Power System Overhaul Proposal

[Jeffenuva]

I don't really agree. I'd rather have the option of creating smaller dedicated power cores for subsystems. One near the engines, one inside large turrets, etc... Since power conduits will cause a loss of efficiency, I think this is the way to go. This also has the advantage of a) needing a lot less space for backup generators, and b) decentralization makes sure the entire ship isn't out of service because of a few lucky hits.

I think you could have both. One massive power reactor system in the main ship, and still have self-powered turrets. The largest core on a turret would be the power core in the turret?

 

[Valiant70]

(As in, more shield blocks = more shields, period.)

NOPE. Do not like.

The current power system of Starmade, and in fact the entire systems model has always struck me as odd. You guys are all used to it so it seems normal, but why the heck is the entire volume of our ships, aside from whatever we set aside for interior work, filled to the brim with blocks and blocks of systems?

This. So much this.

Something like the heat radius is obviously needed to keep people who are poor sports... I mean exclusively performance minded (c'mon I'm just joshin 'ya) from taking advantage of the new smaller size to simply pack in more systems for many times the performance currently possible with the modular power system.

Even though I'm very aesthetically-minded, I've never been able to bring myself to sacrifice more than a minuscule amount of performance for the sake of aesthetics.

I'm not sure 'heat' is the way to go for this, but admittedly I can't think of anything better off the top of my head.

I thought of something earlier:

These boxes need to be renamed. Let's go with "magnetic field" for now.
Magnetic fields don't generally harm organics unless they are absurdly strong. They DO mess with sensitive equipment, though, making it drastically less efficient. Let's just say the magnetic field is how the reactor contains its own radiation. As a side effect, it's also great at stopping cosmic radiation from giving your crew cancer! That makes the area both unusable as system space and excellent for living space. Reasoning problem solved by a simple name change.

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I think you could have both. One massive power reactor system in the main ship, and still have self-powered turrets. The largest core on a turret would be the power core in the turret?

True, but that wouldn't allow you to have one reactor for thrusters and one for shields, for example.

 

[Gasboy]

The current power system of Starmade, and in fact the entire systems model has always struck me as odd. You guys are all used to it so it seems normal, but why the heck is the entire volume of our ships, aside from whatever we set aside for interior work, filled to the brim with blocks and blocks of systems? I really like the idea of having (relatively) small systems installed in the ship, with the rest of the space devoted to interiors. Imagine having actual decks, even on smaller ships, without having their performance being extremely limited. I'm not sure if Schine can pull it off, but if they can, being able to have both ideal pvp and rp ships all in one would be amazing.

The reason that ships are filled to the brim has two parts.

The first part is that it is all about squeezing the most out of your ship, in PvP. If you have spaces, the guy you're fighting who doesn't have spaces has the advantage. Classic minmaxing. And that's absolutely fine. We can't make major changes and ignore something many people enjoy, and face it, it's a multiplayer sandboxy game, there's going to be player vs player combat.

The second part is basically how blocks are rendered. A 2x2x2 cube needs less processing power because only 24 textures need to be rendered. A 1x8 line of blocks has 34 textures that need to be rendered, thus takes more processing power to render. Now scale this up to a modest 200m x 30 x 30 ship, and imagine that not only are the exterior blocks being rendered, but now a more significant portion of the interior blocks are being rendered. This will cause some people with older or weaker machines more trouble with lag and graphical glitches.

 

[Valiant70]

The second part is basically how blocks are rendered. A 2x2x2 cube needs less processing power because only 24 textures need to be rendered. A 1x8 line of blocks has 34 textures that need to be rendered, thus takes more processing power to render. Now scale this up to a modest 200m x 30 x 30 ship, and imagine that not only are the exterior blocks being rendered, but now a more significant portion of the interior blocks are being rendered. This will cause some people with older or weaker machines more trouble with lag and graphical glitches.

We need occlusion culling.

 

[dwwojcik]

The reason that ships are filled to the brim has two parts.

