Pretty but effective turrets. Discussion of a solution.

[TheGeek007]

PvP shouldnt be the norm for this game. There is also a simple solution for this problem: Weapon damage softcaps.

A fascinating idea, but what would you base the softcap on? Size of the entity?

 

[madman Captain]

A fascinating idea, but what would you base the softcap on? Size of the entity?

Weapontype! for example: low softcap for rapid fire systems and high softcap for slow firing systems like Torpedos, artillery cannons or
siege beams.

 

[madman Captain]

Well that's a huge call for you to make. I don't think you (nor I, nor anyone individual in this thread) are the person to make it.

Curretly Starmade goes the way of a 4X game. Those games go strong on PvE, and in those games you have more freedom of balancing because the CPU dosent care about the fakt that it killed by an overpowerd ship. But in PvP even the slightest unbalance will cause that people be pisst off because that what they build dont work against the other one. Even PvP orientated games like MOBAs are in a constant cycle of balancing and rebalancing, and this games dosent give you the freedom to create your own ship witch make it nearly impossible to balance it.
And why the devs should try to balance this game for PvP? Example: Powersoftcap, was a try to balance the game, AND SOME GUYS JUST WORK AROUND IT WITH DOCKED REACTORS!
Ok, they fixed the docked reactors problem, but seriosly what we have now
multi entity multilayer Shield/Armor/Powerregen. ships. And I'm sure that no regular survival player, Role play player or Builder will build ships that works so hard against every try to balance the game, only PvP players build ships that go a way witch I call CHEATING.

And you think you have the right to say that I dosent have the right to say that PvP shouldnt be the norm for this game?

I HAVE the right to say what I think as long I dont break any laws.

This game give to many freedom in building to balance it for a fair PvP.
This freedom of building everything is the greatest strength of starmade,
and I will trying to beware starmade, to avoid that it ends like robocraft where the freedom of building everything ends in "you died by a tesseract with shotguns and blink module"(last time I played robocraft that was the most anoying contruct, I dont now what it is now and I dont care).

 

[Jojomo]

And you think you have the right to say that I dosent have the right to say that PvP shouldnt be the norm for this game?

I HAVE the right to say what I think as long I dont break any laws.

I think you have the right to say what you like here, providing it doesn't harm others.

That doesn't mean you're in a position to determine what should or shouldn't be "the norm" for this game. As I said before, no individual player is.

 

[Raisinbat]

PvP shouldnt be the norm for this game. There is also a simple solution for this problem: Weapon damage softcaps.

FIGHT ME YOU BASTARD!!!

There are already softcaps in place, that's what the hull and armor damage systems are and it fucking sucks. It's also easily circumvented by splitting into more ships or more turrets, because what we really need in the game is more projectile spam.

What the fuck does PVP have to do with anything, ships don't get stronger/weaker by having a player or ai controlling them, the ai is just a blubbering retard, so what you're really saying is that the game should not be determined by what works, but simply be completely arbitrary.

Best design practices ABSOLUTELY should determine ballance. People who aren't on the cutting edge of starmade tech gradually adopt the better designs over time. Docked reactors were rare at first but people caught on and eventually all the ships used them. This may sound strange to you, but some people enjoy having good ships, rather than ineffectual floating interior decorating displays, and approach this by improving as builders, for example by studying other ships and adopting what works.
[doublepost=1481165092,1481163468][/doublepost]

Curretly Starmade goes the way of a 4X game. Those games go strong on PvE, and in those games you have more freedom of balancing because the CPU dosent care about the fakt that it killed by an overpowerd ship. But in PvP even the slightest unbalance will cause that people be pisst off because that what they build dont work against the other one. Even PvP orientated games like MOBAs are in a constant cycle of balancing and rebalancing, and this games dosent give you the freedom to create your own ship witch make it nearly impossible to balance it.

That's not freedom of ballance, that's freedom not to ballance! And it DOES suck; missile frigates in X3 can level entire fleets on their own with missile spam before any of them get within firing range, you think that's fun?

