Nth idea for a better power update

    Joined
    Aug 10, 2013
    Messages
    290
    Reaction score
    366
    Starmade Power System Redesign


    01. Foreword:

    This one's no less wordy than the usual rants that tend to sprout like mushrooms around here, and quite franky, I'm losing my patience for them, same as you do. So I provided some TLDR for the major points in picture format for ease of assimilation. Then you can decide if the whole thing is worth reading.


    02. What's wrong with the old way of things?


    spsr01.png

    - Current system is flawed; Allows for "meta" ships to be vastly more powerful than "RP" ships of similar block count, due to having more power which in turn feed more systems, while using less hull and armor blocks resulting in a lower mass and thus increased mobility. Thus the need for the upcoming change.


    03. What is being done to fix this?


    -Dev's intent was to somehow tie power generation to ship size, and restore a semblance of balance between super-efficient solid system block ships and more realistic builds.


    04. Why is it a bad solution?


    spsr02.png

    -Reactor stabilizers fail at achieving the desired balance, because it favors long and thin ships. You'll get the best power output for your mass by placing your reactor on the far end of your ship on either axis, then placing your stabilizers on the opposite end of the same axis.

    spsr03.png
    -By building a broad ship you'd have greater mass and would have room / need for more systems, yet your reactor can only support so much.

    -Reactor in the center and stabilizers in the wings would still give you an inferior output, as for this to be at least as effective as a rear & front placement, your ship'd have to be at least twice as broad as it is long. And then, you'd still get better results by building your reactor on the tip of one wing, and the stabilizers on the other...

    -Unless you kill or get killed in a high-alpha strike ambush, opponents usually fight with their prows facing each other. While they do try to manouver out of the other guy's firing arc, it's a pretty safe bet that in an even fight most of the damage you take will be on said prow. Which now houses your reactor stabilizers. Which, now damaged, gimp your power output, and make the already ponderous pace of destroying your foes even slower.


    05. My two cents:


    Since everyone and their dog is writing up alternative proposals, I'll throw mine out there as well:

    spsr04.png

    -I think we need limitations that make sense, while allowing for the maximum amount of freedom in designing your ship.

    spsr05.png

    - The problem of ships with disproportionally high amounts of power output and system blocks arose because the game allows designs that'd fall apart in reality. A system brick ship is akin to a stripped down rocket engine with guns and a nuclear reactor sticked in it, all without any kind of structural support. Nay, no compartments, not a single plate anywhere. Not even bolts or ducttape. Sounds safe, doesn't it?


    06. The Solution:


    - If you want to tie a ship's power output and through that, it's ability to feed it's systems, then tie it to the load-bearing capacity of it's hull!

    "Duuh! Stuff in space is weightless! You can balance an anvil on top of a matchstick!"
    -Yeah. You can. But there's also inertia. The matchstick will break if you try to push the anvil with it.


    07. It can be done with minimum effort!


    Hull strength is already represented by Armor HP.
    Think of the airframe of planes, or the self-carrying armor chassis of tanks. There's a limit to how much weight they can support!

    So your Armor HP would decide how many system blocks can you place in your ship.
    You can play around with the values; How much capacity does a system block cost? Will you make different kinds of system blocks cost different amounts of capacity?

    If the systems eat up a relatively high amount of cap., you'd also solve the issue of "solid ship is best ship" as the ship's structure wouldn't support enough systems to fill it up, thus you could have empty spaces inside without remorse. .......Or just stick a big ol' brick of armor on your rear and call it a day, but meh.
    Ofc you'll have to re-balance every system block's performance. ( Ex, now you can have way less thruster blocks than before, so buff their output to avoid crawling around at the speed of a dead space slug.


    08. What'll it do?


    spsr06.png

    -The game shouldn't allow you to place system blocks above your hull's capacity to support them.

