StarMade Ship Systems 2.0

[jontyfreack]

So, since all weapons will have inner power storage enough to fire it once, what will prevent players from building One-Strike Ships - ships with huge alpha strike weapons that uses that inner charge to fire them once and easily annihilate any ship of your size or even bigger.

Especially since you only need to destroy the reactor of your enemy.

more than one enemy ship.

 

[Neon_42]

I think this will work better than the previous proposal, but I have a few questions.

1)what is to stop us from putting redundant stabilizers outside the ship hull to gain maximum power i.e. the chandelier?

We use the total Reactor block count to determine the optimal distance between every Reactor and Stabilizer group. Doesn’t matter how big or small each group is, the minimum amount of distance you need to reach 100% efficiency will be the same for each.

What dictates the size and number of stabilizer groups. It sounds like I could put one stabilizer ridiculously far away such that my opponent cant see it, and it will perform just as well as a box of them surrounding my reactor. Why would I build bigger groups/more groups if they don't matter?

2) I like the chamber system, though tech points sounds a bit lame. What dictates the size of these chambers?

3) Power consumption model confuses me a bit. Is this a simple boolean? If power in >= power power out then the system works efficiently?

Internal capacity
Weapons, tools and some other systems now have their own internal power capacity, enough to fire themselves once. This power capacity would slowly discharge over time so you need to have some power recharge to keep it topped off.
After firing it, the internal capacity would recharge using the available recharge rate. The maximum amount of power recharged for that system would be limited by its reload speed.

This is a bit cryptic and feels overly complex. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong. What determines the recharge rate and power discharge?

Overall much better than the first proposal.

 

[EMC007]

Ok, So I think I might still be a bit confused about certain aspects of this. Mainly thrust.


So, All blocks you place add mass to the ship. The amount of thruster blocks you place on your ship determines how fast you can move that mass. But thrusters require power to run, so, does this mean that you will need to wait until you have finished placing all of the other blocks on your ship before you place the reactor, because you do not know how much power you will need when you are finished?


Or is there something I missed in the original post?

The whole tech point thing makes sense and I like it a lot (but please change the name to something a bit cooler or more sci-fi-y), but what I don't understand is how systems like shields and thrusters get power from this.

So does this mean that you need to first place down all of your shield rechargers before you can determine the size of your reactor and build it too? Because you don't know how much power you will need for them until you have roughly finished the ship?

With the current system (and I'm not saying at all that we should keep it, I would love for a change), you can build up your ship over time because you just place the power recharger and capacity blocks you need as you add more mass, thrusters, and shields to it. But it sounds like for this proposed idea, you would need to redesign your entire power system every time you change the mass heavily or add more shields.


Maybe I'm just being stupid and I'm missing something (that's probably it), but I'd love to get some clarification on this.


Everything else seems pretty cool about this system though, and I can't see any other issues at the moment (except tech points being called tech points)

 

[Matt_Bradock]

For the love of god, schema and Criss DO NOT compare the chamber system to a tech tree. A tech tree you need to unlock through grinding and experience point and it's a completely different thing. You had me panicking when I first heard it on the video thinking "omg now there's experience points too?"

This is an upgrade system. A boost system. A specialization system. A great idea allowing for vast customization opportunities. BUT. It is not a freaking tech tree. Please don't confuse your players.

Weapons: I welcome the idea of internal capacity, although that will result in a rapidly rising popularity of slow reload, high alpha damage weapons such as beam/pulse and missile/beam, as they'll no longer require twice their block count in capacitors to fire. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though!

My biggest worry is the new scanner/jammer/cloaking system, namely the revealing of blocks. I think it is a bad idea, knowing how much of a load it can put on a computer to handle simple things like previewing a template to paste, or displaying a large number of connected block outlines, or even opening or closing a large door or forcefield (which triggers a logic bomb warning already at 5000+ blocks). The engine is not good at handling those, and several optimizations must be made on rendering before this idea can be executed without lagbombing the whole server.