And why the devs should try to balance this game for PvP? Example: Powersoftcap, was a try to balance the game, AND SOME GUYS JUST WORK AROUND IT WITH DOCKED REACTORS!
Ok, they fixed the docked reactors problem, but seriosly what we have now
multi entity multilayer Shield/Armor/Powerregen. ships. And I'm sure that no regular survival player, Role play player or Builder will build ships that works so hard against every try to balance the game, only PvP players build ships that go a way witch I call CHEATING.

BECAUSE PVP DOESN'T WORK ANY DIFFERENTLY FROM PVE DINGUS. YOU'RE SAYING THE GAME SHOULDN'T BE BALLANCED BECAUSE IT'S HARD TO BALLANCE VIDEOGAMES, JESUS CHRIST.

You think we (PVP'ers) Like the current state of the game? Multientity ships are a pain to build, and completely irrational, not to mention every time we build a ship we're at risk of having the ship rendered inoperable by some half-assed ballance update. Powersoftcap was a retarded idea, along with every other attempt to ballance the game i've seen from schine. The fact that they're terrible at their job doesn't mean they shouldn't be doing it. Ballancing starmade isn't that bloody hard, but the way they're doing it by sitting around with a nerf bat waiting for the next exploit to pop up before banging it and breaking another 50 things in the process is what's causing all these exploits. Schine needs to start treating the symptom instead of the cause by removing the incentives for docked entities, along with all the ridiculous penalties to slow firing weapons.

And yes, people who build based on RP/cosmetics/whatever will always produce inferior ships to those who build with effectiveness in mind. The only way you fix that is by completely eliminating any mechanical aspect of design, and just give each ship X attributes based on mass. If you ever get that every PVP player is going to abandon the game in disgust. This is such a fucked up thing to complain about, what would you think if people started demanding cosmetic blocks and slabs were removed because their ships were uglier than yours?

This game give to many freedom in building to balance it for a fair PvP.
This freedom of building everything is the greatest strength of starmade,
and I will trying to beware starmade, to avoid that it ends like robocraft where the freedom of building everything ends in "you died by a tesseract with shotguns and blink module"(last time I played robocraft that was the most anoying contruct, I dont now what it is now and I dont care).

It really doesn't add that much, it's just super poorly ballanced. Haven't played robocraft in a long time, but that sounds like a really stupid addition.

Trying to build good combat ships is why we play the game in the first place, instead of demanding that what we like about the game is removed, how about demanding some proper ballancing from schine, so we can both play the game without these ridiculously OP systems in the game.

To fix docked entities:

• Remove the power bonus (and reballance)
  
• Make passive bonusses linear and independent from mass

Treat the cause not the symptom, instead of trying to smack every single exploit that pops up.

 

[kulbolen]

"And yes, people who build based on RP/cosmetics/whatever will always produce inferior ships to those who build with effectiveness in mind. The only way you fix that is by completely eliminating any mechanical aspect of design, and just give each ship X attributes based on mass. If you ever get that every PVP player is going to abandon the game in disgust. This is such a fucked up thing to complain about, what would you think if people started demanding cosmetic blocks and slabs were removed because their ships were uglier than yours?"

it may be presumptuous of me to speak for others, but i believe raisins statement here speaks for just about every rational player in the entire game.

duh.

 

[DrTarDIS]

A fascinating idea, but what would you base the softcap on? Size of the entity?

not @ me but, I'd personally remove the e/sec softcap entirely. Bigger ships SHOULD make more power. period. Right now there are LAYERED diminishing returns on size, and the ONLY really effective one is the diminishing thrust-per-energy the thruster system puts down. The most effective method of bloat control is quite frankly THRUST and MASS, and it will always be those two.

It would make far more sense to just "convert the entity to a static object" if it's mass exceeded X value.

 

[Az14el]

FIGHT ME YOU BASTARD!!!

I read this whole post like 6 times, because damn it deserves no less.

 

[Cluwne]

Someone give this Raisinbat guy a fucking medal.

There is also a simple solution for this problem: Weapon damage softcaps.

Simple solution my ass. You have power regen softcap already. Enough with the nerf goddammit.

