Reflexion to favorise balance tweaks to favor more diverse ships and gameplay

[Ludovsky]

This is sort of a bit of thinking I've been having regarding a lot of threads and line of thoughts regarding how the current gameplay goes and varied type of thinking I've seen a bit lately.

"Big ships are bad now"
"It's normal that big ships are better, they're bigger. A fighter shouldn't stand a chance against a battleship"
"You can't compare(the more diverse roles of conventional ships battles) to spaceships!"
"I've built a ship the size of a planetoid, I've poured (X) time in it, it owns everything in it's face".

And I feel I must asks a question. Is this the only way we want this game to go? Big? Is building big really the only option there is to be and way to go?
Because I was thinking about this. I could bring arguments like "traditional" space operas(star wars, etc) roles regarding starships(which unlike what many people seems to think, are actually directly based on deepwater navies. That's why they call them "battleships" and "carriers" in the first place or "strikecrafts" and "fighters". Just look at a making-of of the original Star Wars).

I feel the game would benefit from more gameplay tweaks meant to offset the advantages of building in a single direction. There should be a role for every type of crafts, and not just the big ones. Even for combat, which we will admit is what a big aspect of this game turns around.

Because right now, all the focus on "build big" reminds me, in a certain fashion, of another game in a completely different genre.
World of Warcraft.
"The game really begins to shape up when you're level 80"
"Gameplay don't really matters until you're 80, that,s when all the really cool raid are"
"The really fun abilities are at the higher level."

Is it the game we want? A game where the only reason to play a small ship is because you haven't had the time or ressources to build anything bigger? Where everything that is bigger than you "should" roll over you as if you were nothing? Where only the "elite" players who have the time to build the biggest of ships really matter?

I'd like gameplay mechanics that offset this, that gives not one, but multiple directions to designs and crafting. That it doesn't just become "big missiles versus big canons" but "small agile short-ranged craft with rapid fire weapon", "large ponderous armored ship with large slow firing guns able to rain death from miles away", "FTL-loaded carrier, able to bring multiples fighters at farther ranges than even their fast engines could hope to attain in any timely manner", "large-gunned bomber craft dedicated to take out larger ships' subsystems", "Small infiltration craft, meant to cut it's way -inside- an enemy station", "Agile frigate, which offset it's slower-than-strikecraft speed by bristling with anti-stirkecraft weapons which fears only capital ship".

A game where people can start asking themselves now how "big" they want to try to build, but "what" they want to build and what "role" they want to "play" in the scheme of thing.

A game where having a small ship can be a willfull and validchoice and not a merely a period to go through until one can grind enough to build the level 80 raid-junkie grade planetoid ships... and yet keep the later one valid vision. Amongst many others.

Because I like playing minecraft in space. But not World of Warcraft in space.

(This said, thank you so much for making this game, Schema. Something like this was one of my biggest dream game that had yet to be and now it is. It's why I decided to buy it, and to donate to it as well while spreading knowledge of it to all my friends, some of which who have begun to play and greatly enjoy it themselves. I certainly am eager to see it grow further in both content and players and looking forward to have the funds to donate again).

 

[dragon_master]

That\'s a really good idea for now i don\'t really like the course this beautifull game is taking wouldn\'t you prefer if every single ship in existence to have thei\'r own role

 

[Ludovsky]

More or less my feelings.
I want small agiles miners able to go to local asteroids and such in a very timely manner and haul back their stock to local shops in a timely one. I also want to see the slow and ponderous planet cracker using a FTL jump core for long time ressources gathering with arrays of salvage beams, cracking one planet after another until full to the brim, while smaller escort crafts make frequent trips to the planet and back and survey it\'s environs for pirates before the eventual jump back home to unload all of it\'s stock.

I want to see the small bomber able to maneuver around the large capital ship with a short ranged shield-piercing bomb in an attempt to take out the larger\'s ship engine to cripple it\'s mobility while hoping it\'s squadmates in rapid-fire gatlings cannon distract the many anti-strikecraft defenses long-enough to allow it to do so before one of the crew manning the capital\'s turret spots him.

And yet I still want to see the large capital ship with immense slow firing guns, able to strikes smallers ships without warning from miles away for massive damages, an heavily armored and ponderous sniper able to project firepower beyond the direct firing range of any smaller craft at the cost of a slower firing speed due to the greater amount of energy the gun have to build up for each shots even if the generators can easily convey that power. I want people worry about their ability to land the next shot as much as others worry about taking it in the face.