The first part is that it is all about squeezing the most out of your ship, in PvP. If you have spaces, the guy you're fighting who doesn't have spaces has the advantage. Classic minmaxing. And that's absolutely fine. We can't make major changes and ignore something many people enjoy, and face it, it's a multiplayer sandboxy game, there's going to be player vs player combat.

I understand why people build their ships that way (I'm no different.) My question was why is the game designed in such a way that building this way is necessary.

I don't think there's any reason why people should be opposed to a total power system overhaul, aside from how much a pain in the ass refitting all your ships will be if you have multiple large designs. Other than that the only reason is our natural predisposition to disliking change. But hey, it's no secret the game is in Alpha, that's what happens when you play an early access game.

And I definitely don't think that a system redesign along these lines should be in any way bad for PvP. Yes, peoples ships will be less dense, but the whole point is that they can be just as potent while needing fewer blocks. And it's not like the people you'll be facing in battle will be playing with the old system- they'll be playing with the exact same new systems, with all the same handicaps and/or buffs it brings.

 

[Gasboy]

We need occlusion culling.

I agree. I think anything that can be done to alleviate the issue should be done before the power change happens.
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I understand why people build their ships that way (I'm no different.) My question was why is the game designed in such a way that building this way is necessary.

I don't think there's any reason why people should be opposed to a total power system overhaul, aside from how much a pain in the ass refitting all your ships will be if you have multiple large designs. Other than that the only reason is our natural predisposition to disliking change. But hey, it's no secret the game is in Alpha, that's what happens when you play an early access game.

And I definitely don't think that a system redesign along these lines should be in any way bad for PvP. Yes, peoples ships will be less dense, but the whole point is that they can be just as potent while needing fewer blocks. And it's not like the people you'll be facing in battle will be playing with the old system- they'll be playing with the exact same new systems, with all the same handicaps and/or buffs it brings.

It's designed that way to give people choice. You can have fun building your combat monster doom cube, or you can have fun building space ship art, or you can have fun building a ship with a decent interior that can be the pants off of art, but loses to the deathcube.

That's why it's done that way. Choice.

Some people just think that their choice is the one true way.

I'm thinking the power change needs to benefit every way of playing.

 

[jstenholt]

My one concern is refitting turrets. I don't know anything about how they'll work yet, and I'm still dreading doing it, because most of my ships have at least a few dozen and my unfinished capital already has more than 100.

Oh well...

 

[Gasboy]

My one concern is refitting turrets. I don't know anything about how they'll work yet, and I'm still dreading doing it, because most of my ships have at least a few dozen and my unfinished capital already has more than 100.

Oh well...

We're all in the same boat. Power, turrets, weapons, shields... every system will be impacted by the power change.

 

[Mr.Steam]

When a ship is hit during combat will the projectile/energy absorbed by the shields cause the heat to increase? Will shields now fail when the power system overheats? Can we dissipate heat from the reactors with a radiator attached to the hull?

 

[Madman198237]

What the crap do you even mean, "Not this"? I said that that's what basically happens NOW, not suggesting anything. So, that really required no strange reply.

I do not like the idea of a poorly-defined arbitrarily instituted area where nothing can happen in a ship because reactor reasons. Instead, like I said, make it advantageous to include areas that allow NPC (Or player!) access to the majority of your systems, computers, reactors, etc. Make there be consequences for overloading a reactor, but not for simply having one (Seeing as they're required, don't penalize people for what you've forced on them).

Then change armor somehow, so that if you're an armor-tanking ship shells can't simply push right through. Perhaps the most logical method is to evenly spread damage across other blocks until you reach a certain threshold.
Say you can't deal more than x% of damage to an armor block per hit. So you spread damage out until you reach the point where no blocks receive more than x% hp damage. Or that you deal damage to areas x blocks in radius because your AHP is at value z, so armor becomes more effective at taking larger hits, while still being able to shrug off small hits from rapid-fire weapons.

