Power System Overhaul Proposal

[Raisinbat]

A company pays me to design real life ships efficiently every day, so I can have money to eat and live in a house.

What's their thrust to mass and what weapons do they have?

You mean as opposed to the current power system which lets you choose a large triple axis reactor to be efficient, or anything else to be less efficient.

That's not a binary choice, xyz reactors can be laid out in many different ways, unlike new reactors which have predetermined effective layouts. You also ballance your reactor layout against vulnerable parts of your ship; maybe the most efficient reactor has to go through weakspots, so you go for less efficient layout that's more secure. Sometimes, you bloat the ship to have longer reactor lines at the cost of space efficiency. Reactor lines also introduce problems for internal railcomponents, like turrets, you need to work around. Then there's your docking tree aaand ballancing power vs guns in self-powered turrets that i can think of.

I'm not in favor of current power, i'd welcome a change, but you can't seriously suggest the new system allows more designs; it's another aesthetic concession that eliminates design problems to give more aesthetic freedom.

This proposal will have the same choice spectrum for space, and a larger choice spectrum for power.

It would be really nice if you would back up your claims with some kind of argument. Also choice spectrum is not what we're discussing, we're discussing problem spectrum (assuming i get what you said right). Everything you can build now you can build in new system, that's never been a contention, but the reason for designing a lot of the choices are being eliminated.

No it doesn't go away: you'll still want to fit it outside heat boxes. If anything the problem will become more difficult to solve - it looks like heatboxes will be large, and a few large objects are harder to alter to fit something than many small objects.

Heatboxes do not interfere with rails, they're not system blocks they can fit in just fine. It's also removing reactors from turret bases, since there's no benefit from putting them there anymore, so the large base goes away.

They're just boxes, you fit them as close as you can, its like putting boxes on a truck, except there's no truck boundary so you're not even limited there.

Asserting that there will only be one optimal design is ridiculous.

The power system will be based on these boxes. The only product of the boxes is heat mitigation, so only 1 vector. They have different variables like cooling or generation, but it all boils down to 1 vector. It can't support capacity for the same reason current system can't, instakill ships, so capacity is not an option/irrelevant. The only variables we are able to play with are what blocks are in the boxes and what shape/size they are, and because new system eliminates the spatial considerations from this because they are surrounded by empty hull, shape has no impact on the rest of the ship, neither does which blocks we fit inside it, and they don't affect anything else outside of the closed system, making both free variables. The only variable that impacts power systems is how large your ship is.

so heat mitigation is independent of every aspect of your ship except size, and affects nothing other than where your other systems are located, which also doesn't matter. This is why we get chandelier ships (best/only efficient outcome) and why we have much less to think about while designing.

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

"I reject your reality an substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Seriously raisinbat, that's all I hear from you, if it kills you to adapt your build style so much if this new proposal ever becomes reality that you have to constantly bash other people's opinions because of it, then stop updating your game and be content with what you have. If you're so adamant in your quest for the "creative freedom" you perceive in the good old system, then you have the choice of not going with the system as it is proposed.

There are so many problems with what you said.. If you don't like the new system, don't use it? Telling someone to ignore something that will affect everyone is just silly. It's like people saying "if you don't like marijuana then don't use it." It's a (star)citizens right to be able to argue against changes and make his opinion heard. It is extremely biased of you to not give both sides of this argument the same treatment.
If this is a thread to get our opinions on this proposed change, then Raisinbat is completely in his right to "complain". Just as it is your right to be completely enamored with this system.

Stop bawling about people BREAKING your game and acting like the game will be broken in the next few hours. Realize that the new system is just a PROPOSAL and an offer to get Schine some actual player input on the proposed changes, and it might not even make it into the game in a timely manner, or in the form it was proposed here.

Again, argument bias. Why shut down only one side of the argument?

And for your information, I'm a builder firmly planted on the gray area between RP and PvP, I enjoy both aspects of the game (although I don't have a lot of experience in combat (whether it be PvP or PvE), and I want to see both parties to have fun with the game. I care less about whether my ships are actually capable fighters or not, I just wanna have fun, build ships and be a part of the community. I have seen a lot of ships during my time in-game, some of them have been awesome, and others less-than-that, but it's all cool, because people tend to be different and I respect them for those differences.

The fact that you walk the grey line between RP and PvP means that you should not be making decisions about game balance. It sounds harsh, but you said you "just want to have fun" how is the current system preventing you from doing that? As an added note, you should respect the differences in opinion in this thread if you claim to respect people's differences.

