Prerelease v0.200.250

    Ithirahad

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    Get creative with fleet mechanics!

    We know that ships will always try to line up in rows on either side of you, you should be able to make what is effectively a barrier/shield ship that puts a shell segment around your main ship that is held in place by the barrier ship holding formation.
    Have you tried the fleet mechanics at all? Yes, they 'try' to line up, but they will not 'hold formation' unless you stand completely still for a while - and, for that matter, counteract the movement resulting from any fleet ships hitting you in the process - otherwise you dealign, they all try to move to compensate and become entangled by their own collision prevention code, and the entire process has to start again.
     

    Edymnion

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    Have you tried the fleet mechanics at all?
    Oh yeah, they're laughably pathetic. Which is why I said to try. Still going to be better than trying to chain entities together and rely on collision checks to keep them in place, better for the server at least.
     
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    Keptick

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    Just curious about how the shield coverage works with turrets. If I understand correctly we can't place shields on the turret components, correct? I use a specific type of turret on some of my ship where the base rotates around the Z axis of the ship and the guns are mounted on pylons, like so:


    How the fuck do I shield the turret? I might be wrong but I feel like the new system seriously advantages stubby compact blob turrets over those that have long barrels or extensions.... Why can't we put shields on turrets? It's essentially an extension of the ship and docked shields would have no advantage over the normal shield "bubbles" on the main ship.

    Someone please clarify how it works, I really hope that I'm wrong...
     
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    Edymnion

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    Just curious about how the shield coverage works with turrets. If I understand correctly we can't place shields on the turret components, correct? I use a specific type of turret on some of my ship where the base rotates around the Z axis of the ship and the guns are mounted on pylons, like so:


    How the fuck do I shield the turret? I might be wrong but I feel like the new system seriously advantages stubby compact blob turrets over those that have long barrels or extensions.... Why can't we put shields on turrets? It's essentially an extension of the ship and docked shields would have no advantage over the normal shield "bubbles" on the main ship.

    Someone please clarify how it works, I really hope that I'm wrong...
    Put the main mass of shield generators under the base of the turrets. Have lots of shields. Thats about all you need. The bubble for shield power actually is, in my experience so far, larger than it needs to be. By the time you put enough shield generators down to reach a standard 10% recharge rate for a relatively normal amount of shields for a ship of it's size, the bubble is already WAY bigger than the ship is.
     

    Edymnion

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    It scales by square root tho, as AtraUnam stated, so diminishing returns apply. Based on Keptick 's usual preference of ship size, it will become a problem for his designs.
    Yeah, but you can have multiple generator banks to provide bubbles to cover more pretty easily though.

    Its a good downward pressure on gigantism, IMO. You can still make a gigantic titan, you're just gonna have to spend more resources and thought in protecting it properly. Unless you're looking at a turret thats as big as the ship you placed it on, you should be fine.
     

    Matt_Bradock

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    Yeah, but you can have multiple generator banks to provide bubbles to cover more pretty easily though.
    True, but the 1:1 power to shield recharged ratio means that multiple charger banks will consume a ton of power, power that's already hard to generate due to the ludicrous scaling in the required distance between generation and stabiliser blocks.
     

    Edymnion

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    True, but the 1:1 power to shield recharged ratio means that multiple charger banks will consume a ton of power, power that's already hard to generate due to the ludicrous scaling in the required distance between generation and stabiliser blocks.
    Yup, seems to me they've found a fairly decent way to stop people from trying to build 5km long ships. This is good.
     
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    Yup, seems to me they've found a fairly decent way to stop people from trying to build 5km long ships. This is good.
    Really? I thought 5km long needle ships were all the meta now if you want infinates powerz!!!!
     

    Lecic

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    Welp, to be completely honest? Its because people abused docked entities to game breaking levels.

    When Schine took less drastic measures to try and get the "Hey guys, this is bad, please don't do this" message across, they basically just flipped the bird and found a different way to do it.

    So its like anything else in gaming. A minority ruined it for everybody else.
    Sorry, are you saying broken things shouldn't be fixed if people aren't currently abusing them? That's what it sounds like.

    The ship core has, or should have, some RHP. However, this might mean that we're back to coring for turrets...
    This is a good point and another reason why RHP is a bad system. We should still be using SHP.