 

[dwwojcik]

I agree. I think anything that can be done to alleviate the issue should be done before the power change happens.
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It's designed that way to give people choice. You can have fun building your combat monster doom cube, or you can have fun building space ship art, or you can have fun building a ship with a decent interior that can be the pants off of art, but loses to the deathcube.

That's why it's done that way. Choice.

Some people just think that their choice is the one true way.

I'm thinking the power change needs to benefit every way of playing.

This doesn't reduce choice at all. This just means that the space art has a chance against the doom cube. I don't believe that just because someone is interested in only their performance and not the aesthetics of their ship they have an inherent right to be better at battle than someone who cares as much or even more about aesthetics. On the other hand, of course I don't believe that doom cubes should be crippled to spare the space art. I just think that everyone should be able to have an effective ship, and you're free to choose if you want it to be pretty or not as well.

 

[Valiant70]

I agree. I think anything that can be done to alleviate the issue should be done before the power change happens.
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It's designed that way to give people choice. You can have fun building your combat monster doom cube, or you can have fun building space ship art, or you can have fun building a ship with a decent interior that can be the pants off of art, but loses to the deathcube.

That's why it's done that way. Choice.

Some people just think that their choice is the one true way.

I'm thinking the power change needs to benefit every way of playing.

The change should increase choices. Space art can also be functional. Functional ships have more aesthetic flexibility. Currently, functional ships are forced into a few limited possibilities for interior aesthetics.

 

[Gasboy]

When a ship is hit during combat will the projectile/energy absorbed by the shields cause the heat to increase? Will shields now fail when the power system overheats? Can we dissipate heat from the reactors with a radiator attached to the hull?

This is one of the things we get to discuss. What you've have asked is entirely possible to put in.

 

[Comradecolonel]

This doesn't reduce choice at all. This just means that the space art has a chance against the doom cube. I don't believe that just because someone is interested in only their performance and not the aesthetics of their ship they have an inherent right to be better at battle than someone who cares as much or even more about aesthetics. On the other hand, of course I don't believe that doom cubes should be crippled to spare the space art. I just think that everyone should be able to have an effective ship, and you're free to choose if you want it to be pretty or not as well.

This change wouldn't make ships prettier. All that would happen is that it would require more than just plopping down blocks to make your ship better. As it stands now you can make a huge ship with relatively simple systems. Scaling up isn't a matter of skill, its a matter of how big you are willing to build. If all you have to do is plop down a giant cube to make a better system I don't see how that is beneficial to gameplay.

 

[Gasboy]

The change should increase choices. Space art can also be functional. Functional ships have more aesthetic flexibility. Currently, functional ships are forced into a few limited possibilities for interior aesthetics.

Art can be perfectly functional in the game as it is. But what people seem to miss is that the person designing space art has different considerations than the person doing PvP when it comes to building a ship. Making art, or an RP ship, or a PvP ship, each has considerations, decisions to make, which will make the ship less functional in other areas. The interior of a PvP ship is usually a dull affair, compared to art or an RP ship, because the player has made decisions that make his ship better at PvP. When making an RP ship, you give up some combat capability in order to have nice interiors, rooms that have a purpose in the ship builder's mind (and will actually have a real purpose with this reactor idea, and the crew addition). And when you are making space art, you might just be building a shell, which has little to no combat purpose at all.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of these ships, there's only personal preference as to how it looks and how well it functions in combat.

Yes, I think aesthetics could use a boost.

But this power change trumps everything for the simple fact that you cannot do anything useful without having power: factories won't work, you can't mine, you can't have functioning ships or stations. Power first, sadly.

 

[Katorone]

I think you could have both. One massive power reactor system in the main ship, and still have self-powered turrets. The largest core on a turret would be the power core in the turret?

But maybe I'd like to have a core dedicated to the rail mass enhancers and one for the weapon system in these turrets? It wouldn't make sense to have a large reactor and a smaller backup one that's just idling constantly. For efficiency it would be better to have a single reactor power everything, since I'm sure their heat dissipation scales exponentially with size. So in a way you're already less efficient when having multiple reactors, you need a lot more room for them.

