Power crystals.

[Borr]

Simple solution for many problems. Place it and let your ship drain it while you using it. More power it drain, more crystals you need. Bigger ship, bigger crystal consumption, more credits spent, more work to obtain them or more work to mine minerals.

Every system in your designs depends on power gen, an infinite source of power, causing gigantism and lack of balance for everything no matter how you change configs.
During "shield wars" I ask myself what is causing all problems like that. Then I realized that we all thinking wrong looking for solution. That infinity causing problems...

Shields values are OP? What if they could cost you credits to have them like that. What if having or use of any system cost you credits. You'll think twice before you build/buy that giant mothership. Even if you can afford maintenance cost you will be not sure if you could buy enough crystals to make that ship alive and functional.

Let me show you how this could work only using mechanics that are already in the game:

Spoiler: Picturezz

Simple reactor with full power crystal.

Partially used crystal, starting to take damage.

Almost drained crystal.

No power, time to place another one.

This is only example but you'll get the idea how this could work. Just place it, drain it, get another one, place it again.
Crystals could be obtained through mining minerals and processed by some sort of extractors or another way. General idea is to make power source finite.

Please don't disagree unless you have any reasonable argument against it.

 

[OverlordDarkWolf]

I disagree with this mainly because it will still encourage titan ship building and it will break combat flow by making you stop every so often to refuel and put in another crystal. This will also discourage fighters as they don't have the fuel sources a cruiser has, i.e. A single cruiser can cross the ocean but a single fighter can't without sacrificing combat capabilities. It is not a good way to combat gigantism as those ships will have the necessary fuel tanks that smaller ships won't have.

 

[Zeno9141]

This is in my opinion, not the right solution.

1). The Titan-fever will always persist bothering us, no matter what we do.
2). This would only make everything more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious, from a simple space ride to a full-scale siege.
3). It would be a kick in the nuts for aesthetic creativity, as you need lots of room for a design to function. Any unnecessary hull would be a waste of space.

(I did not give it a disagree rating, because disagree ratings are douchebaggery. :p)

 

[Borr]

I disagree with this mainly because it will still encourage titan ship building and it will break combat flow by making you stop every so often to refuel and put in another crystal. This will also discourage fighters as they don't have the fuel sources a cruiser has, i.e. A single cruiser can cross the ocean but a single fighter can't without sacrificing combat capabilities. It is not a good way to combat gigantism as those ships will have the necessary fuel tanks that smaller ships won't have.

Not really, this will not disadvantage small fighters because they're small and need less power to move, fight. It will need proper scale but could work. For titans, oh well that's the point, you'll lose power and give chance for smaller ships to hurt you. So if you spam shields in your design you can still get yourself into trouble.

 

[OverlordDarkWolf]

Again I have to disagree with you. Perhaps I need a better analogy, Like a motorcycle and a semi-truck both going cross-country, The motorcycle has about 4.8 gallon tank and gets about 40 miles per gallon, and the semi-truck has about 500 gallon capacity and gets about 5.6 miles per gallon. The motorcycle has about 192 mile range, the semi-truck has a 2800 mile range. Fighters cannot compete with fuel capacity of larger ships, otherwise they wouldn't need carriers for transportation purposes.

 

[Borr]

This is in my opinion, not the right solution.

1). The Titan-fever will always persist bothering us, no matter what we do.
2). This would only make everything more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious, from a simple space ride to a full-scale siege.
3). It would be a kick in the nuts for aesthetic creativity, as you need lots of room for a design to function. Any unnecessary hull would be a waste of space.

(I did not give it a disagree rating, because disagree ratings are douchebaggery. :p)

1. Yeah, but they will build them wisely and not after playing couple hours...
2. I don't think this is actually bad and "more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious" as it is right now.
3. Hull are useless anyway, people using it only for looks and dead weight (I had idea to change it but this forum is full of ignorants...). And we were forced to refit our designs after weapon update, so sometimes is a must anyway.

 

[Zeno9141]

1. Yeah, but they will build them wisely and not after playing couple hours...
2. I don't think this is actually bad and "more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious" as it is right now.
3. Hull are useless anyway, people using it only for looks and dead weight (I had idea to change it but this forum is full of ignorants...). And we were forced to refit our designs after weapon update, so sometimes is a must anyway.

