Dev Blog : October 21st 2016

[Gonzalo]

nice!

 

[Raisinbat]

This sounds way to much like No Man's Sky; where are the gameplay improvements?

There's no ballance to weapons, armor is useless, ai is totally ineffectual in combat, game gives far too little information and the powergrid is a huge mess; why do you keep expanding the game when the core gameplay sucks this hard?

 

[Criss]

ai is totally ineffectual in combat

As it stands, yes. It is evident that AI will improve with this update. It will be needed in order for factions to function the way we need them to. Furthermore, we have over a dozen ships that we would like to include with this update, even more. We cannot rely on them using the same AI. A level of control will be available.

To answer other questions.

I wonder how NPC strength will vary?

NPC's will vary in strength, and they will have different goals. Our first batch may not include randomly generated NPC factions. We have 2 factions that will be ready, and maybe a third. More will be added over time.

Will they ally or wage war against one another?

At the very least, the Scavenger pirates will fight you, and anyone else the come across. Future factions will generate and may war with each other. Not sure if it will happen with this update.

How are the NPCs going to handle ship/station creation?

I imagine it will be abstract. Creating shipyard stations and the like for every single contest winning fleet would be difficult. Ships will spawn in territory if they have resources and the like.

Can an NPC faction be completely annihilated or subjugated?

Yes, this should be possible.

Could they be forced to pay a tribute to you?

Unlikely, although you might be able to engage in lucrative trade deals? That's very specific and delves heavily into strategy style diplomacy. We aren't there just yet.

I'd like to remind everyone though, that this is just the start. I'm not even sure stations will be included as this update will not require a universe reset.

 

[Captain Tankman]

There's no ballance to weapons, armor is useless, ai is totally ineffectual in combat, game gives far too little information and the powergrid is a huge mess; why do you keep expanding the game when the core gameplay sucks this hard?

You can't balance a game which is only 20% done. Once everything(or at least all core mechanics) are in the game, you can start balancing them out. Otherwise you had to re-adjust everything for each major update and that may be way too time consuming.

@ Topic:

Can the NPC factions interact with us like normal faction e.g. forming alliances with the outcasts or declaring war on the trade guild?

 

[Criss]

Can the NPC factions interact with us like normal faction e.g. forming alliances with the outcasts or declaring war on the trade guild?

I imagine you will still be able to war with a faction, thought I'm not sure about the alliance part. That might come later. AFAIK right now we are getting them to spawn and grow. We will know more as Schema progresses.

 

[Scypio]

I'd like to remind everyone though, that this is just the start. I'm not even sure stations will be included as this update will not require a universe reset.

Is that bad that we got some resets over time ? I mean we can save everythings easily, it's not like it's lost.

 

[Criss]

Is that bad that we got some resets over time ? I mean we can save everythings easily, it's not like it's lost.

Well some servers have been around for a long time. In some cases servers reset once every few weeks for the new changes. We want to avoid that as much as possible. No point in this new universe to explore if it needs to be re-generated often. We expect 2 - 3 resets in the foreseeable future as we change the universe and factions.

 

[Raisinbat]

As it stands, yes. It is evident that AI will improve with this update. It will be needed in order for factions to function the way we need them to. Furthermore, we have over a dozen ships that we would like to include with this update, even more. We cannot rely on them using the same AI. A level of control will be available.

But why not do this first? If you keep piling features on top of a foundation that will need sweeping changes to be functional you end up having to redo large parts of the game. If the AI is made to work with the current powersystem and you change the powersystem later then you have redo an important part of the ai, and if the powersystem has actual scarcity to power where you need to manage which systems to use and when to conserve power it starts affecting other parts of the ai, and that's just on one field.

This also means noone can give any decent feedback because we're stuck with placeholders everywhere.

You can't balance a game which is only 20% done.

Yes you can, starsector and factorio did this just fine. Combat doesn't require faction warfare to be ballanced, power systems don't require faction warfare to be ballanced, ai doesn't need faction warfare to lead it's fucking target and prioritize actual threats over harmless decoys.

Besides if it's impossible why are they trying? Why change power, why add auxilliary power, why change the thrust mechanic? Schine have tried to address these problems, they just fail spectacularly,which is why i'm really fucking worried.

Once everything(or at least all core mechanics) are in the game, you can start balancing them out. Otherwise you had to re-adjust everything for each major update and that may be way too time consuming.

