Reviewing StarMade

[Tunk]

SW bubble shields scale to encompass the entire craft, giving a much larger surface area for attack while shields are active unless the craft is designed to fit snugly inside.
The new shield block/Capacitor mechanic allows you a trade off between capacity and recharge time and is a multi-block structure (capacitors snap onto the shield, or stack on other capacitors on the xyz axis).
Various systems also generate heat, which must be dissipated via hull.
SW handles "docked" entities significantly different to starmade, what we would call docked entities are part of the main craft via hinges.
Actual docking is a separate entity, as in two separate ships docked rather than becoming part of the docking tree of the parent ship.

The games are currently like apples and oranges right now, because they have significantly different implementations of various concepts.

[edit]
I would like to note that SW's Torus worlds are EXTREMELY impressive from a technical standpoint.
These things are literally tens to hundreds of thousands of km of surface area, being rendered in real time.
In addition to that they have made great inroads into rendering large amounts of voxels/entities of a scale that would crash starmade several hundred times over.
I expect planets to be impressive when they are fully implemented.

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

Ah okay. Then I am wrong on that one.

Btw. what's better bubble shield or surface shield?I mean surface shields allow for diminishing shield stats on docked entities...But I am just currious about the pros and cons right now.

With the way the bubble shields are currently implemented, the shield extends a certain distance outside the hull on the longest axes, and that distance gets bigger with the larger the ship. Right now, it blocks shots that come in from the outside, but shots fired from inside can damage blocks directly. So far, people think that this will be useful for allowing:
a) friendly ships can be enveloped in the shield of a larger ship, so they can be defended
b) smaller ships like fighters and bombers to fly under shields to do damage directly to hull

Also, the shields are implemented in such a way that by connecting a slider, the recharge rate and capacity (and subsequently the power consumption) can be toggled on and off, or set to a partial value anywhere in between. It's the hope that futherdown the line, this will allow players to control the strength of different systems to in case of lowering fuel consumption, or if generators are damaged in a fight and lose effectiveness.

 

[Zoolimar]

Btw. what's better bubble shield or surface shield?I mean surface shields allow for diminishing shield stats on docked entities...But I am just currious about the pros and cons right now.

There is no better in this case. Unless of course you implement both of them in the same game.

As pointed out bubble shields allow small craft attacks or ramming to bypass shielding and allow to shield allies without the need for specialised designs.

Surface shields are harder to circumvent (if possible at all) but any non standard use also needs to create highly specialised designs - hiding a bunch of fighters behind more or less standard ship won't be that easy and shielding plates would make the ship more vulnerable.

There is a also a variant with "powered armour" when you build your shield generators and connect them to parts of your hull/force fields. As a result chosen blocks are destroyed only after the shield pool is depleted and can regenerate.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Bubble shields as in actual hitbox bubbles, are an interesting feature. Not only do they allow your own small strike craft to take advantage of your mothership's shield coverage, but also allow boarding pods and enemy strike fighters to bypass it, making smaller vessels viable in capital combat, and forcing the extensive use of point defense turretry to take care of such pesky invaders. Now of course they would function best if there was some level of freedom allowed with their shape to not be an exact sphere (could be easily implemented if the covered area scaled like you scaled the old pre-rail docking area boxdims with enhancers) Either through the shape of the shield recharger group, or intriducing a new block called the shield emitter.

 

[splatthecat]

Bubble shields as in actual hitbox bubbles, are an interesting feature. Not only do they allow your own small strike craft to take advantage of your mothership's shield coverage, but also allow boarding pods and enemy strike fighters to bypass it, making smaller vessels viable in capital combat, and forcing the extensive use of point defense turretry to take care of such pesky invaders. Now of course they would function best if there was some level of freedom allowed with their shape to not be an exact sphere (could be easily implemented if the covered area scaled like you scaled the old pre-rail docking area boxdims with enhancers) Either through the shape of the shield recharger group, or intriducing a new block called the shield emitter.

I like the idea of having a shield that a small fighter could penetrate and fire upon a larger ship taking out turrets or strategic points on a larger ship. It would make combat more a case of how well you plan your attack/defence as opposed to who brought the biggest stick.

Even small buzzy drones could cause maximum pressure to the larger ship, especially if the AI/Fleet is updated to allow for specific systems or components to be targeted. Ships could for example be tasked with attacking point defence turrets, power, engines or even these shield emitters you suggested.

 

[JinM]

I like the idea of having a shield that a small fighter could penetrate and fire upon a larger ship taking out turrets or strategic points on a larger ship. It would make combat more a case of how well you plan your attack/defence as opposed to who brought the biggest stick.

Even small buzzy drones could cause maximum pressure to the larger ship, especially if the AI/Fleet is updated to allow for specific systems or components to be targeted. Ships could for example be tasked with attacking point defence turrets, power, engines or even these shield emitters you suggested.

