MeRobo
Scrub
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The only way to address exploits we are talking about is to do another system redesign from ground up.At the QF level, no, it doesn't need to be complex. Your team is not developing the game so no matter what you do, exploits will exist until those who are developing the game address them. Crew might help with the space vs spam governance issue but I really think you guys should have a more open discussion with Schine about how that's going to work. Otherwise, you're going to run into problems when the universe is released.
Yes, I agree that the result will be ships mostly filled in with systems besides some 5-10 meter gap on the outer part of the ship that will be there to stop missiles. I don't see this as a problem. In fact it's pretty much a desired result.You seem to have restated much of what I previously said. Are we in agreement on this particular detail?
I don't misunderstand. I just don't think you see where your suggestion leads.Did you misinterpret my meaning? To clarify, your team cannot properly balance this system in it's current form. I HIGHLY recommend that you petition Schine to address these exploits rather than try to bandage them by trying to balance around them (in essence, creating more of them) yourselves.
And again. The only way to do it is another major system rework.As for spaghetti... Like I said before, umless you want to code the game yourselves, that's the developer's job to fix; not QF's. Besides, I can think of a few creative ways stabilizers can be exploited even now, with your current configs.
You are trying to build by damage, when you need to build by energy consumption. If you try to get the same damage as before your ship defences will be paper thin and your speed will be atrocious. Weapon damage per energy was greatly reduced to make sure that armour and system blocks don't need thousands of HP to stand up to it.Regarding weapon size: In the pre-weapons-3.0 vanilla config one block of cannon did 10 points of damage. Last time I checked QF's config, they do about 13. That's not really "cutting down" since weapons still have to be pretty large to get any kind of relevant effect against heavy armor scaling.
Have you tested recently ? We tuned the rotation a few weeks ago and it is way easier on the current configs.To clarify, none of the other flight sims I've played over the years had this low of a top speed or turn rate for ships in this size class. This is literally the slowest, clumsiest, ship control scheme I've ever used. This is probably out of your domain but another thing that severely sours the experience of flying these ships is the fact that StarMade's Joystick/gamepad support really sucks and does not save the settings I enter.
A few weeks? Seems I missed an update while I was out of town. I'll give it a try. Is there anything that can be done about the joystick/gamepad issue or is that a Schine issue?Have you tested recently ? We tuned the rotation a few weeks ago and it is way easier on the current configs.
Only Schine can be the judge of that. QF does not have the ability to properly address exploits on an incomplete system.The only way to address exploits we are talking about is to do another system redesign from ground up.
Once again, you're knowingly balancing around an incomplete system that Schine has explicitly said they are going to change. This is going to come back to haunt you.Yes, I agree that the result will be ships mostly filled in with systems besides some 5-10 meter gap on the outer part of the ship that will be there to stop missiles. I don't see this as a problem. In fact it's pretty much a desired result.
Crew quarters if added should add an incentive to have interior interior spaces.
Your response suggests that you either don't understand the idea or you simply don't want to consider any idea other than what you are already invested in. I'll address all the concerns you just mentioned but I'd appreciate if you'd keep an open mind rather than remain mentally married to one single idea.I don't misunderstand. I just don't think you see where your suggestion leads.
Miniaturization warrants minimization of ship profile through grouping all the systems together to be protected by armour at minimum resource and mass cost, or alternatively wide spreading of all the parts to prevent shots from hitting multiple systems at once and probably not using armour at all.
Stabiliser distance warrants long ships consisting mostly of empty space. As a result we get two possible main ship types - spaghetti and armoured needle.
Doesn't matter what Schine does as this pressure on ship design will be there and it will be great due to the fact that not getting hit is the best defence you can have if you can achieve it.
And again. The only way to do it is another major system rework.
Bad? Why? Because you personally don't like it? Because it's not the idea you choose? There is no "punishment" here. You don't ballance by enacting "punishment" and you certainly don't attract new players with it.As for ship HP it's a bad idea. Punishing already by definition weaker RP designs for using armour and decorative blocks? That's bad. The simplest solution will be to leave the ship HP to be determined by Reactor alone, even without chambers, but make each system block subtract a fraction of HP if it is destroyed. So that the ship can be overheated both by destroying Reactor directly or by destroying say 40-50% of all the other systems.
