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Schine announced these goals as reasons for the power 2.0 update:
Goals/Rules
I like these goals, and I think this power update COULD meet them, but below are a list of reasons why the current dev build does not meet them and suggestions that could be taken to help the new system get there.
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- By enforcing a gap between the reactor and the stabilizer, you enforce a specific logical shape for ships (Long and skinny) or worse, with a stupid looking floating enhancer a km outside your ship. They also contradict the statement that they want ships to be easier to modify. If I discover I need 10% more power to finish a design, I need to do a total rebuild of parts of my ship to increase the gap and chamber sizes. In their current state, stabilizers do nothing but add an unnecessary layer of complexity and unpredictability to ship design.
- While stabilizers fundamentally fail at the goal of giving players a reason to build an interior, I have heard two proposed ideas from the community that might do this much better:
- Add a proper "crew" mechanic to the game so that your interior would need to be able to give your crew maintenance access to your ship
[EDIT]
- Add some kind of heat-sink mechanic that modifies your reactor's efficiency based on your ship's total surface area instead of using stabilizers. This way you can stabilize your reactor on any sized or dimensioned ship just by adding detail work to it.
- In terms of being Performant, I would like to note that surface area has to be rendered. While this would be a good way to achieve the goal of balancing RP vs PvP builds, a system that requires ships with more internal and external surface area per mass will get more Client-side lag. Experienced PvP players don’t just design larger ships with fairly small interiors because they are lazy or to take advantage of any special meta, most of us do it because it reduces lag and makes for smoother gameplay when dealing with larger ships. If this system is adopted, please add an admin setting that can be used to adjust optimal surface area balancing for servers that cater more to Titan builds.
So I've been thinking more on this topic, and come to an idea that might be a good compromise of these issues. If your ship's total surface area is a benefit (which would offer good advantages to RP builds), but too much surface area is a major detriment to titans' client-side performance and required design times, then the logical solution would to replace stabilizers with a system that you can bury inside of other blocks in place of surface area (ie: cooling blocks). These blocks would "waste" mass in exchange for simplifying a ship's design.
I image a block with .1 mass that can simulate 20 exposed surfaces. This would typically be less mass efficient than an equivalent group of light weight decorative blocks, but make up for it with simplicity of implementation. In this way, players would have 3 ways to resolve the heat-sink dilemma which each appeal to different play styles.
1- build a detailed interior: The lightest weight solution which rewards RP builds.
2- build a solid ship with elaborate outer armor details: A different kind of RP solution. Heaviest weight, but approaches the problem from a "no wasted block" perspective.
3- build a solid ship with cooling blocks: A simplified solution for ships too large for a full RP surface area to be practical.
[END EDIT]
- Piping to chambers creates two other issues as well:
- Efficiency fall off creates another situation of game mechanics defining ship shapes. If I must pipe my chambers in the shortest possible path to retain optimal efficiency, then the most logical reactor setup is a giant ball or box with chambers surrounding my reactor in minimal proximity. This limits options for curvy linear or flat ships.
- While this distance penalty is small, keep in mind many players will do stupid looking things to make a stronger ship, and anything that preforms good while looking bad will further the gap between RP and PvP builds.
- This also creates a new game mechanic where one already exists increasing the learning curve for new players. If they were connected by computers like everything else, it would be easier to distribute systems to meet your design and it would build on an already familiar system of connecting things.
- By limiting the number of chambers, you can have, you limit the optional roles you can build a ship too. Bigger reactors already mean bigger chambers. If you stick to that idea, you realize you can actually do without this limit since chambers take up mass, space, and cost in place of other systems. If for example a level 3 upgrade actually required 3 chambers, you could nix this hard limit and create more options without sacrificing balance.
- For example: I have a ship right now that can perma cloak, scan, jam, and chain drive. It has no guns, no shields, and its "hull" is made out of motherboard, but it is designed to jump while cloaked for optimal scouting. A similar class of ship could be made in the new system if I were to devote the entire ship to chamber effects and propulsion while trying to minimize its base reactor size to the bare minimum, but with a hard limit of 10 chambers, highly specialized "effect" builds like this cannot be done.
- Weapon upgrades by class are also limiting. There is a lot of merit in experimenting with combinations of beams, cannons, and missiles. This upgrade system forces you to commit to a single main weapon system.
- Instead, I would suggest focusing on things that might apply to ALL weapon classes such as increasing AI accuracy or raw damage, or at least to reduce the by class upgrades to a single tier, so that a diverse build is still an "affordable" payoff
Goals/Rules
First thing we did, was figuring out which criteria our new system should fulfill.
These are the ones we used for power and anything tied to power consumption:
With these goals/rules, we went over the current power system and any of our new ideas including the heatbox mechanic we shared before. We combined the things we liked into a new system that is explained below.
These are the ones we used for power and anything tied to power consumption:
- Predictability: Placing a block leads to predictable outcomes
- Simplicity: The game should only describe the rules to the player, not telling the player exactly what to do
- Make every block matter without losing its importance with different ship sizes
- Depth: The system needs to have equally viable choices within each possible situation, creating additional gameplay possibilities where possible, keeping complexity unchanged.
