The New "Vanilla Standard"

    Do you agree?


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    Matt_Bradock

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    Another thing to consider; NPC ships and stations tend to be small. As per Schine's fleet contest, this is intentional. If you want any kind of PVE challenge in the upcoming faction content, you'll need to stop "hunting squirrels with a bazooka" and try fighting a pirate station in a 5000 mass ship instead of a 50,000 mass one.
    Anyone who needs 5K mass to defeat a pirate station is a skrub kek (nah, they are probably just new)
    Seriously tho, a well built 1.5K can do even the Alpha and the Delta (which I consider toughest due to heavy turret firepower) and with some patience the beta (the turrets on that one aren't a problem... the 1.5M shields are) My problem with those stations is that they are NOT challenging enough. NPC faction fleets offer far more sport as they are much better built than the Isanths.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    Anyone who needs 5K mass to defeat a pirate station is a skrub kek (nah, they are probably just new)
    Seriously tho, a well buildt1.5K can do even the Alpha and the Delta (which I consider toughest due to heavy turret firepower) and with some patience the beta (the turrets on that one aren't a problem... the 1.5M shields are)
    Agreed.

    To be honest, stations aren't much of a challenge. It's their reinforcements I'm thinking about.

    I once teamed up with a friend against a Beta station. We both had 8,000 mass RP/PVE ships and ended up farming Isanths for an hour before taking out the station; not even targeting the faction block.

    We later attacked a Delta which dropped my friend's shields while we were screwing around. I then aimed for the command room and nuked the faction block. ...Insta-kill; the fight lasted less than 5 minutes.
     

    Matt_Bradock

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    Agreed.

    To be honest, stations aren't much of a challenge. It's their reinforcements I'm thinking about.

    I once teamed up with a friend against a Beta station. We both had 8,000 mass RP/PVE ships and ended up farming Isanths for an hour before taking out the station; not even targeting the faction block.

    We later attacked a Delta which dropped my friend's shields while we were screwing around. I then aimed for the command room and nuked the faction block. ...Insta-kill; the fight lasted less than 5 minutes.
    I do love farming pirates on servers that have them buffed - way more entertaining method of resource harvesting than the boring roid grind. I usually go for an Eta station to designate as my farm, their shields aren't the weakest but the turrets are the easiest to disarm.
     
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    Benevolent27

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    its a partial solution. but its still helps. you have limits on your own server.
    Size only part of the issue though. I can easily crash any server with 20 1k fleet ships with some turrets on them. Heck, they don't even need to have turrets. Just tell them to move to a loaded sector and they'll all crash into each other and try to force their way to the center, lagging everybody out.
    Emphasis added.
    [doublepost=1504453513,1504453449][/doublepost]
    Fleet limits?
    Yes. Also docked entity limits are needed.
    [doublepost=1504453709][/doublepost]
    Agreed, this is problematic for single player settings and established servers, but about 50% also agree it's not very useful in multiplayer... The best solution would probably be to just have defaults as they are, but find an efficient set of settings that work best in multiplayer.
    Sort of an e-sports compliant standard for PVP servers that server owners can adopt if they choose, something that we could agree on, and post a "standard PVP config" that we can use as a baseline guideline for a "community accepted standard" to have a fair competitive environment, but not forced.
    I think setting the limit to 200k for single player and default configs is fine. But if you are suggesting it be forced on everybody and not configurable, I would not agree with that.

    What I'd suggest are some nice infographics showing the levels of lag and FPS drops produced by various size ships, including load time, combat, etc. on various types of computers and servers. I think this is really the sort of data we need to determine what a good community standard is. Then we would need to run the tests again periodically to establish new standards as the game becomes more bogged down or optimized.
     

    Asvarduil

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    So, I have a different take on the mass-limit thing. The performance gains are important, but not as important as how the gameplay could be affected by a strict mass limit.

    Right now, Starmade has balance problems - literally. Bigger ships are always better; you don't really need strategy beyond a certain size. As this is a video game, this is unacceptable; most gamers want there to be something called 'competitive balance' (tell me if I pronounced that correctly.) In short, some things you beat, other things beat you.

    A mass limit - preferably a strict one - makes that problem go away. No longer can you build your ace of all trades superdreadnought; you have to prioritize. Do you want weapons power? You'll need to sacrifice shields, or jump drive, or other capabilities. Do you want to create a decent exploration ship? You might need to work on finding ways to run from fights, or not be seen. Do you want to efficiently mine asteroids? Cool, but you better be working in secure space, because you're not going to fit a cloak or jump drive on that hauler.

