The Quickfire Initiative: Rebalancing StarMade.

[Forsyth]

Rregarding leaving cannon recoil low or removing it completely: Agreed. It's unrealistic from both a modern phyisics and sci-fi point of view and takes away from the overall game-play experience. Also, why are we using "gunpowder" to shoot projectiles when things like FTL, force fields and anti-gravity exist?

Even electromagnetic railguns have recoil, so cannon recoil should still exist, but I think it should be scaled with the mass of the ship firing and the size of the array

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Even electromagnetic railguns have recoil, so cannon recoil should still exist, but I think it should be scaled with the mass of the ship firing and the size of the array

Rail guns? How primitive. That's so late 21st century...

If we're being totally honest, in a universe where you can manipulate gravity and travel faster than light, cannon recoil does seem kind of silly. ...like "plot device" level silly.

In any case, I am content with the current recoil setting. It's much better than it originally was. I can take it as is but wouldn't complain if it was removed altogether.

For the record, QF has made some interesting breakthroughs so I give them credit for their efforts. My beef mainly stems with how badly they restrict thrust shields and power. ...and then work to shut down anyone who dares criticize these decisions. If not for that, I'd still be on their discord trying to contribute.

 

[Forsyth]

Rail guns? How primitive. That's so late 21st century...

lol nice

 

[Scypio]

Just a few words... because i'm forced to answer you guys. It's not like i want to but i'm forced to. Otherwise it would look like you are right.

So first, concerning the changes in the configs. They ARE the lastest configs for qf. I mean just check the repository and if values are correct or not.
Manhattan did some changes and while i do not agree with everything he did i do trust his insight on the subject. He "simply" went so far in certain decision we made. He's right in a certain sense.
Anyway, plenty of stuff will have to be looked at when the universe update comes out so wait and see.

Concerning the "agenda" and whatsnot. I mean, even in this topic if i count the number of people for qf changes and against I see less people against than for qf changes. You're just very vocal and there's plenty of pages were it's just the two of you arguing with someone. The worst is that all your complaints aren't even on the same subject for each but you agree "qf bad".
So like, i see one person complaining about thrusts because he can't fly his titan like a fighter anymore and then he gives plenty of reasons why it's bad i just shrug off. He's just one person that doesn't agree in a crowd of others that agree. At one point you've got to understand that your opinion is NOT the majority of starmade.

In the end you can open the config files yourself and create your starmade you want. I strongly suggest you do so, especially if you play offline in solo worlds. Tsonak did already and i'm sure you can too. If you want to ask how and what does each lines of configs you can hop onto our discord and tag ith for quick answer. You can ask there if you're scared of discord but then the response time will be longer.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Just a few words... because i'm forced to answer you guys. It's not like i want to but i'm forced to. Otherwise it would look like you are right.

So first, concerning the changes in the configs. They ARE the lastest configs for qf. I mean just check the repository and if values are correct or not.
Manhattan did some changes and while i do not agree with everything he did i do trust his insight on the subject. He "simply" went so far in certain decision we made. He's right in a certain sense.
Anyway, plenty of stuff will have to be looked at when the universe update comes out so wait and see.

This has been alluded to repeatedly. "someone may have made some changes..." or something to that effect.

And yet there is never any mention of what these changes are, what build version they go with or where I can read up on them. You and I discussed this back in January. Did you ever update and centralize your ducumentation?

Concerning the "agenda" and whatsnot. I mean, even in this topic if i count the number of people for qf changes and against I see less people against than for qf changes. You're just very vocal and there's plenty of pages were it's just the two of you arguing with someone. The worst is that all your complaints aren't even on the same subject for each but you agree "qf bad".
So like, i see one person complaining about thrusts because he can't fly his titan like a fighter anymore and then he gives plenty of reasons why it's bad i just shrug off. He's just one person that doesn't agree in a crowd of others that agree. At one point you've got to understand that your opinion is NOT the majority of starmade.

There's no "agenda" as you two put it. An agenda would imply that we (the four of us) can actually have some kind of effect on QF or the game. Do you really believe that is the case? ...unless, the "agenda" was to agree to abandon StarMade entirely. ...in which case, we obviously failed.

