Every single one of your favorite servers sucks: here's why

[Imagination01]

/rant

The problem with StarMade servers and StarMade as a whole is the only thing to do is PVP, the only reason to do anything in StarMade is to
PVP, you only mine so you can get your cool ship spawned in, you only amass a wealth of credits so you can get a cool ship spawned in, you only build for the sake of building a ship that shoots.

The only thing ships are good for in this game is shooting other ships, so PVE and Build Servers essentially have no content, sure, you can be a "building only faction" but at the end of the day, the only reason to build ships, is so that it shoots.

Sure you can spend 6 months designing a ship to look good with an RP interior and rail logic doors and all this over nifty shit, but there is no point to it, your cool looking ship is just going to be blown up by a ship that shoots, why? because the owner of that ship has nothing else to do, there is nothing to do other than that.

There is nothing else to do in this game, the developers have not made any content to cater to people who do not want to PVP, PVP is the only fun thing to do, every other little feature they have ultimately leads to PVP.

And for a game that the only thing fun to do is PVP, you would expect it to be good? BUT NO, its terrible, there is no point to PVP, as Lancake pointed out, most people choose to stay away from it because the risk is not worth the reward.

This is not entirely the fault of StarMade devs, this is also the servers fault for not giving people anything to do, the one exception to this was EI, their faction config gave players much more PVP content so the players had something to acheive, something to defend, something to PVP for, if more servers used it, it would be marvellous!

Most people hide in their homebase twiddling their thumbs doing nothing all day, because you can do PVP because its not worth the risk, and there is nothing else to do other than PVP, so what are you going to do?

You're going to find a better game, thats what you will do.

 

[karkinosz]

This is not entirely the fault of StarMade devs, this is also the servers fault for not giving people anything to do, the one exception to this was EI, their faction config gave players much more PVP content so the players had something to acheive, something to defend, something to PVP for, if more servers used it, it would be marvellous!

While I did like the mission of EI, to promote better PVP. Even their approach left much to be desired, "much more PVP content" is a vast overstatement. What EI was set up to do in practice was punish anything except open/total warfare between factions.

Except in PVP terms that is the most excessive and wasteful form of PVP, leading to mass resource and time investment loss for one party while the other snowballs in power and resources. The cycle repeats and one is left king of the hill, eventually to either lead to boredom or to lose stuff in offline attacks.

If we want PVP we also want to allow it below total war levels so that it's made sustainable for a server population. Things like bounty hunting and PvPvE type events where people fight over x-macguffin short-term. Having two factions fight to the death justs leads to less PvP over all in the long term.

If we can't achieve that then perhaps at least we can make attrition-based warfare part of the faction PvP dynamic. Have it require a certain number of deaths/losses before territory can be taken(or at least make it harder otherwise?) To promote longer term warfare.


Unrelated to my previous point but imagination building for some is it's own endgame, they like to recreate their favourite franchises ships and etc. And honestly I would think that 90% of the playtime across the community for starmade is probably building, not only because it's the most fleshed-out part of the game but because it's the most time intensive part. (Mining is a close second, but building is more fun than mining.)

Aannnnd third point. Not directed at imagination.

We do very much need PvE content, high-risk high-reward options as well as possability to grind in relative safety. Pretty much the kind of starmade universe that I would hope to have is one where ai and player factions (as well as sub-faction entities.) are part of a single interactive universe.

Some space would, at least at the start, be relatively lawful. Everyone would start as part of a public galactic federation-type faction. Bottom rank only giving one the ability to dock and to have permissions set to personal. You'd then have access to what could be early game content.

Early game content - PvE
- trading (/w possible missions. Bonus credit rewards?)
- Ai-pirate hunting. (w/ possible missions. Bonus credit rewards?)
- Exploration? (We've had suggestions for things like this before. Credit rewards etc etc)
- Escort missions? - (Missions are going to happen, so why not the most hated kind? More credit rewards.)
- Missions in general (Defend x to its destination, deliver y cargo to z sector.)
Early game content - PvP
- Piracy (Might be difficult in what is lawful space, also will lead you to being ejected from the Galactic Federation. Should allow for forgiveness after x-amount of time. )
- Player pirate hunting. (These targets will be free PvP for everyone.)
- Merc work. (Weaker factions might benefit from some extra help, integrate with missions and a possible temp_faction system and you can have easy merc hiring and combat.)
- PvP missions are also an option, what about defending a convoy v.s a player pirate? (The player pirate getting this information from the ever present pirate faction.)

