Objective of this post
Provide input on how I see the design acpect of the game improve. To get there, I will talk abit about other stuff, so that you may know how and why my thoughts on the subject spawned.
Me and Starmade
Just tried out Starmade for a few days, and I must say that it sparked an interrest. Having played quite a bit of sci-fi RPG (GURPS) and dabbled in designing my own space-battle board game, the design part of this game is great...
Still there are some parts that I hope to see improve (and since the game is in alpha, I guess that the chance is great), and others where I think that MY way is more interesting (atleast to me).
Warning
Since i have a lot to say, I warn that this could be a bit of a read, but I hope that my input can be of some use, and/or spawn a good discustion.
NB: English is not my first language, so but I hope it does not ruin your day.
Game versus Simulation
I think of Starmade as more of a game, than a simulation. I do however have some pre-expectations to how the game will work... or simulate.
In the case of science fiction, my veiw has been influenced by both space-opra and hard science. I like when engines roar in space, and lasers draw coloured traces, even though I know that space has no medium for transfering sound, and no particles to ionice to create visible light.
As I treat Starmade as a game, I like it to be balanced in some way. In a simulation I can be perfectly happy with large battlecruisers being both faster and more manueverable than a smaller craft, but any Sci-Fi space opra will tell you that it is the opposite way arround (at least when it comes to manueverability).
The balancing part, being that there should be pros and cons to any ship design, while not making all ships equally good at the same tasks.
Turning Time for ships.
Some of the post I have read on the forum, regards the subject of slow turning speed for large vessels. While this often match Space Opra, and in my oppinion also makes for good game balance, it is hardly all hard-science. There was made a point that larger vessels may bend and twist if they turn to fast, and not knowning better, I am ready to accept that.
Still, I find it somewhat boring that turning is only a function of mass.
Combine this with my objective for design options, I think that the three dimentions of the vessel should affect how it twists and turns. I will also discuss on how angled thrusters COULD affect this, but that is less important (to me at least).
Turning around the Z-axis (left and right):
Should be a funtion of total mass, and the longest dimentions of the vessel on both the X and Y axis. The formula could be something like:
ZTurn = INDEX/(M+XLength+YLength)
Where M is total mass of ship, XLength is the length of the ship, YLength the width of the ship and INDEX the baseline turning speed. In the same way, the two other exis-turns would be:
Turning around the Y-axis (up and down)
YTurn = INDEX/(M+ZLength+XLength)
Turning around the X-axis (Rolling)
ZTurn = INDEX/(M+YLength+ZLength)
But wait I hear you say, this means that longer ships, turn slower on the most important axis, and most cool ships on film tends to be long.
I hear you, so perhaps XLength should be halved for the above formula, on account that the thrusters are aligned along the x-axis.
AND even better, we will have to come up for a good design reason that longer ships have other advantages, like long-barreled weapons being better than cubed weapons... I will go into this later.
For now lets just say that if you are willing to give up x-axis turn speed, you can mount better guns. Thats a design option that matters, and is in line with a lot of space opra (like mass accelerator weapons from the game Mass Effect).
A note on dedicated thrusters for turning the ship. Using the above formula, turning thrusters should only be able compensate for the mass(M) of the ship, and not the length along the three axis. This will make sure that larger ships cannot reach the potential of smaller ships, when it comes to manueverability.
Weapons and Damage Reduction
As I understand, it does not matter in what shape, or form you build a weapon, as long as all blocks are connected. I suggest that the shape of the weapon blocks, affect the weapons stats, rather than allowing us to change the stats from the weapons tab.
My suggestion would be that you track the following about a weapon:
To get Barrel Length and Bore size, it will have to be determined how long the weapon is in a continues line, and how many of such lines are adjecent.
Damage should be a function of Bore Size and Barrel Length
Range and Speed a function of Barrel Length
And rate of fire a function of Mass devided by Bore Size
This give long guns an advantages, and hopefully making designing guns that look like guns a better option.
If your ship is not long enough to house the many weapon blocks you would like, you can still get a better rate of fire, by adding them to the side of the barrel.
What about Damage Reduction
Yes what about it? In Starmade, damage reduction works as a percentages, either 25% or 50%, as determined by the plating you choose to give your ship. This result in Damage Per Second, or DPS, being the most important stat (IMO), which according to the wiki means that I should just mass one-block Anti-Matter cannons, as they have the best DPS per block.