And if you find anything wrong there's 5x as much game that needs changing. It's not like you have to do less work this way, but when you don't know what anything is going to be like in the final game you can't design the new stuff properly! If the game had a proper power system then it would be much easier to design the weapons since you have a system for limiting them, instead of the current power = dps nonsense. If the weapons were well designed it would be much easier to design the ai, because you know what its going to work with, even if there will be slight changes later. If mining and industry were done well then it would be much easier to make the faction system because you know what they need to strive for, instead we're going to get another unfinished placeholder system on top of all the others.

Finishing one system at a time, or at least getting it to a near-finish state produces a lot less work in total; not everything is dependant on every single update, and once you have a stable core it wont need to change at all for future updates (see: Starsector ) What do you think is going to happen when all the systems are in the game and the great deballancing occurs, because my money is on schine loosing track of the process, making a few rubbish adjustments that ultimately get nowhere because everything is so intertwined every change breaks everything else until they say "fuck it" and release the game with shoddy mechanics and starmade joins starbound and no man's sky as huge procedurally generated sandboxes that nobody gives a shit about.

They've allready shown they don't know how to balance the game several times, which wouldn't be such a huge issue if they at least used feedback properly but this approach means you'll never get feedback because we're in perpetual prototype hell. Starmade's strengths lie in ship building, which it does better than any other game i've seen, but the game can't stand on that alone, and as every other failed attempt shows huge procedural universes are worth jack shit unless the game itself has something to offer.

 

[Captain Tankman]

I'm sorry to hear that you don't have any confidence in Schine.
But after all the stuff you've posted I have to ask you, why do you even play this apparently totally broken Starmade that will never get fixed in the first place?
All you've said is "this is broken, that is broken" but I haven't seen anything from you that says "hey let's change that this way so it works better".

Ok I'm done now with this stuff, back to the actual topic.

 

[captainairspeed]

wonder if their will be mercenary factions that you can hire then you could bolster your forces with hired fleets meaning bigger battles quicker also be nice to have cargo ships that only to people stations and deliver the goods instead of the current invisible ships that take a certain amount of time to get their id make pirating factions easier to do as they could spawn along the ships paths

 

[Jananton]

This all sounds very promising, certainly when you dropped the line containing single-player.

Building an AI for NPC factions and characters can be a daunting task, moreover when you want to make it possible to expand the actions provided even more later on, so take your time.

My imagination goes wild already by the idea of encountering strange new ships that hail you with varying 'friendliness', dock with unknown space stations, landing in lush cities on planets and interacting with local civilizations and citizens.

Oh well, I get ahead of myself, can't wait how this all will play out. :D

Greets,

Jan

 

[Scypio]

My imagination goes wild already by the idea of encountering strange new ships that hail you with varying 'friendliness', dock with unknown space stations, landing in lush cities on planets and interacting with local civilizations and citizens.

You forgot the part when you become the tyrant of the planet and mass murder them if they do not agree with you. :D

Wait, i just realized that if factions can do things without the need to be loaded this mean that non-loaded fleets will become a thing. Am i right ?

 

[Ithirahad]

armor is useless

OMGWTFDOYOUEVEN...

*ahem*

...Armor is not useless, I can assure you of that much. You're probably using it wrong (Are you only using one layer?)
[doublepost=1477051589,1477051461][/doublepost]

imagine it will be abstract. Creating shipyard stations and the like for every single contest winning fleet would be difficult. Ships will spawn in territory if they have resources and the like.

No need for that, just make generic industrial stations for factions that don't get their own... And perhaps down the line you can have the contest winners build stations for their fleets if they want to.

 

[Criss]

generic industrial stations

Let's take it a step further. We create a faction the specializes in releasing these installations to the consumer (factions), and they use them to progress with their needs. And they also create blocks that allow build access on structures! And large scale machinery that can build ships!

 

[Ithirahad]

All you've said is "this is broken, that is broken" but I haven't seen anything from you that says "hey let's change that this way so it works better".

He's saying "let's change the development priorities so EVERYTHING - theoretically - works better, and then people can give feedback/ideas of how to fix things that aren't skewed by bugs and prototype systems that make it invalid."
[doublepost=1477052034,1477051928][/doublepost]

Let's take it a step further. We create a faction the specializes in releasing these installations to the consumer (factions), and they use them to progress with their needs. And they also create blocks that allow build access on structures! And large scale machinery that can build ships!

Is this... a hint at what one of the other two factions is?

 

[Criss]

Is this... a hint at what one of the other two factions is?

No. The other two are way cooler.

Saber and I would love to build a faction like this though, but it was not part of our initial plans for the lore, so it was set aside.