    That being said, while it makes it more likely that you'll hit the failure condition (an exploded ship), it also makes continuing less painful. Smaller mass limits take fewer blocks to achieve. Fewer blocks take less time to manufacture than more, and alternatively cost less than more blocks. Thus, you can breathe life into nearly every activity in the game...by putting a hard limit on mass.

    TL;DR - Our current hugeism problem isn't helping the game be good, it's actively hurting it.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    Emphasis added.
    [doublepost=1504453513,1504453449][/doublepost]

    Yes. Also docked entity limits are needed.
    [doublepost=1504453709][/doublepost]

    I think setting the limit to 200k for single player and default configs is fine. But if you are suggesting it be forced on everybody and not configurable, I would not agree with that.

    What I'd suggest are some nice infographics showing the levels of lag and FPS drops produced by various size ships, including load time, combat, etc. on various types of computers and servers. I think this is really the sort of data we need to determine what a good community standard is. Then we would need to run the tests again periodically to establish new standards as the game becomes more bogged down or optimized.
    I'd have to agree with most of this; especially the docked entity part.

    When I was on LvD, I encountered (caused) severe lag when having large fleets of 100 meter, 7000 mass ships; each with 10+ turrets on them, a planetary base and this thing...
    100x test 2.gif
    For someone with relatively small craft, my faction was a good example of why StarMade is not yet ready for the kind of building we want to do in multi-player.
     

    DrTarDIS

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    TL;DR - Our current hugeism problem isn't helping the game be good, it's actively hurting it.
    Bigger ships move slower, charge jump slower, are larger targets etc... There is quite literally WAY TOO MANY debuffs (AND EXPONENTIAL debuffs at that!) to larger ships.
    Bigger ships can NOT be "masters of everything."
    In fact, if you go bigger, you MUST specialize.
    Anyone who thinks that a well built ship 25% the size of another well built ship SHOULD have a fighting chance while face-tanking is a BAD PILOT.

    A picket ship does NOT face-tank a battleship in ANY "balanced" game.

    That being said, softcaps don't do people playing on toasters much good. I'd be all for having specific core-types for different sizes of ships. EG drone-core, destroyr core, deathstar core, etc... With the block limits for each core type being configurable server-side this could be an idea...maybe...kinda...sorta? BP would have to be tweaked a little to "auto-core" to appropriate sizes as you upload them to server, and a few other "tweaks" if it was a server-side setting. A hard-cap on blocks to each "class" and variable(%) statistics for blocks attached to each core type could be another angle of attack.
     

    Benevolent27

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    So, I have a different take on the mass-limit thing. The performance gains are important, but not as important as how the gameplay could be affected by a strict mass limit.

    Right now, Starmade has balance problems - literally. Bigger ships are always better; you don't really need strategy beyond a certain size. As this is a video game, this is unacceptable; most gamers want there to be something called 'competitive balance' (tell me if I pronounced that correctly.) In short, some things you beat, other things beat you.

    A mass limit - preferably a strict one - makes that problem go away. No longer can you build your ace of all trades superdreadnought; you have to prioritize. Do you want weapons power? You'll need to sacrifice shields, or jump drive, or other capabilities. Do you want to create a decent exploration ship? You might need to work on finding ways to run from fights, or not be seen. Do you want to efficiently mine asteroids? Cool, but you better be working in secure space, because you're not going to fit a cloak or jump drive on that hauler.

    That being said, while it makes it more likely that you'll hit the failure condition (an exploded ship), it also makes continuing less painful. Smaller mass limits take fewer blocks to achieve. Fewer blocks take less time to manufacture than more, and alternatively cost less than more blocks. Thus, you can breathe life into nearly every activity in the game...by putting a hard limit on mass.

    TL;DR - Our current hugeism problem isn't helping the game be good, it's actively hurting it.
    There already are strict mass limits available in the configs. LvD is set to 1m for instance. Though we are considering lowering it on the next server reset. We have set up rules for fleet ships now as well. When testing pirates, they were causing massive lag even for just a few dozen entities. I figured out that it was the turrets causing it. After reducing the turrets and optimizing the ships a bit, we could have a hundred of the same ships in the same sector with half the lag.