    -If you do have systems over your capacity, either due to hull damage, or having removed a section in build mode, your system blocks would begin dying much the same way as if you flew into a sun -which is already coded! ( and I consider it a much welcome hastening of ship death, which in some cases can get ridiculiously protracted.)


    09. Profit


    spsr07.png

    In the end, the "meta" ship will need to do as the "RP" ship does, and use a relatively higher amount of hull and/or armor blocks, lest it falls apart. No more ridicule for using advanced armor, or having a multi-layered hull.

    You could be lightweight and super efficient by only using as much hull / armor as your ship absolutely needs to avoid imploding, but you'd also benefit from using more, since losing armor hp would be less of a concern if you have some excess to spare.

    Freedom F**k Yeah!
     
    Joined
    Feb 21, 2015
    Messages
    228
    Reaction score
    145
    Nicely presented thoughts and ideas ... but i disagree with the whole ship-mass=power thing (also in other wrong-headed thread about 'dimensional bane'...)

    Bigger/heavier ships having more power in a linear and predicable way ? I think that is kinda boring, and lacking 'edges'/ traction for performance-variety and complex-designs....

    The two extremes that are problematic are maybe spaghetti and systems-bricks > both have the perceived issue of 'not enough non-system structure/hull'. ... numerous suggestions maybe about this > + we already have the 'systems hp penalty' as well ...

    Rather than 'Armour'/'structural hull', perhaps we should extended the 'systems HP penalty' idea > specifically under the concept of 'Cosmic Radiation' and protection.

    Whatever sci-fi cannon we refer too, we can probably all agree that Cosmic Radiation in open space is a concept and factor of significance.

    So,What about additional penalties for systems that are exposed to space ?
    Does not need to be too 'hard', and small amounts of exposed systems should not make much difference > but this would bork spaghetti-ships certainly, and will impose extra problems for systems-bricks.

    [However - i don't think we can/should completely remove things a bit like 'systems-bricks' due to the fundamental nature of the block-building game > and, after all, a fully autonomous space drone would not have an interior either....neither would a Space Whale (except perhaps for the dorsal and distal idea-holes :) pa-paaaaaaarp) ]
    [doublepost=1510133568,1510133289][/doublepost][also; cosmic squid, google-eyed-tentacle-beasts and nano-clouds (as everybody knows) require very little or no structural support > but they still need to slip-slap-slop in those cosmic rays ...]
     

    Non

    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    296
    Reaction score
    157
    Allows for "meta" ships to be vastly more powerful than "RP" ships of similar block count, due to having more power which in turn feed more systems, while using less hull and armor blocks resulting in a lower mass and thus increased mobility.
    If you are capable of actively acknowledging that power is what makes a better ship, why not put more power in your rp ship? Honestly, players trying to change the meta to make their ships more effective is incredibly annoying. There are things that need to be changed to add more variety in the meta, as in my opinion its rather bland, but even if the power system changed to something that relies on armor hp, your ships will still not be op. Worse, making a ships power primarily dependent on armor bar could very easily make starmade a mass game, where the biggest ship will always win, and only the guy with the biggest ship wants that.
    No more ridicule for using advanced armor
    Assuming it doesn't change, hull has a higher armor to weight ratio, so using advanced armor is a terrible idea.
    having a multi-layered hull
    If you mean having a hull that is two blocks thick, yes, you will still be ridiculed, because there are much better ways to do it. Bad design is bad design, a different system won't fix it. Rp ships can be made good, interior space does not ruin a ship, the primary reason pvp players don't make pretty ships is because of time investment vs when theyll have to redesign. I make roughly one ship a week because thats how often I learn new things that can make my ships more effective. Designing for rp isn't realistic in my case, but there is nothing that says rp ships can't be good.
    but this would bork spaghetti-ships certainly
    I'm real tired of people talking about spaghetti ships. Very few people have them, the people who have them rarely use them because they know how unfair they are, and spaghetti has a size limit. The bigger a ship gets the more it needs to rely on aux to power things like thrust, a large spaghetti will have such a high ratio of aux to other systems that it will be incredibly fragile, there will probably never be a good spaghetti over 50k. If you really want a simple solution to end spaghetti, then remove power reactors and just have aux.
     
