Prerelease v0.200.250

    Valiant70

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    Is this a joke? Are we really doing this now:

    Streams are an abomination I tried rerouting it with some node things and:

    WHO thought that this was an amazing idea?
    Does it even solve islands, let's look at my "Geometric overlord":

    NOPE not really, it also has three shield bubbles so trying to hit the streams will let the other shields recharge.
    Please don't do this, I know what you guys are trying to do but this will end up hurting more than helping.

    Stop trying to "fix" meta, meta is figuring out how the system works and maximizing potential of that system.
    Changing the system changes the meta but it will never make it disappear.
    I would've thought this would at least prevent islanding. Is it the wonky shields that make this viable?
     

    Matt_Bradock

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    I would've thought this would at least prevent islanding. Is it the wonky shields that make this viable?
    Real question is, whether the beams themselves are sffected by shielding or not. If not, then they do hurt islanding. If yes, they don't do crap.

    Honestly, a properly coded break-off mechanic would be the one to completely get rid of island, chandelier and spaghetti ships. If they are not solid enough structurally, they could be simply cut up into pieces.
     

    Valiant70

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    Real question is, whether the beams themselves are sffected by shielding or not. If not, then they do hurt islanding. If yes, they don't do crap.

    Honestly, a properly coded break-off mechanic would be the one to completely get rid of island, chandelier and spaghetti ships. If they are not solid enough structurally, they could be simply cut up into pieces.
    Yeah, if that wasn't so CPU intensive. There would be no way to have large battles.
     
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    Real question is, whether the beams themselves are sffected by shielding or not. If not, then they do hurt islanding. If yes, they don't do crap.

    Honestly, a properly coded break-off mechanic would be the one to completely get rid of island, chandelier and spaghetti ships. If they are not solid enough structurally, they could be simply cut up into pieces.
    The problem I have here though is not the island ships, it's the fact that they've added juiceless mechanics like streams and separate shields because they beliveved it was "meta".

    On my private server I never saw anyone upload or build an island ship, ironically I was the first to try because of the stabilizer distance, and being able to create shield bubbles.

    The stabilizer streams also look ugly and starts in the "center" of your reactor, if you look at the first image here Prerelease v0.200.250 you can see why that creates a problem.

    Stabilizer stream nodes are also limited to leading all streams along one path which means you can't rout them symmetrically.
     

    Valiant70

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    Which is why I said properly coded.
    I highly doubt it's a matter of proper coding. It's more about the nature of voxels and data structures. Schema could explain it better because I don't know how he did his engine, but what I do know:

    Best case scenario is that you "vaporize" the broken off part. That eliminates the load of generating another entity. You still have two problems: 1) Huge numbers of blocks being removed at once in the middle of a firefight. 2) Worse yet, having to check if something has broken off.

    However, I do know that Avoreon managed to do breakoff. Go ask some Avoreon players and server owners how it plays and performs, and see if the devs explain how it's done somewhere.
    [doublepost=1513962762,1513962688][/doublepost]
    The problem I have here though is not the island ships, it's the fact that they've added juiceless mechanics like streams and separate shields because they beliveved it was "meta".

    On my private server I never saw anyone upload or build an island ship, ironically I was the first to try because of the stabilizer distance, and being able to create shield bubbles.

    The stabilizer streams also look ugly and starts in the "center" of your reactor, if you look at the first image here Prerelease v0.200.250 you can see why that creates a problem.

    Stabilizer stream nodes are also limited to leading all streams along one path which means you can't rout them symmetrically.
    I'm going to experiment with dividing up stabilizers to get smaller beams and routing them around. I'll let you know if I find anything good.
    [doublepost=1513963422][/doublepost]UPDATE: Groups merge when they are too close to each other. You can't put a hallway or interior through the middle of a stabilizer group. Time to take some screenshots and go bug Lancake. XD
     
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    Ithirahad

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    UPDATE: Groups merge when they are too close to each other. You can't put a hallway or interior through the middle of a stabilizer group. Time to take some screenshots and go bug Lancake. XD
    Yeah, I mentioned this in tester chat. It's made a giant 'log' stick out between the tails of my frigate. :|
     
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    Efficient design should innately provide some amount of free space in ship
    Why?

    Systems (weapons, thrust, power, etc) will take a considerably smaller amount of space on your ship. This could be ranging from 5% (large ships) to 50% (small ships) of your total block count. The way we will achieve this is described in the section below.
    That means scaling up you ship's size make it worst. Why would you bother building a titan (big ship @5%) if a ship of 1/10 its size have the same amounts of systems (small ship @50%)?

