Dev Blog : October 20th 2015

[FullMetalFox]

Are you kidding me? Competitive racing could add a whole new layer to the game. Imagine a "death race" arena/track on a server that people can join/spectate/bet on. That sounds pretty awesome to me.

I can remember some players trying to make race events on two servers, and the amount of other players showing interest in them was not really noticable, resulting in the event being scraped in both cases. So i wonder how many players would actually be interested in this apart from trying it once.

Interesting FullMetalFox you say we aren't taking on board the community's ideas to improve the game when just in this dev blog we mentioned we're currently implementing Transporters that function in a manner that was suggested by a member of that same community.

GaeasSon pointed out something I seem to say every dev blog, that people too often are quick to jump to poke holes in what we're working on because they don't see it in the same context we do.

That assumption is not correct.
With the lack of a dedicated game designer, im more worried about the big picture not getting enough attention, aka the direction starmade is taking as a whole. And secondly, im very worried about the priotities in development.
I could write down my speculations on why, but those are rather topics that can quickly invite people who turn it into a not very civilized dicussion.

Sure, race gates might not seem like they make sense on their own, they seem a bit random. But once you start considering the aspect of winners' pots, betting, etc suddenly there's another way to stimulate the credit economy beyond just buying and selling at shops. Not only that, once missions are added in, we have another avenue to explore as well that encourages players to start to think about how they build ships and what systems they prioritize over others for the context they're using it in.

Similarly transporters are part of a bigger picture as well, one of

I did think about as to why you choose to develop transporters and race gates now, and yes that did include economics, social activities, pregenerated content, missions/quests, encouraging build diversity, stuffing holes in the teams work load with smaller projects, as well as simply catering towards different player groups. But thats the crux for me, i couldnt come up with a reason as to why now that did not indicate something worrisome.

If you want a more in depth explanation, i can over to write it in a PM.

 

[Bench]

Still sounds a bit random to me. Unjustified? No, but random. They sound like the sort of thing to add later on in beta, perhaps as part of a rare Racing mission type where you try to beat NPC racers in one of a few possible tracks or something. They do encourage more community events, though, and that's always a good thing, I suppose, but I get the sense that they won't be used very much. Kind of like Battle Mode...

It was more as Schema was working on activation gates to solve an existing game issue, race gates were an easy addition to make.

With the lack of a dedicated game designer, im more worried about the big picture not getting enough attention, aka the direction starmade is taking as a whole.

That role is actually what i've recently stepped into as my primary job on the game. Feel free to PM me if you have any more concerns you want to discuss, happy to talk

 

[Ithirahad]

It was more as Schema was working on activation gates to solve an existing game issue, race gates were an easy addition to make.

That's what I suspected, but I'm surprised nonetheless; all those systems you mentioned sound a lot more complicated than activation gates, which I'd think can just reuse warpgate code.

 

[Bench]

That's what I suspected, but I'm surprised nonetheless; all those systems you mentioned sound a lot more complicated than activation gates, which I'd think can just reuse warpgate code.

Schema knows what he's doing

 

[forlorn]

Hey any news or eta on the creatures side of things bench? It's been in the in progress slot for a bit now..I understand that other things need to develop for creatures to happen, but I've had my hopes up for ages now...any tantalizing info or ...basically anything for people who have been hanging out for fauna?

 

[Bench]

Hey any news or eta on the creatures side of things bench? It's been in the in progress slot for a bit now..I understand that other things need to develop for creatures to happen, but I've had my hopes up for ages now...any tantalizing info or ...basically anything for people who have been hanging out for fauna?

Not at the moment, sorry.

 

[TomW1605]

Bench, i just want to ask about the details of how transporters will work.

1. will we be able to transport more than just astronauts. i.e. can i transport a cargo pod from my miner to my factory room?
2. if it is just astronauts would they need to be in gravity to stand on the pad of would it just be the aria above it?
3. what sort of range would it have?

 

[Bench]

Bench, i just want to ask about the details of how transporters will work.

1. will we be able to transport more than just astronauts. i.e. can i transport a cargo pod from my miner to my factory room?
2. if it is just astronauts would they need to be in gravity to stand on the pad of would it just be the aria above it?
3. what sort of range would it have?

1. unlikely.
2. probably gravity.
3. unsure.

 

[TomW1605]

1. unlikely.

is this likely to change in the future?

 

[Bench]

is this likely to change in the future?

Again unlikely

 

[BillGHero]

Improvements to Physics for Projectiles etc
For TwitchCon we had some physics improvements go into the build that saw a massive improvement with beams like salvage beams on planets, projectiles with collisions etc. You should notice from before TwitchCon to now a massive improvement in performance in this area.

Any plans to push those aforementioned improvements soon?

 

[Trekkerjoe]

Transporters? Heck, yeah! Now here's to hoping that you give us some pretty good reasons for using it. I imagine beaming over to another ship to clear out an alien infestation. I can see players beaming down to their base and back. I can imagine an entire faction beaming over members to prevent boarders from stealing their beloved supercapital WIP. If this is going to be half as awesome as I think it might be, then I'm sold.

In regards to the new launcher: Looks very pleasing, and it is nice to see that I can chose the build I run through the launcher. You used to have to go through a lot of trouble to access both the dev branch, and the older builds. Enough trouble that I simply didn't have time for it. No longer!

 

[TomW1605]

will there also be transport inhibitors?

 

[Bench]

will there also be transport inhibitors?

Could be an extra thing the radar jammers do

 

[TomW1605]

or the transport computers have a transport jamming mode that consumes power at a constant rate

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Could be an extra thing the radar jammers do

Radar already hides the targets from missiles, it seems only fitting it would do the same for transporters.

 

[TomW1605]

Could be an extra thing the radar jammers do

i was thinking something that would stop someone from transporting it the sector wether it is on that ship or no. also the ability to lockdown transporters at the cost of power to prevent transport.
[DOUBLEPOST=1445491722,1445491172][/DOUBLEPOST]to elaborate i want to be able to make a blockade by which thay cant just transport from onside to the other

 

[hzzzln]

Bench, any news about asteroid re-spawning/economy in general?

 

[Lancake]

Any plans to push those aforementioned improvements soon?

Most of those optimizations are in the latest dev builds already (still some bugs to find/fix though) so these will be in the next release.

Quick example: Salvager beams in large groups do not cause server wide ping increase anymore, at least it didn't for my 1500 group salvager array which used to drop me to 2-3 FPS and cause 10 000 ping spikes for everyone. Now I drop from 90 to 60 FPS and the 2 other clients on the test server at that time did not notice any ping increase or slow down.

However, this was on the test server. What you experience can be different when the release version arrives.

 

[TomW1605]

when the release version arrives.

do we have any indication when that will be?