StarMade v0.199.349 - NPC Faction Update

[Jojomo]

Well now we have feedback for those issues. We didn't when it was released. Players have made threads and we can assess what adjustments need to be made. In the meantime, we can't sit and wait for those threads to appear before working on the next thing, so we press on.

Oh, I didn't even realise taking away the docked entity aspect of ship design was a realistic possibility.

I really hope that doesn't happen, docked entities create such a huge volume of design potential that wouldn't be possible without them.
(I don't mean "bigger weapons/ships", I mean, to reuse some examples I've posted in other threads: having separate reactors for different areas of shields so that damage to one reactor can mean shields in some areas become weaker than others, or giving separate reactors to weapons that are considered too important to have to share a reactor with other systems, etc)

 

[DukeofRealms]

Guys, this is really getting offtopic. Can we please take suggestions and other comments not directly related to this update to Suggestions/General Discussions.

Thank you!

...Time to get back to break, must not work, already failing.

 

[Lancake]

I read that a system can now be completely depleted of resources. Resources are crafted into blocks and blocks are eventually destroyed...

Does this mean that eventually all systems become denuded and a galaxy is then stripped? It is both an interesting idea and possibly a bane to long-term play, right?

Later that could be a possibility with the right server settings. Disable the replenishing of asteroids would also mean you have to increase the amount of resources each system can hold, or each system will run out of juice after an hour ^^
Right now only the NPC use this system though, see below for some more info on that.

Sooo.... Now back to some other questions about the update...

Can you explain more about the resources of a sector? I don't quite understand the mechanics... Before the update sectors would replenish resources - will that not happen now, or only if you totally mine out a sector? And, is that for all players, or just NPCs (thus forcing expansion...)?

Thanks again for the great work!

Star systems right now have a random value for each of the 16 resources, those will be used to redistribute asteroid generation so that a particular one appears more than others. We'll still use asteroid orbits and their asteroid type spawn mechanic (hot near the star, cold at the system border) but the types that spawn will also be increased or reduced depending on that value.

The resource system is in place, but it's not used by everything yet. Only the NPC Factions will affect resources available in their systems.
They mine every 15 minutes, and every 15 minutes a portion of the system gets filled up again. It's possible they mine more than gets replenished but factions don't mine when resource availability is below a certain threshold.
For the NPC Factions that means they can't just mine the same amount every turn and get away with it.

For players that means adjusting the amount and size of asteroids when you enter an asteroid sector.
Since that resource availability is between 0% and 100%, we use that percentage to load the right amount of asteroids and their size when you find an asteroid sector in that system. 10% might mean you only get 1 asteroid per sector and it's a tiny one, 100% gives you the 4-5 asteroids with max asteroid size (determined in the server config).
That already works for those NPC Systems but isn't applied to unclaimed or player claimed systems yet.

As far as I know, we're planning to finish this for the update that requires an universe reset. There's not a lot of work left on it but we also have to make sure it's well balanced.

 

[Tshara]

I think the fleets need to learn the concept of ‘breaking’ and ‘slowing down’ before approaching a station. It’s a pinball fiesta right now.

Love the activity it brings to the universe however.

 

[Drakkart]

ok so i am reading the patch notes and i have a few questions:
1. why are the demands for blocks set in config files as instead being pulled from the blueprints of the designs they are utilizing?
2. are factions meant to be a nuisance? when i come to a starmade server in 5 years and i want to settle somewhere am i having to decide which faction should hate me for battling them out of a system to take control over it myself for my faction? i see nowhere documented which scenarios will stop the factions from taking space. so in a few years they probably will have taken all systems as theirs except of being fought of.
3. since pirates are also a faction how can we align with them?

I can work with this. Thank you.

Yes. And I think a number of us in the dev team certainly want this to become a reality. I will explain the problems in a second.


I suspect your suggestion would be to limit the resources a cargo block can hold? I have yet to see how many trade ships are used with the current update, or how full they are per trade. When I do, I am sure to make some adjustments.


