StarMade v0.18999 - Some serious optimizations and balance changes

[Spartan-228]

We no longer have the ability to build effective sniper ships and the primary cannon set up will go back to being the buzzsaw.
I am really disappointed. I can see how maybe punch through was a little op, but I always felt that it would be solved with the HP system. Also your attempt to make piercing a viable effect failed. It has little to no more advantage in penetration then the punch through and is useless against shields.
From the description of piercing I have always understood that it was supposed to pass through the first block it cam in contact with, doing little to no damage to that block and imparting all its damage to the blocks behind that block. However it never did this and was thus pointless because it behaved like a week punch through.

So I beg you to pleas return punch through back to the way it was. Otherwise a massive number of sniper ships will be nothing but eye candy. As for piercing if you made it so that it ignored the first layer of armor and imparted its damage to the blocks underneath, it would be very useful for fighters.

 

[0ldSkull]

kupu schema One minor-ish problem I use Ice for color decoration due to its effect with lights. However.... the ice has been magically turned into wood with kitty powers. Any way we can fix it D:

A few textures have been rearranged on the sheet(s), so custom texture packs will need to be updated to look normal again. In the mean time you could switch to the Default texture pack, which looked fine in my quick test.

 

[Xavori]

Not to complain too much, because, hey, love new stuffs and fixes...

But could we get a 24 hour or so heads up. I'm the server admin, and I have to push a button to update the server. So if I have at least a rough idea of when I need to be around to push that button, it'd be great.

Radar jamming still doesn't have an indicator. Little thing, but it'll be nice when it's fixed.

Haven't run into anything else yet. I'll make really for reals bug reports for those.

 

[MorbidHalo]

hmm ive got some weird issues that have popped up since update, everything was fine last night when i was playing but after the update today ive been get this see attached:

 

[aceface]

Thanks, thanks, just thanks so MUCH. I love these balance changes, basically everything I every wanted!!!! :D :D :D

 

[hzzzln]

FPS does now not drop below 30 when I look at NuclearFun's Hyperion (and some of my inferior ships in the background)

This is amazing. Thank you guys so much. And the balance changes, especially to shields and their crafting... it feels like christmas all over again :D

 

[Gamel]

Thanks, thanks, just thanks so MUCH. I love these balance changes, basically everything I every wanted!!!! :D :D :D

nope, this is not everything you wanted.
We still need the proper 3rd person view:p

 

[DrTorf]

Impressiv Work

But I have a small Problem: my ´yellow forcefields a just glowing Grey boxes ... any ideas?

 

[Gamel]

Impressiv Work

But I have a small Problem: my ´yellow forcefields a just glowing Grey boxes ... any ideas?

are you using the default texture pack? if not, try the default one

 

[DrTorf]

are you using the default texture pack? if not, try the default one

Thx, it was on realistic

 

[kupu]

Quick update on the hotfixes required;

Firstly, stop using the "Realistic" or "Pixel" pack. The realistic pack has been depreciated for months and needs to be removed from the installation. The pixel is awaiting an overhaul. Both miss lots of blocks and have wrong assignments.

When encountering graphical issues, please double check with the Default pack. This is the (as the name implies) Default setting and most current. If you are not using a custom community made texture pack, use default please.

Ice had a missing texture assignment after the texture shuffle. It will be reassigned correctly and released in the hotfix.

Ice planet plants were no longer transparent sprites. The new optimisations now require us to specify these as transparent objects where as before it only used the textures transparency to achieve the result. This is fixed and will be released in the hotfix.

Blue forcefields had a super bright light, not a subtle glow. This has been fixed and will be released in the hotfix.

Hot fix should be available tonight (GMT). Thanks for the patience.

 

[MorbidHalo]

Using default still have above issue any other ideas on a fix? or should i just wait for the hot fix and see if that helps?

 

[SmilingDemon]

MorbidHalo ... could you please attach a new Log.txt.x file from the log folder when that problem happens. and maybe the settings.cfg from the Starmade folder ? Makes verifying the problem easier. What grafics hardware are you using ?

 

[kupu]

Using default still have above issue any other ideas on a fix? or should i just wait for the hot fix and see if that helps?

This does not seem to be a texture problem.
I'd do as SmilingDemon said and provide the log.txt and settings.cfg in a new thread under "Game Support". We may be able to fix this with some setting adjustments.

If not, then it could be a bug which a) gets fixed in the hotfix or b) can be reported at bugs.star-made.org to be fixed later on.

