Solutons to discourage gigantism?

[Edymnion]

...And get obliterated the second someone decides they don't like me? No thanks.

Now, I will agree with this sentiment to some degree.

I started out on a big build server that had hugely cranked up mining. You got more from one asteroid there than you did eating an entire planet in vanilla.

Thing was, they beefed up the pirates to the point they were at least a small threat to those huge builds, which meant going out your back door with anything less than 10m shields was absolute suicide. Any random pirate flyby would utterly obliterate you.

In fact, thats the exact reason I left that server and joined a mostly vanilla 1x mining server with default pirates.

And what have I been doing the past several weeks? Building a capitol ship that would have been right at home on the first server. The difference? I choose to build a massive ship because I want one, not because I have to have one just to play.

If you don't want to get crushed by bigger ships, then don't play on servers where the pirates are buffed, and don't play on free-range PvP servers. You are making the choice to be on a server where you feel like you have to have a giant ship to survive. The answer is not to stomp on the ability to have big ships, its just to move to a server that doesn't make capitol ships mandatory.

I dropped everything I had done and left that server, you can too.

 

[Visitor]

Rambling time, long, boring, mostly on-topic and made in part because I am rather tired of regularly seeing people fight over this. Feel free to ignore if uninterested, I do know it's a wall of text.

I would agree that the problem doesn't lie in the existence of the big ships but ease and their availability and scaling of their capability versus costs. Already, in the past, I've pointed out that it's absolutely too easy to acquire money and parts, allowing relatively capable player to create versatile, sizeable, sturdy vessels in hours or even less.

At the same time, since there are no issues of having sufficiently sizeable staff for the ships, properly distributed life support and generally - the construction can be often simplified to 'buy crapton of blocks and pile them together to destroy anyone who piled less of them in their own ship' big ships are logical go-to for any practical undertaking. A big reworking of mechanics regarding ship complexity, redundancy of subsystems and their capabilities in comparison with their scale, power requirement etc would be necessary to change that.

But about that we had plenty of discussions, from making shield-scaling demanding and steep enough that bigger ships durability ratio - at least durability of shields rather than hull - will be noticeably lesser than in case of smaller vessels, through special anti-capital ship weapons, to hard-set in server's controls limits on maximum size and subsystem power scaling.

I do not think that big ships should disappear completely. In fact, it would be rather sad if gigantic ships couldn't exist at all. I personally prefer well-designed, spartan but aesthetic smaller ships but there should be a place for all of those. Currently, the only drawback of big ships, beyond maneuverability which, let's be honest, with their offensive-defensive capabilities is of tertiary importance anyway - is the price. And that is only a temporary drawback since money keep pilling up and blocks are basically the only thing they can be spent on anyway.

It's simply too easy to buy big ships and if they do so much better in any capability than the small ones, I am not surprised. Let people have big ships, but let them also sweat about maintaining them, keeping them running, investing in proper escorts rather than magical eternal forcefield generators that currently protect about any and every type of danger sans owner's stupidity.

I'd rather have Schine consider the problems mentioned in this post (and many threads) and make constant risk balanced with the reward, without really making another such kind of thread over and over again. Yes, we know there is a big (no pun intended) problem with ship size scaling, already. Yes, we do know there are people who are fine with making such completely worthless and those who agree with Yetimania's manifesto, needing big ships to feel they have a big role in the vents surrounding them, to make an impact.

I am pretty sure that statements related to it, such as:

"Baww why can't my tiny fighter that I spent 20 minutes on take out someone's cruiser that they spent a month on ;_;" - every "big ship critic" ever

...are hardly conductive, the same way an as-equally inflammatory claims I've heard that every big ship defendant is just compensating for their personal lackings (a'la big truck drivers with small penises) and simply don't have skill to design and pilot effectively small ships. In fact, I am surprised that in so many threads people make such without mods stepping in and warning people against goading others, the same way I am surprised we have community members willing to pointedly fight using such blanket and simply rude statements.

Those won't help. Beefing pirates won't help long-term either. Re-evaluation of math behind scaling of power of each components while taking into comparison scaling of weapons and any future subsystems (well, I do hope for survivalistic life support and so on, doesn't mean we'll have it though) may help but that won't happen without long, long time of work and adjustment.

Just get me some dev who will say 'yup, we know about it, gonna work on it' and wait till they will need input on certain factors involved rather than reheating those threads over and over again.

 

[jorgekorke]

Stop a moment and think about it.

