Fighting Gigantism in Starmade

[Calbiri]

****BIG CLARIFICATION!!
When below I mention power scaling vs reload, what I mean is weapon power (damage per shot) vs reload time, I in NO way suggest that the ships power be tied in with weapon reload speed, if anything, ship power needs a boost (this would also reduce needed ship size)**** (edited 4/6/13)


While talking with MrFurb today, and after witnessing the potential imbalances we started to brainstorm here is a list of we hope simple and easy changes to drastically reduce the need to make larger ships, as well as provide more balance to combat.

• 
  Ships under 5 mass are too small to show a radar signature (permanent radar jam, without a Jammer)
• 
  Mass of weapon inversely reduces % of gains from addition weapon blocks on that grouping (each addition weapon block provides slightly less power to the weapon group)
• 
  *Weapon* power vs weapon reload speed should be on a set percentage scale with each other (more *weapon* power=less reload, and vice versa)
• 
  The larger the total ship mass is the slower the base firing rate of cannons becomes
• 
  Missiles can be destroyed by heat seekers and cannon fire, they still damage the area they are destroyed at
• 
  D1000 missiles should be converted to EMP (power draining) dumbfire missiles, these will drain a certain amount of power from the target ships energy pool (even through their sheilds) -This is a good counter against building slow large combat ships
  
  
  If this isnt viable, when shields are hit they will stop recharging for 1 second, this would allow for groups of smaller ships to conceivably defeat a large frigate or a capital ship

[*]
When a ships Power Load is reduced to zero, the ships power will go offline for 10 seconds before resuming its recharge rate (similar to the shields 10 second offline funtion)
[*]
The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel
[*]
Weapon sounds get bigger as a weapon group aquires more blocks (big gun=big boom)
[*]
Ship Core Explosions get larger with a more massive ships
[*]
A complete conversion of the current power block grouping and its box dimension system to

• 
  
  Reactor Core-The Central Unit of any ships Reactor, simply attach a length of Reactor Enhancers to each face to increase its performance
  
  
  To start, each Reactor core can have 6 enhances connected to it at 1 per each face. Each of these faces draws additional power from the enhancers linked to it.

[*]
Reactor Core Enhancers-A complicated miniaturization of the standard power block

• 
  
  A set of enhancers 5 blocks long adds +5 to the box dimension extending from that face of the Reactor Core (5 blocks linked to the Z face adds 5 to the Z of the "box dimension" equation)
• 
  Enhancers extension can be build in any length, manner or direction, as long as it starts from a X face it adds to the X dimensions "box dimension"
• 
  Each Enhancer blocks can only touch 2 other enhancer blocks or (A Reactor Core may also be used as one of the alloted 2 touching faces allowed) this forces a player to "chain" out a series of enhancers from each side of the core without merging them
• 
  This would allow for more complex power supply designs without forcing players to expand into the XYZ dimensions to the extent that they are now
• 
  Schema, i can do a detailed in game example of how this would work, using some colored blocks i can easily show the idea to you

Some addition ideas to be considered
http://starmade.org/content/making-ships-so-much-cooler

 

[RPGprayer]

Ships under 5 mass are too small to show a radar signature (permanent radar jam, without a Jammer)
Sounds like a good idea, would promote smaller fighters.

Mass of weapon inversely reduces % of gains from addition weapon blocks on that grouping (each addition weapon block provides slightly less power to the weapon group)
Agreed, there needs to be a gains capacity limit, but not a maximum power limit on the weapons. It should still be up to you if you want to sacrifice mass vs firepower.

Power and Reload speed should be on a set percentage scale with each other (more power=less reload, and vice versa)
This will likely be addressed when schema revamps the power and adds a distribution node/system.

The larger the total ship mass is the slower the base firing rate of cannons becomes
Right now, I agree. I think even the larger ships needs a viable alternative to take down fighters in the future, though.

Missiles can be destroyed by heat seekers and cannon fire, they still damage the area they are destroyed at
Agreed, there needs to be some kind of point defense against missiles in the future. Maybe a percentage chance when it\'s destroyed that it will explode.

D1000 missiles should be converted to EMP (power draining) dumbfire missiles, these will drain a certain amount of power from the target ships energy pool (even through their sheilds) -This is a good counter against building slow large combat ships
Not so sure about this, will have to see what schema is planning on weapons...

When a ships Power Load is reduced to zero, the ships power will go offline for 10 seconds before resuming its recharge rate (similar to the shields 10 second offline funtion)
This could work, I haven\'t that much experience in ship combat yet to make an educated guess.