I appreciate your advice, but with all due respect, you don't know what I'm building for. It's a tad dismissive of you to assume that you do.You are trying to build by damage, when you need to build by energy consumption. If you try to get the same damage as before your ship defences will be paper thin and your speed will be atrocious. Weapon damage per energy was greatly reduced to make sure that armour and system blocks don't need thousands of HP to stand up to it.
Weapon damage per energy was greatly reduced to make sure that armour and system blocks don't need thousands of HP to stand up to it.
Which one is it? Reduced power weapons that you need a lot of, or weapons that require less blocks to get the job done?As for weapon sizes they are already really small. We cut them down almost 4-5 times there is nowhere else to go unless you want another full system rework.
There are two things Schema mentioned that may change how things will work - shields, which he mentioned he wants to take another stab at and crew. Both should be very much okay with pretty dense ships. Especially crew since it will add proper interior spaces useful for the ship.Once again, you're knowingly balancing around an incomplete system that Schine has explicitly said they are going to change. This is going to come back to haunt you.
Addressing and judging is very different things. You don't need any special access to code to judge how the end result works.Only Schine can be the judge of that. QF does not have the ability to properly address exploits on an incomplete system.
I see a system that rewards using shields over armour. I see a system that punishes heavy armoured ships because their armour literally kills them while they sacrifice firepower and speed for it. I see stabilisers that I consider an absolutely worthless part of the system. I see return to vanilla Power 2.0 stick ships. While it all gives minimal actual benefit to showing how tough it is to disable the ship you are fighting against.If you stop itemizing what I write, put ALL of the ideas together; miniaturization, stabilizer spacing and HP, and look at the big picture, you will see a complete system that...
- Allows block spam for those who want it but slightly rewards those who don't use it.
- Allows open space for those who want it but doesn't give them a game-breaking advantage over those who block spam.
- Incentivizes building your stabilizers farther from the reactor but with a semi-sharp point of diminishing returns to curb exploitation.
- Retains the benefits of hull and armor (regardless of play-style) and incentivizes using more of it to increase HP and armor defense.
- Gives players a clear idea of what exactly they are up against; with regard to the overall durability of an opposing ship.
- Prevents a ship from being unreasonably tough to kill by hiding a tiny group of systems within a huge armored hull.
- Prevents that ridiculous "Isanth effect", where 75% of the ship's blocks are missing, yet it's still somehow able to fight you.
Because it is supposed to be like this. If you want the Power 2.0 weapons that vaporise the target in 1-3 passes that won't happen. You literally can't get them no matter how you try. At best after a lot of struggle you'll get some kind of slow and paper thin protected glass cannon (or at least we tried to do it so, we still need to see if we did enough). Curbing the power of weapons enough that they won't obliterate all the blocks on the target in a couple of volleys was one of the main points of QF.Which one is it? Reduced power weapons that you need a lot of, or weapons that require less blocks to get the job done?
...Because from what I'm seeing, I've had to use substantially larger weapons in QF than anything ever I've used in the past in order to defeat the new armor. And from an aesthetics standpoint, weapons were already comically oversized to begin with; hence why I suggested miniaturization in the first place. Seriously; why do we need to mount a death star beam or launch a Saturn V rocket to poke a hole in a frigate?
Once again, you are balancing around an incomplete system. This will come back to haunt you.There are two things Schema mentioned that may change how things will work - shields, which he mentioned he wants to take another stab at and crew. Both should be very much okay with pretty dense ships. Especially crew since it will add proper interior spaces useful for the ship.
1. First; That's a cop out. Second, you're basically admitting that you are in fact, balancing around an incomplete system. Keep doing this and you may end up reinventing the wheel again when the universe update comes out.Addressing and judging is very different things. You don't need any special access to code to judge how the end result works.
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1) Armour cost.
