Gigantism

[Kenshkrix]

One of the more significant questions (to me) regarding fuel is how renewable should it be?
As far as its uses go, I'd rather not lock anything away with fuel, I'd prefer if it was simply a denser/more scalable type of energy, or used to boost different systems (slaving a fuel tank/reactor to something to have it run off fuel instead of power, or in addition to power with some kind of buff).

With the current power reactors you hit diminishing returns, fuel would allow you to move past this limitation, or potentially far past it if your ship guzzles fuel like a monster.
Essentially being easily scaled up and acting like one use super-capacitors, actual power would be inversely proportional to the operating time, and presumably based on the ratio of fuel tanks to reactors, having one fuel tank and 50,000 reactors might give you 2 million power for a tenth of a second, whereas having 1000 fuel tanks and 50,000 reactors might give you 2 million power for 100 seconds.
Arbitrary values of course, I don't even know how much power a line of 50,000 regular reactors makes, just an example.

The other suggestion is to simply make fuel necessary for jump drives, I'd suggest instead giving it a boost in some way.
IE, without fuel it costs you regular power/second but with fuel it costs barely anything, or have it be a speed boost, where burning fuel dramatically improves charge speed. If this was done I'd argue nerfing the relevant mechanic(s) as they currently stand, making jump drives generally worse overall, but much better if you're using fuel for them.

Another potential change would be to make fuel boost the 'range' of a jump drive, newbies could still get around systems at a decent speed, but a fuel infrastructure speeds up actually getting around the galaxy in a decent timeframe.

How one finds, makes, and refines fuel isn't something I'm particularly interested in, but whether or not a completely renewable source can exist is fairly important to me (Even if it involves making a solar extractor or something crazy difficult like that).

 

[Mered4]

The new HP system has changed the way combat works, but I actually see the new HP system as something that makes Titans even stronger in the current balance. They're actually fairly enjoyable compared to other ships because you won't lose your shields too often - which means less damage to repair.

IMHO, this system won't really work well until we get the repair system promised with the shipyards update.
Please, do it quickly

 

[Lecic]

The new HP system has changed the way combat works, but I actually see the new HP system as something that makes Titans even stronger in the current balance. They're actually fairly enjoyable compared to other ships because you won't lose your shields too often - which means less damage to repair.

IMHO, this system won't really work well until we get the repair system promised with the shipyards update.
Please, do it quickly

Actually, when a ship is larger, it takes extra damage to its HP pool.

 

[Mered4]

Actually, when a ship is larger, it takes extra damage to its HP pool.

Yes. I tested this today and yesterday - and I can confirm that while it does matter (sort of), it's just some number that is trying to arbitrarily limit the power of larger ships instead of building game mechanics that balance out the power of the Titan. Like Fleet Control.

 

[Stakhanov]

The new HP system worsens gigantism. If you face a ship x% bigger than you , core drilling (after shields go down) would only take x% longer than a ship your size (assuming cubic ships , many people build theirs flat) but now that you have to destroy half of its modules , it'll take (x^3)% longer to kill it than a ship your size. Even after shields are down , a ship twice the mass takes twice longer to kill. Meaningful combat can only happen between even more similar ship types.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

The bigger a ship is the less blocks you have to remove proportionally. Pulse missiles are very effective, from any size really, so a dedicated bomber is viable for when the shields are down.

 

[Mered4]

The new HP system worsens gigantism. If you face a ship x% bigger than you , core drilling (after shields go down) would only take x% longer than a ship your size (assuming cubic ships , many people build theirs flat) but now that you have to destroy half of its modules , it'll take (x^3)% longer to kill it than a ship your size. Even after shields are down , a ship twice the mass takes twice longer to kill. Meaningful combat can only happen between even more similar ship types.

I would hope so for 1v1 situations. Big ships should stomp the smaller ones all the time in those sorts of fights. The big thing holding back the amazing powers of the drone is that the player can't directly or indirectly control the AI besides an on/off switch.