And I'm sure that no regular survival player, Role play player or Builder will build ships that works so hard against every try to balance the game, only PvP players build ships that go a way witch I call CHEATING.

PvP shouldnt be the norm for this game.

Libtard logic everyone. If someone wrecked your overdecorated rust bucket armed with peashooters it doesn't mean they are racist, sexist, use exploits or bypass the crutches and bandaids devs build their game with. You might just need to actually git gud, either at building, fighting, or both.
Sincerely: literally Hitler

 

[DrTarDIS]

...actually git gud, either at building, fighting, or both.

^^
++

Pearls of wisdom right there. It's sad that some people would rather claw-back their betters, rather than improving their own methods. Odin-forbid you find out there's better ways of doing things.
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...witch I call CHEATING...

You call it cheating, but that seems to say to me that YOU think YOU should ALWAYS come out on top or that YOU should always EASILLY beat the odds. Try not to fall into Cognitive Dissonance and actually click the couple links here and THINK.

What you call "cheating" every rational developer, tester, and top-ten-ranked-player in every game ever invented calls Emergent Gameplay or Metagaming.

Famous examples of Emergent Gameplay include skiing, rocket jumps, wall-riding, as well as COMBO HITS in the street-fighter style games.

In My Honest Opinion; Every game that holds attention has embraced it's emergent gameplay, and most games that massively flop have crushed the emergence in the name of a "vision of balance".

 

[madman Captain]

FIGHT ME YOU BASTARD!!!

hmm... You abuse me, you want that I fight you? Did you really ran that fast out of aguments?
Sorry dude I normaly duelling on higher mind levels than abusing.

Ok, lets see what there come next.

There are already softcaps in place, that's what the hull and armor damage systems are and it fucking sucks. It's also easily circumvented by splitting into more ships or more turrets, because what we really need in the game is more projectile spam.

Is it maybe possible that the goal of the balancing is that fights betwen two large ships NOT feeling like a round COD Hardcore Team Deathmatch public and more like a tactical player input intensive face off, off two opponents?
Is it possible that they want to lay the focus of large ships in defence to furfill the role as a tank and not as a damage dealer?
Shouldent you not quest yourself carefully why it implemented and not blame people how think that this is the first step to prevent ships from completely escalate in damage?

What the fuck does PVP have to do with anything, ships don't get stronger/weaker by having a player or ai controlling them, the ai is just a blubbering retard, so what you're really saying is that the game should not be determined by what works, but simply be completely arbitrary.

Arbitrary the AI? Noooo...
The AI is completely predictable, because they is not retarded, they is just simple and not optimised.
They fly to its target goes in firingrange and shoot. Completely predictable.
The AI fails just in one moment, when it must react on the only unpredictable thing in the game, The Player.

That's not freedom of ballance, that's freedom not to ballance! And it DOES suck; missile frigates in X3 can level entire fleets on their own with missile spam before any of them get within firing range, you think that's fun?

The missile frigate can ran out of ammo and then they pretty useless, they have weak defences they are glasscannons, and torpedos are expensive, dont forget you can intercept the missiles.

But hey, just change the following words: "missile frigate" with "PvP multi entity ship",
"X3" with "Starmade" and "fleet" with "generic monohull ships" and quest youself the same question.

BECAUSE PVP DOESN'T WORK ANY DIFFERENTLY FROM PVE DINGUS. YOU'RE SAYING THE GAME SHOULDN'T BE BALLANCED BECAUSE IT'S HARD TO BALLANCE VIDEOGAMES, JESUS CHRIST.

PvP and PvE works different. Or why PvP and PvE in games like World of Warcraft have completely different loadouts and skilltrees.


I sayed balancing is hard. I sayed PvP balancing is even harder. I sayed PvP balancing in a game where the player has a wide variety of control over the game mechanics is nearly impossible. I NEVER sayed that this games shouldent be balanced! I sayed that this game should be balanced without or with very low focus on PvP.
And no, Jesus wont help you. Stop beliving in in those tales.

