StarMade - Devblog May 8th 2017

[schema]

Greetings citizens,


It’s been a little while since the last news update. However, we decided, that with a new flexible release schedule it would be best to do weekly news posts when possible from here on out. This is all detailed in a forum post here: StarMade Release Cycle & News Posts


What are we working on right now?

One major addition will be a new request system, that will give better overall performance and superior logic for requesting chunks allowing for larger entities. Fleet commands will be made consistent between server restarts, as well as improved local movement, and we will be looking to make fleet fight-or-flight behavior a lot better.


We are also working on other projects in the background, but we can’t reveal everything just yet. The level of planning and discussions has probably increased tenfold since StarMade’s next steps will be quite large, so what we can reveal right now is in the next section. Much of these discussions have revolved around our end goals document. We’ve been working on a public version that we would like to release soon.


Future Plans

Our current focus is on outlining the final gameplay elements of the game as a whole and making sure we cover the aspects of exploration, movement, building, fighting and developing your empire in an interesting and satisfying way for the player.


For this to work properly, we have to adapt our current universe layout. We are discussing and planning how the next version of resource distribution will work in the universe. The game’s present universe is very uniform and doesn’t lend itself to a more dynamic universe we would like to see. This leads us to discuss and work on two specific things. Where resources are and how, you as the player, use them. The current system we are designing will be moving to more points of interest and contention in the universe. Meaning only specific capsules and ores will exist in specific parts of each galaxy. The crafting system will also have to take this into account and will be revised the same way.


Our discussion internally is based around a concept of points of interest within the universe. A point of interest could be many things. It could be a sector, a set of sectors a planet or other stellar phenomena. All points of interest will/should have a gameplay purpose within the galaxy. These will become focal points for contention, and exploration. There will be more information about the specific locations and stellar objects in future news posts.


While we prepare for all of that, bug fixing will once again be focused to establish more overall stability this includes fleets and AI. Work is still moving forward on audio, and our new power proposal. Both which will have quite the impact on the universe, but more on power next week.



Thanks for playing StarMade,


~ The Schine Team

 

[DukeofRealms]

There we go.

 

[Shaker]

My INFLUENCE is great!

Weekly devblogs!!

 

[MrFURB]

More fleet/AI features? Oh yes.
Empire building? Oh yes!
Count Duku? Oh no.

 

[materia]

I heard there was a new power system coming up too; can we get an update on if it is expected to change?

kinda need to build everything around power so its a big deal for a lot of us.

 

[Lecic]

Meaning only specific capsules and ores will exist in specific parts of each galaxy. The crafting system will also have to take this into account and will be revised the same way.

Can you elaborate on this? I just want to know if the recipe revisions will make the unequal resource distribution matter, and why changing the recipes is even necessary.

 

[Amadeus]

Glad to hear the update! Does a flora and fauna update function separately than the universe update, or will it be integrated within it?

 

[Shaker]

I heard there was a new power system coming up too; can we get an update on if it is expected to change?

Read the last line of schemas post, the devs are currently working on their 2nd proposal.

 

[Calhoun]

Fleet commands will be made consistent between server restarts, as well as improved local movement, and we will be looking to make fleet fight-or-flight behavior a lot better.

This interest me. Will Fleets actually remember their last command when the player is offline with that?

 

[Oblivionburn]

The only thing that feels missing in regards to gameplay is a clearer sense of progression... it currently feels more like a sandbox than a game. It should take a lot of time and hard work to amass the necessary materials to make a gigantic/advanced spaceship.

I personally would like to see an option to start on a planet with absolutely nothing and needing to do a lot of stuff before even reaching space with whatever tiny ship I was able to make. I don't wanna be able to have a large/advanced ship until I've been playing for months.

 

[Gristle]

Get rid of stuffing the player into a 1m cube and make captains chairs already.

 

[RODLON]

The only thing that feels missing in regards to gameplay is a clearer sense of progression... it currently feels more like a sandbox than a game. It should take a lot of time and hard work to amass the necessary materials to make a gigantic/advanced spaceship.

I personally would like to see an option to start on a planet with absolutely nothing and needing to do a lot of stuff before even reaching space with whatever tiny ship I was able to make. I don't wanna be able to have a large/advanced ship until I've been playing for months.