While it may be completely inefficient, how does this differ from other games. I suppose cooldowns are used more often in say EVE, which you referenced. But you are also sure to see many systems online at the same time if you have the capacitor to support them. I do not want every system online at once. I am sure the others agree that having defensive effects, weapons, and overdrive on at the same time is not how we want players playing the game. At the same time, I see videos from (suposedly) good players drawing too much power for just one item, and rendering them incapable of activating everything at once. I need a general consensus that this is how gameplay operates. Not just from you. People in this thread reading our conversation will have to agree or disagree that what you say happens, is happening. It isn't as easy as tweaking a number. That number affects multiple playestyles and every unique ship out there.


So what I am gathering from this as that this type of weapon should not exist? Should we increase the penalty for multi-barrel guns? The requirement of a massive capacitor makes sense to me. It is overkill, but that's how that particular player wants to deal damage. Is it too much damage? Is it too easy to make this weapon? Is this what players gravitate towards?


You will have surely noticed that we are now classifying ships into specific roles. For now, it determines what ships spawn for NPC fleets/stations, and nothing else. However, in the future we can push for more individuality between ships. Through either your personal progression in the game, or through NPC crew, or relatively undetermined features such as research we can create a system that gives unique purpose to ships and their roles. This direction is a certainty, it is just a matter of "how?". We could give ships modifiers, but is that fair? We could require NPC crew for ship specializations, but will that work on different scales? Another option is to simply select a role for the ship right then and there, but then we need to avoid exploits. I will admit that we have not got an answer to making ships have specific roles just yet. They AI also wouldn't back any of that at the moment and so it is pointless with regards to PVE as it stands. Hopefully the introduction of those roles with this update is an indication that we do indeed want that diversity.


Sure, but if they agreed with you, they would just state that they agree with you. This is why I am skeptical with regards to your comments. I will listen. But I can't listen to one person alone. You consistently appear on these threads with criticisms. If a large majority or at least a vocal majority are talking against you, your points, or simply not agreeing with what you say, you stand as the odd one out. I hope you understand.

I think what raising is complaining in a few words is
-> too much effort spent on new features while we still not have a definite guideline of what the game is going to become. Also to few bug fixing rounds along with a non visionary more quick patch approach to long time community concerns which ended up "meh" -> auxiliary
-> second the forums and fanboyism and it would be good moderation to remind every party of expressing opinions is not adding arguments to a discussion no matter of picking the side of the probable majority.
-> i see raisin as one of those players which got the math down which enjoy building efficient and for such people their enjoyment is hen out of planing evolves something beautiful from the inside... most of the playerbase likes pretty ships. so the question is where is this game heading are you dumbing it down soon so everyone can battle even with shity builds? or will the game stay with all these nice restrictions and stays true to the hard to master feel we have now?

 

[AndyP]

ok so i am reading the patch notes and i have a few questions:
1. why are the demands for blocks set in config files as instead being pulled from the blueprints of the designs they are utilizing?

They read the weighting from config files.
So you can define if they need like 100% of the blocks from a ship blueprint to spawn the ship, or 10% or even 1000%.
So the actual faction demand is an index of their supplied blueprints.

Funny example:
They now have placeholder stations, as the trading guild home station we intended to use (that white blue-ish with the orange tanks),
had the contents of the tanks replaced with warheads for some reason. (Make them explosive if being shot, as the station didnt require to have more system blocks.)

In the first testing rounds we were expecting a bug in the calculation as the AI started to buy millions of those warheads until we realized their main station is made from 30% warheads..

2. are factions meant to be a nuisance? when i come to a starmade server in 5 years and i want to settle somewhere am i having to decide which faction should hate me for battling them out of a system to take control over it myself for my faction? i see nowhere documented which scenarios will stop the factions from taking space. so in a few years they probably will have taken all systems as theirs except of being fought of.

