Devblog 2017 - 09 - 21

[bricox01]

After some much-needed sleep and reading what was posted while I was sleeping, I think I'm seeing something more clearly now.

The concern is that there will only be one true formula for maximum success as a PvP ship. DrTarDIS I think hit the nail on the head.

you can always expect doom-cubes because of the dimension-penalties on turning

I would like to re-phrase that a bit as: you can always expect someone to take things to extremes.

Sorry, Panpiper, I think I mistook how you were approaching this issue. I took you to mean you were arguing that all of us should be building doom-sticks. Rather, I think you are actually arguing that a core flaw of the new power system is that there is still only really going to be one design that will yield maximum results when PvP is taken to the extreme.

I think it mostly comes down to the rules of the server you play on. I can see a server admin simply forbidding the creation of certain designs (such as doom-cubes or doom-sticks) or requiring that all ships adhere to a mix of certain elements within certain limitations to ensure that it's harder to build them.

In the end, Schine has built a sandbox game. What people do in that sandbox is up to them. I highly doubt their going to toss out the work they've done on Power 2.0 just to appease a few people. The best way we can approach this now, is to offer constructive friendly advice on how it can be fleshed out and made more nuanced going forward.

 

[Zephyrim]

you can always expect doom-cubes because of the dimension-penalties on turning. That's what makes them, NOT POWER. Even the "tower" or "delta wing" PvP ships are outcrops of this system: sacrificing turning/rotation in one set of dimensions to gain it in more useful ones.

FYI: I've edited that other post because I neglected to mention the "best case" 1:1 Pan was talking about originally as being an angled ship.

The simple solution is to make thrust more dynamic by decoupling it from the "stats" of a ship and having them actually rely on physics, to a degree. This would also make actually flying ships more enjoyable, as the thrust system is currently unnaturally smooth leading to a very floaty feeling. It's not fun, and tiny fighters aren't any more fun to fly than most bigger ships unless said bigger ships simply don't have enough thrust.

I think this should be the next thing reworked after power; it addresses the proposed "doom cube" problem by making it almost equally viable to build ships in any shape and with different amounts of thrust while also simply making flying ships more fun, which is half the game.

Of course I understand that my sentiment here isn't very specific; think driving a car. There are big cars, small cars, fast cars, slow cars, and you can even define those aspects differently, cars that have high top speeds and cars that accelerate quickly, cars that are long or cars that are wide, but at the end of the day it isn't as simple as small cars go fast and big cars go slow, or small cars handle better. It depends on engineering. There's also a difference in skill between drivers, and professional drivers are on a whole new level compared to amateur drivers, where amateur drivers may not drift or pull off other maneuvers pros are doing so even while driving a car with less handicaps and assistance.

At the end of the day, what I'm trying to say is that power is being changed from simply being a percentage of your ship's mass and now encourages specialization and a bit of engineering ingenuity. Thrust is still stuck in older times. Sure, there are different things you can do to make your ship handle differently, but at the end of the day your actual optimal choices are a bit more limited and thrust profiles turn in to a game of rock paper scissors with a hidden fourth option that has a good chance at beating all the other choices, and that option is "doom cube".

 

[Lucidess]

My question to everyone after reading posts and stuff:

Who cares what the ship shape and TWR is, because it should be more about weapon and chamber decisions.

I guess that wasn't really a question, but still... I am getting the impression that this is what Schine wants us to experience. Perform your elite geometry skills all you want but so the saying goes: every diamond breaks if struck in the right spot.

If geometry matters on release then sure make a tut so we can all read it.
#Doomsperms
Ok back to holding my breath until my face turns various shades of blue and purple

 

[bricox01]

Me? I'm getting more impatient by the day for the first release of Power 2.0.

Once it's out, I'm going to put it into an existing hull so I can get some degree of comparison.

I don't build for PvP. I try for the best systems I can get into a shell I like. It probably slants my views a bit on all this. I'm anxious to see if it works for me.

