The Quickfire Initiative: Rebalancing StarMade.

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    At this point, QuickFire seems to have devolved into an unstable, hyper-polarizing, and restrictive mess. I thought that it would resolve some of the issues from the weapons and power builds, but now I'm not so sure.

    I think at this point I might downgrade to a pre-QF build so I can build shells without worrying about changing configs and restrictive mechanics...either that or I'll just go switch over to From the Depths. At least that game properly balances all of its different weapons.
     
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    Back to my original question; Why do you guys keep nerfing shields?
    I didn't participate in the last round of shield changes but pre-last change they were pretty strong as long as you cared about building them at proper size.

    Right now looking into confings you can have 5 regen and 1250 cap for 100 power vs DPS of ~17 for same 100 power. Less if we take anything more long range than base cannon. That's 73 seconds to bring down the shields if all the shots hit. For beams or long range weapons you can double to triple that accounting for some misses. So 100-200 seconds to shut down the shields. That's seems pretty decent.

    This should get you from 10 to 20 something millions of shield cap at ~50k mass. Depending on how much recharge you want to have in percentage of your cap.

    P.S. My own on computer notes actually show that shields were buffed from 1.25 upkeep per cap block to 1 upkeep per cap block.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    At this point, QuickFire seems to have devolved into an unstable, hyper-polarizing, and restrictive mess. I thought that it would resolve some of the issues from the weapons and power builds, but now I'm not so sure.

    I think at this point I might downgrade to a pre-QF build so I can build shells without worrying about changing configs and restrictive mechanics...either that or I'll just go switch over to From the Depths. At least that game properly balances all of its different weapons.
    Yeah... After all the crazy designs I've come up with over the past 6 years, I'm not interested in suddenly being restricted to only one build/play style.

    It's times like these that I am glad I started saving all my SM installs (before and after QF) to completely separate folders as a backup.

    I didn't participate in the last round of shield changes but pre-last change they were pretty strong as long as you cared about building them at proper size.

    Right now looking into confings you can have 5 regen and 1250 cap for 100 power vs DPS of ~17 for same 100 power. Less if we take anything more long range than base cannon. That's 73 seconds to bring down the shields if all the shots hit. For beams or long range weapons you can double to triple that accounting for some misses. So 100-200 seconds to shut down the shields. That's seems pretty decent.

    This should get you from 10 to 20 something millions of shield cap at ~50k mass. Depending on how much recharge you want to have in percentage of your cap.

    P.S. My own on computer notes actually show that shields were buffed from 1.25 upkeep per cap block to 1 upkeep per cap block.
    That sounds promising on paper, but...

    The recent changes substantially dropped the amount of shield capacity you get per block. For example; I went from 700K shields on a 7K mass ship (the original "Challenger" class) to about 450K. I tried to tweak a config setting and it corrupted my universe; forcing me to restore a copy of a previous install. When I updated to QF again, the ship registered only 280K shields. Subsequent reinstalls again yielded only 280K; the lowest capacity ever for that ancient ship design since I joined this forum. Meanwhile, regen was so power hungery that I could not fire weapons (30% of total power draw), while moving (30% power draw) without redlining to 130% or more and did not get any kind of resonable performance until I removed ALL shield chargers from the ship.

    This demonstrates two problems.

    1) Regardless of what changes were made to shield rechargers, lower shield capacity per block means yet more block spam, which means less interior and less creativity for the sake of combat effectiveness and a glaring incompatibility with several of Schine's planned features.

    2) Because of the aforementioned excessive mass of system blocks (how you distribute the mass among system block types it is irrelevant), the excessive power draw of thrusters and the fact that smaller ships simply cannot benefit from armor the way larger ships to (due to being *smaller*), shields were the only thing that provided any significant defense for smaller ships. By reducing overall shield capacity, the durability of smaller ships has been nerfed; with the only way to compensate being to add more capacitors, thus adding more weight; thus lowering your speed and turn rate (making them easier to hit); thus requiring speed and turnrate chambers; thus eliminating your ability to use any other chambers.

    As I explained in previous discussions; QF is promoting block spam as well as giantism and forcing one play/build style at the expense of all others. From a balance standpoint, this is simply unacceptable.

    EDIT: Furthermore; the fact you offer an example at 50K mass (a size threshold which I very rarely approach) further demonstrates that you are neither looking at this issue from all angles nor considering how these kinds of broadly sweeping changes affect players who don't fit the supposed consensus of "standard" size or build methods.
     
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    1) Regardless of what changes were made to shield rechargers, lower shield capacity per block means yet more block spam, which means less interior and less creativity for the sake of combat effectiveness and a glaring incompatibility with several of Schine's planned features.
    It's sitting at 250 cap per block for at least half a year now. I really would like to see what changes were that made the cap lower and if maybe there is some bug. Same goes for power draw from rechargers. 25 for thrust, 50 for recharger, 100 for weapons per block. If for any reason your power requirements change that's either a bug or I don't know even what.

