Ideas for Thrust Update

[Megacrafter127]

It becomes safe to make those generalizations because no one has disagreed with me on it, until now (as far as I can remember, not sure if there was an argument on the scale in my Warp suggestion)

At this point in time, how many people play StarMade[and haven't stopped before]? (we have no accurate numbers here, but we definetly know the number is likely larger than the number of active members on this forum)
How many of those are on this particular forum? definetly a fraction, but as the number of people is still quite large, we can assume that it mostly still represent what the general playerbase wants.
How many of the people regularly on this forum were in chat while you asked and did respond to your question? I suspect the sample size to be too small to allow reliable generalization by statistic means.

 

[hzzzln]

"I personally would like this game better if."

This is pretty much a prerequisite for posting a thread in the suggestion forum. Why would anybody post a thread here without actually liking the change that they propose?

Nothing you said there made sense

That is just your personal opinion. I think I understood him just fine.

On topic, I think it wouldn't hurt to have some more thruster modules in the game. I agree that the game is complex already and the devs need to be careful not to overdo it, but I guess 3 Thrusters instead of 1 is pretty straightforward.

 

[Blaza612]

At this point in time, how many people play StarMade[and haven't stopped before]? (we have no accurate numbers here, but we definetly know the number is likely larger than the number of active members on this forum)
How many of those are on this particular forum? definetly a fraction, but as the number of people is still quite large, we can assume that it mostly still represent what the general playerbase wants.
How many of the people regularly on this forum were in chat while you asked and did respond to your question? I suspect the sample size to be too small to allow reliable generalization by statistic means.

That is indeed a valid point, but at that time no one was disagreeing so it was safe to make the generalization.

Seriously, can you guys stop nitpicking around the actual suggestion and allow the discussion to be in direct relationship to it? Megacrafter127 you even agreed with the Warp thread!

jstenholt I have no idea what you hope to achieve in your, "arguments" as so far you've only said that the suggestions bad because realism is bad, and I shouldn't be basing ideas off of other games, both of which aren't valid.

I'm done with this nitpicking, and will only answer to serious discussion about the suggestion, not this.

 

[jstenholt]

I've already stated many reasons why this is a lackluster idea, you've just been focusing on the parts of my argument where I question your understanding of what how opinions work.

 

[Megacrafter127]

I personally don't mind the multiple-thrusters part of the idea. I'm not really for it, but I'm not against it either, as it wouldn't really impact my game-experience at all.
What would negatively impact my personal experience would be the variable max-speed, because it takes piloting-skill out of the entire equation in certain situations, here are some examples:

• Ship A engages combat against ship B; A has a higher max-speed than B, and can deal more damage than the shield of B can regenerate
  • What pilot B does pretty much doesn't matter, as A will always be able to keep up, as it can reach higher speeds and thus can easily catch up to B.
  • A can decide to stay out of B's range and only poke it from max-range, and then moving away again, until the weapon reloaded, B cannot win at all, as the odds of hitting A are almost nil, and B has no chance of escaping, unless B somehow gets help from outside.
• Fleet C engages combat against ship D; D has a higher max-speed than any ship in C, and C can deal enough damage to easily win against D
  • D can escape the entire fleet, even if D has a really really bad reaction time, or even charges through C at max speed, as C cannot keep up at all.

Smaller ships already have a better maneuverability[even if turning is excluded], as their generally higher thrust:mass ratio allows for a much better acceleration.

Edit: also, due to spacefriction, ships with a low thrust:mass ratio can't even reach max speed. Spacefriction increases with speed, so if there was no speed limit at all[with space friction on] each ship WOULD have an individual max speed, albeit probably very high.

 

[Ithirahad]

This includes too many thruster types, and variable max speed is just a bad idea. We really only need two types of thrusters; the ones we have now and more powerful, grouping ones that only add thrust in the direction they're oriented.

Also, having a warp drive based on just going faster than the max speed is a nonsolution. The speed limit is mostly there because of the game's physics in the first place; the faster you go the more likely you are to tunnel into things because the engine can't keep up. If we were to have a warp drive, it would have to use virtual sectors, or use the real sectors but not load what's in them for the ship traveling at warp, or vice versa. (Besides, 3x max speed is kind of slow for warp drive.)