I don't want it to seem like I'm protecting raisin, but your post just jumped out at me Snowtiger256 and I feel like I had to weigh in.

 

[Ithirahad]

The more I read, the more I am beginning to fall in with the "Add the goddamn crew!" crowd. I'm largely positive/neutral on this idea (though as I mentioned, I can't honestly give much meaningful feedback without getting my hands on the system itself) but it seems to me that AI crew and functional ship AI take a higher priority here.

If we absolutely must have this, first, though, for some development reason, my advice would be to change the heat system to a radial system or one that conducts through blocks (boxdims are never good) and then get the thing implemented into the dev branch as a first-iteration system.

And until that point, you might as well lock this thread. :\

 

[Edymnion]

The more I read, the more I am beginning to fall in with the "Add the goddamn crew!" crowd. I'm largely positive/neutral on this idea (though as I mentioned, I can't honestly give much meaningful feedback without getting my hands on the system itself) but it seems to me that AI crew and functional ship AI take a higher priority here.

Well, problem there is if they add the crew first, then thats crew AI that has to be written with the old system in place, then changed when a new system comes in.

Ideally you want the mechanics for things the AI can do to be in place before you start writing the AI, not the other way around.

So yes, if we are even thinking of redoing systems in the foreseeable future, it is better to redo them BEFORE the crew is done. Much less rework that way, as the crew is likely to cement down whatever we have when it comes out for quite some time.

 

[Ithirahad]

Well, problem there is if they add the crew first, then thats crew AI that has to be written with the old system in place, then changed when a new system comes in.

Ideally you want the mechanics for things the AI can do to be in place before you start writing the AI, not the other way around.

So yes, if we are even thinking of redoing systems in the foreseeable future, it is better to redo them BEFORE the crew is done. Much less rework that way, as the crew is likely to cement down whatever we have when it comes out for quite some time.

As far as I understand it, the two systems would be fairly flexible in their interactions with one another. From what I remember of the crew system, crew would interact with "stations" that are linked to various systems. We can just as easily have Power Controller and Auxiliary Power Controller stations, that can later be hot-swapped with Reactor Core Computer and Chamber Controller stations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, though. It's been a while since I've looked at the bits that have been outlined regarding the crew system.

 

[GalactusX]

PVP players against RP players, RP players against PVP players, crew or non-crew, new AI or not new AI, CORE power or not CORE power ... everything will arrive, I only hope that when the changes come, the players have a "Adequate time frame" to accommodate and adapt to them.

Any other discussion between them, is only dust that is lost in the immensity of space ...

 

[Snowtiger256]

There are so many problems with what you said.. If you don't like the new system, don't use it? Telling someone to ignore something that will affect everyone is just silly. It's like people saying "if you don't like marijuana then don't use it." It's a (star)citizens right to be able to argue against changes and make his opinion heard. It is extremely biased of you to not give both sides of this argument the same treatment.
If this is a thread to get our opinions on this proposed change, then Raisinbat is completely in his right to "complain". Just as it is your right to be completely enamored with this system.

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Again, argument bias. Why shut down only one side of the argument?

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The fact that you walk the grey line between RP and PvP means that you should not be making decisions about game balance. It sounds harsh, but you said you "just want to have fun" how is the current system preventing you from doing that? As an added note, you should respect the differences in opinion in this thread if you claim to respect people's differences.

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I don't want it to seem like I'm protecting raisin, but your post just jumped out at me Snowtiger256 and I feel like I had to weigh in.

I may have sounded harsh and not completely on point, but maybe I was reading things wrong, or just getting a bit tired about Raisinbat being so vocal about his opinions, that already have been made clear previously, and he seemed not to get what the others were trying to say. It's sometimes hard for me to interpret the emotions behind what people say in text-based mediums, so I tend to get things wrong sometimes. Can you blame me for that?

I don't presume I have the right to make decisions on game balance, I just want the game to be good for eveyone, not biasing one way or the other. As for what comes to "just having fun" I meant it in a general sense, the actual system doesn't actually matter, as long as we have fun among friends and get to do something interesting and enjoyable.

 

[KaRe]

In my opinion, it may be best to implement this or a system like this. On one hand, the heat system could allow for crews and quarters to be implemented more easily, as in the case of Pulsar: Lost Colony, it allows more space for interior, it balances combat more evenly, and it can lead to more grandiose reactor designs. On the other hand, it provides a critical weakness for all ships, inner hull is weak now, reactors have limited placement areas for best protection, everything will have to be reworked, and as far as I'm aware overheating is equal to being a duck in water or a ticking bomb.

My only question is if stations will work the same or have some differences.