The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel
I think it\'s fine the way it is, you still need a LOT of thrusters for a big ship, and that drains a lot of power. I think mass vs agility needs to be looked at a bit, though.

Weapon sounds get bigger as a weapon group aquires more blocks (big gun=big boom)
Definately. The question is where the different \"tiers\" will be... >5 blocks = small cannon, >10 blocks = medium cannon, or > 10 blocks = small cannon, etc.? A balance question, I suppose...

Ship Core Explosions get larger with a more massive ships
Agreed.

Power core stuff
Maybe there needs to be some kind of core, like you are saying, but some kind of drawback or placement rules for each core, maybe different sizes of cores for differently sized ships? The problem right now is that it is too easy to just build massive amounts of power with just stacking power cores...

 

[Timebom]

my mumblings..
The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel
no, ever pace a real Carrier? We tried. We had crap falling off the bulkheads due to us being maxed out while the carrier was at 1/4 power, then she just pulled away to launch bombers. I could see small craft getting short boosts of highspeeds, but the big ship can just really haul.
When a ships Power Load is reduced to zero, the ships power will go offline for 10 seconds before resuming its recharge rate (similar to the shields 10 second offline funtion)
yes, my ship (in real life) used to drop power when something broke. drift ahoy.
D1000 missiles should be converted to EMP (power draining) dumbfire missiles, these will drain a certain amount of power from the target ships energy pool (even through their sheilds) -This is a good counter against building slow large combat ships
I like the D1000, I wouldnt mind seeing the addition of EMP torpedos though. something small missile boats could run to cripple large craft.
Ships under 5 mass are too small to show a radar signature (permanent radar jam, without a Jammer)
Sounds like a good idea, would promote smaller fighters.
Love this. been playing with micro designs all evening. its great! I would also suggest making them harder to see untill they get close.

 

[MichaelSeph]

Ships under 5 mass, which means 50 blocks, can already rip through small capital ships, at least with how the guns work now.
Having many people running around in those, undetectable ships, ships that you can\'t select to fire at, is a quite problematic view.


\"\"The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel\"\"
No worries, when the Warp Drive will be instated in Capital Ships, they won\'t move at all. Smaller ships will be able to move, and counting real life and movie examples, big ships have more speed than small fighters, just that the big ships can\'t turn, or are big, it doesn\'t mean they don\'t have the bigger engines that actually makes the \"Carriers\" have a reason for existing. Small fighters can\'t handle high speeds, big ships can. And Very big ships are ment to be more like stations, with warp drives, that objects which actually move...

 

[MrFURB]

The reason I think that more mass should mean less top speed is because larger vessels have the nearly infinite power and space to fit thrusters that can give it a 5/1 or even 10/1 thrust to mass ratio easily. This means that you don\'t have to worry about getting flanked at all because you can simply reverse straight to 50 KPH or whatever the top speed is and knock the other craft out of your way, making it extremely hard for even agile vessels to use their maneuverability.
While it may not make sense realistically, it makes sense game-play wise. Not giving the smaller vessels the advantage of speed makes them a bit gimped in the long run. I mean, once turrets work and you don\'t have to face a target to attack them, why even use small vessels when you could just broadside them with huge turrets?

To respond to your reasoning, Mechaelseph, because of how the power and damage system scales off of space and mass, lighter craft have no chance of dealing damage to a larger vessel in the traditional sense of damage. My Gnat is a good representation of a general purpose fighter/bomber at 50 mass (500 blocks) and it\'s main cannon only has a DPS of 1,000. It would take more than 66 of them to defeat Calbiri\'s capitol-ship the Hangman with sustained firepower. How a single or a few 50 block vessels can damage a behemoth\'s shielding I have no clue. Tell me how, if I\'m missing something.
I don\'t agree with not giving capitol ships the ability to move normally. Yes, the warp will be awesome, but it would suck if your lumbering giant of a faction flagship can\'t make basic combat or docking maneuvers.

 

[Calbiri]

it would take 666 of them.... Hangmans stable recharge is 666k
Realism isnt my concern, viable gameplay and performance is, all of these are suggestions to improve those, they may not all be incorporated, and some may have their numbers changed (say, 3 mass not 5?) but they are not game breakers, and are Much preferable to some alternate solutions ive had mentioned to me... I\'m trying to preserve your big ships, just make them not the end solution for everyone.