The truth is; quite a few players I've spoken to about this issue no longer want to engage with QF or even play StarMade for the reasons we've been stating all this time (including thrust and power cost issues). So now all you get is random outbursts from singular frustrated players and the of four us who happened to be on the forum at roughly the same time; two of us attempting to identify/fix a config-related problem (that we still don't have a concrete answer on) and two more chiming in, with opinions you don't like.

The fact that you only responded to us because "Otherwise it would look like we are right " speaks volumes of the true problem we have with QF. ...that you don't listen.

Did it ever occur to you that some of those who dared to questioned you might actually have a point?

The funny thing is that your "crowd of people who agree" are finally starting realize/acknowledge something I warned you and zoolimar about 5 months ago; that "you are balancing around a broken system and this is going to come back to haunt you". Now you're neck deep in changes that have chased off more players than you want to admit and have still ultimately hit a dead end.

Here's a sample of what your "crowd of people who agree" have been saying recently about the current state of this game. I'm not posting their usernames here but I'm sure you already know who they are.

Spoiler

"it was doomed to fail because it was built on p2 =p"

"Yes. It was ultimately an excercice in polishing a giant turd."

"Quickfire was doomed to fail from the start because of the people that led and formed a majority in influencing the outcomes."

"Speaking of P1 vs P2. What would be a good system. I like the complexity of P1, but it was too minotinous to adjust when tweaking your build. and P2 is just too simple. There was an effort to add complexity with stibilizers, but that backfired big time. Anybody have any suggestions?"

"I think at this point most tweak are behind the scene tweaks rather than changes we can make
like adding system HP again
or making sure shit isn't bugged
which is also why it's really dead here currently"

"still would be good to have overall system hp as well so every system damage adds up "

"So besides System HP (and subsystem HP) what bugs need fixing before people could have fun playing starmade again. Honestly it's been so long since I've played I can't even remember. "

"Without any ingame goals, everybody's pretty much tired of building ships that don't work very well."

"most of what starmade had was its interesting systems and good building
w/o the interesting systems theres not really anything to do"

"makes the lack of content for the game much more apparent"

Suggestions? Did someone say "System HP"? Where have I heard that suggestion before?

In the end you can open the config files yourself and create your starmade you want. I strongly suggest you do so, especially if you play offline in solo worlds. Tsonak did already and i'm sure you can too. If you want to ask how and what does each lines of configs you can hop onto our discord and tag ith for quick answer. You can ask there if you're scared of discord but then the response time will be longer.

I'll say it again... I am NOT a coder. My ability to develop any semblance of aptitude for coding has been gone for roughly 15 years. I DID try it repeatedly out of curiosity and stubbornness but the game always crashes and ruins the universe forcing me to reinstall the game. In fact, I've spent more time reinstalling the game than actually tweaking it; time that could be used to build and actually play the game. Kudos to you and Tarsonak for possessing this skill set but it is not as "simple/easy" for everyone as you and Thadius would have us believe. I will gladly accept any help I am offered but this will not be the "one and done" process you are alluding to.

I'll end this by saying; I commend your team's efforts and original intent to save this game. However, your team's unwillingness to listen to ideas outside the box, or more specifically outside of what your "crowd of people who agree" wants to hear is starting to catch up with you.

There are things that can be done to fix this situation but you're going to need an open mind to do it.

 

[Reilly Reese]

There's no "agenda" as you two put it.

The agenda is that you guys are out here trying to turn this into a drummed up crusade and trying to make out like it's a huge conspiracy and the changes are maliciously biased. QuickFire is and always has been a band-aid to the current version of the game. Frankly if you're hating the game experience trying to make meta ships then you're wasting your time. The game and systems will still be changing later down the road and so will the meta. This is why the game community is still dead. Not because Quickfire made everyone leave, but because Power 2 broke everything everyone had, showed up incredibly broken and poorly balanced, and Quickfire has only tried to introduce some semblance of a coherent system to an already dead playerbase.

If you're playing StarMade right now the only thing you should be focused on frankly is improving your design and logic system skills. Make the hulls now and fit the systems in later when there's actually a point to the systems.