Other than that I welcome the new power proposal, as long as it doesn't turn into another forced empty space paradigm.

Edit: On second thought, this seems more complicated than it should be.
1. Why the tech points? Why can't chambers just consume power? Why create a completely redundant different resource coming from the very same reactor?
2. Stabilizers. They seem like renamed heat sinks. Do the exact same: increase reactor efficiency by drawing something away from the reactor and thus have to be placed far away from it to properly function, preferably close to the ship's outer hull... rings a bell?

 

[Haalon]

And also, if the only limit to the effective size of a reactor is the distance to stabilizers, than thin and long ships will be much more effective than other, more compact ships of the same mass.

 

[Ithirahad]

TBH, why do we need stabilizers at all? It seems to me that everything works fine without them. If we want to have power nodes or something to distribute power in large ships (give the base reactor a max range and create more vulnerable targets in large ships), that's fine, but why stabilizers? They seem awfully strange and arbitrary?

Otherwise, I haven't thought of anything else in particular to whine about. :P

 

[Valiant70]

TBH, why do we need stabilizers at all? It seems to me that everything works fine without them. If we want to have power nodes or something to distribute power in large ships (give the base reactor a max range and create more vulnerable targets in large ships), that's fine, but why stabilizers? They seem awfully strange and arbitrary?

Otherwise, I haven't thought of anything else in particular to whine about. :P

My dear, Watson! Clearly these "stabilizers" help to mitigate the block stuffing meta by requiring ships with a certain amount of power to have a certain minimum box dimension. Thus, ships such as the saucer-and-rods style from Star Trek can potentially be effective. (And yes, chandeliers if you really want to build them, although they have no clear advantage because geometry.)

 

[IronDusk33]

I'm completely on board with this, but we do need to come up with a different name for 'Tech Points', maybe just 'Excess Energy' or something simple like that.

I'm also going to agree with Matt_Bradock, don't compare the chamber system to an upgrade tree. I was actually very confused in the video when Criss was talking about it until I realized it wasn't an experience or skill tree, but a sort of progressive/upgrade tree.

 

[Lecic]

I like most of this (besides tech points, terrible name, call them open power channels or power conduit optimization or something else) except for....

Doesn't this encourage boxy ships somewhat?

1)what is to stop us from putting redundant stabilizers outside the ship hull to gain maximum power i.e. the chandelier?

Because taking a hit to the stabilizers is terrible for your ship?

And also, if the only limit to the effective size of a reactor is the distance to stabilizers, than thin and long ships will be much more effective than other, more compact ships of the same mass.

As long as the distance isn't too harsh this should only be a problem for cube/sphere ships.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Hmmm I approve.

 

[Valiant70]

Doesn't this encourage boxy ships somewhat?

Quite the opposite, actually. A boxy ship will have more hull close to the edges of the bounding box, while a thinner one with projections or pylons can have a larger reactor box compared to the rest of it and STILL have somewhere to put the docked entity outside its reactor box. There are pros and cons each way, but unless you want a ridiculously large number of turrets and a small reactor, it will probably not encourage boxy ships, although they should be easy to design.

 

[kiddan]

This system is both an improvement from the current system and the first proposal, if you ask me. I do have one question, however; In what way would this system effect drones, passive push clock warheads, and other ships of minimal size? I'd like to understand a few more of these smaller details before I'm fully sold on the idea.

 

[Ithirahad]

Actually, yeah, that system for external reactors is kind of bad. Why not just disable them entirely?
[doublepost=1494978083,1494977988][/doublepost]

This system is both an improvement from the current system and the first proposal, if you ask me. I do have one question, however; In what way would this system effect drones, passive push clock warheads, and other ships of minimal size? I'd like to understand a few more of these smaller details before I'm fully sold on the idea.

