Hello, new account here.
I've been playing Starmade for a little while now, and I've encountered something that might eventually need dealing with, alongside some ideas that might be interesting if implemented.
First of all, the "Sort of Bug" part. It seems that when traveling in a ship that has a gravity unit you've activated, you get left behind in sector transitions and adrift in space! Right now the only solution is to enter a module on the ship (weapon/missile cpus, etc.) This seems inadequate and I feel it should be better worked around or fixed at some point in development, because it's cool to be able to walk around a ship being piloted without getting left right on the border between two sectors. Based on obervations it seems to simply be a result of the core passing into the sector either before or after the player does, basically making them two separate things in two separate regions of space- not interacting -as far as the game engine seems concerned.
Now for the non-important stuff.
I propose that the number of generated planets be decreased in exchange for fewer, but larger and richer planets. Right now a station near a planet makes it look small, sectors seem cluttered with visible planets, planets are one biome... these things are silly. It's also very easy for one faction to entirely dominate a planet with a fraction of their forces. This is good for faction home planets but that's about it. If planets were more sparse overall and had more to promise in terms of resellable salvagable goods and size, it is my opinion (and hope) that they would be more sought after and considered valuable, like they should be. Maybe they would also benefit from the atmosphere as viewed from the outside being a little more opaque (thus better maintaining the sphere profile until entering atmo.)
Another idea was that when a ship with high mass and inadequate thrust is pulled onto a planet's surface and "crashes", it insta destroys foliage and breaks away a layer or so of terrain surface depending on it's mass and speed. Most of all, it would just be nice if it didn't bounce off like a piece of lego, and maybe even got grounded (by that I mean in need of more thrust before it can even move, because right now you can get around this by rolling or bouncing around and going off of the side of the planet.) When I had this idea, the thought directly in mind was that a ship crashing on a planet recieves a lot of speed dampening but not much angular deflection, making it "burrow" a tiny bit into the ground, leaving about ~85% of it visible, varying based on decent angle. If it crashed with a shallow angle it would leave a big skid path behind it with much of it remaining visible, and if with a steep angle it would basically plow into the ground and clear an opening a few blocks wider than itself while also doing a lot of structural damage (again, depending on mass and speed) to the side of the ship most directly impacting the surface. I would also suggest that manmade structures provide a lot more resistance than generated terrain, for obvious reasons.
Lastly, the "intertial dampening" is useful for ships that don't have pilots in them, but it makes maneuvering ships that you are piloting sloppy feeling. There's no "analogue" aspect to it, you either go full thrust and full speed or no thrust and slow to a stop. Right now the ships act like they're moving in a stange liquid with no hydrodynamic effect whatsoever but a syrupy sort of speed dampening pull. Why is this, exactly? Isn't the shift key a manual inertial dampener anyway? As a final word forming a segue from this "last idea", the limit on ship speed should also be rethought if adding thrusters doesn't increase max speed.
That's it! I hope these thoughts help improve the game in some way, thanks for reading.
tl;dr:
I've been playing Starmade for a little while now, and I've encountered something that might eventually need dealing with, alongside some ideas that might be interesting if implemented.
First of all, the "Sort of Bug" part. It seems that when traveling in a ship that has a gravity unit you've activated, you get left behind in sector transitions and adrift in space! Right now the only solution is to enter a module on the ship (weapon/missile cpus, etc.) This seems inadequate and I feel it should be better worked around or fixed at some point in development, because it's cool to be able to walk around a ship being piloted without getting left right on the border between two sectors. Based on obervations it seems to simply be a result of the core passing into the sector either before or after the player does, basically making them two separate things in two separate regions of space- not interacting -as far as the game engine seems concerned.
Now for the non-important stuff.
I propose that the number of generated planets be decreased in exchange for fewer, but larger and richer planets. Right now a station near a planet makes it look small, sectors seem cluttered with visible planets, planets are one biome... these things are silly. It's also very easy for one faction to entirely dominate a planet with a fraction of their forces. This is good for faction home planets but that's about it. If planets were more sparse overall and had more to promise in terms of resellable salvagable goods and size, it is my opinion (and hope) that they would be more sought after and considered valuable, like they should be. Maybe they would also benefit from the atmosphere as viewed from the outside being a little more opaque (thus better maintaining the sphere profile until entering atmo.)
Another idea was that when a ship with high mass and inadequate thrust is pulled onto a planet's surface and "crashes", it insta destroys foliage and breaks away a layer or so of terrain surface depending on it's mass and speed. Most of all, it would just be nice if it didn't bounce off like a piece of lego, and maybe even got grounded (by that I mean in need of more thrust before it can even move, because right now you can get around this by rolling or bouncing around and going off of the side of the planet.) When I had this idea, the thought directly in mind was that a ship crashing on a planet recieves a lot of speed dampening but not much angular deflection, making it "burrow" a tiny bit into the ground, leaving about ~85% of it visible, varying based on decent angle. If it crashed with a shallow angle it would leave a big skid path behind it with much of it remaining visible, and if with a steep angle it would basically plow into the ground and clear an opening a few blocks wider than itself while also doing a lot of structural damage (again, depending on mass and speed) to the side of the ship most directly impacting the surface. I would also suggest that manmade structures provide a lot more resistance than generated terrain, for obvious reasons.
Lastly, the "intertial dampening" is useful for ships that don't have pilots in them, but it makes maneuvering ships that you are piloting sloppy feeling. There's no "analogue" aspect to it, you either go full thrust and full speed or no thrust and slow to a stop. Right now the ships act like they're moving in a stange liquid with no hydrodynamic effect whatsoever but a syrupy sort of speed dampening pull. Why is this, exactly? Isn't the shift key a manual inertial dampener anyway? As a final word forming a segue from this "last idea", the limit on ship speed should also be rethought if adding thrusters doesn't increase max speed.
That's it! I hope these thoughts help improve the game in some way, thanks for reading.
tl;dr:
- Can't sector transition inside ships without being left behind in space.
- Planets need to be bigger, sparser, have more to offer in terms of resources.
- Oversized and underpowered ships need to have a more punishing landing to being caught in a planet's gravity.
- Ships with pilots in them shouldn't have the intertial dampening effect.