Read by Schine Mass enhancers are stupid

[therimmer96]

Back in the old days, docking enhancers were there to stop you docking something massive to something small. this made sense.

These new mass enhancers don't do that. They just slow down heavy structures, meaning a ship using them for moving large things is being punished a power penalty for being cool.

I understand them for turrets. A downside to putting all your gun on a single turret, I get that. But on standard rails, they do nothing unless your trying to make something move. And moving things along a rail is not something that needs balancing. It's not like it's a way of fine tuning speed either, because of the power requirements, and the fact we have a way to do that that's better anyway.


Here's the actual suggestion then.

Remove the fact that they screw with moving things on rails. Have them only affect turrets. The extra blocks and power requirements only hurts people trying to make something cool even more than having space for rails already does.

 

[Lancake]

What about rotator blocks then? I don't really want to see 1000 meter long ships spinning 360's constantly at a ridiculously speed.

 

[therimmer96]

What about rotator blocks then? I don't really want to see 1000 meter long ships spinning 360's constantly at a ridiculously speed.

If keptic can afford to spawn charon on a server, I am sure he can afford the materials required to make that many mass enhancers and power.

 

[Lancake]

If keptic can afford to spawn charon on a server, I am sure he can afford the materials required to make that many mass enhancers and power.

Yeah but there's a big difference between placing down 400 000 enhancers + providing 12 mil power regen to run it
and placing a single rotator block down.
[DOUBLEPOST=1458315772,1458315499][/DOUBLEPOST]And the most important thing mass enhancers do is to prevent rail exploitation.
If every rail moves fast no matter what is docked to it, you can make 10 rail entities, dock them to each other and when you all move them, they move 10 times faster than normal. (EDIT, the last rail will move 10 times faster than normal, not all of them)

Dock a big thing at the end and you get a nice thing to fuck up physics. Might as well make that thing do 360's while it's moving back and forth at huge speeds.

Rail mass enhancers only enhance up to 1 chain, it's impossible for keptick to dock his charon to chained rail and have it move X times faster than what would be possible otherwise.

When rail speed gets buffed, this is something important to keep in mind...

 

[therimmer96]

Then enforce it some other way that doesn't force sub 100 meter ships to have these stupid blocks that cost power and mass just in order to have engine nacelles that move because they look cool. Whilst they reduce the chances of your theoretical scenario, they're pissing off everyone else simply because they make a change to something that pushes it over the mass limits and all of a sudden shit isn't working.

Might I also add, that if someone with a massive titan wants to screw with high speeds, they might aswell just run at a planet with everything they've got. Same results.

Also, servers have rules against that kinda shit, so either they'd be punished or some other way, or be dicking about in single player.

 

[Edymnion]

And there's the matter of collision checks.

Things moving on active rails (and even things at the ends of rails that aren't moving but potentially could if another rail block was put at the end) are constantly causing collision checks. Its a major source of lag. The bigger the objects being checked, the more lag is produced. Requiring mass enhancers for larger objects in some small way helps deter the willy nilly use of moving large objects around for no good reason. Which reduces collision checks and lag.

 

[therimmer96]

Nope. Disagree with this one aswell.

Things moving on active rails (and even things at the ends of rails that aren't moving but potentially could if another rail block was put at the end) are constantly causing collision checks.

It doesn't collision check when it's at the end of a rail, otherwise we'd get lag all the time from things being docked at stations, when in reality, we seem to get less lag. I also highly doubt that schema is that stupid to be honest.

Requiring mass enhancers for larger objects is some small way helps deter the willy nilly use of moving large objects around for no good reason. Which reduces collision checks and lag.

Moving big things slower just drags out how long the lag is being caused for.

I also wish to point out the fact that enhancers are balanced on mass rather than blocks is just as stupid, because you'd be saying you prefer to have a light fast spinning titan that you would a heavy one, when in reality, the game's not that complicated and it makes no difference

Lag is not a reason to balance, otherwise we'd have game wide mass limits by now, not to mention the fact that the game is getting better. Look 2 years ago, if something was too laggy from collisions, the game would teleport you sectors away to stop it happening, where as now we can have kilonaughts parked next to each other with most lag coming from logic and FPS.