 

[Visitor]

Sorry for late answer. Last few days were busy with preparations for my little trip and tomorrow I disappear for another... period of time as the trip will be underway, family will be visited and so on.

If your little spy boat can see a ship 100 miles away, you can bet your destroyer or carrier can see it too.

Which doesn't mean it'll see it better, since it'll still be the same satellite uplink and single radar.

Keeping destroyers =/= replacing battleships with them.

To a degree, they were. Not on their own, but destroyers took part of their role, due to creation of SAM and SSM missiles in sixties allowing them to well overtake the role of support and even, at times, artillery.

You need to stop saying "wrong" when you're the one who's wrong and when you don't even know what you're talking about.

And to that I may answer that you need to stop saying I don't know what I am talking about when you're clearly wrong. I can also play on my nose, too and say you have cooties and then you may respond with above quote again till any local kindergarten teacher (moderator) will be forced to step in. Wonder how productive that will be and how mature of us to concentrate on such when there are other points to be addressed.

No military force is composed of exclusively big guns because you can't have enough big guns to be everywhere you need them to be, that's what destroyers are for.

But if efficiency per vessel beats that of their multiple smaller coutnerparts when it comes to big ships as you claim, then 'what destroyers are for' makes no sense as too often they're support and escort vessels for those big ships. What would be the point of them if simply another such vessel could be deployed instead (and there's always, unless it's last-ditch defense in a desperate war, some of those mothballed somewhere) being far efficient and effective in every case.

Care to provide sources on that because I did a quick look and no space rovers operate on nuclear reactors.

Even Curiosity rover worked on RTG, as per Lectic's link.

Huh, neat. Only two years though, guess size does open up some routes after all.

Funny jab at pushing one's claim at the price of ignoring facts or reading comprehension issue:

Hilariously, our space rovers have nuclear reactors. They cannot be comparable to the navy ships however, since both the reactors and the radioisotopoes powering them are prepared exactly to maintain rover's life for double/triple the expected mission time, no less or more.

If you'd actually do some study of it, before just jumping to conclusions, you'd know that radioisotope thermoelectric generators (type of nuclear generators the rover is using one of) were employed quite some time before. Voyager probes run on this thing and after 23 years after production (which is already longer than how nuclear reactor ships usually can go) the power generated by the radioisotope went down only by 16.6% and was and is still enough to keep the probes going. Of course, with time the very bits and pieces of the generator experience wear and the generated power gets lower, but the same problem is experienced by reactors of sea vessels - and according to calculations, those little (and thus - shouldn't it be 'very inefficient in comparison to nuclear warships?' probes will keep on trucking despite diminishing power generation till 2025.

That said, you're still ignoring the point by trying to nitpick things. So I'll stick to the point, just because a ship is bigger doesn't mean it's less efficient, and to force such a gamey mechanic would be entirely uncalled for and stupid.

Man half your post is you going on about how you missed the point entirely. Nothing you said has refuted my point, so let me restate it, yet again. Enforcing an arbitrary mechanic that makes big ships inefficient is stupid, since regardless of reasons, big ships can be just as efficient or MORE efficient than smaller ones.

Except if you remove logistics yeah, a big ship is unconditionally more efficient.

Repeating something without providing sensible evidence (I do wait for specifics of efficiency tests of the same model of a ship up and downscaled using the same technology if you're so kind to provide) only makes you seem irritated and desperate to push your point. It's not how discussions work.

As per earlier example which you've noticed yourself, regarding fuel consumption - exactly, that's what it means - size doesn't equal efficiency and doesn't increase it on its own. If it'd be so, those aforementioned fuel-guzzlers I've mentioned wouldn't be such. And they wouldn't require implementation of nuclear reactors to sustain them - while smaller units still don't need such that much. Miniaturization may have effect on implementation of technologies, but it's not a matter of size of vessels but actual efficiency of technology - and even in above example, progress actually leads to both smaller and more efficient power sources lately.

Literally every ship I just listed exists for the sole purpose of protecting the carrier.