    Just curious about how the shield coverage works with turrets. If I understand correctly we can't place shields on the turret components, correct? I use a specific type of turret on some of my ship where the base rotates around the Z axis of the ship and the guns are mounted on pylons, like so:


    How the fuck do I shield the turret? I might be wrong but I feel like the new system seriously advantages stubby compact blob turrets over those that have long barrels or extensions.... Why can't we put shields on turrets? It's essentially an extension of the ship and docked shields would have no advantage over the normal shield "bubbles" on the main ship.

    Someone please clarify how it works, I really hope that I'm wrong...
    And this is a good example of why the shield bubbles are a bad mechanic. I still don't know what purpose these are supposed to actually serve.
     
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    Matt_Bradock

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    OK... Lancake this is getting me to the limit of ragequitting Starmade for good. Every single time I load up my universe and my WIP ship, the power consumption is above 100% and unstable. I look up the main consumers, downsize them to get well below (to 50%) of consumption when idling, then I can't use my active reactor chamber effects because despite being charged they don't activate on left click. Then I save, shut down local and restart it trying to reset hoping my chambers will work, AND NOW THE POWER CONSUMPTION IS OVER 100% AGAIN. I lost count how many times I have went through this cycle and I'm starting to lose my f***ing patience!

    Is anyone else getting this crap?

    Edit:
    I could get used to the new system. I could get used to learning how things work in there. I could even get (although with more difficulty) used to the fact I'll have to completely rework the interiors on my ships in addition to the systems, to somehow accomodate the hella lot of empty space the new system creates. BUT ONLY IF THE MECHANICS ACTUALLY WORK. THEY DO NOT.
     
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    AND NOW THE POWER CONSUMPTION IS OVER 100% AGAIN.
    Are you logging out while in the ship in build mode? This is a common loading bug, when the user drops out while in build mode. It usually takes a relog to fix. The other remedy I've found is adding a reactor block into the existing reactor, because this sometimes jumpstarts the bugged-out calculations, even after the entity has loaded in.
     

    Keptick

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    Sorry, are you saying broken things shouldn't be fixed if people aren't currently abusing them? That's what it sounds like.



    This is a good point and another reason why RHP is a bad system. We should still be using SHP.



    And this is a good example of why the shield bubbles are a bad mechanic. I still don't know what purpose these are supposed to actually serve.
    Yep... I actually use a similar turret design on my titan, and since bubble size is on diminishing returns that probably means that I'm fucked :/

    They should just make it so that bubble shields are shared between docked entities and main entity tbh. Then it wouldn't matter if you placed your shields on your ship or turrets. In any case the current system is pretty broken :(

    edit: DukeofRealms ^what the fuck is this??? Bring normal sad face back please.
     
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    If dev team members are reading... Nothing important, just thought I'd leave this somewhere.

    I don't know if such stuff is worth bug-reporting, or if these were brought up already, but anyways... A few minor issues/dissatisfactions:

    • When you try to reposition items on the build mode hotbar they disappear.
    • The new freedoms of shooting on-board weapons and turrets in detached camera mode are wonderful, but certain movement control possibilities were lost. Could we perhaps have a third camera mode option that works in the same way that detached mode used to work?
    • There is no difference between the "cooldown" (reloading) and the "top-off" (inactive) power consumption of weapons - or is this meant to be so?

    • A large amount of text clutter comes with this update - large enough to hinder the re-learning process, and will probably bring about even more frustration for some people:
    Redundant repetitons of certain infos
    (eg. in chamber function descriptions, stabilization efficiency, the "Reactor" word)

    Display of infos irrelevant to gameplay
    (eg. in chamber function descriptions, reactor ID string, the "Stabilization 0.0m/0.0m" line)

    Ambiguity, inconsistency and redundancy in the naming of certain features and values
    (eg. "Reactor Power Size" instead of "Reactor Size", or "Power" instead of "Current Pw. Amount")

    A few inconsistencies in certain numerical values
    (eg. shield recharge value when pointing on a block vs. in structure info panel)
     
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    Valiant70

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    According to Lancake , stabilizers are still being worked on.
    stabilizer tweaks.PNG
    At this point we'll just have to see what Schema comes up with.
     

    Lecic

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    The fact that they're still called stabilizers and they're "tweaking" it makes me worried.
    I bet they havn't even looked at the suggestions forum.
    The fact that we've only had 1 Schine member, Criss, who isn't even directly involved in balance, comment on this matter for a few short posts, is extremely concerning.

    Hopefully they do something right here.
     
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