 

[hzzzln]

• Ship A engages combat against ship B; A has a higher max-speed than B, and can deal more damage than the shield of B can regenerate
  • What pilot B does pretty much doesn't matter, as A will always be able to keep up, as it can reach higher speeds and thus can easily catch up to B.
  • A can decide to stay out of B's range and only poke it from max-range, and then moving away again, until the weapon reloaded, B cannot win at all, as the odds of hitting A are almost nil, and B has no chance of escaping, unless B somehow gets help from outside.

• Seems to me like B built a bad ship. Shouldn't the player building the better ship win?

• Fleet C engages combat against ship D; D has a higher max-speed than any ship in C, and C can deal enough damage to easily win against D
  • D can escape the entire fleet, even if D has a really really bad reaction time, or even charges through C at max speed, as C cannot keep up at all.

• If D has bad reaction time, then he is probably f'ed because there will be Cannon/Cannon/Stop effect all over him. Except the C guys built a shitty fleet.

I wish there was a variable speed and not a hard cap (or only a hard cap at extreme speeds).

Spoiler: Post Scriptum

Are you this guy?

 

[Megacrafter127]

• Seems to me like B built a bad ship. Shouldn't the player building the better ship win?

If by 'better ship' you mean being able to destroy the other ship in one shot, then yes. Remember, even if A and B have the same weapon-ranges, A can easily stay out of B's range, and only hop in for miniscule amount of time to fire their weapons, while B can't hope to catch up.

• If D has bad reaction time, then he is probably f'ed because there will be Cannon/Cannon/Stop effect all over him. Except the C guys built a shitty fleet.

With enough thrust:mass, you can escape any stop effect.

Spoiler: Post Scriptum

Are you this guy?

Depends :p if both ships have equal mass and their systems are equally efficient, then yes.

 

[lilheartless]

If by 'better ship' you mean being able to destroy the other ship in one shot, then yes. Remember, even if A and B have the same weapon-ranges, A can easily stay out of B's range, and only hop in for miniscule amount of time to fire their weapons, while B can't hope to catch up.

With enough thrust:mass, you can escape any stop effect.

Depends :p if both ships have equal mass and their systems are equally efficient, then yes.

Ok so basically what ur saying is ship a and ship b have the same engagement range but ship b is faster ( i feel like if ship a is slower tha ship b, ship a has less damage than ship b, and ship a's shields can't keep up with ship b's shield and somehow ship b managed to have higher thrust to mass stronger weapons and somehow manages to have a jump inhibitor strong enough to stop ship a's jump drive then ship b would have won either way because if they had an "average ship to mass ratio it would just have more shields more guns and the same interdiction and ship a would have died anyways i'm not really seeing the point you have here. Basically what you are saying is If I take a crappy ship and match it up against a not crappy ship it would lose but if i make the not crappy ship faster it would lose so variable max speed is a bad idea.

with your second point if you have a 5 - 1 thrust to mass ratio you are SACRIFICING something else to be that fast so yeah your hauler that you are flying around in has a 5 - 1 thrust to mass but in order to do that you had to sacrifice weapons armor shields and had to increase the power generation by a factor of x to keep up with the increased thrust on a ship that shouldn't have that much thrust so i'd say the trade off is pretty fair wouldn't you. I guess i again don't see your point.

Equal efficiency does not = similar performance I would like to live in universe where i can customize my ship to DO Something specific i'm honestly tired of Balancing all my ships to do everything cause thats not what i want to fly.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Basically what you are saying is If I take a crappy ship and match it up against a not crappy ship it would lose but if i make the not crappy ship faster it would lose so variable max speed is a bad idea.

No. If you would make the crappy ship faster it would not lose, even if it was still crappier than the not-crappy ship. That is what I said.

 

[lilheartless]

No. If you would make the crappy ship faster it would not lose, even if it was still crappier than the not-crappy ship. That is what I said.

how would a better built ship lose to a crappy ship just because it was faster? If both parties have the same engagement range then every time the crappy ship came in to use its weapons the better ships turrets would fire and the crappy fast ship which is made even crappier by the fact that it used extra space for power and thrusters and interdiction that had to come from both weapons and defense would take more damage than it could dish out. If somehow the crappy ship with crappy weapons and crappy defense beats ship a then obviously ship a must have been "really crappy" i don't understand how this could happen any other way.

 

[Megacrafter127]

how would a better built ship lose to a crappy ship just because it was faster? If both parties have the same engagement range then every time the crappy ship came in to use its weapons the better ships turrets would fire and the crappy fast ship which is made even crappier by the fact that it used extra space for power and thrusters and interdiction that had to come from both weapons and defense would take more damage than it could dish out. If somehow the crappy ship with crappy weapons and crappy defense beats ship a then obviously ship a must have been "really crappy" i don't understand how this could happen any other way.

