Is 2.0 power optimization actually meta?

    OfficialCoding

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    Every time I read your posts, I try very hard to not respond to your drivel. This time I lost, unfortunately.
    As MacThule said, no one is forcing you to be here. Please don't be toxic.
    This shows just how ignorant you are. He's not talking about using a single stabilizer, and if you weren't so pretentious you might realize that. And yes, it's the meta.
    Please stop. This kind of toxicity sickens me. If you dissent, please be civil, and do not resort to insults and name-calling. Also, A lot of us don't like Meta. It's annoying and not fun.
    Vertical stick ships have way better turn speeds and maneuverability than cubic ships. He didn't even mention thrust or ship speed. Seeing things again?
    Beam Sticks also look terrible.
    ...Or you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. They never fixed stabilizers, only made the problem slightly more opaque, and apparently that's enough to fool people like you. You say people are too lazy to design a 'superior 3D ship' while you have such a bizarrely malfunctioning brain that you don't realize that no one is talking about what you think they are talking about.
    Or maybe we are talking about reasonable ship, not Meta PvP ships that no one except Meta PvPers like. And actually we do know what we are talking about.
    Just ignore everything I said, though, because I'm clearly an alt puppet plotting the downfall of this game so I can get a good financial return on my investment.
    Then why did you even comment this? Do people enjoy wrecking the forums and creating division?
     
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    Ithirahad

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    If you're still building phalloids almost a year after they fixed the dimensional calculations for stabilizers, it's either because you love building phalloids, or you're too lazy to design a superior 3D ship because it's too complicated and you just want to slap down one group of reactors, one group of stabs and instantly have "meta."
    Might want to check the graphic I posted above, w/r/t/ the power systems aspect. It is not "one group of stabs"; think about how the facings mechanic works for just a second or look at the graphic and you'll see why they did not "fix" the dimensional calculations.
    [doublepost=1542085917,1542085758][/doublepost]
    A lot of us don't like Meta. It's annoying and not fun.
    Definitely. It's even more annoying and not fun when you want to play on a server with any kind of competitive aspect and the game forces you into an "annoying and not fun" meta. This stuff has to be explained, understood, and fixed so that we don't end up with people defending a flawed system that will inevitably come around and bite everyone in the asteroids later on when more gameplay objectives exist and the competitive aspects of StarMade become actually relevant on popular servers. :P
     
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    Read through the posts and just wanted to clarify a few things-

    I see people talking about ships being built along one dimension (tall, generally, because of our evolutionary bias to things on the ground like predators, hence the horizontal turning being the most comfortable) as a natural maximization when looking at turn rates. Something about sacrificing turning up/down to gain a bonus in the left/right. The thing is, to point your ship to a random direction, there is as much of turning up and down as there is left and right. So essentially, you want to be maximizing the average of the up/down and left/right turn rates which 'tall' ships seem to be no better, in fact worse at, than a spherical build.

    Taking the example of a 300x30x30 'tall' ship vs a 65x65x65 ship of the same volume. The average of the dimensions that have to be taken into account are 155 for the tall ship compared to 65 for the cube ship. And of course I've assumed turn rate follows a linear relationship with dimensions, but even if its not linear, the inequality holds good.

    MacThule it is possible to build a 'stick' ship and still achieve the 6 dimensional bonuses due to the way the game decides the 'zone/side' of a Stabilizer group by checking it's distance from the positive and negative X, Y and Z axes, leading to 6 'zones'. Its a matter of setting the right angles in the reactor axis rotation panel in the advanced build mode.

    This can easily be fixed by-

    1)Increasing the bonus achieved when the distance from the axes is lesser, i.e, closer the the actual 'sides' than bundled up in the edge of the zone. Makes perfect sense.

    and

    2)Scaling the distance it takes to club together two stabilizer groups with their sizes, meaning bigger groups combine at slightly larger distances as well. This is much more natural than the current system where they combine only if the distance between them is less than 3m.

    Finally, a 'stick' reactor with the 6 dimensional bonus is a very poor example of what I'd call the 'meta'. Exposed reactor and power stream- ingenious.