You think we (PVP'ers) Like the current state of the game? Multientity ships are a pain to build, and completely irrational, not to mention every time we build a ship we're at risk of having the ship rendered inoperable by some half-assed ballance update. Powersoftcap was a retarded idea, along with every other attempt to ballance the game i've seen from schine. The fact that they're terrible at their job doesn't mean they shouldn't be doing it. Ballancing starmade isn't that bloody hard, but the way they're doing it by sitting around with a nerf bat waiting for the next exploit to pop up before banging it and breaking another 50 things in the process is what's causing all these exploits. Schine needs to start treating the symptom instead of the cause by removing the incentives for docked entities, along with all the ridiculous penalties to slow firing weapons.

No I dont think that every PvP'ler like the current state of the game. But when I look on the balancing threads in this forum I just have the feeling that the most of them like the fact that rapid fire systems completely overpowerd, and if you say something against it you will be blamed that you just cant build ships. And yes thats the reason why I dont like PvP. Indeed slow firing weapons need improvements, but not just alter the damage give them something that make them special something that say "yes I AM a powerfull cannon fear me!".

And yes, people who build based on RP/cosmetics/whatever will always produce inferior ships to those who build with effectiveness in mind. The only way you fix that is by completely eliminating any mechanical aspect of design, and just give each ship X attributes based on mass. If you ever get that every PVP player is going to abandon the game in disgust. This is such a fucked up thing to complain about, what would you think if people started demanding cosmetic blocks and slabs were removed because their ships were uglier than yours?

Point for you. I can not argue against this one.

Trying to build good combat ships is why we play the game in the first place, instead of demanding that what we like about the game is removed, how about demanding some proper ballancing from schine, so we can both play the game without these ridiculously OP systems in the game.

To fix docked entities:

• Remove the power bonus (and reballance)
  
• Make passive bonusses linear and independent from mass

Treat the cause not the symptom, instead of trying to smack every single exploit that pops up.

hmm... And where this prevent weaponsystems from completely escalate in damage? Will this say that defense become pointless because
they cant counter this massive damage rampup witch will follow?

 

[Raisinbat]

Is it maybe possible that the goal of the balancing is that fights betwen two large ships NOT feeling like a round COD Hardcore Team Deathmatch public and more like a tactical player input intensive face off, off two opponents?
Is it possible that they want to lay the focus of large ships in defence to furfill the role as a tank and not as a damage dealer?
Shouldent you not quest yourself carefully why it implemented and not blame people how think that this is the first step to prevent ships from completely escalate in damage?

If i'm reading this right, you want more tactical combat instead of the current strafe and shoot a lot? Yes, that would be wonderful, but what you're sugesting doesn't DO that, because the softcaps, like all the other caps, are easy to circumvent. If there's a softcap, just split the same damage between more ships.

Arbitrary the AI? Noooo...
The AI is completely predictable, because they is not retarded, they is just simple and not optimised.
They fly to its target goes in firingrange and shoot. Completely predictable.
The AI fails just in one moment, when it must react on the only unpredictable thing in the game, The Player.

You're missing the point. The game has no special rules for how ships work just because an AI is piloting it instead of a person. If the rules are the same, the same ballancing should apply.
[doublepost=1481247062,1481244485][/doublepost]

The missile frigate can ran out of ammo and then they pretty useless, they have weak defences they are glasscannons, and torpedos are expensive, dont forget you can intercept the missiles.

But hey, just change the following words: "missile frigate" with "PvP multi entity ship",
"X3" with "Starmade" and "fleet" with "generic monohull ships" and quest youself the same question.

Ok i'm just gonna do this one for sport...

Spoiler: X3 nonsense unrelated to starmade

Missile frigate costs:

A missile frigate costs close to 50mil in X3 : Cobra - X3 Wiki
A single Flail Barrage missile costs 33k in X3 : Flail Barrage Missile - X3 Wiki
A single flail Barrage missile does 400.000 damage.

Missile frigate can carry 7.000 volume of space, each flail missile takes up 5 volume. Setting aside 1.000 volume for shielding and jump fuel, this leaves 6.000 volume, enough for 1200 flail missiles, which totals up to 480 million damage.

