StarMade Ship Systems 2.0

[whooplaah]

Minecraft was great because redstone was an option but not a necessity or focus. Engineer enhanced the game, but was not the focus. For Starmade: Who is the target audience? How many of them will climb this ship-building learning curve? Is Starmade a game of designing ship circuits, or a game of using those ships? Building ships is the gateway to the rest of the exploring, fighting, and factioning - so this must be accessible for all players.

I strongly emphasize implementing a way for players to simply purchase a ship. Not a blue-print that they have to fly to a construction yard, but just a catalog where they can have a ship delivered to their current location. Players should probably also start out with a ship, so they can skip the construction/learning curve all-together if they want.

I like this game, I think the new system is more balanced. I want to see the game succeed.

 

[Az14el]

"but shield sharing"
watch me use that shit to my advantage too :D
its very nearly as "breakable" as the SPTs themselves and yet another reason for this proposal, not a viable argument against it

 

[Alphajim]

Minecraft was great because redstone was an option but not a necessity or focus. Engineer enhanced the game, but was not the focus. For Starmade: Who is the target audience? How many of them will climb this ship-building learning curve? Is Starmade a game of designing ship circuits, or a game of using those ships? Building ships is the gateway to the rest of the exploring, fighting, and factioning - so this must be accessible for all players.

I strongly emphasize implementing a way for players to simply purchase a ship. Not a blue-print that they have to fly to a construction yard, but just a catalog where they can have a ship delivered to their current location. Players should probably also start out with a ship, so they can skip the construction/learning curve all-together if they want.

I like this game, I think the new system is more balanced. I want to see the game succeed.

That's called blueprints.

 

[Deserea]

That's called blueprints.

i think he means purchasing the entire ship at once, including blocks

 

[ohartenstein23]

Isn't there a server config option to buy a ship directly from an empty blueprint?

 

[Alphajim]

Properly spawning a ship isn't an unneeded feature. And buying by money was removed for a good reason.

 

[StormWing0]

Isn't there a server config option to buy a ship directly from an empty blueprint?

Problem, it doesn't work with buying station BPs so you'll be stuck manually remaking them each time. >.> If this option ever is fully brought back I'd like to see it as buying a filled BP rather than buying and spawning it at the same time so we can buy it filled and spawn the thing elsewhere.

That said the best option to helping new players or players starting on a server is having a well built spawn station with an auto factory people can drop off resources at to keep running. Maybe even personal zones where there's more than one auto factory for people that don't want their stuff dumped in with everyone else's never to sort it out again. I've got gates that have public factories for things like this just no auto factories yet.

 

[El_Poulpy]

I agree with whooplaah about the need for a way for players to simply purchase a ship even if it is a long term (end of alpha) need. It has already been suggested to have "shipyard shop block" so shipbuilders can set a shipyard, set a catalogue of blueprints for sale and then when a customer buy a blueprint from the catalogue, the shipyard built it for him.

 

[Lecic]

So you want to remove AI completely then? Since AI main ships can fire all weapons at the same time as well and will have the same effect.

I have proposed other solutions to fleet spam. Fleets have their own weaknesses (and advantages) compared to a turret boat already. They're not the topic of this discussion though. This is about power balance on a single ship.

clearly and obviously wrong. You cannot have turrets docked around turrets that can actually hit something through the outer turret they are trying to shoot through. Even if those turrets could fire the thrust on a ship there is a limit on thrust if you want to get technical. The thrust added per block must exceed the mass of 1 additional thruster block in order to be useful.
Mass of a thruster block is 0.1

As kulbolen pointed out, I think you misread my post.

You clearly didn't read my post fully. At no point do I claim that self sufficient turrets use main ship aux. My point (which I offer again, because you didn't read it) was that ACTUAL large turrets cannot be self powered and will use either main ship aux or main ship capacity as a powersource. "Self-powered" is reserved for a niche range between ACTUAL large turrets and anti-missile turrets (though anti-missile turrets can power themselves quite nicely).

There is zero reason to ever run a turret off aux or main ship power storage if you don't care about entity count, and many do not. Turrets of any size can be self powered.