 

[Calbiri]

To your carrier point, no i havent paced a carrier, but this is a game in which anyone can buy or build a massive ship, a simple counterbalance to that is to add a plausible detriment, the bigger it gets, the lower potential speed.
As for your small fighters being less visible. i suggest a cloak or black (camo) hull plating (although even black hull is rather visible... for now)
Thanks for your feedback! All ideas and everyones arguements to them, will help make this game better.

 

[Calbiri]

Although my Core/Enhancers for the reactor wouldnt remove the trend of powerfull power systems in ships, it would remove the neccesity for the ship designer to need to make a power system that statically sticks out in each direction to expand the \"Box Dimension\"
In short, still powerfull power systems, but now they can be made in more flexible shapes than just giant 3d cross sections. if schema decides to make them less efficient per block than they are now, thats fine, i simply want to be encouraged to build a more complicated power reactor, rather than just building it bigger

 

[Calbiri]

Thanks for your feedback! All ideas and everyones arguements to them, will help make this game better.
However you assume that i suscribe to your veiwpoint and opinion on how the game should function, apparently i dont.
The ship size radar is a mere suggestion, and an arbitrary number, it can be changed, but i fail to see how you can argue for reality in 1 paragraph (the carrier speed topic) and argue against reality in this topic (small ship size/no radar sig)
The Capital ships are still a Maybe on getting warp, let alone having their standard movement removed, so the size/speed suggestion we\'ve made still has merit

 

[MichaelSeph]

\"and argue against reality in this topic (small ship size/no radar sig)\"

That is incorrect, even a minor projectile/missile is seen in radars, depending on how strong the radar is, it can even scan metal junk at large distances, for example to avoid them.
I never seen any scanner nor radar which only sees huge things and misses small things, it\'s like saying a printer won\'t see that you added an extra point in the text on the paper it\'s scanning.
The only thing radars can\'t see is if something is blocking their straight line of detection, like the mountains and trees, which cause the known \"under the radar\" area where radars can\'t see, but they see anything that is bigger than a pixel on the radar\'s screen.

No matter the examples you take, from an underwater sonar that can (and have to) detect torps up to xray space telescopes and similar toys like Hubble. The more detailsit has, the more pixels it has, the smaller the pixels are, and can even see galaxies in the pure dark patches of the visible sky, that are only 1 pixel big. So yeah, I can\'t really see how fighters would be smaller than a pixel to be undetectable without the need of jammers.

 

[grimzod]

What small fighters lack is a way to damage a shielded ship of sufficient size / shield density:

• 
  we could otherwise solve this by allowing a player to manipulate a slider with one end being max penetration (some number of shield protection is simply ignored at the expense of damage done) and the other being max damage (max theoretical damage for the weapon size and shape with minimal penetration - brute forcing through the shield). This would be beneficial to both large and small ships.
• 
  avoids penalizing those who DO want to build big.

The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel:

• 
  good idea as long as MASS = mass plus mass of all docked systems and ships
• 
  makes a certain kind of sense and can possibly lead to a moderating of ship size vs uses.

The reactor idea might lead to a better game in that the numbe rof needed blocks for a massive ship will also be reduced leading to less lag when a large object is rendered. Less blocks less math.

 

[MrFURB]

One thing I want to put emphasis on is that each size of combat ship needs to have a role that they fill that larger and smaller ships cannot. Fighters need a way to disrupt or gimp larger vessels without having huge weapons. Medium sized ships need some sort of strength that comes from combining mobility with firepower, and huge vessels need to be able to use their massive weapons, shields, and armor without being too godlike.
Balancing it all is going to be painful, but if it\'s done it will be great. Imagine your friends calling for backup in a huge battle. You get a Steam message or Skype message saying \"Help, our allies are under attack!\"
You\'ve got two ships ready for combat, an agile stealth fighter and a huge battleship. Easy enough right? But now imagine you choose the stealth fighter. IMAGINE IT.
You are thinking to yourself, there\'s probably already a ton of huge battleships and battlecruisers. I can be more help in a tiny and easy to destroy metal can than in a huge hulking warship with a thousand shield blocks and a thousand AMC blocks. Why? Because you can do something that thoes huge capital ships cannot, because of your speed, your maneuverability, because you can get in close to the enemy where bigger vessels can\'t.
Once it is time, it will be our job to help the developers to create those advantages.