Which proves that while very useful unit, a carrier's efficiency-to-effectiveness ratio isn't so high under every circumstance - if it'd be, navy would cut additional expense of crewmen and maintenance of separate vessels and instead of escort force of say, 4 destroyers (which stay as an escort group so the reasoning 'small units to keep tabs on more places' does not apply here), it'd create one carrier in their place for lower cost.

As someone who's been around this game for.. three years? Two n a half? A while, I can safely tell you that nothing in this thread, literally NOTHING, is new.

Don't believe me? Go look at gigantism threads made two years ago

Assuming that you actually do know what you're talking about, I skimmed through 'similar threads. Aside from our half-off-topic discussion about efficiency-effectiveness-cost relations, similar threads seem to lack any considerable discussion regarding utilization of things like proper shipyards or current HP/armor features (which isn't that weird since those are rather recent confirmed by Schine features). In addition, this thread was first made from the standpoint of a player who wanted to make a statement and address certain reasons he heard people used against gigantism, which was somewhat more original. Though at least I saw a few good arguments I didn't see brought here, but those I'll reference only if there will be further need to.

I apologize if I sound hostile now, but I start to think I have good reason for my irritation. I will from now on not involve myself with further discussion with you about this topic till with each new statement of yours you'll be willing to provide sufficient information or direct references to programs and vessels (preferably, with their statistics). I don't have time to check through your mentions and claims, threads you reference, look for the actual values and hard data regarding your own claims that show you're wrong (looking around for fuel consumption data of different ships - trusting you do know what you're talking about - wasn't a time spent pleasantly) and then, on top of that, having to explain my references to you as you apparently didn't bother to read about them before regarding them (vide your absolutely horrible misinterpretation of potential rover's RTG lifespan vs for how long it was made to sustain the rover itself or blanket statement that 'everything was surely discussed and there's no point').

Really sorry, I personally do not wish you ill but with how this exchange goes, I simply do not see much point (beyond thread bumping which this threads doesn't need that much) as it's a waste of time for both of us.

One idea could simply be more weapon and effect systems. Having too many options will get to the point where you cant put EVERYTHING in your ship, which means it would be vulnerable to something.

I am very much worried about this, to be honest. We already have plenty of complaints and work regarding balancing things like weapons/effects and how well they do in comparison with each other. I know that one more weapon is considered, but I'd rather have features related to weapons frozen for this time being - there are plenty other, major things people look toward Schine's work on.

One of the more significant questions (to me) regarding fuel is how renewable should it be?
As far as its uses go, I'd rather not lock anything away with fuel, I'd prefer if it was simply a denser/more scalable type of energy

There were some ideas regarding that. I personally suggested for fuel to be rather common but expensive, yet dependancy on it scaled and ships being able to different types of propulsion, each coming with its pros and cons (including need of fuel).

 

[Stakhanov]

Big ships should stomp the smaller ones all the time

So this is what arguments devolve into. Should vs shouldn't. Not much left to discuss , then.

 

[Visitor]

So this is what arguments devolve into. Should vs shouldn't. Not much left to discuss , then.

To be honest, a big part of the discussion wasn't even about it but about 'for what price they should stomp small ships' - actual costs of building, costs of deploying and maintenance of such ships so it won't be one time investment with profits thorough the rest of the ship's exploitation. Though I'd also like to see one day a bit bigger specialization - warhead ships able to damage a capital ship but piss-poor in dogfighting and with limited 'ammo'. Currently people achieved weird things with warheads dealing tons of damage, but that is because of bugs.

 

[Valiant70]

To be honest, a big part of the discussion wasn't even about it but about 'for what price they should stomp small ships' - actual costs of building, costs of deploying and maintenance of such ships so it won't be one time investment with profits thorough the rest of the ship's exploitation. Though I'd also like to see one day a bit bigger specialization - warhead ships able to damage a capital ship but piss-poor in dogfighting and with limited 'ammo'. Currently people achieved weird things with warheads dealing tons of damage, but that is because of bugs.

Effort, engineering, and difficulty are the main factors to discuss (price being an integral part of effort).