 

[Panpiper]

you can always expect doom-cubes because of the dimension-penalties on turning.

DrTarDIS is (likely) correct about corner placement of reactors and stabilizers. I was incorrect when I stressed a single dimension in space. The optimum reactor/stabilizer placement will be reactors in one extreme corner of a box and stabilizers in the other extreme corner of a box. (It will NOT be reactors in the middle and stabilizers in the corners.) This will seriously reinforce the tendency to go back to Borg Cubes. I will certainly be revisiting myself.

The other option is still a pod ship with everything except stabilizers in a central hull that looks like a ship aught to look, and then a trailer pod hanging out in space behind, above or below and to one side, filled with just stabilizers (and maybe clad in a black hull to hide the eyesore). Add as many power modules as you need for more power, and just move the stabilizers further out as needed (and add more). Stop only when the turn rate gets too sluggish to live with.

Regular ships will put their power blocks in a rear corner of their ship and their stabilizers in the opposite corner in the front of their ship. Their power however will ALWAYS be substandard compared to a similar mass/scale cube and vastly substandard compared to a pod ship.

 

[Edymnion]

Reducing inefficiency means bringing a system to 100% efficiency, increasing efficiency means raising it above 100%. They are completely opposite.

Only technically.

"Maximum achievable efficiency" is the end standard. If you get that by reducing inefficiency or increasing efficiency caps, the end result is the same, you move from less efficient to more efficient. PanPiper is right here, they're the same thing for all practical purposes.

 

[nightrune]

I can make one comment here about this discussion. Make sure you are paying attention to what type of efficiency you are talking about. Power efficiency itself and power per volume efficiency are actually pretty different, although linked.

 

[Edymnion]

The other option is still a pod ship with everything except stabilizers in a central hull that looks like a ship aught to look, and then a trailer pod hanging out in space behind, above or below and to one side, filled with just stabilizers (and maybe clad in a black hull to hide the eyesore).

Meh, speak for yourself.

I've been building ship hulls during the lull and they all have nacelle like structures. Couple of examples:


Right now the pods/nacelles are housing jump drive modules in the system build versions because I want them to have discrete systems, but won't need those after the update and I can put stabilizers in them.

Why build them that way? Because to me it makes them look like actual ships where "Yeah, this is obviously where the engines would go" instead of a doomcube that looks like crap.

I would rather build an interesting looking ship and make it as strong as I can given the limitations imposed by the hull than build a super optimized bleeding edge PvP ship and then shrink wrap a hull around it.

Different building priorities I guess. For me the fun is making a kick ass looking ship and then min-maxing what it can do. I find it rather boring to start with just systems because anybody can min-max systems and make a doomcube.

 

[Panpiper]

Different building priorities I guess. For me the fun is making a kick ass looking ship and then min-maxing what it can do. I find it rather boring to start with just systems because anybody can min-max systems and make a doomcube.

I completely agree with you. The entire point of my protestations is that the game mechanics of this new power system specifically penalize you for doing that and reward people who do not. That is NOT good game design.

With the old power system, any ship shape could be used for generating decent power, you just had to figure out how, which did in some cases require skill. That requiring of skill was seen as a bad thing that needed to be addressed, because it penalized new players. So they came up with a much simpler system (that makes just as little sense) that has removed most of the skill and challenge from power. However in so doing, they have created a handicap upon ships that are built the normal way, to look like normal ships. This is a BAD THING! This is what I have been saying all along.

The new system rewards doom cubes and pod ships (NOT the same thing as symmetrical nacelles) and all other ships are less effective.

What I am desperately hoping for is that the old power system mechanics be left in the game, permanently, all of it, including inherited power. The new system can be added on top of it. Then in server settings, the server administrator can decide if the old power system will still work, and whether power inheritance is allowed. It could also be flagged in settings whether or not the new power system can use inherited power for self powered turrets, etc..