 

[Gasboy]

This change wouldn't make ships prettier. All that would happen is that it would require more than just plopping down blocks to make your ship better. As it stands now you can make a huge ship with relatively simple systems. Scaling up isn't a matter of skill, its a matter of how big you are willing to build. If all you have to do is plop down a giant cube to make a better system I don't see how that is beneficial to gameplay.

Well, it's not just plopping down a giant cube. Sure, you can do that, and you'll have limitations on it because you won't have the coolant chambers or the conduits to shift the heat around. But that's a choice you can make. You can run hot, save space, take a risk. It's gone from how big you're willing to build to how much heat you're willing to run.

 

[dwwojcik]

This change wouldn't make ships prettier. All that would happen is that it would require more than just plopping down blocks to make your ship better. As it stands now you can make a huge ship with relatively simple systems. Scaling up isn't a matter of skill, its a matter of how big you are willing to build. If all you have to do is plop down a giant cube to make a better system I don't see how that is beneficial to gameplay.

The proposed system won't make ships automatically prettier. What it will do is allow ships to not have to sacrifice prettiness for effectiveness, and vice-versa. That's all I'm saying.

If a typical warship only needs 5% of its volume filled to have all the power it needs, whether or not the left over volume is just filled in with the new internal armor blocks, or filled in with a full interior is left up to the shipbuilder. Either way, you have an equal potential combat effectiveness. A full interior would no longer make it impossible to compete with a ship with no interior and maximum space devoted to systems.

 

[Valiant70]

Art can be perfectly functional in the game as it is. But what people seem to miss is that the person designing space art has different considerations than the person doing PvP when it comes to building a ship. Making art, or an RP ship, or a PvP ship, each has considerations, decisions to make, which will make the ship less functional in other areas. The interior of a PvP ship is usually a dull affair, compared to art or an RP ship, because the player has made decisions that make his ship better at PvP. When making an RP ship, you give up some combat capability in order to have nice interiors, rooms that have a purpose in the ship builder's mind (and will actually have a real purpose with this reactor idea, and the crew addition). And when you are making space art, you might just be building a shell, which has little to no combat purpose at all.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of these ships, there's only personal preference as to how it looks and how well it functions in combat.

Yes, I think aesthetics could use a boost.

But this power change trumps everything for the simple fact that you cannot do anything useful without having power: factories won't work, you can't mine, you can't have functioning ships or stations. Power first, sadly.

The new system will be less tedious for function, aesthetics, and for combining them. This is because you don't have solid masses of dissimilar blocks that you have to gut and replace (or visually filter as some have suggested) to change anything. There is absolutely something wrong with all of these ships. You can't see what's going on inside at all. To change anything you just about have to redo everything besides power and weapons.

 

[Drakkart]

I have read 16 pages of comments.
I like schines endeavour of spicing things up in a way.
I doubt the actual proposal will get us anywhere besides throwing the games development back by a big margin while other really important stuff still waits for fixing. I'll just go over a "few"(tm) quotes collected on the past pages...

Bear in mind the details of the system are up in the air. Things like what shapes to use, what blocks are needed, and numbers are still being speculated upon. This proposal is here to get your thoughts.

You know schine proposals open to debate most often turned out to be "shipwrecking" the next update without giving the community the feeling that there was really a lot of thought put into it nor their concerns reflected upon.

Depends on how far the reworks go. Personally I'd welcome similar put-together mechanisms for other systems, but this depends on if the Schine team think that's gonna fly.

Probably will be a mix of "core" systems which are complicated and have lots of room for people to design, and additional systems that function classically (how we know) which perform less important roles

Since schine already stated it should affect multiple systems. so i just hope that if ever implemented everything will be implemented together for the implementation after each other will halt fleet productions for month because noone seriously building is going to continue to do so when not knowing how the final balancing will be. this would straight out kill intrest in the game.

