Power System Overhaul Proposal

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    Criss

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    Does schine have a working prototype of this system yet?
    No. Strictly a proposal right now. It was in the works for a while. It is a lot of information. It may be good on paper but we wouldn't think about breaking things so severely without getting feedback, hence the post.

    Sadly this breaks all the actually legit spaced/floating-type designs
    It shouldn't if we don't require power conduits. Depends on how they are used and in what instances. Also we had ideas on how to make breakaway work with disconnected structures, but that is a different problem.
     
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    DukeofRealms

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    THREAD HAS BEEN CLEANED!

    I see a lot of concern from PVP players about this proposal.

    proposal
    the act of offering or suggesting something for acceptance, adoption, or performance.

    Great, we want to see concern, we figured there would be some issues with this system. The rest of the team and I want to have them brought up, list the issues you see with this suggestion. We're looking for feedback; this is why we posted the thread in the first place. We're changing a lot of things at Schine, and one of those is being more open with what we want to achieve.

    My fellow team members and I don't appreciate knee jerk reactions, snide comments and unhelpful remarks. We're trying to work with the community to improve the game, that sort of behaviour is not helping. This is a suggestion, it's a big change to the game, and we want to work with the community to develop the best system we can. We only want to make a huge change like this once, so we want to get it right. This suggestion is the starting point, we've posted it here to gather feedback on potential issues and how we can improve it. Next month this system might be unrecognisable from what it is today, who knows how much we will need to change.

    We haven't started development on this, we've come up with an idea and have decided to share it with the community to find out what's good and what's not. I expect to see it take at least weeks to mature enough to be implemented as a test feature (turned on by config) and months before it's tested, balanced and reworked in-game for it to replace the previous system.

    If you don't like the suggestion, cool, please don't resort to memes, snarkiness and overall negative behaviour. It's hard for me to justify further openness about our plans with the community when this is the response we get. Please keep this in mind.

    Any further posts that do not contribute to this discussion will be deleted. Tell us what you like, what you don't and most importantly why. We're looking for feedback, so please provide it!
     
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    Sounds interesting and exciting. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

    Let me make this as simple as possible.

    In the current system, you can make any ship into an ultra effective meta boat as long as it is even remotely wedge shaped. So you can still easily make a good looking ship that is also min-maxed.

    With the proposed system, every meta ship is going to be shaped like a gigantic chandelier.

    The idea that the game should be balanced around the whims of aesthetic RP builders and not around the PvP that those balance changes will actually effect is idiotic.
    Aesthetics always has to take a back seat to performance for PvP (a general truth, not just specific to SM).

    If you're building a PvP ship it's entirely up to you whether you're willing to sacrifice aesthetics for better numbers. Anyone who isn't is perhaps just not hardcore enough.
     
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    Are you planning a public beta/opt in for testing before main release?

    I'm really excited about this and would like to try it out!
     

    Calhoun

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    Have no fear, Captain Censorship is here.

    Seriously, if you're going to 'clean' threads like that then you may as well take down half of SMD.
     
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    If you don't like the suggestion, cool, please don't resort to memes, snarkiness and overall negative behaviour. It's hard for me to justify further openness about our plans with the community when this is the response we get. Please keep this in mind.
    I really think this line is important enough to be put in bold text. Since I can't do that, I'm quoting it instead.

    As for feedback, I think a major concern will be if older designs can be upgraded to the new system without too much pain/effort. Perhaps an enhancement to the advanced build remove mode that would allow us to delete blocks classified as systems, weapons, foilage, or hull would help as it would allow people to take the systems out of a ship for a refit without damaging the exterior/interiors already in place.
     
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    more in depth thread here:
    My ideas on System Design and Game Balancing

    I like the direction, in which this is going. It would be really nice if you could compartmentalize your ship in regard to the systems, the ship uses, such that the function of a particular compartment would lead to a form, that nicely integrates systems design into interior ship design, so you dont need to build reactor room imitations for RP value and aesthetics, but as a natural consequence of the new block mechanis.