That would allow some servers to exist for people who want rich build systems with strategic depth in build decisions, and some other servers to exist for newcomers who do not want to be bothered with such complexities and just want to build ships without a huge learning curve. Those servers will still have issues with doom cubes, but oh well.

 

[Edymnion]

That requiring of skill was seen as a bad thing that needed to be addressed, because it penalized new players. So they came up with a much simpler system (that makes just as little sense) that has removed most of the skill and challenge from power.

Except there was no real skill or challenge involved most of the time. The only skill/challenge came in wrapping your head around around a needlessly complicated 3 dimensional design process that made absolutely no intuitive sense. Once you "got" it, there was no real challenge. You could throw max power in damned near anything without even thinking about it.

The new system rewards doom cubes and pod ships (NOT the same thing as symmetrical nacelles) and all other ships are less effective.

The current system rewards doom cubes, nothing new here. The most effective design is still a cube/shoebox.

That would allow some servers to exist for people who want rich build systems with strategic depth in build decisions

See, I still don't think thats a thing. Again, there is no skill or challenge to the current system, there is no strategy in it, there's just "make a box" or "make a line".

The new system places less emphasis on pinpoint precision of shoeboxes and introduces actual gameplay decisions that will actually change the entire way your ship performs.

I see it as trading needless complexity for an easier to implement but harder to design system. And I consider that a good thing. The challenge should be making a great system, not in physically placing the blocks. Like logic, the reward is designing a logic system that does amazing things, not having to jump through arbitrary hoops in where the logic blocks have to be placed to make them work.

Designing the system should be hard, installing the system should be easy.

 

[Panpiper]

Except there was no real skill or challenge involved most of the time.

On larger ships, there was indeed little skill creating maximum power, unless you were also using docked power. A few sets of lines exploiting all three dimensions of the ship, and you were set. On larger ships still, you could get away with just lines. The skill came when squeezing two million power into a ship only 100 meters long, still having it look like a ship, and still having room for a couple of large, self powered, nested ball turrets. That was no piece of cake let me tell you.

The current system rewards doom cubes, nothing new here. The most effective design is still a cube/shoebox.

The old system rewarded doom cubes solely because of the (desperately needing to be changed) turning mechanics. Maximum turning capacity was the only reason to build a doom cube, unless you were trying to build a ship under 40 meters in dimension, whereupon the power mechanics required it to be a cube just to squeeze in enough lines. There was NO inherent advantage to a cube with regard to power. With the new system, there most emphatically IS a power advantage to a cube.

See, I still don't think thats a thing. Again, there is no skill or challenge to the current system, there is no strategy in it, there's just "make a box" or "make a line".

There is certainly no additional skill required for the new system either. Now it is "make two boxes of blocks". And instead of the previous freedom to exploit all dimensions for power, now it is just two opposite corners of a cube/cuboid that count. Have fun explaining that logic to newbies. (I seem to be unable to explain it to the folks here.) Any perception of additional design complexity/choices comes from other things that are being worked on which would have been added with or without the power change.

The new system places less emphasis on pinpoint precision of shoeboxes and introduces actual gameplay decisions that will actually change the entire way your ship performs.

I'm sorry, but this is simply false. Power is now ALL about "pinpoint precision of shoeboxes" at least as regards power and stabilizer block placement. The other gameplay decisions would be there regardless.

I see it as trading needless complexity for an easier to implement but harder to design system.

There is absolutely nothing "harder to design" in the new power system. Power system 'design' is so utterly trivial in this new system as to be unworthy of the term "design". Again, all other changes could have been made to work with the existing power system. All the putative problems with the old system had other solutions, including the learning curve problem, which could be addressed simply by watching a proper tutorial video. And they could have been addressed without throwing the literally thousands of already built ships, stations and systems in the garbage.

 

[Edymnion]

There is absolutely nothing "harder to design" in the new power system.

Design as in block layout, no, there isn't.

Design as in getting your reactor up, and picking and choosing which chambers you use, yes, there is definitely design there. It forces you to make tradeoffs. It doesn't allow you to have one ship that can do everything. I REALLY like that.