As I've said before, big ships are just too good at hitting little ones. Cone of fire and heatseekers need to be redone so that an unmaneuverable ship cannot hit a maneuverable one as easily. This means most damage to small ships would be done by turrets, which are far less powerful than main guns and can be shot off if the mothership's shields fall below 50%. This does not change the fact that a bigger ship wins. If you can't break the shields, you can't even do anything to the turrets, so your only option is running away, and you might still get shot down in the process depending on your strategy and the types of weapons the turrets are carrying. Large ships will find that mounting enough light/fast turrets and enough shield regen will still keep small attackers at bay unless they come in overwhelming swarms.

Fuel might help to diversify ship sizes, but only after Starmade develops a real economy without practically unlimited resources. If implemented with current resource acquisition mechanics, fuel would do nothing.

Warheads need to be revamped a bit so they aren't so weird, but should remain highly potent for their mass IMO. I would also like to see a variant that can be detonated ONLY by logic. There are applications where this is more useful than a box of nitroglycerine.

 

[godmars]

Not..really

The new HP system worsens gigantism. If you face a ship x% bigger than you , core drilling (after shields go down) would only take x% longer than a ship your size (assuming cubic ships , many people build theirs flat) but now that you have to destroy half of its modules , it'll take (x^3)% longer to kill it than a ship your size. Even after shields are down , a ship twice the mass takes twice longer to kill. Meaningful combat can only happen between even more similar ship types.

That shouldnt be the case. I haven't tested it myself but with the scaling damage mult on larger ships you dont need to literally kill half the ship to disable it

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Smaller ships seem to benefit from the recent overhaul in the survivability department more than you would think. Advanced armour eats hits pretty well, and do their small size their armour is pretty much always going to get hit, giving you the armour bonus. They're not going to be tanking capital scale waffle cannons, but turrets and anti-fighter missiles will be slowed down some.

 

[Colt556]

Which doesn't mean it'll see it better, since it'll still be the same satellite uplink and single radar.

But my point stands, there's no reason in using a smaller boat if your big carrier can do the same exact thing, along with a million other things your small boat can't. It isn't just that big ships do things better, it's that they do MORE things as well.

To a degree, they were. Not on their own, but destroyers took part of their role, due to creation of SAM and SSM missiles in sixties allowing them to well overtake the role of support and even, at times, artillery.

Again, destroyers never replaced battleships in any sense. Destroyers were always used in shore bombardment, even in WW2. Obviously battleships with their bigger guns did it better, but you didn't always have a battleship and destroyers would help bombardment. The absence of battleships doesn't mean destroyers have changes. Their role remains the same it's always been, destroyers today don't do anything destroyers of 70 years ago didn't do. The only thing that's changed is the tools they used to do their role, the role itself hasn't changed.

And to that I may answer that you need to stop saying I don't know what I am talking about when you're clearly wrong. I can also play on my nose, too and say you have cooties and then you may respond with above quote again till any local kindergarten teacher (moderator) will be forced to step in. Wonder how productive that will be and how mature of us to concentrate on such when there are other points to be addressed.

If you clearly don't know what you're talking about and go around starting every retort with "you're wrong", obviously I'm going to call you on it. Don't like it? Don't make false claims about things you, very clearly, don't know anything about. I mean seriously, the fact that you think destroyers phased out battleships when literally EVERYONE who actually knows the subject will tell you it was carriers that did that, kind of proves my point.

But if efficiency per vessel beats that of their multiple smaller coutnerparts when it comes to big ships as you claim, then 'what destroyers are for' makes no sense as too often they're support and escort vessels for those big ships. What would be the point of them if simply another such vessel could be deployed instead (and there's always, unless it's last-ditch defense in a desperate war, some of those mothballed somewhere) being far efficient and effective in every case.