    The number 1 cause of lag is most definitely turrets on fleets because of the way every single entity causes close-bounding-box type calculations to occur. (You will notice that when you come within 1000 meters or so of a planet that sudden a bunch of lag hits? Well, it's the same sort of thing)

    Mass is really more of a problem for people with low amounts of RAM or slower processors, and usually moreso right when the entity needs to be loaded.
    [doublepost=1504668061,1504668014][/doublepost]
    Bigger ships move slower, charge jump slower, are larger targets etc... There is quite literally WAY TOO MANY debuffs (AND EXPONENTIAL debuffs at that!) to larger ships.
    Bigger ships can NOT be "masters of everything."
    In fact, if you go bigger, you MUST specialize.
    Anyone who thinks that a well built ship 25% the size of another well built ship SHOULD have a fighting chance while face-tanking is a BAD PILOT.

    A picket ship does NOT face-tank a battleship in ANY "balanced" game.

    That being said, softcaps don't do people playing on toasters much good. I'd be all for having specific core-types for different sizes of ships. EG drone-core, destroyr core, deathstar core, etc... With the block limits for each core type being configurable server-side this could be an idea...maybe...kinda...sorta? BP would have to be tweaked a little to "auto-core" to appropriate sizes as you upload them to server, and a few other "tweaks" if it was a server-side setting. A hard-cap on blocks to each "class" and variable(%) statistics for blocks attached to each core type could be another angle of attack.
    Well.. Power aux blocks did kind of make it so ships can scale pretty well at larger sizes now though. Especially since the default position is now ON instead of OFF.
     

    DrTarDIS

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    Well.. Power aux blocks did kind of make it so ships can scale pretty well at larger sizes now though. Especially since the default position is now ON instead of OFF.
    Wait, they're ON now? So they give NPCS the aux regen? I thought that was only for space stations? When did they ninja that in for ships?
    Either way, that's at best a linear e/sec, while thrust per block is still a logarithmic drop, maneuverability is equally a logarithmic drop, Jump charge being tied to mass suffers from the bloated thruster requirements, and damage-to-bear from weapons systems suffers due to all of the above working in conjunction.

    None of that changes the fact that a ship should NOT be able to face-tank(and win) vs. a ship that significantly out-masses it in any sane balance discussion. :)
     

    Benevolent27

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    Wait, they're ON now? So they give NPCS the aux regen? I thought that was only for space stations? When did they ninja that in for ships?
    Either way, that's at best a linear e/sec, while thrust per block is still a logarithmic drop, maneuverability is equally a logarithmic drop, Jump charge being tied to mass suffers from the bloated thruster requirements, and damage-to-bear from weapons systems suffers due to all of the above working in conjunction.

    None of that changes the fact that a ship should NOT be able to face-tank(and win) vs. a ship that significantly out-masses it in any sane balance discussion. :)
    But in the same token, realistically speaking, in any science fiction that you know of, can large ships maneuver like smaller ones? It all boils down to structural integrity. For the same reason bomber ships can't just get a bigger engine and suddenly maneuver the same way a fighter ship does does, a super large ship would tear itself apart if it attempted to move too quickly. So I think that having a speed limiter is practical.

    But in any case, large ships also got a MAJOR buff recently, in that if you can radar jam them, pretty much no smaller ship will be able to break the jam.
     

    DrTarDIS

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    But in the same token, realistically speaking, in any science fiction that you know of, can large ships maneuver like smaller ones? It all boils down to structural integrity. For the same reason bomber ships can't just get a bigger engine and suddenly maneuver the same way a fighter ship does does, a super large ship would tear itself apart if it attempted to move too quickly. So I think that having a speed limiter is practical.

    But in any case, large ships also got a MAJOR buff recently, in that if you can radar jam them, pretty much no smaller ship will be able to break the jam.
    Eh, any sci-fi that has gravity-control negates any structural impact from maneuverability. It's only ever the wetware(crew) that really suffer from quickly maneuvering (for the same reason centrifugal gravity works) in sci-fi without gravity manipulation. That's where Sheer Modulus comes into play IRL engineering and why large massy things like the SaturnV can most assuredly accelerate like a dog with a sparkler up it's hiney. S5 could even accelerate MUCH faster if it didn't have wetware onboard. A LOT of preconceptions about space maneuverability come from people using the word "ships" causing them to associate it with seafaring ships and their maneuverability in WATER. I've read more than a few sci-fi that deal with that too, Troy Rising for example(EPIC READ!!!). From a balance standpoint I see why it's implemented even if I personally disagree with the WAY it's implemented for the most part(boxdim&mass&thrust Vs pure mass&thrust).
    I can agree on the jamming part, info-war in SM is just trash ATM.(beta excuses I know)That's kinda mitigated with a sane weapons range though(EG not 100+ km for a lock-on missile)

    Despite all that I think you'll agree one of the greatest buffs&fixes to lag in the game was the deterministic missiles. I'm looking forward to similar buffs once the LOD meshes and chunk priority are ironed-out.