    Normal hull (armor) will add enough mass so it would not be viable to fill your ships with it.
    Armor/hull would need to be effective enough to warent players wanting to surround their ship with it.
    Those two are mutually exclusive

    Then we add a general system distance requirement between all of the different types of systems
    Ships would need to have the free space available to it to maintain full efficiency that could easily fit interiors

    Nice interiors bro

    We would use the current structural integrity system to keep system blocks of the same type grouped together
    What if I build large and thin wings like on a plane, but instead of being purely decorative I give them purpose by filling them with a mix of shield cap and armor in a 3d checkerboard? Does it make sense all shields caps on my ship suffer sploding because one of them get hit there? System integrity is flawed it's a kick in the ass of creative freedom. It make it dangerous to use a system block as decoration.

    Or... Instead of forcing empty space between all our systems...

    We could just have crew, which are a positive encouragement for having interior that actually makes the game more interesting rather than the random attempts at forced open space, which exist for no positive reason.
    I know you're just quoting crew as an example, but can you please stop? Crews would obviously break the game considering how NPC factions slow down the servers already, even unloaded. Let's just forget about promoting or forcing interiors. People are happy enough to put interiors in their ships when said ship actually looks like one.

    Crew is stupid and that's why it's so easy for Criss to put you in recovery position when you mention it in a discussion about balance.
    If that's what the actual problem is, then I have to say sorry...? Sorry because we can't do everything at once. If this problem is nullified by having a functioning crew system then we will unfortunately have to wait for crew. Yeah we could fix everything according to your specifications right now. Sure. What happens when we add crew and suddenly you want a bit of interior space for them? Well we will be going back and fourth on this issue until every major feature of the gameplay is in...

    I know you're going to rate this as funny and complain and say we are purposefully ignoring you, but you just told me that if we want you to build interiors, then we need to add crew. Okay. Then it's going to have to wait. That's the hard truth.


    all we've ever gotten is: "Everything is fine. Move along."
    That's what is pissing me off. Can you guys help me to get Lancake attention?
     
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    "Oh great and powerful cat God Shema, ruler and creator of our Starmade multiverse. Look kindly upon us your followers, and forgive us are many transgressions.
    We beseech you oh great Lord, spar your humble servants from the great tribulation known as the stabilizers."
     

    Raisinbat

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    I know you're just quoting crew as an example, but can you please stop? Crews would obviously break the game considering how NPC factions slow down the servers already, even unloaded.
    I gotta say i am extremely curious what crew is actually supposed to be. Is it just going to be NPCs standing on your ship to provide bonusses, because a lot of people sound like they think they'll be running around interacting with machines like it's FTL. Sounds like similar pathfinding algorithm to dwarf fortress / towns / etc where you have to move through a 3D grid where each tile is either passable or solid, dorf fort being the most efficient one i know craps out on my 4.5ghz processor around 200 dwarves in a 200x200x20 grid, with very little empty space, but that's without:

    • checking collision against other entities like turrets
    • dealing with path changes in a changing environment, like a ship in the process of being shot full of holes
    • internal collision checks, eg with area triggers (this works so great with warheads, rite?)
    • doing all the other things starmade has to do; faction simulation (still unplayable? im sure crew will help), blocks getting eaten/placed, flying spaceships and the collision thereof which is already gamebreaking.
    • being programmed in java
    Maybe you can do some fancy multithreading since i don't think you're currently using any, but that still leaves you with at best ~100 crew. Now lets say you're on a multiplayer server with 12 active players in 12 different places, how many ships are able to be near those players and still have crew running? You'd have like 2-4 active crew per ship, hardly the "coming alive" people think its going to be.

    If NPCs will literally just stand around on ships and provide bonusses the same way they do in X rebirth (I swear you are just determined to replicate every single dipshit decision that went into that dumpster fire) why dont we just wall them in with systems once they're inside?

    Other problem: what kind of bonusses would crew be able to give? Since we can- COULD create our own shipdesigns optimizing them would mean ships being tailored to their crew; if you get +20% shield capacity you'd just cut shield capacity from the ship to bring it back down to its sweet spot (ballancing your stats is important, idk if its insulting writing this but at this point i just assume you have absolutely no idea how shipbuilding works) like sacrificing a bit more capacity for extra regen. I guess since you've technically managed to patch shipbuilding out of your shipbuilding game you've kind of preemptively countered this previously nonexistant issue, but think of it in systems 1.0 terms: If you have a 2mil e/sec power generation ship that uses 2mil e/sec power, a +20% power generation crewmember isn't useful since the extra power does nothing; you'd retailor the ship to generate 20% less power, or add weapons to bring up the power consumption, you wouldn't leave the ship the same. Crew as a buff mechanic works counteractively to ship design because its another way of doing the same thing, unless we're going to start removing shipbuilding mechanics like chamber effects from chambers and dumping them on crew instead so crew has an excuse to exist.