    Joined
    Feb 21, 2015
    Messages
    228
    Reaction score
    145
    Non, i never started the spaghetti-debates > But it is a useful ABSTRACT concept for the build mechanics at one extreme...
    You are right that 'RP' ships (what is that anyway? - has a cabin and obligatory med-bay ? :/) can be made 'powerful' already - no-need for power 2.0 at all on that basis.

    But you have not added much here - except to assert your superior building knowledge/speed over us ... ty .. (btw, remove all power reactors? lol. )

    Anyway what do think about 'Radiation' as a concept to encourage use of at least full hulls around systems ?
    (yes of course many ships are built like that already - but we are talking theorized abstracted extremes of builds...)
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor


    In all seriousness, really well illustrated +1.

    Regarding your core concept, Hull/Amour tied to Ship integrity, I think it could work with some further development.
    Regarding a name for it, I would highly support:
    -Structual Integrity
    -Hull integrity

    I don't think you should be forced not to place further system blocks. I feel it should just be a soft cap, with increasing penalies. Combat dedicated ships will always be more effective than Role play ships, but if your refering to bricks then I agree (althougth decoration and interior space do not come at the cost of performance, simply just time).
    I think what we want to acheive is for players to have the freedom of design, and in that have their design choices count within that.

    This could be achived by limiting power production to size, as the power 2.0 does, limiting systems to hull as per this suggestion, or limiting systems/power to an additional system which players need to manage.


    Bigger/heavier ships having more power in a linear and predicable way ? I think that is kinda boring, and lacking 'edges'/ traction for performance-variety and complex-designs....

    The two extremes that are problematic are maybe spaghetti and systems-bricks > both have the perceived issue of 'not enough non-system structure/hull'. ... numerous suggestions maybe about this > + we already have the 'systems hp penalty' as well ...

    Rather than 'Armour'/'structural hull', perhaps we should extended the 'systems HP penalty' idea > specifically under the concept of 'Cosmic Radiation' and protection.

    Whatever sci-fi cannon we refer too, we can probably all agree that Cosmic Radiation in open space is a concept and factor of significance.

    So,What about additional penalties for systems that are exposed to space ?
    Does not need to be too 'hard', and small amounts of exposed systems should not make much difference > but this would bork spaghetti-ships certainly, and will impose extra problems for systems-bricks.

    Radiators would certiantly be pretty cool imo. Anyway to make power storage a thing gets my support as well//
    I don't think its viable to try and figure out if a blocks exposed to space. Theres pleanty of near massless blocks which could be used to cover them anyway.

    Maybe one way of looking at it could be Hull-Systems damage reduction, as in the ratio between the ammount of hull/armour vs systems on a ship could apply additional damage resistance/reduction to shots hitting syrems or even the whole ship. E.g


    (Robocraft has a similar system where the more armour you have, the more effective each induvidual armour block becomes)

    The more armour you have (compared to systems) the tougher you are to damage. Thus bricks become 'soft' targets that may actualy take a penalty regarding damage becuase of a high systems to armour value.

    Just some ideas

    ----------------------------------------

    On a side note, with docked shielding and hull seemingly being removed I'm at a loss at how to effectively armour and protect my ships. Overpenertrating shots will still go through the whole ship, all weapons will still be built to break armour + systems in one hit etc. How do I protect my vital components that I do not want to be damaged? Previously I could wrap docked shielding around vital components to ensure that penertrating shots are absorbed, and that heavy fire is required to damage that part of my ship. Now I just have to rely on armour.... which will get destroyed and penertrated with every hit anyway. Do I have to put 20+ layers of armour at my nose and just fly nose on :?
     