Well, having to add crystals all the time could get 'quite obnoxiously tedious'.
As for the hulls, you did not read my statement carefully enough. I said it would harm creativity, not that hulls were useless at the moment.

IMHO, I would say this is either a late-game addition that needs to be very carefully thought out, or a mod, when the game reaches a more stable state.

(Some friendly advice here: When you start a thread like this, try to not only give pros in the OP, or you are bound to get disagree'd and flamed upon. I would suggest balancing out the pros and cons, It really makes your post a lot more professional and unbiased.)

 

[OverlordDarkWolf]

1. Yeah, but they will build them wisely and not after playing couple hours...
2. I don't think this is actually bad and "more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious" as it is right now.
3. Hull are useless anyway, people using it only for looks and dead weight (I had idea to change it but this forum is full of ignorants...). And we were forced to refit our designs after weapon update, so sometimes is a must anyway.

1. People already have to take weapons, thrusters, power tanks, power regen and soon shield tanks and shield regen into consideration, because if they focus only on shields, having about 0.7 thrust ratio, no main ship weapons, and use turrets as their only weapons, they are dead in the water if they lose their turrets and the enemy is able to keep up with their speed or if they get into a planetary gravity well.
2. Adding more requirements to ships will not make things better for ships smaller than titans, just more ridiculously obnoxiously tedious as Zeno9141 stated
3. I use my hull to protect my core after the shields are down, sure it may buy me a couple of seconds, but a couple of seconds is all I need to activate my overdrive to get away.

 

[psteiner]

And just adding on to what has already been said...

Servers would be a nightmare:

• Increased asteroid destruction
• As more and more resources are mined out, new players have no way to get out to them in the first place
• This would promote core mining, or crystal mining, as taking out a crystal or crystal supply would cripple all systems
• Too much focus on realism:
  • If you make one thing a finite supply, what could this go on to? Would weapons require stuff to be stored, same with thrusters and shields?
• Ugly on small ships:
  • How in the world are you going to fit a crystal, a small shield generator, weapons system, and still have room for aesthetics when you build a ship small enough to fit on a 6 x 6 x 6 docking port?

 

[Lecic]

Let me bring over my points from the 0.157 update thread, where you first started this suggestion.

We need fuel and you know it. I mean some sort of limited energy source, bigger ships with bigger reactors = more fuel and maintenance cost. For balance sake...

I will agree to FTL only if they will use resources to use them.
I always think about balance first, and balance is what this game needs right now. All complains ("shield wars" for example) comes from lack of balance. This game will die if Schine will listen to people that can't see bigger image and people that compensate small dick complex by building giant ships and only care about themselves, their designs.

You can balance stats without needing some sort of limited, constantly draining fuel resource. The limited resources of the future will be the blocks you build your ships with. With a better economy in the game, and resources being rarer, 1,000,000 mass ships won't be an issue.

Stats also need to be balanced, of course. A smaller faction shouldn't have to field their own titan to take out the enemy's. Clever use of multiple anti-cap frigates could accomplish it, as an example. However, with the current stats, that isn't really possible.

All I get from your last sentence is that someone with a bigger ship killed you, and now you think everyone who builds large ships must have tiny dicks, due to the "compensating" thing. First off, that's stupid. Second, what about the female or otherwise dickless players who build large ships? Are they somehow compensating for their complete lack of dick? Somehow I doubt it. You're doing nothing but making yourself look like an angry imbecille.

Why? It have perfect sense to me. You have always ship core in your inventory just in case, right? Even if you stuck somewhere because you drain last power crystal, you can always use that ship core to find some shop and buy new crystals. Regular ship use could use significantly less durability (hp?) of that crystal.
I think fuel could balance this game and it is relatively simple solution. Right now power generation is some sort of infinite source of power and everything depends on it (even shield generation), so we can build infinite size ships with no consequences.

Fuel is micromanaging and is obnoxious. I shouldn't need to constantly check my stats and make sure I have enough fuel to get from point A to point B, enough fuel to fire my weapons, enough to keep the autoturrets running. That's the point of smart reactor and power tank designs. It's boring and just adds another pointless check to the game that you need to occasionally tend to, like food in Minecraft. People said that it would be balanced because you needed to get food, but really it just ended up constantly starving new players to death and being an annoying hassle that didn't actually worry them for anyone with a small farm.