The death of the "this can do everything!" generic ship is a good thing, IMO. I look forwards to having to design power around the idea of a ship being a scout with good jump drives, or a tank with lots of shield stuff, or a glass cannon with lots of weapon stuff, or trying to make a jack of all trades but master of none.

The number of options available for chambers will outweigh the capacity of the reactors so that we HAVE to make decisions. That is important. We won't be able to have it all, and thats the way it should be.

 

[Panpiper]

Design as in getting your reactor up, and picking and choosing which chambers you use, yes, there is definitely design there. It forces you to make tradeoffs. It doesn't allow you to have one ship that can do everything. I REALLY like that.

Chambers have nothing to do with the power system. Chambers could have easily been implemented with the old power system. My criticisms have nothing to do with the chamber system.

 

[Edymnion]

Chambers has nothing to do with the power system. Chambers could have easily been implemented with the old power system. My criticisms have nothing to do with the chamber system.

Could have been done separate, weren't done separate.

Bottom line was the old system was counter-intuitive and added nothing to gameplay. The new system is more intuitive (or if you insist, "easy"), and adds many gameplay options.

The fears you have are based on assumptions and projections, and even if they do come true, they can be dealt with as we go with tweaks and adjustments to things.

Its going to be different, and we're going to have to re-learn things, but in the end its going to be better.

 

[dwwojcik]

TL;DR Starmade is dead, long live Starmade.

 

[dwwojcik]

Really you need to learnt how to put blocks at oposite points of a ship? [Are you kidding?]

By that logic you could say Really you need to learn how to put blocks in a line?

 

[dwwojcik]

I think this whole discussion thread serves only to boost egos. None of us have played the update yet, none of us really knows what we're talking about. It's too soon to say for sure how the meta will evolve.

I definitely feel we've move past constructive speculation into angry ranting in this thread.

I personally trust that, if the new system is a steaming pile of shit like some (cough Panpiper cough) predict, Schine will go to great lengths to whip it into shape, and, failing that, would be big enough to revert the power system or try a third time.

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

All update threads for StarMade are just a group of people talking about how smart they are. The reason this one stands out is that the bar is so low that people bragging about understanding it worries me.

 

[bricox01]

My own opinions here:

• I like the idea of chambers as opposed to the old effect system. It adds decisions to the whole process because you have to navigate a sort of tech or skill tree.
• As far as how the new power layout versus the old power layout goes, Panpiper and others are right, it won't fix doom-cubes/doom-sticks.
• You can't fix doom-cubes/doom-sticks. You can't fix min-maxing in a sandbox. You can only encourage creativity.
• I like the idea of power prioritizing over power capacitors.
• We're trading power capacitors and auxiliary power for reactor stabilizers. I'm okay with that, but it still encourages/rewards certain shapes over others.
• I see the need and reason for the stabilizers: They're intended to serve as a limiter for reactor size to ship size. I see a another solution: make the reactor group's mass increase in a non-linear way. It will force you to put an ungodly amount of thrusters and mobility chambers on your ship just to compensate. Tweak the curve right and it should reward small to medium sized ships over larger ships.
• The key limiter for ship size is still the same as it's always been: How bad of a turn rate can you accept?
• I expect Schine will be tying the weapons update into the power update quite heavily.
• I like change because it keeps things fresh. Naturally, I prefer some changes to others.

 

[Edymnion]

Ed i think you can not get the point about make predictions with the current data we have and say is a totally bad idea.

Thats rather my point. Making predictions with the data we have now is pointless, because we don't have enough data to go on. All we have is sky high views of general ideas. We have no specific data to work from.

Right now I could say "Each reactor block gives 1,000 e/sec, scales linearly, requires only 1 stabilizer block per 100 reactors, and at maximum that stabilizer only has to be 5 blocks away from the reactor" and nobody short of the devs could tell me I'm wrong on any of it because we don't know.