- Performance: Game limits must not be avoidable, using the least amount of these limits is better to minimize any potential exploits
- Performant: Must perform well from a game engine perspective
- Creativity: Allow as much creativity as possible
- Logical: Needs to make sense to the player
- Solution focused: Must solve any current game issues with that particular system
With these goals/rules, we went over the current power system and any of our new ideas including the heatbox mechanic we shared before. We combined the things we liked into a new system that is explained below.
I like these goals, and I think this power update COULD meet them, but below are a list of reasons why the current dev build does not meet them and suggestions that could be taken to help the new system get there.
----------------
- By enforcing a gap between the reactor and the stabilizer, you enforce a specific logical shape for ships (Long and skinny) or worse, with a stupid looking floating enhancer a km outside your ship. They also contradict the statement that they want ships to be easier to modify. If I discover I need 10% more power to finish a design, I need to do a total rebuild of parts of my ship to increase the gap and chamber sizes. In their current state, stabilizers do nothing but add an unnecessary layer of complexity and unpredictability to ship design.
- While stabilizers fundamentally fail at the goal of giving players a reason to build an interior, I have heard two proposed ideas from the community that might do this much better:
- Add a proper "crew" mechanic to the game so that your interior would need to be able to give your crew maintenance access to your ship
[EDIT]
- Add some kind of heat-sink mechanic that modifies your reactor's efficiency based on your ship's total surface area instead of using stabilizers. This way you can stabilize your reactor on any sized or dimensioned ship just by adding detail work to it.
- In terms of being Performant, I would like to note that surface area has to be rendered. While this would be a good way to achieve the goal of balancing RP vs PvP builds, a system that requires ships with more internal and external surface area per mass will get more Client-side lag. Experienced PvP players don’t just design larger ships with fairly small interiors because they are lazy or to take advantage of any special meta, most of us do it because it reduces lag and makes for smoother gameplay when dealing with larger ships. If this system is adopted, please add an admin setting that can be used to adjust optimal surface area balancing for servers that cater more to Titan builds.
So I've been thinking more on this topic, and come to an idea that might be a good compromise of these issues. If your ship's total surface area is a benefit (which would offer good advantages to RP builds), but too much surface area is a major detriment to titans' client-side performance and required design times, then the logical solution would to replace stabilizers with a system that you can bury inside of other blocks in place of surface area (ie: cooling blocks). These blocks would "waste" mass in exchange for simplifying a ship's design.
I image a block with .1 mass that can simulate 20 exposed surfaces. This would typically be less mass efficient than an equivalent group of light weight decorative blocks, but make up for it with simplicity of implementation. In this way, players would have 3 ways to resolve the heat-sink dilemma which each appeal to different play styles.
1- build a detailed interior: The lightest weight solution which rewards RP builds.
2- build a solid ship with elaborate outer armor details: A different kind of RP solution. Heaviest weight, but approaches the problem from a "no wasted block" perspective.
3- build a solid ship with cooling blocks: A simplified solution for ships too large for a full RP surface area to be practical.
[END EDIT]
- Piping to chambers creates two other issues as well:
- Efficiency fall off creates another situation of game mechanics defining ship shapes. If I must pipe my chambers in the shortest possible path to retain optimal efficiency, then the most logical reactor setup is a giant ball or box with chambers surrounding my reactor in minimal proximity. This limits options for curvy linear or flat ships.
- While this distance penalty is small, keep in mind many players will do stupid looking things to make a stronger ship, and anything that preforms good while looking bad will further the gap between RP and PvP builds.
- This also creates a new game mechanic where one already exists increasing the learning curve for new players. If they were connected by computers like everything else, it would be easier to distribute systems to meet your design and it would build on an already familiar system of connecting things.
- By limiting the number of chambers, you can have, you limit the optional roles you can build a ship too. Bigger reactors already mean bigger chambers. If you stick to that idea, you realize you can actually do without this limit since chambers take up mass, space, and cost in place of other systems. If for example a level 3 upgrade actually required 3 chambers, you could nix this hard limit and create more options without sacrificing balance.
- For example: I have a ship right now that can perma cloak, scan, jam, and chain drive. It has no guns, no shields, and its "hull" is made out of motherboard, but it is designed to jump while cloaked for optimal scouting. A similar class of ship could be made in the new system if I were to devote the entire ship to chamber effects and propulsion while trying to minimize its base reactor size to the bare minimum, but with a hard limit of 10 chambers, highly specialized "effect" builds like this cannot be done.
- Weapon upgrades by class are also limiting. There is a lot of merit in experimenting with combinations of beams, cannons, and missiles. This upgrade system forces you to commit to a single main weapon system.
- Instead, I would suggest focusing on things that might apply to ALL weapon classes such as increasing AI accuracy or raw damage, or at least to reduce the by class upgrades to a single tier, so that a diverse build is still an "affordable" payoff
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