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- Oct 27, 2013
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Preface
I really like the direction the new power update has taken. The consumption, capacity, power priority, and the chamber system have advanced the game's potential by leaps and bounds already. All that remains is to address the flaws of the system and tweak it to be the best it can be.
Based on the discussions over the past few days, I've attempted to collect the ideas that in my opinion are best and appear to solve the most problems, and compile them into a single system.
Please excuse the clutter of having one more thread. I've done this to show how multiple ideas fit together, which would have been difficult to do in multiple separate threads.
HP System
The problems:
On the surface RHP seems fine, but there are at least two problems. The first is that it removes any and all functional purpose for decoration blocks. The update that intended to make RP ships better instead makes decoration blocks 100% dead weight.
The second problem is that blowing away half of a ship does nothing if the reactor is in the other half. A small minority of players have also accused the RHP system of being "the new coring" which, while perhaps exaggerated, isn't too far off. We'll just call this "Black Knight Syndrome" for convenience.
In a way, this could be worse than the Black Knight because in Starmade, the U.S.S. Arthur can blow the entire midsection out of the enemy as long as the reactor and most of the chambers are intact. Then you have two halves of a ship shooting at you with guns which may or may not ALSO be divided in half to form more outputs than they used to have and... well you get the picture. It's just not desirable aesthetically for a ship in that condition to continue to function.
Possible solution: Bring back a modified SHP system.
The Problem:
There is ONE and ONLY ONE possibility for maximum power output per mass. That is to have the reactor at one end of a ship and the stabilizers at the other, and as little as possible between. Even if the needle or dumbbell shape proves not to be the best in all situations (it's really not), ships will almost always need to tend toward being long and thin on one axis. Otherwise you have a lot of dead weight that does absolutely nothing until your shields are down, and even then only functions to protect your reactor from specific kinds of weapons.
While long and thin is the most common shape in many sci-fi universes, it shouldn't be the only viable shape for high power/mass ratio. Even the strange grids of power 1.0 did a better job in this area (albeit only for small ships). To make matters worse, this places the reactor at one end of the ship rather than in the middle, which is a little odd for long ships, but straight up weird for tall or wide ships.
Possible solution 1:
Remove stabilizers from the game and rely on the HP changes to make interiors viable. This would likely be sufficient, but might feel bland to those who liked the geometric puzzle of old power.
Possible solution 2:
A modification of this and this.
This isn't as fundamental a problem, but deserves consideration. I included it here because my solution ties in with the heat mechanics.
The problem:
Some players seem to feel that they must always use scanning chambers for fear that the enemy *might* be impossible to detect otherwise. With no scanning chambers, a titan suddenly decloaking behind you is always a possibility.
A possible solution:
Thermal detection mechanics. These ideas would have to be heavily modified to be used without the heatsink mechanic I proposed above.
Main principles:
Here I've used bullet point indentations to represent trees and branches.
This is by no means the only set of solutions, or a way to solve every problem with the game. It does appear to solve several of the more glaring issues with the current systems. These ideas could be used in their entirety with or without some tweaks, or bits and pieces could be selected to be implemented.
[doublepost=1513461233,1513460698][/doublepost]schema , I hope you find this information and these ideas useful. I'd be happy to explain more about the reasons I suggested any part of this, and there are a host of Starmade fans here who can help to determine the consequences of various choices.
If you're willing to discuss the power system openly with us, I believe the community can help you tremendously. Communication at this point in Starmade's development may be more critical than any other time because of the wide variety of possible issues. There are a lot of very smart people out here who have been playing your game for years and want nothing more than to see it completed in the most fun way possible for all play styles.
I'm sorry that so many of us are such a pain to communicate with, but I can assure you that making Starmade the best it can be is a goal we all share. No one would bother sticking around otherwise. People have a tendency to fight over things they care deeply about, so the amount of debate and argument here does at least have a silver lining.
I really like the direction the new power update has taken. The consumption, capacity, power priority, and the chamber system have advanced the game's potential by leaps and bounds already. All that remains is to address the flaws of the system and tweak it to be the best it can be.
Based on the discussions over the past few days, I've attempted to collect the ideas that in my opinion are best and appear to solve the most problems, and compile them into a single system.
