Some ideas for you all to mull over before the Q&A

[LunaMoonbringer]

So, those of you who know me are aware that I'm not one to post often on the forum-especially in the suggestions section. I respect that Schema is doing the best he can, and that he has his work cut out for him; hence, I don't try to nag about new ideas. However, seeing as there is a Dev Q&A tomorrow (actually today by the time I finished writing this), which would provide the perfect opportunity to go over some of the things the Starmade community wants to see in the game, I felt that it would be at least somewhat worthwhile to throw up a list of the things that I would really like to see in this game. Just a warning, this list is going to be extremely cliche, and mostly contain things that have already been suggested elsewhere. I'm just talking about how I would like to see them implemented, and provide some food for thought.

So, I would divide the possible improvements I have into 3 different sections:

• Combat
• Building
• Economic

Combat​

• I know this one has been stressed more times than nearly anything else on the forums, but an improvement in hull armor. I'm not simply saying to soup up the damage that a single block can take, however. I'm not the first person to suggest this, but I like the idea of hull blocks that would disperse energy-weapon damage across several hull blocks. This would serve the dual purpose of making hull more effective against energy weapons (can't simply say AMCs, as the weapons update is coming soon) since it would disperse the damage, but it would make it more viable to use missiles to breach the hull of a spacecraft. At the moment, hull blocks are of no more use than an energy block, or a shield block, and this promotes bad design. Borg cubes, ships lined with nothing but shields, etc. By making them a more viable defense, we can also improve ship design, at least somewhat.
• I tend to be a major proponent of fleet combat. I don't like the idea of three or four people on a side going in, scattering around, and just shooting the nearest target. I want to see battles where there are fighters escorting bombers around larger capital ships, where the bombers can actually make a difference. Let's face it: I don't care about fire rates or maneuverability: currently there is no real reason to have people in your military/faction/group fly anything other than the largest ship you can possibly afford.
• That's why I'm proposing a weapon idea. I don't have a name for it, I don't care about coming up with a name for it. Although I am partial to some form of Torpedo. Essentially, it would be a weapon that could only be mounted in very small groups (no more than 10 blocks), and no more than 2 groups could be installed on a ship. It would have a very low rate of fire, taking 60 seconds or so to reload at its fastest. It would technically be considered an energy weapon, and hence hull blocks could disperse it somewhat. However, it would have decent AoE damage, and could pierce hull fairly easily. The real unique part about it is that it would pierce shields. I know this raises concerns regarding griefing of ships while a person is offline, or other mayhem. Hence, it would only function on a ship that was occupied within the last 60 seconds, or has an active AI module controlling it. This would prevent it from being used on ships that are resting around while players are offline, and would also provide a measure to keep players from briefly hopping out of their core to stop the weapons from causing any damage.
• Alright, one more thing about improving the tactical side of combat, and then I'm done with that. So, here is my take on ship systems. With the ships that we are building nowadays, power is becoming a problem, protecting them is becoming a problem, and we end up just throwing massive 100x100x100 cubes of power, thrusters, shields, and AMCs in. Now, I'm not gonna touch on AMCs, because that's all gonna change soon. But as for power and shields? I would like to see more go into the implementation of that. My thoughts are that they work as normal at the start, but as you gain more space to build, you are able to create more complex configurations. These would take up more space, but would also provide much greater power/shield efficiency, combating the diminishing returns that are common once ships start getting rather large. This would also create a reason for actual intelligent design of reactor systems and the like. Now, most of this may seem to fall under building. However, there is a combat aspect to it. Right now, we just aim at the core, because it's the only part that really matters when hit. Well, maybe that and the weapons computer. However, if special setups were required for larger generators, then there would be incentive to fire at the reactors and such. Hitting one just right could hinder the power supply on a large ship, or slow the rate of shield regeneration, or perhaps even damage the port thrusters, causing the ship to list to the left. As technically difficult as this would be to implement, it would make combat and building a lot more intuitive.
• Alright, off the complete system overhauls and other stuff that we will likely never see. Now, this one is simpler, but I think it would make combat a lot more exciting: more laser colors. I mean, geez, white gets pretty boring. I want to be dodging around green beams that are shattering hulls, while firing red lasers at a turret shooting out blue missiles. Or something like that. Give us some color!
• This one is rather obvious: make max speed scale inversely with mass. Starting at around 400 mass speed would decrease as mass went up, to the point where a ship over 10k in mass would be incapable of doing more than 30% of the max speed. Therefore, you can't chase down a fighter in your capital ship.
• Ship strafing is another obvious one. Ships can't move sideways any faster than 40% of their max speed, and this decreases to 10% by the time 10k mass is reached. Why 10k mass? I just feel that is a good number to signify the start of capital ships, which should not be able to maneuver like a Strike Suit.
• Could missiles be a little faster, please? If you think about the speed they move in real life, they are ridiculously slow at the moment.

