StarMade Dev Blog 17 November 2017

[Ithirahad]

This wouldn't be something like the "electrical" style damage Robocraft has, would it? I really hope I wouldn't have to "triforce" an entire battleship to minimize damage.

If they went with an implementation like that, I'd hope that it would ignore shapes for damage spreading purposes. This game doesn't really need to differentiate between wedges and tetras and other things for that in any case I can think of, and it'd be a performance problem at SM scale to go through and check each block shape as it's propagating damage. But, uh... we'll see. :P

 

[schema]

We disclaimed this pretty much every time we did news about balance. You can probably check on it in the backlog of news and blogs. It didn't really do much to avoid drama. I think this conversation is pretty normal in its context obviously.

I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with talking to me about that game in this way. Do you think I'm not doing research and have plenty of things planned to overhaul mechanics? I rather do things in batches, so not everything is all over the place in terms of organizing it.

 

[Ithirahad]

We disclaimed this pretty much every time we did news about balance. You can probably check on it in the backlog of news and blogs. It didn't really do much to avoid drama. I think this conversation is pretty normal in its context obviously.

I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with talking to me about that game in this way. Do you think I'm not doing research and have plenty of things planned to overhaul mechanics?

While I don't claim to know whether or not you're doing research... I must say that the general assumption in the (veteran) community is that you don't. As for why, I think Zyrr would be more qualified to explain that than me.

 

[schema]

Ithirahad didn't mean you with that. I meant redalert's post

 

[Non]

We disclaimed this pretty much every time we did news about balance. You can probably check on it in the backlog of news and blogs. It didn't really do much to avoid drama. I think this conversation is pretty normal in its context obviously.

I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with talking to me about that game in this way. Do you think I'm not doing research and have plenty of things planned to overhaul mechanics? I rather do things in batches, so not everything is all over the place in terms of organizing it.

To the best of your knowledge, how often do you and the other Schine members play SM for more than a few minutes at a time?

 

[Lecic]

Do you think I'm not doing research

No, I don't think you're doing research, and if you are, however you're conducting your research is flawed. I know I certainly haven't been contacted about problems in the meta, nor has Zyrr, nor has a myriad of other people who know what is wrong with it. If you are doing research, it's shitty research.

 

[schema]

I try to play on multiplayer servers under different usernames after and inbetween releases. Saber and chris play regularly. And we do sessions with andy and lancake.

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

On Schema's side of the argument, he said that he would describe the changes in pre-release news right in the OP.

On the playerbase's side of the argument, you used the phrase:

several other features and changes [bold]were[/bold] made along the way

Meaning, at least to me, and it seems to a majority of commenters, that the changes had already been made. They also have a feeling that their suggestions have been ignored in the past, and want to urge you to not continue that trend. About the spaghetti related comments specifically, if you already made all the changes you wanted to before the next news update (as you said), then that means you either finished work on your balancing feature, or had started work on it already. Again this is all just based on what was said, and my impressions on them.

 

[Ithirahad]

To the best of your knowledge, how often do you and the other Schine members play SM for more than a few minutes at a time?

Thing is, you can play for hours, days, or in my case years on end without uncovering a lot of the issues and bits that matter as far as this combat stuff goes. Doing that takes a certain kind of player with a certain kind of dedication to certain kinds of things. The answer to this question isn't actually extremely relevant to the problem at hand.

 

[Zyrr]

I guess the key takeaways here are that the community has almost no trust in Schine to directly communicate our feedback to you, with the general opinion around here settling on them being unreliable in accurately giving you our thoughts, so this face to face conversation is very important. It's not that you aren't doing research, it's that we feel you're researching from sources that aren't accurate in the first place. Not a knock on you, but definitely an issue we want to rectify immediately.

The main points we're concerned with are;
1) the new power system not properly addressing balancing issues, EG offense vastly outpacing defense on a block vs block basis
2) somewhat poorly thought out updates in terms of what they're supposed to be fixing, EG local shielding to fix docked hulls
3) a lack of transparency on what exactly you're changing until it's already been changed, at which point it's a time sink for you to rework things. The net result is the thought that our feedback has been ignored
4) a lack of a consistent explanation for why exactly power is being changed and why exactly it's gone in this particular direction

 

[schema]

For spaghetti ships, we have a set of options so far, we don't know the exactly balance of it yet, as we also don't want to overdo it.

