Kill Docked Power Entirely

[Winterhome]

The problem here is people here are lagging the game with exploits, as a means to bypass the power restrictions for the large ships.

I refer you to this update: StarMade v0.199.214 Auxiliary Power, Better Graphics, Better Textures, and Bugfixes

Docked power has been removed and replaced with a non-laggy replacement. It's been gone for months.

 

[jijiji]

Can we just kill docked power entirely?

Why not just continue power softcap to docked entities. So 2m+2m will be about 2.5m total power income?

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I refer you to this update: StarMade v0.199.214 Auxiliary Power, Better Graphics, Better Textures, and Bugfixes

Docked power has been removed and replaced with a non-laggy replacement. It's been gone for months.

we have found a way to exploit the new system. Basically we create a "battery", dock that to a rail, then build our turrets on that.

the battery supplies 2m power to the turret, and the turret can spin and move very fast, and fire a giant nasty gun.

 

[Spoolooni]

I prefer another suggestion I saw that if a docked entity had it's rail destroyed, it would stop functioning, but not undock (something about a ghost rail being made, still looking for the thread again). That way we get rid of the problems with undocked entities in the middle of ships altogether, including rail doors etc.

Every solution suggested far has been nothing but adding complexities to an already sluggish combat system with zero depth. This solution seems the most modest and the most simple.

 

[Batavium]

Docked power has been removed and replaced with a non-laggy replacement. It's been gone for months.

we have found a way to exploit the new system. Basically we create a "battery", dock that to a rail, then build our turrets on that.

Philthy Mcnasty beat me to it.

Edymnion doesn't mean the traditional docked reactor that used logic and a power supply beam.

What you see now is that people dock extra pieces with power modules to the main body of the ship. And then dock their turrets to that. This way all power generation of the main ship can be used for trusters and main weapons.

That is why i said it's more multiple ships acting as one. Or in Philthy Mcnasty words a battery.

Disabling all rail power transfer will impact turrets and would require redesign of most of them.

I am hurting my brain at finding a solution that doesn't punish everyone. From a server health stand point we want docked entities gone.

Adding different types of cores would also work. Like turrets needing a turret core. And doors and airlocks needing a utility core. As soon as you then dock two ships cores both ships loose main power. "like docking to an advanced shop"

But that would again require redesign of mostly everything. Unless we could swap out individual parts of a blueprint in this case the core.

EDIT

If cores could set type like a Bobby ai then it would not require a need to redesign. Just change the type of existing stuff and it works again.

Types would be: ship, turret, utility and ??? "fill in anything thats missing"

Main kicker as soon as you dock two ship cores both ships loose main power. This adds some gameplay to as in many movies. Undocking from a ship in order to fight is often a dramatic moment. "Star Wars, Star Trek, etc etc"

EDIT

 

[Shadow2Lead]

I'd definitely agree with killing docked power, if power generation were balanced so that turrets were still viable from an energy production standpoint. This would also have the (imo) visual benefit of shrinking turrets.

Perhaps all power generation on all entities could count towards a single soft cap and that soft cap could be variable based on the total mass of the ship and all docked entities? This way as you would want/need to bypass the soft cap it slowly rises, but you're still less efficient than building in the small/mid size range.

--- This gets a bit OT, but I think is still relevant to the combined balance & lag problems which I think are the reason this topic still needs to exist after multiple attempts by the devs to fix this general problem:

Regarding the docked entities in general and the lag resulting from being separated, I've been baffled since I started playing why rails/docks/(perhaps logic) aren't all indestructible & insubstantial like an overheating core. With the exception of turret rails* they all seem to be primarily non-combat related in how they are supposed** to be used. As a newcomer it would have made (and frankly still would make) a lot more sense if all shields/power/systems were shared between all attached entities, rather than the current rather arbitrary set of different rules (where shields only share downwards for ~75%, power shares downwards but only if the power supply meets the entire power demand, etc.) This would make designing modular ships much more intuitive and I believe make balancing shields/power/systems much easier since you would balance based on the resulting total ship (ie. root entity and all of it's attached entities) rather than each individual entity which results in that ship.

TLDR; Intuitively to me, the main ship (ignoring turrets) should behave identically if it is one entity or if I take that entity cut it in two and dock them together. This also makes balancing power/shields/etc. easier. This also removes the only combat effectiveness related reason I can think of for rails to be destructible.


*Turret blocks ideally would have hp and just stop turning after being shot/destroyed rather than disappearing.

**Right now docked armor, docked engines, docked power (again) are all useful combat elements, but also all seem to be regarded as bugs/exploits so strengthening them isn't a problem imo since they are intended to be removed, at some point in some way.

