Priorities going forward - hope thread general.

[Thundergrip]

If you're even here on these forums, it can only mean one thing: you're a bit obsessed with Starmade, and you want MORE right away, and damn waiting for beta. With that in mind, I propose to give everyone what they want: somewhere to pretend they're Schema! That place is here, folks.

In this thread: We share and discuss our priorities list for Starmade improvements. Be as vague or as specific as you'd like. Let's make a thread worthy of notice by those closer to the coding process, shall we? (we can dream)

I'll start. I'd like to see the following improved posthaste, and so on, in descending order:

- Game-breaking issues (obviously). Disappearing ship cores, ships failing to appear. I haven't noticed too many of these issues, to be honest.

- Weapon balance. A space game isn't much of a space game without ship-to-ship combat, and right now it's... a bit two-dimensional. You can't venture out into the vacuum in any size ship without the possibility of a) a ship 10 times the mass blindsiding you and vaporising your shit with a 20k block antimatter array before can turn to face it, or b) nothing at all interesting happening. Once we build our death-barges, we want to DO something with them, damnit. In that vein...

- Hulls/Reinforced Hull buffs. In the far future, ship hull is apparently made of styrofoam. Right now the best bet for a dangerous ship appears to be to build your ship entirely OUT OF shield generators, ignoring hulls altogether. Once your shields are down, any moderately large antimatter cannon can drill through 20 or 30 blocks and vape your core in just a few seconds, assuming you can keep it on target (not hard to do if the opponents ship is bigger than an asteroid). I want hull to be an actual defensive option when the shields go down, and not just a cosmetic choice.

- AI/Pirate/Turret improvement. Some of us don't have the internet stability for a great server experience (qqqq), and for them, pirates are the beginning and end of their game experience. That's ok for now, I guess... but even on servers, there existing a butthurt-neutral threat in deep space for new players to hunt for resources, or old players to amuse themselves with without crushing the young'ns, would be valuable in terms of multiplayer accessibility. Also, having turrets that are more reliable would go a long way towards balancing combat between ships of vastly differering sizes. I think it's important, anyways.

- Stability and optimization. Once there's a reason to need rock-solid stability, let's shoot for it. I think that a huge advantage of Starmade over similar games, and a reason for it's success so far, is that it can be played on a mediocre computer. As someone who owns a mediocre computer, I am admittedly biased here, but for god's sake don't make me run a gaming rig to play the game smoothly. Do whatever you have to. Playability by all was a huge factor in Minecraft's success and it will be a huge factor in the success of Starmade. If I wanted processor-heavy nonsense I would go buy Eve.

-More blocks. The game as it exists is fun and there's no denying. All the building blocks of a galaxy at peace or at war are there. This isn't high on my list because I think more can be done with what we have, and to better effect. In any case, more blocks, especially more weapons or ship systems, would be just wonderful. We can all agree. Hear hear.

-Server options. I understand that almost all of these issues could be "fixed" by giving a huge slew of customization options to server runners in the form of a .conf file. I'm not exactly against that, but I think that in the name of a *consistent* game experience for all there should be a solid baseline. At least that way, we'd all be talking about the same game.

- Planets. The issue of round vs. flat planets is a tricky one, and I don't pretend to have the solution. I wish Schema the best on this one, because it's gonna be a bitch. Planets as they are now however are just a bit too weird to be entirely acceptable. Should they be round, with crazy complex gravity wells? Should they be flat? Should they be perhaps two-sided? Beats me, but I think they should be different.

- Faction/RP tools. Let's face it - we can do factions on our own. The faction block is a great tool for this but there are more pressing issues than enabling role-playing, especially when role-playing is totally still doable and not banned by galactic law (.conf). Actually can we rename the server.conf file to galactic_law.conf?

- Economy. I understand that in alpha, the whole game is more of a testing sandbox, and I respect that. Eventually, however, getting 20billion credits in 20minutes is of course going to have to change. One day. That goes for factory producing and mineral harvesting (what a joke) as well.