Excluding beams, all weapons have a travel time to their target. If the crappy ship gets out of the not-crappy ship's range before the not-crappy ship's weapons hit it, it will not take any damage, whereas the not-crappy ship will take damage.

 

[lilheartless]

Excluding beams, all weapons have a travel time to their target. If the crappy ship gets out of the not-crappy ship's range before the not-crappy ship's weapons hit it, it will not take any damage, whereas the not-crappy ship will take damage.

and for the exact reasons you stated ship a would have the advantage over ship b weapon travel time. assuming ship a is moving at its maximum speed lets say 150 m/s and ship b can move at 300 meters per second both ships have an engagement range of lets for ease of numbers say 5000 meters ship a is moving away from ship b ship b is maintaining distance just out of firing range only coming in to fire when its long range weaponry is back online.

assuming this situation ship a would absolutely destroy ship b because ship b has to travel much further to hit ship a while ship a doesn't have to do anything except fire its weapons ship b cannot fire its weapons until it has made range on ship a equal to not only its firing distance but also has to account for ship a's travel speed with its weapons so while ship a can immediately fire its weapons as soon as ship b is in range because ship b is coming @ ship a ship b cannot fire its weapons until it has traveled both into range and farther into range = the targets travel speed x (distance / projectile speed) meaning if ship b's missiles travel at 600 m/s then at 5000 meters it would take ~8 seconds to reach its target which means that ship b would have to be within 5000 - (150x8) or 3800 meters so ship a can fire at its maximum engagement range while ship b has to close distance for multiple seconds before it can attack.


(this math is not exact honestly its barely an approximation firing parameters aren't this simple but the point still stands)

 

[hzzzln]

No. If you would make the crappy ship faster it would not lose, even if it was still crappier than the not-crappy ship. That is what I said.

If I get attacked by another ship, which is better than mine in every regard except speed, why shouldn't I be able to outrun it?

 

[IronDusk33]

Just gonna add my two cents:

Firstly, a variable max speed is something that is kinda already in the game (overdrive modules), so multiple thrusters may not be needed.

At any rate, I don't think that adding multiple thrusters would really make the game over-complicated. If you didn't want to use the fancy thrusters, use the normal ones. Its similar to the way the weapons system is right now. It is highly customizable and takes a while to fully understand, but it doesn't make the game any worse by making it too complicated. If you don't want to use fancy guns, use the bog-standard ones. More options does not make the game bad in any sense in a sandbox game.

The physics of high speed is the only possible issue I see with this. It is true that a very high speed might cause issues if you run into something, but I'm not sure what that speed is, and if it depends on things like a computer's performance or server lag. A possible solution: Force the max speed to lower in sectors with planets or stations so the player wouldn't accidentally tunnel into them. After entering said sectors, the player could re-accelerate to high speeds. An option could also be added to disable this speed down.

On ships of multiple speeds, the thrusters could be balanced in such a way that the high speed thrusters on a ship require so much energy that good weapons (weapons that could take down a slower but much tougher ship) are very difficult or impossible to implement on a ship. So a large number of smaller faster ships would be required to take down a larger ship, but a larger ship may not be able to hit and take down a faster ship easily. Which would make a whole lot of sense.

 

[lilheartless]

Just gonna add my two cents:

Firstly, a variable max speed is something that is kinda already in the game (overdrive modules), so multiple thrusters may not be needed.

At any rate, I don't think that adding multiple thrusters would really make the game over-complicated. If you didn't want to use the fancy thrusters, use the normal ones. Its similar to the way the weapons system is right now. It is highly customizable and takes a while to fully understand, but it doesn't make the game any worse by making it too complicated. If you don't want to use fancy guns, use the bog-standard ones. More options does not make the game bad in any sense in a sandbox game.

The physics of high speed is the only possible issue I see with this. It is true that a very high speed might cause issues if you run into something, but I'm not sure what that speed is, and if it depends on things like a computer's performance or server lag. A possible solution: Force the max speed to lower in sectors with planets or stations so the player wouldn't accidentally tunnel into them. After entering said sectors, the player could re-accelerate to high speeds. An option could also be added to disable this speed down.