Please excuse the clutter of having one more thread. I've done this to show how multiple ideas fit together, which would have been difficult to do in multiple separate threads.
HP System
The problems:
On the surface RHP seems fine, but there are at least two problems. The first is that it removes any and all functional purpose for decoration blocks. The update that intended to make RP ships better instead makes decoration blocks 100% dead weight.
The second problem is that blowing away half of a ship does nothing if the reactor is in the other half. A small minority of players have also accused the RHP system of being "the new coring" which, while perhaps exaggerated, isn't too far off. We'll just call this "Black Knight Syndrome" for convenience.
Possible solution: Bring back a modified SHP system.
- Bring back SHP as a means of killing ships.
- Give each subsystem (reactor, shield, thruster, etc.) its own HP pool. When enough of the system is destroyed, it stops working.
- Destroying the reactor could have additional consequences like random explosions, or just leave the ship completely dead in space, able to be salvaged.
- Shipwide integrity: Based on ratio of system blocks to other blocks. A high ratio of systems to structure reduces the overall number of blocks that must be destroyed to kill the ship. This is similar to the HP debuff applied to very large ships in Power 1.0, and could be applied alongside the same.
- First, it solves Black Knight Syndrome. If you blow away half a ship's structure, it breaks up as one would expect it to.
- Second, it solves the problem with decorations being dead weight. Having interiors and even bulkheads between systems is now a viable design choice for durability, as this increases the surface area of your hull that has to be blown off to kill your ship.
- Third, it is the final nail in the coffin of skinless and spaghetti builds, which were already marginalized but still feasible.
- Fourth, depending on the config numbers of shipwide integrity, this makes ships with interior equal to or better than ships with none. (Of course, an alternative to interior is to install thicker armor, or put internal armor between your systems, so this is no more of a forced design choice than the inclusion of shields in the game.)
The Problem:
There is ONE and ONLY ONE possibility for maximum power output per mass. That is to have the reactor at one end of a ship and the stabilizers at the other, and as little as possible between. Even if the needle or dumbbell shape proves not to be the best in all situations (it's really not), ships will almost always need to tend toward being long and thin on one axis. Otherwise you have a lot of dead weight that does absolutely nothing until your shields are down, and even then only functions to protect your reactor from specific kinds of weapons.
While long and thin is the most common shape in many sci-fi universes, it shouldn't be the only viable shape for high power/mass ratio. Even the strange grids of power 1.0 did a better job in this area (albeit only for small ships). To make matters worse, this places the reactor at one end of the ship rather than in the middle, which is a little odd for long ships, but straight up weird for tall or wide ships.
Possible solution 1:
Remove stabilizers from the game and rely on the HP changes to make interiors viable. This would likely be sufficient, but might feel bland to those who liked the geometric puzzle of old power.
Possible solution 2:
A modification of this and this.
- Reactors build up heat when they generate power or take system HP damage. This must be stored or radiated away to prevent the reactor from overheating.
- While overheating, the reactor triggers random explosions throughout the ship's system blocks. The farther it is past its limit, the larger and more frequent the explosions become.
- Stabilizers become heatsinks.
- Each heat sink block block stores a fixed amount of heat, acting as a buffer against overheating. Each block also radiates heat away into space to cool off.
- EDIT: Hull, armor, and decorative blocks all add a small amount of heat capacity, but no cooling.
- The smaller a heat sink group is and the further it is from the reactor and other groups, the faster each block radiates heat. (This replaces stabilizer distance.)
- Heat sinks must be connected to the reactor by conduits. This removes the purpose for island builds.
- Destroying heat conduits reduces the connected heatsink group's cooling speed by a fixed percentage per destroyed block. Very long conduits only need a section destroyed to disable connected cooling. Very short conduits can't be completely disabled, but the heatsinks won't provide much cooling in the first place.
- Add a chamber called "thermal failsafe" which automatically limits your power output when heatsinks are full enough to prevent you from overheating yourself.
- Encourages interesting features like nacelles, fins, and warp rings.
- Removes the meta of one long dimension, increasing creative freedom.
- Draws a correlation between ship size and feasible reactor output. For a given reactor size, the smaller the ship, the less mass-efficient the reactor is.
- Numbers can be tweaked to eliminate density-related ship imbalances, whether high or low.