 

[33Cav]

What is your definition of "ACTUAL large turrets", i use spts up to 20k mass that fire their weapons off of less power blocks than would be possible than if draining solely from the main ship

It isnt just the power blocks you have to consider, it is every block up the chain. The last paragraph of this post details two limits on turret power generation, I recommend that you read it. ONE actual large turret I have built is a deep welled turret of 32k mass that requires 86.4m power regeneration to fire per second (weapons only). 24 * 2 = 48 is less than 86.4m last time I checked.

no real limit UNTIL you reach the thrust limit

I chose to use the thrust limit because that was the point he wanted to make. In fact you reach a POWER LIMIT on the main ship long before you reach a thrust limit, and this power limit applies despite (and also ignores the effect of) docked entities. Thrust on docked entites draws from the main ship and that is something that cannot be overcome.

"but shield sharing" ... very nearly as "breakable" as the SPTs

Shield recharge (typically used as the primary tank for dreads and above) becomes useless when used in docking chains to prevent similar caliber weapons from doing to a turret what they would do to a main ship. By the same token, total shield capacity is negligably increased by spreading shields across multiple entities. Total of 10 * 100k shield cap blocks vs 1 * 1m shield cap blocks is only a difference of about 5m total capacity if you ignore the 50% penalty. If you take into account shield sharing shooting the entity at the end of the chain then just over half of the shields protect that section, substantially weakening all the entities in the chain, including the main ship (which now has the weaker shields).

This is about power balance on a single ship.

Apparently you don't want to consider that a single ship can be used in this example as AI controlled vs ship with turrets. Well it CAN.

There is zero reason to ever run a turret off aux or main ship power storage if you don't care about entity count, and many do not. Turrets of any size can be self powered.

Wrong. Turrets themselves have a limited docking chain size as limited by the configuration files (default is 25 including the main ship). You cannot at any time surpass this, proving that turrets of "any" (read infinite) size cannot be constructed. Even if the configuration did not prohibit this there is another limit that you will reach. Some time down the entity chain, adding another entity of any mass would increase amount of mass enhancers required such that to power the mass enhancers on the bottom level turret entity would cost more than the 2m softcap. This means that there would STILL be a hard limit on generation.

 

[Lecic]

Wrong. Turrets themselves have a limited docking chain size as limited by the configuration files (default is 25 including the main ship). You cannot at any time surpass this, proving that turrets of "any" (read infinite) size cannot be constructed.

Oh, sorry, I guess you can't have an efficient self powered turret with more than 4.8 million base DPS then.

Within all practical limits, self powered turret sizes are not capped.

Even if the configuration did not prohibit this there is another limit that you will reach. Some time down the entity chain, adding another entity of any mass would increase amount of mass enhancers required such that to power the mass enhancers on the bottom level turret entity would cost more than the 2m softcap. This means that there would STILL be a hard limit on generation

2 million power can support two million mass in mass enhancers. A self powered turret using 46 mil power per second (setting aside a whole 2 mil for our mass enhancers) would still only weigh around 46,046 assuming pure systems. You have enough free mass left over that you could probably put 20 layers of advanced armor on this turret if you wanted to.

This is not a limit on turret size at all.

 

[33Cav]

2 million power can support two million mass in mass enhancers.

RequiredEnhancerCount = ( DockedMass - 50 ) / 5
PowerConsumption = NumberOfEnhancers * 50

(2,000,000 - 50) / 5 = 399,990 enhancers for 2m mass.
399,990 * 50 = 19,999,500 power regen required for enhancers.
19,999,500 > 2,000,000 i.e. 2m mass enhancer requires approx. 20m power regen, a direct contradiction to your assertion.

can't have an efficient self powered turret

While we are on the topic of efficiency, the volume required (in space, not in blocks) of minimal dimension power generation is 20*21*25 for power aux and 30*30*39 for conventional power (300 groups). You could of course have a 1*1*1530 long pole but minimal x+y+z dimensions are preferred.

Within all practical limits

Perhaps a more practical limit would be the admin of a server noticing that you have docked several 24 long entity chains to your ship(s), deleting them and subsequently banning you to prevent the server from exploding the instant the ship gets into combat or an accidental undocking occurs.

If your objection to mass enhancers is that they arent enough of a penalty then simply petition the admin(s) of the server that you play on to increase the power cost of mass enhancers.
If you want less entities allowed in a docking chain then you can petition them for that too.
Both of these are configurable in the block behaviour confg and server config respectively. Neither of these will prevent anti-missile turrets from being self powered.

 

[Lecic]

RequiredEnhancerCount = ( DockedMass - 50 ) / 5
PowerConsumption = NumberOfEnhancers * 50

(2,000,000 - 50) / 5 = 399,990 enhancers for 2m mass.
399,990 * 50 = 19,999,500 power regen required for enhancers.
19,999,500 > 2,000,000 i.e. 2m mass enhancer requires approx. 20m power regen, a direct contradiction to your assertion.