We have a lot of changes planned for the weapon system as well. We wont forget about PvP. Furthermore, it is a discussion. The shape of the heat area doesn't have to be a box it could be customized for example. This is what discussion is for.

I'll get to shapes later for now i'd like to state that additionally to what i stated in the paragraph before the weapon system in it's actual state is one of the few things that actually performs.

Wrong. This was conceptualized by the two developers that know the most about the game out of the entire team. I had no idea of this proposal until they were ready to present it to us. If you think I am also not skeptical or critical of their ideas, you would again be wrong. I have already made some concerns clear to the team.

So robin and who else came up with this? sorry i'd really like to know and i'd really like to have a confirmation of them having read this post for it gets dead serious l8r.

THREAD HAS BEEN CLEANED!
... We're looking for feedback, so please provide it!

If you should ever wonder why people are annoyed by you, it is posts like these... the argument that half of smd should be cleaned up as well then, indicates that people feel a strong smell of cencorship and that is not good practice for someone in your position. i agree the memes and anim gifs suck but it is the internet and those are also part of expressing something.

Really? docked ship's turrets still shoot at the inside of a carrier when there is an enemy outside, and the sectors are still not fixed so that ships don't jump around, and the power system is what you are worried about?

He made a rock solid point. i would like to again remind you if shipbuilding comes to a halt and people loose interest in the game due to uncertainty this will have negative imapct on sales esspecially because right now are a few promising titles out there in early access.

As I understand this is a suggestion/brain storming thread, which is cool.

Right and i am sorry not to catch that right away. i hope this time it will result in a dialog before we will get presented a new "deal with it" "solution"

...

So, let's look at the problems


Forced design choices, True

Lack of complexity, True

Too many blocks involved (number, not types), False

Focused on regen, False

i'll cut this out but good points made in your post...

Lack of complexity. 100% true. When Aux blocks came out, many of my comrades where disappointed that schine replaced a complex mechanic with a ez one, docked reactors required math, spreadsheets, time, and a basic understanding of geometry in order to get the most per block out of them. There were many things to consider, such as the curve of reactors, how much cap you could get away with,
...

Here's one core point, schine, you're never going to make it so that a lesser experienced player can compete with a more advanced player, no matter what changes you do, the basic rules will always apply: Better player = better ship = better combat = winner. Instead, your focus should be to reveal the meta to new players, your focus should be to get them over the learning curve, and your focus should be to encourage, wherever possible, active thought about the most optimal placement of blocks for it is this constant drive to improve that not only keeps many of our players around after 3 years, but drives innovation in starmade.


Before we move on, we should discuss how to fix point 1 and 2. There is no fix for both 1 and 2, as in every other game, you will never reach perfect balance, there will always be something different about a certain type of ship/block/player/server/client/design philosophy. If you try to reach perfect balance, you'll end up with fixed position stats and unbelievably boring design.


There will be no curve, and thus there will be no innovation to make the most out of these curves and thus there will be no design and thus there is no game.


What you should do to improve these areas is to strike a balance between learning curves and playing to starmade strengths. One of the core things about starmade as I've already said is its insane complexity and depth, something not many space games have to offer. In other space games, you usually have fixed position non curving stat modules that you can add to your ship (I.E space engineers’ reactors, single block placement, set and fixed regen) this set and forget type of gameplay gives clear objectives and has a very small learning curve, but it doesn't offer much to long term players, which is why space engineers has a high turnover rate (i.e most people do not play it continually for 3 years)

Again curves ... there always was something ringing along good game design utilizing curves...

You're not solving anything "right now" with this, you're just creating new bugs, new problems, breaking new things, wasting time on what seems a random distraction to redo part of the game and gameplay that most people have been adequately happy with for... 4 years... instead of focusing on fixing easier, more pressing bugs and issues.

Yep he has a point.