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

There's a difficult mechanic to explain in video games, and I won't be the one to explain it well. I can barely grasp the concept of it, but it is there all the same. The best way I can describe it is as the "killer update". Games are meant to be played in a way that promotes competitiveness, it's the way that things become popular. You might point to games like minecraft, Gmod, and roblox that don't promote this very heavily, and you would be right for saying that those games are good "casual" games. But look at the amount of games that are considered "casual" and the ones that are "competitive". Look at the player base for most casual games, and think about how long the game stays popular. Besides the fringe cases like minecraft and such, the games that stay around the longest are competitive ones.

Before I start ranting too long, I'll try and just give a concise statement: Drastic changes that are meant to make the game more approachable to a casual crowd can easily have the inverse effect of reducing the playerbase. While it is alright to allow people to do as they please, enpowering those people, depending on their viewpoints, could have negative long term affects. Much like a slippery slope, but much less like a logical fallacy.

 

[Raisinbat]

Seriously raisinbat, that's all I hear from you, if it kills you to adapt your build style so much if this new proposal ever becomes reality that you have to constantly bash other people's opinions because of it, then stop updating your game and be content with what you have. If you're so adamant in your quest for the "creative freedom" you perceive in the good old system, then you have the choice of not going with the system as it is proposed.

So you bash my opinion? im AGAINST creative freedom, at least read my posts if you're going to get all offended. Would also be nice if you could adress some of the points brought up instead of doing nothing but whine.

Stop bawling about people BREAKING your game and acting like the game will be broken in the next few hours. Realize that the new system is just a PROPOSAL and an offer to get Schine some actual player input on the proposed changes, and it might not even make it into the game in a timely manner, or in the form it was proposed here.

Yes its a proposal, im responding to the proposal halfwit, as opposed to you whining that someone disagrees with you.

We need to give the folks at Schine time to flesh out the proposal and come up with a dev build so we can actually test what kind of chnges the system will actually incur in game. In the meanwhile, both the proposed system and the game might change, so we might still have to adapt our building process in order to make use of any other changes during the time Schine works on this proposed change.

They posted it here FOR FEEDBACK. I am providing feedback on the consequences of these changes, why are you so upset about that?

And for your information, I'm a builder firmly planted on the gray area between RP and PvP, I enjoy both aspects of the game (although I don't have a lot of experience in combat (whether it be PvP or PvE), and I want to see both parties to have fun with the game. I care less about whether my ships are actually capable fighters or not, I just wanna have fun, build ships and be a part of the community. I have seen a lot of ships during my time in-game, some of them have been awesome, and others less-than-that, but it's all cool, because people tend to be different and I respect them for those differences.

And you're posting this because? You (by your own admission) don't know anything about pvp, and don't care either, so why does your opinion matter on this? And why is it that only positive opinions on this suggestion is allowed?

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

In my opinion, it may be best to implement this or a system like this. On one hand, the heat system could allow for crews and quarters to be implemented more easily, as in the case of Pulsar: Lost Colony, it allows more space for interior, it balances combat more evenly, and it can lead to more grandiose reactor designs. On the other hand, it provides a critical weakness for all ships, inner hull is weak now, reactors have limited placement areas for best protection, everything will have to be reworked, and as far as I'm aware overheating is equal to being a duck in water or a ticking bomb.

My only question is if stations will work the same or have some differences.

The only way this makes crew quarters to be implemented is by FORCING empty space, how is that a good thing for what is supposed to be a sandbox voxel game? And placement of reactors has always been a concern, you don't want your power lines to be on the outside of the ship, do you? While I think reactors would be an interesting idea, the current proposal is, quite frankly, retarded.
I can agree with what others have said:
-implement crews first, and give bonuses to systems manned by crews
-if you want to force dead space for a reactor, force a certain amount of crew to keep track of the reactor for maximum efficiency.
and my own idea:
-crews need to be claustrophobic, so each crew member needs to have a space that is a certain volume of free blocks, just like terraria.

 

[Gmodism]

This is a good idea to make combat in starmade interesting at all, I hope that good tools will be made to make it easier for people to fix their ships, otherwise there is a risk that some players would leave upon such a drastic change, but this is a good idea in the long run.
Shields should take their energy from the reactor and add heat, this is to make the shieldboats more centered towards civilian crafts.
Also you got to make undocked cores not collide with mothership, and add animated plexdoors to scale down the insane amount of cores on large ships and decrease lag.
This change will not change the fact that all ships basically feel the same in starmade, small ships need to be much more agile and stop turn and maneuver faster, bigger ships should be slow, but for example a battleship needs to have most of it's weapons as turrets, new combat mechanics are needed so that a commander can control all turrets, aim them and fire as regular guns.
Sorry for spinning of but these are issues that need dire improvements. /Regards

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

[Im triggered!]