In addition, shields protect for 100%, until they run out of energy.
I think it would be cool if Shields protected against a flat amount from each shot (reducing shield energy), with the remaing damage getting reduced by the armor plating %.
This would make high damage/low DPS weapons good against shielded targets, and low damage/high DPS weapons good against unshielded targets.
A few exsamples. The Vessel SS Starmaid has normal plating (25% reduction), 100 shield energy and a shield damage reduction of 10.
The Starmaid is hit by a low damage/high DPS weapon five times. The weapon deals 14 damage per hit. As the Starmaids shields are at full energy, all shots have thier damage reduced by 10 points, allowing only four points of damage through, which is reduced by the armor, to five times three points of damage. The shields energy is reduced by five times 10 points, and is now down on half capacity.
The next hit to the Starmaid is from a high damage/low DPS weapon. It hits with a single shot for 50 damage. Reduced by 10 points going through the shield, it inflicts 40 points on the armour, or 30 points after armour reduction. Shield energy drops another 10 points.
As you can see, the smaller shots were reduced to dealing only 21% of thier original damage, while the larger shot dealt 60% of its damage.
But how do we determin damage reduction from shields?
Read on for the answere:
Shields
Right now it does not matter how you place your shield blocks. Not much design choice in that. With the above concept of having both shield energy (how much total damage they can stop before recharge), and shield damage reduction (how much damage they can stop from a single shot), we have created a purpose for design.
My suggestion is that energy is a function of the number of unique shield groups, perhaps keeping the concept of each additional shield group adding less and less energy.
Shield damage reduction should then be a function of the average size of all shield groups.
So when placing down more shield blocks, you can choose to add them to excisting groups to improve the damage reduction, or add them as a new group, to improve total energy.
If adding a new group, damage reduction will fall, if the group is smaller than the other groups.
The formula may be something like:
Energy=Squareroot of Groups*INDEX, with index being a number set by design choice.
DR=Average size of groups, plus Size of smallest group.
Adding the size of the smallest group, removes the insentive to have 100 one block shields and one 999 block shield, if going for high DR.
Thrusters
Perhaps the design accepct that I think needs the most improvement.
To get things straight, lets agree that the thrusters in Starmade are whats called reactionless thrusters, as they simply provide acceration, without expelling mass.
Even though they are reactionless, and as so constitute super-science, Space Opra demands that they are placed at the rear of the craft, in big chunks and possible more of them than only one.
None of the rules for thrusters (as I understand them) in Starmade, currently support any of the above. Surely its my veiw of how things ought to be, but I think Luke Skywalker would agree with me.
So what are we looking at. Right now thrusters produce thrust, more as the dimentions of a single cluster of thrusters (lets call it a drive) increase, and consume power. They can be placed anywhere one the ship.
First off, I think that a few rules are in place for a thruster to work. If just a single of the following rules apply, the truster works:
I would like to keep the current calculation for thrust, as it is cool enough.
But what then should change if I pick a suboptimal design for thrust output?
Power consumption offcource, which should be a function of the largest dimention of the drive and the mass of the drive. I have not come up with a formula yet, but it should be so that splitting thrusters into multiple drives, reduce the power drain per point of thrust, at the cost of thrust per block.
This gives a design choice of an effective ship, versus a fast accelerating ship.
The higher acceleration you want, the less likely you are to afford cloacking and jamming, and weapons will drain energy faster.
Effective ships may have a lower acceleration, but more excess power for all thier power needs.
Power
At first I found the design a bit boring, until I saw some pictures of huge cubes of interlocking powersblocks, providing huge amounts of power.
Still, I feel that the power core design could be somwhat improved, by discarding the storage block, and make power storage a function of the the powercores longest dimentions and the total number of blocks in the power core.
(A powercore is what I have taken to call all connected powerblocks).
Storage=Blocks*(Blocks/[Largest Dimention]^3)*INDEX
Where INDEX is the most power a single block should be able to hold. If INDEX is 10,000, this means that a solid-cube-core can hold 10,000 power per block in the powercore.
The End
These are the concepts that I can be most clear about now, but I may add to this after having played some more, or hopefully gotten a few comments.
Provide input on how I see the design acpect of the game improve. To get there, I will talk abit about other stuff, so that you may know how and why my thoughts on the subject spawned.