They have an exponential growth curve, so they will grow slower the bigger they are.
So not sure how it is after years, but they should not go above 60-100 systems unless you modify the config.
We started with 7 NPC factions and even after week of growing they did not occupy too much of the universe.

3. since pirates are also a faction how can we align with them?

For now many diplomacy modifiers are trimmed down.
As we have for example modifiers for destroyed ships.
So if you for example start a war, and only defend for some days, you would still destroy their ships attacking you, and thus they would get a higher aggression rating, that could not lower as long as you are there to fight back the ships.
So for now we set them to be "peaceful", and they will most likely accept a peace offer if you send it to them.
As we need some more details in the diplomacy conditions.
Like make it matter WHERE the ship was destroyed.
If you destroy it in your area, it would possibly not matter that much, if you do that in their area it should count even more than hitting one in a neutral area.

Pirates are a NPC faction in the list, but they do not have an AI and settlement like the others.
(They are kinda kept for legacy reasons, as people may have built in their name, joined their faction and so on. They will most likely vanish in the future universe overhaul and melt into the scavengers)

- Andy

 

[Jananton]

This makes so much fun building your first ship again while fleets fly past in the distance.
It's great to see a lot of what we've watched building in the dev streams see flying by and adding to the overall feel that things are happening in the world, or eh, universe of course.

One thing to note though, I feel some Trade-guild pilots need their license revoked since they seem not to obey low speed restrictions in the vicinity of shops and stations, and moreover, don't leave an insurance note when they bump into your building efforts. They bump you sectors, or even systems away while you franticly try to add some reactors and engines and you find that the advanced build menu stops you in space while your ship travels on.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Reilly Reese]

Chriss

Chiss + Criss?

Spoiler: Chiss Criss

 

[Drakkart]

They read the weighting from config files.
So you can define if they need like 100% of the blocks from a ship blueprint to spawn the ship, or 10% or even 1000%.
So the actual faction demand is an index of their supplied blueprints.

Funny example:
They now have placeholder stations, as the trading guild home station we intended to use (that white blue-ish with the orange tanks),
had the contents of the tanks replaced with warheads for some reason. (Make them explosive if being shot, as the station didnt require to have more system blocks.)

In the first testing rounds we were expecting a bug in the calculation as the AI started to buy millions of those warheads until we realized their main station is made from 30% warheads..



They have an exponential growth curve, so they will grow slower the bigger they are.
So not sure how it is after years, but they should not go above 60-100 systems unless you modify the config.
We started with 7 NPC factions and even after week of growing they did not occupy too much of the universe.



For now many diplomacy modifiers are trimmed down.
As we have for example modifiers for destroyed ships.
So if you for example start a war, and only defend for some days, you would still destroy their ships attacking you, and thus they would get a higher aggression rating, that could not lower as long as you are there to fight back the ships.
So for now we set them to be "peaceful", and they will most likely accept a peace offer if you send it to them.
As we need some more details in the diplomacy conditions.
Like make it matter WHERE the ship was destroyed.
If you destroy it in your area, it would possibly not matter that much, if you do that in their area it should count even more than hitting one in a neutral area.

Pirates are a NPC faction in the list, but they do not have an AI and settlement like the others.
(They are kinda kept for legacy reasons, as people may have built in their name, joined their faction and so on. They will most likely vanish in the future universe overhaul and melt into the scavengers)

- Andy

Thank you for the response but is it in general planed to also have a nohome system faction you could align with due switching into a pirate role surpressing communications make yourself a name in the black market that basically is part in every faction.
Ok i am comming from how real life is pirates are not pirates because they somewhen decided to join a pirate faction pirates become pirates through their acts and afterwards keep going on with their lives when uncaught. but they are building up a reputation amongst themselfes for you never pirate alone. so will we be able to operate naturally and on occassion switch into the pirate role surpessing communication and take over a ships cargo by force to then let them go or will have to kill the ship for it's loot.

will a ships loot always correspond to their cargo + scrap of the stuff the ship was made of?