    Last edited:
    Joined
    Feb 21, 2015
    Messages
    228
    Reaction score
    145
    errrrm, can't i just put many layers of hull on (or even in) my brick ? > internal armour/'hp' stacks protected by even more exterior armour...hmmm, that seems to make a hard, not soft brick :/
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor
    errrrm, can't i just put many layers of hull on (or even in) my brick ? > internal armour/'hp' stacks protected by even more exterior armour...hmmm, that seems to make a hard, not soft brick :/
    You sure can! Making a giant brick seem to always be a constant curse of starmade design. What seperates a brick from an Imperial Battlecruiser isn't the number of blocks, but the time investment. You can't force players to make nicely detailed ships or not build in giant 50 by 50 by 50 chuncks at a time.
     
    Joined
    Feb 21, 2015
    Messages
    228
    Reaction score
    145
    a fair point - i worry about armour-scaling-bonus becoming very powerful - but that could equally be fun if done right
     

    Non

    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    296
    Reaction score
    157
    But you have not added much here
    I'm not necessarily trying to add, but to show that what this suggestion attempts to accomplish will not be accomplished by this suggestion.
    On a side note, with docked shielding and hull seemingly being removed
    So far I have seen nothing that indicates these will be removed.
    How do I protect my vital components that I do not want to be damaged?
    Hide and/or move them out of the likely line of fire.
    Previously I could wrap docked shielding around vital components to ensure that penertrating shots are absorbed, and that heavy fire is required to damage that part of my ship
    This won't stop real heavy fire. In general the best armor is space, if you can sacrifice looks, put 10-20 blocks of space between your outermost hull and your systems.
    Anyway what do think about 'Radiation' as a concept to encourage use of at least full hulls around systems ?
    Real pvp ships, the ones that can kill stuff 5x their mass, pretty much universally have hulls, encouraging it won't change much.
    remove all power reactors?
    Yeah, I am not sure what the other pvp people would think of this, but I would recommend that normal power reactors, the things that you put in long lines, be removed so all ships run on aux. Make aux explosion radius scale stronger with group size so a 10k reactor can do some serious damage to a ship. It weakens small ships (things under or at softcap) significantly, but under the current system a small ship can easily pump out over 50 dps/mass, so its not the worst thing.
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor
    I'm not necessarily trying to add, but to show that what this suggestion attempts to accomplish will not be accomplished by this suggestion.

    So far I have seen nothing that indicates these will be removed.
    E.g you can no longer have docked entities shielding parts of your main ship, as their shield bubbles would be canceled out if theyre within your main shields. Thus you can no longer have 'Oinion' like layered ships
     
    Joined
    Feb 21, 2015
    Messages
    228
    Reaction score
    145
    i see your point Non about the reactors - but I completely disagree. As the fundamental component of a ship, I think there should be scope for 'better' and 'more complex' reactor designs, ideally different choices of reactor-form/power source > > everything being suggested (including power 2.0) makes the reactor-design process simple and dumb, with virtually no scope (so it currently seems) for rewarding complex designs or experimentation (excluding the magical-chamber-buffs)

    more importantly, current Dev builds are NOT more intuitive> i have 200,000 regen > this can fire a 6000block beam (no other systems mounted), which apparently delivers 600,000 dps / power cost > when idle, i see 9%(?) power drain > when i fire, and during recharge i see 45%(?) power usage of my 200,000 e/sec regen ...

    How the hell do any of these numbers relate? :/
    [doublepost=1510140409,1510140323][/doublepost](might that elsewhere...)
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor
    more importantly, current Dev builds are NOT more intuitive> i have 200,000 regen > this can fire a 6000block beam (no other systems mounted), which apparently delivers 600,000 dps / power cost > when idle, i see 9%(?) power drain > when i fire, and during recharge i see 45%(?) power usage of my 200,000 e/sec regen ...