Total cost for a fully loaded missile frigate: 50mil + 1200 * 33.000 = 90mil

So, what can this be used to destroy?

Let's take a regular ass Argon Titan : Titan (ship) - X3 Wiki

Shield HP: 8.000.000
Hull HP : 5.000.000
Cost: 70mil, not counting equipment.

So with 13mil HP for a ship that's a size class above the missile frigate, and 480 million damage, a single missile frigate and lay waste to 36 destroyers before running out of ammo.

So that's 28 times it's resource cost it's able to destroy, 50+ if you consider that the frigate itself isn't lost. I don't think any remotely competent starmade builder, that's trying to make something for combat, is going to lose to something 30 times cheaper.

Spoiler aside, you're missing the point again. The game should be ballanced in singleplayer, having horribly overpowered options in singleplayer isn't fun, because they invalidate every other option, and since the game works the same in singleplayer as it does in multiplayer, if somethig is OP in multiplayer it's OP in singleplayer.

PvP and PvE works different. Or why PvP and PvE in games like World of Warcraft have completely different loadouts and skilltrees.

PvP and PvE works differently in world of warcraft, because world of warcraft is ASYMETRIC. Monsters and bosses don't have skilltrees or gear or anything else to modify them. They get massive stat bonusses but don't have any choices. Starmade is not asymetric, so there's no fucking difference.

I sayed balancing is hard. I sayed PvP balancing is even harder. I sayed PvP balancing in a game where the player has a wide variety of control over the game mechanics is nearly impossible. I NEVER sayed that this games shouldent be balanced! I sayed that this game should be balanced without or with very low focus on PvP.

What is the control we have that's so hard to ballance?

Like i already said ballancing the game based on singleplayer is redundant because it's the same fucking game. There is no difference between single and multiplayer, your ships work the same, your guns work the same.

 

[Spoolooni]

Hell, even a certain Vagyr member plays "pvp" in single-player, while it might seem like a joke at first, singleplayer is through a logical standpoint, a perfect test bench for multiplayer conflict. Also, after reading all these posts, I fucking love you guys so much, let us make Starmade great again.

 

[Jojomo]

I sayed balancing is hard. I sayed PvP balancing is even harder. I sayed PvP balancing in a game where the player has a wide variety of control over the game mechanics is nearly impossible. I NEVER sayed that this games shouldent be balanced! I sayed that this game should be balanced without or with very low focus on PvP.

That would ruin the game completely for PvPers - the mechanics would destroy PvP.

On the other hand, balancing for PvPers doesn't by definition ruin the game for RPers: there are plenty of RP servers available where you won't come across PvP optimised ships..

 

[Genkis]

Well I haven't read the whole thread (yet, sorry ^^,) and probably the discussion has already moved on quite a bit but I want to add a point to the original problem that was posed here.

Idea 1:

is a barrel/output block. This block would act as a barrel for a certain weapon that it is linked to. This way weapons could be stored in the ship and be hidden to make nicer looking turrets.

Problem then would possibly be that turrets could be overpowered.
To nerf this the barrel block would have a significant effect on the weapon: The longer your barrel the higher is the range.
In addition a barrel block would have to have a lot of mass so that you can not overuse it.
also the mass of the docked weapons could also be used to then nerf the mobility of the turret.
This would prevent a turret form beeing much to mobile while having to much power.


Idea 2 :
The alternative would be to just have a output block without any other use and just nerf the mobility of the turret with the mass of the docked weapons.

EDIT

another point adding to both Ideas to make the turrets actually more turret-like:

Reloading block
this block has to be added to the turret directly, to transfer ammunition/energy from the weapon to the barrel.
the more reloading blocks, the faster the reloading. but softcapped
of course the reloading blocks would just increase the standart reload time of a weapon so that a rocket would never reloaded as fast as a antimatter cannon


this way a turret would not just be barrel and hull/armor but it also would not have to contain a whole weapon system which I think would be a nice balance between the way weapons work at the moment and how much better turrets could look.