 

[AndyP]

Not sure if it works to have them without a home.
But there is nothing in the way to spawn like 30 isolated factions that just take a system, have one station in it,
and degrade the drive to expand to zero.

They could then use their production to increase the total fleet and start raiding ships around them.
Can even balance them to only sell stuff,
so if they capture and dismantle a big ship with grey hull they will start selling large amounts of grey hull shortly after that.

Loot will most likely correspond to the size and blocks of the ships (talking about those item-blobs from destroyed ships)
However, effectively getting the cargo from a ship will require to capture it and extract the cargo.
Shooting it with all its cargo and destroying the cargo wont give it as loot.
However, capturing by some type of radio conversation could be a thing in far future,
the mechanics to implement something like that, are not yet there.

This makes so much fun building your first ship again while fleets fly past in the distance.
It's great to see a lot of what we've watched building in the dev streams see flying by and adding to the overall feel that things are happening in the world, or eh, universe of course.

One thing to note though, I feel some Trade-guild pilots need their license revoked since they seem not to obey low speed restrictions in the vicinity of shops and stations, and moreover, don't leave an insurance note when they bump into your building efforts. They bump you sectors, or even systems away while you franticly try to add some reactors and engines and you find that the advanced build menu stops you in space while your ship travels on.

Greets,

Jan

Its also fun to just align to one with the grapple beam and let them taxi you around.
As the trade ones, fly from trade node to trade node they will most likely bring you to some player or other faction home.

And yes, their piloting is quite stupid, we will improve on that as said in the news. =)

- Andy

 

[Rixxan]

Thank you Schema and Co.


UPDOOOOOOOOTE!!!

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Are you sure that wasn't just the launcher? After I updated starmade, the launcher opened and proceeded to tell me that I was on the version I had left off on.

Yup, i went into a new single player universe and started a war with the Outcasts. EDIT: Just figured out the problem. I didn't realize the launcher doesn't automatically update itself, I still have v2.0.6.

edit: Also, what are the server check boxes to turn off NPC factions or at least all ship spawning? "Simulation"? I had a couple of single player servers set up for just creative building ships in peace/safety, but now NPC faction ships are flying all over the place.

 

[Reilly Reese]

One thing i've already noted is you can't read the full descriptions.

Criss Saber Y U NO PRESS ENTER

Also spellcheck kinda looks like there's no space between wealth and grants but not sure.

 

[Mariux]

TIME TO BULLY SOME FILTHY AI PLEBS

 

[Ithirahad]

Well now we have feedback for those issues. We didn't when it was released. Players have made threads and we can assess what adjustments need to be made. In the meantime, we can't sit and wait for those threads to appear before working on the next thing, so we press on.

While I personally don't see a huge issue with docked power specifically, from experience issues like that don't get handled until years down the line when the players bothered by them have already quit.

 

[StormWing0]

Criss if you can't fully power your ship's systems in ships under 200m on an axis you're doing something wrong. XD


That said what are the requirements for each of the rolls?

Like what's needed for a factory station to be a working factory station, or a mining station to be a working mining station, and so on.

 

[Criss]

Criss if you can't fully power your ship's systems in ships under 200m on an axis you're doing something wrong. XD

It helps to provide examples.

 

[Andir]

As a server admin...


How do I get these factions to work on a server? I have so far been unable to get a multiplayer server running with these new updates. I am updating to --dev but the only place I can get factions to spawn is in single player.

 

[Groovrider]

I had a ship that was 200 x 150 x 210 that was hard to power so fair enough.

 

[Reilly Reese]

As a server admin...


How do I get these factions to work on a server? I have so far been unable to get a multiplayer server running with these new updates. I am updating to --dev but the only place I can get factions to spawn is in single player.

You need to switch to release v0.199.349 (Latest)

Use the /npc_spawn_faction_pos_fixed command to spawn the factions. If you pay attention to the error message when you don't have a parameter it explains everything.