Lecic you are free to think what you want. And I don't think anything I say will convince you otherwise, so I'll stop trying.

 

[Non]

I try to play on multiplayer servers under different usernames after and inbetween releases. Saber and chris play regularly. And we do sessions with andy and lancake.

Honestly Schema, fight me, or Zyrr, or any of the top pvprs who have spent hours testing for effecttive strategies, until you do, I question your understanding of the balancing of this game.

 

[GDPR 302420]

I try to play on multiplayer servers under different usernames after and inbetween releases. Saber and chris play regularly. And we do sessions with andy and lancake.

1v1 me Ares Mod

 

[Lecic]

Saber and chris play regularly

Considering how clueless these two are about the game's systems, this isn't setting a very good standard for the rest of the team.

Andy and Lancake know a decent amount but Lancake in particular will deny any problems with his balance stats until hit in the face with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, repeatedly.

 

[schema]

As is displayed in this thread it is hard to communicate, when as soon as any of us says something they get accused of wild things.

1) There are several balance options that we can tweak in this new power update, so that we can actually address is accordingly should it be a problem
2) Local shields are mostly not to address docked hull. There are other changes for that. Local shields are just part of it. Local shields, while good for a lot of things, are mainly to combat 2 part ships that are far apart as the power spent to defend both parts can be balanced to outweight the gain
3) My main work is to make things as dynamic as possible to be able to change them should they become a problem by just going into the config.
4) We outlined the motivation for it in the original post. Amongst other things, old power doesn't scale right, and none of the bandages came anywhere close to fixing it. Not only that but also the way weapon worked stood in the way of balancing them correctly.

 

[thatothermitch]

It's truly strange that the community can lose faith so profoundly and yet is still willing to hang around to fight about it. I do it of it too, and, if anything, I feel guilty about being so enrapt. Maybe it's time to move on and give Schine enough room to complete their vision.

 

[Zyrr]

As is displayed in this thread it is hard to communicate, when as soon as any of us says something they get accused of wild things.

1) There are several balance options that we can tweak in this new power update, so that we can actually address is accordingly should it be a problem
2) Local shields are mostly not to address docked hull. There are other changes for that. Local shields are just part of it. Local shields, while good for a lot of things, are mainly to combat 2 part ships that are far apart as the power spent to defend both parts can be balanced to outweight the gain
3) My main work is to make things as dynamic as possible to be able to change them should they become a problem by just going into the config.
4) We outlined the motivation for it in the original post. Amongst other things, old power doesn't scale right, and none of the bandages came anywhere close to fixing it. Not only that but also the way weapon worked stood in the way of balancing them correctly.

I guess that's fair. It feels kind of thin but I suppose it is just an on the spot response and I understand it's getting near 5am for you, so it's not something to hold against you. It definitely seems like you're well aware of what's going on though, even if you don't have anything particularly decided on where exactly you're going. It'd be best if you could formulate some official responses to the addressed issues after consulting with the rest of Schine and give us that rundown when you have it but before you act on it.

 

[schema]

Lecic probably because they arent building for PvP.

 

[Lecic]

2) Local shields are mostly not to address docked hull. There are other changes for that. Local shields are just part of it. Local shields, while good for a lot of things, are mainly to combat 2 part ships that are far apart as the power spent to defend both parts can be balanced to outweight the gain

All local shields accomplish is allowing people to make docked hull without needing to actually dock the hull. They can just arrange their shield bubbles to accomplish the same thing.

Instead of fixing docked hull you have codified it as an official mechanic. Congratulations.

 

[Ithirahad]

It's truly strange that the community can lose faith so profoundly and yet is still willing to hang around fight about it. I do it of it too, and, if anything, I feel guilty about being so enrapt. Maybe it's time to move on and give Schine enough room to complete their vision.

A lot of people have 'faith' in what the game can be, but not how Schine seems to be managing it now. The game is unique, and for some of us, there's nothing to move to.