Devblog 2017 - 10 - 13

Dev builds don't have offocial changelogs outside Schine's internal documentation(which are not publicly available), due to them being incomplete builds for testing, twealing and debugging. You'll just have to try and spot differences while tinkering with the dev builds...

 

I find your approach very interesting, it is much more explicit than the one proposed by default, pretty, clean and functional, I adhere to this interface proposal.

 

You know what they say. A picture tells more than a thousand words.

And I think it’s a bit more productive then only saying why something is bad. It shows what can be improved and possibly how.

 

I read this very well, very thankful

 

I wish they did have a changelog for the dev builds somewhere, would be a heck of a lot easier to figure out the differences between them. Even if it was just a locked thread that got the major changes just tacked onto the end with the new changes, posted under each build version as a section header in the post.

 

Why have increased the distance between the reactor and the stabilizers in these latest versions?

It was not hard enough?

I really do not understand anymore ...

 

Can we have a dev blog please? It's been over 20 days.
Lancake nightrune

 

Try reducing the size of your reactor... I've reduced my reactor's size from 180 to 60 blocks, and while I've still got the same number of stabilizers as I had before, chamber size and overall mass went down a lot while power output went up from ~1700 to ~6500; I did not have to increase the ship dimensions or reposition anything inside the ship. Experiment a bit.

EDIT:
For clarification (and feedback ;) ), the 180 block reactor was in 0.200.121, reduced to 60ish in 0.200.153; I had around 220 stabilizers in .121 because I traded mass for distance (still got a 2.4TMR) of which I could shave off just about ten in .153 to get my stabilization factor back up from ~9% to 100%.
Ship size is 49x25x20ish, with a mass of ~680t in .121, now it's close to 450t. TMR is 2.4, three chambers, 3x100 block main gun, two PD turrets, a bunch of logic and rail systems, and still ample of crew and unused space. All I could ever want in such a small package, and it works in .153 at least as well as it did in .121 (or 0.199.any for that matter). Good job, devs!

 

Because the OP asks for feedback:

The new larger required separation distances (since 200.14X??) feel pretty extreme. I realise it's no good looking at separation distances in isolation (need to also consider power produced, and system block power requirements, to get full picture) but compared to the dev builds before that it's a bit of a shock.
EDIT: even with more extreme stabiliser separation distances I still love this mechanic. After a few test builds I've found it really isn't anything to get worried about.

Please consider testing a config where stabiliser effectiveness doesn't drop all the way to zero when too close to the reactor. Let them have a small minimum effectiveness that is still potentially useful (a point somewhere between 5% and 20%...?)
(Like in power 1.0 - any reactor block placed always gave you more power, even if it wasn't very much).
In other words, make the minimum stabiliser distance a soft limit instead of a hard limit.

 

I work on a small ship (about 20 x 20 x10) but the layout of a power system in this configuration is not serious, I can not get enough power to power the thrusters, for the rest it is not even possible. Unless deporting the stabilizers outside the ship which is not part of my way of seeing things because I am not a pvp player.

I was, however, in favor of the idea of this new energy system, but I noticed that I was wrong.

 

.....I just can't bring myself to write anything sympathetic.

Here's a ship in build 200.153.
It's dimensions are less than or equal to 20x20x10 (the dimensions in the GUI on the left are incorrect/bugged - anyone can confirm this for themselves)
It can fully power all 675 thrusters you see here (2700 e/s).
It produces 2032.3 thrust. (For comparison a solid 20x20x10 block of advanced armour would weigh 1000)

Of a 20x20x10 volume these thrusters would take up 16.8% of the total volume.
The reactor plus stabilisers would take up 2.1% of total volume.

It really wasn't difficult at all.
(And you could go beyond the power I've generated. E.g if you're happy to increase the volume of that bounding box used by reactors+stabilisers from 2.1% up to 4.1% you could increase your thrust to 2595.3)





Devs, maybe you need a psychological trick to make people realise they don't need to use 100% stabilisation for each stabiliser block. Perhaps instead of using indicator colours of red to green you could use green to blue (or blue to green)? Red seems to be too scary.
I don't know, just an idea....

Also, if you don't want anyone complaining that "100% 'efficiency' for stabiliser blocks doesn't necessarily give the 'best' ship...my universe is imploding!" then I'd suggest not referring to the stabilisers as having "efficiency". Only refer to reactors as having "efficiency" and stabiliser blocks as instead having "stabilisation" percentage.
I've seen a mix of both terms for stabiliser blocks used by Schine so far.
Seems a ridiculous thing to have to even consider, but you know what people are like....

 

This discussion is totally sterile and not constructive, you try to sell me the pure theory by taking into account only part of the problem. I will not detail everything to try to justify myself, I feel I do not have to do it, I have other concerns in life. My designs will go to the trash, that's all.

Fine if you like this new puzzle, this is not my case, I will stick to that.

 

I genuinely don't understand....

I've showed you how you can actually power a 20x20x10 ship all the way up to a 2.5 thrust to mass ratio, in the new system... I honestly can't be any more constructive than that, unless you post your design.

