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- Mar 27, 2014
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This.e. Why not just use chamber systems for weapons as well to keep it consistent. It may even be more intuitive and intriguing. Also having the ability to change out the effects on the fly would be kind of cool.
Real 16" guns on battleships don't have reactors, because they're not directed-energy weapons. What they do have is a magazine full of gunpowder and shells that stretches down into the hull:This reflects no turret in real life or any science fiction ever. How many combustion cylinders does a 20" main gun on a battleship have? Does the .50 cal on top of a nuclear submarine have its own reactor as well?
Taken outside of Starmade, the notion of putting a reactor on a gun is absurd.
Taken inside Starmade, it's not absolutely necessary in any way, turrets function just fine drawing from primary power, but over a period of years docked power has been a primary source of exploits & performance problems.
If power scales linearly with block count in the new system, then there is nothing to bypass. It's only OP right now because you can get around the S-curve. Turrets would actually be disadvantaged, having less distance to put between reactors and stabilizers, relative to the much larger ship that they're mounted to.I'm starting to feel like the powered turret argument is nothing but a trojan horse for keeping docked power around in order to bypass and work-around primary entity power caps meant to balance entities.
You are a beautiful bastard.Real 16" guns on battleships don't have reactors, because they're not directed-energy weapons. What they do have is a magazine full of gunpowder and shells that stretches down into the hull:
When an Iowa fires its guns, does that make the radar power go out? Does that leave less power for propulsion? No, it doesn't. The energy comes from powder bags. The power to rotate the turret comes from ship service generators, separate from propulsion. If turrets were a hundred meters long and massed thousands of metric tons, and carried massive DEWs, they would have their own dedicated reactors.
I think it's more ridiculous, actually, that some people want to hamstring turret construction by making them into little parasites that you glue to the outside of the hull instead of a fully-integrated component of the ship.
This is deceptive. Docked power with logic clocks and power beams is a performance issue. Turrets having their own power are no more of a performance issue than unpowered turrets of equal size.
If power scales linearly with block count in the new system, then there is nothing to bypass. It's only OP right now because you can get around the S-curve. Turrets would actually be disadvantaged, having less distance to put between reactors and stabilizers, relative to the much larger ship that they're mounted to.
I'm not trying to be dismissive, CW, but this is a vague anecdotal support for a very debatable basic assertion. In 40 years I've yet to see or read one single fiction where a ship's turret was independently powered. Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Ender, Galactica, Firefly, Farscape, Stargate, even Spaceballs - I recall none of these ever mentioning independently powered turreted weapons.Having one reactor only for an entire ship is fairly antithetical to most Sci-Fi and real life ship designs. I have seen countless shows...
And before this proposal there was a different reason why.Us people who like the idea of self powered turrets are saying what are saying BECAUSE there is the One-Reactor limit for the parent ship. If not, I would just put specific power reactors immediately under each of my turrets. This arbitrary One-Reactor limit, -Which I Think Is A Good Balance Decision-, is why Turrets should be able to power themselves.
In that case you and I have understood the proposed changes differently, and ... well, I can't say it's specific enough to say for certain which of us is right. The assumption I'm making based on what's presented is that right after firing an alpha weapon will have the same draw (or slightly more) while charging as a rapid fire weapon of the same size while it is firing, then a smaller draw to stay charged once full, but that doesn't (on a very quick reread) appear to be explicitly stated. This is one of those places where concrete numbers on different weapon systems and set ups would be nice (assuming, as always, that this is the proposal we go with.) For what it's worth, I'm for either having the original proposal stand (including bounding boxes for reactor/stabilizer groups) or giving weapon systems near uniform power consumption for total size (primary +secondary + Tertiary). If it means giving up the overdrive effect, I will be the first to shed a tear, but it'd be worth it.I am not arguing different rates of regeneration between Alpha and DPS focused weapons. I am arguing that they will have inherently different power draws from the mothership even if they fit inside the same shell. This inherent difference leads to difficulties in making cross fleet turrets. Most turrets would have to be tailor made for each individual ship.
Indeed it is, because none of it supports putting reactors inside of guns.This is deceptive.
Exactly. There is no RL example to base turret reactors on, neither are shells and powder analogous to power generation for an energy weapon.Real 16" guns on battleships don't have reactors
Yes. From ship service generators inside the ship, not generators inside the turrets themselves.The power to rotate the turret comes from ship service generators, separate from propulsion.
I'm not concerned about theoretical turrets that would be using additional active reactors for appropriate purposes. The problem is that even if your evaluation is correct it does not address deliberate exploitation of docked power, only the projected balance-imbalance of legitimate turreted weapon systems, and turrets do not require independent power to achieve that balance. It only opens the exploit door.Turrets would actually be disadvantaged, having less distance to put between reactors and stabilizers, relative to the much larger ship that they're mounted to.
For the ships docked to another ship, all the ones that are child ships will have their reactors turned off.Hey, just let me know if I'm am idiot, or if this has been brought up: what's to stop me from making several pieces of one ship, each with their own reactor and chambers and whatnot, and then docked to the main entity? Will the reactors on docked entities then shut off? what happens then if 2 ships dock together in that case? Or docking to a station?
