Devblog 13th September 2017 (Power Stream!)

[Drakkart]

The complexity has shifted from a convoluted, hard to understand, and overly complicated way to generate power, to a system that generating power is easy and its how you manage that power between chambers (which have set limits, that doesn't make 'larger is better') and what the demands are during different operations is the complexity that you have to master. The shape of a ship means very little in this, and the learning curve has shifted to steep, to a curve to one that is easy to pick up but has depth to master, which in my opinion is much better.

Well maybe you know more than us then please feel free to enlighten us. You are right we do not know the entire system yet and i agree it is better than what we had at least for new players. But i do not consider those chambers a good idea or real endgame either.

 

[StormWing0]

What would quiet some of these people is if there was a power modding chamber of some kind to let smaller ships supe up their reactors to pump out more power than normal.

 

[Scypio]

- What defines "small" ?
- At wich scale such thing would be impossible to do on a ship ?
- Wouldn't it be better to simply put more reactor than adding a chamber that boost the rest... ?
- Chamber = less points for other and more useful chambers on your small ship. How to balance that ?
That's just putting a small bandage to stop the bleeding from your arm cut.

 

[Drakkart]

What would quiet some of these people is if there was a power modding chamber of some kind to let smaller ships supe up their reactors to pump out more power than normal.

Naw that would not give people something to experiment with. That would be a cheat and not something tinkerers would enjoy. The thing is the only joy would be a system that really is hard to master and the old system was. For example they coud have put curves on the powerscaling of the new reactors let's say they sense proximity of each other and the more are close the higher the output but at the same time the entire group wants as much "surface area" as possible... such stuff makes people go crazy with excel sheets and trial and error and keeps people captivated constantly. new "exploits" are coming up and hardly there is just one final awesome solution... it could still work as simple as it is on small ships but the high end ships would differ depending on the understanding of the engineer and that is what is missing with the new system.

trust me a dumb "exploit now" button is the opposite of what such people want

 

[ADIX]

I'm actually happy with the new system well what we saw currently. But I guess it will be only better.
Everyone is saying this "old system was hard to master" thing but... build a lot of 1 width line to all 3/6 directions... sort of... In my opinion it will be harder to set chamber to match exactly the purpose of the ship. I mean there's a lot of thing to boost with the chambers but you have limited resources. You can't boost everything to 100% (perma cloak + 200% speed etc, you have to choose). Currently if you run out of power because of your system sizes you just add more power reactor you just make the 1 width lines longer... And currently if you want the most most most effective power system you have to build this shape... I mean, most perma cloakers look the same (I guess...) because how power generation works... The current system is a shape limits power generation. And this is not how in real life it works. At least not how in the game. Atom reactors doesn't have + shape, right? And perma cloaking is hard to do now... I know, not all the ships should have perma cloak... Obviuosly. But the new system does not do this. It just allow other shaped spaceships to have perma cloak.
Not to mention that currently you determine your ships capability when you build it. There's no "redirect power from weapons to jump drives and let's get the hell out of here". But with this new power system you can do that as well as many other thing. There's so many potential in the new system while the old system is just a "well, I built that shape again... at least it has a lot of power..." thing...
I hope this change from one cahmber tree to an other will be logic controllable.
IMO the new system brings more engineering things and things to master in the building phase (planning chamber trees) as well as to the using/fling phase (switching between chamber trees).
On the other hand, I'm not sure chamber is the good name for those things. I don't know what they should be called... Power redirectors I don't know. But I guess those things participate in redirecting/pumping/transfering more power than by default rather than in the power generation process if I understand the "story" correctly.

 

[Toshiro]

it's sad to read so much negative speculation on a system that is not yet finalized, all because people are afraid to change their little habits of slippers. The fear of change and unhappy human but it does not make the man more open and more intelligent ...