On ships of multiple speeds, the thrusters could be balanced in such a way that the high speed thrusters on a ship require so much energy that good weapons (weapons that could take down a slower but much tougher ship) are very difficult or impossible to implement on a ship. So a large number of smaller faster ships would be required to take down a larger ship, but a larger ship may not be able to hit and take down a faster ship easily. Which would make a whole lot of sense.

the last mechanic you talked about is already in place thrust to mass ratio is not easy to maintain and in fact when was the last time you had a fully fitted ship bigger than say a corvette that had more than a idk 2:1 thrust to mass can it be done ..... sure but thrusting takes power i know on the smallish mining ship i just built it has 600k power per second and a 1.3 - 1 thrust to mass ratio It requires about one fifth of my overall power supply for thrust now if i wanted to double the thrust i'd need to use over double the power it already takes which means i couldn't mine and thrust at the same time if i wanted to do so i'd have to either decrease its shields or decrease its mining power (weapons in this case) in order to make up that deficit any bonuses have to come at the expense of something else and a "balance" is key....

There are edge cases of course if you were to make a ship that literally had only long range weapons cannon/beam, beam/beam/ missile/beam that could specialize in long range hit and run attacks while having no shield In this case it could have both Strong Offensive and Mobility capabilities while having 0 Defensive capabilities and it would probably work, with this ship you could probably kite and kill someone if they didn't have a ship prepared to deal with such tactics, this is of course not a reason not to add in this type of system as it adds "depth" to gameplay that isn't just who has the higher block count cause everything is the same.

What really saddens me is how a few(some) people are so totally ingrained in how homogenized starmade is right now, all weapons have exactly the same dps most systems scale almost linearly and the ones that don't have workarounds, as it stands right now you can't make a ship to do something..... you just make a ship it doesn't really matter what you put on it cause everything is "mostly" the same, I guess it would just be nice to create with purpose and i'm all for any type of change that brings more diversity (variance) to ship types.

 

[Blaza612]

I personally don't mind the multiple-thrusters part of the idea. I'm not really for it, but I'm not against it either, as it wouldn't really impact my game-experience at all.
What would negatively impact my personal experience would be the variable max-speed, because it takes piloting-skill out of the entire equation in certain situations, here are some examples:

• Ship A engages combat against ship B; A has a higher max-speed than B, and can deal more damage than the shield of B can regenerate
  • What pilot B does pretty much doesn't matter, as A will always be able to keep up, as it can reach higher speeds and thus can easily catch up to B.
  • A can decide to stay out of B's range and only poke it from max-range, and then moving away again, until the weapon reloaded, B cannot win at all, as the odds of hitting A are almost nil, and B has no chance of escaping, unless B somehow gets help from outside.
• Fleet C engages combat against ship D; D has a higher max-speed than any ship in C, and C can deal enough damage to easily win against D
  • D can escape the entire fleet, even if D has a really really bad reaction time, or even charges through C at max speed, as C cannot keep up at all.

Smaller ships already have a better maneuverability[even if turning is excluded], as their generally higher thrust:mass ratio allows for a much better acceleration.

Edit: also, due to spacefriction, ships with a low thrust:mass ratio can't even reach max speed. Spacefriction increases with speed, so if there was no speed limit at all[with space friction on] each ship WOULD have an individual max speed, albeit probably very high.

The fact that using this new system ships can create a specialized strategy for their ships of which certain ships won't be able to counter is not a valid reason, as that's the point of these two systems, to allow ships to specialize more and create more diversity between ships, making combat seem significantly more interesting. EVE has a similar situation, with interceptors flying so fast (using propulsion boosts) that no weapons can hit them, and they can just freely unleash their missiles on their enemies while their both webbed (can't move) and warp scrammed.

This includes too many thruster types, and variable max speed is just a bad idea. We really only need two types of thrusters; the ones we have now and more powerful, grouping ones that only add thrust in the direction they're oriented.

Also, having a warp drive based on just going faster than the max speed is a nonsolution. The speed limit is mostly there because of the game's physics in the first place; the faster you go the more likely you are to tunnel into things because the engine can't keep up. If we were to have a warp drive, it would have to use virtual sectors, or use the real sectors but not load what's in them for the ship traveling at warp, or vice versa. (Besides, 3x max speed is kind of slow for warp drive.)

The reason that I have four is to allow for more diversity between ships, and make it easier to specialize. I have thrusters for all ships in general (Hypercoil), capital ship suited thrusters (sub-light), fighter suited thrusters (VPM) and one all around, that has a catch (Microwarp).