    Furthermore; the fact you offer an example at 50K mass (a size threshold which I very rarely approach) further demonstrates that you are neither looking at this issue from all angles nor considering how these kinds of broadly sweeping changes affect players who don't fit the supposed consensus of "standard" size or build methods.
    I can as well do it for 7k. At this size you should have around 2 millions of capacity.
     
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    I've been MIA for some time, so correct me if I'm wrong. Schema gave the power of game-balance back to the players, this group of players (some of the most experienced to ever play the game) fixed the most significant and broken issues with Starmade (which Schine could not) and now people are AGAIN complaining about the game balance. Ah, war, war never changes.

    My thanks to the QF team for their work.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    It's sitting at 250 cap per block for at least half a year now. I really would like to see what changes were that made the cap lower and if maybe there is some bug. Same goes for power draw from rechargers. 25 for thrust, 50 for recharger, 100 for weapons per block. If for any reason your power requirements change that's either a bug or I don't know even what.


    I can as well do it for 7k. At this size you should have around 2 millions of capacity.
    Did you guys ever post a list of all current QF settings? ...Or at a minimum; a note of what configs go with what StarMade build? At present, this info does not appear to be on QF's discord or repository. What info does exist (including the opening post of this thread) appears out of date.

    If there is a bug, having the most updated information would make it a lot easier (for QF and non-QF) to determine this quickly and address it properly. Without this basic info, we have no frame of reference for how things are supoosed to work vs any abnormalities.

    In any case, 2 million shields at 7K mass is not possible for my build at this time. Reason: All ships and stations are at 40% of their original shield capacity. Even if I removed all shield rechargers and weapons from the Challenger and filled every remaining cubic meter of empty space with capacitors it still won't reach 2 million. There simply is not enough space.

    If you don't know what happened, that's fine, but it would be highly beneficial if your team updated your opening post of this thread to show current settings, current build and a link to any change logs you may have.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    For gits and shiggles, I backed up my StarMade install to another folder then completely reinstalled the game from scratch (now ver.202-96) and added only my blueprints, player skin, keyboard config and the QF configs.

    Starting a new universe, the reduction in capacitors still exists but I made an interesting discovery while refitting my Challenger...

    Stabilizers no longer appear to be required for power-grid regen. They still have a stability value but removing them all did not reduce power regen or ship performance. I am unable to determine what, if anything stabilizers do now.

    Is this intentional? If so, is it in any of QF's update notes?

    Is this how you were able to get additional shielding? ...by replacing stabilizers with shield capacitors? When I did this, I reached about 85% of my original pre-update shield value.

    What are the current consequences of building a ship with zero reactor stability?

    ETA: Firing at the reactor of a target with no stabilizers did not have any noticeable effect on the blocks themselves. No noticeable change in loss of reactor HP either.
     
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    Is this intentional? If so, is it in any of QF's update notes?

    Is this how you were able to get additional shielding? ...by replacing stabilizers with shield capacitors? When I did this, I reached about 85% of my original pre-update shield value.
    That's interesting to say the least. No. I didn't account for that. Though there may be a discrepancy in size/mass between how we build ships. My calculator assumes around 5k reactor blocks for a 7k mass ship.

    As for stats there is a "Configs" channel on Quickfire discord with all the latest stats in neat tables. Thing is it's slave to the GitHub repository that Quickfire server uses so there may be some discrepancies with what is in general Starmade version especially if someone was doing some tests.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    That's interesting to say the least. No. I didn't account for that. Though there may be a discrepancy in size/mass between how we build ships. My calculator assumes around 5k reactor blocks for a 7k mass ship.
    That's the problem that's been causing our disagreements. You can't "calculate" how someone else is going to build a ship. Likewise, you shouldn't use calculations to dictate how someone else builds. We all build for different styles and different purposes. Example, the original challenger is actually a hybrid between a light cruiser, a transport/carrier and an artillery platform.
    No doubt your 7000 mass ship is not a 100m long quad-nacelle hybrid.

    As for stats there is a "Configs" channel on Quickfire discord with all the latest stats in neat tables. Thing is it's slave to the GitHub repository that Quickfire server uses so there may be some discrepancies with what is in general Starmade version especially if someone was doing some tests.
    That info is out of date and is not mentioned anywhere obvious.

    This is why I keep asking your team to post a list of current configs AND recent changes so we can all be aware of what those changes are.

    If stabilizers are in fact, no longer needed and shield capacity is cut by 60%, then players should know about that.

    ETA: With regard to shields, the in-game stats are very different from what you stated.
    Shields info.JPG
    In short: Regen is 2 HP per sec. per block (not 5). Capacity is 100 HP per block (not 250).
     
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    In short: Regen is 2 HP per sec. per block (not 5). Capacity is 100 HP per block (not 250).
    Can't help in this case. Quickfire config is 5 regen, 1 upkeep, 250 cap. You can check in Discord yourself.

    As for the ship and assumptions - we need to assume at least something. We can't just say "everything works" because it won't. Frankly the 5k reactor at 7k mass is in no way a super PVP ship. Certain people do pretty ridiculous things with the system even after we hit a couple of points like system mass with a hammer. But chambers, plus death of energy capacity kinda don't leave much room to work with.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    Can't help in this case. Quickfire config is 5 regen, 1 upkeep, 250 cap. You can check in Discord yourself.

