilariously wrong. Shipbuilding in SE is massive, boring chore. Floating around with a jetpack, needing to keep things connected at all times, having a very short placement range, and then needing to go back over everything with a welder isn't fun. The vanilla combat consists of a rocket launcher, a gatling gun, a warhead block, and improvised gravity guns, and a grinder and assault rifle for astronaut combat. All these weapons are incredibly shitty to fight with. The ship to ship combat only works at close range due to the short ranges of the weaponry, and the astronaut combat is incredibly clunky. As for survival? What? SE has almost nothing to do in survival, just like Starmade!

In Starmade you are encourage to fill (And brainlessly spam) your ship full of Shield, Gun, and Power blocks to make it magically more powerful than other ships.

This is the issue with starmade, there is no "Flavor" to the ship building, no tactics, no encouragement of good ship design, just spamming of "SystemBlocks" to make your ship the strongest.

Thank you for proving that you know absolutely nothing about building ships. If you had said this two years ago, I might agree with you, but today? Hell no. Ship design is incredibly complex in Starmade, far more complex than SE is.

EDIT-

As soon as i posted the thread i started reworking the ship core size idea, it didn't seem very helpful but the first thought was to give some incentive to create a room specifically to guard it in the event of a ship boarding, as if it were destroyed or tampered with it would mean the end for the ship in question.

YOU WANT TO BRING BACK CORING? ARE YOU SERIOUS?

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Oh, please. This thread contributes nothing serious to gameplay and contains no decent suggestions.

You choose one ship core of 4 sizes.
The larger the size the more "Hardpoints" you get, but the lower your max speed.

Are you serious? This goes against everything StarMade is about. There shouldn't be multiple core blocks of different sizes, because then that encourages exactly what your suggestion is trying to remove - doomcubes. And this system limits creativity, the core principle StarMade was made on. The 'one-size-fits-all' core approach works perfectly anyway, there's no need to change it.

And if you prefer Space Engineers that much, then go play it. No-one's going to stop you.​

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

It's really hard to get an accurate idea of how Starmade is doing over another two. One way you can do this is by using stat tacking sites like Comparison - Steam Charts to compare the users on steam. The problem with doing this is the demo and full version are identical and you can't simply tell it to add those numbers. Space Engineers and Empyrion are exclusively sold on steam and Space Engineers has been on Steam much longer Starmade as well. This site simply cannot track the number of players who have not converted to steam. Even if Schine were to post stats about how many people log into the authentication servers to play the game we still would not get an accurate representation of the number of players as it is possible to play the game without logging in as Starmade has no DRM.

 

[Rynage]

It's really hard to get an accurate idea of how Starmade is doing over another two.

Actually all three games have a public server list to join multiplayer servers.

As for the number of players ingame: (Current "True" community size):
All public Starmade servers during primetime on a saturday add up to 20-40 players (max 7-12 people online on the highest populated server)
All public Space-Engineer servers during primetime on a saturday add up to 300-500 (max 32-64 people online on the highest populated server)
All public Empyrion servers during primetime on a saturday add up to 200-400 (Max 32-64 people online on the highest populated server)

This is a huuuuuuge gap in playerbase, obviously something is very wrong.
This also means not a lot of people are playing Starmade multiplayer.

For a Free game that can run on any system, Starmade should have double the population of these two games.
Also, Starmade has better netcode, an ENTIRE galaxy system, and can have up to 200 people playing on the same server together.

So something is wrong, and im guessing it's the ship building aspect, maybe people want the simplicity of these two games?
Maybe Starmade is too complex?
Maybe ships that look good in starmade are useless against deathcubes?


I dont know for sure, but instead of complaining i wrote an entire system to fix it, im doing my part for the small 40 person community and the game.

 

[Lecic]

Or maybe it's because people like to go after shiny graphics and you don't know anything about how the game works these days, or you'd know that doomcubes, ANY doomcube, not just hastily thrown together ones, are bottom tier vessels these days?

 

[sayerulz]

Yea, modern gamers just don't seem to be very smart. They all seem to flock to games with shiny graphics but little depth, and don't have the patience for a game like starmade which- heaven forbid- you need to use your brain every once in a while to enjoy fully. Not to say that space engineers and empyrion are games that need no thought- by todays standards, they are pretty sophisticated. But the fancier graphics appeal to a gaming community that wants to be able to take games in at a glance. They look at screenshots of starmade, they see pixel cubes. They look at space engineers, they see fancy 3d models, and they are too lazy to find out more.

 

[jontyfreack]

I think it is because the other two games have nothing fun to do in single player thus multiplayer is the only option to have any sort of fun. so you will find most (tell me if I am wrong) players of starmade play single player.

 

[Criss]

In Starmade you are encourage to fill (And brainlessly spam) your ship full of Shield, Gun, and Power blocks to make it magically more powerful than other ships.

Actually I find this to be quite the opposite. The regular pvp'ers of starmade will tell you that block placement is crucial. Lecic even went into depth as to how to layer various shield blocks while I was working on the TG frigate to ensure I get the most out of them. Power systems in starmade are optimized by building them in certain patterns. Weapons also have an effect on optimization when built in different configurations. The reason you find it easy to place blocks aimlessly is because we would rather not restrict your freedom to do so.

