StarMade Ship Systems 2.0

[Mortiferum]

Ok, so why do you think it's ok to pretend like everyone in favor of the suggestion doesn't do PvP? Cut the pointless false personal attacks.



If you know there's more than to engineering beyond exploit systems and that the quality of your systems beyond those matters, what's your point?



The proposal doesn't say anything about this. You're fighting a straw man of your own creation.

The proposal actually does talk about a soft cap if you look at what Lancake (I think) said in a separate thread talking about "concerns for a super gun ship".

I am just stating that most people for the system haven't done any PvP, that's all. Obviously to comment on balance you need to actually play the game.

What will prevent players from building One-Strike Ships - ships with huge alpha strike weapons?

The top-off rate is a percentage of the weapons max power draw. For big weapons that require a lot of internal capacity to fire once, there will be a large enough power consumption that you need a large enough reactor to fire them at least once.

Even if you use a reactor that is just big enough for the top off-rate, you’ll only fire it once which is a concern if you miss that shot or fail to hit anything vital.

If it is a concern during testing, we could implement a form of power penalty that increases the % top-off rate depending on reactor vs weapon size ratio.

 

[33Cav]

Possible Solution to multiple reactors online in a docking tree

1) Online chambers must be unique to an entity within the docking tree
This will still enforce a TP cap, adding more entities to the tree does not let you keep adding any chamber you want to it, just ones you have not used yet so you can't keep stacking chambers
If a station is the root node of the docking tree then each leaf of that node should still be treated as separate trees

2)Checking for an allowed a chamber to be onlined must only be done when the docking tree changes and when a chamber is onlined (when a chamber is offlined need not be done)

3)If a reactor is disabled (combat damage to RHP) then reactors of all children in the docking tree are disabled too

4)Chamber effects are inhereited by child nodes, provided the mass/blocks of those nodes are taken into account for those chamber effects when required

Results of this:
a)Multiple onlined reactors per docking tree are allowed (1 per entity in that tree)
b)Chambers can be active on each entity with a reactor
c)Chamber of type 'A' cannot be onlined on an entity if another entity in the tree has a chamber of type 'A', but can if you are onlining it on the same entity the other chamber is on
d)Allows splitting the ship up into different entity subsystems, at the cost of lowering combat survivability (see 3)
e)While splitting a larger reactor into smaller, dedicated reactors across many entities in the docking tree provides you with more space efficient (and thus potentially higher overall output) power generation it would also not give you any advantage by spreading RHP across those reactors as targetting the main ship's reactor would still disable all the child reactors of the ship

Questions, comments and complaints welcome

TLDR: Online chambers must be unique to an entity within the docking tree

 

[Lecic]

Results of this:
a)Multiple onlined reactors per docking tree are allowed (1 per entity in that tree)
b)Chambers can be active on each entity with a reactor
c)Chamber of type 'A' cannot be onlined on an entity if another entity in the tree has a chamber of type 'A', but can if you are onlining it on the same entity the other chamber is on
d)Allows splitting the ship up into different entity subsystems, at the cost of lowering combat survivability (see 3)
e)While splitting a larger reactor into smaller, dedicated reactors across many entities in the docking tree provides you with more space efficient (and thus potentially higher overall output) power generation it would also not give you any advantage by spreading RHP across those reactors as targetting the main ship's reactor would still disable all the child reactors of the ship

How does this solve the issue of self powered turrets having effectively no drain on the main ship?

 

[Mortiferum]

How does this solve the issue of self powered turrets having effectively no drain on the main ship?

For a turret to be self powered it either needs to be big and usually underpowered for its size.

I dont see an issue tbh.

 

[Az14el]

Turrets using their own power won't be using the main ships power, which would absolutely take more blocks & weight than putting that power on the turret, because the turret hasnt yet been subject to soft caps (so it will require less reactors>blocks>weight). Self powered turrets are lighter when you consider they have to pull their power from somewhere. In the extreme case, a 900 block reactor line can outperform a 9k block aux unit.

edit to say this is all only relevant when the main ship has passed power soft caps to run its actual necessary onboard systems. No large ship will escape aux reqs entirely and not suffer hard from it, self powered parts or not.

 

[Lecic]

For a turret to be self powered it either needs to be big and usually underpowered for its size.

I dont see an issue tbh.

But it really doesn't. Power reactors take extremely little module count.

 

[Mortiferum]

But it really doesn't. Power reactors take extremely little module count.

But to fit the current 2.0m power softcap, the weapon must use less than 2.0m power a second if that is what you are getting at.

Either that or you start chain docking things (Havent tested it, dunno if it would work).

 

[entarlas]

LOVE the new proposal. Good work Schema. Thank you for listening to us
Can't wait to see this in game, Im actually looking forward to refitting ships now w/ this one!

 

[Alphajim]

If it is a concern during testing, we could implement a form of power penalty that increases the % top-off rate depending on reactor vs weapon size ratio.

That is called speculations, not facts.
Mortiferum

 

[TheOmega]

Everyone not in favor of one reactor is worried about how they are going to power everything on their absurdly large ship. The reactors are probably going to generate much more power than the current system, therefore needing a smaller reactor. They might produce just enough power to power a normal ship of that size. They might produce way too much power, maybe not enough. I'm betting it's just a config change away from being as intended. Extra power is useless in this system.

Side note, stabilizers should have multiple textures so we can see their efficiency at a glance.

 

[Extholious]

Side note, stabilizers should have multiple textures so we can see their efficiency at a glance.

i second this, it would be a nice feature that removes a bit of a hassle of having to stop building and check a menu to see if it works

 

[Lord Daro]

Extra power is useless in this system.

