StarMade v0.19485 Internationalization Support & Bugfixes

[Mr.Steam]

I happen to love transporters but I do think there needs to be some risk or drawback associated with using them. I know they drop shields but that is usually not a problem unless you are beaming around during combat, which probably doesn't happen all that often. I think the lock-on/charge timer is a good compromise. If the lock-on/charge time varied according to how far you are transporting that might be good also.

 

[StormWing0]

^Question How to Lockon from a station to a ship or other station?

 

[refirendum]

My client's performance has been dropping as the two newest updates were installed. The server has been increasingly giving me "server is under high load" messages

 

[Lone_Puppy]

The transporter beacon now has a charge time. That's just what it needed. I think it's balanced enough as it is now. You still have to drop your shields to use it so you would risk the ship if you used it in battle.

I agree, the charge time is a good way to control its use, but I'm not sure we need a beacon at all.

I would prefer a type of transponder, that doesn't do anything unless you have some sort of separate portable wireless logic remote control for your transporter. This would behave exactly the same way the wireless block works, but you pair it with a logic block on the ship. Give it short range, like 1-2km.

On Star Trek they would rely on somebody on the ship controlling the transporter and I would prefer this. The transponder would be useful for identifying you apart from everyone else. It would also allow for logic automation to beam you back when triggered, as long as you are in range. Sure, they introduced mobile/portable transporters, but this is likely to occur with the advancement of technology.

Like the warp inhibitor, you could simply have a transport inhibitor.
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My client's performance has been dropping as the two newest updates were installed. The server has been increasingly giving me "server is under high load" messages

Me too! I notice my computer's CPU fans power up like crazy these days.

 

[theEota]

On Star Trek they would rely on somebody on the ship controlling the transporter and I would prefer this.

That would completely break the feature for single player

 

[Lone_Puppy]

That would completely break the feature for single player

I did mention the transponder, which is pretty much the beacon but without the ability to initiate transport.
The remote would be where you could control the transporter remotely and anything else for that matter. Even a push effect to cause the ship to descend to the planet surface or eject a shuttle that descends.

 

[FatCobra]

On Star Trek it happened a few times where a person would activate the transport then run on to the pad for transport. As well as having an "emergency" beam out transponder for one.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

The following might be influenced by my most recent experiences about the current build.

The game's borderline unplayable. Having new features is useless if I can't keep a server online long enough to start using them
Furthermore, adding new features to an unstable build will only add another set of bugs in addition to those that are already in, even known, and NOT fixed. (like the shipflightmode HUD just turning off sometimes).
Trying to play on my favourite server today, and it keeps going down, to a point where the admins didn't even turn it back on because there was no point, it'd last for less than 10 minutes. OFC, nothing in the logs pointing at what could cause the timeouts. Couldn't even have been the old database, it got a full wipe with 0.19476
So, personally, I might be a statistically insignificant minority, but I don't want new features. I want one damn feature, and that is stability. The ability to play the game. The ability to use all current features without crashing the game or corrupting the database.
I couldn't have done that for God knows, how long. I was always hoping that maybe the next update will focus on stability instead of putting in more barely tested (or only tested on a really small scale) features that further add to instability instead of reducing it, and further complicate debugging because it will be even harder to find out what has broken what this time.
You can only build a skyscraper on solid foundation, you can't throw floor on floor half-assed. It'll collapse into a mess. Which is, right now, I feel exactly what is happening to Starmade.

 

[kiraen]

The game's borderline unplayable. Having new features is useless if I can't keep a server online long enough to start using them
Furthermore, adding new features to an unstable build will only add another set of bugs in addition to those that are already in, even known, and NOT fixed.

This comes up every now and then. Look around a bit and you'll find a thread or 5 basically saying the same thing.
'Stop adding features and fix X'

The end result usually turns out to be

1. Get over it, alpha is for feature additions.
   
2. Not gonna happen cuz it'll just break again when Y is added.
3. The majority doesn't have this problem, you'll have to wait.
4. Bug fixes happen concurrently (at the same time as) feature additions. They are working on it.

Pick one. It really doesn't matter which. None of the other threads changed anything, I doubt this one will either.


On that note, my personal server is stable. The only server I join with friends is stable (discounting DDOS attacks). Dunno what to tell you.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

This comes up every now and then. Look around a bit and you'll find a thread or 5 basically saying the same thing.
'Stop adding features and fix X'

The end result usually turns out to be

1. Get over it, alpha is for feature additions.
   
2. Not gonna happen cuz it'll just break again when Y is added.
3. The majority doesn't have this problem, you'll have to wait.
4. Bug fixes happen concurrently (at the same time as) feature additions. They are working on it.

Pick one. It really doesn't matter which. None of the other threads changed anything, I doubt this one will either.


On that note, my personal server is stable. The only server I join with friends is stable (discounting DDOS attacks). Dunno what to tell you.