Edited for clarity.

 

[Comradecolonel]

Why not just continue power softcap to docked entities. So 2m+2m will be about 2.5m total power income?

Why are you guys ignoring this idea. It seems to me like the easiest solution. It doesn't fix the docked hull issue but it should address people making ships like the Arbalest that I linked to.

Shadow2Lead And this guy's idea too.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I'd definitely agree with killing docked power, if power generation were balanced so that turrets were still viable from an energy production standpoint. This would also have the (imo) visual benefit of shrinking turrets.

Perhaps all power generation on all entities could count towards a single soft cap and that soft cap could be variable based on the total mass of the ship and all docked entities? This way as you would want/need to bypass the soft cap it slowly rises, but you're still less efficient than building in the small/mid size range.

--- This gets a bit OT, but I think is still relevant to the combined balance & lag problems which I think are the reason this topic still needs to exist after multiple attempts by the devs to fix this general problem:

Regarding the docked entities in general and the lag resulting from being separated, I've been baffled since I started playing why rails/docks/(perhaps logic) aren't all indestructible & insubstantial like an overheating core. With the exception of turret rails* they all seem to be primarily non-combat related in how they are supposed** to be used. As a newcomer it would have made (and frankly still would make) a lot more sense if all shields/power/systems were shared between all attached entities, rather than the current rather arbitrary set of different rules (where shields only share downwards for ~75%, power shares downwards but only if the power supply meets the entire power demand, etc.) This would make designing modular ships much more intuitive and I believe make balancing shields/power/systems much easier since you would balance based on the resulting total ship (ie. root entity and all of it's attached entities) rather than each individual entity which results in that ship.

TLDR; Intuitively to me, the main ship (ignoring turrets) should behave identically if it is one entity or if I take that entity cut it in two and dock them together. This also makes balancing power/shields/etc. easier. This also removes the only combat effectiveness related reason I can think of for rails to be destructible.


*Turret blocks ideally would have hp and just stop turning after being shot/destroyed rather than disappearing.

**Right now docked armor, docked engines, docked power (again) are all useful combat elements, but also all seem to be regarded as bugs/exploits so strengthening them isn't a problem imo since they are intended to be removed, at some point in some way.

Edited for clarity.

I think that could work. Make rails/turret axis indestructible as long as the turret still has blocks. However the turret axis can still take damage and lose the ability to turn. Once the turret is completely destroyed, then the turret axis can die. Things will never undock due to damage then.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Why are you guys ignoring this idea. It seems to me like the easiest solution. It doesn't fix the docked hull issue but it should address people making ships like the Arbalest that I linked to.

Shadow2Lead And this guy's idea too.

How would this translate to docked ships in a mother ship?
[doublepost=1481923319,1481923068][/doublepost]Maybe we really do need power cables. Having a cable block that adds system hp, and has to be connected to weapon systems for them to get power would be both realistic, and would balance things out. It also forces pvp ships to work on the interior.

 

[Batavium]

Why are you guys ignoring this idea. It seems to me like the easiest solution. It doesn't fix the docked hull issue but it should address people making ships like the Arbalest that I linked to.

Shadow2Lead And this guy's idea too.

The idea is good but i don't think StarMade understands entities in this way. That is why i didn't add a like. Every entity "core" can have 2 mil regeneration they are stand alone. How does the game tell them apart or add them while docked? I could be wrong but i think it would require major recoding same with ghost rails. I like solutions to use what is in the game already. Just in a better or different way so it's easy to implement.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

How would this translate to docked ships in a mother ship?

Frankly, unideally imo: all docked ships would act as either power/shield boosters or power/shield drains depending on relative the system/mass ratios of the docked ships and the mothership, and how all that relates to whatever soft caps are in place.

So yeah, very valid point, and I don't have a good answer other than I think I prefer that set of weirdness/problems to the current set. (After all, the problem is if a docked ship hurts a motherships combat capabilities right? That's not too big a problem since the entire point of a mothership is for the docked ship/fighter to undock before/during combat.)

Off the top of my head you could bandaid the issue by having separate dockers for modules vs ships. So entities docked via a "module docker" would behave as described, but somehow be difficult to undock (EDIT: have them only be undockable at a shipyard). Entities docked via a "ship docker" would behave under a set of rules/penalties that would make them non-useful when docked, but easy to undock. But I can't think of a way to make this work well/better.

The idea is good but i don't think StarMade understands entities in this way.