I've already explained this to you, please stop making me repeat myself. In real life resources are the answer to your question. In reality no nation can afford to build nothing but super carriers, they just can't do it. They take too much manpower, too much money, too many resources. This means they also do not want to risk losing them, since losing even a single supercarrier is a -HUGE- loss. So they spam more expendable ships that are smaller, weaker, and cheaper, to play cannon fodder and protect the big heavy hitters. It's a lot better to lose a single destroyer over a super carrier. It isn't that the smaller ships are efficient or even comparable to the big ones, it's that they're cheaper. Hence why I keep telling you that if you removed resource cost america would have nothing but hundreds of Nimitz'. That is also why we need to make resources something important in starmade, so that factions in starmade have to make the same choices as nations in real life.

Even Curiosity rover worked on RTG, as per Lectic's link.


Funny jab at pushing one's claim at the price of ignoring facts or reading comprehension issue:



If you'd actually do some study of it, before just jumping to conclusions, you'd know that radioisotope thermoelectric generators (type of nuclear generators the rover is using one of) were employed quite some time before. Voyager probes run on this thing and after 23 years after production (which is already longer than how nuclear reactor ships usually can go) the power generated by the radioisotope went down only by 16.6% and was and is still enough to keep the probes going. Of course, with time the very bits and pieces of the generator experience wear and the generated power gets lower, but the same problem is experienced by reactors of sea vessels - and according to calculations, those little (and thus - shouldn't it be 'very inefficient in comparison to nuclear warships?' probes will keep on trucking despite diminishing power generation till 2025.

You are -STILL- ignoring the point and ranting about things that, truthfully, do not matter. My point was never that nuclear power can't be used on smaller things. It's that getting a nuclear reactor that can power an entire city on a honda civic aint gonna happen. My point was that size opens up the ability for things smaller craft can't afford. Yeah, sure, great, some rover has a little nuclear reactor that lasts two years. A nimitz has a nuclear reactor that runs for twenty years and produces thousands of times more power than Curiosity's reactor ever will. And because of that even a huge 300+ meter long warship can operate just fine for over two decades. So the idea of adding in arbitrary limitations in starmade is asinine, and illogical. The way it works now is how it should work. Bigger ships require more power, and to generate more power they need bigger reactors. That's how it does work, and that's how it should work, because that is realistic and makes sense.

Repeating something without providing sensible evidence (I do wait for specifics of efficiency tests of the same model of a ship up and downscaled using the same technology if you're so kind to provide) only makes you seem irritated and desperate to push your point. It's not how discussions work.

As per earlier example which you've noticed yourself, regarding fuel consumption - exactly, that's what it means - size doesn't equal efficiency and doesn't increase it on its own. If it'd be so, those aforementioned fuel-guzzlers I've mentioned wouldn't be such. And they wouldn't require implementation of nuclear reactors to sustain them - while smaller units still don't need such that much. Miniaturization may have effect on implementation of technologies, but it's not a matter of size of vessels but actual efficiency of technology - and even in above example, progress actually leads to both smaller and more efficient power sources lately.


Which proves that while very useful unit, a carrier's efficiency-to-effectiveness ratio isn't so high under every circumstance - if it'd be, navy would cut additional expense of crewmen and maintenance of separate vessels and instead of escort force of say, 4 destroyers (which stay as an escort group so the reasoning 'small units to keep tabs on more places' does not apply here), it'd create one carrier in their place for lower cost.

I covered this directly above this quote, but TL;DR there is no "efficiency-to-effectiveness" ratio, there's a "efficiency-to-cost" ratio. Even if a bigger unit is, technically, less efficient it doesn't matter because that bigger unit is better (more armament, longer range, more power generation, stronger armor/shields) and cheap enough to justify spamming nothing but it. That is why adding in things like fuel and other resource hurdles is the only thing "gigantism" needs. Trying to nerf the ships themselves is, as I said, simply the wrong way to go about it.

Assuming that you actually do know what you're talking about, I skimmed through 'similar threads. Aside from our half-off-topic discussion about efficiency-effectiveness-cost relations, similar threads seem to lack any considerable discussion regarding utilization of things like proper shipyards or current HP/armor features (which isn't that weird since those are rather recent confirmed by Schine features). In addition, this thread was first made from the standpoint of a player who wanted to make a statement and address certain reasons he heard people used against gigantism, which was somewhat more original. Though at least I saw a few good arguments I didn't see brought here, but those I'll reference only if there will be further need to.