Which brings me to my next point. Fuel will either be rare enough or consumed enough that it will be pointless to ever field a larger ship, or common enough that it's just a slight hassle for players and doesn't actually solve any problems.

 

[CyberTao]

• As more and more resources are mined out, new players have no way to get out to them in the first place

Just to clear that up, Asteroids will Regenerate Once a sector has been Unloaded for so long. Its hard to notice on Singleplayer because more often then not the Server is offline when those sectors are unloaded, and on a server you tend to look for sectors with No asteroids to Build.
But coming from someone who had New Asteroids regenerate and Spawn inside a WIP Station, they do respawn :p

3. Hull are useless anyway, people using it only for looks and dead weight (I had idea to change it but this forum is full of ignorants...). And we were forced to refit our designs after weapon update, so sometimes is a must anyway.

If you stayed on to date on Dev News, you would have know there was a upcoming Block HP system that would render Hull fairly useful.

As for the OP, I cant say I'm very fond of that idea. While Alternate power sources would be a good idea, One that forces you to Harvest asteroids to maintain your fleet doesnt sound very appealing. Add in the possibility that on a server, one could hide behind a an allied ship, and Make your ships waste all their Power shooting your own ships while you are offline.
Plus, if you are gonna design the crystal to work around a "Damaged State", There is the exploit of using Astro-Tech to Heal it o -o

 

[psteiner]

Just to clear that up, Asteroids will Regenerate Once a sector has been Unloaded for so long. Its hard to notice on Singleplayer because more often then not the Server is offline when those sectors are unloaded, and on a server you tend to look for sectors with No asteroids to Build.
But coming from someone who had New Asteroids regenerate and Spawn inside a WIP Station, they do respawn :p

Well, in large servers, I can't help but notice that asteroids are quite thin near spawn. Combine that with necessitated mining, and the area will be cleared out quickly, and it won't refresh because there are usually people in the vicinity.

 

[Unnamed25]

Well, in large servers, I can't help but notice that asteroids are quite thin near spawn. Combine that with necessitated mining, and the area will be cleared out quickly, and it won't refresh because there are usually people in the vicinity.

Well, that would be quite good!
We don't want asteroids respawning 5km from the spawn area for easy mining.

 

[Borr]

3. I use my hull to protect my core after the shields are down, sure it may buy me a couple of seconds, but a couple of seconds is all I need to activate my overdrive to get away.

The only way you could protect ship core with hull for couple seconds is to make couple layers of it around. Normal hull have 100hp and 25armor, hardened 200hp and 50armor, so with big enough weapon you can get through in no time. And you know how big array of overdrive system you need to even think of escape, to use it on normal ship not specialized one? So yeah, bad example...

• Too much focus on realism:
  • If you make one thing a finite supply, what could this go on to? Would weapons require stuff to be stored, same with thrusters and shields?
• Ugly on small ships:
  • How in the world are you going to fit a crystal, a small shield generator, weapons system, and still have room for aesthetics when you build a ship small enough to fit on a 6 x 6 x 6 docking port?

Everything on your ship depending on power, so it already require something to function. Only power generation require nothing.
Really? 6x6x6 ship? Do you heard about enhancers?

Let me bring over my points from the 0.157 update thread, where you first started this suggestion.



You can balance stats without needing some sort of limited, constantly draining fuel resource. The limited resources of the future will be the blocks you build your ships with. With a better economy in the game, and resources being rarer, 1,000,000 mass ships won't be an issue.
But right now we only need to download blueprint from internet, upload it and buy ship. You can turn on buying with blocks but what if you don't have space in your inventory for all required blocks?

Stats also need to be balanced, of course. A smaller faction shouldn't have to field their own titan to take out the enemy's. Clever use of multiple anti-cap frigates could accomplish it, as an example. However, with the current stats, that isn't really possible.
And we gonna wait years until everything be balanced. With limited power source we don't need to wait...

