StarMade v0.199.349 - NPC Faction Update

[Amadeus]

How will NPC spawning work in non claimed sectors? Just curious after I wandered into some Isanths a little unexpectedly.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

How will NPC spawning work in non claimed sectors? Just curious after I wandered into some Isanths a little unexpectedly.

I think the old TG and Pirates are still in the game at this time. In my mess abouts I still come across pirate stations.

 

[Criss]

Apparently the Vault Station isn't suppose to be their homebase but for whatever reason it can be and when it does it loses it's display info. The normal vault stations have their display data.

It is temporarily their homebase.

 

[TrainDodger]

There is something wrong, I was able to steal and dissasemble a big transpor ship almost without open fire.
I touched the docking block of the npc ship with a public rail from my ship, so the npc ship magnetic-docked to mine. I moved it to my sector, destroyed the faction block with a small ship and keept all the stuff.

Your ship with the public rail... did it look like this, by any chance?

 

[Amadeus]

I think the old TG and Pirates are still in the game at this time. In my mess abouts I still come across pirate stations.

Same, I wonder if in later updates we will get wandering fleets from both the major and procedurally generated factions. I don't think it's feasible for every system in the game to be claimed, but I also don't think that unclaimed sectors should be empty of ships or stations.

 

[DragonSoul9000]

sorry for the language everyone! but I don't appreciate some contiuosly dogging developers about this and that needs to be fixed. they have a timeline set and a vision they are working towards. if someone can't appreciate that then they don't need to be playing or bringing other people down with them because they are unhappy. He could have done research into programming methods and other suggestions to make their job easier instead of trying to tear someone else down. Point is if I don't like a game I don't play it. I don't hound the heck out of the developers because it's not the way I wanted it.
[doublepost=1482345417,1482345044][/doublepost]Let me clarify that a little more before I have people start trying to rip me a new one! Bug reports, suggestions, even a little reminder here and there are always welcome but unfortunately no developer in this world will ever be able to please 100% of the masses 100% of the time. with that being said, how would anyone like for me to come into your home and start telling you how to run things, how to do thing, or that you are not doing something right!!! It's plain wrong and shows you have no respect for others and only care about yourself!!!

 

[Shaker]

The forums are here for us to share ideas and help this game progress, if all the info the devs got was praise and glory they wouldnt know of any of the bugs and broken aspects of the game, the bug tracker and all that is all good but you do need to tell the playerbase about it aswell for testing and for the other server admins to look into, the best place to get it out there is actually this page!
Like Criss not knowing about the sneaky dock stealer ship.

Another "bug" that keeps getting ignored is that jumpdrives can still be charged faster through logic, even though im pretty sure the devs are against the idea of chaindrives.

Another one i saw last night was a PvP ship at about 4million blocks with 1.5million worth of turrets extra, no hull all system.
How is this adding to the game?

 

[BillGHero]

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.




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.

Awesome answer! Very detailed and complete. Thank you very much.

 

[DragonSoul9000]

The forums are here for us to share ideas and help this game progress, if all the info the devs got was praise and glory they wouldnt know of any of the bugs and broken aspects of the game, the bug tracker and all that is all good but you do need to tell the playerbase about it aswell for testing and for the other server admins to look into, the best place to get it out there is actually this page!
Like Criss not knowing about the sneaky dock stealer ship.

Another "bug" that keeps getting ignored is that jumpdrives can still be charged faster through logic, even though im pretty sure the devs are against the idea of chaindrives.

Another one i saw last night was a PvP ship at about 4million blocks with 1.5million worth of turrets extra, no hull all system.
How is this adding to the game?

Shaker there is a difference in letting someone know that there is a bug that needs to be fixed and what Raisinbat was doing. He/she was blatantly putting down the game and the Developers. As I said in my earlier statement reporting bugs and the sort is fine but don't start drama just because you were not getting your way. Yes the game needs work but by god it is still fun to play right now as it is. That's what games are for, to have fun. Not going around gripping that something is not the way you like it. I tell you what, the one and only person that has any right to gripe that the game is not the way they like it is Schema!!!! I'm sorry if people don't like what I'm saying but what everyone fails to realize is that this is Schema's dream and we are all just along for the ride. Sit back enjoy the ride and see what it turns into!!!! Make suggetions, report bugs, come up with inventive ideas but don't try to dictate what other people's dreams should be like. If you want to do that then make enough money to pay someone to code a game to your liking!!! And to anyone that even thinks of saying well I did pay for this game, think about this can you pay all your bills for under $20, didn't think so!