I apologize if I sound hostile now, but I start to think I have good reason for my irritation. I will from now on not involve myself with further discussion with you about this topic till with each new statement of yours you'll be willing to provide sufficient information or direct references to programs and vessels (preferably, with their statistics). I don't have time to check through your mentions and claims, threads you reference, look for the actual values and hard data regarding your own claims that show you're wrong (looking around for fuel consumption data of different ships - trusting you do know what you're talking about - wasn't a time spent pleasantly) and then, on top of that, having to explain my references to you as you apparently didn't bother to read about them before regarding them (vide your absolutely horrible misinterpretation of potential rover's RTG lifespan vs for how long it was made to sustain the rover itself or blanket statement that 'everything was surely discussed and there's no point').

Really sorry, I personally do not wish you ill but with how this exchange goes, I simply do not see much point (beyond thread bumping which this threads doesn't need that much) as it's a waste of time for both of us.

I am not making any claims you need to look up, nor anything that require me to provide sources. Even a 5 year old can understand the concept of "yeah this is better, but it's more expensive and we have finite money so use the cheaper one". What, exactly, do you need referenced for this? What "hard data" would I even provide to prove this point? I mean I'm effectively saying "the sky is blue" and you're demanding concrete evidence for that, it's like, just look out your window man.

The problem here is you are, literally, just flat out ignoring what I am saying to you and going on only vaguely related tangents, like with your rover nonesense which had literally nothing to do with anything I was saying. If you're sick of looking things up stop ignoring what I'm saying and address the points I make, not the points you say I make.


TL;DR The only thing that needs to be done in regards to "gigantism" is making resources actually matter so it's simply not economically viable to spam titans. Problem solved. Works in real life, it'd work here too.

 

[HolyCookie]

lol i just posted this on a thread, where i was talking about the new HP-system and way to (ab)use them.
my theory was that if you split a ship into many pieces, you wont have big penelty effects.
and thats why i suggested a new class :D with probably a name of a class that already exists
here is my post:


every disk you see is a different entity
new ship class has been added:
DESTROYER
with the size and mass of a titan this beautifull class can be the core of an attack.
it's damage per second is legandary, people often reffer to the DESTROYER as the iron fist.
it is very vulnerable to many ships and turrets, this is why it should Always be in a fleet.
opposite way, everything is vulnerable to the DESTROYER (exept homebase of course).
with its massive damage, and damage spread, you better stay out of shot.

other advantage is: detroying it still takes really long, as it has so many parts.

disadvatage: it has to be in a fleet, the fleet will be able to reduce the damage being done to the DESTROYER.

 

[Keptick]

Boarding. It's now possible to take down titans with a core, it just takes incredible skill (and luck) :P

 

[Mered4]

Boarding. It's now possible to take down titans with a core, it just takes incredible skill (and luck) :p

More luck than skill, I would think. Especially with God-Turrets and people with brains.

I mean, what if I had one door to my ship that was covered by most of my exterior turrets, then put five or six interior turrets on the other side? No amount of skill will win past that defense unless you nuke it.

 

[Keptick]

More luck than skill, I would think. Especially with God-Turrets and people with brains.

I mean, what if I had one door to my ship that was covered by most of my exterior turrets, then put five or six interior turrets on the other side? No amount of skill will win past that defense unless you nuke it.

In that case it'd be really unreasonable to expect a chance of survival.

 

[jorgekorke]

Boarding still needs tweaks. It just came, so we can't expect the best of it.

I also dissaprove the creation of anti-astronaut turrets. It's a very dull concept. I would prefer them to make NPC's (which are currently useless) to auto-shoot faction enemy astonaults instead. A fire-fight in a ship between "people" would be way cooler. (and NPCs would have an use after all)

 

[Lecic]

DESTROYER

In a traditional navy, a Destroyer is in the class between Cruisers/Destroyers and Frigates.