 

[Criss]

We no longer have the ability to build effective sniper ships and the primary cannon set up will go back to being the buzzsaw.
I am really disappointed....

So I beg you to pleas return punch through back to the way it was. Otherwise a massive number of sniper ships will be nothing but eye candy.

First, I think we should get more than a few hours after a release to actually test stuff.

Second, this is alpha. While it is nice to make it easiest for players, we also want balanced gamelay. If the devs have to make radical changes to provide a better end product, then I can't encourage them enough.

 

[Lancake]

Also, stop using bearishmushroom's shader mods, they are broken and can give (hilarious) issues. Should be "easy" to fix though.

We no longer have the ability to build effective sniper ships and the primary cannon set up will go back to being the buzzsaw.
I am really disappointed. I can see how maybe punch through was a little op, but I always felt that it would be solved with the HP system. Also your attempt to make piercing a viable effect failed. It has little to no more advantage in penetration then the punch through and is useless against shields.
From the description of piercing I have always understood that it was supposed to pass through the first block it cam in contact with, doing little to no damage to that block and imparting all its damage to the blocks behind that block. However it never did this and was thus pointless because it behaved like a week punch through.

So I beg you to pleas return punch through back to the way it was. Otherwise a massive number of sniper ships will be nothing but eye candy. As for piercing if you made it so that it ignored the first layer of armor and imparted its damage to the blocks underneath, it would be very useful for fighters.

The piercing effect block was set to punch through yes, the piercing damage system was not used the last few months.
The piercing damage system is back though...and with that, beams will be able to penetrate again once more.

"It has little to no more advantage in penetration then the punch through" Great, that's is what we were aiming for. the Piercing blocks will work great against thinning out armor, same for low damage weapons while the punchthrough blocks are just average at best. Good luck getting through a 3 thick layers of 7500 ehp with small punchthrough weapons (like 500-1000 damage per shot, which are fairly big already)

"I can see how maybe punch through was a little op" That is unfortunately an understatement. A weapon dealing only 1000 damage could shoot through 40 system blocks, now multiply that by 50-100 groups and you destroy 2000-4000 blocks each hit. It is also relatively easy to get this weapon damage and group count with a 0.1 sec reload. so 40 000 blocks destroyed in 1 second, while explosive and the piercing damage system would offer 6000 in 1 second at best.
Note: once explosive can be set to higher number to 2-3 radius, the softcap on the 2 other systems will be increased to stay equal.

"From the description of piercing I have always understood that it was supposed to pass through the first block it cam in contact with, doing little to no damage to that block and imparting all its damage to the blocks behind that block. However it never did this and was thus pointless because it behaved like a week punch through."

It does not behave like a weak punch through, the piercing damage system is capable of inflicting a lot of damage behind strong blocks. It spreads out its damage along a line, with a punch through system you are required to have the damage needed to destroy the first, second,... block.

I'm not saying the numbers we chose are perfect, there are some (currently 2) bugs out there that mess up the results. And yes, sniper ships will most likely be gone, at least the slow firing ones. They will still be useful to inflict high alpha damage on shields and down them quickly but of course you don't use a block damage effect on that ^^

 

[Nydos]

This happend after patch:

http://scr.hu/1665/xgxfx
http://scr.hu/1665/xgxfx
http://scr.hu/1665/242le

before all was ok, may i ask for help?

 

[Yellow Voices]

So Today i log in and play with my big ship, Turns out all my 'shiny blocks', Crystals, ice, glass plex doors etc, have been 'damaged'. I only assume that due to blocks having their HP improved, this has given the blocks the appearance of damage. How can I fix this? My ship is way too large to simply run over it with an astro-tech beam. I'm severely dismayed by this. I don't want all my work to go to waste. Any suggestions?

 

[Lancake]

So Today i log in and play with my big ship, Turns out all my 'shiny blocks', Crystals, ice, glass plex doors etc, have been 'damaged'. I only assume that due to blocks having their HP improved, this has given the blocks the appearance of damage. How can I fix this? My ship is way too large to simply run over it with an astro-tech beam. I'm severely dismayed by this. I don't want all my work to go to waste. Any suggestions?

That's something forgotten, no worries. Wait it out, the hotfix will fix it.

 

[Calbiri]

Those block types did not have their HP adjusted. Also, a fix is to save the ship as a new blueprint, and purchase it a new gain from the catalog. This should cause the damaged blocks to be spawned in without damage (presuming that block damage is actually the problem)