 

Seriously, THIS might have been one of the most insightful posts in all the recent discussions :D
If I could, I'd give it a 'like', 'agree' with it, and label it as 'useful', 'friendly', and 'creative' all at the same time in addition to just considering it 'informative'. And just a tad 'funny haha', too.

 

Didn't you give out a release date for the new update? I'm pretty sure you did and its way past due, did your team leave or did you just give up on this game? The game is fun and all but I'm stopping all my projects due to this new update, it shouldn't takes months to make a update. This game is like 5 years old now and close to being "done" but this game will be like minecraft were there are updates/dlc's

 

No offense, but have you ever coded something like this for a game before? If the answer is no, Please rethink your answer because yes it can take months. Nobody here likes it but it's true.

 

iirc the only release date for anything regarding power 2.0 publicly mentioned was for public dev builds, which was missed by about 3 weeks, but said dev builds have been out for a while now.

 

Yeah I have, I helped make a game, If your going to be rude don't say anything at all.

 

Good point.
I personaly dislike that if I place a stabilizor within (x) distance it is in-effcient (thus must be destroyed). It hurts my brain :,(
Thus I seek out ways to get around the stabilizor mechanic, e.g floating pods decorated as other ships so that I don't have to deal with the terrifying red colours -_-

Pretty much this:

I don't like that I can't place stabilizor blocks within (x) radius (my OCD woul not let me place in-effcient stabilizor blocks EVER).
Thus me and other players will find every possible way to break and get around the system, even if it does take a lot more effort than just trying to work within it imo.

Overall I think it would have been much better recived if theyd phrased it as "get bonus stabilization the further away from the reactor it is, starting out at (x%) per block by the reactor, and going up to (x+y%) per block out at (x) distance".
That way instead of dealing with a negative, your dealing with a positive (bonus) that players will try to maximise instead of hate on.

 

While I am not really a fan of of the basic reactor-stabilizer system, I agree that some re-presentation of the concept might help with psychology.

something like;

- individual-stabilizer efficiency can only ever 'try to approach 100%' in practical builds - optimal ship design does not require that each stabilizer block is individually acting at 100% -100% individual-efficiency for all stabilizers in a stabilizer-group (for larger reactors) is a theoretical limit that can hardly be achieved in a practical ship -

--- Updated post (merge), Nov 10, 2017, Original Post Date: Nov 10, 2017 ---

(eg - in the real world, 0% energy loss through mechanical or electrical transitions, or friction, is a theoretical concept that can hardly be achieved ...)

--- Updated post (merge), Nov 10, 2017 ---

PS:

notes on refitting a ship in current Dev:
old ship was high efficiency XYZ reactor, just bellow bonus-cap, at 13k mass with its turrets, fairly lightly armored and shielded for its size class, but fast 1.7 thrust ratio > it had powerful turrets, and 2 high-power beam-beam-overdrive + multi-barrel cannon-beam-punch. It had a good amount of interior, and was in no way a brick.



I think the Devs are doing a fair job in matching old-new systems in terms of refitting (although i don't really like base concept of stabilizers).
Here are some notes on the refit, where i simply strip out power and replace with new (2000 reactors - 5000+ stabilizers to get 100% output)

Power: - less reactor blocks, but stabilizers feel a bit spammy, especially as they don't even benefit from connections like capacitors. However similar effective power out is not too difficult to achieve it seems, eg in regards main weapons still firing and recharging fine.
If I add in several chambers, the whole system will take up noticeably more total blocks than the old system, for this ship, which was not using any passive defense systems (but of course gain chamber effects in 2.0)...


Thrust: WOW - this has changed a lot, and in this system for the better, as there is now much less thruster spam > 1.7 thrust went straight up to 2.5 in this system > removed maybe c.1/3 of the thrusters to bring down thrust to 1.7 again. This makes me happy. Power consumption is still an issue for heavy ship thrust, but now i don't need enormous blocks of thrusters. Yippee! - for this ship this makes potential for a lot of internal changes ....

Shields: I initially liked the new shields, but i am not so sure now. Firstly, conceptually, why would rechargers create bubble and capacitors not ? Secondly, the bubble gets big too quickly, pretty much making shields 'plonk-down-and-forget' again :/. Thirdly, on the the refit, first view of shields is an absolute nightmare, with hundreds of overlapping bubbles, virtually all of them deactivated >

1- this is painful to look at, and means at least significant shield refitting...
2-what is performance hit of all these shield bubbles?, if somebody does fight with a ship like that ? eg as some shield groups are destroyed/depleted, some are activated, missiles impact several at once ect ect. ??? + !

in current build capacity goes up from 700k to 3mill for same number of blocks > recharge goes down some (or does it ... i forget now :/)

Weapons: obviously still WIP, but currently cannon uses proportionately loads more power, while beams not only seem to bounce of shields, but seem to use proportionally much less power ...(ie previously the beams could nearly cause power outage at times, but the cannon could fire pretty much all the time - that is now reversed)

Hope that is useful info for anybody without chance to try something similar

PS - tip for refitting shields > chose effect NOT on on ship already > put down cpu > remove/replace shield block with new effect in bulk symmetry mode > now you can select the cpu to have all the linked blocks (eg buried in hard to find single block hull spaces :/) highlighted, without your eyes being burned out by the bubble graphics...