 

[Ithirahad]

<snip>

 

[Raisinbat]

OMGWTFDOYOUEVEN...

*ahem*

...Armor is not useless, I can assure you of that much. You're probably using it wrong (Are you only using one layer?)

Show me an armor tanking design that can win a fight against a similar sized ship with same level of design, when you do that, and only then am i going to drop this point.

Armor does NOT stop high penetration weapons; even fighters can go through 40 block thick advanced armor = useless.
Armor does NOT prevent your turrets from being shot off = any turret based design loses combat effectiveness as soon as shields drop.
Armor does NOT prevent critical blocks like computers, cameras and logic from being destroyed making any advanced design prone to system failure every time it's hit.
Armor does not benefit from shield regen so a large part of your ship stops functioning once armor kicks in.
Armor does not prevent structure damage, giving your ship various hiccups like loss of control or power.

But worst of all, armor adds a ton of weight to your ship, weight that increases your need for thrusters and passive effects; yes it takes time to destroy a large block of armor, but that doesn't come free.

How about instead of assuring me of this nonsense you give me a ship to shoot at? PM me and we can setup a fight :D More science is always good.

My imagination goes wild already by the idea of encountering strange new ships that hail you with varying 'friendliness', dock with unknown space stations, landing in lush cities on planets and interacting with local civilizations and citizens.

Your imagination is out of control. You really think a game with thousands of planets is going to have millions of NPCs running around doing things? Much lighter games in more efficient engines struggle with 100 and they don't have custom built spaceships floating around everywhere. If you want to imagine all this crap here's a great game for you

 

[Ithirahad]

No. The other two are way cooler.

Saber and I would love to build a faction like this though, but it was not part of our initial plans for the lore, so it was set aside.

Tak Star Logistics should be its own faction, using the Tak ships currently designed for the TG for hauling but with a different paint job, along with armor-tanking converted freighters for defense (Mostly because I love the idea of conversion-kit ships for some reason), and a bunch of stations and things for exactly this purpose.
[doublepost=1477053854,1477052886][/doublepost]

Show me an armor tanking design that can win a fight against a similar sized ship with same level of design, when you do that, and only then am i going to drop this point.

Armor does NOT stop high penetration weapons; even fighters can go through 40 block thick advanced armor = useless.

Show me a fighter reliably that can go through 5-block-thick armor and do a meaningful amount of systems damage in actual combat while under fire from turrets... and I shall reconsider my position.

Armor does NOT prevent your turrets from being shot off = any turret based design loses combat effectiveness as soon as shields drop.

There's no rule saying that your turret base has to be docked to the outside of the hull. Try putting the turret docking contact under multiple layers of blast doors (a.k.a. ARMOR) in your hull, and separating the turret's rail docker from the rest of the turret, then it will become significantly harder to actually shoot the turret off, and people will have to try and kill it or knock out the barrels - both significantly harder than just popping off the turret with most designs.

Armor does NOT prevent critical blocks like computers, cameras and logic from being destroyed making any advanced design prone to system failure every time it's hit.

Um, no; just use a bunch of advanced armor.

Armor does not benefit from shield regen so a large part of your ship stops functioning once armor kicks in.

That's just balance. Either you dedicate to shield tank, or dedicate to armor tank, or combine the two, meaning that your 5-block-thick armor is just weighing you down when you still have shields and your shield equipment is just wasting internal space when your shields are down.

Armor does not prevent structure damage, giving your ship various hiccups like loss of control or power.

If your ship is completely losing power due to getting shot a few times with shields down that's your own damn fault, whether or not you're actually using armor as a major part of your defense.

But worst of all, armor adds a ton of weight to your ship, weight that increases your need for thrusters and passive effects; yes it takes time to destroy a large block of armor, but that doesn't come free.

It does that. But in return, you get practical immunity to most types of missile, significantly reduced damage from beams, and you get to piss off the guy who loaded a huge ion beam because it's suddenly 100% useless.

How about instead of assuring me of this nonsense you give me a ship to shoot at? PM me and we can setup a fight :D More science is always good.

...And here I refer you to Zyrr and the Formiden Colonial Mandate.

Your imagination is out of control. You really think a game with thousands of planets is going to have millions of NPCs running around doing things? Much lighter games in more efficient engines struggle with 100 and they don't have custom built spaceships floating around everywhere. If you want to imagine all this crap here's a great game for you

That's hardly out of control. It's actually completely achievable - you just need various clever implementations of LoD techniques and levels of virtualization to make it work.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

Looks awesome!