So, I've been piddling around a little bit with this update. It's been a latest in a long line of frustration from StarMade. Allow me to give you some backstory, if I may. My son bought this game for me last year as a Father's Day present; he remembered I liked to play it way way back in the day when cannon and missiles were the only weapons and hull parts looked like quilts of riveted sheet metal, for texture. So I loaded it up and it was kinda fun, but I noticed no real playability. Build things. Mine things. Blow up things. Rinse, repeat. Meh, okay. So I get together with my son, who really wanted to play on a multiplayer server with me in StarMade, and we decide we'll spice things up a bit and weave a storyline into our gameplay and then make some YouTube videos telling the story. We hash out what we want the universe to have, would we allow anyone else in, and so on.
Back story done? Great. So I go to the community pages and download blueprints and whatnot, since we decided there will be oodles of NPCs in here. My son is working on his thing, so I'm the one largely doing the editing work. No problem--it's time consuming, as I work two jobs, but let's keep our eyes on the prize, here. Then along comes the power update. Since Steam doesn't permit us to turn off updates, all my block config stuff gets erased. Well, there's two weeks of work gone. A lesson learned. My son and I consult, and we decide to go ahead and use the new power update because it'll add in another dimension to the storytelling--new emerging technologies changing the balance of power in the galaxy. I like it. We can work with this. Now if only missiles can figure out how to actually lock onto a target... but I digress.
Now, in July of current year +1, I am literally three blueprints away from having our story world ready. Out comes the weapon update. This requires another conference, and it's a big one. Many bugs that were really bothering us were fixed, but many things we liked were being taken away. After a lengthy discussion and a few pots of coffee (root beer, for my son), we decide to give this new update a try.
Oh, good heavens. What a mess. I remember reading a post in here, last year. I don't remember who said it, but he was spot on: Schine are creating solutions for problems that didn't exist. So now we have ammo rules for rockets but not cannon. We have damage falloff for beams but not cannon. Missile launchers no longer work on structures using the old power system. I think I'm the only one that dislikes the new texture package (I kinda liked the "used universe" look of the previous package), and there are still no mobile factory ships, a main staple of many science fiction movies and series. I definitely liked the changes to armor, however, because the armor pool always seemed a bit odd, but structural hp made more sense to me than the reactor hp, since you should be able to kill a ship without gutting its power plant. Meh. Okay. I have creative differences with a game designer. Nothing new there, I suppose. I guess I should be thankful logic blocks all still work as advertised.
So, after another conference--wherein I told my son I would've just learned Blender if I knew this would take over a year to prepare for--we're finally on track to get playing and videoing. I'm now using a non-Steam version to avoid auto-updating. Unless it's absolutely mind-blowing, no more updates for me, thanks. I wanted to share how we decided to lock things in, to make the updates livable:
- After fixing the block configs again, armor values got added to certain blocks that were deemed "sturdily built". Conversely, glass lost its armor rating.
- Faction blocks piff into vapor if you shoot them with even a handgun (of course, a handgun has more dps than a single cannon block...). HP changed to 5000.
- Impact recoil was left alone and weapon discharge recoil and cursor recoil was set to 0. Reason? We use rail guns. Gunpowder was so last millennium. The two NPC factions that might still use chemical accelerants learned all about recoilless cannon and recoil compensators.
- Since NPC ships were not updated to fit the released updates forced on me (thanks, Schine. Did me a solid, there), missile-launching NPC ships using the old power supplies are being refit on a case-by-case basis to carry cannon or use new power systems. Ironically, all three baseline NPC factions have ships described as bombers but lack the AI to use the new bombs.
- The death ray was changed back into a "sniper laser". Now NPCs can still use them. Besides, two charge-up weapons seemed a little redundant. I haven't tested it yet, but do AIs know how to use charge-up cannon at all?
- Missile capacity was changed to linear, since there are a lot of missile frigates in the game, and we really like seeing the occasional Macross Missile Massacre (Macross Missile Massacre - TV Tropes).
- Things actually require components to craft components, such as computers requiring motherboards to craft. All the prices were redone using composite and alloy mesh as a baseline, so there's something resembling an actual economy in-game.
- Stabilizer distance was reduced to minimum. Reason being, they serve more as insulative jackets, cooling sleeves, magnetic bottles for anti-matter, etc.
- Arc-lasers were changed a little to resemble the damage pulses that no one seemed to like, but were abundant in this game world we were building. As an aside, I saw a post here a few days ago mentioning they would like to see ship-borne melee weapons. You mean like the damage pulse weapons that were disabled???
TL;DR: The update is a headache that requires lots of tweaking. I would have been happier if the power and weapon updates were left as optional dev builds until the whole thing is finished being made-over.
