Capital ship scaling

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    So I had a thought that came to me after reading something posted by someone else about Capital ships/Titans whatever you want to call them, complaining about how people worry too much about min-maxing and those ships are so overpowered nerfs have to be made which renders a more elegant ship with decor and interiors and such inferior.

    This is true, I for one am one such douche who loves math and min-maxing, and yes indeed it does leave my ships.. boring. Unsophisticated. Just not pretty, because I care too much about cramming the most power/weapons I possibly can into the ship.

    And let's be real, that's not what we should want.. Yes we want uber ships, yes we want some min-maxing, but boring is never good for a game.

    Now here's what this led me to come up with: Scaling changes. Yep, scaling changes. Hear me out..

    The new weapons system has really helped level the playing field between small and huge ships,the fact that you can only get so much of an effect and it scales to sizing us great, and the fact that range is also fixed is fantastic (I had a ship with 10k range super turrets that killed everything before it even had a clue I was there, where is the fun in that???), and in the same way the fact that power generation does drop off when it gets over a million a second also levels the field in a big way, a gigantic ridiculous ship has to cram a ton of power in it to make it run, excellent. But it needs to go a little bit further!

    Weapon damage needs to have a soft cap point like power generation has.

    Why?

    So that min-maxing is less complicated and less rewarding. Because let's be real again, it isn't good gameplay. Now, it will still exist, some people's ships will be more efficient than others, period. And there is nothing at all wrong with that. But huge insane overkill instant pewpew. death weapons need to go.

    Here's a bit more on how I think this should work...

    Capital ship weapons that are massive take a big scaling hit past a certain point, making huge weapons less common, instead smaller, more numerous weapons that are more efficient would take their place. This would leave Capital ships will still more firepower than smaller ships, but the added challenge of trying to hit a smaller, more agile target becomes more real when you cannot 1-shot them with one stray lucky bullet.

    It is doubtful a small ship could duel a Capital ship, the Capital ships shields are probably too daunting. But a fleet? Perhaps they can do the job! And since smaller weapons will be the flavor, fighters might favor trying intentionally to focus on taking out turrets first to lessen the danger from their massive foe.

    All of this also should make it much less punishing to decorate your ships interior and exterior, because super size systems aren't overly useful anyways. Sure, players could counter this by building instead of massive armaments, thicker hulls. This is acceptable gameplay in my opinion, and much more fun that massive instant death guns.

    So, this is my thought. Tell me what you think!

    TL; DR-
    Scale down large weapons, reduce min-maxing, make Star-Made hopefully prettier and more accessible to less hardcore players in the process.
     
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    This would also make battles last longer, not a bad thing in my opinion. Soft cap might be a smart move. For one, Doom Cubes lose their status of Galactic PewPew Champions. They still can use huge guns, but they become less preferable to a lot of guns. Then again, we would see a whole lot of AMC shotgun arrays come back. At least they'll need power that cannot be afforded with good shield regen in place.
    I can see how this could benefit the game. But how high a soft cap did you have in mind? If it's too big it changes nothing, if it's too small then most defensive aspects of combat ought to be rebalanced as well... Might get funky.
     

    NeonSturm

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    Wanted to give it a like, not a useful, but then I saw "... more accessible to less hardcore players ..." :p :D

    More seriously now:

    I would like two 250 mass (player) ship vs a 1'000 mass ship to have equal chances as two 25'000 mass vs a 100'000 ship.
    Also weapons to be much smaller compared to the ship (maybe not as extreme as in EVE-Online, but where is the balance option to penalize larger?)

    I think the best way to archive this is to require 5 or 10 non-vitals per vital (weapon, power, ...). How this is archives is not important, but stuff like defensive effects based on module/ship blocks or weapon damage may need to scale bigger to compensate for all these hulls.



    I think the showcase warp-reactor (a 3x3 thick, tall thing in your machine room) should cover already most of the array size, thus you need to hide less in-between decks or in walls.
    Same with other partially exposed systems.

