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This post is intended to offer constructive criticism, feedback, and suggestions to the Developers about the approaching power update. Please read the entire post before commenting, and please keep discussion civil. This post is specifically related to my observations of the power system, chamber effects, armor, shields, weapons, UI, stabilizer distance, ship stats, and other suggestions.
Power System Overview
Overall, the new power system seems to be working well in terms of the balance between reactor power, and reactor capacity. There is enough power to keep a sufficient number of thrusters running in order to achieve adequate speeds in a craft while still maintaining a weapon and shield system.
I appreciate how well the balance between weapon power consumption, thruster power consumption, and shield power consumption plays into a vessel. There is enough power to generally run all three systems on a single ship well, however not so much power that any one system can become much larger than the others. IE: with the balance the way it currently is I must make sacrifices between the strength of my shields, and the strength of my weapons. I believe this will go a long way toward preventing any one ship from being exceptionally strong.
Reactor Capacity seems to be in an optimal state in which a ship is prevented from having too many chamber systems. The balance here seems to be in a good place.
I will now go into greater depth on each section of the power system changes.
Effect Descriptions Need Polishing
One of the biggest issues with the development builds in their current state is that, as far as I can tell, none of the chamber systems work exactly as intended. In addition to the UI suggestions that I will outline at the end of this post, there is a general lack of clarity as to what each of the chamber effects actually do. I will use for example the defensive effects as these suffer most from this lack of clarity.
Firstly, when choosing whether a defensive chamber is to be an armor chamber or a shield chamber at the top of the tree there is some ambiguity as to what exactly the percentages mean. Lets take for example the armor choice. It is fairly clear that the added 10% armor applies to HP, however it is slightly less clear that the -25% applies to what might be called armor absorption (The ambiguity of this term will be discussed further in this section) in that it affects the damage that armor takes.
Perhaps I have overstated the issues with the initial tree selection, however ambiguity increases further down the tree. In the second section of the armor chamber tree there are four effects: Armor Heat Damage, Armor Type: Powered, Armor HP Absorption, and Armor HP Efficiency.
I assume that Armor Heat Damage reduces the damage taken by stars, Armor HP Absorption decreases the amount of damage the armor takes, and that Armor HP Efficiency increase the amount of HP that each armor block has. I may be correct in this, however it required assumptions. Each of these will need a better description of what sorts of damage or weapons they apply to, and how exactly they apply, as an example, until halfway through writing this post I thought Armor Heat Damage applied to missiles. In addition to a lack of clarity regarding these effects, I have absolutely no idea what Armor Type: Powered does or how it applies. As far as I can tell, all Armor Type: Powered does is slowly reduce the vessel's armor HP for seemingly no reason and with no damage taken.
This ambiguity also applies to other chamber trees such as the Reactor Shield tree.
Armor & Armor Effect Tree Critique
Note: For this section I am assuming that each armor effect is intended to work as described in the previous section.
With the description of the new armor effects I get the impression that armor is finally moving in a direction of not being totally inadequate as a complement to, or replacement of, the shield system. This is progress, however from my observations from messing around with these systems in single player armor is still laughably weak, especially when a ship protected by only armor is hit by missiles.
My hope is that as the effects become clearer and more polished we will see missiles become more balanced in relation to the damage they deal against ships compared to weapons such as cannons and beams. However, in order for the armor effect tree to truly make armor effective a few changes might need to be considered.
The first change is straightforward and simple, the Base Armor Enhancement should not reduce armor damage absorption. I understand that this is a choice intended to balance the four options against each other (IE: Not make Armor HP Absorption or Armor HP Efficiency better than the other). However, this choice does more to weaken armor than to strengthen it. Due to all armor types having exactly the same HP (100), armor damage/HP absorption is the only thing that actually makes it good. By setting armor damage absorption at a -25% off the bat for the Armor Effect tree not only is armor gimped and the Armor HP Efficiency effect only slightly worthwhile, the Armor HP Absorption 1 ability is completely negated. This is not conducive to making armor worthwhile, even with the Chamber system.
