Devblog 2017 - 09 - 21

[Panpiper]

I'm not going to miss being forced into big boxy squares or gordian knots to try and squeeze enough power into a small enough space.

No. Instead you will simply NOT be able to squeeze enough power into a small enough space. That option no longer exists. There is now for all intents a fixed relationship between length and power. If you are building a small, 'short' space ship, you are building a low power ship. Period. I for one liked having the option of putting in the extra work for the extra power. It put skill and effort into building. There is much less of that now. That does make the game easier for newcomers and RPers. It makes it a heck of a lot less interesting to the rest.

 

[Edymnion]

No. Instead you will simply NOT be able to squeeze enough power into a small enough space.

So you have access to the private dev development server now?

Because they've repeatedly said that small ships won't need stabilizers at all, and that you can just slap your reactors down in a blob and be done with it.

But hey, it doesn't really matter. You'll either come around to the new system and keep playing, or you'll leave. At this point nothing you or I or anyone else says is going to change the simple fact this WILL be what happens. We can either accept it, or leave.
[doublepost=1506360757,1506360657][/doublepost]

I wonder if we'll see sphere ships with reactor core and stabilizer shell.
Should have outstanding turn rate for their size too.
Last but not least: one could slap many a thruster block and set maneuver thrust higher to combat the bad turn rate of barbell ships.

The demonstration stuff they showed had long straight reactor lines with rings of stabilizers around them. Depending on how well they tune the new system, if that line with rings ends up putting out the same power as a box reactor with the same overall dimensions, there shouldn't be any change at all.

 

[Panpiper]

Because they've repeatedly said that small ships won't need stabilizers at all, and that you can just slap your reactors down in a blob and be done with it.

This is true, as long as you accept the definition of small ship as being synonymous with low power ship. As long as your tiny ship has just a dozen or so power blocks (or whatever the break point is), then yes, you can just put them down wherever you want and be done with it. That does NOT mean however that you can fill half the space with power blocks because your ship is small. You will not be able to squeeze 500 power blocks (or whatever) into the engine room of your tiny ship oblivious to stabilizers. The moment you exceed the 'tiny ship threshold' of power blocks, you will need to add stabilizers and they will require distance, which will rapidly make your ship NOT tiny, as you increase the power.

It used to be possible to build small ships that could do serious heavy armor breaking block damage to large ships (IE: the Marauder, that can break ten such blocks per second). That will no longer be the case, unless your idea of an effective small ship is breaking one such block every four seconds.

 

[Edymnion]

True, but look at your example there. Its got long arms (presumably due to there being cross style generator lines in there). You could run plenty of power down the central hull and put a few stabilizers out on the ends of those pylons along with the weapons and call it a day.

About the only ships I see being invalidated are the super dense shoebox designs.

Plus again, we have not seen just how far away those stabilizers have to be for a given size. All the worries about this may be completely moot if it turns out you can still fit it all into existing hulls with fewer blocks. And if not, its an alpha. Enough feedback saying that the distance required is too far and they can easily tweek it smaller.

At this point, its happening no matter what we say. So instead of being doom and gloom, lets wait and see how they actually implement it, and offer constructive feedback on tweaking it if needed. Going around saying its horrible and its going to kill creativity/the game/pvp/whatever is just premature and silly at this point.

 

[Panpiper]

At this point, its happening no matter what we say.

Well, you are right, it is happening, despite anything we say. I am flogging the dead cat for two reasons.

It is cathartic to me, I believe strongly that the change was entirely unnecessary, that it will set back the game development a lot, and that it has not just broken everything we have built, but invalidated much of what we have spent years learning. I am extremely disappointed that what was once the shining castle of building games, with a rich depth of nuanced tradeoffs in build strategy, has been reduced to overly complicated block piling exercise with little more strategy in building then many other build systems that do not require one to spend days piling blocks. And so I bemoan the loss.

The other reason is that it is just remotely possible that Schine and company will see where this is headed, by virtue of my and others pointing out consequences, that they can tweak what they are doing to head off some of the worst of it before it starts. There is now a lot less flexibility in design for ships that are built to win fights. There is of course just as much flexibility as there ever was for ships that are NOT meant to win fights. Maybe Schine reading my grumblings will decide to put Aux Power back in for instance, which will give power players a way of building combat worthy ships that do NOT straddle two sectors.

