The bigger the ship the more engines required.

[NanoFreak]

Every time I see space battles with huge ships in starmade, those ships do indeed turn as if they were in fact huge dreadnoughts or battleships but they always move at ridiculous speeds. This also leads to orientation changes, confusion and missed shots due to constant sector changes. Dreadnoughts should move like dreadnoughts, not like fighters.

What I suggest is either : bigger ship size -> exponential increase in power requirements
or : bigger ship size -> exponential increase in thruster block requirements

Both of these have their pros and cons but will have the same result : Appropriate speeds for different sized ships.

Increase in power requirements would still allow travel at higher speeds while in battle you would have to manage your speed to allow enough power for your weapons to fire.

Increase in thruster block requirement would not hinder weapons in any way but it would also limit the ships speed outside of combat.

This is why the integration of the latter would be best implemented after the adding of FTL/Jumpgates feature which has been hinted at by the devs in the Q&A sessions.

I hope this hasn't been suggested before and I'm not unnecessarily clotting up the forums.

That will be all for now, I'll be waiting for your opinions.
Thanks for reading.

 

[Planr]

This has already been suggested a million times. However, I think it more important we add in junk food and cheetos before we do anything else.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

The problem really is just that thrust scales superlinearly with mass of thrusters (I'm sure it gets sublinear at some point, but probably only at very large masses). It could probably be fixed by just making thrust depend on the number of thruster blocks total in the ship instead of having the grouping system currently where more in one big group is better and box size further increases the thrust.
Space Engineers has a much simpler thruster design at least for amount and scaling (there's complexity in the position and direction of thruster placement due to rotation and directional thrust) where twice the thrusters means twice the thrust and twice the power use; it has fairly good results in large ships not being very fast unless you dedicate a ton of space to thrusters and reactors. It also doesn't lend itself to interior thrusters since blocks immediately adjacent to a thruster in the direction it emits thrust get damaged when the thruster fires, so you have to add more interior space for interior thrusters or put all of them exterior (which is squared thrust for cubic ship size increase...very limiting on bigger ships).

 

[Zedrackis]

The problem really is just that thrust scales superlinearly with mass of thrusters (I'm sure it gets sublinear at some point, but probably only at very large masses). It could probably be fixed by just making thrust depend on the number of thruster blocks total in the ship instead of having the grouping system currently where more in one big group is better and box size further increases the thrust.
Space Engineers has a much simpler thruster design at least for amount and scaling (there's complexity in the position and direction of thruster placement due to rotation and directional thrust) where twice the thrusters means twice the thrust and twice the power use; it has fairly good results in large ships not being very fast unless you dedicate a ton of space to thrusters and reactors. It also doesn't lend itself to interior thrusters since blocks immediately adjacent to a thruster in the direction it emits thrust get damaged when the thruster fires, so you have to add more interior space for interior thrusters or put all of them exterior (which is squared thrust for cubic ship size increase...very limiting on bigger ships).

In practice its already like this, and I assume your ship isn't massive enough to notice. Your speed will be capped as will your acceleration if the thrust your ship provides is not greater than the ships mass. On less that a few thousands mass you never notice because thrust blocks tend to be very efficient in small groups. Further more in testing thrust blocks do have an efficiency formula, and again you wont notice it unless you have several thousand mass worth of ship to counter.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

In practice its already like this, and I assume your ship isn't massive enough to notice. Your speed will be capped as will your acceleration if the thrust your ship provides is not greater than the ships mass. On less that a few thousands mass you never notice because thrust blocks tend to be very efficient in small groups. Further more in testing thrust blocks do have an efficiency formula, and again you wont notice it unless you have several thousand mass worth of ship to counter.

It is very much not like this. Simply make a test ship with two lines of thrusters and connect them at any point. That one block will make efficiency jump through the roof because the two groups have become one. I was talking about a system in which grouping and group size do not matter at all. StarMade's system makes group size and group number matter immensely and allow for thrusters to scale ridiculously on the lower end. By maximizing grouping techniques, I can get a 62 meter long, 40 meter wide, and not very tall ship with a few thousand thruster blocks to hit the default speed cap in half a second (and drain its entire power reserve doing so, but the regen is sufficient).