In addition to what I have stated in the previous paragraph (removing the -25% [Armor] in Armor Base Enhancement) it may be worth considering adding an armor effect that severely hampers missile impacts. I understand that this is difficult due to the way missile damage radius is calculated on impact, however it is very important that missiles not be god weapons, now is the chance to rectify this. My ideas for a hypothetical armor effect that counters missiles are as follows:
Unlike my critique of Armor and the Armor Effects Tree, I do not think that the descriptions of the shield effects are quite so obtuse. I do think that terminology needs to change surrounding missile damage, (the fact that it is called Alpha damage is rather confusing.) however I think that the description of this effect can be rectified with a reference to this being missile damage.
Also unlike my critique of Armor, I do not think that the -25% to the Under-Fire Timeout in Base Shield Enhancement overly gimps shields. If anything, this choice is one that was necessary to begin to rectify the fact that shields have been, in my opinion, too strong.
As mentioned in the Power System Overview section above, I do think that the amount of power shields use in order to function strikes a good balance.
In addition to those things, I find the choice to make shields have a limited functioning area (bubble) to be an interesting one. However, if a player cannot have two separate shield bubbles on one vessel for the purposes of covering a large vessel creativity may be hindered. That may not be the case, however the fact that the bubbles turn red when there are two overlapping bubbles certainly makes it appear that way (however this may simply be a visual effect of the meshes overlapping).
Weapons
Again, as stated above, the energy that weapon systems consume seems to be sitting around a healthy balance when compared to the energy of other ships systems. Also as mentioned above, missiles are still very strong.
The fact that missiles consume such high amounts of power in order to recharge does help to balance them. However, when damage on a hit is still so high to un-shielded (and even shielded) ships in the case of a hit they are still far better than any other weapon. As mentioned above, this could be rectified with an armor effect that decreases missile effectiveness, however it might also be rectified by either increasing the power required to recharge missiles, or adding an entire defensive effect tree dedicated to countering missiles. Point Defense turrets help this, however missiles are still too strong on hit, and point defense ought not to be the only effective counter against them, especially when considering the glitches and performance issues that occur when a ship is peppered in point defense turrets.
While my long-standing hatred of missiles still stands, I do however have one complaint related to missiles performing poorly as opposed to too well. That complaint is, missiles can't hit anything that is moving. Even lock on missiles can't. Despite missiles being almost too strong, it's incredibly frustrating to a player when they launch a lock-on missile, and it never connects when both ships are moving at speed. Maybe this is a scanning or homing issue, whatever it is, despite missiles being good, this should probably be rectified.
Beams and Cannons seem to be balanced well against defenses such as shields*, however, again, not so much against the other options (missiles).
UI & Clarity
There are a few simple suggestions that I think might help improve the interface of the chamber effects tree.
The first suggestion I have is that players should not be required to attach a chamber to their ship in order to see what the tree is for that chamber type. Chamber Effect Trees should be viewable from the reactor screen regardless of whether or not the ship has that chamber type attached to their ship. This would improve player experience.
The second suggestion is related to the Chamber Effect descriptions. As descriptions of effects are added and improved more room will be necessary to display them. It's smart having the descriptions appear when the mouse is however over the effect, however if there is not enough room in this regard, it may be worthwhile to display the description at the bottom of the chamber tree screen when the effect is clicked.
Stabilizer Distance
Stabilizer distance might use just a little bit of work. It's a little bit nuts how much the distance away from the reactor increases for each reactor block added above the initial size of 10 blocks. Maybe the distance should only increase for every few blocks added, or only when the reactor is leveled up.
Ship Stats & Overheating
In the new power system the only system block that affects whether or not the core of a ship overheats are the reactor blocks. It is my understanding that players are supposed to counter this limitation with the use of backup reactors, however this makes ships rather vulnerable once the reactor is found or attacked. Perhaps chambers should also count toward a ships reactor HP.
I am worried that the ability to see the power reactors of other ships with the use of a strong recon chamber might revive the infamous problem of "core drilling". For those new to the community, this was a problem in the earlier days of development where a player could "drill" for another players core and win an engagement. I may be over-reacting in this regard, however it is a possible issue that should be addressed, and approached carefully. I like the idea of being able to see a reactor, however, again, it must be approached with caution, especially when considered with the fact that the reactor blocks are the only blocks that count toward system HP.
