Disabling systems after HP % is Pointless

[Mered4]

The hype surrounding it. It's hard for people to play two games at once. If it isn't a success, there will still be a lot of sales. That can be good or bad. Players would be encouraged to find an alternate, or discouraged to continue searching. Who knows? Just things to consider I suppose.

No Man's Sky might gain a lot of initial cashflow due to the hype, but it will quickly burn out if the product doesn't at least come close to the expectation. It's happened before.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Seriously. Why is this even in the game? This is a game that involves destroying blocks. If you haven't tested the HP system yet, you need to kill about half the opponents ship to overheat his core and then kill him with swarmers or turrets or whatever. That's right. I said HALF. I don't know about you, but when half of my ship is gone, it doesn't work. Especially if the computers are hit - then I'm a sitting duck.

Right now, if you hit 55% Structural HP, your base systems (thrust, power, and shields) basically stop working. So, as if losing half the mass on your ship and probably all your weapons and effect computers wasn't bad enough, now you cannot move.

*sarcasm*
I was doing just fine until I lost my thrust!
*/sarcasm*

Here's my point:

The disabling of systems after a certain percentage of structural damage is completely pointless because those systems can be destroyed by the enemy anyway. They probably have already. Like I said earlier: HALF YOUR SHIP. It's gone. I'd be gone at 25% shields, tbh. I'm not repairing that. Are you kidding?

TL;DR

It's pointless and should be removed. Give us Fleet Control! :D

Have you even looked at the values? It starts taking effect way before a ship is destroyed.

At 90% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 90% effective.
At 75% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 60% effective.
At 60% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 30% effective.
At 55% you lose control of your ship and then at 50% a ship overheats, has no shields trust and power.

 

[Mered4]

Have you even looked at the values? It starts taking effect way before a ship is destroyed.

At 90% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 90% effective.
At 75% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 60% effective.
At 60% HP your remaining shields, thrust, and power is only 30% effective.
At 55% you lose control of your ship and then at 50% a ship overheats, has no shields trust and power.

That was not apparent when we tested it, and it makes it even worse. Arbitrary values to provide.....what? What's the point? You're losing blocks every time someone nails you with a cannon or a missile or what have you. Why is that not enough?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

That was not apparent when we tested it, and it makes it even worse. Arbitrary values to provide.....what? What's the point? You're losing blocks every time someone nails you with a cannon or a missile or what have you. Why is that not enough?

If you don't even notice the effect why do you even care? Also it makes sense that systems would not be in the best shape after parts have been removed. We are not carefully removing your shield capacitors, power modules, and thrusters with a wrench and screw driver. They are being destroyed violently with weapons, explosives and the like. Why shouldn't the rest of the ship be effected when these parts are removed? There also may be parts of the ship that are damaged but the blocks themselves have not been removed, this also simulates damaged components that are not yet destroyed. Tracking the individual HP of every block and applying de-buffs accordingly would take to much processing.

 

[Mered4]

If you don't even notice the effect why do you even care? Also it makes sense that systems would not be in the best shape after parts have been removed. We are not carefully removing your shield capacitors, power modules, and thrusters with a wrench and screw driver. They are being destroyed violently with weapons, explosives and the like. Why shouldn't the rest of the ship be effected when these parts are removed? There also may be parts of the ship that are damaged but the blocks themselves have not been removed, this also simulates damaged components that are not yet destroyed. Tracking the individual HP of every block and applying de-buffs accordingly would take to much processing.

There's no need to provide said de-buffs. They are already present in the block system as it is, without any arbitrary values. This is not a simulation of a missile tube - it's a block of modular missile blocks that are not dependent on eachother to function.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

There's no need to provide said de-buffs. They are already present in the block system as it is, without any arbitrary values. This is not a simulation of a missile tube - it's a block of modular missile blocks that are not dependent on eachother to function.

The percentage debuffs I guess is supposed to simulate the destruction of the ship so it is more of a slope until dead. Without Debuffs at 56% your missing a lot of your ship but still have full control and your ship should be relativly 56% effective, and then as soon as you lose a single point, you're dead in the water. Having debuffs happen at specific points means your ship dies more gradually. instead of having a sharp drop off at 50%

 

[Mered4]

The percentage debuffs I guess is supposed to simulate the destruction of the ship so it is more of a slope until dead. Without Debuffs at 56% your missing a lot of your ship but still have full control and your ship should be relativly 56% effective, and then as soon as you lose a single point, you're dead in the water. Having debuffs happen at specific points means your ship dies more gradually. instead of having a sharp drop off at 50%

View attachment 12937

Hey look! Analysis! Thank you!