    To broaden the picture abit:
    At the moment, building and using ships doesn't feel like you are actually out in space. And that using a ship is a group effort, if systems are not adequately automatised. Thinks like central and controllable artificial gravity systems, life support systems, airlocks, which truly serve a purpose besides being a door, .... And ship to ship combat that is more subtle and less brute force, such that you could target specific systems, like thrusters, or weapons systems compartments, actual power conduits distributing the power within the ship, or life support. maybe you could trigger events, that would force you to leave the bridge and reboot or repair certain systems, so you don't need actual block damage or at least not alot of block damage for actual ship to ship combat, but an event based pattern as an extension. say you got hit by an ion beam, so you have to go to the shield system and use the consoles there to get the shields working again. EMP impacts could dissable main power, but maybe you have failsafe systems, that jump in, but those are only linked to some of your systems. you could even imagine all sorts of further logic based automatisations, that could be required, so you could built and use a console on the bridge or any other control room on the ship to control those automatisations and react to certain events. So you can make automatisations if you are short of a crew, but which by themselves could be a target again. but those events could give a crew an actual purpose onboard.
    you could destroy the bridge of the ship, so you cant maneuvre the ship or fire weapons from there, but you can go straight to the engine room, where you can only use the thrusters and jump drive, but not weapons. vice versa, the weapons system could be controlled from the corresponding compartment. so maybe you built backup control rooms into your ship or different rooms, that could centrally control a specific subset of your systems. radar/jammer/cloaker room, weapons room, engine room, .... or/and all in one :)., so you fly the ship and your friend controles the guns, ...
    imagine a canon destroying a power conduit, such that you have to reroute power, or hitting single weapon systems, that would actually fail without the bigger part of the ship getting destroyed. cannons or beams hitting the reactor block, so the reactor needs attention, so it doesnt overheat and explode the whole ship. Weapons with small radius of damage could become alot more interesting, such that it would allow missiles to become way more expensive, so you dont have those shields down->missiles hit->ship gone-battles any more, but battles like: the shield generator got hit, but in the time i needed to fix it, one of my weapons systems got deactivated. I'm getting a FasterThenLight flash right now :) but on star made steroids :)

    Maybe this goes too far, but the new power core design somewhat touches all the other aspects aswell.

    - bring systems design and interior design closer together
    - event based extension for less brute force combat szenarios
    - more out in space feeling
     
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    I see a load of PvP players concerned with this affecting them (creating objectively-better ships, for example) though honestly I still can't quite grasp their argument, given the objectively-better ships that already exist. There's a lot of talking about how aesthetics come after the PvP (ie maximum performance). But if that's the case, how do you care if the aesthetics of the perfect system are imperfect?
    Am I just missing part of this argument?

    Have no fear, Captain Censorship is here.
    Seriously, if you're going to 'clean' threads like that then you may as well take down half of SMD.
    could you just not and actually make an argument? have a conversation instead of trying to stop it altogether?
     

    Gasboy

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    Have no fear, Captain Censorship is here.

    Seriously, if you're going to 'clean' threads like that then you may as well take down half of SMD.
    We're not going to have the argument about how this isn't censorship, are we?

    I don't know what people thought would happen when folks start insulting the devs.

    If you want them to listen, write out a reasonable post. If you're just going to call the devs idiots, don't be surprised to have your post deleted.
     
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    The low-hp/low-mass filler block that you mentioned... I think it would be really convenient if build mode had a check box to make that block visible/invisible. It would be like shining an x-ray on your ship and easily seeing where the systems are located.

    Also, you will need a way to prevent a ship from having every possible passive system on it(Punch/Pierce/Antigravity/momentum-protection/etc.). Since your ship has more space in it. I assume those systems will also be miniaturized with their own heat boxes.
     
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    Zyrr

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    Aesthetics always has to take a back seat to performance for PvP (a general truth, not just specific to SM).

    If you're building a PvP ship it's entirely up to you whether you're willing to sacrifice aesthetics for better numbers. Anyone who isn't is perhaps just not hardcore enough.
    I'm really glad you posted this. Now, don't take this the wrong way, I'm not attacking you per se, just your way of thinking that is shared by most of the Dock.

    We need to get rid of this "you cannot have a pretty and effective PVP ship" meme. It's not true and it hasn't been true for years. There are innumerable examples of great looking PVP ships, both inside and out. Not making your meta minmaxed PVP ship look good is laziness, not a limitation placed on you by the game.