 

[Ciggofwar]

One thing we don't like is thruster's all over our ships just to move in said directions, that's apart of early design configs in R&D. Later too find out that a unit assemble is the key ticket, similar like in star citizen's approach of venting exhaust or a harrier type exhausting unit assemble, of actuation movement of the thrusters to articulate along given multiple axis points. My 500 meter ship may require more thrusting units, for instance if I have regular hull I only need one per side, a hardened hull require two units per side and 3 layers of hardened hull I might take 5 thrusting units and that makes 1 larger thruster unit, one it saves some room in having 3-4 smaller units grouped. but also requires a bigger reactor of energy, keeps the balance of weight size mass and the energy needed to make it work, knowledge of building planning and how the energy is balanced in game play as well where there placed along the axis points, the smaller your craft the less you need and less energy requirement's.
Our view is from what we know of vessel's in water, space is a different puppy therefore it requires a different set up for balances.
At the same time I don't want to play with basic building blocks, I want the advance version of building blocks allowing for designs streamlines articulated structures a learning forward curve against our initial ignorance curve of what works. You can have luxury and room or be sitting on a milk crate for said entertainment lol

For military wise a smaller vessel vs a dreadnaught good luck with that approach of single vs single. As a building engineer I already thought of you and have something special just for you!!! Now a swarm of small crafts attacking a dreadnaught each with a function a purpose has best chance losses over a given success, it's tactics vs tactics , many aspects of many experiences and encounters vs ignorance's.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

It is very much not like this. Simply make a test ship with two lines of thrusters and connect them at any point. That one block will make efficiency jump through the roof because the two groups have become one. I was talking about a system in which grouping and group size do not matter at all. StarMade's system makes group size and group number matter immensely and allow for thrusters to scale ridiculously on the lower end. By maximizing grouping techniques, I can get a 62 meter long, 40 meter wide, and not very tall ship with a few thousand thruster blocks to hit the default speed cap in half a second (and drain its entire power reserve doing so, but the regen is sufficient).

That's actually wrong, the efficiency increases because the size increased. The current trust calculation subtracts 1 from each dimension before multiplying them together, that means if you have a single line of thrusters you are only gaining thrust from one dimension, your thrusters need to be at least 2 meters wide, long, and tall in order to not suffer this penalty. Additionally If you build two thrusters of identical size in taking up the same box dimension you will lose thrust when they are connected. You most definitely do not need a few thousand trusters to reach high speeds.

As for balance, we are getting a lot of changes to the thrust mechanics where players will have to allocate thrust for every direction, and possibly even to turn.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

That's actually wrong, the efficiency increases because the size increased. The current trust calculation subtracts 1 from each dimension before multiplying them together, that means if you have a single line of thrusters you are only gaining thrust from one dimension, your thrusters need to be at least 2 meters wide, long, and tall in order to not suffer this penalty. Additionally If you build two thrusters of identical size in taking up the same box dimension you will lose thrust when they are connected. You most definitely do not need a few thousand trusters to reach high speeds.

As for balance, we are getting a lot of changes to the thrust mechanics where players will have to allocate thrust for every direction, and possibly even to turn.

This just means the scaling is even more ridiculous, as the simple design that already stretches the limit of what a feasible energy supply can do can be improved further.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

There was a discussion here regarding the exact thruster equation and how the game should handle it.

http://starmadedock.net/threads/how-should-starmade-generate-thrust.251/

 

[Fwyrl]

You guys (and gals) DO remember that space has no friction, therefore, everything moves like a fighter. The acceleration should be what is different, not speed (this includes turning)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

You guys (and gals) DO remember that space has no friction, therefore, everything moves like a fighter. The acceleration should be what is different, not speed (this includes turning)

Inertia still applies

 

[Fwyrl]

Inertia still applies

inertia determines acceleration.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Inertia determines acceleration and turning.

 

[Ithirahad]

One thing we don't like is thruster's all over our ships just to move in said directions, that's apart of early design configs in R&D.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having directional thruster outputs... I don't recall a single design of mine that would look bad with a forward thruster ring or something. (And I build everything smooth and round, no boxes for me)

 

[ltmauve]

Personally, I wouldn't mind having directional thruster outputs... I don't recall a single design of mine that would look bad with a forward thruster ring or something. (And I build everything smooth and round, no boxes for me)

Yeah, a design of yours. Not everyone builds ships the same way as you do.
Currently the favored new thruster system of the devs is a system where max speed is based on thrust, and thrust and speed can be divided between the different axes. I would favor a system where the max speed requires more thrust the more massive the ship is.