Building​

• Let's start with the easiest to implement first: a few more hull colors. I'm sure Kupu would be fine with making a few more textures. I for one would find a Navy Blue useful, and I'm sure someone out there could use a pink. Also, how about those ice crystals? Can't wait for em!
• Give. Me. A. Cockpit. Module. I don't want to locate my core in my bridge, or near the exterior of my fighter, just so I can access it. Give me another place that I can use to get in my ship.
• Systems. See the Combat section for more details.
• Shipyards: if you remember that post I made on the old site, you've heard this before. Essentially, it's an idea that would make ships themselves a lot more valuable. To put it simply, you would be required to build a framework in at least the dimensions of the ship that you want to spawn in. You would then purchase the ship, or feed in the required materials. The shipyard would then proceed to construct the ship at a rate of 25 blocks per second. Since not only would you be required to build the framework, but it would take a while for a ship to assemble, you would be less inclined to waste your large ships. If it took an hour for your 10k mass ship to assemble, you wouldn't be as likely to send it into a pointless battle without an escort, would you?
• Planet size: Alright, I know this one may be a bit premature, seeing as how the new planets haven't even been implemented yet, but it's something that has been bothering me and a couple friends of mine. The new dodecahedron planets look really cool, sure, but if you look, they can't be any more than 300 blocks on each side. That's a serious problem for people who want to build major planetary bases-there's simply not enough room for real building anymore. Perhaps if the size was doubled, to around 600 blocks on each side, there would be plenty of room for building. It would also make planets more imposing, something actually worth looking at.

Economic​

• Alright, I'm tired as hell, so I'll wrap this up quickly. First of all, good quality levels. Say the DFN makes energy blocks that have a higher rate of power regen than normal. Say the NLE makes hull blocks that can take 10% more damage. We exchange goods, because the DFN wants tougher ships, and the NLE needs more power. Bam. There's suddenly trade. There's a more widespread economy. Pirates can camp the popular trade lanes and ambush traders to steal their goods. Everybody wins.
• Make everything more expensive. I mean tripling the cost or more. You want a big capital ship? Sure, but it's gonna cost you. Also, raise the credit cap a bit please. Most factions have 3-4 ships already above it.
• Also, maybe a faction bank, where anyone in the faction could deposit money, and select people could withdraw? Therefore, faction members could crowdfund ships. Ships and materials could also be bought by drawing funds straight from the bank.

Alright, that's all I've got for tonight; I need sleep. If I think of anything else, I'll edit. Please, poke holes in my arguments, pick apart my suggestions completely, explain why they are bad. Just please don't do two things:

• Say my suggestions are bad without providing actual reasons as to why
• Discredit this whole post because you don't like one suggestion. Pick and choose, people!