In addition to the above issues, I have been given the impression from my testing that ship HP is not displayed entirely correctly. It may still be factoring in other blocks such as thrusters and shields when it is only the reactor blocks that count.
In regards to armor HP, what use is armor HP if it does nothing to dampen the effects of system damage? If I still have most of my armor on my ship said ship should not overheat simply because my reactor was destroyed. Armor protects the ship and it's systems. The armor HP seems to do nothing about protecting the ship other than being a display of how many armor blocks a ship has lost. This is an issue that has bothered me for several updates now. Perhaps system blocks should take less damage if a ship still has a specific amount of armor. This may be the way it works already, however if it is, it doesn't seem to be very effective in it's current state.
Other Critiques & Suggestions
In an earlier post about the power update it was communicated that all ships would have a built in FTL drive. This does not appear to function properly as of the time of this posting.
A plan that was also mentioned in an earlier development post was that the power update would be phased in, working in conjunction with the old system, for a period of time. As of 0.200.188 ships built on the old power system perform both very poorly, and cannot be overheated. They perform poorly because they were built with the old system in mind of course. However, it is worrying that the old power blocks have been completely replaced with the reactor power blocks. As a side effect of this replacement old ships cannot be overheated at all. To the developers: Are you still planning on phasing in the new system? Is there a memo that I have missed?
Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to state that I am well aware that the power system is still very much a work in progress, and that I am working from a development build. However, as these builds become more polished and the update nears release I deemed it necessary to give my feedback before it gets too far along the road.
And, as a final disclaimer I would also like to state to the developers that my feedback should not be taken without the feedback of the community.
I hope my feedback has been helpful. Good luck to everyone who reads this. I hope you are well. Stay safe.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Edit: Removed "and armor".
Power System Overview
Overall, the new power system seems to be working well in terms of the balance between reactor power, and reactor capacity. There is enough power to keep a sufficient number of thrusters running in order to achieve adequate speeds in a craft while still maintaining a weapon and shield system.
I appreciate how well the balance between weapon power consumption, thruster power consumption, and shield power consumption plays into a vessel. There is enough power to generally run all three systems on a single ship well, however not so much power that any one system can become much larger than the others. IE: with the balance the way it currently is I must make sacrifices between the strength of my shields, and the strength of my weapons. I believe this will go a long way toward preventing any one ship from being exceptionally strong.
Reactor Capacity seems to be in an optimal state in which a ship is prevented from having too many chamber systems. The balance here seems to be in a good place.
I will now go into greater depth on each section of the power system changes.
Effect Descriptions Need Polishing
One of the biggest issues with the development builds in their current state is that, as far as I can tell, none of the chamber systems work exactly as intended. In addition to the UI suggestions that I will outline at the end of this post, there is a general lack of clarity as to what each of the chamber effects actually do. I will use for example the defensive effects as these suffer most from this lack of clarity.
Firstly, when choosing whether a defensive chamber is to be an armor chamber or a shield chamber at the top of the tree there is some ambiguity as to what exactly the percentages mean. Lets take for example the armor choice. It is fairly clear that the added 10% armor applies to HP, however it is slightly less clear that the -25% applies to what might be called armor absorption (The ambiguity of this term will be discussed further in this section) in that it affects the damage that armor takes.
Perhaps I have overstated the issues with the initial tree selection, however ambiguity increases further down the tree. In the second section of the armor chamber tree there are four effects: Armor Heat Damage, Armor Type: Powered, Armor HP Absorption, and Armor HP Efficiency.
I assume that Armor Heat Damage reduces the damage taken by stars, Armor HP Absorption decreases the amount of damage the armor takes, and that Armor HP Efficiency increase the amount of HP that each armor block has. I may be correct in this, however it required assumptions. Each of these will need a better description of what sorts of damage or weapons they apply to, and how exactly they apply, as an example, until halfway through writing this post I thought Armor Heat Damage applied to missiles. In addition to a lack of clarity regarding these effects, I have absolutely no idea what Armor Type: Powered does or how it applies. As far as I can tell, all Armor Type: Powered does is slowly reduce the vessel's armor HP for seemingly no reason and with no damage taken.