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah, a design of yours. Not everyone builds ships the same way as you do.
Currently the favored new thruster system of the devs is a system where max speed is based on thrust, and thrust and speed can be divided between the different axes. I would favor a system where the max speed requires more thrust the more massive the ship is.

No, my point is that my way of building isn't square/boxy or anything and I could still fit forward thrusters reasonably well... I don't see why other building styles can't too.

 

[Ciggofwar]

In space engineer's movement you need thrusters all over the ship to move it on the +and - axis's of X, Y, Z. faster movement or mass will equally be more thrusters to make the ship design than has to be equally bigger to cover all the said thrusters, We went from adding less power modules less thruster modules to achieve power and movement by addressing the xyz axis into one thrust movement, this also allows room for interiors in fighters, very small ships and for the larger builds allowing them to have the same feature of more room which equals more design,
Like I mentioned in other posts the end result of forward thinking you will need to have "directional thrusting units" for large mass ships. by reduction of using the xyz into one thrust, and now all kinds of room opened up you could come out with directional thruster units for large mass ship to aid in turning, a separate unit which could be a single unit that sits on the keel beam of "zero" and aids in trusting the ship left or right,
Where you place the said directional thruster from center mass of large ship aids in the "pitch" of the ship turn yet still be under the physics of space of inertia, to far forward at full speed turn caused the ship to over steer in said direction.

This beam post is the center of the ship at the bottom of the ship

and this is my current thrust tree for xyz axis

This is a mock up of a thruster unit that sits on the keel of "0" of the y-z axis at a given distance forward from the center of the ship which will be a math ratio of length and width which gives an ideal location where to mount the thruster unit which starts the pivot point for turning moving the unit forward increases and rearward decreases the arc of turning or "the size of the unit required" the size of the unit determiner's the amount of thrust and the location point tells the ship how much to turn and at what thrust is provided for the turning to articulate. This is the pivot point and this is x amount of thrust given.

This is another mock up of two directional thrusters might be smaller than one big unit that sits on the keel of y-z axis , the two units sit on the x-y axis great for ships that have wings or odd shaped ship designs again a math ratio will determine where the pivot point starts of best suited, outwards or inwards changes the pitch of the pivot, and the size of the thruster unit, determines how much thrust is applied to the pivot direction.
Again it will be up to the builder to figure out the locations and size and adding it to the building plan, the units could be like shown or units of there own kind with nozzles to add to the visual of space travel.
Smaller ships of size do not require these units. You could have both options available dependent on the style and design of your ship based on the inertia mass of the ship, for instance my ship being 3 wall thick and hardened blocks will need a 3x to 4x bigger unit to achieve the same turning thrust as a single hulled ship of regular blocks adding to the games dynamics of balance.
There could also be a turning computer that also fine tunes with a slider control for the pitch ratio so at various speeds the turning is smooth.
This is the forward thinking for game play design for thrusting units of which I was referencing, rather than covering the entire ship so you can thrust now concept, putting ideal ideas out there for the builder of the math.

 

[0ldSkull]

StarMade currently uses a system of constant acceleration plus a speed limit. I think this is the underlying source of many of the balance-related complaints related to ship speed vs. size.

In reality constant thrust does not impart constant acceleration. Rather acceleration decreases as velocity increases, because the object's kinetic energy increases exponentially as velocity increases (E=.5*mv^2). Thus more and more energy (the work provided by the thrust) is needed in order to increase speed a little bit more.

If SM acceleration followed a similar model, there would be no need for an artificial constant hard cap on speed (other than a high sanity limit for the server). Each ship would have its own effective speed limit which is governed by its thrust:mass ratio, naturally determined by the asymptotic nature of the acceleration computation. That is, as the ship's speed increases its acceleration would naturally approach zero since its thrust is constant.

 

[Viridis00]

Each ship would have its own effective speed limit which is governed by its thrust:mass ratio, naturally determined by the asymptotic nature of the acceleration computation. That is, as the ship's speed increases its acceleration would naturally approach zero since its thrust is constant.

I think in the last Q&A they mentioned that in the future there would be something similar to that. I distinctly remember hearing that some ships wouldn't be able to break certain speeds based on design. I'm all for that as well, because as it stands, once you get into battle you're kind of deadlocked with another ship despite size difference.

 

[Ithirahad]

I dislike speed limits for travel reasons - if anything, larger ships should be able to go FASTER than smaller ones, at least outside of combat. However, for combat balancing there should probably be differentiated in-combat and out-of-combat flight speeds... no idea how the actual mechanics would work; just an idea.