Diminishing returns on raw amount of power, shields and weapons

[BP_Merc]

Hi, I searched but didn't find anything.

Starmade is very promising, and among three similar games in development this is my favourite one. Though there is one thing sucking a bit of the fun out of it.

There is simply no reason to not build as big as possible apart from manouverability, which isn't really a big deal with unlimited turrets. Thus, everybody does it.

I would like the game to have room for ships of all shapes and sizes to be feasible, but at the moment, any server intended for PvP will just be "the biggest cube you can make" type deals and frankly it's mind numbingly boring. No reason to have multi-purpouse fleets with fighters, heavy fighters, corvettes, frigates, escort carriers... Everyone just has their own death star, constantly lagging the server when they switch sectors.

So I propose what seems to be the best solution. At a certain ship mass, say 15.000, you start gaining less and less for every block of power, shields and weapons you use. Very very small initially (it will still be "worth it" to keep building) like 0.003%. But at certain mass checkpoints, this negative modifier increases cumulatively. For example, 0.006% at 17.500 --- 0.012% at 20.000 --- 0.025% at 22.500 and so on, up to a maximum reduced efficiency of 60%.

What would be extremely cool is if there is a very rare block found in some hard content somewhere that halves these negative modifiers, and people would have something to aspire to for making their multiple-sector ships work. But the key is that there will be a lot less of those ships, and a more versatile display from the average gamers.

 

[McDili]

I\'m not sure on the specifics for shields. I know there are specifics for them, I just can\'t think of them at the moment.

Power loses it\'s bonus once you reach around 1million e/sec. After that point, you get a fixed minimum amount of power. I believe you only get 25 e/sec out of each power block beyond that point.

Weapons function the same way, they also have diminishing returns. AMC\'s get more effective as you have more blocks, but the amount at which they get more effective diminishes as you group of a lot of them.

Missiles suffer from diminishing returns the most. It\'s way more beneficial to have multiple missiles than it is to have one big one if you plan on optimizing a set amount of missile blocks for damage.



The only difference with weapons is that the diminishing returns hits each weapon individually, and does not affect each other separately.



I don\'t think it really stops cube ships because cubes are the most efficient uses of space regardless of diminishing returns or not.

Having diminishing returns function differently wouldn\'t solve it either, it might solve the doomcube issues at a high amount of mass, but it would still encourage people to build cube ships at any mass lower than that point.

I would rather their be a solution to hinder the efficiency of cube ships that covers all the bases, and makes it undesireable even at lower levels of mass. But it\'s a tough solution to come up with in a game where everything is a cube.