- If you're right about this and if it's somewhat easily changeable and if the idea is solid I think the game is in Alpha and it'd be worth taking the time to change.
- If you're right about this and it's very difficult to change or impossible, which unfortunately makes sense, that'd be great to know for certain so we can limit ourselves to brainstorming solutions within the framework of what's possible, because power (and other unintended side effects of the docking system) still need fixing.

 

[Guthris]

A lot of yammering about spilt milk, docked hull is handy in a competition when all ships are restricted to a reasonable size and fighting at equal odds. Calling anything and everything an exploit seems to be the default nowadays. If the game allows it under vanilla circumstances and no configs were changed to accommodate the build requirements during construction.

Its a beneficial use of ingame mechanics

Video game exploits - Wikipedia
"
Game mechanics
Taking advantage of the systems that make up the gameplay. A game mechanics exploit is not a bug—it is working as designed, but at the same time is not working as intended
"

Until you lobby to get the "feature" fixed, try to tone down on calling exploits. People adapted and overcame former limitations. Restrictions were added and will continue to be added and every single time people will find new ways to think outside the box and come up with beneficial tactics within the bounds of current game mechanics.

Outside blood & steel i have seen 0 counts of docked hull in the 2 1/2 years ive played this game. Ive seen plenty reactors being used, they lagged upon undocking. Sometimes crashed a server here and there. However. You lobbied, (complained) and got your way. Now we have Aux reactor banks.

So what if people dock the odd reactor to support a turret. I cant imagine however that tactic being as over saturated on a shell as the former 100 reactor titans. Most people cant even fit 100 turrets big enough to demand their own additional 2m e/s. You just dont have that kind of surface area on most ships.

This entire argument boils down to having the cake and eating it. I see the same at work. Non-smokers lobbied to remove smokers from inside restaurants. Fair enough they get forced outside. Then in the summer people outside complain that all the smokers are outside on the terrace. "Well mate, you wanted us here. I dont want to deal with you but im not trying to get your arrogant ass removed. Let me have my coffee and a smoke, I work 50 hour weeks"

If developers deem it an exploit let them say it publicly. Fix in next week and people will stop doing it. For better or worse the amount of options to cause lag have been severely reduced since before the aux reactor patch. There is a steady pace of improvement to performance. following the trend of patches we've seen.

 

[Comradecolonel]

The whole point of the 2 mil cap for power is to keep ships from getting exponentially more powerful. If you can just plop down more entities that can still run at max efficiency, that is essentially free power with only drawback being extra weight. You gain all this extra fire power and it also protects the hull since shots to the battery and turret don't effect the block hp of the main ship. I can just see some crazy huge titan with large turrets and docked hull all over it having an obscene amount of firepower. If the ship ever goes down then so does the server. It seems cool but its the kinda stuff that makes people stop playing.

Docked hull is most certainly an exploit. It isn't just babies crying over spilt milk. If you look at the ship in my earlier post you'll understand. Even watching blood and steel you'll understand. It is an misuse of mechanic to overcome a limitation to do what that limit was created for. You are telling the game that you aren't actually piloting one ship its 3. They just happen to have loopholes that allow you to control the 3 ships as if they were one. How is that not exploiting the mechanics of the game?

This is a quote from the wikipedia defintion you linked:
"an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers. Exploits have been classified as a form of cheating; however, the precise determination of what is or is not considered an exploit can be controversial. This debate stems from a number of factors but typically involves the argument that the issues are part of the game and require no changes or external programs to take advantage of them."

 

[Shadow2Lead]

To be fair exploit or not, going by the wiki definition, is entirely dependent on the intentions of the devs. That said even if it's fair to nitpick the word choice, the point holds.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

The whole point of the 2 mil cap for power is to keep ships from getting exponentially more powerful. If you can just plop down more entities that can still run at max efficiency, that is essentially free power with only drawback being extra weight. You gain all this extra fire power and it also protects the hull since shots to the battery and turret don't effect the block hp of the main ship. I can just see some crazy huge titan with large turrets and docked hull all over it having an obscene amount of firepower. If the ship ever goes down then so does the server. It seems cool but its the kinda stuff that makes people stop playing.

Docked hull is most certainly an exploit. It isn't just babies crying over spilt milk. If you look at the ship in my earlier post you'll understand. Even watching blood and steel you'll understand. It is an misuse of mechanic to overcome a limitation to do what that limit was created for. You are telling the game that you aren't actually piloting one ship its 3. They just happen to have loopholes that allow you to control the 3 ships as if they were one. How is that not exploiting the mechanics of the game?