    I have to agree with HerrColonel, crew doesn't seem to add anything from a gameplay perspective and is ultimately just another form of window dressing for a game that's so spartan in gameplay even dear ester is ashamed of it.

    It seems like the only reasons for adding crew is to force interior or add more realism to a game that really doesn't need either of those things with a million more pressing issues.

    Oh and while im here



    You aren't discussing a damn thing, Lecic and Redalert have been trying to discuss with you for months, and you always ignore them or just circle the wagons and damage control. As far as i can tell trying to discus anything with you or just implying you piss your pants gets exactly the same response from you, but one of them takes less effort and is more fun.

    If you want people to be polite and reasonable with you, try listening to them and taking their complaints seriously instead of closing your eyes and going LALALALALALALA.

    You can ban, ignore and discredit everyone as much as you want. Eventually there wont be any negativity left on the dock, because everyone who doesn't have their tongue in your colon will have left and starmade will be well and truly dead. The people left here trying to help you is a testament to how badly we wanted this game to succeed, despite the years of abuse there's still a tiny flicker of hope left that you'll snap out of this nonsense and focus on making a game instead of this bizarre interplanetary circus it's turning into, and when there is noone left, when you realise the last years have been a complete waste of time on your end as you continue to run in circles fighting imaginary boogie men like gigantism and doom cubes, and you follow the rest of us as we leave starmades abused and rotting corpse behind you'll have noone to blame but yourself. And jojomo. But mostly yourself.
     
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    I'm not opposed to this. The problem is that removing or reducing stabilizer requirements on a ship means we return to a meta where ships are filled to the brim with system blocks. There will be no cap on power inside a confined volume until you fill that volume. That is why Schema does not remove them. It's the exact opposite of the goal we set out to accomplish.
    Once again, we all realize that is the goal. And what we are saying is that YOU CAN'T DO IT WITH THE POWER SYSTEM! STICK SHIPS ARE THE PROOF! The crew system is what should be encouraging interior space, not the power system. If we have to suffer with system crammed ships for a few months/however long until crew are a thing, so be it. It is better than the alternative. I love everything else about the power system, just cut the stabilizers and let crew be the driving factor for removing system filling.
     

    The_Owl

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    Also, Don't make a system and then say "But it'll work when crew come out"
    That's a piss-poor excuse and honestly, downright disgraceful to the people who play. We all know it'll take at least a year for crew to come, MINIMUM, and you cannot expect a community to put up with this utter, Piss poor designed system of stabilizers, with a, Frankly, Pathetic excuse for not fixing them. Besides, why should we trust you to actually fix it?

    It's a shame, because the rest of the update shows Immense promise. Such a shame it's dragged down to shit tier by this.
     
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    Geez.
    I appreciate that something was done against line ships, but I hoped they'd REMOVE some of the silly overcomplicated sh!t instead of adding more.

    Just delete those stabilizers already.

    Although, to be fair, IF distance and mass allows that whole reactor assembly to be fitted into my usual reactor rooms, I could almost see myself using it.

    ( I WILL NOT HAVE REACTOR PARTS IN THE BOW OF MY SHIP! REACTOR PARTS BELONG TOGETHER! )
     
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    Also, Don't make a system and then say "But it'll work when crew come out"
    That's a piss-poor excuse and honestly, downright disgraceful to the people who play. We all know it'll take at least a year for crew to come, MINIMUM, and you cannot expect a community to put up with this utter, Piss poor designed system of stabilizers, with a, Frankly, Pathetic excuse for not fixing them. Besides, why should we trust you to actually fix it?
    I don't mind waiting a year or more for crew, weapons, AI, etc. There are plenty of other games to have fun with in the mean time. Also, I just enjoy following the development of StarMade, without any expectations about its current playability. If I had to guesstimate, I would say the game is less than half finished, and as such, while I've logged a few thousand hours tinkering with it, I have avoided serious attachment to any of it's play mechanics. When something changes, I check it out. If it's fun to play with, I log a few hundred more hours. If it's not so great, or unstable, I check in on the forums, maybe make a suggestion or some comments, then go find something else to occupy my free time.

