Devblog 2017 - 09 - 21

[Batavium]

I guess everyone is waiting almost eternity for this update to test.

Nah the longer it takes the better i hope it takes foreever!

To quote a game company like Blizzard: It is done when it is done.

 

[Magrim]

Achieving maximum power within the smallest package will require reactors at one end and stabilizers at the other end of whatever dimension your ship is greatest. If you build this way, you will be putting on display where your energy generation systems are. If I were a tactical player I would take note of the disparity between axes and target the extreme ends of your ship. There would be no need to scan for that weak point because you did the work for me.

If stick ships are how players are going to build then other players will take advantage of this knowledge and adapt their tactics to kill stick ships. In turn, stick ship creators will adapt to this by hiding their reactors / stabilizers, increasing armor at the extreme ends of their ship or something else entirely. The point is we don't know what kind of equilibrium will be reached at the end of this arms race.

 

[Edymnion]

It's taken longer then expected. We'll have a dev build you to as soon as possible.

Heh, this is why you never even given an estimated time beyond "Soon". People take "We hope to get it in a couple of weeks" as a blood oath sworn over a first born that it will be here in exactly 14 days.

 

[Toshiro]

From what I have just read, I think that the exasperation of this interminable waiting begins to be felt.
Dear developers, please tell us about your progress.

 

[JinM]

You know guys I allready finished building some small reactor templates, so I have a place to put in the new reactor blocks. ^^

 

[DevajC]

Does Schine run into unexpected problems every 3 weeks? Because this is the fifth time they have promised to have a Dev Build out in 3 weeks. Is their office haunted by a ghost that thinks Starmade is a Minecraft rip off?

I remember back in May there was a news post or something saying the Power Update would be here by the end of the summer, and based on what I had seen of Schine these past 6.5 years I extended that to the start of October....and here we are, not even a dev build!!

Schine always continues to deliver. There will probably be 1 month between the Dev and pre release at this rate. Or the update will be out in February so it can be a nice even year between the proposal and release. Its so frustrating waiting.

 

[Cluwne]

I think it's safe to say that Schine is no ordinary developer. When we think about them we must think bigger.
Whenever they say that something might take a year of development, think bigger - think galactic year.
I just hope I'll see Starmade going into beta before the heat death of the universe.

 

[Toshiro]

I think we can not blame them for taking more time than expected, during a development phase, there are always unexpected problems. I prefer to wait a little longer rather than pay the price of a sloppy job. (especially with regard to the critics who are not encouraging).

But a little more transparency on the progress and possible difficulties encountered would be a good point and would allow players to be more peaceful, would also bring compassion and moral support to the team.

 

[kikaha]

If only one of the Shine team could reassure us a little by saying something like "Its coming guys, don't worry". I would ask myself the same question that often...

 

[Lucidess]

"Will we be able to use the old system still?

Yes, there will be a config option to disable/enable the old system. When it’s still enabled, a structure will switch over to the new system as soon as one of the new reactor blocks is used.
If the old system is disabled, all old power related system blocks will be inert and only serve as decoration."

Ok so awhile ago you were scaring the pants off us by saying that you will (and i quote): "REMOVE THE OLD POWER SYSTEM".
But now you are... not?
So you are NOT going to remove it? YES? or NO?

I want a straight answer because like some people like me still absolutely love and rely on the old power system, and having it simply go away would waste everyone's time with what we built to make work, who cares if it's outdated. I understand if it causes game breaking issues if you pit a old power ship against a new power one, or that it could be severely unbalanced, and maybe not having to update for awhile is ok with me.

 

[Snowtiger256]

AFAIK, this is how it goes.

1. There will be a config option to enable/disable the old power system. Disabling the old system will render old power blocks inert and decorative for all entities available.
2. Both power systems will coexist until the new system is thoroughly tested, tweaked, balanced and deemed ready for widespread use.
3. Any structure will convert to the new power system, when the new reactor blocks are placed on that entity, at this point the old power system blocks will become inert and decorative on that entity.
4. Old power system will be either removed totally or disabled by default, when the new system has been properly implemented (See 2.).