 

[Lancake]

I also wish to point out the fact that enhancers are balanced on mass rather than blocks is just as stupid, because you'd be saying you prefer to have a light fast spinning titan that you would a heavy one, when in reality, the game's not that complicated and it makes no difference

Lag is not a reason to balance, otherwise we'd have game wide mass limits by now, not to mention the fact that the game is getting better. Look 2 years ago, if something was too laggy from collisions, the game would teleport you sectors away to stop it happening, where as now we can have kilonaughts parked next to each other with most lag coming from logic and FPS.

True, in reality we should look at dimensions and block count, but that's a complicated thing to "enhance". Rail enhancers scale linear and otherwise we would need to do more fancy stuff that many wouldn't understand.

Lag IS a reason to balance/consider, otherwise we would have:
- no power penalty
- no damage loss on penetration
- huuuge planets
- ...

In the past you could easily make a checkerboard cannon array that when dealing hull damage could kill most clients. Now it's way harder to do that due to soft limitations we put up, and some optimization.

Back on topic:
It's possible to let rail mass enhancers enhance more than 1 chain, but its efficiency goes down for every chain it goes through. That should still cause it to be near impossible to exploit rail chains I mentioned before.

Still not sure about removing the entire mechanic. Back in those dev builds I had a 6 million block ship, docked to a 2 block station that managed to spin 360's in a few seconds.
At the nose, it went about 500m/s and there wasn't even a physics check for small stuff like ship cores, it just passed through it.

Do you think it's sane though that a ship does this on a station that's 2 blocks big?

 

[therimmer96]

Do you think it's sane though that a ship does this on a station that's 2 blocks big?

I think it's insane to think that anyone would do this for any prolonged amount of time other than the luls, and I also think that it's insane to mess with people on the lower end of the scale because in the absolute extreme case some one might be a dick

Even if you're not willing to remove it outright, make the base mass it can carry ALOT higher, and just make the curve at those extremes stupid steep.

I also want to point out that your worst case scenario is currently very possible with no mass enhancers. turrets don't seem to need any mass enhancers if a player is the one controlling it, so you could just turret dock charon and swing it around to your hearts content. I've seen this done on NFD as a way to quickly point a ship back at C (also wish to point out this was a cherokee whipping around at stupid speeds and I never noticed a performance drop)

 

[Edymnion]

It doesn't collision check when it's at the end of a rail, otherwise we'd get lag all the time from things being docked at stations, when in reality, we seem to get less lag. I also highly doubt that schema is that stupid to be honest..

Last I heard it did, and I did see a reduction in FPS drop back when I first heard about it after putting speed controllers on all the docking port rails to turn them off.

Haven't tested it in a while though, it just became second nature that whenever I build a docking port, I turn it off. To my knowledge though, even a single rail block that isn't turned off is constantly running checks to try and move whatever is docked to it, even when it has nowhere to move it to.

 

[Lancake]

I also want to point out that your worst case scenario is currently very possible with no mass enhancers. turrets don't seem to need any mass enhancers if a player is the one controlling it, so you could just turret dock charon and swing it around to your hearts content. I've seen this done on NFD as a way to quickly point a ship back at C (also wish to point out this was a cherokee whipping around at stupid speeds and I never noticed a performance drop)

Yep, the enhancer slow down mechanic was way harder to implement on manually controlling turrets so it was delayed. At some point we'll need to get it to remove this method of creating lag. That doesn't mean we need to create another way to create lag.

And you'll only notice performance drops when that whipping around ship hits another medium-large ship at high speeds, starts clipping and then you got a ship on a big stick + server lag.

 

[ne3zy]

I agree about mass enhancers being annoying

 

[therimmer96]

Yep, the enhancer slow down mechanic was way harder to implement on manually controlling turrets so it was delayed. At some point we'll need to get it to remove this method of creating lag. That doesn't mean we need to create another way to create lag.

And you'll only notice performance drops when that whipping around ship hits another medium-large ship at high speeds, starts clipping and then you got a ship on a big stick + server lag.

Mining too quickly, bumping into a shop too quickly, building too quickly, they all cause lag as well. Lets balance against that by adding a block that screws with the lower end aswell.

My point that your not addressing is that mass enhancers aren't just stopping exploits. Mass enhancers are forcing smaller ships to sacrifice crucial systems and use power that was probably sacrificed to make way for those enhancers in order to function normally, even though those ships won't cause lag. Right now, I have a moving engine nacelle that has 500 blocks, and it needs enhancers to move at full speed. That's not stopping exploits, that's balancing something that has no business being balanced.