    An interesting side-note: Disabling animation on blocks seems to REALLY help low&medium spec computers deal with larger ships(and planets too, because lava), but that's a server-side block-config option that can't be effectively done client-side(WHY? IDK, the cat-god wills it).

    I think having an upper limit on blocks(or dimensions) for ships COULD be(is) a good balance and performance thing. But a large portion of the ACTUAL balance issues in the game are more intrinsic to the piece-by-piece way starmade is programmed with new features and semi-haphazard removal of old ones.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    There seems to be an undue concern with combat effectiveness developing here, with regard to size and specialization. There's something that needs to be adressed before this thread gets too far off of its original idea. Apparently my coffee boost wore off last night and I accidentally posted this in the wrong thread but I'll post it here due to its relevance to this thread.

    Regarding big vs small and fleets vs capitals; This isn't about combat balance anymore. It's about the technical limitations of the game with regard to multi-player.

    Example; I once received a request for help with pirate attacks from another player so I sent a squadron of 5-7 Pathfinder frigates to guard his base since it was already loaded. Each ship was only 100 meters long but covered with point defense turrets. While the fleet fought the pirates, it killed that player's frame rate and he asked me to make them leave.

    This is what we want to avoid; lagging multi-player with our builds to the point where everyone's ping skyrockets and their fps tanks. Other than my preference for PVE over PVP, another key reason for my leaving multi-player entirely was the fact that my builds (while small) typically carry 8 or more point defense turrets to counter swarmers. This greatly added to server load and forced me to downgrade my ships; sacrificing survivability so as not to freeze/crash the server.


    Not everyone is willing to do this so multi-player will never live up to its full potential until we all collectively scale back our builds or schine figures out a way to optimize the game in such a way that extreme size and entity count are no longer a problem.
     
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    Matt_Bradock

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    A LOT of preconceptions about space maneuverability come from people using the word "ships" causing them to associate it with seafaring ships and their maneuverability in WATER. I've read more than a few sci-fi that deal with that too, Troy Rising for example(EPIC READ!!!)
    That's why I absolutely love The Expanse novels and series, where there's no technomagic artificial gravity, no technomagic FTL, no shields, just you, the vacuum and that thin sheet of titanium in between - and where you strap down and put away everything and de-pressurize the interior before you go to battle, and leaving your seat during high-G maneuvers will turn you into a human pinball or a splat on the wall.

    Thing is, still a lot of people build their ships by the "I'll just slap on a couple thousand more blocks" methodology. And while the maneuverability difference between a 15K and a 150K mass ship is huge, the diff between a 150K and a 1.5M mass ship is not so big. Also, there are workarounds at that size to bypass or at least partially mitigate some of the debuffs, which -will- be utilised, and -will- cause more lag, such as docked thrusters and self-sustaining turretry.

    In my honest biased opinion, the actual fun to fly something ends at around 200K mass. Anything above that is just way too sluggish, way too much grind to get, and requires way too little piloting skill to effectively use. I personally don't even build past 150K, because I don't think it's worth the hassle and my computer can't really handle that either.
     
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    DrTarDIS

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    Thing is, still a lot of people build their ships by the "I'll just slap on a couple thousand more blocks" methodology. And while the maneuverability difference between a 15K and a 150K mass ship is vastly different, the diff between a 150K and a 1.5M mass ship is not so much. Also, there are workarounds at that size to bypass or mitigate some of the debuffs, which -will- be utilised, and -will- cause more lag, such as docked thrusters and self-sustaining turretry.