I find Space Engineers to be going in a very different direction. Instead of designing your power system, you have a single block that acts as a power source. You do not get to design the power source itself, maybe the room it is in at best. The machinery in Space Engineers also allows you to adjust settings as well, notably on gravity modules. This simplifies, and yet restricts creativity. Instead of allowing you to create a power system that is spread throughout the ship, you will have very focused, and very defined structures that you have to deal with.

Is that bad? No. Space Engineers and StarMade are very different games, and we are not trying to be Space Engineers. We are using blocks, and so we can take advantage of a modular system, which allows you to define your own shapes and designs. We also find it gives more purpose to the entirety of your ship, instead of a few pieces of machinery spread throughout a few rooms.

That being said, we hope to include more features and gameplay later on that encourage the use different tactics, and design philosophies. The recently implemented fleet system already opens the door to support vessels, which I am sure will come down the line.

I have not played Empyrion but I must say this. I find the building mechanics in SE to be tedious. In a purely survival situation I can see the value in having to weld a ship together, but afaik, there is no alternative that lets you design something as quickly in SE, as you can in StarMade.

 

[kiraen]

Our weekly moron posting, I see.

*Space Engineers:
25$
Requires Mid-To-High range PC
Been in development for a single year

I stopped reading here. Troll post or someone with brain damage.
Sorry if someone else already said this stuff, but it's not worth my time to read any more of this thread.


SE entered public alpha (early release) 2.5 years ago. Initial development was obviously before that. No actual indication of when that started, but it could be as early as 2010, since that is when the company was founded.
Medieval Engineers entered public alpha (early release) a year ago. It's actually the same game engine, so there is not much new there.

It's also a very different company and has a few more employees then Schine. This is understandable, since they have the profits from 2 other already released games (again, same engine) to pay every one.

Considering the complete failure to collect data, I can't imagine anything after that point was worth reading.

If you have a problem with the quality of the game, you might try actually paying Schine to listen to you whine.

I'm getting sick of these threads.

 

[jstenholt]

I'm serious, somebody needs to develop a browser extension that filters out all titles that contain phrases such as "bring back," "great again," "space engineers," or literally anything like this absolute shitpost.

 

[KillaKrazy]

Our weekly moron posting, I see.



I stopped reading here. Troll post or someone with brain damage.
Sorry if someone else already said this stuff, but it's not worth my time to read any more of this thread.


SE entered public alpha (early release) 2.5 years ago. Initial development was obviously before that. No actual indication of when that started, but it could be as early as 2010, since that is when the company was founded.
Medieval Engineers entered public alpha (early release) a year ago. It's actually the same game engine, so there is not much new there.

It's also a very different company and has a few more employees then Schine. This is understandable, since they have the profits from 2 other already released games (again, same engine) to pay every one.

Considering the complete failure to collect data, I can't imagine anything after that point was worth reading.

If you have a problem with the quality of the game, you might try actually paying Schine to listen to you whine.

I'm getting sick of these threads.

It's posts like these that are driving people from the forums.

And seriously? It's getting old hearing people defend Schine because he has been the "lone" coder for the game. It's not my fault that he couldn't manage his finances and get a bigger team together. When you get older and get a real job, try using the excuse that you couldn't get a product done on time because you were working on it alone. Good luck with that.

 

[Lecic]

It's posts like these that are driving people from the forums.

And seriously? It's getting old hearing people defend Schine because he has been the "lone" coder for the game. It's not my fault that he couldn't manage his finances and get a bigger team together. When you get older and get a real job, try using the excuse that you couldn't get a product done on time because you were working on it alone. Good luck with that.

Did the slightest thought of "maybe he didn't want more than himself coding the game until recently" pass through your head?

Posts saying garbage posts are garbage are not driving people from the forums. Nevermind that around 75% of these, what are we at, half dozen in the last two months, posts were made by confirmed permabanned alts, do you really think a general discussion filled with "THE GAME IS DYING BASED OFF MY UNFOUNDED PROOF, AND IT'S BECAUSE OF <INSERT COMPLETELY INCORRECT REASON BACKED UP BY SOMETHING THAT HASN'T BEEN CORRECT IN A YEAR AND A HALF HERE>" is more damaging to the forums, or people saying "You're wrong, here's why with valid reasons, can people stop posting this garbage already"?

 

[BJammin]

This back-and-forth about "I'm so tired of seeing these stupid posts" is accomplishing nothing at an alarming rate. Look, just because a player talks about something we're all tired of hearing, doesn't give any of us the right to go off on them for what they said; no matter how ridiculous it may or may not sound. If another player lacks the patience to calmly discuss their issues with certain forum posts, they should either ignore it or report it. Nowhere in the Dock's rules does it say we're obligated to attack the OP (alt account or no) for making such posts.

And please, if anyone goes on a rant about my attempt to keep the peace here, you're only proving my point. People who can't handle others they disagree with should at least learn how to before posting on a forum.

Also, to be clear, this is not a defense of the OP's suggestions/statements in any way (I've already given my two-cents about that). All I aim to do is try and calm down the mess this thread seems to have become.

 

[jstenholt]

Can I just add that I love how "funny" is the new rating for really dumb shit?