    StarMade isn't my broken car that Schine is fixing for me. StarMade is Schine's car they are building from scratch, therefore me trusting them to fix it is irrelevant. To reiterate, if I don't like the modifications Schine is making to their car, I can let them know, and then stop test driving it for them until they make changes I'm interested in.
     
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    The problem is that crew can't magically fix a broken system, as already stated people will just make their sticks slightly longer to stuff crew inside too. And that car analogy doesn't work when you realize they are making something they plan on selling to us, if they are the only ones who like it the game will tank.
     
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    And that car analogy doesn't work when you realize they are making something they plan on selling to us, if they are the only ones who like it the game will tank.
    When I realize that Ford is making a car that explodes when rear-ended, I stop test driving it until they fix it. If they don't fix it, whether or not they plan on selling it, I don't plan on buying OR driving it. I "bought the car" already (or rather a prototype), for a very reasonable fee, and have already driven it more miles than any of my other luxury cars that were sold, at a premium price, as "production ready" vehicles.
     
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    When I realize that Ford is making a car that explodes when rear-ended, I stop test driving it until they fix it. If they don't fix it, whether or not they plan on selling it, I don't plan on buying OR driving it. I "bought the car" already (or rather a prototype), for a very reasonable fee, and have already driven it more miles than any of my other luxury cars that were sold, at a premium price, as "production ready" vehicles.
    So they're not fixing your car, they're fixing their design, and you have a broken prototype. But you still want to spend money on the car once it's fixed
     
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    Guys, I tried to give credit where it's due, but when we said "reduce the stabilizer efficiency gradient", we just meant what we said.
    You guys tried, I'll give credit there. But everything else wasn't needed, wasn't asked for, and wasn't intended.

    I'm done with politeness, because you guys didn't get the message. We JUST wanted you to reduce the efficiency gradient, that's it. And somehow, you guys managed to overthink and over-complicate this very simple request in the name of simplicity.
    You also managed to make the problematic and mutually hated stick-ship a stronger design in the same update, and claim that it's weaker because it's more susceptible to being shot on it's length, as if nobody had thought of that idea before. Not to mention, you have also eliminated the island-ship; a design that's only used for aesthetic and has no practical purpose by principle, and claim that this change implicates the player-base will make different ship designs.

    Because you guys actually impressed us in your ability to misinterpret simple ideas, I suggest this: Take your idea board, your brainstorming time, and your principle goals of appealing to the player-base, and throw them away, because they have managed to tarnish an idea that was valid at its conception.
    I mean this completely, because there's an obvious change being made from suggestion to application, and that is where you guys are located. I wouldn't have been this harsh and acerbic had you guys made a more honest mistake, or a smaller problem, but this... This is a compound failure with hypocrisy sprinkled on top. ALL WE ASKED FOR WAS 1 REDUCTION. A simple value change would have been enough. It would have been completely fine had you just changed a few coefficients in the equation that determines the efficiency of stabilizers.
    You guys even failed to address a main problem, and make that problem worse.
    Just make a linear reactor inefficient, that's all you need to do. Take the inverse of the current power system, and line ships would be done. it'd be such a bad design that no one would build it.
    Power stream didn't NEED to happen. It's not simplifying the game at all. It just makes the game less appealing to new players and makes more veteran players upset.
    Changes are hard to get approval of, that's well understood by any developer. However, Changes are more readily accepted if you ONLY take what people want Changed, and ONLY put in that change. If a lot of your players want a feature (More that 50-60%). Implement it to what the player-base wants. You guys can have ideas, but DON'T implement them unilaterally. Take LOTS of polls, put out ideas and let the player-base vote what it likes and dislikes, and when you come to programming, take the advice of many (the players), over the few (you guys), because at the end of the day, the players will be using your product, and if what you produce is garbage, then the players are going to move over to your competitors, and you will have sacrificed much of your time and work to achieve only faliure.

    I'm not sorry for being harsh, this is really in your best interest.
     
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    When I realize that Ford is making a car that explodes when rear-ended, I stop test driving it until they fix it. If they don't fix it, whether or not they plan on selling it, I don't plan on buying OR driving it. I "bought the car" already (or rather a prototype), for a very reasonable fee, and have already driven it more miles than any of my other luxury cars that were sold, at a premium price, as "production ready" vehicles.
    And then one day they decide to remove the brakes from said car. Sure you've gotten your monies worth from it, but why wouldn't you be angry if you could keep driving it for many more years if they fixed one simple error? Saying "I've gotten my monies worth so I don't care if the game is ruined now" isn't exactly a good argument for not fixing stabilizers.
     
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