I'm sure someone from Schine will offer an official confirmation of this.

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

They "removed" the old docking system and you can still use it; same thing here.

 

[Lucidess]

They would be removing still-perfectly-functioning-gameplay, along with the old power system. It doesn't deserve to go in the trash, maybe it just needs to be tweaked for it to be balanced along with the new power, and make it a second kind of power system that is more primitive, or named something else. Definitely does not have to be called "Old" either. Anyway i'm just whining at this point but this is how bad I want power reactors to exist still. :D

 

[Cluwne]

I find it interesting how we slowly transition from discrete systems to systems based on some sort of "flow" of something. This time power.
It's like going from Starcraft to Total Annihilation economy model. I like this lot.
I wonder how will this affect resource acquisition and utilization in the future. Maybe we'll finally get passive mining in some form?

Though some major improvements to shipyards and fleet control, beyond GUI, are needed to make the RTS aspect less tedious.
The ability to queue designs to build alone would be a significant improvement.
And if there would be a repeat function, we could automate turret, drone and ship production in some cases, ridding fleet management of some of it's tedium.
Order queue for fleets would do us good as well.

 

[Kinetic13]

Anyone else notice there is a new update for the dev build?

 

[kikaha]

Yep, trying very hard to get my fighter fonctionning. Not enough power onboard to make all systems fonctionnal. I mean i cannot power a 40 blocks (2x 20) beam weapons...
got 20 power blocks and 5 stabilizers and only 500 power gen. 1 beam alone uses 880 power... 160 damage is somthing i think is "minimal" to break through armor. I need to fly, power the shields, the jammer...
i could do all that with the old power. had 26k regen. Now with 500 regen i feel a bit short.

 

[Kinetic13]

Im sure the devs will be making a lot of adjustments based on our feedback. I do agree though, and the spacing between the reactor and stabilizer blocks seems a little much for the size of the reactor I was working on.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Yep, trying very hard to get my fighter fonctionning. Not enough power onboard to make all systems fonctionnal. I mean i cannot power a 40 blocks (2x 20) beam weapons...
got 20 power blocks and 5 stabilizers and only 500 power gen. 1 beam alone uses 880 power... 160 damage is somthing i think is "minimal" to break through armor. I need to fly, power the shields, the jammer...
i could do all that with the old power. had 26k regen. Now with 500 regen i feel a bit short.

...do yourself a favor, go to starmade/data/config/blockbehaviourconfig.xml and open it up in notepad/wordpad/clariswerks/whatever. use the find/search function, and look for "<cannon>" Then read the scary numbers. Once you scroll a bit up, a bit down from there, you'll see some interesting lines about "reactor power." Particularly interesting is that all weapons systems need (groupsize*15energy)/second to reload, which is only that high while reloading. After it's "loaded" it drops to (groupsize*3)/second to "keep it charged"

a 9 block reactor gives 450 power without stabilizers. so you doing barely 500 at 20+5 blocks seems to say you're not reading, not watching the videos in the OP, etc..
AFAICT a 19 block reactor needs 10 stabilizers, and they only need to be ~15 blocks away? that should net you something like 950 e/sec, which is well more than enough to load and fire a 30 block weapons group...

Anyways. Put yer readin skillz tah werk, ombiously you can raed. "jammers" don't take the power you think they do, nor do scanners, nor does a jumpdrive. read the "effects" xml to see the trees and their costs.

we're probably going to have to screw with those a lot as players to show the cat-god-and-pantheon what actually works in a sane balance.
(for Der Kattengott's sake disconnect weapon range from sector size, or give us a second number to shrink them uniformly while keeping sectors large!)

 

[Valck]

disconnect weapon range from sector size, or give us a second number to shrink them uniformly

This, pretty please.

 

[StormWing0]

I'll just be happy to get my fleet miner's drones fully working but from the sounds of it the devs started way too low on the reactor power generation.