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There is a lot of controversy surrounding the new stabilizer connection beams. I've spoken with a few people in a fairly cool-headed environment and we have come up with a few ideas for improving the new beams.
The Way Things Are Now
The current connection beams' sizes are determined by the combination of:
- The number of reactors in the group being stabilized
-The number of stabilizers in the group being connected to the reactors by a beam
- The number of groups of stabilizers connected to a reactor group
- The relative size of the stabilizer group compared to total number of stabilizers
The current beams are always visible, even in flight mode.
The current beams disable the connecting stabilizer group when damaged. This, however, will be changed in the near future (see news update on pre build 0.200.269, section Energy Stream, major paragraph 2).
The current beams can be redirected with Reactor Stabilizer Stream Nodes, and this redirection has no effect on stabilization or other features.
The Problems
These beams are generally unpleasing aesthetically and don't work with a variety of builds.
With larger numbers of reactors and stabilizers the beams take up considerably more space and can get out of hand very quickly.
The consequences of damaging beams quickly becomes debilitating and serve as a game-breaking mechanic.
Once a beam generates, the player cannot build or delete blocks in the space it occupies.
The Solutions We Came Up With
Make the size of stabilizer beams more manageable by keeping the thickness constant, most likely at 1 block wide. In terms of big builds, a lot of space in ships is often devoted to rooms and decoration, which is almost always closely-spaced. A 1-meter width will allow the player to, using nodes, redirect the beam and navigate it through their builds to avoid occupied spaces and connect to the stabilizers. The ability to redirect also permits the player to redirect the beam through more protected areas of the ship.
Make the beams visible only in build mode (preferably only while in that ship's core in order to prevent cheating). This partly negates the need for the ability to redirect the beams through unoccupied spaces, but it removes the need to hide the beam within the ship and lets the player focus on moving it through more protected areas or in ways more conducive to the ship's shape. It also partly dulls the game-breaking effects of having the breakable beam. Additionally, it opens the opportunity for a recon ability (likely expensive) that can allow players to see opponents' beams in flight mode for a short period of time. Another option for the beams' visual appearance is to make them invisible outside of build mode only by default. Then, a player can, through some method, link light blocks to the beams to not only make them visible, but to also make them the same color as the block using the current texture fitted in different colors to match each light block.
Allow players to build in the space a beam occupies. This is a bit of an obvious thing to ask for because of the difficulties that come with disallowing it. Therefore, it doesn't require very much explanation. All I need to say is that the beam needs to be manually redirected and then put back in order to build in that space otherwise.
Make the penalty for damaging a stabilizer beam much less end-all-be-all. We didn't think up an exact penalty yet, but it must be something that doesn't work on a scale or HP system, mainly for the sake of performance and implementation. My suggestion would be to have a temporary set percent decrease in stabilization provided by the connected group as opposed to complete disconnection. Something like 30% or 40% destabilization of the group would be a good amount. Basically, on taking damage, the added stabilization of the group instantly drops x% and slowly recovers over the next y seconds. Every time the beam takes damage it goes back to that x% decrease regardless of what the current percent is. This would also be interesting considering the weapons because it gives the advantage to the weaker, faster-shooting machine gun over the more powerful, single-shot lock-on missiles. Of course, another option would be a penalty to reactor HP should the beam sustain considerable damage for an extended amount of time.
Final Notes
These are all potential solutions that we put a good amount of thought and discussion into. I doubt that all of these points will be implemented, or even agreed with, but they each have a reasonable backing and their own advantages and disadvantages. I mostly spoke about the advantages of the solutions, but there are downsides to them that must be taken into account. I recommend that we all put a lot of thought into changes and improvements that can be made on these new additions before deciding to remove them. Please be sure to discuss which fixes you like and which fixes you don't like below in the comments section.
EDIT: As it turns out, the player's inability to build in spaces that overlap connection beams is a bug and was not intended. As a result, I have crossed out the relevant information to that.
EDIT: Corrected my description of stabilizer beam size determination.
EDIT: An interesting addition was suggested by Captain Skwidz and Kikaha that I decided to add to my suggestion as a slight modification to the beam visual mechanic.
The Way Things Are Now
The current connection beams' sizes are determined by the combination of:
- The number of reactors in the group being stabilized
-
- The number of groups of stabilizers connected to a reactor group
- The relative size of the stabilizer group compared to total number of stabilizers
The current beams are always visible, even in flight mode.
The current beams disable the connecting stabilizer group when damaged. This, however, will be changed in the near future (see news update on pre build 0.200.269, section Energy Stream, major paragraph 2).
The current beams can be redirected with Reactor Stabilizer Stream Nodes, and this redirection has no effect on stabilization or other features.
The Problems
These beams are generally unpleasing aesthetically and don't work with a variety of builds.
With larger numbers of reactors and stabilizers the beams take up considerably more space and can get out of hand very quickly.
The consequences of damaging beams quickly becomes debilitating and serve as a game-breaking mechanic.
The Solutions We Came Up With
Make the size of stabilizer beams more manageable by keeping the thickness constant, most likely at 1 block wide. In terms of big builds, a lot of space in ships is often devoted to rooms and decoration, which is almost always closely-spaced. A 1-meter width will allow the player to, using nodes, redirect the beam and navigate it through their builds to avoid occupied spaces and connect to the stabilizers. The ability to redirect also permits the player to redirect the beam through more protected areas of the ship.
Make the beams visible only in build mode (preferably only while in that ship's core in order to prevent cheating). This partly negates the need for the ability to redirect the beams through unoccupied spaces, but it removes the need to hide the beam within the ship and lets the player focus on moving it through more protected areas or in ways more conducive to the ship's shape. It also partly dulls the game-breaking effects of having the breakable beam. Additionally, it opens the opportunity for a recon ability (likely expensive) that can allow players to see opponents' beams in flight mode for a short period of time. Another option for the beams' visual appearance is to make them invisible outside of build mode only by default. Then, a player can, through some method, link light blocks to the beams to not only make them visible, but to also make them the same color as the block using the current texture fitted in different colors to match each light block.
Make the penalty for damaging a stabilizer beam much less end-all-be-all. We didn't think up an exact penalty yet, but it must be something that doesn't work on a scale or HP system, mainly for the sake of performance and implementation. My suggestion would be to have a temporary set percent decrease in stabilization provided by the connected group as opposed to complete disconnection. Something like 30% or 40% destabilization of the group would be a good amount. Basically, on taking damage, the added stabilization of the group instantly drops x% and slowly recovers over the next y seconds. Every time the beam takes damage it goes back to that x% decrease regardless of what the current percent is. This would also be interesting considering the weapons because it gives the advantage to the weaker, faster-shooting machine gun over the more powerful, single-shot lock-on missiles. Of course, another option would be a penalty to reactor HP should the beam sustain considerable damage for an extended amount of time.
Final Notes
These are all potential solutions that we put a good amount of thought and discussion into. I doubt that all of these points will be implemented, or even agreed with, but they each have a reasonable backing and their own advantages and disadvantages. I mostly spoke about the advantages of the solutions, but there are downsides to them that must be taken into account. I recommend that we all put a lot of thought into changes and improvements that can be made on these new additions before deciding to remove them. Please be sure to discuss which fixes you like and which fixes you don't like below in the comments section.
EDIT: As it turns out, the player's inability to build in spaces that overlap connection beams is a bug and was not intended. As a result, I have crossed out the relevant information to that.
EDIT: Corrected my description of stabilizer beam size determination.
EDIT: An interesting addition was suggested by Captain Skwidz and Kikaha that I decided to add to my suggestion as a slight modification to the beam visual mechanic.
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