Yeah, I misread the configs. My point still stands, however, that you could support more than enough mass with 2 million power.

Perhaps a more practical limit would be the admin of a server noticing that you have docked several 24 long entity chains to your ship(s), deleting them and subsequently banning you to prevent the server from exploding the instant the ship gets into combat or an accidental undocking occurs.

What kind of shitty server bans a person for having a mere 24 entities docked to their ship?

Neither of these will prevent anti-missile turrets from being self powered.

Nice red herring. Point defense turrets need so little power that is does not matter in the slighest whether they are self powered or not. We're arguing about actual combat turrets here.

 

[kulbolen]

I chose to use the thrust limit because that was the point he wanted to make. In fact you reach a POWER LIMIT on the main ship long before you reach a thrust limit, and this power limit applies despite (and also ignores the effect of) docked entities. Thrust on docked entites draws from the main ship and that is something that cannot be overcome.

semantics. it was in your wording. he clearly knew there was an upper limit, but its not practical to consider.

Wrong. Turrets themselves have a limited docking chain size as limited by the configuration files (default is 25 including the main ship). You cannot at any time surpass this, proving that turrets of "any" (read infinite) size cannot be constructed. Even if the configuration did not prohibit this there is another limit that you will reach.

i 100% think servers should be able to limit docking chain. i think 5 is probably a good number. unfortunately, this setting is finnicky and *does not work properly*

What kind of shitty server bans a person for having a mere 24 entities docked to their ship?

gonna have to stick up for cav here, i think you misunderstood him this time. i think he means a chain dock of 24 entities to just barely stay under the default 25 limit. although i think everyone here knows that anything with 25 chain docked entities is already WAY beyond practical and probably a shitstorm of lag. a few of us experimented with maxing out energy cap gains on chain docks and really quickly learned that even 2-3 block docked bits cause obscene lag when bundled together into 10+ and then blown up. =p

 

[RabidBat]

Just ignore Lelic You will never get him to change his mind. There is no flexibility with him and I think he enjoys dragging shit out.

You could tell him 2 + 2 = 4, yet if he is convinced and it suits his cause that it equals 3 he will tell you for life it is 3 and nothing else.
Your just wasting your breathe by explaining things to him. Just giving him the attention he craves.

You mention spacious blueprints of scifi and sea going vessels, he'll produce cramped blueprints of a Saturn V rocket.
You talk about tomatoes he will reply as if you're talking about corn flakes.

But yeah in Lelics world, there is only Lelic. It has no room for reading, context, logic, common sense, and staying on topic.

I am honestly not sure, and have brought this up before, if he is trying to be a troll, or has some kind of mental retardation that means his tunnel vision and inability to think openly are beyond his control.
One thing I do know though is ignore him and don't give validation.
Ignore it and.... well it won't go away... but it will take a massive hit to it's HP/MP and its stats will debuff.

 

[33Cav]

Point defense turrets need so little power

23 barreled ams with ams decoy addition drawing 15k power * 70 ams on my dreadnaught = 1,050,000.

bans a person for having a mere 24 entities docked to their ship

Not 24 entities. Multiple turrets with this arrangement means 24 * number of turrets. Don't forget that it isn't just the number of entities that is the issue but the proximity of them to each other.

clearly knew there was an upper limit

Apparently only after I pointed it out the first time, otherwise I would not have mentioned it that first time. From that point I proceeded to point out the various limits. Claiming "infinite" does not mean you are claiming "practically infinite".

setting is finnicky and *does not work properly*

Phabricator bug report link?

 

[Lecic]

23 barreled ams with ams decoy addition drawing 15k power * 70 ams on my dreadnaught = 1,050,000.

Well, here is my advice for you. Have your AMS on individual computers for each barrel, or at the very least do it in smaller groups. You will use substantially less power despite having the same PD effectiveness. Also, 70 AMS turrets is way too many. PD turrets can't effectively target more than a couple missiles at a time once you're past a handful per side of the ship. There is really no reason for a ship to ever have more than 24 PD turrets, and that's pushing it.

 

[Shaker]

Have your AMS on individual computers for each barrel,... There is really no reason for a ship to ever have more than 24 PD turrets, and that's pushing it.

The usual PD turret is built to be small and extremely basic, thats why most if not all, wont go to the scale of adding multiple computers when each computer is only supporting 1 block worth of cannons.