 

[Jojomo]

Hi guys, could you please clarify this from the update announcement:

Resources and Mining
Systems now have a resource richness. This amount is hidden at the moment but will actually be reflected by spawned asteroids in an upcoming universe revamp. The factions will use their contingent to mine resources from their territory. The amount of resources they can mine is limited and will reflect on what the player actually sees when they go there. For example, if a system is mined out, there will be no more asteroids spawning. The npcConfig can define a resource replenish value if needed.

I was discussing it here, and it seems like there isn't a clear consensus on what it actually means.

What effect does the system resource value(s) have?

Do asteroids still respawn? What does the line about not spawning mean?

EDIT: ah, I see this has essentially already been asked

 

[DragonSoul9000]

jojomo There is a setting under the Adv Settings when selecting the world you want to play. There is a setting there for Astroid sector replenish time sec. If this is set to -1 then when you mine a asteroid to the point it has no blocks left it will not regenerate. Otherwise it will regen slowly over time. the resource value is so the NPC knows rather or not that system has enough resources to sustain their continued control over that system or not. in otherwords if the resource value drops below a certain point and the NPC Faction does not have the resources to cover the supply cost to hold a system then they abandon the system. Basically it's like a player losing their Faction points. without Faction points we cannot own a system or take ownership.

 

[Jojomo]

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.

Could you please clarify what this means? How do NPC factions affect resources in a way that player factions don't?

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.

They can mine the same amount every turn if that amount is less than the 15 minute replenishment amount though, right?

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.

Does this mean than a system untouched by NPCs will always load 100% asteroids, but if an NPC faction has been mining faster than replenishment, then the quantity of asteroid blocks loaded when a player arrives will reflect the percentage that the NPCs would calculate they've reduced it to?

So NPCs mining reduces the amount of asteroid blocks available to a player even while the system isn't loaded for a player, but not by eating away at actual spawned asteroids, but by reducing the amount spawned?

The method described is only for unloaded systems, correct? When loaded for players NPC mining will behave basically like a player mining?

Do asteroids respawn every 15 minutes in systems loaded for players?
[doublepost=1482373297,1482373046][/doublepost]

jojomo There is a setting under the Adv Settings when selecting the world you want to play. There is a setting there for Astroid sector replenish time sec. If this is set to -1 then when you mine a asteroid to the point it has no blocks left it will not regenerate. Otherwise it will regen slowly over time. the resource value is so the NPC knows rather or not that system has enough resources to sustain their continued control over that system or not. in otherwords if the resource value drops below a certain point and the NPC Faction does not have the resources to cover the supply cost to hold a system then they abandon the system. Basically it's like a player losing their Faction points. without Faction points we cannot own a system or take ownership.

Isn't the resource value just what determines which asteroid types will be common/rare in a system? And it remains constant?

 

[RODLON]

I hope that the "older issues" include the weird thing that happens when changing sector and the high speed glitches like player disalignment, floor traspassing when using gravity and raycast innacuracy.

 

[Jeryia]

I would like to complement you guys on the many options available to determine a faction's behaviour. This level of customization is godsend for those of us trying to make custom servers.

Only complaint is that it looks like I need to respawn the faction in order to make any changes to their confi, but I think you guys are working on that.

Question,
Is there documentation somewhere on what everything in the new npc config files do? Most things have comments, but some do not. For example, I haven't the slightest idea on what this is:

                <DiplStatus>
                    <Name>POWER</Name>
                    <Timeout>1.0<!--In Faction Turns--></Timeout>
                    <Value>1<!--In diplomacy points (no float)--></Value>
                </DiplStatus>

 

[Inspired2150]

Just dropping by to say that I agree with most points Raisinbat made. This game is indeed closer to being a gallery than being an actual game. I wholeheartedly want Starmade to succeed, but what I am seeing is chaotic addition of bugged features on top of other bugged features for years now.