 

[GnomeKing]

[To clarify, and to not appear as a complete Misery: while I am not currently enthusiastic, i will (if i have time) give the new building mechanics a fair try. In reality it is various aspects of multiplayer-meta game and behavior, fleet controls, and AI commands that have slowly sapped my enthusiasm for the game - power-threading was never really an issue for me, just a key aspect of the game to work through. ]

ps: re XYZ reactors and RP; take for example Synthea's mod of the Lennart yacht>
EELS - Exotic Energy Luxury Ship (Lennart Yacht mod) v1
Here is nice looking max power/max speed/perma-stealth ship...with a swimming pool and movable solar wings !!!...ok, a very specialized ship, but that crazy look only happened because of the functional need to maximize the XYZ reactors-threads. Under the new system, it would have been much easier to modify the original Yacht and max-buff the chambers for stealth etc...but i am not sure the final build would be as interesting...:/

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Discussing this topic is cool but the truth is that none of us really know for sure what is and is not possible in the new system. I for one, want to actually TEST this thing, open up its guts and see what it can do.

Come on Schine, get the lead out!

 

[Daro_Khan]

I want to test it too, instead of bickering on the forums about something i have not put my teeth into yet!
Here is a list of my thoughts below.

I hear many arguments that it make the game to easy to learn. And Here I am. The old power system had one effective way, alll one had to do is google research or ask around and make best power right from the start. I admit the old power was poorly explained, it added an fake barrier to getting a good power setup

Now with this new system power is straight forward within game(from what we see so far) And Chambers add (Customization!) which = depth and removes linear growth in a way by adding character to each ship (good at stealth or scanning or Jumping or combat or a mix of several) backup reactors for different chambers for different effects.

Am going to address the largest thing now NO MORE JUMP DRIVE MODULES,INHIB MODULES,POWER TANKS,SCANNER MODULES Scale on MASS OF WHOLE SHIP. Lets not forget Defensive effects to!(which are going to be chambers AFIAK) Most of these modules fucking sucked balls since they scaled on mass of ship. Ship HP scaled collective with all system blocks. Suddenly your overheating because only your engines got shot off lol!

We will be saving a lot of internal space with the new system, even with reactors and chambers you all gonna have more room for weapons and shields (more rooms for the folks that like that too) Oh and Ship HP might be turning into Reactor HP Or System hp and reactor HP (in live stream Cat god wasn't sure yet.)

Anyway rant over.

P.S this change was not just about power, but about the foundation system for universe update and the effect system Schema mentioned (sectors systems, anomiles)

 

[GnomeKing]

"Most of these modules fucking sucked balls since they scaled on mass of ship. Ship HP scaled collective with all system blocks. Suddenly your overheating because only your engines got shot off lol!"

.... yes indeed - that was the balance that made large ships difficult to build without also having large weaknesses, such as thrust-mass ratio...the new system seems to allow for buying/searching out magical 'buff' blocks, rather than having to build a difficult power-thread or other 'hard-wired' solution based on universal game-mechanics.

Eg: Want a bit more thrust?
>old: balance out current power/mass with added thrusters and increased mass/consumption + changing the physical hull/systems blocks of the ship
>new: find/buy a magical thruster buff block, attach, and turn dial to level umpteen-gazillion...(or until capacity of reactor reached)

New is certainly easier - but i am not sure it is going to be as satisfying in the long run


on another note:
(i can also see how paid for 'Buff-Block Packs' might fund servers...currently buying in game credits on a server gives access to resources in bulk, protected sectors and the like, but does not improve the quality/abilities of your builds per se)

 

[Ithirahad]

Eg: Want a bit more thrust?
>old: balance out current power/mass with added thrusters and increased mass/consumption + changing the physical hull/systems blocks of the ship
>new: find/buy a magical thruster buff block, attach, and turn dial to level umpteen-gazillion...(or until capacity of reactor reached)

They said that they are going to try and avoid redundant chambers that don't do anything you could accomplish by simply adding more normal blocks. So, no effective shield capacity increases (Ion effect) or permanent thrust increases, unless they've changed their plans.