Here\'s some brainstorming for how I think the most fun and balanced system would be, just off the tip of my tongue...
Huge ships: Long range, can obliterate anything quickly unless it is too close for the turret tracking speed or turning rate to track it. Huge shielding/power supplies makes it immune to any but the largest conventional weapons.
Medium ships: Can retain some mobility along with increased firepower. The higher mobility allows it to have a better time tracking things faster, so fighter/bombers arent as much of a problem. Because they can carry respectfully large weapons, if they manage to close the distance with larger ships they can pound away at their shields quite well.
Small ships: Smaller ships are naturlly stealthy, fast, and agile. Because of that they can get nice and close to larger ships and hide in their \'blindspots\' where the pilots/turrets cannot see or fire. Fighters should have a way to severely disable a ship if it manages to stay close to it, giving them a major role in deciding fights between larger ships. Can turn fast enough to track and fight other fighters as well as shoot down missiles.

 

[MichaelSeph]

The only small objects that can damage big ships are bombers, not tiny fighters.

But now we are going on the topic of balancing guns, shields, mass and stats, for example if there\'s a possible \"small bomber\" model to actually touch medium sized ships (frigates and such), then it would need a number restriction because the bigger ships would also be able to use the bomber missiles, and in hundreds of blocks.

Balance seems to start being an important topic, but I would think there are still few technical topics that should be discussed before starting to see what ship can damage another type of ship.

 

[Calbiri]

Yes, but if the radar tagged all that sort of stuff you\'d have a crowded screen, now bear in mind that your computer will filter smaller junk objects, and your radar might not be the huge fragile x ray telescope... and lastly, if you wanna play reality devils advocate then throw in ping times on radar, as these sectors are interplanetary distances that even the radar takes hours to cross. But I think you\'ve made your point, you disagree with no radar sign, i you could have just left it at that...

 

[Calbiri]

I\'ll repeat that my original post was on gameplay mechanics, not actual balancing, and seeing as mechanics need to be coded, I posted these mere suggestions, that being said, please continue to post, but don\'t be a zealot about the balance thing, really not the point of the OP sorry

Thanks

 

[Zyrafyr]

• 
  Ships under 5 mass are too small to show a radar signature (permanent radar jam, without a Jammer)

This sounds cool to me. Would add realism and a major danger for big ships. The main weakness big ships have is fighter defense against lots of small ships, add the element of surprise and... crap. I think that if turret rotation speed was related to the mass of the turret and if the turrets mass was added to the mother ship that it would affect manuverability and players would have to design the turret accordingly. This would also increase the danger of small ships. (X3 Terran Conflict turrets behave somewhat the same way depending on the weapon size)

• 
  Mass of weapon inversely reduces % of gains from addition weapon blocks on that grouping (each addition weapon block provides slightly less power to the weapon group)

I think it should be an increase. We are talking about energy weapons here after all, most likely using magnets to focus and drive the energy forward. However with ammo based weapons yeah I agree. (more about ammo down the page)

• 
  Power and Reload speed should be on a set percentage scale with each other (more power=less reload, and vice versa)

Already implemented, you can adjust the damage/range/speed/reload in the weapons pannel. I like how it works for energy based weapons as is. For ammo based weapons... I don\'t know. Maybe something like how docking will work that dictates the dimentions of the green box. (the docking isnt implemented this way yet but it will be)

• 
  The larger the total ship mass is the slower the base firing rate of cannons becomes

Should be dependant on the weapon I think, since not all weapons are implemented we may have to wait and see, then come to a conclusion on a case by case testing. Besides I don\'t see how the size of the ship has anything to do with the weapon, but the mass of the weapon would affect it kinda like it already does.

• 
  Missiles can be destroyed by heat seekers and cannon fire, they still damage the area they are destroyed at

Makes sense to me, missiles can be tough suckers to shoot down especialy in a large ship, good luck dodging.,,

• 
  D1000 missiles should be converted to EMP (power draining) dumbfire missiles, these will drain a certain amount of power from the target ships energy pool (even through their sheilds) -This is a good counter against building slow large combat ships

Well scince EMP weaponry will be implemented anyway I don\'t see why we need to get rid of dumbfire missiles. I support redesigning how they function though, maybe give then greater AOE and a proximity sensor. The ammo for them may also be cheaper and take up less space? Also I should mention that missiles are a good way to carve out large chunks of a big ship; I think total damage of a ship and its blocks health needs to be taken into consideration but I can\'t think of a good way to do that unless the core can be hidden instead of have a target on it. If the core Icon can be moved to the center of the ship instead of the core it would make combat more interesting instead of just aiming at the Icon and destroying the core. Missiles would have greater use in that case.

