On Chambers: A concern.

[lupoCani]

Essentially, I wish to express a fear regarding the upcoming power system, with regards to the sense of building.

Firstly, something like chambers is probably necessary. Systems like weapons and shield effectively multiply each other. Doubling shields or weapons will both double the amount of damage a ship will dish out before shield failure. Alas, given a 50/50 split between weapons and shields on a ship, you're stuck in an optimal situation. Any other split of 100 has a lower product than 50*50. Halving one system will only allow a 50% increase of the other, lowering the combined effectiveness. Thus, by the tyranny of the square, a purely block-based system forces everyone to be a generalist.

This is the virtue of something like the chamber system. It can have whatever algorithms it wants, to allow us to specialize however we want.

The backside is a bit more abstract. I'm normally the first to wince at statements like "Starmade is an X game", but on this I hope we can agree- "Building is an important aspect of Starmade". And, to me, 'building' contains the idea of taking things that do things individually, and putting them together to do those things combined for new and greater results.

Chambers carry this aspect, but not as much as current systems do. They are something you build, but ultimately, they are just what Schine has called them- a skill tree. Placing blocks that form a skill tree is still a skill tree. We haven't seen the system yet, and one shouldn't make assumptions, but it seems like an imitation, an illusion of building around what it actually a point-spending system like any non-building game has. Less putting components together to make a machine, more assigning stats to an avatar.

I'm not against chambers, I'm mostly urging caution. I perceive there has been a great rush of enthusiasm for the chamber system- "Make cloaks into chambers, make jump drives into chambers, make shields into chambers, make everything into chambers!"

Chambers are a powerful balancing tool that comes at a cost. Perhaps even a small cost, Schine's work in minimizing it being admirable. Nevertheless, we should tread lightly, and consider whether any given system really needs to be framed entirely as preset skill nodes. Some do, but perhaps not as many as the tone of the suggestions forum might have had one believe.

 

[nightrune]

Hi LupoCani ,

I can understand the concern that this comes from, but we have already thought down those lines and decided against it. We sat down to design the new system with the hope of making everything completely consistent. We even went down to adding weapons and thrusters and shields into the chamber system as well. As you can see we've decided against that, as it adds very little to game play, and becomes very tedious. Weapons themselves build differently then thrust, shields, and armor, and logic and rails build very differently as well. We concluded on a rough rule of thumb for chambers, "Behavior, not Stats," chambers should not do anything you can do by just adding more blocks. That is to say, No chamber will just give you more shields for less blocks, but will change behavior of those shields that you already have. A concrete example would be, not actually going to be in game, shield chamber 1 would "harden" you shields to specific types of damage but would not change your shield total, or shield recharge itself. If you don't have shields, then the shield chambers will be useless to you. Those changes in behavior are actually laying a system of ship-wide effects that are actually separate from the chamber system itself and which will be reused in later updates.

Hopefully that helps.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, I'm seeing chambers as being less like skill trees and more like the rune system from Diablo 3.

You've got your base skill, and then you select a rune that augments or changes that skill.

 

[lupoCani]

Nightrune, thank you for responding. I will note, if only for the record, that I'm also anxious about having chambers create functionality from nothing, as opposed to altering functionality provided by other blocks. More positively, if "behavior, not stats" means we get to keep jump drives as an installable system, I shall be very happy.

Other than that, while I cannot say my fears are wholly alleviated, I have formulated my concerns to the best of my ability, and had them not only read, but responded to. My work here is, so to speak, done.

 

[kulbolen]

Firstly, something like chambers is probably necessary. Systems like weapons and shield effectively multiply each other. Doubling shields or weapons will both double the amount of damage a ship will dish out before shield failure. Alas, given a 50/50 split between weapons and shields on a ship, you're stuck in an optimal situation. Any other split of 100 has a lower product than 50*50. Halving one system will only allow a 50% increase of the other, lowering the combined effectiveness. Thus, by the tyranny of the square, a purely block-based system forces everyone to be a generalist.

this is untrue, due to tons of variables that arent accounted for.

 

[lupoCani]

Certainly, there are other factors, most of all the very large number of systems a ship has, but I do maintain this is the central nature of building with blocks. Unaccounted-for variables might help, but I don't see how they could turn the whole concept around.

In either case, given the general tone and purpose of this post, I'm not sure if I should go out of my way to argue for chambers.