    In my honest biased opinion, the actual fun to fly something ends at around 200K mass. Anything above that is just way too sluggish, way too much grind to get, and requires way too little piloting skill to effectively use. I personally don't even build past 150K, because I don't think it's worth the hassle and my computer can't really handle that either.
    Docked thrust has no benefit last I checked, It somewhat hampers your thrust because you have to manually inherit it. Docked Hull still applies it's mass penalties. Self-sustaining turrets are not really that much of a buff except VS NPCs (and players too poor as pilots to range, maneuver, and jam)...while still applying mass penalties. Not really seeing much "mitigation" there... Well docked hull effects, somewhat, sometimes, when they work. Also when they don't block your firing arc(s). Also when they don't strip you core ship's SHP&AHP pools down too much to be effective.

    100% agree on the way too sluggish(water ships above) and too much grind. 100% disagree about piloting skill and effective use, especially because of maneuvering penalties which require you to; in-combat calculate and activate jumps to keep your weaponry to bear, and/or have dedicated cameras and weapons systems for each of the six cardinal points while using them effectively (say goodbye to maneuvering), and/or have crew dedicated to sectored weapons systems(limited to cannons, because you can't get into beam computers for some stupid reason and missiles don't let you move the lock-on reticule), or some unholy combination of the above.

    I'm not going to deny that "smaller ships" should be more common(I think they are anyways) or that there is thrill to be had in a more "arcade-like" starmade experience like we had back when stations gave real blocks instead of scrap(plentiful resources for all, less bovine fecal matter grinding). Hell, I MISS those days of100k being a relative upper limit on ships blocks, but mainly because of the "arcade feel" of smashing digital legos much more regularly(more dense player clusters).

    Same time, the "bloat problem" isn't with the ship sizes IMHO, it's with shaders, animations, collision checks, AI that's insane, manufacturing/technology staleness(I miss spending days finding a way to make a supply chain for every block based off of rock/lava/ice/flowers in random-generated recipes THAT LEVELED UP), and various other turds needing polishing.

    Performance is a thing, I agree, but it's MUCH better these days in comparison (if you fly an "old style" blueprint that uses turret-docks with boxdim enhancers in the recent engines). Performance also needs to be forward-thinking on the type of PC that will cost $200-500 in 2020, not in 2017.

    I honestly believe that MOST of the "problems with OP bigger ships" stems from this being a RESOURCE ACCUMULATION GAME at it's heart, which doesn't make them a "problem" but rather an intrinsic design choice. The exact same way a lv 20 rogue in WoW isn't and can't be balanced vs a lv120.(this is an argument FOR upper limits, AKA level-caps to some degree) However, at it's CORE the game doesn't have a proper methodology to "cap levels" in an intuitive way. We can hope and softpich ideas about bringing some of that in aweek or two, but it requires a lot of fundamental changes to the methodology of ship/empire building/operation.
     
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    I have issues with hard-limiting build sizes on a server. It encourages min-maxing and lowers the chance of interesting fights with big contrast (small frigate fleet vs one big mothership).

    Correct me if i'm wrong but so far i haven't seen anybody mention an alternative to hard limiting the size of ships/fleets. What about increasing block costs (credits and manufacturing) by a factor of anywhere between 100 times as expensive to 1000 times as expensive? On an intuitive level it seems like it would act as a natural limiter for how many blocks can be expected to be seen in any given fight, helping performance and also reducing some construction tedium since the average player is more likely to want to construct a 1k mass ship rather than a 100k mass ship, while not hard-limiting the entrepreneurial souls who want to pour their souls in those huge builds.

    Of course there would be cons:
    -How to balance astronaut mining so someone who is broke can actually afford a tiny mining ship?
    -Eventually, given a long enough stalemate/peace time, big factions will still lag the game
     

    Benevolent27

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    Eh, any sci-fi that has gravity-control negates any structural impact from maneuverability. It's only ever the wetware(crew) that really suffer from quickly maneuvering (for the same reason centrifugal gravity works) in sci-fi without gravity manipulation. That's where Sheer Modulus comes into play IRL engineering and why large massy things like the SaturnV can most assuredly accelerate like a dog with a sparkler up it's hiney. S5 could even accelerate MUCH faster if it didn't have wetware onboard. A LOT of preconceptions about space maneuverability come from people using the word "ships" causing them to associate it with seafaring ships and their maneuverability in WATER. I've read more than a few sci-fi that deal with that too, Troy Rising for example(EPIC READ!!!). From a balance standpoint I see why it's implemented even if I personally disagree with the WAY it's implemented for the most part(boxdim&mass&thrust Vs pure mass&thrust).
    I can agree on the jamming part, info-war in SM is just trash ATM.(beta excuses I know)That's kinda mitigated with a sane weapons range though(EG not 100+ km for a lock-on missile)

    Despite all that I think you'll agree one of the greatest buffs&fixes to lag in the game was the deterministic missiles. I'm looking forward to similar buffs once the LOD meshes and chunk priority are ironed-out.