 

[Edymnion]

what was once the shining castle of building games, with a rich depth of nuanced tradeoffs in build strategy, has been reduced to overly complicated block piling exercise with little more strategy in building then many other build systems that do not require one to spend days piling blocks.

I don't see that, I really don't.

The power system we had before was mind bending to wrap your head around at first, and then it was just boringly easy. There was no trade-offs to building power into a ship, and hitting the soft cap on most things was ridiculously easy (or virtually impossible depending on the shape of your hull). Three or four layer box reactor and you were done. Or simply run some lines under the hull and you were done. At least this way you have to worry about your placement, you have to have trade-offs on what you can and cannot have for any given ship via reactor chambers, there is going to be a lot MORE decision making and planning required to have a good ship, instead of just slapping down some reactor lines/boxes/spirals and calling it a day.

 

[dwwojcik]

Absolutely no one except RPers who couldn't care less about combat effectiveness is going to build a ship that looks anything like any of those sci-fi classics. All combat effective ships in Starmade will be made with all their stabilizers at one extreme end of the ship and all their power reactors at the other extreme end. [...] Others such as myself (assuming I still play) will let form follow function and will indeed have 'pods'. One will be a kilometer above my ship, and the other will be a kilometer below my ship.

There's a perfect wrench Schine can (and probably will) throw in those plans. I'll bet things like reactors and stabilizers will require crew members to be able to access them. Have fun building kilometer-long corridors.

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

People keep saying the old system lets good builders squeeze a little extra power out of a ship layout; that's fundamentally not true; there is optimal and suboptimal currently. You aren't getting more power, everyone else is just getting less.

Excluding the rare times that power to weight is a focus there is no reason to ever use a suboptimal layout. This isn't FtD where engines have burn rates, heat, or durability to worry about. There is no horizontal tuning, just [NUMBER].

 

[Panpiper]

People keep saying the old system lets good builders squeeze a little extra power out of a ship layout...

The old system let good builders squeeze a LOT of extra power out of a ship using inherited power, docked systems, etc.. Building was vastly more complicated if you built that way, even conceiving of how to string everything together took serious brain time. That is now all gone. The RPers and casual players no doubt rejoice. Those who thought they finally had a game with serious meat, lament it's passing.

 

[kikaha]

Well now its going to be serious meat in style !
More seriously, you complain that your brain and other's will not be put to so much use anymore. I disagree totally here. I think that on the contrary those people with so much brain will have quite a challenge to get some serious meat out of their ship with an added RP/constraint.
Now, more so later, you will be able to manage your power/weapons/turrets/drones/fighters in a more in-depht manner by sending power/crew(people or npc) to the adequate part of the ship to respond to threats or particular situations. That will require planning and thinking...

Thats how i see things anyway.

 

[Panpiper]

Adding RP has never been any sort of constraint whatsoever. Any player competent to build PvP warships is MORE than able to add however much extra space for RP or crew and whatever without it harming the combat capacity one iota*. There is absolutely zero difficulty with that. The only reason they did not always do so is because they simply do not enjoy spending hours upon hours decorating to no gameplay end. Any future additions to game play revolving around power or crew applications would have been on top of the tactical building challenges which no longer exist. This new power system is a SUBSTANTIAL degradation in the building challenge. I used to enjoy brainstorming how to build a ship. Now I see little prospect other than being forced to play with building blocks for hours on end, just so I can play the rest of the game.

*The extra decorative mass might have a tiny impact on the turn rate and thrust, but it would be minimal.

 

[dwwojcik]

Have you tried Factorio? It sounds like that's more the sort of thing you wish you were playing when you decide to build a ship.

 

[Panpiper]

Have you tried Factorio? It sounds like that's more the sort of thing you wish you were playing when you decide to build a ship.

No, I did not know about it. I am looking at it now. Thank you.

