Discuss with the Devs July 18 2019 ([SIS]-Shortform)

[Zoolimar]

schema did confirm that raiding cargo ships will be made easy by them being visible on the map. or some kind of mechanic that would make it easier for raiders to find ships to attack.

I don't see how it will help much. Even assuming you have a Star Wars style interdictor ship capable of pulling ships from warp, if they go through a system it's in, you still need 8 of them to enclose an enemy base. Or place them as a plane in 3d space cutting the galaxy in parts and in this case you'll need a lot of them. Really a lot.

Haulers don't even need drives really, just jump drive chambers. Good luck trying to catch them.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

I don't see how it will help much. Even assuming you have a Star Wars style interdictor ship capable of pulling ships from warp, if they go through a system it's in, you still need 8 of them to enclose an enemy base. Or place them as a plane in 3d space cutting the galaxy in parts and in this case you'll need a lot of them. Really a lot.

Haulers don't even need drives really, just jump drive chambers. Good luck trying to catch them.

we'll just have to wait and see what the system looks like. perhaps if the AI is driving a cargo fleet they will have pre-programed "rest" periods as a potential downside to using AI instead of players flying them themselves.

 

[Energywelder]

You could implement haulers in the sense they're forbidden to have jump chambers, just a thought.

Also also, on the topic of detecting them: Modern cargo ships are required by international law to have "transponders". One way i can see this being implemented is all ships equipped with thrusters have a transponder signal built into them by default, and then stealth chamber 0 or 1 come with the ability to turn it off. When a transponder is active your ship shows up in the galaxy map, from any range. That way finding cargo ships won't be impossible.

 

[MaartenAll]

Not to sound pessimistic, but I feel like we're just heading into another year of unplayable Starmade because of all the bugs that will inevidably come with this update, just like we had with the power update.
Fleets are still full of bugs, shipyards are still full of bugs, even pickup rail systems still bug out from time to time,...
Why not just focus on details first and build a stable game instead of trowing another huge change at us that will make the game even less stable?

 

[SkylordLuke]

Not to sound pessimistic, but I feel like we're just heading into another year of unplayable Starmade because of all the bugs that will inevidably come with this update, just like we had with the power update.
Fleets are still full of bugs, shipyards are still full of bugs, even pickup rail systems still bug out from time to time,...
Why not just focus on details first and build a stable game instead of trowing another huge change at us that will make the game even less stable?

The game needs to go forward hard with updates,we are all here alpha testers. I am not playing currently because of the things you mentioned,but we need to understand that game must have big updates that could break things badly. once the game features are in,then we fix the bugs in a large sweep,and bim bam bom,the game is ready for public

EDIT* also hot damn,that is a lot of new stuff that is gonna be added or changed. a whole new game! but the one I always imagined it should be.

 

[aceface]

Neither of those I'd really consider ideal, I rather like the Galaxy at large, even if it's not important to winning the game population/territory wise.

The universe ought to be as compact as possible. How it is right now is catastrophic. Theres no reason to interact and its just simply very unlikely to interact with another player with a large galaxy.

schema DukeofRealms
Otherwise you're killing the exploration aspect of the game you had previously talked about creating.

Lol, theres no exploration when every system is just a copy paste with a different colour hue. If theres far away systems to explore that have riches or something unique then yes itd be exploration but having a large copy-paste galaxy to "explore" is not what Id call exploration. Rather have a smaller one with more interesting stuff promoting player interaction.

 

[Tsnonak]

personally...

the epidemic I see here, is that many are blinded by their own grandios visions of "what it could be", they can no longer see, how good StarMade could have been, if it was just finished, everything got balanced, and worked.

The game needs to go forward hard with updates,we are all here alpha testers. I am not playing currently because of the things you mentioned,but we need to understand that game must have big updates that could break things badly. once the game features are in,then we fix the bugs in a large sweep,and bim bam bom,the game is ready for public

EDIT* also hot damn,that is a lot of new stuff that is gonna be added or changed. a whole new game! but the one I always imagined it should be.

Well...
get ready to start alpha testing a whole new game, or at least very different one, the StarMade which has engaged so many for so long, despite its broken/buggy alpha status, will "essentially be a different game".

We have already had "big updates", that caused many to "rage quit".
We already have a bunch of Features, half implemented and broke.

The universe ought to be as compact as possible. How it is right now is catastrophic. Theres no reason to interact and its just simply very unlikely to interact with another player with a large galaxy.


Lol, theres no exploration when every system is just a copy paste with a different colour hue. If theres far away systems to explore that have riches or something unique then yes itd be exploration but having a large copy-paste galaxy to "explore" is not what Id call exploration. Rather have a smaller one with more interesting stuff promoting player interaction.

I have seen the maps, full of the "ill fated" single man factions, the players themselves are the cause, not the size of the map, most never leave the main galaxy anyway. I suspect, the new compact map will not change this mentality either.
I believe people who want to interact will (history proves it), and many will eventually, when they are ready.
It may not always be "good for business", to run off players that would eventually interact and contribute good content, by forcing them into competetive rts and pvp all time, constantly, neverending, many will loose interest, (history also proves this).