Alright guys. That's what I got. If somehow you read this whole wall of text then you are CLEARLY obsessed enough to contribute here, and are therefore obligated to post. No excuses, no disintegrations.

 

[Morhe]

It probably belongs in the suggestion forum.

Honestly, everything you listed has been repeated to death on the suggestion forums anyhow. I\'m happy just letting Schema keep doing what he\'s doing. If you\'ve read the patch notes for at least the past month, you\'ll see that pretty much everything you\'re talking about has been getting addressed, albeit incrementally since there\'s only one developer.

 

[Kitts]

Hulls/Reinforced Hull buffs.


It\'s possible to make custom hulls with 1 to 100 in armor. There\'s even an guide out on youtube on how to do it.


More blocks.


It\'s also possible to make lightweight versions of AMC/hulls etc. And i suspect it\'s also very possible to make them drain less energy. Sure, it\'s not quite \"new\" blocks - but it\'s something at the least :P

 

[McDili]

Alright, here goes my list. Yes I\'m obsessed with this game. No I will not stop.



1) Gamebreaking stuff blah blah blah, as much as I take it for granted, the experience begins and ends with the presence of gamebreaking mechanics or lack thereof. Right now, I barely notice gamebreaking glitches. But they do happen for some as seen on the forums, such as constant server crashes.



2) I re-design of the overheating mechanic on the ship-core. http://star-made.org/content/overhaul-ship-core Couple good suggestions in that thread. Although since I posted that, I thought a better solution would be to have it so that if you lose 25% of your ship\'s integrity(Total Blocks) then your ship is destroyed and your core overheats.

My biggest gripe with combat right now is that if you\'re not core-drilling the enemy, you\'re doing it wrong. I think it\'s silly to have all these systems on a ship, that actually affect you when destroyed, and yet they are of little strategic value compared to the core right now.

If a system existed where, your ship dies when 25% of it\'s total blocks are destroyed, then combat all of the sudden has comparitively way more depth. This change also doesn\'t mess up the balance of weapons, however it would make missiles worth a damn. Which would be awesome! It would also mean that if two ships of equal stature put up the dukes, the winner is probably not walking away unscathed. This would also encourage the use of bomber craft support.



3) As Thunder said, weapon balance. Anti-Matter cannons seem fine, missiles could use slightly more speed, and I actually think d1000\'s should be way faster. It\'s a bit silly to me that you can outrun the dumbfire, makes it useless at anything farther than in-your-face and against anything smaller than a planet. If I make a 200m long, 20wide and 20 height d1000 array, that dumbfire rocket should travel at a blazing speed. But the heat-seekers and SD-BB should still be able to be outrun, else they\'d be too cheesy.



4) Better AI config options. Right now there exists a config option to determine how many meters the AI is 99% accurate at. I want the choice between turret AI and ship AI, and the choice between Accuracy_vs_Distance(Like we have right now) and Accuracy_in_Percent. That way, I could make it so that Turret AI is 30% accurate at 150m, and Ship AI is 75% accurate at 500m for example. Seriously this would make my experience so much better.



5) Going to steal Thunder\'s Thunder again, the Hull being worth something would be nice. My ideal Hull would be resistant to Anti-Matter Cannons, so that it actually takes quite a few hits to pierce hull. Since AMC\'s already break shields better than missiles, leave missiles as they are so they are good vs hull and bad vs shields. Make AMC\'s good vs shields and bad vs Hull. Yet another thing that would add depth to combat.



6) More Blocks. Miscellaneous stuff, like a Radar Block. Instead of having every ship have radar, have a radar block that is more efficient similarly to how power blocks are. Also would be neat if it broadcasted radar signatures to nearby allies in the same faction. But yeah, efficiency and number of blocks determines range of radar and how pinpoint accurate it is. With that in mind, you could modify the 10xJammer to broadcast multiple signatures in different places, rather than just remove one. That way it would confuse the enemy and possibly even the turret AI.

That\'s just an idea off the top of my head.



7) Economy. Not gonna make a wall here, I figure it\'s already planned, just low on the priority list atm. No big deal.



8) Optimization.





