Dev Blog : February 17th 2016

[Jananton]

Oh boy, I can't believe I completely overlooked this blog, having had one just the week before I thought this was that one still.

I can only say the game mechanics mentioned and described here are extremely interesting. It's understandable that setting this all up and fine tune it will be a huge task and will take time, but it's definitely a thing to look forward to with great expectations. :D

Greets,

Jan

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

Are more NPC factions planned?

I seem to be thinking of this fleet stuff from a completely different perspective than most people.

I'm thinking of a trading guild and a merchant guild (who compete and hate each other), and multiple different "alien races" factions each with their own military/militia (who are invariably at war with each other), plus a few different pirate factions, plus some sort of galactic police force, plus a few more odd-ball factions, plus several civilian factions (one for each race).

I'm thinking all these NPC factions would be having fleet battles all over the galaxy, all the time; and NPC factions would try to expand, and setup mining operations, and shipyards, and trade routes, and factories, and...

I'm thinking player made factions would just add to the chaos; where each player made faction would choose which NPC factions to support or fight against.

I'm thinking player vs. player fleet battles are just the tip of a very large iceberg.

 

[kiraen]

Are more NPC factions planned?

Yup.
StarMade Development Direction

 

[Criss]

Are more NPC factions planned?

Yes. There are 5 factions planned at the moment. The Trading Guild, Outcasts and Scavengers have all been revealed so far. Two more factions are also planned. After these factions are in there will be randomly generated factions using assets provided from the devs and the community with contests.

There is the possibility that more established races will appear after all this, but for now we are just sticking with the 5.

 

[StormWing0]

There going to be an easier way to make new NPC factions than what we have currently?

 

[Pyuri]

Fleets, Hangar-ships, NPC aahhh awesome.

But, Starmade urgently needs a performance update.
Online, there are still too many Lag causes.
We need much Server rules to play without lag and so much players dont read the rules.


I'm afraid the Starmade servers can't handle big Fleets, or big fleet battle. At the end i think, the most servers of Starmade will make hard rules for fleets.

I wish a performance update. But sorry i am not a Prgroammer i dont know how hard it is. But i think a Performanve update is needed and will bring much more fun in starmade as a Fleet update for first.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Performance updates and the like are added pretty much all the time, but there can't really be a proper across the board optimisation until the games more feature complete, since as more things are added it's just going to break again. It's something that comes with the open alpha territory.

 

[Nickizzy]

Yea, at least we don't have to many massive gliches(cough)space engineers(cough). I wonder when we will get out of alpha? I would perfer to stay for a while(if not for gameplay features) so we get more of the roadmap done, hopefully all of it. And in alpha you can suggest actual things like invis ship cores and cockpits before the universe is set in stone.
[DOUBLEPOST=1456410336,1456410271][/DOUBLEPOST]See that^:p i just saved this thread from a rant about breakof collision damage and out of shipcore control!

 

[kiraen]

Alpha means feature incomplete.
Once all the feature are in and the road map is complete, then we move to beta for balancing and optimization.
This does not mean more features can not be added later.
I'm expecting at least another year before beta.

 

[Rixxan]

Finally my titan carriers will be far more useful and i wont just have to leave my fighters behind once i commence the dump functions. Keep corvettes in formation with the my ship to keep safe during mining excursions or when heading into known combat.
...sigh i can dream.

Yeah 'cept ender lost ALL of his ships, hopefully you don't sustain that kind of losses too often.

 

[Nickizzy]

Yeah 'cept ender lost ALL of his ships, hopefully you don't sustain that kind of losses too often.

I actually wonder if that would be a good idea in starmade? Have swarms of small armor cubes orbit a larger ship? They would totally mess up player lockons and would give an decent shield against missiles. Beams and cannons would be mostly stopped if the ships rotated fast enough.

Alas, I know not what fleet commands you could give your ships, but "orbit" would be a cool one.

 

[Nickizzy]

You might be able to do a fake version of that now with rails, but it might defeat the purpose because of shield sharing and punch through effects.

 

[RabidBat]

Seriously hope they do some optimization with this update, alpha or not, it's no good adding/releasing a feature if it's going to make the game unplayable for most.

 

[Nickizzy]

Seriously hope they do some optimization with this update, alpha or not, it's no good adding/releasing a feature if it's going to make the game unplayable for most.

Here:

Performance updates and the like are added pretty much all the time, but there can't really be a proper across the board optimisation until the games more feature complete, since as more things are added it's just going to break again. It's something that comes with the open alpha territory.

Alpha means feature incomplete.
Once all the feature are in and the road map is complete, then we move to beta for balancing and optimization.
This does not mean more features can not be added later.
I'm expecting at least another year before beta.

What they said.

 

[kiraen]

Sandra and Woo » [0430] Software Engineering, Now With Cats! | The comedy webcomic

To be clear, we are currently in the third panel.

 

[Rixxan]

Sandra and Woo » [0430] Software Engineering, Now With Cats! | The comedy webcomic

To be clear, we are currently in the third panel.

Kinda true, just we know what we want. We just don't know how to say it yet. We know all the things we DON'T want, we just don't know what we DO want.

 

[kikaha]

I'd like to find remnants of past battles. Stumbling accross ship wrecks (with nasty surprises inside?) would add some "story" to the universe. Like wouah something happened here, lets explore this ship cimetary...

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Wow. I had a play with the recent dev build and I love being able to send ships out to designated sectors. Awesome!

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Can we see course plotting with fleets? I tried sending a formation to a sector using the move order and they obeyed, but crashed into to a station and became stuck. They didn't avoid the station. A course plotting system with multiple coordinates would help. Would be great for plotting courses around sectors you don't want to go through.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Can we see course plotting with fleets? I tried sending a formation to a sector using the move order and they obeyed, but crashed into to a station and became stuck. They didn't avoid the station. A course plotting system with multiple coordinates would help. Would be great for plotting courses around sectors you don't want to go through.

We desperately need this for jump drives as well to avoid those pesky suns.