    How the hell do any of these numbers relate? :/
    Thats what happens when you remove power storage XD
    I personaly feel that the recharge mechanic could have been implimented without removing storage.
    E.g You fire you missiles, power is drained from storage at a constant rate while the weapon 'reloads'
    Having regen and storage at the very least offers far more building variety than just building everything off PURE regen -_-.
    Thats like removing one of the shield blocks imo. It just leaves a big hole
     

    Non

    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    296
    Reaction score
    157
    everything being suggested (including power 2.0) makes the reactor-design process simple and dumb, with virtually no scope (so it currently seems) for rewarding complex designs or experimentation (excluding the magical-chamber-buffs)
    The dumbing down of starmade is what the devs want from my understanding, nor is current power very complex, all I have to do is place lines. Interestingly, power lines tend to require higher mass at small scale than at large scale, as a smaller ship not purpose built for reaching 2mil e/s will likely be shorter than something far surpassing soft cap (lets say 100m longest dimension vs 300m), and will therefore require more lines to get that 2mil. In essence its the same thing stabilizers do in new power, require an increased length to have more block efficiency, the big difference being that current power is soft capped at 2 mil so anything significantly beyond doesn't have to worry about dimensions, whereas in new power, dimension dependent generation applies to all ship sizes. If a volume based power like aux were properly tested and balanced for group size, so that the damage of an explosion of a 10k block group were actually enough to consider using several smaller groups instead, it could be a rather complex and intelligent system, that does require compromises and planning, but can be simple enough for people to just plop down blocks and forget.
    more importantly, current Dev builds are NOT more intuitive> i have 200,000 regen > this can fire a 6000block beam (no other systems mounted), which apparently delivers 600,000 dps / power cost > when idle, i see 9%(?) power drain > when i fire, and during recharge i see 45%(?) power usage of my 200,000 e/sec regen ...
    Power 2.0 weapons are very screwed because of lack of power capacitors, but your problem, at a guess, is that you were reading the structure tab stuff rather than doing the calculations yourself. Unless they fixed it, the numbers presented on the structure tab are very inaccurate. A 6000 block weapon always does 60,000dps (excluding od and ion multipliers). I'm guessing this is beam/beam/someeffect, if I'm wrong ignore the rest. 6000blocks*10dps/block*15seconds (reload time)=900,000damage. If I understand correctly, structure tab misses part of block count (I don't remember if its the secondary or effect slave), and displays the total beam damage as dps rather than damage per shot, under those circumstances it would probably register 4000blocks*10dps/block*15seconds=600,000 damage and then displays that number as your dps (technically it is dps, but its only sustained over 1 second).
    I cant say anything as to its power usage as I don't know the multiplier.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: Dire Venom
    Joined
    Aug 23, 2016
    Messages
    758
    Reaction score
    129
    This is somewhere between potentially misleading and incorrect....(depending on geometry involved, and assumptions used for the image)

    Note that I've assumed that the ship before it was widened had its stabilisers at 100% efficiency (i.e. all the way out at "optimal" separation distance from the reactor), or at least quite high...

    The solution will be more like this:
    Screenshot from 2017-11-08 22:49:30.png

    You'll put in a wider reactor, possibly increase length a bit (or possibly not), then add enough stabilisers to get 100% reactor output.

    The reason for this is that making a very long ship requires more extra hull mass than the extra stabiliser mass required in one not as long, for the same power output. (Large text because I've seen people miss this bit previously)

    Caveats: this is not always the case for every possible setup, but is for the majority of "typical" designs with non-extreme dimensions; I've made no attempt to make reactor/stabiliser sizes accurate in this image, it just illustrates the concept; drawing is not to scale, the text is the most reliable description.
     

    Non

    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    296
    Reaction score
    157
    a very long ship requires more extra hull mass than the extra stabiliser mass required in one not as long, for the same power output
    Thats very numbers dependent, nor is there any guarantee it will be one solid hull and not two. I have never met a pvp builder who was overly concerned with increasing hull weight when increasing dimensions, as there are some benefits to it besides power. I don't believe that this point is very legitimate for a competent pvp builder, if they want to make a brick they won't care about its hull size.
     