No need to resort to personal attacks on snowtiger, he seems to have apologized in a roundabout way for his response to one of your previous posts.

Also, you are against creative freedom? Mind if I ask why?
[doublepost=1487089785,1487089558][/doublepost]Gmodism You seem to fail to realize how weird this system is. Think about it, less than 25% of mass for system blocks? a huge dead zone that decides it's own dimensions, or fits to your ship size automatically with no way to change it's direction? Using HEAT as a limiter in how much the weapons can fire, while a larger reactor allows a larger amount of heat to be dissipated, allowing the weapons to fire?

And even if the heat system is changed, there is still the fact that they are forcing dead space, before there is even anything to do with said dead space.
[doublepost=1487089931][/doublepost]Is there a thread that focuses on the points of each argument? It would be much easier to read instead of going through all 32 pages of this fire storm.

 

[MacThule]

Having slept on the issue:

+1 For power system revision from Esec/Ecap to heat cost from a reactor core, IF optimizing that reactor core isn't simply about following a single recipe inside a small box on your ship with one 'best reactor composition' at any given ship size.

+1 For making power and other systems more accessible to new players, IF the upper end of performance is still terribly difficult and time consuming to work out (i.e. moving the steepest part of the learning curve away from basic shipbuilding and towards the end of advanced ship building). Greater initial accessibility would be nice, so long as this doesn't eliminate rewards for players with advanced experience and understanding.

+1 For requiring some interior space buffer around systems that can't be occupied by another system, but I'm strongly against the unrealistic idea that it's because the systems are irradiating the entire ship and think buffer space & auxiliary systems would be better forced by making it crew service/access related.

-1 For making any sort of dead zones in ships to be filled with extra light filler blocks. This is unrealistic, counter-intuitive, and completely undermines the stated goal in the OP of block count reduction.

The interior block thing is still absolutely lost on me. That space can easily be achieved right now, without crew implemented, without a systems overhaul, without making special new ultra-light blocks... because we have a shit-ton of utterly useless ultra-light blocks on hand right now. They're just sucking up block IDs. By requiring x number of motherboard, circuit, or charged circuit blocks be connected to an entity's power reactors (and/or other systems), you can start forcing internal space right now.

I realize now that getting the community started on expanding interior, system-adjacent spaces is almost certainly an unstated goal of this proposed overhaul. That is understandable since upcoming developments on the timeline will clearly require ships to have that space so it can be converted into quarters and duty zones. Perhaps the interior hull affair is meant to be an interim solution during the time between implementation of a new power system and later implementation of Crew. Otherwise why force ships to have huge chunks of unused interior space? If this is the case, don't bother creating a whole meta-narrative about why that space needs to be there, heat zones and such, just require it, tell us the real reason, and let us fill it with whatever. This doesn't prevent you from converting to a heat-based power system if that works better developmentally, since heat and other radiation can be contained with shields and vented.

My biggest fear, is that this system heralds a major pivot in development focus towards the realm of the RPG. I fear that achieving superior performance from these "reactors" is going to become about AI crew 'experience' rather than actual player intelligence and experience, which will set off the cascade of descent into grind-town. Because at that point, the only path to superior performance is grinding experience. Rewards for ingenuity, cooperative learning, experimentation, designing and re-designing will fall away, outclassed by uber-crew controlled by players with excessive amounts of free time to be online.

 

[Raisinbat]

Also, you are against creative freedom? Mind if I ask why?

I already explained this in more details, but dont blame you for not reading the entire thread... Power System Overhaul Proposal

I play to solve design problems, when design is made easier, such as removing space limitation, you're eliminating what makes the game fun. Things like designing a flight deck or a turret socked doesn't matter if internal space is plentiful everywhere.
Creative freedom means you can make whatever you want, but it removes the purpose for ships being built until they're all the same mechanically and only aesthetically different.

Look at it this way: If ships require fuel, we have a purpose to build tankers and refineries. If cargo didn't compress it's content so much we would have cargo ships instead of shuttles, or just fitting 0.01% of a ship with cargo and doing it that way.

Is there a thread that focuses on the points of each argument? It would be much easier to read instead of going through all 32 pages of this fire storm.