As far as exploration goes, copy paste is pretty hard, in reality they are not all the same, planets have different orbits, some don't even have asteroid belts, etc... This is also where "server concepts" come in, like Yogswarm, SunWorld, Star Wars etc... making each universe unique.
This "built to last a few weeks", and "resets with a global leader boards" may very well be the end of custom servers, too much work involved.

Exploration riches... we know the routine, the powerblock controls the best resources, the rest get to settle for scraps (history proves this too).

I am not looking to argue, just simply expand on what was posted...
"It's all in a perspective", and there is no "single correct one", they are all parts of the "greater whole".
Most of these "counter" arguments have already been made, there is one for every perspective, the trick is: to get the "big picture".

... but I guess, ya'll are getting what you want, seems Schine has already made the dissisions to turn StarMade into an RTS.
... getting TLTW, see you in space!
... maybe.

Edit: I worded it extremely bad, apologies, it was just a generalized statement, no pun intended

 

[EricBlank]

The apparent shrunkenness inherent in this is one of it's biggest turnoffs for me too, but then again they're being so frustratingly vague who can actually tell what they really intend? It would be nice if they'd draw us a picture... I don't think the entire galaxy needs to be narrowed down into these galactic-control regions rather than the important regions need to stand out from the surrounding galaxy.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

A few suggestions (or speculations of what the devs might already be doing) regarding the new galaxy structure... Mostly just daydreaming aloud:

• Keep the solar systems being made up of a regular cubic grid of sectors, with the host star (or pair of host stars) residing in the center sector (to ensure that their furthest planet orbits and asteroid belts don't cross the system boundaries).
• But abandon the regular cubic grid of solar systems, to remedy the unnatural and weird orderliness of the galaxy.
• Make the planned galaxy regions vertically non-overlapping, but make them several systems thick, to retain galaxy depth.

And introduce metasystems:

Base the generation of galaxies' spiral shape on upscaled "metasystems", within which individual solar systems could reside at random positions. To explain, currently the galaxy is made up of a set of filled and a set of empty "pixels", which together demarcate the spiral arms and the central bulge.

These 3D pixels are the current 16x16x16-sector-sized solar or void systems. Instead, metasystems would play this same 3D pixel role in the galaxy shape generation, but they would be cube shaped volumes made up of whatever number of standard systems. If they would be composed of let's say 5x5x5 standard systems, they would contain 125 possible positions for a star and its orbiting stuff, chosen randomly.

This way, there would be a small enough chance for stars within a spiral arm or the central bulge to align in unnatural vertical columns, or north-south/east-west horizontal rows, or diagonal lines (and an almost zero change to form a weird, fully regular cubic or rectilinear grid).

Furthermore, the star-size to galaxy-size ratio would shift closer to realistic; galaxies would become 5x larger in diameter, and much less dense, so stars wouldn't visually block out each other that much. Also, the ratio between planetary orbit diameters and interstellar distances would shift closer to realistic too (currently it's possible to have a smaller distance between two planets of different systems than between a planet and its host star; systems are separated by smaller distances than their diameters; the galaxy feels cramped; separate solar systems with void systems from all directions).

So again, the rule would be that 5x5x5-system-sized metasystems would either contain 124 standard systems of void plus a single randomly positioned solar system (in case they're within a spiral arm or the central bulge) or only void units (in case they're between spiral arms or in intergalactic space).​

Alternatively, increase the number of sectors that make up solar systems, and decentralize their host stars, with still centralized but potentially highly eccentrically orbiting planets and asteroid belts.

And perhaps implement some sort of "void-drive" to mitigate the cons of such an increase in the amount of empty space

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[EricBlank]

Certainly an interesting way to divvy up the space. I would both generate "metasystems" and larger individual systems within them. The current solar systems have orbits of objects pretty cramped so expanding them outwards into surrounding otherwise empty space, making some of them a 48^3 sector cube, or a random size between 16 and 72 or whatever, gives room for more orbits and distant comet clouds like our own oort cloud and objects like Pluto, which would be hella rad. And of course, more random system size let's systems appear less identical.

Huge systems that way could also hold distant binary star systems with planets orbiting both at a distance as well as planets orbiting either star, which is awesome.

It would let space feel a lot bigger, the galaxy can be a lot more spread out and randomly spaced without being empty entirely, and regions can then include a few large and many small systems on a similar plane, and each feel more unique.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

Certainly an interesting way to divvy up the space. I would both generate "metasystems" and larger individual systems within them. The current solar systems have orbits of objects pretty cramped so expanding them outwards into surrounding otherwise empty space, making some of them a 48^3 sector cube, or a random size between 16 and 72 or whatever, gives room for more orbits and distant comet clouds like our own oort cloud and objects like Pluto, which would be hella rad. And of course, more random system size let's systems appear less identical.

Huge systems that way could also hold distant binary star systems with planets orbiting both at a distance as well as planets orbiting either star, which is awesome.

It would let space feel a lot bigger, the galaxy can be a lot more spread out and randomly spaced without being empty entirely, and regions can then include a few large and many small systems on a similar plane, and each feel more unique.

I really like those ideas!

The possibility for variance in solar system volume is particularly intriguing.

The aforementioned "metasystems" would thus provide not only freedom for the position of a solar system within an otherwise regular grid, but also freedom for different types / differently structured solar systems.

I think we're on to something here.