 

[DrTarDIS]

...You don't put your living quarters in the same region as your reactor, for radiation shielding purposes...Warhammer...

That one...made me laugh in a very dark way.
I agree with you overall, but i'm laughing so hard at it.

This is true, as long as you accept the definition of small ship as being synonymous with low power ship. ...It used to be possible to build small ships that could do serious heavy armor breaking block damage to large ships (IE: the Marauder, that can break ten such blocks per second). That will no longer be the case, unless your idea of an effective small ship is breaking one such block every four seconds.

tiny ships also were synonymous with cloak/jam exclusivity. Chambers means we get to have birds of prey, warbirds, defiants, and whatnot. "Roles" like stealth-attack, blockade-runner, and scout have been opened up to the larger ships.

There's no reason to ASSuME that the reworks will not identify and address any lost functionality on smaller ships while enhancing others.

Eg, "build small ships that could do serious heavy armor breaking block damage to large ships" I don't see why you could not do this. where before/now

• you'd build a giant lump of weapon,
  
• wrap it in a weave of reactor lines,
  
• add enough capacitors to fire your weapon
• add thrust & armoring/shielding to taste

new system

• you'd build a giant lump of weapon,
  
• put a ball/line/wall of reactors,
  
• a ball/line/wall of stabilisers to get efficiency(or let it be inefficient)
  
• add thrust & armoring/shielding to taste
  

[doublepost=1506385308,1506384845][/doublepost]

No, I did not know about it. I am looking at it now. Thank you.

yeah factorio is awesome. sort of high-tech zelda. Tanks are useless, trains are useless. get the car then rush powersuits and conveyor upgrades.

 

[Cluwne]

high-tech zelda
trains are useless

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Anyway, what you're saying is the size of the ship now only determines the power output and, therefore, highest possible top-off power draw by weapons.
I'm starting to see how this new system pushes "bigger=better" even more than the previous one.
As well as the doom barbells with reactor part blobs sectors apart.

 

[Panpiper]

new system

• you'd build a giant lump of weapon,
  
• put a ball/line/wall of reactors,
  
• a ball/line/wall of stabilisers to get efficiency(or let it be inefficient)
  
• add thrust & armoring/shielding to taste

Unless the new system lets us generate the equivalent of 400K+ power in a reactor system no greater than 50 blocks long, such a ship will be impossible. I can tell you right now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, such a small ship will not be anywhere near capable of generating the power sufficient to power such a weapon. (I don't remember the actual power output of the Marauder, and I can't remember the game commands well enough now to actually check, but I seem to recall it was a lot higher than even that.)

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

Any ship can power any weapon under the new system, given time.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Unless the new system lets us generate the equivalent of 400K+ power in a reactor system no greater than 50 blocks long, such a ship will be impossible. I can tell you right now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, such a small ship will not be anywhere near capable of generating the power sufficient to power such a weapon. (I don't remember the actual power output of the Marauder, and I can't remember the game commands well enough now to actually check, but I seem to recall it was a lot higher than even that.)

I'm not sure.
since weapons need capacity these days, you're mostly limited to a high-refire if you want your small packages. it nerfs pulse and beam secondary indirectly with a "hidden" mass penalty after 5k damage projectiles.
since weapons are [probably] their own capacitors new system, a mega-nuke can be "loaded" slowly at low priority que, but load it quickly off a main ship. Suddenly bombers can [probably] be made in small packages that strike fast and returned to main ship with fleet commands. I have no doubt there will [probably] be high-refire options too.

 

[Cluwne]

Any ship can power any weapon under the new system, given time.

a mega-nuke can be "loaded" slowly at low priority que

Nope. There is such thing as the top-off power draw. If you don't produce enough power - the weapon won't fire at all. Neat, huh?
One way strategic bombers could have been made viable is with the capacitors that would provide the energy to keep weapons charged.
Unfortunately, the power capacitors are being removed with the rest of the old system. No bombers with nukes for you I'm afraid.

 

[LoSboccacc]

Any ship can power any weapon under the new system, given time.

wrong. if you even bothered to read the description, there will be a small energy usage needed to keep weapons ready to fire, to limit precisely that.