    This also makes power-lines less annoying. Thrusters are more effective (account for these 5 or 10 additional hulls) for same power, thus you need less power compared to the ship mass in RP ships (take-off on planets) = less annoying.
    (( But if 10 non-vital give 10 structural integrity points and deco-computers+logic-blocks logic-points which are both required by vitals, you don't need more vitals ))



    I also think empty space should not be penalized. Make turn rate based on mass! Just use dimensions to determinate which turn rate (yaw, pitch, roll) should be affected how strong by given mass.
     
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    This would also make battles last longer, not a bad thing in my opinion. Soft cap might be a smart move. For one, Doom Cubes lose their status of Galactic PewPew Champions. They still can use huge guns, but they become less preferable to a lot of guns. Then again, we would see a whole lot of AMC shotgun arrays come back. At least they'll need power that cannot be afforded with good shield regen in place.
    I can see how this could benefit the game. But how high a soft cap did you have in mind? If it's too big it changes nothing, if it's too small then most defensive aspects of combat ought to be rebalanced as well... Might get funky.
    Long battles - totally agree!

    Total side note: Maybe engines should work like shield regen in a way, when you are under fire your engines lose 25% efficiency for the next 15 seconds after getting hit? This would keep annoying hit and runs down a little which could be an issue from this..

    As for my opinion on WHERE the soft cap goes.. Make it a server config, an RP server would want to set it pretty low, whereas a server with really huge ships could have it higher.. The base I was thinking, maybe 1k modules attached to the main computer would be the soft cap, maybe even less?

    Definitely should be configurable because it largely depends on the playerbase of the server.

    Obviously that's a rough number, we'd have to test it to see what happens and what resulting tweaks might also need to be adjusted
     
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    If they're made specifically for hit-and-run tactics i doubt 25% would help much. These ships do not necessarily rely on raw speed as they do on outmaneuvering and catching their foe by surprise. That initial shock of the target is what wins the battles for these buggers. Trust me on that one - most builds of mine are supposed to fight like that :D
    Pretty much everything is customizable in Starmade, it's logical to assume this would too. However, the default setting must be taken seriously as it will always be viewed as an official way the game's supposed to be played. And most of the servers won't modify it much if the system in place is satisfactory.
    I was thinking of putting a soft cap on damage dealt rather than the amount of the gun's blocks although it may be simpler to do it the way you propose... Less fiddling than putting a cap on each of the current 16 weapons available. Not sure if the balance would remain, but that should be tested anyway.
     
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    Well I wouldn't want hit-and-run to be non-existent, it is in fact a legitimate strategy :)

    I just thought it might help out a tiny bit in lieu of some of these other tweaks.

    But I do agree with your thoughts as far as it should have a pretty solid base number because a lot of people won't tweak it..

    I do think it'd be better to keep it on a per-block basis, as trying to scale it per weapon would just be too much, and not only that but each weapon is scaled with each other in a proper way, so it should still work out about the same anyways (I think).
     

    NeonSturm

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    I would not do a softcap on damage, but damage PER SECOND on just 4 weapons (double it for slaves)
    EDIT: A per block basis is good too...
    per turret? also with numbers of turrets?

    We have already so many options... especially for blocks in blockConfig.xml (not behaviour) that it is insane changing every single value :)
    You need a tool for it (wedges, pentas, 8 colours, 3 hardness levels (with glass))
     
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    I wouldn't think we should change every single value... I think we should put a soft cap on a per block basis for weapons, and you would just change that. A single figure that manages it all. (...and in the darkness bind them!) It would automatically scale with damage per second and such, as the new weapons do that themselves :)
     

    NeonSturm

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    I wouldn't think we should change every single value... I think we should put a soft cap on a per block basis for weapons, and you would just change that. A single figure that manages it all. (...and in the darkness bind them!) It would automatically scale with damage per second and such, as the new weapons do that themselves :)
    But what if some server wants one weapon take more space / has more mass but requiring less power and another requiring more power but less space?

    I think we should have a default weapon and default slave and weapons slaves inherit from this when they don't define own values.
    Nothing should set own values, instead multiply and divide these standard values.
     

    Lecic

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    No. It'd bring back the days of rapid pew-pew AMC checkerboards. I'd prefer to see loses specifically on rapid weapons on larger arrays, so that larger ships use the slower firing cannons for combat with similar sized ships, with point defense turrets or a smaller reserve rapid cannon for dealing with fighters.