Until we see Universe update and see what can be done about resources everything is cheap. After that all the recipes will need a rework anyway.
2) Ship damage
Same as now. Getting damage into systems severely hampers the ship performance. Even in case you don't hit the reactor. Which is pretty big right now. For example for a 3k block reactor ship composition will be something like this:
3k Reactor + 3k Stabilisers
1k Weapons
2k Shield Rechargers + 4k Shield Capacitors
4k Thrusters
And then you get armour and chambers on top of it. With something like 4-5k blocks total.
4) CC waffles vs low density ship
So you are suggesting to use a medium-close range weapon against an unarmoured ship that probably will have more speed than you? And even in this case during times when beam waffles were very prevalent spaghetti ships still performed at least adequately.
5) Stabiliser distance.
You are literally suggesting vanilla Power 2.0 stab distance config with a little changed numbers. Result will be the same. It worked exactly like this. If you build stabs close you need a lot of them, if you build far you need less. And we have seen what it leads to.
6) Evasion and missiles
We will need to look into what exactly is the problem with the turret AI. If it's missile speed than we will need to see how low we can set it. But ships above fighters are not supposed to dodge all the missiles and projectiles. Smaller fast ships should dodge some of the projectiles. But without extensive testing it is hard to get better numbers. We will need dozens-hundreds of different combat reports with very different ship compositions to see how good/bad is the projectile speed.
For example when I was testing long range vs close combat weapons with Scypio with his ship being more or less normal long box in the general shape he did dodge a lot of shots until he came into like half the CB range.
7) The fact that Schema works on the Universe update and that most actual solutions to the problems will involve things like universal conduits or being able to build things only in certain radius around the reactor. Both of which were vehemently rejected by many people before. It's not a minor tweaks problem.
No. You only see what you want to see. You ignore the details that I provide in order to maintain your preferences and refuse to consider anything outside of your point of view is demonstration enough of that.I see a system that rewards using shields over armour. I see a system that punishes heavy armoured ships because their armour literally kills them while they sacrifice firepower and speed for it. I see stabilisers that I consider an absolutely worthless part of the system. I see return to vanilla Power 2.0 stick ships. While it all gives minimal actual benefit to showing how tough it is to disable the ship you are fighting against.
Because ships can have a lot of HP and lose their weapons, or thrusters, or stabilisers and just aimlessly drift in space or be unable to deal any damage while for any observer they will look like just somewhat wounded. That is why I think that HP should be tied only to reactor directly and every other system destroyed should also damage it, to a lesser extent. Thus losing a decent chunk of systems or rector will kill the ship that was already crippled by received damage.
Ship HP and it's actual ability to function are not tied 1 to 1. And never were. Even when SHP was in place. But dying to lost armour? That's too much.
Because it is supposed to be like this. If you want the Power 2.0 weapons that vaporise the target in 1-3 passes that won't happen. You literally can't get them no matter how you try. At best after a lot of struggle you'll get some kind of slow and paper thin protected glass cannon (or at least we tried to do it so, we still need to see if we did enough). Curbing the power of weapons enough that they won't obliterate all the blocks on the target in a couple of volleys was one of the main points of QF.
Ships with similar mass, unless they sacrifice something, should not be able to easily destroy their counterparts. With CAN-MIS you sacrifice range and ability to leave shooting to AI. CAN-CAN suffers from problems with armour. MIS is weak against spaced armour and has low projectile speed for dumbfire projectiles. MIS-MIS is bomb and that's enough.
Could you clarify why this is bad for Quickfire's balancing but not a problem for your balancing? I've only been skimming these text walls, sorry.Once again, you are balancing around an incomplete system.
Probably us, not Quickfire.Is there anything that can be done about the joystick/gamepad issue or is that a Schine issue?
Yes, it's very nice! While people don't agree, almost everyone wants what they think is the best for the gameWhile it's nice to see a discussion of this kind remain civil for a change.