    An interesting side-note: Disabling animation on blocks seems to REALLY help low&medium spec computers deal with larger ships(and planets too, because lava), but that's a server-side block-config option that can't be effectively done client-side(WHY? IDK, the cat-god wills it).

    I think having an upper limit on blocks(or dimensions) for ships COULD be(is) a good balance and performance thing. But a large portion of the ACTUAL balance issues in the game are more intrinsic to the piece-by-piece way starmade is programmed with new features and semi-haphazard removal of old ones.
    Yes, if you use a method of movement that does not rely on gravity, sure, like.. jumping? (Or Star Trek warp drives, or wormholes, or streamslipping, etc.) I don't expect jumping to be slower for a larger ships in StarMade, and it isn't. (And I am using nomenclature local to StarMade here by calling them "ships" rather than "space craft"; this is intentional.) I do, however expect any sort of movement that has a ship moving through space, subject to centrifugal forces, to result in that ship requiring an exponentially greater amount of structural reinforcement based on the dimensions of the ship to pull off the same maneuvers as a smaller ship. But there is no such mechanic in StarMade. Instead we have the diminishing returns on thrusters and turn speed. Is it a fair trade off?

    People get stuck into this mentality of "build as big as possible" because this is how you make the most effective ships even with the thrust and turn speed drawbacks. Are thrusters some kind of expensive block in StarMade? No. They are made out of the most plentiful resource in the galaxy. So players end up building ships that are much too large for most people's computers to effectively handle. There must be some kind of drawback to building larger that scales in size, but which also effectively renders building "too big" to be a waste. It should "seem realistic," even if it isn't, but I don't see the dev's including centrifugal force and then having ships break at key structural points any time soon if they decide to suddenly turn really fast. We build ships out of blocks here. This game isn't supposed to be a Nasa space simulation engine.
    [doublepost=1504728202,1504727019][/doublepost]
    How does that help ships that are too big and slow to evade dumbfire missiles?
    If you build your ship too slow to evade dumbfire missiles, then that is your fault. haha

    And secondly, if your ship is so large that it CANNOT be made to move fast enough to even escape dumbfire missiles, then that's great. Working as intended.™ There must be a point at which ships are too large and are vulnerable if we have any hope of StarMade battles not always being determined by "who has the bigger ship".

    Though to me, individual ship mass is less of an issue for lag than docked entities/turret lag in fleets (as a result of bounding box lag). But then again, we have server hosting that has good upload speed to our users, so it can handle the transfer of data for these larger ships to clients for the size limits we have specified (1m mass hardcap). As a server admin though, I can tell you right now that we had a LOT more server-killing lag merely from turrets on fleet ships. And secondary to that, fleets crashing into each other when moving from sector to sector because they all try to cram into the same exact point. What can be done about the bounding box lag from docked entities/turrets? I don't know. Maybe implementing bubble shields for ships, so they bounce off each other rather than having to calculate each individual block collision? Or maybe a new type of dock that fuses a docked entity to the main ship, where it does not detach if the dock breaks? Or turrets pre-calculate what their movement range is ahead of time and then when actually moving, it just follows that set of rules, ghosting through any external ships? Then for fleets, they really, really need to NOT use the same point in space to try and move the entire fleet to when moving to a sector. It should be a grid of trajectories that are offset by the bounding boxes of each ship.
    [doublepost=1504728701][/doublepost]
    I have issues with hard-limiting build sizes on a server. It encourages min-maxing and lowers the chance of interesting fights with big contrast (small frigate fleet vs one big mothership).

    Correct me if i'm wrong but so far i haven't seen anybody mention an alternative to hard limiting the size of ships/fleets. What about increasing block costs (credits and manufacturing) by a factor of anywhere between 100 times as expensive to 1000 times as expensive? On an intuitive level it seems like it would act as a natural limiter for how many blocks can be expected to be seen in any given fight, helping performance and also reducing some construction tedium since the average player is more likely to want to construct a 1k mass ship rather than a 100k mass ship, while not hard-limiting the entrepreneurial souls who want to pour their souls in those huge builds.