    The real 'meta' would resemble a layered cube. The reactor in the inner core, followed by thrusters then other chambers and systems followed by the stabilizers and armouring. The outermost layer should be the shields because they're useless after they fail, and can be simply an armor layer in themselves. This falls in line with integrity (which, sadly may be removed altogether) and the power stream as well as turn rates and to top it all the projections of the ship on any plane (the averaged out 'silhouette' of a ship when being viewed from all angles).

    People may try to say a stick has a better silhouette but again, this has the same flaw as claiming 'tall' ships having superior turn rates had- you've gotta look at the average values, and a sphere is the best, and a cube is but marginally worse.

    Finally, there is a lot of unnecessary hostility on this thread. In contrast, I hope you have a wonderful day ahead of you :)
     
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    TheDerpGamerX

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    Or maybe we are talking about reasonable ship, not Meta PvP ships that no one except Meta PvPers like. And actually we do know what we are talking about.
    It should be noted that no one likes meta ships. They are gamey and dumb. The only reason why hypermeta cancer shit is used is out of a fear that your opponents might use it.
     
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    Roll speeds are really fast no matter what, so no, you really only need either your pitch or yaw to be quick and then you can just roll to compensate for the other axis.
    If so, it is a broken mechanic, even by the games standard because ideally a tall ship should roll just as slowly as it pitches, and this no doubt will be resolved in the future.
     
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    You're really talking about balance on barrel roll with tall ship ?

    It's like taking care of your fingernails while your arm has been ripped apart. Literally. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
     
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    You're really talking about balance on barrel roll with tall ship ?

    It's like taking care of your fingernails while your arm has been ripped apart. Literally. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    The only reason stick ships are used is because of this broken mechanic. The power system does not require you to build in a stick, quite the opposite. Fixing rolling will eliminate the need for a stick ship and along with it the need to use the stabilizer zone hack as well (which I agree needs to be fixed regardless).

    In itself, a power setup with stabilizers on all 6 sides (I mean the actual sides) is the superior design, while 4 or 5 sides (again, I mean actual sides) will not be too bad either.

    Food for thought: Placing down stabilizers at half the optimum distance will require you to place double of them to achieve the same stabilization. Each block by itself will only provide half the stabilization it could have had it been placed at the optimum distance. In order to decrease the reactors stability by the same amount as a reactor with half the number of stabilizers at optimum distance, you would have to destroy twice the number of blocks. The disadvantages of this kind of setup would be you'd need to use more stabilizers, while the advantages are a stronger stabilizer setup, decreased dimensions and an increased turn rate. On further thought, the power system seems to be more complicated than it seems.
     

    DrTarDIS

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    Mandatory login because I see some downright Dunning-Kruger levels of hilarity.

    If so, it is a broken mechanic, even by the games standard because ideally a tall ship should roll just as slowly as it pitches, and this no doubt will be resolved in the future.
    LOL. Arc. That mechanic has been like that since before you created your account. I an many others have made that comment in so many of the dev-threads and PvPvE balance flamewars it's fking hilarious that you haven't clued into it by now.

    How you can NOT know about it this many years and hours of playtime later is perplexing my mind. If you don't understand the basic laws of motion in the game by now, you need to Stop Talking about meta and/or good/bad builds and instead replace the TALKING part with SHUTTING UP AND LISTENING TO YOUR BETTERS. This is the Only way to escape being Stupid.
     
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    Az14el

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    what am i even reading here lmao, the question "is 2.0 power optimization actually meta?" doesn't even make sense. "is 2.0 power optimization actually Most Effective Tactic Available?" isn't all that straightforward to answer but i think i got enough of it to work with here.

    yes maths is still a thing and no thats not a skywanderers dev conspiracy, i just seen a couple of equations in my life

    "Meta's" not a naughty word or "unfun" mechanic on its own, it's a thing that exists in any situation that involves any level of strategy no matter how obscured. Where it gets "unfun" or "fun ruining" or what have you is when its results after community interaction are "unfun" or "fun ruining", it is what you make it and doesn't necessarily respect your intentions with how it's structured.