Well, that's just the thing. The way I understand it, the new system doesn't have an S-curve built into the block count, nor does it seem to have a softcap. The power associated with each reactor block is a linear relationship. 100 blocks of reactor are 100 times more powerful than 1 block of reactor. 1,000,000 blocks of reactor are 100 times more powerful than 10,000 blocks of reactor, and so on. What's on a curve is the distance between reactors and stabilizers, and this heavily favors objects with large box dimensions.Self-powered turrets don't match reality, they don't match any fiction or game I know of, and they aren't necessary for anything in Starmade except bypassing soft caps. That's the only thing that simply "cannot be done" without docked power, and I'm not really a big fan of that.
It seems to be the core feature undermining every attempt to re-balance the old power system. If permitted under the new reactor system then it will surely undermine any balance the new system brings as well.
The entirety of the new power system opens an exploit door. See above ^^^I'm not concerned about theoretical turrets that would be using additional active reactors for appropriate purposes. The problem is that even if your evaluation is correct it does not address deliberate exploitation of docked power, only the projected balance-imbalance of legitimate turreted weapon systems, and turrets do not require independent power to achieve that balance. It only opens the exploit door.
I'm not crazy about that. In general I build turrets without their own power supply anyway, but I don't think child entities should have their reactors shut off. If other ppl want to have self powered turrets, they should be able to. If I want to dock to another ship without losing my own power regen, I should be able to do that.For the ships docked to another ship, all the ones that are child ships will have their reactors turned off.
This is your fault, not the game's. It's still in alpha*... and in alpha, big things can and do change. If you thought they'd be keeping stuff the way it is just because they happened to release their alpha development builds, I'm not really sure what to tell you. :P* I hope one of the mods reads this*
Well, if that is so, then goodbye StarMade. I enjoyed ever second of this game the last 2 years, but this, no, sorry, I can't do it. If you with your 300+ bleuprints can do this then I show all my respect, but me with only 50 + blueprints can't see them all become useless.
I honestly think your entire argument is flawed here, in the real world we use ammunition, in starmade we use energy to fire our weapons, now this being said, the barrel can be the weapon output, and the base of the turret it's powerplant (since there's no other purpose for the base than it being the source of power)Indeed it is, because none of it supports putting reactors inside of guns.
Exactly. There is no RL example to base turret reactors on, neither are shells and powder analogous to power generation for an energy weapon.
Yes. From ship service generators inside the ship, not generators inside the turrets themselves.
I'm not concerned about theoretical turrets that would be using additional active reactors for appropriate purposes. The problem is that even if your evaluation is correct it does not address deliberate exploitation of docked power, only the projected balance-imbalance of legitimate turreted weapon systems, and turrets do not require independent power to achieve that balance. It only opens the exploit door.
The reason why I see not allowing multiple reactors at once is that if you could have many reactors the most effective way would be to have as many small reactors as possible (assuming there is no efficiency loss for smaller reactors) in order to increase the dependability and survivability of your power system (with more reactors the percentage of power output loss when a reactor goes down decreases). This would essentially force builders to go back to something similar to the current power setup by fitting in as many of the smallest reactors possible into your ship.not really, what if you want to spread out multiple reactors across a large ship and run them at the same time to minimize powerless if one is hit,
or being able to build individual reactors for individual systems.
edit: i still cant see any reason to not allow multiple reactors at once, any real ship would have multiple reactors with redundant backups. and it just seems like intelligent design to have multiple running at once, ie, you have a main reactor for most of your systems, but you have secondary reactors for, say, engines, and another for shields, i mean this is only really an issue on ships larger than 400 meters but still, i am many others often build this large
i thought the same until i remembered losses due to topped internal capacity of weapons
in the case of a large group of X*Blocks of DPS weapon, the losses are ridiculous and almost all of the energy provided by the ship is changed in damage.
Whereas in the case of X*blocks of alpha weapon, the losses may exceed the amount of power regen available to load the weapons.
With the current self powered turret with power capacity blocks, a same size alpha turret would use far less weapon blocks than a DPS one - due to the need of capacitor - and would obviously deal less damage over time - but one could change a turret for an other and it would not change the design of the main ship.
whereas with the power system described in this topic, changing from a DPS turret to a an Alpha one would cause :
1 - a huge reduction in scale of the turret, and so a probable rebuilt of the ship, at least arround the dock of the turret.
2 - a complete rebuild of the main ship to add reactor blocks, which means also increasing the number of chamber blocks, which means almost completly rebuilt the ship.
3 - a turret filled with hull - or any block which doesn't consume power - to keep its size.
As I mentioned above, you lack the knowledge of the intricacies of turrets to fully understand this discussion. Different systems require different power and you can optimize turrets for either DPS or Alpha Damage or Shields or Armor which will yield different results. 1 Weapon =/= 1 Shield and so on. To make this very clear, we will assume everything is inside the same turret shell. Optimizing for Alpha or DPS will leave different amounts of internal space for other systems or hull/armor. A turret that can fit on a spot on a ship is not guaranteed at all to have the same energy requirements as a same mass same size turret of different interior design.