All I get from your last sentence is that someone with a bigger ship killed you, and now you think everyone who builds large ships must have tiny dicks, due to the "compensating" thing. First off, that's stupid. Second, what about the female or otherwise dickless players who build large ships? Are they somehow compensating for their complete lack of dick? Somehow I doubt it. You're doing nothing but making yourself look like an angry imbecille.
Actually female players play games to compete with male players. And no, nobody killed me with bigger ship. Small dick is only an example to show compensation for complexes. People build bigger ships because someone else have bigger ship. I'm just tired of this stupid competition. Why the only way to destroy ship you must have bigger ship?


Fuel is micromanaging and is obnoxious. I shouldn't need to constantly check my stats and make sure I have enough fuel to get from point A to point B, enough fuel to fire my weapons, enough to keep the autoturrets running. That's the point of smart reactor and power tank designs. It's boring and just adds another pointless check to the game that you need to occasionally tend to, like food in Minecraft. People said that it would be balanced because you needed to get food, but really it just ended up constantly starving new players to death and being an annoying hassle that didn't actually worry them for anyone with a small farm.
You don't die from not having fuel. If you wanna run big ship then you have to worry, that's the point, your choice. I never suggested with what ratio power could be drained from crystal so why you speculating about it?

Which brings me to my next point. Fuel will either be rare enough or consumed enough that it will be pointless to ever field a larger ship, or common enough that it's just a slight hassle for players and doesn't actually solve any problems.

If you stayed on to date on Dev News, you would have know there was a upcoming Block HP system that would render Hull fairly useful.
Yeah, I heard about that HP revolution. You will be able to place hull anywhere to boost your HP not only into exterior. I suggested to move shield into it as an value like hit points or armor so they could work like directional shield.

As for the OP, I cant say I'm very fond of that idea. While Alternate power sources would be a good idea, One that forces you to Harvest asteroids to maintain your fleet doesnt sound very appealing. Add in the possibility that on a server, one could hide behind a an allied ship, and Make your ships waste all their Power shooting your own ships while you are offline.
Plus, if you are gonna design the crystal to work around a "Damaged State", There is the exploit of using Astro-Tech to Heal it o -o
If you use one crystal to heal another, not really.

 

[Unnamed25]

Astro-Tech doesn't use power last time i checked.

 

[Zeno9141]

The only way you could protect ship core with hull for couple seconds is to make couple layers of it around. Normal hull have 100hp and 25armor, hardened 200hp and 50armor, so with big enough weapon you can get through in no time. And you know how big array of overdrive system you need to even think of escape, to use it on normal ship not specialized one? So yeah, bad example...


Everything on your ship depending on power, so it already require something to function. Only power generation require nothing.
Really? 6x6x6 ship? Do you heard about enhancers?

Okay. Allow me to tell you everything wrong with the way you handle a discussion.
1). You gave only pros in the OP.
2). All of your replies are clearly biased towards your satisfaction.
3). You edit a quote? Seriously? Just put it below the quote, for sanity's sake.

And finally, you try to disprove every single one of the arguments against your idea without thinking thoroughly if these arguments might have a certain sense of plausibility.

-------------------new paragraph that has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff mentioned above here----------------------------

Now, if you think fuel is going to fix "shield wars", you are wrong. Shield wars have been in existence for probably longer than you play this game. If anything were to fix it, it would be smart people who build ships with set roles and a definite purpose, not multipurpose-jack-of-all-trades-ships. Ion and Overdrive seem extremely efficient at busting shields. And now that weapons scale linearly, it does not matter whether you use 100 small ships or one titan. They will have approximately the same power.

Also, do you see micromanagement, hyper-realistic systems, and tedious "solutions" to "problems" as fun? I don't. Imagine it like the Frostfall mod for Skyrim. (just an example). It is fun on the short term, but gets really annoying lategame. Eventually you'll get really, really tired of it.

 

[Lecic]

But right now we only need to download blueprint from internet, upload it and buy ship. You can turn on buying with blocks but what if you don't have space in your inventory for all required blocks?

We're getting changes to the economy and buying ships. We're probably going to buy ships using blocks at shipyards large enough to fit the ship. We'll most likely be able to use plex storages for this function.

And we gonna wait years until everything be balanced. With limited power source we don't need to wait...

Yes, we would still need to wait for stats to be balanced with a limited power source. Just because power now costs a resource under your suggestion doesn't mean the stats of shields/thrust/weapons don't need to be balanced.