I was excited for this update, but the first thing I did after logging in was building a simple mining drone to see if it mines. It doesn't. Same old spinning around or just floating in the same place doing nothing.

Is it wrong of me to expect old features to be fixed before new ones are added, thus building a strong foundation? It's probably been around a year, if not more, since fleet mining functionality has been added, and it still doesn't work. I guess i'll check back in another month to see if something changed.

I don't mean to be bitter, but every time I am excited for a new patch I get disappointed after logging in. And that excitement shrinks every time, while the disappointment grows.

 

[DukeofRealms]

Is it wrong of me to expect old features to be fixed before new ones are added, thus building a strong foundation?

This isn't how alpha development works, if this is what you expect, I suggest you come back in beta or release period.

Alpha development is adding all core features into the game, feature additions take priority over bugfixing, balancing, optimisations... It doesn't actually make any sense development wise to continuously fix features already in the game. Why? Because when we add additional features, it's almost certain we're going to break something else. It's not making a "strong foundation", it's simply delaying the next point in time where that feature will be broken again.

We'll never make it to beta if we're continuously trying to make a release state product at every release. That being said, we do fix issues when we can and we won't release an update with major issues (which happens in traditional alpha development). We do work on optimisations when we can.

So yes, it is wrong to expect a release state or beta state game at every update, in a game that is in alpha development. If this is what you want, you'll need to come back later.

 

[Criss]

mining drone to see if it mines

To add what to duke said, a large expansion of AI capabilities and additional functionality will be worked on for the next major update. Despite its usefulness, sending a drone to mine is not a core mechanic, nor is it currently preventing players from connecting to their worlds, or somewhere breaking blueprints. Thus it is a low priority. Trust me, you don't want us ignoring the bugs that do those things. They are far worse.

 

[taisong]

Star systems right now have a random value for each of the 16 resources

Is there any way to see this number? I would really want to see it from the scan-data.

 

[nokturnihs]

Just dropping by to say that I agree with most points Raisinbat made. This game is indeed closer to being a gallery than being an actual game. I wholeheartedly want Starmade to succeed, but what I am seeing is chaotic addition of bugged features on top of other bugged features for years now.

I was excited for this update, but the first thing I did after logging in was building a simple mining drone to see if it mines. It doesn't. Same old spinning around or just floating in the same place doing nothing.

Is it wrong of me to expect old features to be fixed before new ones are added, thus building a strong foundation? It's probably been around a year, if not more, since fleet mining functionality has been added, and it still doesn't work. I guess i'll check back in another month to see if something changed.

I don't mean to be bitter, but every time I am excited for a new patch I get disappointed after logging in. And that excitement shrinks every time, while the disappointment grows.

Hey man don't worry. Some of the points made above are valid about alphas, however I will firmly state that the project development path is a chaotic mess from the eyes of a professional developer and project manager. But I work on business software, and only occasionally tinker with games. I will say that the bonuses are somewhat reliable releases and progress towards a released game. When we'll get it, who knows? Maybe before Star Citizen anyway...

Finally I will sympathize with you and raisinbat for being blasted by the forums here. Whenever I've tried to contribute in ideas or bug mentions its always ended up being a a hazing from the terrible community here. I saw your post only because the NPC update has so badly broken the economy that you can barely play starmade at this point. I wouldn't waste your time. The people here don't like criticism and will just hammer anything you say into sand unless you think, and act like them. The developers are okay people and are working hard, even if I don't agree with their methods. These forums however are the worst form of negative PR any game could have. Have been a forum member for a long time, and early adopted starmade long, long ago.

 

[Jojomo]

I saw your post only because the NPC update has so badly broken the economy that you can barely play starmade at this point. .

I'm not disagreeing or arguing with you (nor agreeing) because I simply don't know either way, I'm just very curious to know what effect the NPC update has had on economies (positive or negative) in your experience.

This is a topic I'm interested in (I started a thread about this myself) - because I think a working economy will be vital to long term success.