    It's something to approach logically, or ignore at the entire projects risk, naturally.
    [doublepost=1542501303,1542499879][/doublepost]
    I see people talking about ships being built along one dimension (tall, generally, because of our evolutionary bias to things on the ground like predators, hence the horizontal turning being the most comfortable) as a natural maximization when looking at turn rates. Something about sacrificing turning up/down to gain a bonus in the left/right. The thing is, to point your ship to a random direction, there is as much of turning up and down as there is left and right. So essentially, you want to be maximizing the average of the up/down and left/right turn rates which 'tall' ships seem to be no better, in fact worse at, than a spherical build.
    You're not pointing at a random place you're alligning your fastest turning axis to a moving objects trajectory then easily holding at all but the closest ranges it by power of good ol skubphysics. In addition to the superior turn rates is yes, superior power generation by mass than a cubic design as well as a lesser penetration profile than a roughly equal or remotely z aligned ship as well as a guarantee of less concentration of critical systems in a dmg path for the majority of a fight (the head to head that your thinner profile makes it very easy for you to maintain) and of course full forward turret firepower without need for superfiring which increases your profile further on a z aligned ship further sinking mobility. This is all pretty well known and demonstrated though, the best .199 era ships tended to be vertical (typically not wide simply because screens are wider than they are tall & left/right feels more natural, though the advantages in a 3d space are technically the same) for the same reasons and the general movement physics of ships haven't changed, there's an option to spend a large chunk of your reactor % on turn rate chambers or to sacrifice an extreme amount of momentum thrust for mobility thrust for more turn rate, both sacrfiices a thin wide/tallboie can circumvent entirely while only increasing its own durability and power efficiencies.

    what would allow a balance for this is more in depth physics & break off, but it's a long shot for the engine tbh
     
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    i used to think the 1 ship shape being the only optimal build was a issue in of itself, sadly mostly because aesthetically i didnt jive with it. i can understand the fustration if the game-state was way to solved. and given that many testers are Really good at math, logic, and understanading game engines in of themselves, relative to most the population, even most gamers of other games. it dont take long before people can solve a poorly thought out system. singular, undynamic. one ship style or weapon system>everything else type thing

    its the same fustration in MTG if mono red decks always got top 8 in standard. the format becomes figured out to fast. anything like creativity, uniqueness, or diversity is thrown out and a lot of the playerbase moans the staleness. if you want creativity etc. make a jank deck. knowing its not as good, but if it does win 1 out of 10 you feel good. or it just does whacky unexpected stuff and you have a good time. just dont expect to win
     
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    Read through the posts and just wanted to clarify a few things-

    I see people talking about ships being built along one dimension (tall, generally, because of our evolutionary bias to things on the ground like predators, hence the horizontal turning being the most comfortable) as a natural maximization when looking at turn rates. Something about sacrificing turning up/down to gain a bonus in the left/right. The thing is, to point your ship to a random direction, there is as much of turning up and down as there is left and right. So essentially, you want to be maximizing the average of the up/down and left/right turn rates which 'tall' ships seem to be no better, in fact worse at, than a spherical build.

    Taking the example of a 300x30x30 'tall' ship vs a 65x65x65 ship of the same volume. The average of the dimensions that have to be taken into account are 155 for the tall ship compared to 65 for the cube ship. And of course I've assumed turn rate follows a linear relationship with dimensions, but even if its not linear, the inequality holds good.

    MacThule it is possible to build a 'stick' ship and still achieve the 6 dimensional bonuses due to the way the game decides the 'zone/side' of a Stabilizer group by checking it's distance from the positive and negative X, Y and Z axes, leading to 6 'zones'. Its a matter of setting the right angles in the reactor axis rotation panel in the advanced build mode.

    This can easily be fixed by-

    1)Increasing the bonus achieved when the distance from the axes is lesser, i.e, closer the the actual 'sides' than bundled up in the edge of the zone. Makes perfect sense.

    and

    2)Scaling the distance it takes to club together two stabilizer groups with their sizes, meaning bigger groups combine at slightly larger distances as well. This is much more natural than the current system where they combine only if the distance between them is less than 3m.

    Finally, a 'stick' reactor with the 6 dimensional bonus is a very poor example of what I'd call the 'meta'. Exposed reactor and power stream- ingenious.

    The real 'meta' would resemble a layered cube. The reactor in the inner core, followed by thrusters then other chambers and systems followed by the stabilizers and armouring. The outermost layer should be the shields because they're useless after they fail, and can be simply an armor layer in themselves. This falls in line with integrity (which, sadly may be removed altogether) and the power stream as well as turn rates and to top it all the projections of the ship on any plane (the averaged out 'silhouette' of a ship when being viewed from all angles).