 

[nightrune]

They said that they are going to try and avoid redundant chambers that don't do anything you could accomplish by simply adding more normal blocks. So, no effective shield capacity increases (Ion effect) or permanent thrust increases, unless they've changed their plans.

This is correct. The rule is "Behavior not Stats." If you can increase the stat with a block we will likely not be buffing it with a chamber.

That said, the effect system is capable of buffing stats for use later on.

Edit: Clarified

 

[Ithirahad]

That said, the effect system is capable of buffing stats for use later on.

So, is the underlying system behind chambers going to be used for crew enhancements as well? And environmental effects?

 

[nightrune]

So, is the underlying system behind chambers going to be used for crew enhancements as well? And environmental effects?

It's going to be used for many things, particularly environmental effects.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm What about drones and other docked ships that are undocked in mass for fleets? We know that chambers don't transfer effects from one entity to another so will the docked entity's chambers auto activate on undock or are we going to be cursing your names for all time and have to manually turn them on?

 

[nightrune]

hmm What about drones and other docked ships that are undocked in mass for fleets? We know that chambers don't transfer effects from one entity to another so will the docked entity's chambers auto activate on undock or are we going to be cursing your names for all time and have to manually turn them on?

I don't have a specific answer at this time, but it doesn't make sense to have to manually turn them on. It may be fun to have that on logic though. Will need to be weighed against player experience on dock/undock.

 

[Ithirahad]

I don't have a specific answer at this time, but it doesn't make sense to have to manually turn them on. It may be fun to have that on logic though. Will need to be weighed against player experience on dock/undock.

I'd recommend a blanket disable of effects upon docking that doesn't actually deactivate chambers, just makes them have 0% effect or whatever. Having to either reactivate everything manually or have an extra activator and NOT-gate just to have the stuff activate when undocked sounds annoying.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

I just thought I should stop by to ask if any dev team member has an answer to a comparatively unimportant question that will come up at some point in any RP / aesthetic builder's mind: do you guys plan to completely remove the blocks that will become unusable after the new power and chamber system gets fully refined?

I'm asking this because the Power Reactor, Power Capacitor, Auxiliary Power and Jumpdrive Module blocks look absolutely beautiful as decoration, especially the jumpdrive blocks. I mean, come on, they're a work of art!

I'd suggest to remove their functionality, but keep them as decorative blocks with low mass and low HP (and perhaps remove the explosiveness of the Aux blocks, 'cuz who decorates with bombs?)


Let's not waste those pretty textures, please

 

[EricBlank]

I'm really excited about these new repulser/hover blocks. That's going to be loads of fun to play with.

Any chance of a similar block that deflects other objects away from itself? Similar to how we can kinda have push beams/cannons now, without having to worry about it shooting through the walls out into space if there's nothing there

 

[Cluwne]

Those are definitely repulsors, not "hovers".
It makes one wonder if those would be a good defense against warhead block torpedoes...

I'd be more excited if they would make a whole system revolving around projecting fields though.
Could lay the groundwork for universe update too, what with black holes and such.
Couldn't stars have a stronger pull up close? Just wondering. Adds another layer of tedium complexity for us to master.

Pair it with push beam - get a repulsor/attractor field (Toggled, with LMB/RMB selecting direction perhaps?)
Astrotech beam makes it a repair field, EMP - energy drain, salvage provides passive mining(?), and so on.

Size (group bonus like power caps' maybe?) of the field gens affects field size, secondaries - it's effects' strength.
Throw in a menu to customize field properties and behavior, such as affected entity types with ship it's on included, effect strength vs tick rate, and etc.

In the end you got a robust system you could, in theory, adapt to celestial bodies, stations, anomalies... Kind of a local, sub-sector scale effect application.
If there's gonna be stuff like artifacts, some weird kinds of ore, or some other sci-fi stuff with a good dose of "fi", you could add those fields to make it truly unique in some way.