    Lancake

    Head of Testing
    Joined
    Aug 20, 2013
    Messages
    794
    Reaction score
    560
    • Schine
    • Tester
    Nicely written, had a few laughs while reading it ^^

    You illustrate your concerns quite well but I believe it's a bit premature to say that the long stick ship will perform better than this 40K ship you've illustrated.

    The long stick will give you the most efficiency, you'll be able to get quite a lot of power with a minimal amount of blocks. But you also put both groups in a very predictable (and vulnerable) position. If you're fighting something that looks like a long stick, you're for certain going to shoot its front portion first and perhaps even try hitting its back if you're at an angle. Suffering damage to your stabilizer or the reactor, will cripple your power regeneration fast.

    The 40K ship will have the same issue if you put it in the same space, but it also has more width and height to spread out the reactor and stabilizer components to be in a less predictable place.

    We also allow you to make over-sized reactors where it's simple not possible to get 100% efficiency on your stabilizers. Perhaps you'll need 2 or 3 times more stabilizers but you'll also get a lot more power out of it and only use a small portion of your volume still dedicated to systems.

    ---

    As for your alternative approach, I don't think that would work. Making this long stick ship with awesome power generation to still work, would simply involve putting a certain amount of armor blocks down too (at the front). This power gap is still there, and the only thing that is changed is that now you at least need some armor on the ship to work.

    If the lack of armor blocks on these long system sticks is your only concern, then it's not a bad suggestion. But from what I can see, you're concerned about the system encouraging you to make long, one dimensional sticks to get the most power. In that case, your suggestion doesn't work.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: Neon_42

    Ithirahad

    Arana'Aethi
    Joined
    Nov 14, 2013
    Messages
    4,152
    Reaction score
    1,330
    • Purchased!
    • Top Forum Contributor
    • Legacy Citizen 8
    Nicely written, had a few laughs while reading it ^^

    You illustrate your concerns quite well but I believe it's a bit premature to say that the long stick ship will perform better than this 40K ship you've illustrated.

    The long stick will give you the most efficiency, you'll be able to get quite a lot of power with a minimal amount of blocks. But you also put both groups in a very predictable (and vulnerable) position. If you're fighting something that looks like a long stick, you're for certain going to shoot its front portion first and perhaps even try hitting its back if you're at an angle. Suffering damage to your stabilizer or the reactor, will cripple your power regeneration fast.

    The 40K ship will have the same issue if you put it in the same space, but it also has more width and height to spread out the reactor and stabilizer components to be in a less predictable place.
    Yes, but ultimately if you want to maintain any semblance of competitiveness, you will still essentially have your stabilizers in the front, and reactor in the back, and you will still be heavier than the stick. Or maybe not heavier than the stick, because if the stick-builder wants to add them, the stick can afford to have a good number of redundant stabilizers past 100% where the 40k ship might not even have any space for them. The stick could even mount an entire secondary reactor, resulting in higher overall survivability. The stick might end up the same mass as the 40k ship, but far more capable.

    ...Also, all this discussion assumes that armor (and defense in general) is far stronger than it is now. As it stands, it looks to me as though the ship that wins is more or less the one that packs the most raw power to maintain a huge alpha gun, and that ship would naturally be the stick.
     
    Joined
    Feb 27, 2014
    Messages
    1,074
    Reaction score
    502
    • Purchased!
    • Legacy Citizen 4
    • Top Forum Contributor
    It seems that the obvious solution would be mouting one-use missile salvo pods, which are then jettisoned after use.
    Simply use up most of your remaining regen to keep it charged and deploy during combat for extra lag!
    Thus as long as you have a decent sized reactor you can bring a lot of firepower to bear, only at the cost at lugging around some extra mass before the fight.