    People may try to say a stick has a better silhouette but again, this has the same flaw as claiming 'tall' ships having superior turn rates had- you've gotta look at the average values, and a sphere is the best, and a cube is but marginally worse.

    Finally, there is a lot of unnecessary hostility on this thread. In contrast, I hope you have a wonderful day ahead of you :)
    this is called theory crafting, and youve missed a lot of variables that dont work as youve assumed. most of what you have here is wrong, no matter how right it sounds like it should be.
     

    NeonSturm

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    I've recently thought about a fix. It is a proposal in suggestion-forum
    https://starmadedock.net/threads/co...uggestion-on-how-to-fix-balance-issues.31129/

    First, you have vector shields but they only block weapons until 20% damage is left.
    Then you have either global shields blocking the rest or do it with hull.

    One advantage of blocking with hull is, that if the enemy uses ion weapons, you have 20% less damage on your shields.
    But if the enemy uses hull damage weapons, you block already 80% with shields and they hold longer because they block not 100%.

    Next, if you block with hull, you only receive 5-15% of the original damage.
    If the shot hits any advanced armor and is lower than 15% already, it is voided - it really well protects your reactor and core parts.
    On normal armor, its voided below 10%, but use normal armor to diminish damage before it hits advanced armor.
    When shot from multiple angles, the same advanced armor can void many shots while normal armor takes the damage mostly.

    Furthermore, each hull is penetrated by shots doing less than 5% hp as damage, but survives 20 hits and repairs on reboot.
    Armor is 10% and 10 hits, advanced armor is 15% and 7 hits.
    With that, your hull only needs to hold off 5% damage and mixed coatings hold off some alpha damage without need for repair and void more damage. Your global shield will be penetrated if a shot exceeds 10% of charge, but shields will hold longer and have a bit more cap than now.



    Ok then, with or without this fix applied, would dongles not survive longer by having a harder-to hit stabilizer stream middle of the ship?

    They could essentially be a weapon mounted 2km in front of the reactor to extend weapon range and be a tiny target that far in front.
    The big thing that is fat and easy to hit would be far behind.
     

    OfficialCoding

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    I've recently thought about a fix. It is a proposal in suggestion-forum
    https://starmadedock.net/threads/co...uggestion-on-how-to-fix-balance-issues.31129/

    First, you have vector shields but they only block weapons until 20% damage is left.
    Then you have either global shields blocking the rest or do it with hull.

    One advantage of blocking with hull is, that if the enemy uses ion weapons, you have 20% less damage on your shields.
    But if the enemy uses hull damage weapons, you block already 80% with shields and they hold longer because they block not 100%.

    Next, if you block with hull, you only receive 5-15% of the original damage.
    If the shot hits any advanced armor and is lower than 15% already, it is voided - it really well protects your reactor and core parts.
    On normal armor, its voided below 10%, but use normal armor to diminish damage before it hits advanced armor.
    When shot from multiple angles, the same advanced armor can void many shots while normal armor takes the damage mostly.

    Furthermore, each hull is penetrated by shots doing less than 5% hp as damage, but survives 20 hits and repairs on reboot.
    Armor is 10% and 10 hits, advanced armor is 15% and 7 hits.
    With that, your hull only needs to hold off 5% damage and mixed coatings hold off some alpha damage without need for repair and void more damage. Your global shield will be penetrated if a shot exceeds 10% of charge, but shields will hold longer and have a bit more cap than now.



    Ok then, with or without this fix applied, would dongles not survive longer by having a harder-to hit stabilizer stream middle of the ship?

    They could essentially be a weapon mounted 2km in front of the reactor to extend weapon range and be a tiny target that far in front.
    The big thing that is fat and easy to hit would be far behind.
    First off, what? I couldn't follow that too well.
    Second, Shield Bleed through is a bad idea. Shield Bleed through is already in the game in the form of that 9 month old shield bug that still pops up occasionally, and I don't think anyone really likes it. imo shields should be an all-or-nothing deal.
     

    Lone_Puppy

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    I would prefer the current shield mechanic/effect on the hull be related to integrity and not shields.
    The new shields with the bubble in build mode should be actual shield bubbles, but I guess there must be some universe engine or other reason this is not favorable.