 

[Edymnion]

Mass enhancers are forcing smaller ships to sacrifice crucial systems and use power that was probably sacrificed to make way for those enhancers in order to function normally, even though those ships won't cause lag.

Now lets be fair here, no "small ship" is going to have turrets big enough to require more than a couple of enhancers. By the time you get a ship big enough to have turrets large enough to need enhancers, slapping 10-20 extra blocks on there isn't really going to do much in the way of hurting it's performance.

 

[therimmer96]

Now lets be fair here, no "small ship" is going to have turrets big enough to require more than a couple of enhancers. By the time you get a ship big enough to have turrets large enough to need enhancers, slapping 10-20 extra blocks on there isn't really going to do much in the way of hurting it's performance.

turrets.are.not.the.issue

Rails are. Something is wrong when ships like this needs enhancers for those engines to move. That's not causing any lag, all it does is cost power and space that could be cargo or interior

 

[Edymnion]

Something is wrong when ships like this needs enhancers for those engines to move.

500 blocks. Appears to be standard armor, thats 0.15 mass per block, or 75 mass per nacelle.

Thats all of 5 enhancers.

Cut a line in your hull, drop in the 5 enhancers, replace the armor over the top as 1/4 slabs. Now you have extra room that doubles as decorated hull.

I mean, not trying to sound snotty (but I'm probably coming across that way, so sorry), but the number of enhancers required is so small that they generally aren't an issue. I mean, you probably spent 3x as many blocks just on rails and logic to make a small ship have decorative moving parts. You are already sacrificing performance for cool factor

And frankly, I will take the mass enhancers over the docking enhancers we used to have any day of the week. At least we can hide the enhancers anywhere we want.

 

[Keptick]

Yeah but there's a big difference between placing down 400 000 enhancers + providing 12 mil power regen to run it
and placing a single rotator block down.
[DOUBLEPOST=1458315772,1458315499][/DOUBLEPOST]And the most important thing mass enhancers do is to prevent rail exploitation.
If every rail moves fast no matter what is docked to it, you can make 10 rail entities, dock them to each other and when you all move them, they move 10 times faster than normal. (EDIT, the last rail will move 10 times faster than normal, not all of them)

Dock a big thing at the end and you get a nice thing to fuck up physics. Might as well make that thing do 360's while it's moving back and forth at huge speeds.

Rail mass enhancers only enhance up to 1 chain, it's impossible for keptick to dock his charon to chained rail and have it move X times faster than what would be possible otherwise.

When rail speed gets buffed, this is something important to keep in mind...

Honestly, that's an edge case scenario that would be better enforced by server rules. Screwing over everyone that wants to make cool animated stuff on the OFF CHANCE of an asshole using it to screw up a server (which is much easier to do by ramming a planet fyi), is just bad game design.

Besides, if I REALLY want to spin a 1km long object in circles mass enhancers will hardly stop me from doing that, it'll actually just make the entity bigger (and lagier).

 

[nightrune]

I felt like the only change needed was to increase the mass enhanced per block.

 

[therimmer96]

500 blocks. Appears to be standard armor, thats 0.15 mass per block, or 75 mass per nacelle.

Thats all of 5 enhancers.

Cut a line in your hull, drop in the 5 enhancers, replace the armor over the top as 1/4 slabs. Now you have extra room that doubles as decorated hull.

I mean, not trying to sound snotty (but I'm probably coming across that way, so sorry), but the number of enhancers required is so small that they generally aren't an issue. I mean, you probably spent 3x as many blocks just on rails and logic to make a small ship have decorative moving parts. You are already sacrificing performance for cool factor

And frankly, I will take the mass enhancers over the docking enhancers we used to have any day of the week. At least we can hide the enhancers anywhere we want.

I'm not saying its a massive issue, I know its minor to most people, however, some places, 5 mass enhancers are a problem. Not every entity has space for 5 mass enhancers -

It's not a major issue, but its silly to have such a limit to prevent edge cases

 

[HolyCookie]

Can't disagree with the lack of moving stuff on ships.... really want to be beaten by a ship that I just couldn't shoot because it was so cool.
I would say boost the mass enhancer effect on rotators and remove the need of mass enhancers for basic rail. this way Lancake's scenario is less likely to happen but still there will be more move thingies. also chain through entities effect is really needed.