I\'m done! That\'s my list.



But seriously if ships died from losing 25% integrity instead of being core-drilled, I would squeeeeee with joy. Combat would just be so much more fun and filled with more pew pew.

 

[AGmukbooks]

and to be honest WHO ISN\'T this game is spectaculair, ingenious, and all sorts of fun. the only problems i encounter are a lack of weapons (with the ships AND the players) and the lack of ability to make moving parts on your ship. i do NOT like that fact that i cannot make a ship with a slowy opening hangar gateway or even make basic landing gear for my fighters is the one of the few things that i have tried and tried to worka way around i even tried to use turrets without weapons to act as motors but alas that is slow and also quite dull as i have to go to the back of my ship go into the core that controls the door and then open it slowly only to find out that it usually glitches like crasy half the time i to it because i accidentally move my mouse up a little or something stupid like that. oand the things listed already has been mentioned above i will not talk about that

 

[z1967]

First of all, I would like to say that if I was Schema, I would fail. I am not even sure how Schema is managing to pull all of this off (A robotic cat?). This is just how I would go about developing assuming I was skilled enough.

First order of buisness, bugs. If they exist, they will be squashed as soon as humanly possible. Schema is already doing this and that is fantastic.

After Bugs comes a gradual release of new features. Balance of current stuff comes first, with new weapons, blocks, etc. coming afterwards. Even more configs come for server owners in this wave of stuff.

Next comes community and advertising. More players is often better than only a few players. Forum improvement would be nice as it could use a little bit of attention (like a report to mod. button at the bottom or top of posts).

Now down to specific features and balances that I would like to see made but are not nessecary as of now.

Salvage cannon fail rate- fairly straightforward, a chance for you to fail whilst collecting certain blocks.

The Community deciding to decide on a single ship classification (its getting really annoying to see a new one every other day)

AMC and Missle rebalance. AMC should do significantly less damage to hulls with the usual damage to shields and missles should do even more damage to hull but stay useless to shields.

Turning and thrust, this is way to complicated to put in a simple list...

Shields, I would like passive regen to make a reappearance and a slight buff to regen. and an optional buff to shield pool

this is all I can think of. I also agree with all of the previously mentioned suggested changes above. maybe cores and computers could be hard points?

 

[HadrasVorshoth]

So we\'re doing a Suggestion Brainstorm thread to refine our ideas before dumping it in the Suggestions forums? A\'ite.