Me and Starmade
Just tried out Starmade for a few days, and I must say that it sparked an interrest. Having played quite a bit of sci-fi RPG (GURPS) and dabbled in designing my own space-battle board game, the design part of this game is great...
Still there are some parts that I hope to see improve (and since the game is in alpha, I guess that the chance is great), and others where I think that MY way is more interesting (atleast to me).
Warning
Since i have a lot to say, I warn that this could be a bit of a read, but I hope that my input can be of some use, and/or spawn a good discustion.
NB: English is not my first language, so but I hope it does not ruin your day.
Game versus Simulation
I think of Starmade as more of a game, than a simulation. I do however have some pre-expectations to how the game will work... or simulate.
In the case of science fiction, my veiw has been influenced by both space-opra and hard science. I like when engines roar in space, and lasers draw coloured traces, even though I know that space has no medium for transfering sound, and no particles to ionice to create visible light.
As I treat Starmade as a game, I like it to be balanced in some way. In a simulation I can be perfectly happy with large battlecruisers being both faster and more manueverable than a smaller craft, but any Sci-Fi space opra will tell you that it is the opposite way arround (at least when it comes to manueverability).
The balancing part, being that there should be pros and cons to any ship design, while not making all ships equally good at the same tasks.
Turning Time for ships.
Some of the post I have read on the forum, regards the subject of slow turning speed for large vessels. While this often match Space Opra, and in my oppinion also makes for good game balance, it is hardly all hard-science. There was made a point that larger vessels may bend and twist if they turn to fast, and not knowning better, I am ready to accept that.
Still, I find it somewhat boring that turning is only a function of mass.
Combine this with my objective for design options, I think that the three dimentions of the vessel should affect how it twists and turns. I will also discuss on how angled thrusters COULD affect this, but that is less important (to me at least).
Turning around the Z-axis (left and right):
Should be a funtion of total mass, and the longest dimentions of the vessel on both the X and Y axis. The formula could be something like:
ZTurn = INDEX/(M+XLength+YLength)
Where M is total mass of ship, XLength is the length of the ship, YLength the width of the ship and INDEX the baseline turning speed. In the same way, the two other exis-turns would be:
Turning around the Y-axis (up and down)
YTurn = INDEX/(M+ZLength+XLength)
Turning around the X-axis (Rolling)
ZTurn = INDEX/(M+YLength+ZLength)
But wait I hear you say, this means that longer ships, turn slower on the most important axis, and most cool ships on film tends to be long.
I hear you, so perhaps XLength should be halved for the above formula, on account that the thrusters are aligned along the x-axis.
AND even better, we will have to come up for a good design reason that longer ships have other advantages, like long-barreled weapons being better than cubed weapons... I will go into this later.
For now lets just say that if you are willing to give up x-axis turn speed, you can mount better guns. Thats a design option that matters, and is in line with a lot of space opra (like mass accelerator weapons from the game Mass Effect).
A note on dedicated thrusters for turning the ship. Using the above formula, turning thrusters should only be able compensate for the mass(M) of the ship, and not the length along the three axis. This will make sure that larger ships cannot reach the potential of smaller ships, when it comes to manueverability.
Weapons and Damage Reduction
As I understand, it does not matter in what shape, or form you build a weapon, as long as all blocks are connected. I suggest that the shape of the weapon blocks, affect the weapons stats, rather than allowing us to change the stats from the weapons tab.
My suggestion would be that you track the following about a weapon:
Total Mass
Barrel Length
Bore Size
To get Barrel Length and Bore size, it will have to be determined how long the weapon is in a continues line, and how many of such lines are adjecent.
Damage should be a function of Bore Size and Barrel Length
Range and Speed a function of Barrel Length
And rate of fire a function of Mass devided by Bore Size
This give long guns an advantages, and hopefully making designing guns that look like guns a better option.
If your ship is not long enough to house the many weapon blocks you would like, you can still get a better rate of fire, by adding them to the side of the barrel.
What about Damage Reduction
Yes what about it? In Starmade, damage reduction works as a percentages, either 25% or 50%, as determined by the plating you choose to give your ship. This result in Damage Per Second, or DPS, being the most important stat (IMO), which according to the wiki means that I should just mass one-block Anti-Matter cannons, as they have the best DPS per block.
In addition, shields protect for 100%, until they run out of energy.