This sounds like a good idea

 

[GalactusX]

The community of players should do in this post only 3 things:
- Whether they agree or disagree with the suggested changes.
- Give their opinion if these changes are or are not good for the game of other players (not just for a specific type of players, for all)
- If they see that he can change the new system and/or implementing something new that adds more gameplay and subtracting difficulty, exposing his suggestions and arguing them.

I am seeing that the post is filling up with answers to other players over and over, entering a loop of negativity that does not favor anyone. If I put a suggestion, and this one does not like another person, I do not have to enter into a debate, trying to downplay the one who takes the opposite.

The changes are always hard, what happens is that we have settled into an inefficient system waiting to be changed, and now, that this is about to change, we do not want it because we have settled for what we have, instead of waiting for something new, that will make us have new goals.

This is just a personal opinion.

 

[KaRe]

I agree with the previous post entirely. It is useless to argue about 3 or 4 problems rather than all of them, and doing so with negativity.

 

[Lord Daro]

I would like to throw in some ideas and see if anyone else thinks aswell they could contribute to making the proposed new mechanics enjoyable.

Well, I didn't bother to read the 20+ sites since the last time I took a seriuos look at this thread.
Therfore I'm saying sorry in advance, should this stuff already have been proposed.

1. Reactor:
How about reactor blocks are volatile by default? The explosion could be triggered if 10 or 20% of the reactor are destroyed or by some random change, if that's much more preferable codewise.
Also I would let performence stack up on block count per cluster. (Similar to current powerlines)
But the explosion radius will go up propotionally.

This would mean in praxis that a single massive cluster of reactor block would be very powerfull but at the sime extremly dangerous, potentially ending the battle for good, when damaged.
On the other hand severel smaller clusters could ony dream of the performance the above provides, but damageing them won't be as severe.
So builders would have to decide beween savety or raw power.

2. Shields:
Shields could possibly be included into the balance of the proposed heat dynamic.
My Idea here is not have schields deplead on being hit but rather stack up addional heat (added to the heat they already build up). This would make the recharge kinda depended on the ratio of reactor/all other active systems, meaning you could temorally increase recharge by not using some systems permantly and thus "saving energy".

As for shield block count:
For one could the block count could simply decrease the heat build up on having the shields hit, while also raising flat build up from the system itself.
However, I would like to throw in an alternative idea aswell:
The flat build up just for running shields is still growing with block count, but the shield strengh would be an indicator how much damage they can directly repell from the ship.
To picture this: A shield system that's stronger than the weapons firing at it, will have it's heat increased more or less slowly (depending on total dps). But if a weapon can make extremely high shield damage in a very short time (Like canon/pulse/ion for example), the round will ignore shields and hit the hull directly.
With this system, builders would need to strike a balance between having high recharges and the maximum weapon strength to defend againsed.


Also: I advocate for having system performance and heat build up in general stack up with cluster size, thus giving a choice between raw power and "energy efficency".

 

[Zerefette]

I wanted to express my opinion on this too...
First of all, I'm very positive about this, it's a chance to get rid of part of the waffles, unite efficency to aestethic and giving a sense to all this mass of blocks slammed together.
Now this, Kupu's pic.

And this.

They look remotely alike, but only because you've seen Kupu's pic.
But If you hadn't seen the first one you'd probably think it's 4 groups of blocks connected by a pile of other blocks.
Now think it the new system becomes essentially this but scaled to whatever the amount of power you desire is, in the end it's a mass of blocks connected to other blocks.
This is what I fear may happen after the update, people creating masses of blocks united by conduits, this is just as bad as waffles.
And it becomes worse if this is sunk in armor or other blocks like this.

This is just as terrible as waffles.
What I expect is components subwork, let's focus on the reactor core, is there a way to make it look good while functional?
Reactor examples:

Spoiler: images

And a Sci-Fi bonus.

Now some player made examples.

Spoiler: images

I made this little thing just as an example.

And I made this one a long time ago

This could be a chamber room.

When you build these things you get the feeling of being satisfied of what you do and then you think fk this is cool but techincally useless. But if we could unite RP and PVP this can be perfect!
Other than this the structure may change depending on the amount of heat it gives off, but that is detail up to the development.
Also we need glass pipes/conduits.
I hope you get my point. I may have stolen pics from random people, contact me if you wanna be cited in the post.

 

[NeonSturm]

This is just as terrible as waffles.

This is terrible, I agree!

This could be archived by requiring the chambers to be more equally distributed over the heat area.
.
Or have a distance from each other (chamber heat box) and the whole reactor is the boundary box around those.
.

Perhaps we should not allow advanced armour inside a chambers heat box?
Only interior hull for decoration.​