1. Radar block. As you\'ve said above, this would balance out the stealth issues a bit: make it so you need some way of detecting them, and also give another tactical element: shoot the detector to make your enemy blind.
2. Mass Projection Cannon/Mass Impulse Cannon. Fires low-value blocks like dirt or sand from the ship plexistorage which then stick onto the target if they hit, otherwise they go to the sector border and disintegrate if they don\'t hit anything (to prevent there being lag-inducing lines of dirt/sand flying through the universe for a long time). Requires a lot of energy, has a fairly average cooldown, but does no damage, simply increases the mass and size of the target, with the secondary usage of being used to rapidly build terrain out of \'earthy\' blocks.
3. More Data. we\'ve already seen little data entries (or at least, I\'ve seen them in youtube videos, haven\'t had much time to play in the past two months so haven\'t yet seen them in-the flesh), but it\'d be nice to see that expanded, possibly with an organisational system to catalogue the found logs, and maybe a way to write up our own Captain\'s Log to store in the ship\'s black box turret-vessel-contained plexistorage room.
4. Manipulator Nodes, aka spaceminecraftpistons. being able to manipulate systems like cannon blocks so one could have multiple intensities of fire could be intriguingly fun. Have a \'warning shot\' mode with the cannons put in a weaker mode, and a \'shoot to kill\' mode where they\'re hooked up right.
5. More factions plus a on-world-creation RTS-esque factionquantity# factionhostility% and factionpower% dropdown, selecting how many factions there should be in the world, how hostile they are to the player, and how powerful they are out of the absolute maximum which is like a Death Star level of damage when they\'re in control of any ship, or a guy on a tugboat inexplicically in deep space armed with a BB gun at the absolute minimum power. Combined with the hostility factor, it could be interesting to see incredibly hostile but ineffective factions try to attack the player with an armada of cheap, replaceable, but terrible ships, and have the player\'s perspective of their effectiveness work from that. Or incredibly powerful neutral factions that won\'t harm the player unless they do anything \'illegal\' in its territory, like how the Shops send the trading guild: it\'d be fun to see that occur for other factions.
6. Intra-NPC faction battles. I want to see EVERYONE fight against pirates except the high-hostile-to-players factions, and even then, only by chance if they happen to have a base within X range of a pirate base. Also, it could be interesting to see allied NPC factions work together, and later on closer to full release, a way of converting NPC factions to join the player, in combination with the planned crew AI system, implying NPC characters will be in the game properly by that point.
7. In-ship message board. It\'d be nice to send a message to people who are within the various system blocks in my ship via a block that sends a message out when you right click on it and then type into a GUI. Appearencewise: HadrasVorshoth: \"FIRE EVERYTHING YE SCUNNERS\"
8. More ship types for NPCs if more are added. Pretty much every classification ought to have some equivalent in the game, though the maximum in the classification lists we\'ve invented the NPCs should have should be dependent on their power rating as described above.
9. Reasons to explore. I\'m thinking indigenous life on planets that can run basic base machines, possibly dangerous creatures that will murderise you who have valuable guts and hormones that can be sold for profit, maybe even some commodities like booze, nanobot replication packs, and sentient blobs of matter to be sold for usage in beauty products because space is DARK, bro. Also, more ruins, faction bases on established structures, mining facilities both abandoned and manned, etc.
10. Mysterious Anomaly! If you get beyond a certain distance in certain directions (random direction) from spawn (distance configurable in world creation), you find a Mysterious Anomaly occur, that makes your ship go increasingly off-course, without any warning unless you are particularly observant and have markers you use to navigate by. Clever piloting, IRL paper mapping of where the unusual irregularties occur, and maybe even some trigonometry and calculus, will reveal a path through this anomaly, which will then take you to another region of the map particularly far away from that Anomaly, in a one-way route that defys normal spacial logic beyond the consideration of teleportation. Anomalies should be rare, hard-to-find, hard to work out spacial distortions that, once discovered, connect two areas despite their distance in one direction, which could be interesting, but cannot be constructed, and are more a plausible curiosity involving warp travel, that due to its limitations cannot be easily exploited but could be useful with some ingenious minds put to the task.
11. Variable thruster/engine types, seperated by price and effectiveness, each with benefits. Lower versions have high acceleration but low speed, higher versions have low acceleration but high speed. Combinations thereof take a mean average of all the stats of each thruster combination, and create a final result that decides the ship\'s motion.
12. Directional gravity. Because gravity generators could be abused maybe to create intriguing ship structures that take advantage of people walking along different angles... I\'d like to see a ship that uses celings equally as much as floors by flipping personal gravity.
13. Containment Zone. A way to have players on a ship walking about while it is in motion without them being flung to one side or dying because the ship is moving while they are technically seperate objects unless they plug into a system block. This is the most unlikely thing on this list in my opinion, but I do like the idea of non-essential crew to not be plugged into systems when they\'re not needed, and be able to relax in a communal area on a ship.
14. Tone Emitter. A weapon of the mind, it hits a target ship, and depending on your configuration (plus with the movers idea earlier modifying it in-use), it plays a tune on the other ship. This could be used to create a low pitched MIDI Doom Choir to proclaim doom to your foes, or a high pitched hailing sound to state you wish to converse briefly before you battle, as well as other ideas that others will surely envisage, from psychological torture to dubstep ships of doomy dooms.
15. This space for rent as my mind is now burnt out and my notepad of ideas written at work is now devoid of anything else.

 

[jjaquinta]

I\'d like more interesting planets. Right now they\'re just kind of... there.

And, since that area is pretty stable, the simplest thing Schema could do to increase the variety here substantially is to make it possible to add planetary generators. Then we could do the work for him.