Not necessarily. As I understand the plans for 2.0, systems will quickly shut down, if there is not enough power for them. (At least not with some other systems running aswell)
So building youre reactor bigger might help with keeping the enire ship powered, even when it takes some damage.

Side note, stabilizers should have multiple textures so we can see their efficiency at a glance.

That would be realy great.

 

[Lancake]

The proposal actually does talk about a soft cap if you look at what Lancake (I think) said in a separate thread talking about "concerns for a super gun ship".

What will prevent players from building One-Strike Ships - ships with huge alpha strike weapons?

The top-off rate is a percentage of the weapons max power draw. For big weapons that require a lot of internal capacity to fire once, there will be a large enough power consumption that you need a large enough reactor to fire them at least once.

Even if you use a reactor that is just big enough for the top off-rate, you’ll only fire it once which is a concern if you miss that shot or fail to hit anything vital.

If it is a concern during testing, we could implement a form of power penalty that increases the % top-off rate depending on reactor vs weapon size ratio.​

​

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Only the last paragraph mentions a sort of penalty which resembles the soft cap you're talking about. It was a very crude example, to point out that the in-game testing phase will be the one to point out if something needs to be changed or not. In reality, I would rather change how weapons work than introduce another form of power penalty. Making assumptions is dangerous, but a high alpha beam is easier to hit than a high alpha cannon.
For now, don't expect any power penalty on the top-off rate.​

 

[Spoolooni]

Only the last paragraph mentions a sort of penalty which resembles the soft cap you're talking about. It was a very crude example, to point out that the in-game testing phase will be the one to point out if something needs to be changed or not. In reality, I would rather change how weapons work than introduce another form of power penalty. Making assumptions is dangerous, but a high alpha beam is easier to hit than a high alpha cannon.
For now, don't expect any power penalty on the top-off rate.​

I certainly agree with this notion as a starting foundation to solving the "alpha weapons" problem. I think introducing power nerfs would defeat the entire purpose of having a linear power increment to begin with.

 

[Mortiferum]

Only the last paragraph mentions a sort of penalty which resembles the soft cap you're talking about. It was a very crude example, to point out that the in-game testing phase will be the one to point out if something needs to be changed or not. In reality, I would rather change how weapons work than introduce another form of power penalty. Making assumptions is dangerous, but a high alpha beam is easier to hit than a high alpha cannon.
For now, don't expect any power penalty on the top-off rate.​

Oh, the only assumption I learnt to work off of is "if it has a chance to end badly, it will".

I am simply assuming the worst so I cant be disappointed.....

-------

 

[petlahk]

Well let's be quite frank here. I'm tempted to make a return after yet another long hiatus but this system isn't really leaning well for me. Not because the initial proposal is bad but because I'd like to know when It comes out

I also think that there needs to be some kind of, at the very least, rough estimate.

We know for sure is that under the new system all ships will be closer to a linear power curve, however there are still a lot of factors we don't know.

I agree. Thank you for clarifying this MrFURB!

 

[lord_farquad]

Love the idea in principle. The one thing I feel it doesn't solve for (maybe I am missing something) is encouraging the creation/use of empty spaces and reduction in system sizes, which I really liked from the last proposal.

Also, as has been said, please change the name from "Tech Points" :P

 

[Comradecolonel]

Everyone not in favor of one reactor is worried about how they are going to power everything on their absurdly large ship. The reactors are probably going to generate much more power than the current system, therefore needing a smaller reactor. They might produce just enough power to power a normal ship of that size. They might produce way too much power, maybe not enough. I'm betting it's just a config change away from being as intended. Extra power is useless in this system.

I want multiple reactors for design diversity not for more power. My assumption is that a single reactor will be more efficient then many multiple reactors. The point would actually be to make the ship tankier, as you could defend all the reactors separately. Big ships should have no trouble at all providing power. The only reason big ships have power issues now is because of the power cap.

Also excess power is always useless unless going against an EMP equipped enemy. Most ships I build I try to squeeze as much capability based on power generation. I don't see how that would be different in this system. If anything the point of all the newer revamps to systems should be to make excess power more useful.

 

[Lecic]

But to fit the current 2.0m power softcap, the weapon must use less than 2.0m power a second if that is what you are getting at.

Either that or you start chain docking things (Havent tested it, dunno if it would work).

2 million power generation only takes about a thousand modules. With another hundred or so power caps, this can fuel a 20k block (200k DPS) Cannon/Cannon or Beam/Cannon weapon for less than 2000 modules. If you add the additional 2 million power gen you can also put on the base, that's 400k DPS you can fuel with around 2500 to 3000 power modules. Stack chain docked power generators for every additional 200k DPS you'd like to add.

Compare this to auxiliaries, which would take 20k modules to fuel 400k DPS.

Reactors are expected to be of similar or smaller size in this rework. Self powered turrets are incredibly easy to make and will continue to be. So let's cut it off now, fix this problem, and force turrets to draw from the main vessel.

The one thing I feel it doesn't solve for (maybe I am missing something) is encouraging the creation/use of empty spaces and reduction in system sizes, which I really liked from the last proposal.

The forced empty spaces of the old proposal was one of the biggest problems with it.

 

[TheOmega]

I want multiple reactors for design diversity not for more power. My assumption is that a single reactor will be more efficient then many multiple reactors. The point would actually be to make the ship tankier, as you could defend all the reactors separately. Big ships should have no trouble at all providing power. The only reason big ships have power issues now is because of the power cap.

The point is you need to defend your only active reactor. You can have multiple, just only one can be active. As for design diversity, there is no set shape a reactor needs to be, so you can fit it nearly anywhere, as well as stabilizers. If you want a tanky ship, use armor and shields, and build a bigger ship.