I want to see the shuttle built for ground-attack raid on planets and unloading marines to raid enemy instalations in hope of taking out the faction module that bolster the defensive strenght of the static structure they are installed in, to make their destruction easier.

But at the same time would not mind and enjoy the option to make factional modules still make stations impervious to damage or being messed with as it currently does for those who want more relaxed servers with less PVP elements and would rather not see someone coming by their based to destroy it \"just because they could\" when they are away.

This is minecraft in space. I want to see as many options and ways to play than possible.

 

[dragon_master]

Yeah and people could start specializing in different typer of spaceships from the huge and slow planetoid sized ships to the little highly maneuverable fighters

 

[Nootau]

There aren\'t any ship roles :|, who told you that there were? They lied to you. There aren\'t \'strike\' crafts. There aren\'t \'battlecruisers\' to offset \'cruisers\' or \'dreadnaughts\'. There are only Ship Cores and blocks to add onto them. The \'class\' systems and \'roles\' are player thought up, player enforced, and player driven. Not something StarMade uses.

Also your Starwars, space oppera concept falls flat.. how many smaller ships did they have facing the deathstar at once? Counting it even didn\'t have shields and they could damage the body of the deathstar, which they were, the one way this planet sized ship was defeated was from a plot hook that someone left a clean shaft to the effective Ship Core.

If you wish to know why there are so many kinds of ships IRL and in fantacy and not just all giant monstrocities, it is easy to see. Cost and construction time. Smaller ships were rarely ever able to take on a larger ship alone and hope to survive, not even thinking of winning. The smaller crafts won once they out massed the larger ships evening the odds of expensive single ships with a mini swarm of lesser prices ships until the firepower was close to the same.

Now if you wish to have smaller ships go toe to tow with larger ships you must offset Effort vs Effort and Time vs Time. Remove size of the end result out of the picture. Does Ship B have close to as much: Time, Effort and Cost, put into it as Ship A? Is Ship A about as efficent(a single point focus on combat and not estetics or multitasking in this case) as Ship B? If yes in both cases then it should be a fair fight with minimal advantages. If no, the side with more Time/Effort/Cost invested and pure dedication to the one task should have the clear advantage. Anything less handicaps one side unfairly.

 

[dragon_master]

I know that the ship classes don\'t exist in this game but players created them so it is eadier to identify the ship and i\'m definitly not saying that a bunch of amc\'s sticked around a core could destroy a huge planetoid sized ship because the dedication that you put in a ship should give best ways of coming out of a fight.

And the honor of saying i won that fight not because i made a block of amc\'s but because fought battles and salvaged abandoned ships and payed for every single block with tears and blood will be yours.

I hope that you understand what we are discussing in this thread after you read this post.

eadier to identify the ship and i\'m definitly not saying that a bunch of amc\'s sticked around a core could destroy a huge planetoid sized ship because the dedication that you put in a ship should give best ways of coming out of a fight.

And the honor of saying i won that fight not because i made a block of amc\'s but because fought battles and salvaged abandoned ships and payed for every single block with tears and blood will be

 

[Krazykat]

nice copypasta skills. But he did read the post, and countered it. Don\'t avoid the argument and attack his now, your move. But you wasted it so here I go



never, ever should a ship with less mass than another that is similar in design win. Simple as that

A fleet outmasses a capital ship, one fighter does not.

Size is not the issue, big ships were never a problem, it was that people were too lazy to go find a pirate station and get everything they needed to start their own capital ship ( I was able to kill a stations turrets using just the base materials it gives you when you first start). If you were bad and made a mediocre ship then it was your fault it got destroyed.

A capital ship should be able to fight and win against a weaker enemy, with minimal damage too. But people get so butthurt because they didn\'t use tactics or teamwork that we got severly nerfed.

I guess we are entering the age of Medium sized cruisers and corvettes now. They seem to have the most efficient shield regen now and a few of them using decent teamwork can take out even the largest planetoid with relative ease. It is so boring now that no one uses big ships anymore, took away that excitement when 2 faction flagships went at each other.

 

[dragon_master]

First of all i didn\'t copy paste i\'m in a nokia asha for god sake it can\'t copypaste if i was in my computer i would be playing, second i didn\'t said that a fleet couldn\'t destroy a planetoid sized ship i said that a bunch o canons around a core shouldn\'t be able to destroy a planetoid sized ship or a ship that has hours and hours put into itin my computer i would be playing, second i didn

 

[Krazykat]

protip, stop using a phone on a forum board, your post is barely legible.



Also I agree that a pile of cannons shouldn\'t, however that pile of cannons has a weakness. Lack of armor, lack of shields, or lack of power.