This ambiguity also applies to other chamber trees such as the Reactor Shield tree.
Armor & Armor Effect Tree Critique
Note: For this section I am assuming that each armor effect is intended to work as described in the previous section.
With the description of the new armor effects I get the impression that armor is finally moving in a direction of not being totally inadequate as a complement to, or replacement of, the shield system. This is progress, however from my observations from messing around with these systems in single player armor is still laughably weak, especially when a ship protected by only armor is hit by missiles.
My hope is that as the effects become clearer and more polished we will see missiles become more balanced in relation to the damage they deal against ships compared to weapons such as cannons and beams. However, in order for the armor effect tree to truly make armor effective a few changes might need to be considered.
The first change is straightforward and simple, the Base Armor Enhancement should not reduce armor damage absorption. I understand that this is a choice intended to balance the four options against each other (IE: Not make Armor HP Absorption or Armor HP Efficiency better than the other). However, this choice does more to weaken armor than to strengthen it. Due to all armor types having exactly the same HP (100), armor damage/HP absorption is the only thing that actually makes it good. By setting armor damage absorption at a -25% off the bat for the Armor Effect tree not only is armor gimped and the Armor HP Efficiency effect only slightly worthwhile, the Armor HP Absorption 1 ability is completely negated. This is not conducive to making armor worthwhile, even with the Chamber system.
In addition to what I have stated in the previous paragraph (removing the -25% [Armor] in Armor Base Enhancement) it may be worth considering adding an armor effect that severely hampers missile impacts. I understand that this is difficult due to the way missile damage radius is calculated on impact, however it is very important that missiles not be god weapons, now is the chance to rectify this. My ideas for a hypothetical armor effect that counters missiles are as follows:
- The first idea I have for this hypothetical effect is that it makes armor act like a skin in which missile damage spreads across before affecting systems. By this I mean that if a missile hits an armor block it spreads to adjacent armor blocks before spreading to other types of blocks.
- The second idea I have for this would be that the effect directly decreases the radius that a missile damages the ship for as long as the ship has armor. Perhaps it could even go so far as to be tied to armor HP in some sort of calculation, however I believe that simplicity is key, and that complex calculations hidden to the players only hinders the game.
Unlike my critique of Armor and the Armor Effects Tree, I do not think that the descriptions of the shield effects are quite so obtuse. I do think that terminology needs to change surrounding missile damage, (the fact that it is called Alpha damage is rather confusing.) however I think that the description of this effect can be rectified with a reference to this being missile damage.
Also unlike my critique of Armor, I do not think that the -25% to the Under-Fire Timeout in Base Shield Enhancement overly gimps shields. If anything, this choice is one that was necessary to begin to rectify the fact that shields have been, in my opinion, too strong.
As mentioned in the Power System Overview section above, I do think that the amount of power shields use in order to function strikes a good balance.
In addition to those things, I find the choice to make shields have a limited functioning area (bubble) to be an interesting one. However, if a player cannot have two separate shield bubbles on one vessel for the purposes of covering a large vessel creativity may be hindered. That may not be the case, however the fact that the bubbles turn red when there are two overlapping bubbles certainly makes it appear that way (however this may simply be a visual effect of the meshes overlapping).
Weapons
Again, as stated above, the energy that weapon systems consume seems to be sitting around a healthy balance when compared to the energy of other ships systems. Also as mentioned above, missiles are still very strong.
The fact that missiles consume such high amounts of power in order to recharge does help to balance them. However, when damage on a hit is still so high to un-shielded (and even shielded) ships in the case of a hit they are still far better than any other weapon. As mentioned above, this could be rectified with an armor effect that decreases missile effectiveness, however it might also be rectified by either increasing the power required to recharge missiles, or adding an entire defensive effect tree dedicated to countering missiles. Point Defense turrets help this, however missiles are still too strong on hit, and point defense ought not to be the only effective counter against them, especially when considering the glitches and performance issues that occur when a ship is peppered in point defense turrets.
