Fighting Gigantism in Starmade

[MichaelSeph]

Yes, it\'s a fictional gameplay discussions, but at some ideas which are mentioned to be \"realistic\" or \"bring realism\" where that is totally false, makes me comment about the realism part. But that doesn\'t mean it\'s not a good idea to be implemented for the gameplay in Starmade :D

 

[Calbiri]

True Michael, I only meant that I\'m aware of the real, and that just because its not realistic shouldn\'t make it tabboo to suggest I wanta fun game to play, regardless of the realism, I\'m sure schema will find a balance, and these suggestions were merely to give him possible ideas. Don\'t hate me for it, I like big ships too

 

[Ferdi265]

I like the idea of balancing ship sizes. Recently, I started a topic about boosts, which should add the mobility smaller fighters need. Just imagine a bigger ship firing blockade busters at a small ship and the small ship barrel rolls to the side, dodging the missile while still being able to fire at the big ship. Right now, starmade is getting crushed by big motherships killing small fighters in one shot.
If this goes on like that, imagine what we will never see: groups of small arwing like ships, shooting at a big mothership, eventually destroying it - If they manage to dodge long enough.
If these ships have enough mobility they can overcome the damage gap between small and large ships. Now, this game is in alpha. We can still change it. Now\'s the time to promote the small agile fighters. Imagine a big fight: 2 Motherships 6 middle-sized fighters and around 12 small trickships. Imagine the role they would play; their collective damage output, the teamwork required to accurrately target one point of a ship as a team and slowly burn your way to the core.
that is, what I wish to see in starmade. The teamwork and the roleplay required for a successful fight. the strengths and weaknesses of the different shipclasses. The tactic and communication required in a fight.
This is what I hope to see in starmade.

 

[Nameless]

Now *THAT* is something I could live with!

Incidently enough all the ships I\'ve been building localside work best in tandem with other ships (they\'re all very small) and I\'ve yet to figure out how even go about building a so called \"godship\".
Going with my whole server admin idea; I think it be at least feasible (though I could why it couldn\'t/shouldn\'t be implemented) if the admin(s) had the power to designate ship limits. Lets say Player X decides to build a ship that has a mass of 10 and the server he\'s on has a limit of 5; once he\'s built up to the 5 mass he won\'t be able to build anymore or some other viable option (maybe a massive mob spawn to whittle him down to size??)

 

[Ferdi265]

I just read the topic again and found out, that motherships just have WAY too much shield/power for a small ship to even damage. A small ship firing at a mothership wouldn\'t do anything.
if to just counter the shield regen of a ship of big enough size, you need 600 small ships (that have 3 times the damage output than mine) then we seriously have to balance this. The shield/power and damage scales way too much in big ships. But even if this gets scaled down, people will just stick tons of turrets on their ships, that will shoot at you no matter where you are, with no chance of dodging.

 

[MindSpark]

So true. But the AI is rather buggy and might shoot other turrets by accident

 

[Ferdi265]

We could counter the problem with a weapon that does more damage to more massive objects.
But, man.. This is a serious problem. I\'ll quit for today. Too much Mindf*** about balancing. Schema, I wish you power for balancing this. This may be the number one thing to do after soft borders.

 

[Calbiri]

Ironic that you see the validity of the problems I\'m trying to address upon encountering my very own capital ship (which I\'ll reiterate, the Hangman is a -Small- capital ship). . I\'m sure schema will balance things somehow, maybe these posts will give him ideas for better solutions.

 

[MrFURB]

Heck, the only thing we need to do here if we want a quick-fix is limit the mobility of capital vessels and give an option for directly countering or even bypassing shields that isn\'t overpowered. Turning the slow-moving, hard to aim and rarely ever used dumbfire missile into an EMP bomb or just make it bypass shielding completely would be a good counter that caould easily be employed by smaller targets against larger ones because they can get close enough to actually hit something with them, as opposed to the slow, lumbering giants.

 

[Calbiri]

This is sort of what the OP was suggesting... :D glad you agree

 

[Ferdi265]

This is a good idea.