 

[dragon_master]

Yeah i know that it lacks armor and shield but stil if it gets behind the engines and you don\'t have turrets coverimg the engines it can do damage with the current shield sistem nerfed you could be defeated by a noobish ship

P.S: i\'m trying to write the most legible way possible

 

[Krazykat]

get turrets then, not to expensive and with enough they are really effective. I got at least 15 on each Cruiser, up to hundreds on my titan



off-topic sorry I\'m acting a bit douchy, but am also tired due to test taking and studying.

 

[dragon_master]

Well people have their own opinion.
P.S:good luck with the studying wathever is it for because i can\'t guess what is it for

 

[MrFURB]

Let\'s face it, the combat right now is alpha combat, with a paltry number of tools and tactics available. When the game releases I\'m willing to bet that it will look a lot more like Ludovsky\'s first and second posts.

You can spend a lot of effort and time into making a big ship, but ship size has to combine with it\'s efficiency, pilot skill, and situation to get combat effectiveness. Big ships will always have an advantage as they do now, but that advantage alone doesn\'t insure their survival. There will always be those few crack pilots who can\'t stand to pilot something that turns like the Titanic after it sunk, and so pilot small/medium fighters and frigates, trying to use what advantages they can get to overcome the size difference.

 

[Krazykat]

Marine Biology.



Fish have never been so interesting ever!!!

but seriously, currently the game is catering towards a medium sized vessel covered in well-shielded turrets.

 

[Planr]

I think this goes in suggestion

 

[Ludovsky]

Perhaps.
But for a short explanation.... I\'d like a game able to cater to all designs and styles.

From explorations vessels focusing on various systems, loaded with shuttles for planetary descent and observation, to huge lumbering mining craft that can double as mobile refineries.
Small attack bombers that with, albeit short ranged and thus having to dodge rapid enemy anti-strikecraft fire, would be able to deal damaging blow to enemy subsystems...
And the fast-firing even more nimble interceptors meant to take them out.

Large ponderous ships that moves slowly, but offset this weakness with thick plating and huge artillery guns able to lay accurate devastating fire from miles away, perhaps made even more accurate thanks to a laser point carried by a smaller ship. That might see a single bomber blow up it\'s engines to strand it, but still give a fleet of medium cruisers a hard time for it\'s money... and that is if fighting without the support of allies or of it\'s own strikecraft cover to distract enemy attackers while it still rain devastation from afar.

Carriers which might be as ponderous, but thank to an FTL drive give squadron(s) of fighters a strategic mobility which their engines could only dream of.

Or any other role and design which a player could think of and hasn\'t thought of yet.

 

[Ludovsky]

Perhaps.
But I feel the scope is general enough, and especially the goal of debating what people would like out of the game might still fit of a general \"discussion\". Since the goal is not really to make a suggestion but to discuss a viewpoint.

 

[Nootau]

That isn\'t Star-made.

 

[Ludovsky]

More or less. The Yamato was more or less sunk by a swarm of fighters which dropped bombs and torpedoes on it which dealt critical damage to the ship.

The Bismark, perhaps the second biggest battleship ever, might not have been destroyed by fighters plane, and in fact is one of the few ship that can openly claim to have taken a pounding for hours without support by a larger fleet and still float afterward(it\'s crew actually had to scuttle the ship altogether for the british to stop pounding on it)... but the reason it was nonetheless easily caught and surrounded by such a fleet in a territory as large as the atlantic ocean was that a single squadron of seaplanes came upon it, launching a single volley of torpedoes.
Of these torpedoes, a single one actually hit it(and that\'s saying something about the difficulty of hitting even large targets when in as unstable a firing platform than a plane).
That torpedo hit the rudder, utterly ruining it and forcing the Bismark to naviguate purely and only in circle.... a sitting duck in the middle of water.

But then again it was a ship operating without escort, operating purely on the belief that it\'s own personal performances would be enough to defeat any opposition.

Which is how I believe it should be. No lone fighter should able to annihilate a capital shipby itself.
But a capital ship shouldn\'t think it can operate in impunity without any support either. This is partly where \"capital\" comes from in the first place: their importance as means to projects power over great distance.... and the importance as such to protect them with a proper escort.

 

[Ludovsky]

And why could it not be?
We are playing an alpha. A game that has barely begun development.

This is why I\'d like to present this sort of discussion when development is still so early.

Because \"World of Warcraft in space\" where only players who manage to build \"level cap\"-grade ships can have any notable impact is not the game I\'d like to see this becoming, even if I am ill placed as a mere player to speculate.