Fireside Chat with Nuclear Doughnut, Smoke, and Comr4de (SATURDAYS AT 9PM GMT-7)

[Comr4de]

We're gonna get started soon; we'll be moving straight to game balance.

 

[Comr4de]

And cut! Thanks for everyone who participated!

Special thanks to gravypod, Joelbrisco, Leanson, Nuclear Doughnut, and Smoke for speaking and providing their insight. Audio will go up on youtube within the hour. By tomorrow night

In the future, we'll be moving the time ahead one hour. This should allow more people to participate.

 

[Master_Artificer]

It was a very good discussion.

 

[Joelbrisco]

Nothing like doing a pod cast when I feel like crap.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Nothing like doing a pod cast when I feel like crap.

Holy Shit first post yolo hashtag swag four twenty blaze it.
*Airhorns*

 

[Joelbrisco]

Holy Shit first post yolo hashtag swag four twenty blaze it.
*Airhorns*

It was suggested I partake in the community a little so why not?

 

[Master_Artificer]

Around 11 minutes their is a good idea, fast forward to that part.

 

[Comr4de]

Due to issues with youtube, I'm just go ahead and release the MP3 from the talk. Runtime is approx. 2 hours. Enjoy!

Episode 1

 

[Master_Artificer]

That was pretty much the best intro ever. Audio sounds really good.

 

[Winterhome]

Listening to the conversation right now - a lot of things like "unplayable" and "lag" are getting thrown around. This isn't really so much of an issue with the game itself at the moment as it is an issue with the current combat meta (bigger is better).

People are so afraid of losing materials that they build bigger ships to avoid dying, prompting other people to do the same, and so on and so forth. You end up with the "average" ship size being in the hundreds of thousands of units of mass and upwards of that.

Combat is pretty efficient on smaller size ships (up to the 50k mass region or so). People just don't have any reason why they would want to use anything small unless it's an agreed upon battle with set mass limits.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Listening to the conversation right now - a lot of things like "unplayable" and "lag" are getting thrown around. This isn't really so much of an issue with the game itself at the moment as it is an issue with the current combat meta (bigger is better).

People are so afraid of losing materials that they build bigger ships to avoid dying, prompting other people to do the same, and so on and so forth. You end up with the "average" ship size being in the hundreds of thousands of units of mass and upwards of that.

Combat is pretty efficient on smaller size ships (up to the 50k mass region or so). People just don't have any reason why they would want to use anything small unless it's an agreed upon battle with set mass limits.

You should join our fireside chat, sounds like you know what your talking about.

 

[Winterhome]

You should join our fireside chat, sounds like you know what your talking about.

Will do that next week, assuming I remember to. Thanks for the idea.

 

[Joelbrisco]

Listening to the conversation right now - a lot of things like "unplayable" and "lag" are getting thrown around. This isn't really so much of an issue with the game itself at the moment as it is an issue with the current combat meta (bigger is better).

People are so afraid of losing materials that they build bigger ships to avoid dying, prompting other people to do the same, and so on and so forth. You end up with the "average" ship size being in the hundreds of thousands of units of mass and upwards of that.

Combat is pretty efficient on smaller size ships (up to the 50k mass region or so). People just don't have any reason why they would want to use anything small unless it's an agreed upon battle with set mass limits.

But they are still factors within the game that people need to deal with. Because of the creative freedom StarMade provides people are always going to try and break the limits and find out new things. The fact most people are a afraid to lose a ship I would agree to that as if they made it or got it from the forums it takes time and dedication to get it made/spawn in. That is effort people don't want to lose. But the issue is if you're gonna PvP or play on a PvP server be prepared to lose a lot of ships and that is a fact people are going to have to face like I do when I attack people. I'm always willing to lose the ship when I do a raid and accept it when I do.

 

[Winterhome]

But they are still factors within the game that people need to deal with. Because of the creative freedom StarMade provides people are always going to try and break the limits and find out new things. The fact most people are a afraid to lose a ship I would agree to that as if they made it or got it from the forums it takes time and dedication to get it made/spawn in. That is effort people don't want to lose. But the issue is if you're gonna PvP or play on a PvP server be prepared to lose a lot of ships and that is a fact people are going to have to face like I do when I attack people. I'm always willing to lose the ship when I do a raid and accept it when I do.