 

[Friction]

Are we fighitng scale or mass?
I was thinking of something something like a increasing scale of returns for power requirements?
using an example of shields since its what i ahve been working with most recently, having power demand increase by somethign like [total shield blocks] * (1 + [increase])
so for 100 shield blocks with an increase of 0.1, the power required for this would be what it would currenrtly take to power 110 shield modules.
However, that would only result in more spacebeing used for power for the shield modules, and now the ships are even bigger (woops)

 

[Calbiri]

mass, since it is the acutal block count that is tying up resources to calculate their movement, location and collisions
Scale, since larger objects have a higher chance of loading conflicts with other objects
so both i guess

 

[palarious]

It seems to me that the real issue here is shields.



I would suggest decreasing power requirements for shields on less massive objects and increasing power requirements for more massive objects.



That seems to run more in parrallel with the real world and wouldn\'t nerf the big ships. It\'s also less complex than all the solutions presented.

You have to understand that big ships take a lot of resources. Right now, it\'s easy to glitch the system and build them. Later, players won\'t have that option. It\'ll take a lot of effort to get those ships. They should be powerful, and the lack of gravity and air resistance in space mean that many of the characteristics we associate with large objects on Earth simply don\'t apply.

 

[palarious]

Also, the core is too easily targeted. the radar signature should show up at the center of the mass, not on the core.

Totally second the idea of smaller ammo-based weaponry having faster reloads with smaller radius of damage.

 

[The Last Baron]

Right now, throwing a shield block onto a ship with 100,000 blocks will add the same shield HP as putting that same shield block onto a ship with 100 blocks.
Somehow, these shield modules are able to increase the size of their protective field to an unlimited degree without using more power or losing potency.
This doesn\'t really seem to make much sense to me, and in a way has made SM not all that fun, having a capital ship with unlimited shields (when faced by smaller ships). I understand that capital ships are supposed to be extremely large and powerful, but with current mechanics and balancing they just make smaller ships obsolete, at least in terms of utility. If you are going to fight with any other player, bigger is simply better.
And I know that a common response is \'content before balancing\' in regards to how shields and lasers work out, but to be honest I\'ve stopped playing completely because of this. New content does sound great, but Schema has added a tremendous amount of content into this game over the past several months I\'ve been playing. What I want more than new content and mechanics on a game that constantly crashes servers and lags if any player tries to dock his capital ship is a game that\'s a bit more stable so we can enjoy the content that\'s already in here.
Playing SP is all good and well, but I like to play on a multiplayer server and work towards something with other people. And right now that\'s simply not an option.

 

[MrFURB]

I think that having the calculated center of mass as the designated \'center\' of the vessel, for both turning and radar/heat signature reasons would make good ship design much more important. People would have to guess where your core is located (Or sneak a peak at your blueprints to get an upper hand) instead of gun straight towards it right off the bat.
Just more suggestions, because more suggestions are ALWAYS needed.

 

[The Last Baron]

I think that when the amount of currency and building resources pilots have access to is drastically lowered, we\'ll be forced to build smaller ships. That in itself is a great way to limit construction projects to realistic. With access to the catalogue and unlimited funds from killing 1-2 NPC pirate ships, we\'ve been able to build monstrosities without any effort at all.
And I know that I\'m guilty of it, I\'ve saved ship designs that are just 10,000 shield blocks, 10,000 energy generators, etc. simply to buy and harvest. This propelled the design of my capital ship to a huge level, and there have been a few instances where I\'ve lagged out the server by running into a planet or another capital ship.
By adding a cap to the amount of funds each shop has for purchasing items from players, drastically lowering the loot dropped by NPCs or altering it to only include cheap items (loot tables!) we would see a natural decrease in ship size.

 

[MrFURB]

Okay, so we got down a lot of ideas about how to balance size-differences combat wise and statistically, but how about logistically? With capital ships costing in the range of 10,000,000-1,000,000,000 credits, why are there so many being made?
Because inflati- Hah, nope, because the economies aren\'t stable yet. The sooner we see stable server economies, we\'ll see the size and cost of vessles pull back dramatically and people will be much more careful with their vessels. It will also inheritly fix the lack of meaningful gains from mining/manufacturing, effectively fixing many, many apects of the game that are either slightly or waaaay imbalanced.
The economy can be fixed by limiting pirate loot to not include valuables such as level 4-5 ores and faction blocks, and by removing the option to buy and sell negative amounts of items to a store.

 

[Calbiri]

i posted 2 new links on the original post