What people fail to understand while arguing from both sides is that gigantism is not a gameplay issue. This is no Star Wars, a fighter (X-Wing, for example) will never take on a enormous entity (Death Star, for example). It is all right.

Gigantism is a major general hardware problem. A 4 mil mass ships for example will instantly crash anybody that does not have a PC more expensive then 3k $. And face it, nobody is going to upgrade their computers for a game that we don't even know if it will succeed or die before 1.0 .

That is why people like Joel are ruling over EE. It's not a matter of resources, people can easily come together and assemble the materials to build something to fight against. It's the hardware. Very few people can even render the titan and have a playable FPS.

 

[Visitor]

What people fail to understand while arguing from both sides is that gigantism is not a gameplay issue.

Gigantism is a major general hardware problem.

While I am still in the thread, I'll comment.

Actually, the problem is it IS both. Yes, I agree it's a hardware issue and I don't visit some servers because even somewhat optimized, the game poorly treats my computer when I face some more elaborate, animated (be it through logic blocks or anything else) constructions but it is also a gameplay issue. No matter if you think it's realistic that big ships are vulnerable to smaller ones or not (there are sci-fi shows speaking for both ways and neither of them has to be exactly how it'll be in Starmade), big ships seem to be a problem even for players with great hardware rigs handling fleets of dreadnoughts easily.

 

[Ithirahad]

Gigantism is a major general hardware problem.

I'd call it more of a Lieutenant General hardware problem, or maybe full General... :p

...Jokes aside, I've been on the recieving end of this issue. When Joelbrisco on pre-reset Elwyn Eternity warped into my sector (Or I warped into his) I'd instantly freeze out and have to relog. This could have easily caused problems if there was any conflict going on... It also caused problems if he decided to go to the spawn shop to buy stuff. Ships large enough to cause serious technical issues should, by virtue of game balance, be rendered impractical. And no, the "time spent building it" argument doesn't hold up at all - Most ships of that scale that I've seen are nothing more than giant flying refrigerators, which were obviously built as quickly and lazily as possible, and probably took about the same amount of time to build as, say, my 25000-mass cruiser, if not less due to the use of obscenely large maximum build areas in singleplayer.

 

[aceface]

i wouldn't call it a hardware problem, more of a problem with a game that promotes these huge monstrosities. we can't load unlimited blocks. thats just silly.

 

[Jay_do]

To be honest. I think that the new blueprint system and the crafting has basically eliminated any sort of gigantism. Unless admin commands are used. If someone manages to get a gigantic ship with the current system in place then they deserve to have it.

EDIT: Wait a sec. This is a dead thread. Why in the world did it come back up?

 

[Krougal]

The thing is everyone is a ship captain in this game. While turrets manned by players would probably be a lot more effective, who really wants to sit on someone elses ship? Space marine? Yeah right, diehard RPers, maybe. Fighter pilot? Yeah, til you get creamed a few times and ragequit. Other RP shit that involves sitting around yakking? See space marine above.

So from a practical standpoint, I see 3 stages of ships with the current game mechanics. The starter ship. The first loot pinata farmer ship. The biggest ship you can build. If the economy were harder, you might see more intermediate ships, but it really isn't once you get going. And yes, there aren't enough positive factors to make small ships practical. They're hard to get any level of detail into. There will always be someone with a larger ship to come ruin your day. Small size and higher maneuverability don't seem to count for much. Do I think something should be done? Yes. Do I think that something is nerfing the fuck out of big ships? No.

While I love to look at the stuff Keptik and Ref and the other many really talented builders around here build, if I were running a PVP/PVE server I wouldn't allow any ships even close to that size. I've got an older but still pretty high-end rig and my performance is less than acceptable when loading up a few titans.

Right now it seems like the only solution is for server admins to set lower caps for servers meant for actual survival play. That would end most people's problems right there and still let everyone do what they want to do more or less. Want to play small ships? Find other like minded people and set a 20k, 2k or whatever floats your boat mass cap.

 

[Ithirahad]

Right now it seems like the only solution is for server admins to set lower caps for servers meant for actual survival play. That would end most people's problems right there and still let everyone do what they want to do more or less. Want to play small ships? Find other like minded people and set a 20k, 2k or whatever floats your boat mass cap.