    This line of thinking is what I feel has lead to this not very well thought out idea to replace power. RP builders and, in general, people who have not spent much time looking at systems either because they're newer or haven't been exposed to an environment that forces you to have considered this to be fact.

    All of us can agree that we want our ships to work well. It's no fun flying an underpowered ship. This sort of suggestion is, at its core, to allow RPers to make their "powerful" ships - an admirable goal, I suppose. The problem is that the mindset is "I will not change, the game must change to suit me" rather than "how can I solve this problem within the framework of the existing system". All it takes is an hour or two of thought into systems, and most of all, EXPERIMENTING! I can't stress this enough. No player who would be considered good at PVP came into this game and won every fight and had a perfect design. What you see is the result of countless designs and tests, countless lost duels and lessons learned. Don't be risk adverse. There is no such thing as losing unless you let yourself lose, only things to learn from.
     

    Lecic

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    Aesthetics always has to take a back seat to performance for PvP (a general truth, not just specific to SM).

    If you're building a PvP ship it's entirely up to you whether you're willing to sacrifice aesthetics for better numbers. Anyone who isn't is perhaps just not hardcore enough.
    No, not really. The meta ship shape and shapes that can look good with ease and accommodate numerous aesthetics styles are currently the same. You currently only have to sacrifice an absolutely miniscule amount of performance for external aesthetics with 90% of builds in the current game.
     

    Calhoun

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    We're not going to have the argument about how this isn't censorship, are we?

    I don't know what people thought would happen when folks start insulting the devs.

    If you want them to listen, write out a reasonable post. If you're just going to call the devs idiots, don't be surprised to have your post deleted.
    See that's the problem, the posts that were removed weren't that bad. I mean sure, they could have been phrased a bit more politely (cough Lecic cough) but if that's the reason for takedowns, well, see more than half of SMD.
     

    Lecic

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    I see a load of PvP players concerned with this affecting them (creating objectively-better ships, for example) though honestly I still can't quite grasp their argument, given the objectively-better ships that already exist. There's a lot of talking about how aesthetics come after the PvP (ie maximum performance). But if that's the case, how do you care if the aesthetics of the perfect system are imperfect?
    Am I just missing part of this argument?
    As a PvP player, I would prefer if my builds could look good and also compete. This is currently possible. With the upcoming Chandelier Meta, it will be significantly more difficult to do this.
     
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    At first i was okay with this idea as it wouldn't change a lot in fact, now with a bit more thinking i'm not for at 100%. Because it would force everyone to build around the holy boxes provided by this system. While it isn't a problem for most of the ship you might be used to it pose a bit problem for me and simply originality for ships, shapes and design. I just made theses two rapidly :

    Small cruiser... What to do with the structure between ?
    Sans titre.png

    And now to my battlecruiser wich got in fact a very good potential for pvp.
    Sans titre1.png

    How am i supposed to build something that isn't a box to keep being inside the heat aera ? There isn't anymore things to fill the gap except well... Hull ? So what ? I'm going to have a whole lot of empty space that i'm forced to fill with useless bloc because it's not in a cooling box ? So if i want a ship that is a bit optimised i must make a giant box or build a reactor so big that i'll take every part of the ship, so i'm wasting space because i'm not going again for the cooling box.
    My point is, with this you simply kill the creativity and possibility to build unregular shapes without shooting at ourselves.
     
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    therimmer96

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    Yes. It will likely be a part of the dev build and toggle-able with a config option.
    IF you get through to the dev build with this idea, it's pretty much a sign that it's going in, nothing can be done about that. We should have an earlier prototype build of this, perhaps seperate from the rest of the game and it's updates, doesn't even have to be SM itself, lots of games use Unity to trial new features etc.

    This is going to change the most fundemental feature of the game, and have knock on effects through out the game, affecting balance not only for ships, but stations. It's going to require everybody to restart the game fresh pretty much. You really shouldn't do this without an actual prototype in the hands of players who can provide early feedback based on actual gameplay, rather than trying to build theories on how it will work, we all know things are going to change as development continues and you find out what's possible.
     

    Gasboy

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    As a PvP player, I would prefer if my builds could look good and also compete. This is currently possible. With the upcoming Chandelier Meta, it will be significantly more difficult to do this.
    How will it be more difficult? I don't see what exactly makes it more difficult to do.
     
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