    As for the ship and assumptions - we need to assume at least something. We can't just say "everything works" because it won't. Frankly the 5k reactor at 7k mass is in no way a super PVP ship. Certain people do pretty ridiculous things with the system even after we hit a couple of points like system mass with a hammer. But chambers, plus death of energy capacity kinda don't leave much room to work with.
    This is a prime example of why people question QF so harshly.

    I've just provided you with a screenshot of the shield stats from your team's most recent QF configs applied to a fresh download of StarMade's latest build; ver. 202-96. I've also told you that at least some of your QF discord info is out of date and that certain functions (shields and stabilizers) are not working as they normally should.

    ...Yet here you are with your typical dismissive/evasive response. No investigation; no attempt to actually identify the problem and completely ignoring all of the info I just provided you, in favor of your cherry picked opinion-based tangents.

    Would you care to discuss the information I've provided?

    1) Shield regen. at 2 HP per sec. per block (not 5).
    2) Shield capacity at 100 HP per block (not 250).

    3) Stabilizers no longer seem to have a function.

    If you're not interested or you simply don't have an answer for these things, that's fine, but I'm only interested in the discussing the system data and any changes made; not more of these pointless tangents.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    Out of curiosity, how did you get ver 0.202.96? Is that a dev build? In my launcher, it's showing the latest version to be 0.202.87.
    I had been using a much older version, then I updated when I saw new configs listed on github. After applying the configs, the above changes were what I received. Just to be sure, I backed up the game to another folder and used the launcher to download and install the latest version. 202-96 is what I ended up with.

    I'm going to cross-check between the basic build and the the one I manually updated with QF and see if anything changes
     
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    Dr. Whammy

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    Thanks for listing that other build Forsyth . The appropriate build version did not appear to be listed under any of QF's documents or discord.

    I tried another fresh game install for ver. 202-96 without adding the configs and got nothing but errors.
    I tried 202-87; stable but still had the old weapons/shield configs.
    202-87 is stable and has the newer weapons config but shields have still been reduced; albeit to a lesser degree.

    For ver. 202-87 with QF added, I get the following variances.
    - There seems to be no penalty for forgoing stabilizers entirely. They effectively don't have a purpose.
    - shield capacity per block is 200
    - shield regen per block is 2
    - upkeep is 0.4 allowing allowing the same (just under) 5:1 capacitor to regen ratio.
    - chamber need only one block if the reactor is 99 blocks or less.
    - Reactors of 100 blocks or more seem to require chambers to be a minimum of 10% of reactor size, rounded down (example: 300-399 requires 30 chamber blocks while 400-499 requires 40.

    Are you seeing similar results?
     
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    I did a repair of my current 202.87 build (straight from launcher). I noticed a couple of discrepancies (might be because of how mine is set up, I haven't downloaded any additional configs):

    - Reactors of 100 blocks or more seem to require chambers to be a minimum of 10% of reactor size, rounded down (example: 300-399 requires 30 chamber blocks while 400-499 requires 50.
    I'm seeing mostly the same thing, but for me, 400-499 requires 40
    - There seems to be no penalty for forgoing stabilizers entirely. They effectively don't have a purpose.
    Stabilization is still needed.
    - shield capacity per block is 200
    - shield regen per block is 2
    - upkeep is 0.4 allowing allowing the same (just under) 5:1 capacitor to regen ratio.
    I'm seeing 250hp/capacitor, 5 regen/recharger, but the same ratio.
     

    Dr. Whammy

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    I did a repair of my current 202.87 build (straight from launcher). I noticed a couple of discrepancies (might be because of how mine is set up, I haven't downloaded any additional configs):
    Discrepancies? Can you expand on that a bit?

    I'm seeing mostly the same thing, but for me, 400-499 requires 40
    Sorry, that's a mistype. 400-499 does require 40.

    Stabilization is still needed.
    My I ask what ship size you're using? I've tried everything from the original 10 reactor blocks up to a ship with over 4000 reactor blocks. Deleting the stabilizers yielded the same power output. Replacing the stabilizers with more reactor blocks and connecting them into one big array yielded 100 power for each block, at 0% stabilization.

    I'm seeing 250hp/capacitor, 5 regen/recharger, but the same ratio.
    Something is very off here. It would be nice if the QF team would post actual instructions on how to setup their build; including what order to add the files and what builds go with what config.
     
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    My I ask what ship size you're using? I've tried everything from the original 10 reactor blocks up to a ship with over 4000 reactor blocks. Deleting the stabilizers yielded the same power output. Replacing the stabilizers with more reactor blocks and connecting them into one big array yielded 100 power for each block, at 0% stabilization.
    I just loaded in a core and started slapping power modules on it.

    Something is very off here. It would be nice if the QF team would post actual instructions on how to setup their build; including what order to add the files and what builds go with what config.
    I think that would be quite useful
     
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    Dr. Whammy

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    I just loaded in a core and started slapping power modules on it.
    Did you notice a cutoff where you can't get additional power without stabilizers? ...or is it just the original 10 free blocks?
     
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