- Increase the proximity-based cooling debuff to decrease maximum density. (fix system stuffing)
- Increase conduit destruction penalty to increase minimum density. (We're probably beating a dead spaghetti monster at this point.)
This isn't as fundamental a problem, but deserves consideration. I included it here because my solution ties in with the heat mechanics.
The problem:
Some players seem to feel that they must always use scanning chambers for fear that the enemy *might* be impossible to detect otherwise. With no scanning chambers, a titan suddenly decloaking behind you is always a possibility.
A possible solution:
Thermal detection mechanics. These ideas would have to be heavily modified to be used without the heatsink mechanic I proposed above.
Main principles:
- Detection: The more heat you output, the farther away you (and potentially your reactor and cooling systems) can be seen on sensors. In general, the more power a ship uses, the farther away it can be seen.
- Basic stealth chambers let you suppress part or all of your thermal exhaust to make you harder to see far away, or make you completely invisible on sensors. How long you can remain "silent" depends on how much energy you're using and how much heat sink capacity you have.
- Visual cloaking is separate, but part of the same tree. All it does is hide the blocks. It does not hide a ship's thermal signature.
Here I've used bullet point indentations to represent trees and branches.
- Cooling override I: When the ship's heat sinks are emtpy, you radiate no heat and heat sinks do not cool off. As the fill up, you begin to radiate heat as a percentage of your maximum cooling speed. As you begin to overheat, you will be radiating heat as fast as your ship is able.
- Cooling override II: 50% less heat leak than Cooling Override I.
- Silent running: You radiate no heat, but your heat sinks provide no cooling while active.
- Zero-point cooling module: While stealth is active, you cool 5% of your maximum cooling speed without radiating it into space. If you minimize power consumption enough, you can turn this into permanent stealth.
- Zero-point cooling suite: Your ship's cooling speed while not stealthed is reduced by 50%. While stealthed, you can cool up to half your remaining cooling speed without radiating any heat.
- Cooling override II: 50% less heat leak than Cooling Override I.
- Visual cloaking: Uses a fair amount of energy to make the ship invisible. Does not hide thermal signatures.
- Electromagnetic cloaking: Uses a lot of energy to make you completely undetectable. You cannot vent any heat while this is active, making it a solution for brief, absolute stealth.
- Targeting jammer: Prevents basic lock-on missiles from targeting you. Increases the distance from which you can detected seen by 25%.
- Advanced jamming (very high chamber cost): Defeats lock-on-jam systems. Increases distance from which you can be detected by 50%.
- Flares: Activate to confuse heat-seeking missiles.
- Decoys: Activate to confuse radar missiles.
- Passive sensor upgrade I: Increase thermal detection distance by 50%.
- Passive sensor upgrade II: Increase thermal detection distance by 100%.
- Passive sensor upgrade III: Increase thermal detection distance by 200%.
- Passive sensor upgrade II: Increase thermal detection distance by 100%.
- Active sensor upgrade: Detect stealthed ships at close range even if they radiate no heat. Only ships using Electromagnetic Cloaking can hide.
- Active-scan assisted missiles: At close range, you can missile lock any ship that is not using Electromagnetic Cloaking.
- Lock-on-Jam technology: Defeats basic targeting jammer. Your missiles recognize the jamming signal and follow it.
This is by no means the only set of solutions, or a way to solve every problem with the game. It does appear to solve several of the more glaring issues with the current systems. These ideas could be used in their entirety with or without some tweaks, or bits and pieces could be selected to be implemented.
[doublepost=1513461233,1513460698][/doublepost]schema , I hope you find this information and these ideas useful. I'd be happy to explain more about the reasons I suggested any part of this, and there are a host of Starmade fans here who can help to determine the consequences of various choices.
If you're willing to discuss the power system openly with us, I believe the community can help you tremendously. Communication at this point in Starmade's development may be more critical than any other time because of the wide variety of possible issues. There are a lot of very smart people out here who have been playing your game for years and want nothing more than to see it completed in the most fun way possible for all play styles.
I'm sorry that so many of us are such a pain to communicate with, but I can assure you that making Starmade the best it can be is a goal we all share. No one would bother sticking around otherwise. People have a tendency to fight over things they care deeply about, so the amount of debate and argument here does at least have a silver lining.
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