Self-Imposed weapon and system confinements

[JinM]

It all started, when some dudes decided, that everyone that doesn't use the latest meta builds for ships on purpose is a roleplayer in Starmade.

As the term roleplay is heavily broad in Starmade, I just want to tell you guys: Don't use this term in this disucssion. Any roleplay related things like "what is a fighter, this doesn't make sense in the real world or your universe" don't belong here. This thread is aimed at mechanics and system numbers discussions, and putting them into classifcation charts.

Roleplaying is, when I take over a character within an universe and actually talk and play that persons actions. It has nothing to do with building a ship for pvp. ​

Starmade, right now, allows us to build ships with that we can have pvp that is fun.

An example would be if I build two different ships that only have 100 m/s maximum thrust, and use cannons instead of beams. But overall they are equally strong, and the outcome is dependent on the pilot and and sometimes luck about who hits the first blow.

Such type of pvp can be very interesting. I don't care for the dudes that allways strife to max out within a given ruleset, and that play to win over play to have fun. This guide is not for you if you want to win.

This guide and rule-suggestions is for the people that want to use all their engineering skills to build ships that are fun when you fight with them against other ships that also follow this self-imposed ruleset.

Does this have to do with roleplay? No. We dont care if you build interiour into your ships or have a nice hull. All we want is that the battles are fun. That doesn't mean this rules are not appliable to roleplay. I have designed them to actually use them on a roleplay server, with ships that do have interiour.

The new order of rules

This thread is a WIP. When I play Starmade again, I will update the OP in regards of the actual game mechanics and weapons balance. Right now I don't play this game. But if you guys want to share your own suggestions for the rules feel free to reply.

What I aim for:

• The biggest size that is able to pvp is around 50k mass, exceed this limit and you are very likely to have a laggy fight. The following rules will be set to balance around this maximum ship size. If you field a 50k battleship, it should be a very huge fight with many participating ships.
• The smallest size will be 3k mass, or at least 50m into one dimension. This is in regards to missiles and cannons not being able to hit propperly at smaller ship sizes.
• Thrust: The fastest ship should be a fighter with 3k mass, but the maximum speed we engineer for is very low, like 150m/s. 50k Battleships should be able to reach 150m/s but should not be able to turn quickly. How can that be achieved? You just adjust the slider in your thruster config.
• Minimum ship dimensions, minimum ship mass. If you use a reactor of 899 blocks, your ship has to weight at least 3k mass. And the combined dimensions should be 130m minimum. That means a ship of 30m height, 40 width, and 50m length for example. - How to scale this numbers in the higher regions is still unknown to me. I aim for sharp break points at important reactor sizes and ship mass sizes.
• The overall idea will be, that we have a ship strength classification, ranging from fighter to battleship, with margin points in between. So if you have a ship of 5,7k mass it would belong to the size class "fighter lvl 3": everything below 7k mass. I your ship has 8.9k mass it would belong to the size class "corvette", everything below 12k mass.
• I can imagine that I use another scale than mass for classifying the ships too. So there would be a size classification, and a strenght classification. So a fighter of the strength 3 could fight against a corvette sized tradeship of the strength 3.

What would you like to use for limittations?
I can imagine that you guys often build bigger ships. We can't discuss if we go smaller or bigger at all - I am sorry but the gamemechanics simply prevent that: Too small and missiles + cannons don't hit, too big and you have lag while you fight. I am more interested into what your preffered ship sizes in regards of daily building are within this margins. I personally would top the upper limit at 15k mass. Let me be honest here: I can't build so fast, I have a very detail obsessed building style. 15k mass would be my upper limit. But I want that other people also like to use this rules, and that it can be applied to a greater audience. What's the ship size you would like to fight in if you could choose? Where would you have the most fun? What is the dream battle you aim for? 3 fighters and one battleship on each side? Or 4 battleships? Or rather 1v1 and then have a little competetion between 8 participants?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Rather than limit or restrict, I think the best thing would be for Schine to actually finish the game.

As it stands now, PVE is broken because there is no content but what we make for ourselves (why am I getting a terminator vibe here?). NPC factions are basically mobile background scenery that mindlessly spreads through the universe like a virus; depleting resources and creating lag. It would be nice if we could tune down the rate at which they expand and spawn ships.

On the other hand, PVP is broken because it forces a single style of play. Anyone who does not adopt and build around this play style is put at an instant disadvantage. Also, the game has not been purged of exploits (ship theft by forced reverse docking for example) and does not allow for reliable faction expansion due to said exploits and incomplete features (AI for example).

It almost sounds as if you are brain storming for a specific server config. MicroMade and BabyMade were interesting low-lag concepts. It could be interesting to see what ideas others come up with. In the mean time, I'll continue building assets for my server. Unfortunately, I can't open it to other players until Schine fixes a few big gaping holes in their game.

 

[Az14el]

PVP is just way too heavily into beamspam territory right now, even with .199s missile spam you'd end up with a good mix of weapons just for reliability (missiles mostly being shot down by manual ams, beams bugging out cross sector, cannons usually missing shots), now beams are just hyper reliable regardless of engagement range.