After gathering credits and blocks you reach the mid-game. Where you go into wild space to either tame it for your own or for those loner-types extend the reach of the federation.

Now your future path likely depends on how you acted towards the Fed. If your membership is pirate heavy then they will not hesitate to declare war and war missions against your faction will be given out. Kill x number of players or conquer a territory.

Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, if those missions fail it will increase (some equivilent to FP, but not as excessive or useless as FP, will still call FP) and if they succeed it will decrease your FP. Territory in this system doesn't increase FP but is required to store FP. The more FP is stored in a system the harder it is to take. FP cap is related to how far a system is from a claim station. (more than 2 systems away means practically none.)

Mission failure doesn't mean that the mission runs out of time however. It means that the defending faction completes the conditions instead of the attacker. (Ie fed calls a war mission on, the galactic empire. But the galactic empire kills all the attackers.)

How we make high FP systems harder to take? No idea there, I thought maybe applying a damage reduction to the station might be the way forward. With the homebase by default being a 100 fp system(which only loses FP when all other systems are depleted. And even then only if that's enabled.)

10fp = 10% damage reduction. Etc etc.

However all this is just for endgame pirate PvE...

Faction PvP:
Requires war missions to be called by either faction if you want to eventually kill the homebase. Trying to wipe out a faction on good terms with the Fed is probably difficult as well, best targets are fellow warring factions.

As battles are won the losing side suffers FP decrease. Stations begin to become more and more vulnerable. Depending on the target factions might decide to sacrifice certain claim stations since they control their distribution of FP.

Faction PvP war missions are long term and if they lapse then both sides suffer major FP loss. Say maybe a week in length, most should resolve before then. But some may prefer it lapse since both sides will become very vulnerable.

Pretty much this system will either result in one side trying to go for peace or suffer total destruction.

Economic PvE:
Now these guys are the opposite of the faction PvP crowd, no fighting. Only money. And lots of it. Very likely to be allied directly to the galactic fed or another player faction.

In a normal faction FP would spread from a claim system and spill over into neighboring systems, to expand owned territory. However an option exists to instead turn excess FP into credits, to symbolize the power of economic clout to produce dividends. Power begets money and money begets money.

Once again the mission system comes into play. Economic-based factions can take on supplying missions with an increased frequency and with increased rewards. The missions they give out are also tipped advantegously to their side of the bargain. Although these missions aren't likely to be taken by players (because players don't get the concept of bulk-discounts at all.) they will eventually be completed by ai allowing the faction to gain blocks en-masse.

Pretty much for these guys obtaining resources is a matter of time. Except with FP caps and limited systems, they aren't all that good at warring.

With their excessive wealth they can pay top-prices to nearby PvP and PvE factions to ward off any threats player or otherwise.

Now there was more, but I lost my train of thought after this.

TLDR: Starmade needs content, im not saying implement this but it feels like a step in the right direction.

 

[Master_Artificer]

While I did like the mission of EI, to promote better PVP. Even their approach left much to be desired, "much more PVP content" is a vast overstatement. What EI was set up to do in practice was punish anything except open/total warfare between factions.

Except in PVP terms that is the most excessive and wasteful form of PVP, leading to mass resource and time investment loss for one party while the other snowballs in power and resources. The cycle repeats and one is left king of the hill, eventually to either lead to boredom or to lose stuff in offline attacks.

If we want PVP we also want to allow it below total war levels so that it's made sustainable for a server population. Things like bounty hunting and PvPvE type events where people fight over x-macguffin short-term. Having two factions fight to the death justs leads to less PvP over all in the long term.

If we can't achieve that then perhaps at least we can make attrition-based warfare part of the faction PvP dynamic. Have it require a certain number of deaths/losses before territory can be taken(or at least make it harder otherwise?) To promote longer term warfare.


Unrelated to my previous point but imagination building for some is it's own endgame, they like to recreate their favourite franchises ships and etc. And honestly I would think that 90% of the playtime across the community for starmade is probably building, not only because it's the most fleshed-out part of the game but because it's the most time intensive part. (Mining is a close second, but building is more fun than mining.)

Aannnnd third point. Not directed at imagination.

We do very much need PvE content, high-risk high-reward options as well as possability to grind in relative safety. Pretty much the kind of starmade universe that I would hope to have is one where ai and player factions (as well as sub-faction entities.) are part of a single interactive universe.

Some space would, at least at the start, be relatively lawful. Everyone would start as part of a public galactic federation-type faction. Bottom rank only giving one the ability to dock and to have permissions set to personal. You'd then have access to what could be early game content.

Early game content - PvE
- trading (/w possible missions. Bonus credit rewards?)
- Ai-pirate hunting. (w/ possible missions. Bonus credit rewards?)
- Exploration? (We've had suggestions for things like this before. Credit rewards etc etc)
- Escort missions? - (Missions are going to happen, so why not the most hated kind? More credit rewards.)
- Missions in general (Defend x to its destination, deliver y cargo to z sector.)
Early game content - PvP
- Piracy (Might be difficult in what is lawful space, also will lead you to being ejected from the Galactic Federation. Should allow for forgiveness after x-amount of time. )
- Player pirate hunting. (These targets will be free PvP for everyone.)
- Merc work. (Weaker factions might benefit from some extra help, integrate with missions and a possible temp_faction system and you can have easy merc hiring and combat.)
- PvP missions are also an option, what about defending a convoy v.s a player pirate? (The player pirate getting this information from the ever present pirate faction.)

After gathering credits and blocks you reach the mid-game. Where you go into wild space to either tame it for your own or for those loner-types extend the reach of the federation.

Now your future path likely depends on how you acted towards the Fed. If your membership is pirate heavy then they will not hesitate to declare war and war missions against your faction will be given out. Kill x number of players or conquer a territory.

Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, if those missions fail it will increase (some equivilent to FP, but not as excessive or useless as FP, will still call FP) and if they succeed it will decrease your FP. Territory in this system doesn't increase FP but is required to store FP. The more FP is stored in a system the harder it is to take. FP cap is related to how far a system is from a claim station. (more than 2 systems away means practically none.)

Mission failure doesn't mean that the mission runs out of time however. It means that the defending faction completes the conditions instead of the attacker. (Ie fed calls a war mission on, the galactic empire. But the galactic empire kills all the attackers.)

How we make high FP systems harder to take? No idea there, I thought maybe applying a damage reduction to the station might be the way forward. With the homebase by default being a 100 fp system(which only loses FP when all other systems are depleted. And even then only if that's enabled.)

10fp = 10% damage reduction. Etc etc.

However all this is just for endgame pirate PvE...

Faction PvP:
Requires war missions to be called by either faction if you want to eventually kill the homebase. Trying to wipe out a faction on good terms with the Fed is probably difficult as well, best targets are fellow warring factions.

As battles are won the losing side suffers FP decrease. Stations begin to become more and more vulnerable. Depending on the target factions might decide to sacrifice certain claim stations since they control their distribution of FP.

Faction PvP war missions are long term and if they lapse then both sides suffer major FP loss. Say maybe a week in length, most should resolve before then. But some may prefer it lapse since both sides will become very vulnerable.

Pretty much this system will either result in one side trying to go for peace or suffer total destruction.

Economic PvE:
Now these guys are the opposite of the faction PvP crowd, no fighting. Only money. And lots of it. Very likely to be allied directly to the galactic fed or another player faction.

In a normal faction FP would spread from a claim system and spill over into neighboring systems, to expand owned territory. However an option exists to instead turn excess FP into credits, to symbolize the power of economic clout to produce dividends. Power begets money and money begets money.

Once again the mission system comes into play. Economic-based factions can take on supplying missions with an increased frequency and with increased rewards. The missions they give out are also tipped advantegously to their side of the bargain. Although these missions aren't likely to be taken by players (because players don't get the concept of bulk-discounts at all.) they will eventually be completed by ai allowing the faction to gain blocks en-masse.

Pretty much for these guys obtaining resources is a matter of time. Except with FP caps and limited systems, they aren't all that good at warring.

With their excessive wealth they can pay top-prices to nearby PvP and PvE factions to ward off any threats player or otherwise.

Now there was more, but I lost my train of thought after this.

TLDR: Starmade needs content, im not saying implement this but it feels like a step in the right direction.

Woah

 

[Aynslei]

A few people have gone and brought up that PvP is only met with risks and no rewards. Losing the ship is the most commonly sited downside, but one that people dont talk about often? Losing FP on death.

This is my opinion here but losing FP on death has done more to kill PvP in this game than any other factor. If someone is hanging out side your base why should you fight them? To lose a ship? to lose FP and then lose that homebase? There are ZERO healthy interactions in that system.
It favors the people capable of snowballing and just that.

I think this is a flaw in the games design, as we need a system of FP that promotes faction interaction.

 

[Comr4de]

The way I see it, (some?) server owners feel forced to make life easier because Starmade doesn't really have many mechanics to promote expansion which gives you a better quality of life. Resource gain stagnates if you have a big enough salvage ship right? Only getting more players mining at the same time improves it. You don't need more bases for that, just a few more ships (and players)

Also, our trade model is currently a very simplified version of a supply & demand system, a system where shops magically gain blocks so inflation is something that happens on its own. Considering that newly discovered shops spawn with a full load, you just have to go far enough to find them.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong since this is just my experience, in the past I played as a normal player and I blamed Starmade for not giving me opportunities to do more than just mining and ship building. That might just have been my particular playstyle though since I never got involved into faction politics.

I did not feel the need to PvP, the only real reward I got out of it is killing someone who was verbally harassing me. There's also a ton of risk involved compared to the potential reward, losing your entire ship kicks you in the balls after spending weeks of building it. I do NOT want to reduce the risk, just increase the reward. With everyone having an invulnerable homebase, it's hard to actually get PvP going anyway unless it's planned to happen at a certain date + place, but that takes away the element of surprise. "Oh no I'm getting attacked at base Y, gather the fleet in system X and get there ASAP! We will purge these heretics from our sacred lands!!" etc...

I did not feel the need to expand and have multiple bases (all of which are hard to defend even with super duper turrets on them), I can't really think of of something positive you get from having more bases, you already have an invulnerable one that can have everything you want.
And that salvage bonus you get that? That's a joke, you can get it by placing down a station block and a faction module...When you're done with mining, either remove it or let it stay there, it's not like FP costs are a big deal. And finding + getting to an unclaimed sector isn't difficult anyway, not with all the buffed up jump drives being used on all servers.

PvE is a bit different, it's way more predictable when you know what ships are being used on the server. The spawn size is usually the same (5 ish randomly chosen ships) so you roughly know what ship size to take with you to farm them. So yeah I did PvE, but there was never any danger involved since I knew what to expect.

All of these concerns I had, can't really be addressed by changing the server config. You can make resource gathering go faster, but that just makes me build more ships without actually using them. You can encourage PvP on your server by other means (witch hunt for spawnkillers, pvp events with rewards, ...) but that doesn't change the fact that at its core, Starmade encourages you to hug your homebase till you die of old age.

--------------------

Now about performance issues, usually I can blame the server for that ^^...There's a reason why we have a default config, the game is optimized for those numbers.

It's true that a 10 max block build size is small, but the game is optimized to handle that amount. It can handle 8000 blocks per click extremely well but that efficiency goes down fast when you go above that limit.
If I see a server with 100 max block build size, I can't take them serious when they're complaining about performance. Placing down millions of blocks with a single click puts a tremendous load on the server. Sure it's doable when there's only 2-3 guys doing it...But when there are 20 or more online at the same time, you're going to have a serious amount of slowdowns.

I can say the same thing about increasing the max speed, systems get loaded/unloaded at a faster rate which means more server traffic going on. Increasing sector size counters that a bit, but considering you can also put more ships inside the same sector, you potentially create a zone that has a lot of data to be fetched and saved. That's hypothetical though, I don't really think there's any bad thing of increasing sector size with a reasonable amount unless it's like higher than 5 000 meters it should still be fine-ish.

The past week has been a wild ride but I'm finally sitting down to respond.

Yeah, there are a lot of cases here where the game itself is to blame. Namely trade. Trade in the game is pretty simple right now but my understanding is that is a temporary issue. As far as PvP goes... yeah. Basehugging is practically encouraged.

In regards to your comments on the config, so many issues with performance and combat balance could be fixed just by using the default config. I guess everyone wants their supercaps.

 

[Nickizzy]

This story goes on for another three paragraphs

Actually, please do. This is sorta off topic but that was a really cool story. It made me think of using player stories like that as the actual legends of starmade.

(That story was from post 34, if you need to find it.)

 

[Comr4de]

Actually, please do. This is sorta off topic but that was a really cool story. It made me think of using player stories like that as the actual legends of starmade.

(That story was from post 34, if you need to find it.)

The next three paragraphs are basically "the vaygr war happens". I'm about to go out for groceries but I'll shoot you a PM with the deets when I get back.

 

[Nickizzy]

vaygr

wait, isn't vaygr the Homeworld species vaygr? I never noticed that. Did they have vaygr themed ships?

 

[Lecic]

wait, isn't vaygr the Homeworld species vaygr? I never noticed that. Did they have vaygr themed ships?

Vaygr Empire used Homeworld Vaygr ships at the very beginning, but I don't think they've used them in a very long time.

 

[Nickizzy]

Vaygr Empire used Homeworld Vaygr ships at the very beginning, but I don't think they've used them in a very long time.

But still! Someone needs to make a carrier or something with a fleet somehow!

 

[NeonSturm]

The admin problem could perhaps be solved if for example a StarTrek and a Warhammer server would coop.
StarTrek players could still be admins in Warhammer and vice versa - so that they are either player or admin.

 

[Byamarro]

Now about performance issues, usually I can blame the server for that ^^...There's a reason why we have a default config, the game is optimized for those numbers.

It's true that a 10 max block build size is small, but the game is optimized to handle that amount. It can handle 8000 blocks per click extremely well but that efficiency goes down fast when you go above that limit.
If I see a server with 100 max block build size, I can't take them serious when they're complaining about performance. Placing down millions of blocks with a single click puts a tremendous load on the server. Sure it's doable when there's only 2-3 guys doing it...But when there are 20 or more online at the same time, you're going to have a serious amount of slowdowns.

I can say the same thing about increasing the max speed, systems get loaded/unloaded at a faster rate which means more server traffic going on. Increasing sector size counters that a bit, but considering you can also put more ships inside the same sector, you potentially create a zone that has a lot of data to be fetched and saved. That's hypothetical though, I don't really think there's any bad thing of increasing sector size with a reasonable amount unless it's like higher than 5 000 meters it should still be fine-ish.

Now, you've touched there very interesting topic. And my question is:
How NPC factions, ships building automation by shipyards, AI NPCs and generally making Starmade first person RTS game will improve performance?

 

[Lancake]

Now, you've touched there very interesting topic. And my question is:
How NPC factions, ships building automation by shipyards, AI NPCs and generally making Starmade first person RTS game will improve performance?

Well I assume it wouldn't increase or decrease performance (aside from bugs). But as I haven't seen the system in-game yet and given the fact that I'm not the person coding this system, I don't see how I'm supposed to know that.

 

[Byamarro]

Well I assume it wouldn't increase or decrease performance (aside from bugs). But as I haven't seen the system in-game yet and given the fact that I'm not the person coding this system, I don't see how I'm supposed to know that.

Faction development in game affects server performance in exponential manner. Regardless of how it's being coded. Sure, we can optimize stuff, but we can't beat math.
If Schine (with all my respect for them) embraces mass-production on one side, while on the other sets block placing limit to 10, then I feel that their strategy is pretty inconsistent.

 

[NeonSturm]

Although the strategy is inconsistent, the reason for placing at max 10 blocks is another - LAG in MP.

I think it's a flaw to update function together with aesthetics and update function when leaving and reentering build mode. Logic could be an exception as long as it's on a small scale (not pasting >10x10x10 templates).

 

[endoric]

I know nothing of SM servers but man minecraft server admins are the worst cheaters on any server i have been a part of.

i know as i was an admin briefly and was able to cheat at will without punishment. it was lame.

 

[Spoolooni]

Needs more Ares