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Everyone has a different idea about combat and it's been talked about to death. Most weapon ideas right now don't really matter because they're either too far out there to be looked at right now (and will probably be irrelevant when the system comes in anyways) or are too close to the current setup and will just immediately be irrelevant when the new system comes in. I don't think your ideas on weapons are any different. I really think we should wait until the new system is in before saying how it should be changed.
This idea has no specifics to talk about at all. I'm pretty sure fleet combat is a thing that is on Schema's mind...but we need something to talk about, even a vague idea.
The hull damage-spreading idea has been discussed previously in a thread on the old forums. Good idea I think. Unfortunately, the hull problem was raised in the last Q&A and so far all we've heard is that we might possibly one day get an abstracted health system.
Your greater complexity idea is too general and vague to have anything of substance to discuss. I'd love to see that general idea talked about in the Q&A though.
I hate the whole inverse speed scaling idea simply because it would make large ships completely impractical until FTL is implemented and even then FTL would need to be pretty easy to do in very large ships (the last Q&A made it pretty clear it'll be an emergency thing and take possibly 5 minutes to charge for on-ship FTL). Fighters should be things you can at least follow, otherwise they become too powerful; having severe turning and problems accelerating is already bad enough on capitals (all a fighter needs to do is head behind you and they're pretty safe. once thrust is separated by direction as indicated by the last Q&A, fighters will have that as almost a free escape). Yes, you read that right, thrust will be direction-separated. Your concern about sideways movement has already been addressed (and in a more logical way than arbitrary limits I think; basically, you would set direction percents in your ship's menus.).
Missiles too slow...I'm pretty sure they'll be revamped in the upcoming weapon update.

Pretty much agree on the building stuff. Not sure whether it's true, but I heard more colors are possibly planned recently in the thread talking about hull colors. IIRC the last Q&A said shipyards are planned.

Economy is screwed. Even triple the expense is nothing, since I can turn one black hull and one grey hull into one faction module, which is a ridiculously overpriced item for what it does (I made over 200 recently on a server and discovered that shops generally don't have the money to even buy 12 of them, enough to then buy several thousand hardened hull from the shop). I'm pretty sure salvaging one abandoned space station is sufficient to hit the credit cap this way. Notably, this method will still work even when you can't just plop build blocks onto stations, since shops always start with some black and grey hull for sale and they're the two most common types found on ships...and they're found on the Isanth VI, the default pirate vessel.
Ultimately, though, I think this is a bad idea because we already had a previous tripling a while back when supply-based-pricing came in and it had no noticible effect.
Making ships more expensive won't do anything unless the utter brokenness of the cubatom system and factory system are changed, but then if you fix the brokenness, it becomes ridiculously time-consuming to build ships without being part of a large faction (and the faction bank would just make the difference between one person and a whole faction that much more ridiculous on servers where ship buying is on...or material-purchasing via this bank idea). I'd have a lot of trouble making ships with good-looking interiors if everything was expensive and in addition to a ton of time designing the ship, I would also need a ton of time to find resources. Even in a faction with people helping, the only viable big ships at all would probably be ones made with advanced build mode cube-placement...meaning more giant cubes all over the place. This also would ruin the ability to make large fleets in factions since you'd everyone to pool resources just to get one decent ship. Even now with easy resources, a true fleet needs a lot of people in a faction.
Proper economy will need logical progression of resource acquisition (right now we start at "can take out entire planets by hand" and end up at "can take out entire planets by hand plus generate millions of blocks every second just in case you felt like it") and some mechanism to prevent huge disparities in ability to build even basic ships, not just a price increase and money transferral capabilities.
Your trading idea is interesting, but ultimately would probably be pretty pointless unless a faction can only have one way of making hull. It would just be easier to have faction members search hull recipes until they find the ideal one rather than constantly be trading with another faction. Trading recipes could of course happen, but that would be a one-time thing per two factions.
The credit cap being raised has been confirmed already in the last Q&A IIRC.

 

[Trafalgar]

Economy is screwed. Even triple the expense is nothing, since I can turn one black hull and one grey hull into one faction module, which is a ridiculously overpriced item for what it does (I made over 200 recently on a server and discovered that shops generally don't have the money to even buy 12 of them, enough to then buy several thousand hardened hull from the shop). I'm pretty sure salvaging one abandoned space station is sufficient to hit the credit cap this way.

You can make a faction module for 2 credits with cubatoms right from the beginning of the game. You can make anything else fabricate-able for 3 credits or less. This is one reason there's a new system being implemented now to replace cubatoms and recipes and all that.