Drones would primarily change in that they no longer need space for power capacity, which was annoying (and the base 10,000 power capacity was a bad stopgap).
Push-clock warheads might not work any more, depending on what they decide to do with passives.
Larger ships of relatively minimal size would also be buffed for reasons stated above.

 

[Valiant70]

This system is both an improvement from the current system and the first proposal, if you ask me. I do have one question, however; In what way would this system effect drones, passive push clock warheads, and other ships of minimal size? I'd like to understand a few more of these smaller details before I'm fully sold on the idea.

Anything could technically be launched from within the bounding box as long as there is a means to activate its reactor after launch, and a means to get docked onto a rail before its reactor must shut down.

 

[Lecic]

Quite the opposite, actually. A boxy ship will have more hull close to the edges of the bounding box, while a thinner one with projections or pylons can have a larger reactor box compared to the rest of it and STILL have somewhere to put the docked entity outside its reactor box. There are pros and cons each way, but unless you want a ridiculously large number of turrets and a small reactor, it will probably not encourage boxy ships, although they should be easy to design.

Requiring ships of a certain shape (wedges) to put their turrets on pylons/ridges sounds like a bad system.

Actually, yeah, that system for external reactors is kind of bad. Why not just disable them entirely?

This actually makes me think, why not disable ALL docked reactors? By making turrets need to draw power from the main ship, you remove the advantage they have of splitting up all the reactor HP, which would make turret boats a huge pain to properly kill. You would also make EMP actually able to work on turret boats, as turret boats are currently pretty much immune to EMP if their guns are self powered (and trust me, they usually are.).

 

[MrFURB]

What dictates the size and number of stabilizer groups. It sounds like I could put one stabilizer ridiculously far away such that my opponent cant see it, and it will perform just as well as a box of them surrounding my reactor. Why would I build bigger groups/more groups if they don't matter?

For a reactor to be 100% efficient you need an equal number of stabilizers. And yeah, I had an old ship back before the weapons update that did that; looked like a fighter but had huge chunks of systems outside normal render range. I mean, there's nothing stopping you before OR after the power update.

This is a bit cryptic and feels overly complex. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong. What determines the recharge rate and power discharge?

Very likely to be raw block count with the total power needed being block count multiplied by weapon combo.

 

[Valiant70]

Requiring ships of a certain shape (wedges) to put their turrets on pylons/ridges sounds like a bad system.

Whether it will actually do that or not depends on whether we can reshape the box, which I think we can. Make the box flat enough, and a wedge could have turrets along half of its top and bottom easily.

 

[Ithirahad]

This actually makes me think, why not disable ALL docked reactors? By making turrets need to draw power from the main ship, you remove the advantage they have of splitting up all the reactor HP, which would make turret boats a huge pain to properly kill. You would also make EMP actually able to work on turret boats, as turret boats are currently pretty much immune to EMP if their guns are self powered (and trust me, they usually are.).

Exactly. I see no reason to keep them, and with a power revamp it's time they be eliminated altogether.

 

[Calhoun]

This actually makes me think, why not disable ALL docked reactors? By making turrets need to draw power from the main ship, you remove the advantage they have of splitting up all the reactor HP, which would make turret boats a huge pain to properly kill. You would also make EMP actually able to work on turret boats, as turret boats are currently pretty much immune to EMP if their guns are self powered (and trust me, they usually are.).

I don't think killing off self powered turrets is a good idea. That just seems like an arbitrary restriction for a mechanic that actually required some thought and design to work properly.

 

[Ithirahad]

I don't think killing off self powered turrets is a good idea. That just seems like an arbitrary restriction for a mechanic that actually required some thought and design to work properly.

It does, but it also still circumvents any balancing measures on ship power that Schine might put in place down the road, and... really, now that there is no power capacity, I don't see any particularly valid use for the things. Turrets should just be main ship guns that swivel.

EDIT: Allowing reactors on turrets also inflates the size of turrets... and the last thing we need are big moving docked entities to bloat up collision calculations.