The Microwarp isn't a warp drive, it's similar, but MUCH slower, but it still allows for great non-warp speeds. It's entire existence is from EVE, since I wanted a fourth to make it more interesting. :p

The actual warp drive from my Warp thread talks about how it would simply go through everything, since those objects aren't in the space that's being moved, and also for this very reason.

the last mechanic you talked about is already in place thrust to mass ratio is not easy to maintain and in fact when was the last time you had a fully fitted ship bigger than say a corvette that had more than a idk 2:1 thrust to mass can it be done ..... sure but thrusting takes power i know on the smallish mining ship i just built it has 600 power per second and a 1.3 - 1 thrust to mass ratio It requires about one fifth of my overall power supply for thrust now if i wanted to double the thrust i'd need to use over double the power it already takes which means i couldn't mine and thrust at the same time if i wanted to do so i'd have to either decrease its shields or decrease its mining power (weapons in this case) in order to make up that deficit any bonuses have to come at the expense of something else and a "balance" is key....

There are edge cases of course if you were to make a ship that literally had only long range weapons cannon/beam, beam/beam/ missile/beam that could specialize in long range hit and run attacks while having no shield In this case it could have both Strong Offensive and Mobility capabilities while having 0 Defensive capabilities and it would probably work, with this ship you could probably kite and kill someone if they didn't have a ship prepared to deal with such tactics, this is of course not a reason not to add in this type of system as it adds "depth" to gameplay that isn't just who has the higher block count cause everything is the same.

What really saddens me is how a few(some) people are so totally ingrained in how homogenized starmade is right now, all weapons have exactly the same dps most systems scale almost linearly and the ones that don't have workarounds, as it stands right now you can't make a ship to do something..... you just make a ship it doesn't really matter what you put on it cause everything is "mostly" the same, I guess it would just be nice to create with purpose and i'm all for any type of change that brings more diversity (variance) to ship types.

Indeed one of the biggest problems with the game is the fact that a lot of ships are generally the same. They aren't anything special, they all just do everything, thus this system will allow that to change and as I've said twice now, allow for more ship diversity. One way to tackle it is to introduce more weapons, I personally don't have any ideas, but maybe you can come up with some.

 

[lilheartless]

The fact that using this new system ships can create a specialized strategy for their ships of which certain ships won't be able to counter is not a valid reason, as that's the point of these two systems, to allow ships to specialize more and create more diversity between ships, making combat seem significantly more interesting. EVE has a similar situation, with interceptors flying so fast (using propulsion boosts) that no weapons can hit them, and they can just freely unleash their missiles on their enemies while their both webbed (can't move) and warp scrammed.



The reason that I have four is to allow for more diversity between ships, and make it easier to specialize. I have thrusters for all ships in general (Hypercoil), capital ship suited thrusters (sub-light), fighter suited thrusters (VPM) and one all around, that has a catch (Microwarp).

The Microwarp isn't a warp drive, it's similar, but MUCH slower, but it still allows for great non-warp speeds. It's entire existence is from EVE, since I wanted a fourth to make it more interesting. :p

The actual warp drive from my Warp thread talks about how it would simply go through everything, since those objects aren't in the space that's being moved, and also for this very reason.



Indeed one of the biggest problems with the game is the fact that a lot of ships are generally the same. They aren't anything special, they all just do everything, thus this system will allow that to change and as I've said twice now, allow for more ship diversity. One way to tackle it is to introduce more weapons, I personally don't have any ideas, but maybe you can come up with some.

balance is tough i'm kinda in the same boat I know that something feels wrong about the way things are but its like reaching through air you know i just can't wrap my head around a balanced idea to fix them.

 

[aytoms29]

Eh. Different Thrusters mean more different types of ships. Balancing this could be tough though

 

[Ephelemi]

You can easily put a hardcap on speed so extreme thrust/mass ratios don't give you extreme speeds.
Something like 3:1 thrust-mass would be the max, anything more and you won't go faster.

In my opinion it would be more advisable to have a nonlinear development of speed to t/m ratio. This would allow a big change of speed at small t/m ratios but would lead to ever smaller changes once you build really many thrusters. Then you wouldnt need a cap.
Another solution would be to have a nonlinear increase of power neaded with a linear increase of thrusters, making the amount of power needed very large for fast ships, so they would have to become specialized, and the amount of power needed forships that have too many thrusters ridiculous to impossible.
Linear ratio systems are nowhere near reality and even less are Caps.