24 turrets is a nice number to aim for, but id personally aim for at least 5-8 per side. But this is totally dependant on the scale of ship.
Best to try and overlap PD as much as possible

 

[Lecic]

The usual PD turret is built to be small and extremely basic, thats why most if not all, wont go to the scale of adding multiple computers when each computer is only supporting 1 block worth of cannons.

Yes, normally, but when you have so many outputs on them that combined your point defense is draining over a million power, perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and invest in some extra computers?

 

[Optapodamus]

I have a solution, one that will make everyone happy I think and is also very simple: Replace shields with automatically regenerating blocks and make systems able to fail.

This simple change will solve a multitude of problems;

1. Small ships will be able to defeat large ships.
2. Armor would be useful
3. Cloaking would be useful
4. Repair beams would be useful
5. Shipyards would be useful
6. Character weapons would be useful (I'll explain)
7. Ship to ship boarding would be a thing (I'll explain)
8. Interior ship defenses would be a thing because of boarding
9. Ships with large crews of players would be a thing (I'll explain)
10. Ship design would make a difference
11. No more massive sloppy borg cubes
12. It'd still be easy enough for the casual players/noobs
13. People who don't enjoy building ships would play this game

With the current system the only thing to do is have as much shields and damage as possible and plenty of warp modules to be able to retreat. All you do is pop in, hit your weapons, and run if your shields drop too low. Large ships only fear larger ships. There is no reason to strategically design anything, or have armor, so long as you leave before your shields run completely out. God forbid you have a nicely designed/nice looking ship and your shields drop. Might as well completely reload the blueprint because of the amount of effort it takes to find and repair every single bullet worth of damage, especially piercing rounds.

Now, take away shields and replace with blocks that regenerate, or more specifically after the player makes changes in build mode the ship is saved and upon taking damage it slowly reverts back to the last save. Healing beams from un-docked ships that are at a minimum distance (otherwise you just undock a healer inside your ship) and shipyards greatly increase the speed of repairs. Shops could also repair ships for a fee. However being required to carry around every single type of block you have would discourage the use of a wide variety of blocks, so instead in addition to power a sort of currency could be used to replace blocks. A inexpensive and expensive version, for balance. Now that fixes quite a lot of problems, but I'm not done yet.

Systems need to be able to fail. All of them. Multiple ways preferably. Without this the best strategy is still brute force. With it, a small agile ship with a skilled pilot could overtake a large ship by taking out its systems with precision attacks. Why should they fail? Too much damage, obviously. More interestingly there could be a "critical block/s" like a core for each system that if damaged shuts down the system, or if accessed by a friendly player, in person, could repair the system much faster. These cores could also be accessed by enemy players to shut down the system. This would both promote multiple players per one ship but also boarding parties and the use of character weapons, which as of now are completely pointless. It would be nice if it could be required that modules be within a certain range of the core, depending on how many there are, that way people aren't able to just slap all their cores in one spot. Why should there only be one core for each system? No reason! Do not limit players. I'd be awesome to have multiple reactors, multiple engine room cores, etc. You'd set them up like modules to computers, when one fails you lose all the function of the modules attached.

Now that ship boarding is a viable strategy why not allow players to take over cores? If a person can get to another players core, they should be able to hijack it, even with the enemy player inside. It could take longer depending on how large the ship is or how much power is currently being generated or whatever. That way players would have plenty of time to defend themselves, even in poorly designed ships.

Scanning should reveal a ships system cores. Otherwise having a massive ship would still be the best strategy. A player should be alerted when and by who they are being scanned.

Finally being able to "re-route power" to different systems mid-battle would make for more dynamic, strategic, and interesting battles. However too much power for too long would overload the system, greatly increasing the strength of the system for a short time before resulting in total system failure.

The amount of strategy that would open up with just these simple changes would be fantastic.

You could have a cloaked ship with multiple players use warheads to slam a hole into an enemy capital ship, board it, disable systems and capture it.

A small ship with a great design and a skilled pilot could disable systems one by one on a large ship with superior dog fighting but being as how it'd take too long to completely overload the core or board the ship and capture it they could just demand money, or demand they drop their cargo. (Piracy)

There could be two capital ships with multiple people on each, both ships could be fighting each other while having battles going on inside each ship. A solo player could put his ship on auto pilot and run and fix an important system that is failing, or fight enemy boarders mid battle. Hell, if they're really ballsy they could go board the enemy ship lol

The tides of a battle between ships of equal strength could turn do to skill or strategy.


I believe this strategy better fulfills your goals. Thanks for reading.

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