Your graph is very straightforward, but it misses the value of systems. For example, what would that graph look like if you lost 5% of your ship and the computers? What about 5% and you still have those computers? What if you lost the back half of your ship (thrusters, JDrive, Defensive Effects, whatever) instead of an even spread of damage?

What I'm trying to say is that you are trying to make a curve *smoother* without telling us why.

"Without Debuffs at 56% your missing a lot of your ship but still have full control and your ship should be relativly 56% effective, and then as soon as you lose a single point, you're dead in the water. Having debuffs happen at specific points means your ship dies more gradually. instead of having a sharp drop off at 50%"
Did you miss the rest of the curve, bro? It does die off gradually - 50% is the bottom of the graph. If your ship still works at 50% in the function it was designed to perform, you are either extremely lucky or a God-level ship designer.

 

[Jay_do]

But that's the point I'm getting at!

A ship that has lost 50% or even 30% of its mass is not a ship - it's a rotting hulk that might run a little bit if you turn the key. It's not necessary to add a mechanic that auto-disables all your systems. Believe me, my ship is getting pounded and I'm losing systems left and right - I don't need reminded by cutting my thrust arbitrarily.

The enemy should have to kill the engines just like any other system. That's how the block system works.

"I believe quite a number of people have asked for astronaut features."
I know exactly one person in the MushroomFleet community who has brought up astronaut features that involve boarding a ship and assaulting it. That person is Slate_Gorgon, and we quickly reminded him that boarding (while it might be cool) will end up being a gimmicky feature that is only used for videos or laughs.

On the forums (which I track fairly regularly), I haven't seen a serious discussion on boarding in months. Now, I know we can't judge the *majority* opinion in any way, but this seems to be a fair indication that it's not on the top of the community's list.

As a reminder, the MFleet Community has at least 75 active players who come on Teamspeak to talk, and around 450 or so that do not.

In single player I was doing some testing an I was able to board an active ai pirate ship that was 9.5k mass while in a 230 mass fighter and I successfully took it over. The grapple hook is very good.
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That's a good mechanic! And it's one we already have - when a ship is deactivated/overheated/utterly demolished, it is immediately dead in the water. There is then the despawn timer that is based on the size of the ship.

The issue is the pointless disable mechanic BEFORE the ship hits the *utterly destroyed* threshold. What's the point? I'd assume that by the time the ship gets to that stage, you can't honk the horn.
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"Look mate, your personal feelings about some other drama which I simply don't care about it (no offence, I just don't) does not give you an excuse to be rude!"

These aren't personal feelings. Not at all. These opinions are based off of evidence that indicates DoR and WedTM are attempting a massive cash grab before trashing Starmade and walking away. Just like they did with that CubeWorld game. I don't trust them and you should not either. Not because I "feel" they're doing it wrong, but because there is evidence that indicates they are attempting to get as much money as they can from Starmade before they bury it. I was as outraged as you when I first heard this - "You've gotta be kidding. Are you high?" were my exact words when I was told.

"I've yet to formulate my own opinions in the HP system so I won't comment on my views toward it, but it winds me up immensely to see post like this after every update, slagging off the devs and calling their work pointless. They have a lot more patience than me because if I had put that much work into a game and got this kind of response every time I would have told everyone where they could stick their game and gone to the pub..."

I would never call SCHEMAS work pointless. That man knows his stuff and I am always amazed at what he pulls off with the Java language. However, I also have little patience for a company that refuses to plan for the future. I'd also like to help out - but I have a better chance of seeing a flying unicorn when I wake up tomorrow then being invited to contribute at Schine.

"Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to formulate opinions that disagree with the games decision and direction. And to voice those decisions. But there is no excuse at all for it to be done in an insulting manner"

You are right.

That said, I'm still laughing my ass off that this got past the testing stage. I mean, who even tests anymore besides the Schine team and the veterans?

This is how the hp sysyem was planned out many many months ago on whatever livestream that was. We knew this was how it was gonna be and we liked it. Apparently you didn't get the memo or something but this has been the plan for months.

 

[Mered4]

In single player I was doing some testing an I was able to board an active ai pirate ship that was 9.5k mass while in a 230 mass fighter and I successfully took it over. The grapple hook is very good.
[DOUBLEPOST=1434890007,1434889727][/DOUBLEPOST]
This is how the hp sysyem was planned out many many months ago on whatever livestream that was. We knew this was how it was gonna be and we liked it. Apparently you didn't get the memo or something but this has been the plan for months.