This is a quote from the wikipedia defintion you linked:
"an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers. Exploits have been classified as a form of cheating; however, the precise determination of what is or is not considered an exploit can be controversial. This debate stems from a number of factors but typically involves the argument that the issues are part of the game and require no changes or external programs to take advantage of them."

I don't think this is a loophole, i think this is part of the game design.


A lot of ships are modular. For example, making the TNG Enterprise is much easier with rail docker than it is with the old system. Now you dock both ships together, and inherit the thrust from the engine section.

A lot of really good ships are modular in sci fi and real life.

Following the 5 whys, the problem here is optimization of the game itself. This is not a finished game, this is an early alpha game, and they have halted optimization to work on adding npc factions, hence why when a docked entity breaks away, it lags the game.

Now, that cheesy ship....

I don't think that this is exploiting the rail system, i think this is the intended use. A self powering, self shielded weapons module is pretty nasty, but that is part of the rail system. This is not the only ship that does this, there are several module based ships out there now, that move very quickly, turn very quickly, have massive shields each, and have some really amazing systems.

The only people that are really disadvantaged by this, are the SM edit guys like myself, who turn shells into ships. It is a little difficult to make a shell modular when you get it as a shell, but i have found ways around this. I have multiple docking points for the modules. This is because i anticipate the day when this game is very optimized, and collision damage becomes a part of every day life because it won't crash the servers.

 

[Az14el]

these excessively docked ships might be seen as exploitative, they're generally very weak, MAY excel in defence, have more direct counters than a traditional ship, counters aren't really required to beat them due to their extreme weakness on armor phases, will have split shields and so armor phasing can be forced by far less damage/dps, heavily docked & threaded turret bases are generally either terribly unstable lag wise or functionally or just purely on paper theory and not actually built.

This doesn't address the problems that they cause a lot of lag & can be just unpleasant to fight, especially with several Ion layers as it can feel like you're doing no damage at all for a while (you definitely ARE). As far as Balance problems if it's the damage potential, I have bad news, regular old turrets without specific docking arms do that too and they have been doing that for as long almost as I've been playing. We have fleets now too which let you inflate damage at an even crazier rate than turrets. I agree shooting up a heavily docked large ship can cause a lot of lag, potentially even crash servers, but they're not fucking exploiting they're just being retarded. There's a point where it's useful and admittedly some shoot right past that into "touch me and i fuck your computer" territory and that's about their ships only strength by that point. If they're actually using that as an "advantage", then yes they're exploiting, fine, but they're also really really stupid and not really helping themselves.

Jokes on me though i guess because I did the same laggy docking crap to protect huge banks of PSUs ready to shake around inside my ship on undocking back when they were a thing, but so did most of us. So that said docked elements like weapons systems, powered docking arms & docked armor definitely is a thing that needs to be monitored, if it becomes just the go to meta used as ubiquitously & aggressively as PSUs were then it's definitely a problem.

 

[Panpiper]

I prefer another suggestion I saw that if a docked entity had it's rail destroyed, it would stop functioning, but not undock (something about a ghost rail being made, still looking for the thread again). That way we get rid of the problems with undocked entities in the middle of ships altogether, including rail doors etc.

Ghost Rails

Buff, nerf, patch, buff, nerf, patch, buff, nerf, patch... Just do away with the whole free flying undocked due to damage issue all together and be done with it completely.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Ghost Rails

Buff, nerf, patch, buff, nerf, patch, buff, nerf, patch... Just do away with the whole free flying undocked due to damage issue all together and be done with it completely.

Assuming this isn't sarcasm? I agree completely. The thing is rails being vulnerable is a weakness that has been baked into balance as of now - which is how we got to here from power.

And now off to read the linked thread

 

[Sachys]

Assuming this isn't sarcasm? I agree completely. The thing is rails being vulnerable is a weakness that has been baked into balance as of now - which is how we got to here from power.

And now off to read the linked thread

so at which point when is it fine for people who cannot match the mass / weapon power of a certain factions ship to cloack bomb the turrets of the other ship with warheads?

 

[Raisinbat]

Why are people using docked reactors still? They don't do anything.

I refer you to this update: StarMade v0.199.214 Auxiliary Power, Better Graphics, Better Textures, and Bugfixes

Docked power has been removed and replaced with a non-laggy replacement. It's been gone for months.

I refer you two to THIS FUCKING THREAD. READ IT.

Me too, but if people won't voluntarily stop making docked reactor chains that break the server every time one of them comes loose, what choice do we have?

No you have the choice to build one as complex as you like but it should never be mandatory. Veteran starmade players can and will build complex wonders. But it should not effect new players from getting to grips with the game regardless of ships size.