Well, naturally it'll always be a factor. Boundaries exist to be pushed. But in the current state of the game, casual gameplay suffers dramatically because of the economy and combat meta, and servers choke on large objects doing big things. Do people need to stop using big ships? Hell no - it's fun to fly them and fun to attack them. But there's gotta be a reason for people to do things that don't mangle the server or the fun factor for others.

 

[Leanson]

Well, naturally it'll always be a factor. Boundaries exist to be pushed. But in the current state of the game, casual gameplay suffers dramatically because of the economy and combat meta, and servers choke on large objects doing big things. Do people need to stop using big ships? Hell no - it's fun to fly them and fun to attack them. But there's gotta be a reason for people to do things that don't mangle the server or the fun factor for others.

I think I mentioned fun being a factor to do things and it's role in how players play the game. For alot of people fun is obtained differently. Now with the current combat system for larger ships. It always favors the larger ship. Now a good example that I mentioned was from the depths. Which a large ship on that game, can be taken down by a much smaller ship.
The economy is a large hindrance with combat too.

 

[Winterhome]

I think I mentioned fun being a factor to do things and it's role in how players play the game. For alot of people fun is obtained differently. Now with the current combat system for larger ships. It always favors the larger ship. Now a good example that I mentioned was from the depths. Which a large ship on that game, can be taken down by a much smaller ship.
The economy is a large hindrance with combat too.

The economy favors using smaller ships that your mining can support easily. It's functional, but it could use a lot of work to make it truly useful on the scales people build at nowadays.

I agree that larger ships need to be possible to take down with smaller ones (and they are, just not by anything under 1/8th the mass), of course. It'd give people good reasons to fly small ships vs. large ships.

One of the things I was thinking about that would improve the combat meta is having an exponential curve on weapons power usage based on total weapon size, leading to large ships needing more and more power reactors relative to the size of their guns, or being able to efficiently opt for smaller guns and swapping the remaining space for shielding and such. I feel that large ships should still take a long time to take down regardless of what you're using - but they should also take a long time to take eachother down, too, due to power management issues.

 

[Leanson]

I think it should be a exponential curve base on weapon size and ship mass. The bigger the ship, the larger the damage will be, and power requirements, and reload time. Meaning a large ship will perform different than smaller ones. Weapons them self will start at a level for them to cause decent damage to shields at a basic 150 block set up. That can be the base. Anything more power cost increases, reload time increases, and damage increases, and with larger ships being able to support larger weapons. If we do this that means a large ship will most likely have hundreds of 150 block weapons. Many higher block count weapons. And one potential super weapon. That cost alot to fire. This I think will help with ship to ship battles not last all of 3 seconds.

 

[Nuclear Doughnut]

I like that idea. especially with the generation of power being linear.

For next week I hope to get a significant portion of the council members to join us for our next chat. We already have 1 other than Com4de (who's name will remain anonymous until that night) who will be joining us.

 

[Leanson]

Do we j

I like that idea. especially with the generation of power being linear.

For next week I hope to get a significant portion of the council members to join us for our next chat. We already have 1 other than Com4de (who's name will remain anonymous until that night) who will be joining us.

Do we have a set time. and date, let me know so I can be there again.

 

[Joelbrisco]

I think it should be a exponential curve base on weapon size and ship mass. The bigger the ship, the larger the damage will be, and power requirements, and reload time. Meaning a large ship will perform different than smaller ones. Weapons them self will start at a level for them to cause decent damage to shields at a basic 150 block set up. That can be the base. Anything more power cost increases, reload time increases, and damage increases, and with larger ships being able to support larger weapons. If we do this that means a large ship will most likely have hundreds of 150 block weapons. Many higher block count weapons. And one potential super weapon. That cost alot to fire. This I think will help with ship to ship battles not last all of 3 seconds.

I think this goes into my suggestion on missiles/beams/cannons being larger in size as the weapons go up in size. They move slower and take more time to be used. But also they do a much larger damage area and when they are coming you can see it clearly and when it does hit you see it clearly.

As for date of the podcasts 9pm gmt on saturday