• 
  When a ships Power Load is reduced to zero, the ships power will go offline for 10 seconds before resuming its recharge rate (similar to the shields 10 second offline funtion)

I don\'t like this, power output is constant, why would it stop all together? If maybe the lower the charge the lower the output. If anyone here know anything about capacitors you know what I am talking about. There is a curve in the relation of a constant power charging a capacitor. 9v on a depleated cap will have less voltage on the leads across the cap as its charging, it will then rise as the cap is getting more charged. I used to know the terminology from collage but forgot it all, lol.

• 
  The larger the ship mass becomes, the lower the percentage of the servers max speed a ship can travel

I don\'t think this is nessisary, besides people should get rewarded for sacraficing shields and power for thruster space. As it is now, if you don\'t have enough thrust you may not be able to reach the max speed anyway.

• 
  Weapon sounds get bigger as a weapon group aquires more blocks (big gun=big boom)

Yes please!

• 
  Ship Core Explosions get larger with a more massive ships

Yes please! Also make it dangerous to get near a large ship as it blows or get caught in the pop. Makes sense to me.

• 
  A complete conversion of the current power block grouping and its box dimension system to
  
  
  Reactor Core-The Central Unit of any ships Reactor, simply attach a length of Reactor Enhancers to each face to increase its performance
  
  
  To start, each Reactor core can have 6 enhances connected to it at 1 per each face. Each of these faces draws additional power from the enhancers linked to it.

Well I like how power functions as is, its quite complex and I think it rewards players for designing ships instead of just clumping things together.

• 
  
  
  Reactor Core Enhancers-A complicated miniaturization of the standard power block
  
  
  A set of enhancers 5 blocks long adds +5 to the box dimension extending from that face of the Reactor Core (5 blocks linked to the Z face adds 5 to the Z of the \"box dimension\" equation)
• 
  Enhancers extension can be build in any length, manner or direction, as long as it starts from a X face it adds to the X dimensions \"box dimension\"
• 
  Each Enhancer blocks can only touch 2 other enhancer blocks or (A Reactor Core may also be used as one of the alloted 2 touching faces allowed) this forces a player to \"chain\" out a series of enhancers from each side of the core without merging them
• 
  This would allow for more complex power supply designs without forcing players to expand into the XYZ dimensions to the extent that they are now
• 
  Schema, i can do a detailed in game example of how this would work, using some colored blocks i can easily show the idea to you

Eh, kinda feels like your over thing this, but I am open to see how this idea works. I normaly can understand complex written instructions but this I am going to need to see visually.. Maybe you could do a fraps using current blocks as place holders? Or maybe pics as visual aid?

 

[Calbiri]

As of this post, none of these ideas from the OP have been implemented, if you think they are, then i seem to have failed in explaining that suggestion properly, sorry

 

[Nameless]

Good to hear that; personally I hope most if not all of these suggestions are not implemented. I for one think that to impose some kind of build paradigm in a sandbox-type game is just plain wrong.
I for one think that it should be up to the server admin(s) decision on what would be considered an acceptable build limit and not something implemented in-game.
Does that even make sense? I hope so.

 

[MichaelSeph]

\"Ships under 5 mass are too small to show a radar signature (permanent radar jam, without a Jammer)
This sounds cool to me. Would add realism and a major danger for big ships.
\"
Danger, yes. But I don\'t really see in what kind of reality small fighters are too small to show a radar signature, counting that even the normal airport radars which are not military technology, can detect small missiles but not fighters with weapons, engines, engine heat, electric signature and wings ?
If an object is big enough to occupy 1 single pixel on the screen, it is detected. In the past there were issues with airport radars having birds flying arround, beacause even those birds were detected, especially when they went in wing shapes (the traveller ones), but now the signal is automatically filtered, informatically (like an in built PC ), and that\'s not an issue anymore. Birds are still kicked away from airports though, since groups of birds flying around + plane = crash (possible), if several birds get abducted into the engine cooling. Such things happened in the past.

What would be realistic is having cloaked hull, like in real life, materials in certain shapes that never bounce back the radar waves and so it\'s permanently undetectable. But it should still be detectable by Heat seeker missiles ^^

 

[Calbiri]

I\'ve not suggested any build limit, that being said there are valid reasons for not having everyone building Just giant ships. You still can, but these suggestions allow for other viable ship sizes, without hard constraints or limits, you can still easily build Powerful capital ships, they simply aren\'t untouchable godships. If these suggestions seem going in the wrong direction, then Please, provide counter suggestions, instead of simply saying \"I think your ideas are wrong\" and don\'t use the reality arguement please, I\'m well aware of how reality works, and this is a fictional gameplay mechanics discussion.