Do you complain about people kicking footballs to hard, or when people use fire magic against ice monsters? People follow what works, and no, people aren't going to make "complex wonders" if there's no fucking point to them. You're basically complaining that people are playing the game differently from you. It's fucking retarded, please stop. Making your ships high end PVP ships isn't mandatory, just like making them pretty isn't, but if there's no way to make GOOD design that's better than BAD design, you kill the reason a lot of people play.

I also sincerely doubt that some random idiot, completely new to the game, needs to be able to build a fucking titan immediately. Why the fuck would that be necessary, you can't do that in any other fucking game.

If this shit is about fixing the performance issues with docked hull, then this:

Why just not make docked entities go boom instantly, destroying (or not?) blocks around the place where they were docked? With proper animation, and switched off collisions, could look definitely better than 1fps, laggy experience.

Or shadow docks are how you go about fixing it; modular ships don't lag when they're just floating around, only on undocks.

If people are pissed off that modular ship design is stronk, if you don't build them, please shut your fucking mouth? Most of the sugestions in here are blatantly fucking retarded, because the people making them don't understand or care about the problems involved.

Why are you guys ignoring this idea. It seems to me like the easiest solution. It doesn't fix the docked hull issue but it should address people making ships like the Arbalest that I linked to.

As the author of that ship here's why it won't work, along with several other reasons. That ship isn't even modular for the sake of power generation, except the cannon, but to reduce mass cost of support systems.

The game punishes single entity ships in a myriad of dumb ways, power is just one of them, but consider that we have fucking fleets now:

What happens when a 500.000 mass fleet of small ships armed with EMP weapons runs into a 500.000 mass single ship?

The fleet of small ships have a massive power generation bonus and can easily outtage the large ship, which becomes completely unable to do anything. Currently turrets will still work, unless they're also being targetted, but at least turrets can compete. Modular design is how larger ships catches up with fleets of smaller ships. Game should have a ballance between large ships and small ships, not emphasize one of them to ridiculous extremes.

Also keep in mind that surface docking is a planned feature (as far as i remember, maybe correct me on that) and once that comes in you get alll the good old exploits right back, just with surface docking :D Surface docked turrets, surface docked armor, surface docked shields etc etc etc.

Fixing docked power/entities and all this other shit requires two core changes:

• Remove the power bonus and reballance power consumption
• Remove the mass cost for support systems and make them work on linear scales

I wrote a longass post about fixing this shit in detail a while back but nobody cared: My Stupid Power Mechanics Thesis

As for all the other changes:

Every solution suggested far has been nothing but adding complexities to an already sluggish combat system with zero depth.

People keep complaining about complexity in this game, but this approach is what causes nonsensical complexity. First we had power system with reactor lines, but that couldn't be allowed to continue on forever, so softcab was added. Then that wasn't good enough for big ships, people were using docked reactors, so the cap was raised. That didn't fix anything so auxilliary power was added. That didn't fix anything so people are still using docked entities, what will the next rule be?

Refusing to go back and rework bad mechanics instead of just piling on arbitrary rule after rule trying to catch every exploit is how you get nonsensically overcomplicated design.

A lot of yammering about spilt milk, docked hull is handy in a competition when all ships are restricted to a reasonable size and fighting at equal odds. Calling anything and everything an exploit seems to be the default nowadays. If the game allows it under vanilla circumstances and no configs were changed to accommodate the build requirements during construction.

Its a beneficial use of ingame mechanic

Maybe if shine would get their fingers out of a space whale butthole and fix the issues in the game that have been there for years, there wouldn't be so many "exploits" around.

The whole point of the 2 mil cap for power is to keep ships from getting exponentially more powerful. If you can just plop down more entities that can still run at max efficiency, that is essentially free power with only drawback being extra weight. You gain all this extra fire power and it also protects the hull since shots to the battery and turret don't effect the block hp of the main ship. I can just see some crazy huge titan with large turrets and docked hull all over it having an obscene amount of firepower. If the ship ever goes down then so does the server. It seems cool but its the kinda stuff that makes people stop playing."

The point of the 2mil cap is that schine are fucking idiots, and removing the powerbonus would stop all this nonsense once and for all. I'm sure this all makes a lot of sense when comparing single entity ships to modular ones, but compare both ships TO FLEETS. Fleets of identical mass would utterly fucking annihilate large ships, so what is the point of large ships then?

As has allready been pointed out, modular ships DON'T LAG WHEN THEY AREN'T DYING. Adress the fucking issue, the lag, if that's what your problem is.