I think it would be cool if Shields protected against a flat amount from each shot (reducing shield energy), with the remaing damage getting reduced by the armor plating %.
This would make high damage/low DPS weapons good against shielded targets, and low damage/high DPS weapons good against unshielded targets.
A few exsamples. The Vessel SS Starmaid has normal plating (25% reduction), 100 shield energy and a shield damage reduction of 10.
The Starmaid is hit by a low damage/high DPS weapon five times. The weapon deals 14 damage per hit. As the Starmaids shields are at full energy, all shots have thier damage reduced by 10 points, allowing only four points of damage through, which is reduced by the armor, to five times three points of damage. The shields energy is reduced by five times 10 points, and is now down on half capacity.
The next hit to the Starmaid is from a high damage/low DPS weapon. It hits with a single shot for 50 damage. Reduced by 10 points going through the shield, it inflicts 40 points on the armour, or 30 points after armour reduction. Shield energy drops another 10 points.
As you can see, the smaller shots were reduced to dealing only 21% of thier original damage, while the larger shot dealt 60% of its damage.
But how do we determin damage reduction from shields?
Read on for the answere:
Shields
Right now it does not matter how you place your shield blocks. Not much design choice in that. With the above concept of having both shield energy (how much total damage they can stop before recharge), and shield damage reduction (how much damage they can stop from a single shot), we have created a purpose for design.
My suggestion is that energy is a function of the number of unique shield groups, perhaps keeping the concept of each additional shield group adding less and less energy.
Shield damage reduction should then be a function of the average size of all shield groups.
So when placing down more shield blocks, you can choose to add them to excisting groups to improve the damage reduction, or add them as a new group, to improve total energy.
If adding a new group, damage reduction will fall, if the group is smaller than the other groups.
The formula may be something like:
Energy=Squareroot of Groups*INDEX, with index being a number set by design choice.
DR=Average size of groups, plus Size of smallest group.
Adding the size of the smallest group, removes the insentive to have 100 one block shields and one 999 block shield, if going for high DR.
Thrusters
Perhaps the design accepct that I think needs the most improvement.
To get things straight, lets agree that the thrusters in Starmade are whats called reactionless thrusters, as they simply provide acceration, without expelling mass.
Even though they are reactionless, and as so constitute super-science, Space Opra demands that they are placed at the rear of the craft, in big chunks and possible more of them than only one.
None of the rules for thrusters (as I understand them) in Starmade, currently support any of the above. Surely its my veiw of how things ought to be, but I think Luke Skywalker would agree with me.
So what are we looking at. Right now thrusters produce thrust, more as the dimentions of a single cluster of thrusters (lets call it a drive) increase, and consume power. They can be placed anywhere one the ship.
First off, I think that a few rules are in place for a thruster to work. If just a single of the following rules apply, the truster works:
It has a clear rear view (not blocked by any other block from the ship, or docked stuff.
It is is adjecent to a block that follows the above rule (making it possible to hide the edge of a drive.
It is in front (on the x-axis) of any other working thruster.
I would like to keep the current calculation for thrust, as it is cool enough.
But what then should change if I pick a suboptimal design for thrust output?
Power consumption offcource, which should be a function of the largest dimention of the drive and the mass of the drive. I have not come up with a formula yet, but it should be so that splitting thrusters into multiple drives, reduce the power drain per point of thrust, at the cost of thrust per block.
This gives a design choice of an effective ship, versus a fast accelerating ship.
The higher acceleration you want, the less likely you are to afford cloacking and jamming, and weapons will drain energy faster.
Effective ships may have a lower acceleration, but more excess power for all thier power needs.
Power
At first I found the design a bit boring, until I saw some pictures of huge cubes of interlocking powersblocks, providing huge amounts of power.
Still, I feel that the power core design could be somwhat improved, by discarding the storage block, and make power storage a function of the the powercores longest dimentions and the total number of blocks in the power core.
(A powercore is what I have taken to call all connected powerblocks).
Storage=Blocks*(Blocks/[Largest Dimention]^3)*INDEX
Where INDEX is the most power a single block should be able to hold. If INDEX is 10,000, this means that a solid-cube-core can hold 10,000 power per block in the powercore.
The End
These are the concepts that I can be most clear about now, but I may add to this after having played some more, or hopefully gotten a few comments.