    Of course there would be cons:
    -How to balance astronaut mining so someone who is broke can actually afford a tiny mining ship?
    -Eventually, given a long enough stalemate/peace time, big factions will still lag the game
    I think the devs should really consider including an optional fuel component. Because this would definitely be part of what determines how big a player wants to build. But then we should have interesting mechanics for mining and creating said fuel, like different kinds of production facilities. Also maybe different kinds of power reactors. This is the kind of variability that I think would make the game more interesting and also more realistic. Just because someone builds a giant ship doesn't mean they have the resources to keep that ship running.

    But, in any case, if you battle against a larger ship with smaller fleet ships, you will notice that the fleet ships almost always suffer casualties, but they also win vs ships many multiples their size (if you build them right). This is due to how they mitigate damage against larger turrets by minimizing the block damage to individual entities at a time and also because they are a lot more efficient block per block, pound for pound. Though you do run into issues if there are too many projectiles and the server starts dropping calculations because it can't keep up, effectively turning the spam of weapon fire to 0 damage.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    I have issues with hard-limiting build sizes on a server. It encourages min-maxing and lowers the chance of interesting fights with big contrast (small frigate fleet vs one big mothership).

    Correct me if i'm wrong but so far i haven't seen anybody mention an alternative to hard limiting the size of ships/fleets. What about increasing block costs (credits and manufacturing) by a factor of anywhere between 100 times as expensive to 1000 times as expensive? On an intuitive level it seems like it would act as a natural limiter for how many blocks can be expected to be seen in any given fight, helping performance and also reducing some construction tedium since the average player is more likely to want to construct a 1k mass ship rather than a 100k mass ship, while not hard-limiting the entrepreneurial souls who want to pour their souls in those huge builds.

    Of course there would be cons:
    -How to balance astronaut mining so someone who is broke can actually afford a tiny mining ship?
    -Eventually, given a long enough stalemate/peace time, big factions will still lag the game
    I actually mentioned this quite a few times; just stated in a different way. In short; server admins need to stop creating these insane mining bonuses. Kill the bonuses and giantism won't be as big of an issue, but that's only part of the solution.

    Things like fleet count will never go away as long capitals exist. Turret/entity count will always be an issue as long as PVP and swarmers exist. Nearly every issue discussed in this thread is a direct result of player behavior in the face of some very obvious software programming limitations. People build large because they can. They dock a bunch of entities because they can. They focus on maxing out their ships at the cost of extra server lag ...because they can.

    Hard caps... Soft caps... It's all irrelevant. Regardless of which side you try to debate from, we are not likely to reach a solution Unless players change their current behaviors and Schine optimizes their software further.
     

    Benevolent27

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    I actually mentioned this quite a few times; just stated in a different way. In short; server admins need to stop creating these insane mining bonuses. Kill the bonuses and giantism won't be as big of an issue, but that's only part of the solution.

    Things like fleet count will never go away as long capitals exist. Turret/entity count will always be an issue as long as PVP and swarmers exist. Nearly every issue discussed in this thread is a direct result of player behavior in the face of some very obvious software programming limitations. People build large because they can. They dock a bunch of entities because they can. They focus on maxing out their ships at the cost of extra server lag ...because they can.

    Hard caps... Soft caps... It's all irrelevant. Regardless of which side you try to debate from, we are not likely to reach a solution Unless players change their current behaviors and Schine optimizes their software further.
    If servers had more customization for settings on the number of allowed docked entities, this would help quite a bit. It's not realistic, but then again mass limits aren't realistic either.

    But essentially, servers have higher mass limits generally because the population demands it. For example, when I was part of the reboot of Light vs Dark, I can't tell you how many players said they would not play on our server if we set our limit to 200k. To be realistic about what was acceptable to players at the time, we had to set our limits higher. Many players were very upset about the cap being limited to "only 1m mass," but it was an acceptable compromise. Our plans are to gradually reduce the mass limit on our server (probably from 1m to 500k) and also reduce the mining bonuses by half. We can't just do it overnight though because that would lead to insane economy imbalances for players that are already established. We have to wait for the next server reset. And then we have to make sure that the lowered limits won't do away with too many ships, leading to players having spaz attacks due to all the time lost on their larger ship builds. There is no way around it though, lowering limits is probably going to cost us some players. I am hoping though that it will help keep the players that stay. But lowering the mass limit is, in itself, just not good enough. Server admins need more controls.