    Personally, I don't see the point of disabling shields that overlap. Logically, if somebody was able to engineer a shield system anything like what's in Star Wars, Star Trek or other Sci-Fi, they would work out systems and safeties to allow overlap. You wouldn't just wastefully disable a generator. They would either allow overlap through phase control or something or simply make them work as an array of some sort.

    That's my 2 cents on shields. I'd give you a whole dollars worth, but I'm at work and don't have the time. ;-)
     

    NeonSturm

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    Second, Shield Bleed through is a bad idea.
    Vector shields bleed.
    But all-sourounding skin-shields can block the little bleed afterwards.

    You can have a charged vector shields and empty global shield.

    But when bleed plays a role most likely you have an "assault shield" like:
    First, your vector shield blocks 80%.
    Secondly, a small global shield on that vector shield module will block minor damage (weak attackers or stray shots).
    Thirdly, the normal armor blocks will take 5-10% damage without breaking from a few alpha-damage strikes between reboots.
    Forthly, the advanced armor mitigates remaining 15% damage.
    Fifthly, or the shot pierces your armor plate, because the plate was too weak and hit your main ship.
    Sixtly, the main ship has a global shield which is weakened AFTER hull from that docked plate.
    Sevently, if the shot is above 10% shield strength, it is reduced only by 10% shield strength and "pierces".
    Eightly, weapons are weaker because it's easier to get single shots to pierce protection layers with weak-dps weapons.
    Ninthly, weapons damage your ships armor (a few spaced-out shots heal on reboot).
    Tenthly, weapons are mitigated by the final protection layer which uses advanced armor to mitigate every shot below 15% original dmg.
    Elevently, your systems are damaged (that's permanent, sorry, but your enemy was too big to handle even though your ship has an elite-standard military design).

    There is no bleed against weak weapons.
    Occassional alpha-damage strikes do no permanent damage (reboot heals armor blocks which are not killed).
    After vector shields (which are the only bleeding), there is an additional shield layer.
    Bleed to hull is intentional to reduce ion weapon damage in turn and to save global shield hp by sacrifying hull blocks in a local spot when shield gets weaker. Docked armor can easily be replaced, compared to a whole ship.
    The new shields with the bubble in build mode should be actual shield bubbles,
    True, but not only that.
    When we get vector shielding on that bubble, it is nice.
    Otherwise skin-shields should remain an option.
    I would like most if bubble shields reduce weapon damage by 20% for taking 5% damage, then vector shields reduce it to 20% by taking 75% of damage from reduction% and finally, skin-shields take the rest.
    Some shield vectors fail first, then the skin-shield gets down and hull takes damage but the bubble is still alive, so bombers will deal some additional damage by getting under it.

    Shield bubbles can enclose a space with 8 times the mass of a ship but 1.2 times it's length/width/height.
    That way it's 2x as volumetric but 1.2x as big and encourages empty space to fit tighter.

    Personally, I don't see the point of disabling shields that overlap.
    I agree.
    In my proposal, overlap would not disable shields.

    Instead, every layer reduces damage by a %, but only until a minimum %.
    The last % are taken by either skin shields or - when depleted - by hull.
    The more bleed, the more efficient - but all shield layers total in no bleed, unless desired between vector and skin shields hull can be placed by intelligent design.

    You'd intentionally design it so that armor plates are damaged to protect your skin shields charge because that one covers "holes" in vector shielding through which your weapons fire.
    Good aiming would hit those holes and bypass vector shields.

    These shield vectors can be weak, but provide armor before shield (when you want it), reduce ion-weapon damage in real combat scenarious before your core ship actually gets damaged and offer 15% free damage reduction plus ionizing to recharge most spots during combat, leaving only a few holes in it to more energy/time-intensive low -combat-regeneration.

    _______________
    Final note:

    Civilians don't require all this separation.
    They can work with standard skin-shields but take 2x damage as result.
    That does not matter much when they are 50% bigger than you, they got 125% extra shielding too.
    Maybe they have not so many shield-blocks, but even military shouldn't attack a 2x2x2x as big ship alone without strategy planing.
     
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    TheDerpGamerX

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    I don't understand this thread title. It's basically asking: "Is meta actually meta?"
    By Power 2.0 optimization do you mean making your power 2.0 ship as efficient as possible? If so, yes. Making a Meta ship is infact Meta.
    You don't seem to understand what Meta means. It is not a specific style it just refers to the most effective design you can create.