Speak for yourself, not us. Lots of players get very creative with power placement and system placement, inside and outside the ship. Need we remind you of the external reactor fiasco? Schine is consistently taking away freedom and creativity from us players more than you're giving it with a few new pretty shiny blocks here and there.

if something made players engage to such a degree as making spreadsheets about a mechanic you as a developer should be proud of having achieved creating an aspect of the game so intensely desireable to master that you should be proud of yourself. Taking away freedoms never a good thing and you will maybe never even leran it but be told that is a dark page in starmades history.

Well I believe we disabled docked reactors anyway. Power supply beams cannot fire at their mothership.

...

Dear schine, we love our game, I have issues understanding what you propose, all we know for certain is that it will most likely break every ship we ever buildt and this sucks. I do not see how your changes could even slightly fix the points mentioned. instead i see even more restirctive forced design...
The point i'd really like to make though is. This game does not need a new power system this game desperatly needs fixes.
The Ai needs most of them. we need turrets to be able to take out torpedos in order beef em up drastically to make small ships viable.
We need a real trade system that is based on depleting ressources creating demand for farms, food ... livestock... we finally need a new crafting system that is intuitive. we need fixes to the rail/logic/gravity/camera system to be finally able to build extendable docking arms which allow us to dock to other entities by using their camera behind the raildocker while controlling the ships movement. We need monospaced fonts on displays and better was to access all their features. also for example displaying the contents x blocks left of the display block...

The powersystem could get an upgrade but why not thinking more of a general heat system to be implemented just alongside what we have now we now need to make up our minds about getting heat out of our ships... if we want to constantly fire outr guns we better pump a lot of coolant through them. That actually would be a system we could grasp and understand.
But your approach of trying to turn the system upside down bigger ships onel require now 5% of their space as systems... goes like - WTF?! Bigger ship = more volume = more powerfull ship and if you really try to turn that around please explain to everyone how this should be a welcomed change since it violates everything we know from every other game out there from watching our sci-fi series and ... And really we should leave space empty to be most effective?

such a change would be so drastic. that i really wonder why not recode the entire thing with unity instead which would be less work probably less new bugs and so long and so fourth.
We are in 2017 now robin worked on this game for over 10 years now. java is first compiled into a bytecode which then gets interpreted... and we are still running this game as a single thread application 7 cores bore them selfes to death while one is sweating rendering our ships. You sure power is your issue? Tbh. if you want to fix power revert to docked reactors those actually demanded something of the players. Aux adds nothing to the game it made it more boring.

On a sidenote someone mentioned that it would be cool having the shareable components back like 11x11x11 reactor designs... every skillfull player would hate it if such stuff would turn out to be the most effective and people just copying their design leaving no room for real genuity. The regular power system in place now is still challenging it probably just should never run into a cap and instead curve slightly back to never reach 1000e/s/block maybe even create a new curve... but this stuff is what keeps tinkerers excited about a game.

Again if you should still consider rendering every ship ever built obsolete then i strongly suggest you do it with a single patch and with it the new system is set in stone. additional uncertainty otherwise would kill the game right now as there are way to promising alternatives out there.

My suggestion make systems which are in use generate heat and give us tools to redistribute and eliminate said heat but you better not touch / turn everything upside down without having a clear concept and numbers backing it and making sure the game actually would benefit from it because it is easier to understand and harder to master... if it does not solve the initial points mentioned in the OP leave the old system as it is.
I have no fucking clue how you'd want to explain that a ship would be come more effective if left empty inside rather i doubt any new player would understand this, but hey you come up with a really good explanation and perhaps .... - naw i doubt there is a good explanation for that. bigger ship - more volume - more systems - stronger ship. Sounds logical correct to me.

In the end good builders will always be better. so no worries here. but i think with changing this system too drastically you probably would loose a big chunk of playerbase starmade might not recover from.
obsolete ships are not fun.

I know robin once mentioned not playing to many other games for he does not want to get influenced to much and thus getting distracted from his vision for starmade.
Well maybe it is time to play some more games and get a few ideas of how problems are dealt with in other games. just to find back on track. it is not everything bad out there. at least i'd like to besure he watches "extra credit" on youtube... basically a channel that explains and evolves around good game design and how and why.