To the contrary - I knew they were considering it as an option but (as most logical people do) I assumed they would come to the same conclusion I did - that it was pointless or overkill. Unfortunately I was proven wrong, so here we are :/

"In single player I was doing some testing an I was able to board an active ai pirate ship that was 9.5k mass while in a 230 mass fighter and I successfully took it over. The grapple hook is very good."

I have a question - did the ship have turrets? If not, I understand how you got on. If it did.....well. Those are some terrible turrets 0.o

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Hey look! Analysis! Thank you!

Your graph is very straightforward, but it misses the value of systems. For example, what would that graph look like if you lost 5% of your ship and the computers? What about 5% and you still have those computers? What if you lost the back half of your ship (thrusters, JDrive, Defensive Effects, whatever) instead of an even spread of damage?

What I'm trying to say is that you are trying to make a curve *smoother* without telling us why.

"Without Debuffs at 56% your missing a lot of your ship but still have full control and your ship should be relativly 56% effective, and then as soon as you lose a single point, you're dead in the water. Having debuffs happen at specific points means your ship dies more gradually. instead of having a sharp drop off at 50%"
Did you miss the rest of the curve, bro? It does die off gradually - 50% is the bottom of the graph. If your ship still works at 50% in the function it was designed to perform, you are either extremely lucky or a God-level ship designer.

Of course you will still have to protect your computers and yes computers are more valuable but this is just a raw number comparison. I've shown you these numbers are simply not arbitrary and that they in fact do something and are not useless. Yes you could loose all your thrusters but none of your power infrastructure and you would still loose power from getting below 90%. I'd say that's not useless, you have to run power to those systems, destroying those parts causes shorts and the shields cannot be effectively applied to damaged sections of ships. It makes perfect sense to me.

It also doesn't die off gradually and 50% is not the bottom of effectiveness, just when a ship dies. Sure a ship is disabled at 50% but if it's still fighting it's theoretically still 50% effective (not counting the loss of control at 55%). With the more adjusted curve that you get from lowered system effectiveness you have percentages of effectiveness below 50% all the way to zero instead of it dropping at 50% to zero.

 

[Jay_do]

To the contrary - I knew they were considering it as an option but (as most logical people do) I assumed they would come to the same conclusion I did - that it was pointless or overkill. Unfortunately I was proven wrong, so here we are :/

"In single player I was doing some testing an I was able to board an active ai pirate ship that was 9.5k mass while in a 230 mass fighter and I successfully took it over. The grapple hook is very good."

I have a question - did the ship have turrets? If not, I understand how you got on. If it did.....well. Those are some terrible turrets 0.o

Lol no It didn't. You would have to kill the turrets first or find a blind spot to grapple onto then torch through the wall or vent or whatever.

 

[Mered4]

Of course you will still have to protect your computers and yes computers are more valuable but this is just a raw number comparison. I've shown you these numbers are simply not arbitrary and that they in fact do something and are not useless. Yes you could loose all your thrusters but none of your power infrastructure and you would still loose power from getting below 90%. I'd say that's not useless, you have to run power to those systems, destroying those parts causes shorts and the shields cannot be effectively applied to damaged sections of ships. It makes perfect sense to me.

It also doesn't die off gradually and 50% is not the bottom of effectiveness, just when a ship dies. Sure a ship is disabled at 50% but if it's still fighting it's theoretically still 50% effective (not counting the loss of control at 55%). With the more adjusted curve that you get from lowered system effectiveness you have percentages of effectiveness below 50% all the way to zero instead of it dropping at 50% to zero.

My point is that by the time it hits 50% it might as well be at zero, because the ship will have long since ceased to function as it was designed.

"I'd say that's not useless, you have to run power to those systems, destroying those parts causes shorts and the shields cannot be effectively applied to damaged sections of ships. It makes perfect sense to me."

You can meta an end-game, you can meta how your ship is powered, but you cannot meta a balance. *It makes sense in the real world* is not an argument you can bring into a video game that isn't a pure sandbox survival game - which Starmade is not. Balance is the underlying fabric of how the game operates. You can't explain it away with real world analogies. If your game design is art, then game balance is like engineering. The pieces have to fit, because they are the parts for the engine that drives gameplay. Starmade does not have any of the systems you mentioned in the game - it is made of modular sections that can be easily networked to become greater than the sum of their parts. Removing a couple sections is akin to pulling the plug on your laptop at home on your crowded WiFi. You won't be watching your TV, iPhone, and Desktop all power down after displaying CONNECTION FAILED messages.

That's how it works in the game. That's it. It's not a massive spinning engine of awesomeness (though we love to create those out of things that aren't thrusters), it's a massive chunk of mass that form-fits to your ship. If you want that massive engine, please stop imagining that lifeless chunk of thrusters is a pretty engine with moving parts and whatnot. Just build an awesome engine, then put it in the Engine Porn thread so the rest of us can drool over it :p

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Stealth ships are really good for finding a blind spot.