Actually female players play games to compete with male players. And no, nobody killed me with bigger ship. Small dick is only an example to show compensation for complexes. People build bigger ships because someone else have bigger ship. I'm just tired of this stupid competition. Why the only way to destroy ship you must have bigger ship?

Uh, no? Female players play games because they are fun, not because they have some sort of agenda to compete with males.

There are better ways to balance the gigantism issue, and limited fuel isn't one of them. A big ship will still crush a smaller ship without any competition regardless.

You don't die from not having fuel. If you wanna run big ship then you have to worry, that's the point, your choice. I never suggested with what ratio power could be drained from crystal so why you speculating about it?

I didn't say you would die without fuel. I used minecraft as an example, because it has a similar system that is nothing but annoying micromanagement, much like what you suggest.

I never said anything about the power drain ratio. You're the one who brought it up.

Which brings me to my next point. Fuel will either be rare enough or consumed enough that it will be pointless to ever field a larger ship, or common enough that it's just a slight hassle for players and doesn't actually solve any problems.

 

[Zeno9141]

Actually female players play games to compete with male players.

That. Is sexist.

Besides that undoubtedly not-hidden overly sexist comment.. This person does not really listen to criticism on his suggestion. I have an advice for you all:

 

[Borr]

That. Is sexist.

Besides that undoubtedly not-hidden overly sexist comment.. This person does not really listen to criticism on his suggestion. I have an advice for you all:

Best way to discredit someone... I asked two girls, why they play and both told me that. Even if something sound like sexist didn't mean that is not true. Saying that someone is sexist is like hammering someone in the head.

Oh no, I edited again, bad Borr, baaad! :P
Okay. Allow me to tell you everything wrong with the way you handle a discussion.
1). You gave only pros in the OP.
Not only, and depends of person, and which is good for them. For you getting power from magical force of the Universe to power your ship is ok, for me not.

2). All of your replies are clearly biased towards your satisfaction.
And I can say the same about some of the statements here.

3). You edit a quote? Seriously? Just put it below the quote, for sanity's sake. There is nothing wrong with that, I didn't changed anything you said...

And finally, you try to disprove every single one of the arguments against your idea without thinking thoroughly if these arguments might have a certain sense of plausibility.
With all due respect but some some of argument sounds like "oh no, leave my ship alone". Seriously, this is the worst community I ever seen. No one can say anything without being flamed...

-------------------new paragraph that has absolutely nothing to do with the stuff mentioned above here----------------------------

Now, if you think fuel is going to fix "shield wars", you are wrong. Shield wars have been in existence for probably longer than you play this game. If anything were to fix it, it would be smart people who build ships with set roles and a definite purpose, not multipurpose-jack-of-all-trades-ships. Ion and Overdrive seem extremely efficient at busting shields. And now that weapons scale linearly, it does not matter whether you use 100 small ships or one titan. They will have approximately the same power.
I played this game longer than you think. I remember how big shield problem always was. That is why guys from Space Engineers still refuse to add them.

Also, do you see micromanagement, hyper-realistic systems, and tedious "solutions" to "problems" as fun? I don't. Imagine it like the Frostfall mod for Skyrim. (just an example). It is fun on the short term, but gets really annoying lategame. Eventually you'll get really, really tired of it.

Overall I'm done with this community, nothing changed, new website, the same people with closed minds as it was before, too afraid of something new... Saying anything here is a waste of time, oh well...

 

[Zeno9141]

I am implying, it is not a game feature, and shouldn't be. This is mod material.
If you want fuel, learn Java, do some more extensive research into the effect of micromanagement on players, and iron out the mechanics.

Overall I'm done with this community, nothing changed, new website, the same people with closed minds as it was before, too afraid of something new... Saying anything here is a waste of time, oh well...

We are not as idiotic as you imply here. Instead, we try to show how a collaborative and collective approach is better than pure self-enjoyment. As I said, if you want this so badly, mod it.

Best way to discredit someone... I asked two girls, why they play and both told me that. Even if something sound like sexist didn't mean that is not true. Saying that someone is sexist is like hammering someone in the head.

You are stereotyping women on basis of 2 people. You cannot address the entire female gamer community just because 2 radical feminist people play games only for that reason.

Oh no, I edited again, bad Borr, baaad!

This thread is going into flaming hell from both sides. If you can't stand constructive criticism on your ideas, do not address it as "flaming".