Okay, I say it another way - armour can be made as cheap or costly as needed depending how the Universe update works. Until then we don't care what are the recipes and costs for any of the blocks. Because right now they are cheap and thinking about what may happen next is worthless because we don't have enough information.1. First; That's a cop out. Second, you're basically admitting that you are in fact, balancing around an incomplete system. Keep doing this and you may end up reinventing the wheel again when the universe update comes out.
Turrets existed for a long time and always were used. You can find Youtube videos of how they perform against spaghetti. And they perform horribly. And I ignored the point of diminishing returns because it doesn't change anything about stabilisers fundamentally - you will still get P2.0 stick shapes they will just be a little longer or shorter.4. Turrets exist... Also, you ignored what I said about a point of diminishing returns; so again, your response is not relevant to what I said.
The test is pretty simple - lower the missile speed by a lot, see if the delay persists. IF it doesn't that means there are some problems with AI tracking missiles/object moving at very fast speeds. If it does that means there is some kind of a bug in AI target acquisition algorithm.. You either didn't understand what I wrote or you deliberately chose to ignore it. Unless you fix the one and a half second delay between the time a missile is fired and the time the AMS turet even starts to turn to aim at it, the AMS turrets will not hit the missiles. Meanwhile. Your own "clique mate" was complaining up and down the discord chat yesterday about these issues (I notice your team dismissed his concerns too), so you'll have to pardon me if I regard your (vaguely described) test with Scypio as being of limited scope and specifically set up to fit within your shared preferences. And if you reply with your signiture statement that "everything is working as intended". I'm going to remind you of the fact that both of you (being QF configurators) built your ships according your chosen META; something you alone, control. In essence, it is working as intended for your purposes and not for balance across all ship types and sizes.
Than maybe you can show how it will be good and healthy to have ships capable of obliterating their opponents in short amounts of time? Because we specifically removed it because it was a problem with latest iteration of vanilla weapons. You could burn a ship under 10 seconds if server can take it and cripple it even faster.No. You only see what you want to see. You ignore the details that I provide in order to maintain your preferences and refuse to consider anything outside of your point of view is demonstration enough of that.
The same applies more or less to all recipes. Until cost and resource distribution become a part of the game (the universe update) we decided to not look and bother with it. In the current game, you can easily have everything you need for several weeks or months within a few hours. With the crazy bonuses that's just it. Just claim a system and mine roïds in a few sectors, not planets in unclaimed systems...Okay, I say it another way - armour can be made as cheap or costly as needed depending how the Universe update works. Until then we don't care what are the recipes and costs for any of the blocks. Because right now they are cheap and thinking about what may happen next is worthless because we don't have enough information.
Just to add some details on top of that, with some tests with Ith and myself, i could evade volleys of fire at around the 2-3 km range if i remember correctly. Which is 25% of the CB max range. The thing is : it is really easy to evade volleys with cannons. So don't fire all your guns in volleys. If it isn't, that's much harder to count down between each volleys and dodge accordingly. But that's up to the builder and your piloting skill (and ability to do multitasking).For example when I was testing long range vs close combat weapons with Scypio with his ship being more or less normal long box in the general shape he did dodge a lot of shots until he came into like half the CB range.
If the META is to build a fleet of specialized ships that compensate each others weakness then i think we did a great job, shouldn't i ?I understand your intent, but if you truely believe there is always a META then you must concede that a true balance can never be achieved.
well, I wouldn't exactly call that a hotfix, hotfixes are usually distributed from the developer, (usually in the game package), and don't require users to manually copy / replace files.Already done.
You can get the hotfix here :
GitHub - alterintel/Quickfire: Settings for Starmade Quickfire Testing Server
Settings for Starmade Quickfire Testing Server. Contribute to alterintel/Quickfire development by creating an account on GitHub.github.com
You should be asking us this, not Quickfire. They don't have control over that...well, I wouldn't exactly call that a hotfix, hotfixes are usually distributed from the developer, (usually in the game package), and don't require users to manually copy / replace files.
I will have to guess that means no.
Thanks anyway!
... because this was a QF-Config oversight and the group was working together w/ Shine on this, figured you might know.Then why are you asking something we don't have our hands on here ... ?