Another idea would be to get additional damage if you manage to fire from only 50m distance to the hull of a bigger ship than you are.

 

[Skwidz]

Ah okay. Then I am wrong on that one.

Btw. what's better bubble shield or surface shield?I mean surface shields allow for diminishing shield stats on docked entities...But I am just currious about the pros and cons right now.

It depends on points of reference. In this case they are SW and SM. IMO bubble shields are better than surface shields because they look cooler and can be more useful i.e. a bubble formed around a ship will protect anything that's inside it such as a smaller ship or part of something the ship is docked to.

When I think of surface shields I think of integrity fields such as those from Avorion. These kinds of shields are more like personal body armor rather than like a "riot shield" which protects other things better and lasts longer. Like in Avorion integrity fields enhance the strength of a ship's hull, armor, etc. but the ship still receives damage as does smaller ships near it and what it's docked to.

Starmade's "bubble shields" are just surface shields limited by a three-dimensional radius. I don't mind them that much, but I would like to see them be remade as integrity enhancement fields which require slightly less shield rechargers and capacitors (call them integrity enhancer chargers and capacitors or something a lot better). The reworked integrity enhancement system could then add onto system integrity making some decorational designs a little easier but some balancing will need to occur to prevent spaghetti. Then bubble shielding could be added which would work in graphical and functional design to the shields in SW; a bubble which extends around the ship based on its dimensions (mass, length, height?) and shows an energy effect where a projectile hits (like SG Atlantis' city shield) and removes the projectile that distance from the ship. The actual shield generator can work similar to the reactor chamber mechanic but I think something different could be better. A "chamber" upgrade or whatever could involve manually extending the shield or increase the default range.

 

[Calhoun]

Bubble shields are great until you realise people will just ram their gun barrels under the shield and fire

 

[splatthecat]

Bubble shields are great until you realise people will just ram their gun barrels under the shield and fire

That is where collision damage would come in. It would take a pretty brave pilot to get that close, especially under fire against an enemy ship that was executing evasive manoeuvers and risk damaging their weapons just to get under the bubble shield.

Two big ships slugging it out at a distance could be boring but being able to target specific systems or send in fighters/drones that can get under the shields could be potentially more exciting.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Bubble shields are great until you realise people will just ram their gun barrels under the shield and fire

Yup your right. They'd need to fix that.

 

[therimmer96]

Bubble shields are great until you realise people will just ram their gun barrels under the shield and fire

Make shields impenetrable by ships of different/none allied factions.

Done.

Bubble shields pls.

 

[sapphire790]

I love staramde, or i at least loved, but...
look at this...

 

[therimmer96]

Wow, a game with no multiplayer and no real gameplay!

It's starmade, but worse.

 

[Nauvran]

Wow, a game with no multiplayer and no real gameplay!

It's starmade, but worse.

how can it be worse than Starmade?
how can anything be worse than starmade?

 

[Ratchet Hundreda]

Wow, a game with no multiplayer and no real gameplay!

It's starmade, but worse.

Dude it's in pre-alpha... it's not even an open alpha yet like StarMade. Though I would like to hear what is that you consider "gameplay" which SM has but SW doesn't

 

[Zoolimar]

Yup your right. They'd need to fix that.

Why? Is someone is so slow or dumb that anyone could push their cannons into their flank I'd say allow them.

 

[Tunk]

Regarding true bubble shields and bypassing them with gun ramming,

Personally you could resolve the gun ram issue by making it a matter of intersecting area.
EG: If the smaller ships shield radius (along the longest axes) intersects a area less than 10% of the larger ships shield it can pass through, otherwise its a inelastic collision off the shield when they contact.
Smaller compact ships/fighters/drones will pass through battleship sized shields, but penetrator/peener ships with a small frontal cross section will still bounce and their effective radius for the collision will be based on their length.

Given the relationship between volume/surface area this means destroyer sized ships and below can bounce fighters, but fighters can penetrate anything from cruisers up causing a stratification in ship sizes while still giving fighters, and destroyer type ships a natural role (shield penetration and screening).

 

[NuclearFun]

Make shields impenetrable by ships of different/none allied factions.

Done.

Bubble shields pls.

my own probably stupid idea after reading this:
...have (non allied) shield repel each other (unshielded fighters, torpedos or extruding unshielded "rams" could still penetrate under high risk)

probably wont happen though, so just rambling

 

[Skwidz]

Maybe only entities with the same shield frequency and faction can go through a bubble shield of that frequency and faction without shield drain?

 

[OfficialCoding]

Maybe make the bubble like a forcefield that only factioned ships/players can go through. Like the shield gate on Scarif in Rogue One