While my long-standing hatred of missiles still stands, I do however have one complaint related to missiles performing poorly as opposed to too well. That complaint is, missiles can't hit anything that is moving. Even lock on missiles can't. Despite missiles being almost too strong, it's incredibly frustrating to a player when they launch a lock-on missile, and it never connects when both ships are moving at speed. Maybe this is a scanning or homing issue, whatever it is, despite missiles being good, this should probably be rectified.
Beams and Cannons seem to be balanced well against defenses such as shields*, however, again, not so much against the other options (missiles).
UI & Clarity
There are a few simple suggestions that I think might help improve the interface of the chamber effects tree.
The first suggestion I have is that players should not be required to attach a chamber to their ship in order to see what the tree is for that chamber type. Chamber Effect Trees should be viewable from the reactor screen regardless of whether or not the ship has that chamber type attached to their ship. This would improve player experience.
The second suggestion is related to the Chamber Effect descriptions. As descriptions of effects are added and improved more room will be necessary to display them. It's smart having the descriptions appear when the mouse is however over the effect, however if there is not enough room in this regard, it may be worthwhile to display the description at the bottom of the chamber tree screen when the effect is clicked.
Stabilizer Distance
Stabilizer distance might use just a little bit of work. It's a little bit nuts how much the distance away from the reactor increases for each reactor block added above the initial size of 10 blocks. Maybe the distance should only increase for every few blocks added, or only when the reactor is leveled up.
Ship Stats & Overheating
In the new power system the only system block that affects whether or not the core of a ship overheats are the reactor blocks. It is my understanding that players are supposed to counter this limitation with the use of backup reactors, however this makes ships rather vulnerable once the reactor is found or attacked. Perhaps chambers should also count toward a ships reactor HP.
I am worried that the ability to see the power reactors of other ships with the use of a strong recon chamber might revive the infamous problem of "core drilling". For those new to the community, this was a problem in the earlier days of development where a player could "drill" for another players core and win an engagement. I may be over-reacting in this regard, however it is a possible issue that should be addressed, and approached carefully. I like the idea of being able to see a reactor, however, again, it must be approached with caution, especially when considered with the fact that the reactor blocks are the only blocks that count toward system HP.
In addition to the above issues, I have been given the impression from my testing that ship HP is not displayed entirely correctly. It may still be factoring in other blocks such as thrusters and shields when it is only the reactor blocks that count.
In regards to armor HP, what use is armor HP if it does nothing to dampen the effects of system damage? If I still have most of my armor on my ship said ship should not overheat simply because my reactor was destroyed. Armor protects the ship and it's systems. The armor HP seems to do nothing about protecting the ship other than being a display of how many armor blocks a ship has lost. This is an issue that has bothered me for several updates now. Perhaps system blocks should take less damage if a ship still has a specific amount of armor. This may be the way it works already, however if it is, it doesn't seem to be very effective in it's current state.
Other Critiques & Suggestions
In an earlier post about the power update it was communicated that all ships would have a built in FTL drive. This does not appear to function properly as of the time of this posting.
A plan that was also mentioned in an earlier development post was that the power update would be phased in, working in conjunction with the old system, for a period of time. As of 0.200.188 ships built on the old power system perform both very poorly, and cannot be overheated. They perform poorly because they were built with the old system in mind of course. However, it is worrying that the old power blocks have been completely replaced with the reactor power blocks. As a side effect of this replacement old ships cannot be overheated at all. To the developers: Are you still planning on phasing in the new system? Is there a memo that I have missed?
Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to state that I am well aware that the power system is still very much a work in progress, and that I am working from a development build. However, as these builds become more polished and the update nears release I deemed it necessary to give my feedback before it gets too far along the road.
And, as a final disclaimer I would also like to state to the developers that my feedback should not be taken without the feedback of the community.
I hope my feedback has been helpful. Good luck to everyone who reads this. I hope you are well. Stay safe.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Edit: Removed "and armor".
Last edited:
