Fighting Gigantism in Starmade

[Morrigi]

Sorry, are you brain damaged? If there was air in space, it wouldn\'t be fucking space.

And sound does not propogate without a medium. There is not enough of one in space for sound to propogate, and therefore it cannot move through it.

And if we have power generators that pull energy out of literally nothing and engines that don\'t need fuel, then who are you to say we can\'t go \"100000mph\"

You\'re either trolling with that last paragraph, have not been through any kind of education, or are phenomenally stupid.

 

[Morrigi]

\"Fighting Gigantism\" is not the issue.The issue is that the entire game is unbalanced. You can get hundreds of millions or billions of credits in the space of half an hour if you haven\'t done it already in five minutes.

Ship hulls might as well be wet cardboard.

Power generators pull energy out of nothing.

Engines require no fuel.

A capital ship armed with guns and fighting its twin can most likely shred its shields in seconds, if not a second.

Hull and armor plating for capital ships is exactly the same as it is for fighters.

Missiles are slower than Chicago traffic on a bad day.

Ships are slower than a beat-up Ford with a flat tire.

Ships are universally faster than missiles.

Weapons fire in general is comparable in velocity to the ships firing them.

Smaller weapons are slow-firing.

Larger weapons are fast-firing.

etc. etc.



Point is, the game is critically unbalanced and entirely lacking in common sense in nearly all areas. I hate to jump on the bandwagon here, but there\'s a reason for that.



It\'s Alpha.

 

[Kaamio]

Gigantism started it, the shield change patch made giant ships mortal again but many issues still remain. This thread has been a lot about general combat balance which is always relevant.



Combat balance is not about making two ships equally matched in a random encounter, it\'s not about giving you a fighting chance if you\'re not well suited to the fight ahead. It is about making sure there isn\'t a best ship. It\'s about creating a system that will yield different ships that have different strengths, and combination of ships will be the \"best fleet\". And that best fleet can be easily destroyed in combat if the enemy has an idea what it\'s going against.



Combat balance is about counters and variables and real options. Current system has lots to work on until we can have a balance, and this thread has multiple suggestions to that effect, maybe we will eventually have a reasonable semblance of balance around, maybe not but I have faith that Schema has some plans brewing. True balance is unlikely to be seen, because of the freeform building nature of the game, but it\'s not really necessary either.



I\'d like to see more capacity based system overall, bigger shields since combat regen is off and general regen is low, as well as acceleration nerfs for large ships (maybe 500 mass and up) and turning buffs for medium-large ones (100-2000) and turning nerfs from that size up. Economy, unfinished as it is, is neither the cause nor cure for these issues, it merely emphasizes the problem, of that I\'m pretty damn certain.



Haven\'t been that active lately since a lot of my friends stopped playing and a lot of the systems are \"broken\", but I have high hopes for this one... fun of playing is there, just lacking content and basekeeping convenience. Keep up the good work

I reckon that with some item management stuff, tweaking of manufacturing to make it logical (as in dealing with useless parts and mineral levels which have imaginary value since the level has no meaning) and plenty of more weapons and combat mechanic variables and this game will have doubled it\'s entertainment value. And I\'ve been entertained for about 50-80 hours so far I think.

 

[Morrigi]

+1 cookie for you. I agree completely.

 

[Riftmaster]

Someone suggested this before, but...

Mass-based acceleration/turning?

Sure, if you have a battlecruiser ship that is a giant engine, you can manuver it like a fighter, but then it has no weapons worth speaking of...



Currently, to my understanding, acceleration is based on some calculation involving the ship mass (x blocks) and the thrust available...

Can turning speed be based on a similar calculation?

 

[LunaMoonbringer]

To be completely honest, the only ways I currently see people not automatically wanting a massive superdeathmachineofhatefulawesome are:

a) Buffing Hull to the point where it is actually useful enough that it isn\'t a better idea to just use rock; also increasing shield prices to the point that they are a major luxury item. This would make it feasable for a carrier to launch a swarm of bombers armed with missiles to try to pound through the hull. This would also serve the purpose of making repair lasers actually useful, since hull isn\'t destroyed in 2 shots.

b) Making ship components so insanely expensive that only very large and powerful groups could afford to build a large warship, and even then, it would be something unique.

The second one would not provide the boon of fewer giant ships in each engagement, and more combat between fighters and frigates, but also cause a fleet to be more willing to think tactically. This is because in Starmade at the present, even if you lose your massive awesomeriffic ship of doom rainbows, you can just spawn in another incredibly easily, and with very little cost to oneself. However, if the price is so high that you would have to mortgage Apple to make a down payment, you would think twice about rushing in ahead of your support. You would also be more willing to explore tactics involving frigates and other small vessels.

 

[Nootau]

Did you add in the concept of people who focus on not only salvaging planets and stations at a time and building their components? Price is not a real hurdle. Some of the more bloodthirsty pilots will only forage a single combat vessel, something small at first and hunt. Hunt players at times but they focus pirates. Disabling the engines and then taking out the core, This will allow them to consume the enemy vessel with salvage beams or manually, thus collecting the valued units without ever working with credits directly.

 

[ProzackPH7]

The major problem that I seem to face and why it is a moot point to attempt being decent at any small ship fighting- is the fact that large ships are nearly as nimble and \"dog-fighty\" as small ships... The largest ships should be the fastest, consume the most energy and have the most defenses... But a small ship, a fighter or bomber, should be able to dodge, weave, barell roll and sabatoge large ships.

Large ships shouldnt be weak or have some weakness to a certain type of weapon. A fighter should be only powerful if the pilot is good enough and a massive ship should only be weak if the designer didnt do enough to cover all of the blind spots. Also, turrets/weapons should be further balanced in speed vs damage, a weapons that peppers a ship with lasers shouldnt do 1000 damage each shot and a low powered weapon should drain far less power, do far less damage and be incredibly speedy... this is for lasers and rockets.

A large ship should be able to move extremely fast but sluggish when turning, allowing for medium ships to strafe the larger ships but be torn to ribbons if they dont move fast enough.

With this all being said I do not think a turret should be able to blow a fighter out of the sky within 3 seconds of being spotted (the smaller a ship is, the less likely a turret should be able to hit it-however this isnt true, turrets are currently incredibly \'spot on\' accurate), I dont think a capital ship should be able to be a giant baseball bat and knock smal ships around like flies, and I dont think a fighter must SOMEHOW take down the shields of a massive ship to get into it (Shields should project further out the more massive a ship is so small crafts can squeeze between the shields to do direct damage to the hull) - This doesnt mean that bombers will be crazy over powered because as soon as a large capital ship realizes it is being attacked, it can easily just out run the bomber or undock protective AI ships to help defend it allowing for larger ships requiring some turret defense AND Fighter defense.



Ps. I am new to the forums, hello everyone.

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

What a bump!