The thing is that a (say) 100k mass ship shouldn't be against the rules. It should be possible, maybe even viable, but it should have weaknesses just like any other type of ship. As I say every damn time this kind of thing comes up, a "big ship" shouldn't be the be-all-end-all of starships in the game, nor should it be completely impossible to build and fly. It should simply be another type of ship, with its own weaknesses to other (smaller but not necessarily tiny, this isn't Star Wars, and for those that constantly cite that counterexample, I don't want it to be!) types of ships and its own risks associated with its use.

 

[AtraUnam]

There was an idea a while ago to allow undeathinators on ships so that fighter pilots could simply respawn in the fighter bay and get in another fighter. Sounds like a good way to let people have fun in fighters while still letting them stay in a longterm battle.

 

[Leanson]

From the depths man, I been saying it, big ships there mean more to blow up and it harder to protect.

 

[Ithirahad]

From the depths man, I been saying it, big ships there mean more to blow up and it harder to protect.

• ...Except for the fact that this is a game of infinite resources and there's no way to stop people from amassing so much stuff that it creates an entry barrier for newbies and cost of titans becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, all you need to protect as big a ship as you want is a dock. Literally. One block. And even... no, especially, a non-docked titan is almost inevitably better protected than something smaller that's undocked because it has so much shielding and space for immense turrets.

 

[cyberus111]

When you need a bajillion shield points to defend against a rowboat with a rocket launcher gigantic ships are a result

 

[Leanson]

• ...Except for the fact that this is a game of infinite resources and there's no way to stop people from amassing so much stuff that it creates an entry barrier for newbies and cost of titans becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, all you need to protect as big a ship as you want is a dock. Literally. One block. And even... no, especially, a non-docked titan is almost inevitably better protected than something smaller that's undocked because it has so much shielding and space for immense turrets.

You haven't played from the depth then, because you addressed nothing in that game that related to SM. Look at some videos and see its Game play to see how it's like.

 

[Ithirahad]

You haven't played from the depth then, because you addressed nothing in that game that related to SM. Look at some videos and see its Game play to see how it's like.

Oh, you mean a GAME called From the Depths? I had no idea that that's what you meant... I thought it was some obscure reference to time. Like, "Since the depths of ancient history, I've been saying..."

 

[Visitor]

When you need a bajillion shield points to defend against a rowboat with a rocket launcher gigantic ships are a result

I am pretty sure that if it'd be the case, OP rocket-launcher rowboats would be now commonly used in place of the gigantic ships since, let's be honest, most people acquire such big ships to dominate battlefields in PvP/PvE. Yes, there are people who build big ships as an artistic endeavor, but they're in great minority on most servers with PvP factions.

 

[LoSboccacc]

are we ignoring there is a perfectly fine solution in game right now?

just change ShieldCapacityTotalMul to 1000 and ShieldCapacityPow to 0.75, and this is what you get for blocks/capacity:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y=((x*1.0)^0.75)*1000+between+0+and+100000

 

[Joelbrisco]

Honestly I don't think Starmade supports the building of ANYTHING it is the players and the environment that cause it big or small. To have a sandbox that is about creative freedom and having fun with it at the same time is what I think some people expect from a sandbox game but to then also go and say "NO! You can't have that; because I can't handle it!" is a silly thing to say and try to enforce on the base game. It is like complaining "I can't run the Witcher 3 on max graphical settings with 60 FPS so they must change it or no one can have it!" Ship size limits if there are some should be based upon the server owners and if you don't like what they allow or don't take it up with them. Limiting others based upon what you can and can't do is plain stupid.

 

[Keptick]

Honestly I don't think Starmade supports the building of ANYTHING it is the players and the environment that cause it big or small. To have a sandbox that is about creative freedom and having fun with it at the same time is what I think some people expect from a sandbox game but to then also go and say "NO! You can't have that; because I can't handle it!" is a silly thing to say and try to enforce on the base game. It is like complaining "I can't run the Witcher 3 on max graphical settings with 60 FPS so they must change it or no one can have it!" Ship size limits if there are some should be based upon the server owners and if you don't like what they allow or don't take it up with them. Limiting others based upon what you can and can't do is plain stupid.

I agree. The only exception is when 99.9% of a server's population crashes from a ship, then it might be a tad too big for it's own good, in my opinion.

But yea, trying to limit ship size because a person has shitty hardware is just a bad idea.

 

[Joelbrisco]

I agree. The only exception is when 99.9% of a server's population crashes from a ship, then it might be a tad too big for it's own good, in my opinion.

But yea, trying to limit ship size because a person has shitty hardware is just a bad idea.

That is where it would fall upon the admins to decide and deal with.