2nd Paragraph) You are making sweeping implications from what seems to be a point of ignorance. On very small ships this is a very large concern, and it only decreases in importance to a moderate concern with larger ships. I can assume that you have dealt less with turrets than I have from your writings, which is okay, but it is obvious that you don't understand their intricacies.
Did neither of you read the section on weapons? Weapons of the same block count and energy per damage will have the same energy per second requirements.I am not arguing different rates of regeneration between Alpha and DPS focused weapons. I am arguing that they will have inherently different power draws from the mothership even if they fit inside the same shell. This inherent difference leads to difficulties in making cross fleet turrets. Most turrets would have to be tailor made for each individual ship.
Overdrive modifies the ratio of DPS per block and power per damage. It is really not applicable for this comparison.*Further Edit Clarification* Remember how Overdrive increases power need along with several other modifications to weapons, lest we forget Secondary/Tertiary usage.
How can you support self powered turrets but not multiple reactors on the same ship? They're EXACTLY THE SAME, except one is docked.Us people who like the idea of self powered turrets are saying what are saying BECAUSE there is the One-Reactor limit for the parent ship. If not, I would just put specific power reactors immediately under each of my turrets. This arbitrary One-Reactor limit, -Which I Think Is A Good Balance Decision-, is why Turrets should be able to power themselves.
TP is only used for effects and modifiers, though. The main issue with self powered turrets is that they are SELF POWERED, which would not require any TP.Man, all this talk about docked reactors being imbalanced, about self-powered turrets being somehow wrong. I like building huge, self-powered turrets. A real, manly turret is at least a million blocks.
Why not just make docked entities inherit the division of Tech Points? So, for instance, if you have a reactor of 100 blocks on the main ship, and then two turrets with 50-block reactors on each, then the ship gets 50% of the TP allotment and the turrets each get 25%. This would work perfectly and would keep people from cheesing offensive chambers on turrets, because, for instance, if you had a 50,000-block reactor on a ship and only 1000 blocks of reactor for each turret, then each turret would only have a tiny fraction of the total TP (that is, it would only have power, not much in the way of chambers).
We don't balance the game around what is "cool from an RP standpoint," we balance the game around what is balanced. And self powered turrets are broken.I think, even from an RP standpoint, it's cool to have self-powered turrets.
You're not accounting for the fact that many self powered turrets sit on multiple layers of docked power generators. These specifically would go away with a linear power system, but turrets having their own power IS a performance issue. The game has to worry about calculating all the regen and reactor damage for 2 extra entities for self powered turrets. Multiply that by the dozens of turrets and docked guns a larger meta ship might have, and you're cutting down on a decent load by disabling their reactors and making docked guns useless.This is deceptive. Docked power with logic clocks and power beams is a performance issue. Turrets having their own power are no more of a performance issue than unpowered turrets of equal size.
But the problem with self powered docked entities is that they have no stress on the mothership. They are self powering, self aiming, and immune to frame rate lag. They need to be more like a system and less like drones glued to tripods.I still believe that the docked entities should still be allowed to use internal reactors, having a turret that can self power itself, can relieve some of the stress from the mothership, and at this current time, i still do not have any idea how many reactor blocks you are going to require to get what we currently have for the system now (i.e. how many blocks will it take for 2million generation)
Boarding was planned to be done with the teleporter system, and I see no reason for it to be any different. Even if it was through docking (this certainly wouldn't result in any terrible collision lag!), it would have its own checks and not work like normal docking.I'm going to speculate about a planned feature here: boarding. If I'm going to dock to another ship to board it, does this mean that my ship is now going to be dependent on the ship I'm boarding in order to fire it's turrets in case backup arrives? What if my target is woefully smaller than me? What about faction permissions? Will docking to a hostile faction's ship allow your own to keep its reactor on? Or will the enemy ship be forced to try to feed the demand of my ship? What if I felt like being a dick and built a large pulse/can/overdrive weapon on my boarding craft to purposefully try to drag the enemy ship's power down?
Did you also read my next post?But the problem with self powered docked entities is that they have no stress on the mothership. They are self powering, self aiming, and immune to frame rate lag. They need to be more like a system and less like drones glued to tripods.
Did you also read my next post?
There are lots of things that could be done for the base of the turret. The main one that comes to mind is something people have wanted for ages, which is allowing us to put our secondaries and effects into the base of the turret.I honestly think your entire argument is flawed here, in the real world we use ammunition, in starmade we use energy to fire our weapons, now this being said, the barrel can be the weapon output, and the base of the turret it's powerplant (since there's no other purpose for the base than it being the source of power)
if we remove the powerplant from the turret, what else is there to put into the base of the turret? we'd be back to how we started with the old docking system
I second this. It would be nice to be able to build turrets where the topmost part in the chain (the elevation axis/gun system) doesn't have to be so large relative to the base, like it does right now. Like actual battleship guns, for instance; the whole gun house doesn't have to elevate with the guns, just the barrels.There are lots of things that could be done for the base of the turret. The main one that comes to mind is something people have wanted for ages, which is allowing us to put our secondaries and effects into the base of the turret.