That would be cool, the game feels too creative sandbox, but for this kind of games "a lot of stuff and time" or "more difficult" can traslate directrly as "more grinding" which is really bad.
Try playing Factorio, you will need to do a lot of difficult things on the planet surface before launching a rocket.

 

[spocklin]

Oblivionburn I believe RODLON hit this one on the head pretty well. You sound more like a space engineers or Empyrion player than a starmade person when you mentioned those things. I believe the goal is to make starmade more like starmade than any other game as it will keep it unique.

 

[Brokengauge]

The only thing that feels missing in regards to gameplay is a clearer sense of progression... it currently feels more like a sandbox than a game. It should take a lot of time and hard work to amass the necessary materials to make a gigantic/advanced spaceship.

I personally would like to see an option to start on a planet with absolutely nothing and needing to do a lot of stuff before even reaching space with whatever tiny ship I was able to make. I don't wanna be able to have a large/advanced ship until I've been playing for months.

My time is too precious to spend months "playing" just to do what I want to do. I mean, if I'm gonna be neglecting my kids for this, it better be fairly quick before I'm able to go out and do the FUN things.

It's a moot point. It'll probably be customizable in the config lol

 

[Ratchet Hundreda]

Finally i read things from you guys which seem ambitious enough that it would make an interesting GAME out of the current ship building simulator. I look forward to see you guys make it happen and hope for the best. Time has been an ever so annoying factor for quite a while when it comes to you guys making things happen but in the end what matters is that you indeed eventually get it done.

Cheers!

 

[Jananton]

The key word for me here is 'exploration', can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Matt_Bradock]

A nice idea would be tying the resource types available in a system to the star's color and size. There's nothing wrong with not every system having every resource, and realistic because IRL stars of larger mass and higher temperature can fuse heavier elements of the periodic table. Another possibility is randomly calculated system clusters spawning more of one or two resources types and less or none of another 1 or 2 groups. This could be signified by the background image's main colors that could correspond with the color of the resources the system is rich in.
That combined with a huge decrease of NPC trading posts (pink icon shops and tradestations, by huge I mean you're lucky if you find ONE of those in every 8 systems or so) would force player-player and player-NPC interactions and prevent players from getting away with spending all their time in a single system, and also might result in certain clusters that contain crucial resources worth waging wars for.
Also would be epic for this to correspond with ship variations of NPCs and players from these clusters.
For example, a cluster rich in zercaner and threns but with almost no hylat would result in ships using mostly beam and missile weaponry since they lack the materials to manufacture cannons. The hull colors would also be grey, red and maybe purple because that color of asteroid is present in the cluster.
Another example would be the presence of heavily armored ships in clusters with an abundance of fertikeen asteroids.

 

[Napther]

(pink icon shops and tradestations, by huge I mean you're lucky if you find ONE of those in every 8 systems or so)

Hmmm. Maybe a bit more than that, or maybe "smart" deployment of shops to areas of "High interest" such as other civilisations, etc.
I also believe stick shops will become part of a proper economic network, but I cant remember where I got this information from; either way, I can deal with less stick shops if they were just plain better.

As for this new universe, interesting stuff. I HOPE jump drive mechanics are looked at and updated with this Point of Interest system as it would require a lot more movement of player craft (and even fleets), and current jump mechanics are uninteresting and annoying, and readily bypassed by the ChainDrive system...

 

[kikaha]

Can you elaborate on this? I just want to know if the recipe revisions will make the unequal resource distribution matter, and why changing the recipes is even necessary.

It will be necessary because to build some key component for ship or stations you need certain type of blocks. Those blocks need certain types of ores.
I mean try and build a station without a build block for exemple.

 

[Criss]

flora and fauna update function separately than the universe update

They will likely be separate. Flora and fauna do not impact how you play the game in our current plans. For the moment, they are sort of a filler to populate planets. When we get close to working on them, we may find more interesting uses for flora/fauna.

sense of progression

A part of the universe update is this progression. Restructuring the universe allows us to create possibilities like establishing a base in a rich environment, or fighting others for rare resources and more beyond that. Right now you can settle anywhere and be completely fine.