If you're on a server with some beefier pirates I find a good thing to do early on is attack a station to bring in reinforcements then bump on stealth, find the ship of your choosing and have fun pirating pirates. Note: There is so much that can go wrong with this plan, fun though.

 

[Mork2]

I like the overall effects of the new mechanic.

Bobby AI weapons and NPCs can now actually kill things with guns. They don't have to make an impossible to hit core shot. Just do enough systems damage. If you don't like core drilling this is a nice mechanic to balance it out somewhat.

Once the target is overheated the astronaut is ejected and if I can see your icon I can just continue to fire on you with ship cannons till your dead and respawn somewhere else. Then I can board your ship relatively safely.

The new mechanic allows for a bit more design considerations, take it as a challenge for system layout.

From an engineering point of view to damage I'm now stacking all my shield capacitors to the front or towards the surface of my ship after weapons. I won't care if they get dropped to half since the shields are down anyway. The shield rechargers will be behind that. I won't need those either at that point since the shields are down having them nerfed by up to 50% won't matter I can use those to soak damage from more critical system blocks. Power generation and power storage will be in harder to get to areas. So while they will get reduced maybe up to 50% from the system damage penalties they will be the last system to loose blocks hopefully. Since a pile of weapon blocks are up the front as well the loss of power won't be to much of an issue as ill be missing forward weapons first then shields. With the loss of so many system blocks this should bring my mass down quite a bit so the engines will have a bit easier time of it as long as the engines weren't hit. If I optimise my capital ship for frontal damage properly ill not lose any blocks from engines, power, power storage before my ship overheats. If you light me up from behind I'm going to take critical damage rather quickly after the shields go down. Your bonus for hitting me on the weaker area/spot.

I would say the new system encourages you to take block placement of systems a bit more thoughtful.

Do docked entities also overload as well if the main ship does? If not the docked power cores will continue to supply power and the turrets will continue to fire and internal defence weapons will continue to work.

 

[Keptick]

You're expecting a private company to make their plans public, that's your problem. Do you see Valve, bungie or other companies make their roadmaps public? No.

 

[Mered4]

You're expecting a private company to make their plans public, that's your problem. Do you see Valve, bungie or other companies make their roadmaps public? No.

Schine doesn't compare to EA, Valve, or any other company that makes games with a publisher. Schine is an indie developer. They cannot both claim *developer privilege* or whatever you want to call it, and ask the community to help make their game. I'd like to know where my contributions are going, personally.

*Private Company*

Are you high? Schema is the only one who does real work. DoR and WedTM run the website, the rest of the guys talk about how important their jobs are, and we smile and nod as updates come out. Come on. Lol. It's one guy. Not a private company. The Cat is Alone in this.

 

[Puddles]

If you payed attention to anything on this site of the forums, you'd know that we have 2 new coders that are slowly learning the code as they fix the bugs. It is not a 1 man dream team, there are 3 coders, and various other members like modelers and texturer.

Take off your privileged badge already please, you don't get to talk down on a Dev because you disagree with him. You don't even have a purchased badge!

 

[Zeno9141]

Schine doesn't compare to EA, Valve, or any other company that makes games with a publisher. Schine is an indie developer. They cannot both claim *developer privilege* or whatever you want to call it, and ask the community to help make their game. I'd like to know where my contributions are going, personally.

Anyone can ask anyone to help with anything. Whether you help is your own decision.

 

[therimmer96]

If you payed attention to anything on this site of the forums, you'd know that we have 2 new coders that are slowly learning the code as they fix the bugs. It is not a 1 man dream team, there are 3 coders, and various other members like modelers and texturer.

From one of his tweets, it looks like everything new with the chat system was bspkrs.

It's a company. There is more to developing a game than developing the game. Kupu does all the art, he has just finished redoing the entire pixel texture pack, saber has been working on the 3d models for the fauna system which should be the next big update, Duke and Wedtm handle the business side of stuff, Andy runs QA.

 

[Mered4]

If you payed attention to anything on this site of the forums, you'd know that we have 2 new coders that are slowly learning the code as they fix the bugs. It is not a 1 man dream team, there are 3 coders, and various other members like modelers and texturer.

Take off your privileged badge already please, you don't get to talk down on a Dev because you disagree with him. You don't even have a purchased badge!

I've purchased the game. The status is bugged on SMD and after three weeks of trying to get it fixed I just decided it wasn't worth the hassle.