You could do some limited design brawls and those can be interesting, though should be kept to minimal mass and aesthetic standards if you want a lot of entries. I'd probably be down if you planned something on lvd, just again doubt there'd be many people into it since most are just utilizing what works by schines values to best protect their survival mode interests (makes sense to me too).

 

[Gasboy]

This fits in nicely with an idea I have had kicking around in my head since I started playing Starmade.

Take the Washington Naval Treaty/London Naval Treaty, and convert it in to a set of rules for PvP play.

Each 'nation' gets a set tonnage (block count, mass, pick your poison), and in that tonnage, a set limit of specific sized ships (cruisers, battleships, etc, etc.). Specific weapon sizes (block counts) for each class of ship. You can't build more ships unless you have had ships destroyed, and any replacements have to follow the original ship building rules.

You have a restricted amount of space for the entire set of nations, each nation gets a home sector and a few surrounding sectors. To earn more tonnage or ship numbers, you have to either: 1) take more sectors or 2) capture enemy ships. You could set the amount of sectors required to get more tonnage/ships. Captured ships could be repaired/upgraded, or scrapped for parts to build a new ship of your own types.

Obviously the restricted space and requirements to earn more tonnage/ships should have the different factions fighting. To avoid mismatched 'alliances', you could split the nations into two or more team alliances.

Make it a seasonal thing to keep it fresh, change up the rules to address balance issues or make things more interesting or harder.

It could be a lot of fun, but also, it'd be a ton of work to do all the accounting work.

 

[JinM]

Just a quick note for myself and anyone interested:

I will add a rule, that restricts the usage of beams.

Also I will add a rule that bans the usage of missile-beams.

It is the BEST for simplicity to totally outlaw them, and make a whitelist of usable weapon combos.

Why? Balance. If I only allow cannon primary combos, and only pure missile...and maybe missile-missile, then I pretty much have a balanced set of weapons. Missile-beam would also be banned because they simply don't hit and would make the combat too unpredictable (if I use a tracking missile it simple HAS to hit under certain circumstances e.g. 30 diameter target that is standing still - right now this is not the case).

Including beams with the current vanilla settings is next to impossible, in any combination they overpower any cannon and missile combination. A 20% beam module of total weapon module restriciton could work, but I think this just makes building ships even less fun and more complicated than neccessary. Maybe a maximum beam module count depending on reactor size restrction is possible.

 

[Az14el]

you can balance beams with range restrictions and just dropping their damage, it's perfectly possible to make them range anything from flash lights to galactic solar flares with values edits. This is already well known though it's just not default, you're definitely wrong there.

 

[Dire Venom]

This fits in nicely with an idea I have had kicking around in my head since I started playing Starmade.

Take the Washington Naval Treaty/London Naval Treaty, and convert it in to a set of rules for PvP play.

Each 'nation' gets a set tonnage (block count, mass, pick your poison), and in that tonnage, a set limit of specific sized ships (cruisers, battleships, etc, etc.). Specific weapon sizes (block counts) for each class of ship. You can't build more ships unless you have had ships destroyed, and any replacements have to follow the original ship building rules.

You have a restricted amount of space for the entire set of nations, each nation gets a home sector and a few surrounding sectors. To earn more tonnage or ship numbers, you have to either: 1) take more sectors or 2) capture enemy ships. You could set the amount of sectors required to get more tonnage/ships. Captured ships could be repaired/upgraded, or scrapped for parts to build a new ship of your own types.

Obviously the restricted space and requirements to earn more tonnage/ships should have the different factions fighting. To avoid mismatched 'alliances', you could split the nations into two or more team alliances.

Make it a seasonal thing to keep it fresh, change up the rules to address balance issues or make things more interesting or harder.

It could be a lot of fun, but also, it'd be a ton of work to do all the accounting work.

Some great points here, navel capacity and tonnage seems like a good way of doing this.

 

[JinM]

values edits.

So you suggest to alter the server configs?

If this is the case either I wrote the OP wrong or you read it wrong. Self-imposed rules are rules, that don't use the alteration of server configs, and get enforced because players build their ships with limittations and "bad on purpose".

 

[Az14el]

just to point out that while it's not vanilla, it's an easy change to make that won't heavily affect BPs from other servers/standard config. Should you actually want to include beams, but feel you simply can't.

 

[JinM]

just to point out that while it's not vanilla, it's an easy change to make that won't heavily affect BPs from other servers/standard config. Should you actually want to include beams, but feel you simply can't.

Yes and no. I totally understand your idea, thanks for the input.

My suggestion also incorportates to limit the number of power blocks you use within a given ship size relational to mass and dimensions. That simply can't be put into configs right now.

And even the new options that are going to get added, don't allow this sort of fine limitation: If your ship is this and this long in combined dimensions, you are allowed for X power blocks maximum, and X thrust maximum. I highlighted this part blue in the OP, because I think people can miss it.

That's why I don't even think about touching configs, because there are still other systems that would require self-imposed limittations. And most importantly I don't want to use configs because the populated servers will stay vanilla. And its more fun to play on a server where people are online, and then maybe one or two hours each day two people are online at the same time that like to use some self-imposed pvp rules.