There are bugs, confirmed bugs, on the tracker (go look for yourself, phab.starma.de) that have been around for at least 3 releases already... without any sign of being worked on.
The main problem with adding feature upon feature is that the code will be an absolute mess, and each added unstable untested "feature" will make debugging exponentially harder, because in order to splat a particular bug, you have to find out exactly which "feature(s)" cause(s) it.
Furthermore, a lot of features were just abandoned right after adding them, and are incomplete or still bugged therefore almost useless.
Just a short list:

1. NPCs were added long ago, but they are useless. There were promises for quests given by them, use of NPC crew, a Lua interface to give them advanced scripts or orders, right now they have trouble even sticking to your ship, let alone being able to do anything remotely useful, and they have been in the game how long? Over a year now?
2. Faction points. Right now, their only effect on the game is the drain when you have too many systems for your member count/activity. Half a dozen different uses were planned for them (buy your asteroid respawns in your system, spawn AI ships for your faction as patrols, use them for trading, gain them from the also never implemented quests etc.)
3. Damage beam hitscan: hits at long ranges still don't always register. This has been there since the very weapons update
4. Immortal, ghosted turret sections if the master entity is deleted (overheating, /destroy_entity, /remove_overheating) - another bug to the rail system (among the dozen, at lteast some of those were fixed)
   
5. Wireless logic blocks tend to unlink after server restart since the day they were released
   
6. Ships built by shipyards have all their block metadata wiped, including logic connections, display block texts, storage pulls etc.
   

And then there were features that vanished, one of those in particular helped a lot with making the game universe look alive. When I started playing (back then with no fancy backgrounds, flat planets, 4 weapon systems total, low speed, small sectors, and low view distance) I often ran into Trading Guild fleets travelling from or to a nearby shop. Sometimes they ran into a pirate spawn and the player could run into a big battle. It added a lot to the game's atmosphere.
These Trading Guild spawns occasionally visited shops, naturally restocking them
It's all gone now, haven't seen any of it happen in over a year.

 

[kiraen]

First, regarding NPCs, have you read http://starmadedock.net/threads/starmade-development-direction.21615/ ?
Second, factions points. You might want to have something to spend those points on before you can actually spend the points. You listed several features that need to be added before there is any point to adding the feature you want added. Weren't you complaining about adding features?

As for the rest...

1. Get over it, alpha is for feature additions.
2. Not gonna happen cuz it'll just break again when Y is added.
3. The majority doesn't have this problem, you'll have to wait.
4. Bug fixes happen concurrently (at the same time as) feature additions. They are working on it.

Pick one. It really doesn't matter which. None of the other threads changed anything, I doubt this one will either.

You are welcome to write your own game. Moving on...

 

[FatCobra]

I haven't noticed any unstabili

The following might be influenced by my most recent experiences about the current build.

The game's borderline unplayable. Having new features is useless if I can't keep a server online long enough to start using them
Furthermore, adding new features to an unstable build will only add another set of bugs in addition to those that are already in, even known, and NOT fixed. (like the shipflightmode HUD just turning off sometimes).
Trying to play on my favourite server today, and it keeps going down, to a point where the admins didn't even turn it back on because there was no point, it'd last for less than 10 minutes. OFC, nothing in the logs pointing at what could cause the timeouts. Couldn't even have been the old database, it got a full wipe with 0.19476
So, personally, I might be a statistically insignificant minority, but I don't want new features. I want one damn feature, and that is stability. The ability to play the game. The ability to use all current features without crashing the game or corrupting the database.
I couldn't have done that for God knows, how long. I was always hoping that maybe the next update will focus on stability instead of putting in more barely tested (or only tested on a really small scale) features that further add to instability instead of reducing it, and further complicate debugging because it will be even harder to find out what has broken what this time.
You can only build a skyscraper on solid foundation, you can't throw floor on floor half-assed. It'll collapse into a mess. Which is, right now, I feel exactly what is happening to Starmade.

Alpha

 

[Lecic]

Damage beam hitscan: hits at long ranges still don't always register. This has been there since the very weapons update

I think this actually got fixed.

And then there were features that vanished, one of those in particular helped a lot with making the game universe look alive. When I started playing (back then with no fancy backgrounds, flat planets, 4 weapon systems total, low speed, small sectors, and low view distance) I often ran into Trading Guild fleets travelling from or to a nearby shop. Sometimes they ran into a pirate spawn and the player could run into a big battle. It added a lot to the game's atmosphere.
These Trading Guild spawns occasionally visited shops, naturally restocking them
It's all gone now, haven't seen any of it happen in over a year.

This still happens. We just never run into those fleets anymore because of jump drives.

 

[Master_Artificer]

"I think this actually got fixed."

Wait WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

Thats amazing. This is amazing. I'm going to reinstall my Beam+Beam turrets now on those severs with sectors more than 10km wide.

 

[Spartan-228]

Okay can some one tell me if the AI waives work as advertised, and if they work as advertised how do you make it do that. The reason I ask is because yes I can get the level 1 difficulty wave to spawn, but non of the others will spawn.

 

[StormWing0]

Okay can some one tell me if the AI waives work as advertised, and if they work as advertised how do you make it do that. The reason I ask is because yes I can get the level 1 difficulty wave to spawn, but non of the others will spawn.

Been having the same issue. Also they seem to shoot each other now in the case of the pirates.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Been having the same issue. Also they seem to shoot each other now in the case of the pirates.

Pirates now regard each other as hostiles? That is also amazing.

 

[StormWing0]

Pirates now regard each other as hostiles? That is also amazing.

Saw some shooting at a turret that was blown off of a station so not totally sure.

 

[Spartan-228]

I wish the waive level thing would get fixed. I really want to use that feature, and I have a lot of ships I built for that purpose.

 

[Trekkerjoe]

I wish the waive level thing would get fixed. I really want to use that feature, and I have a lot of ships I built for that purpose.

Oh, so that feature was not fixed then? Bummer. I really wanted to have trader fleets escorting cargo vessels. The cargo vessels would have been rigged to warp upon enemy contact, to add a more dynamic feel to them.