Spoiler

Literally more than half of these "anonymous comments" are directed at P2 and things outside of the scope and capability of config changes. Again reiterating that the chief problem is the game's issues itself and that config changes are not able to cover that up.

 

[Scypio]

And yet there is never any mention of what these changes are, what build version they go with or where I can read up on them. You and I discussed this back in January. Did you ever update and centralize your ducumentation?

Our documentation is somewhat centralized in the same documents brought here. The philosophy hasn't changed, only changes in numbers.
As for the numbers, we have a script to show off interesting numbers out of the configs. Not all because that's not the point of this script to pretty print everything in the configs. And, well, it's up to the one pushing the changes to update the bot on the discord, i do not know if it has been done. But we do have a git hook to the git repository on the discord, so whenever there is a change the #git-updates channel on discord is notified.
And, well, i think that's it. I know, it's not something as documented as it could or should but we do not have much control over other stuff. We do not know if the next update to come will have our latest configs, the previous one or even tsonak's config for example. I'm sorry but that is the way it is. Quickfire and schine are both doing their stuff in their basements and sometime one needs the other.
And to be honest i think it suits both too. Quickfire can do their stuff without worrying about the game's development and possibly upcoming updates and the other way around is correct too. But as a downside there is no documentation about what version of the configs is going to what version of the game.

Suggestions? Did someone say "System HP"? Where have I heard that suggestion before?

Oof.
It might be boasting but i asked for the revival of system hp way before qf became a more official thing. So way before the sentence you quoted were even thought about. And i've heard it a lot too, don't worry. But again we're not schine, we cannot bring back system hp.
One of our first config change was to bring back system hp by adding reactor hp to every block. Of course it didn't worked. Then we were stuck with waiting for schema to do something about it. I do hope he'll do something to bring it back but i can't tell for sure if he'll do so or not.
What now ? Give up and wait for a hypothetical and upcoming update ? Or do something about it now and try to have a playable game ? We did the latter. And we did quite okay from what i've heard. Yes, it's far from perfect and even today there is plenty i'd like to change if i could get my hands on the code and modify it just slightly. Like for example another set of config to separate acceleration and max speed for ships.
Yes, reactor are big, system draw a lot of power per block (which is how you get a big reactor, it's just looking at the other way around). But that was how you could get something "alike" system hp. That on top of a lot of people whining about system taking too much place in their precious ship. Smaller systems + the need for a bigger reactor ended up what we had. With manhattan's commit, the oversized reactor should be smaller.
But, well, as i said, nothing can be balanced as easily as it sounds. The only thing to balance out correctly ships is cost. And that's not going to happen before the universe update and since schema needs to do some side work, well that's going to take a while. Since we couldn't use cost, we used power generation to balance compare one ship to another. I'd be happy to reduce reactor's size to something less comical if we had system hp back myself. But, oh well. We're stuck waiting. At least modding is starting to come along nicely so maybe we'll have something interesting to play with sooner.
But, yeah. In general feedback are either pointing toward inherent problem of the current game we cannot fix in any ways with only config edits or are simply suggestions. Which is how the feedback turns out usually. In fact, all of your quotes here are things we cannot do anything about it.
I mean, i can answer just to prove a bit my point.
First three comments don't bring up any point.
Fourth comment is about power and more generaly complexity (and rewards for understanding this complexity) when building a ship. Which we cannot do much about it.
The three next ones are just asking for system hp. Which we cannot do anything about it.
And the three last ones are complaining about the lack of content... Which we cannot do anything about it.
So, in the end there is nothing we (quickfire team) can do at all on our part right now.

I'll say it again... I am NOT a coder. My ability to develop any semblance of aptitude for coding has been gone for roughly 15 years. I DID try it repeatedly out of curiosity and stubbornness but the game always crashes and ruins the universe forcing me to reinstall the game. In fact, I've spent more time reinstalling the game than actually tweaking it; time that could be used to build and actually play the game. Kudos to you and Tarsonak for possessing this skill set but it is not as "simple/easy" for everyone as you and Thadius would have us believe. I will gladly accept any help I am offered but this will not be the "one and done" process you are alluding to.

Well, welcome to starmade's config world. Ith and myself did the same. We changed numbers, looked if it did stuff, crashed or not and so on until we understood what we were doing. Then onto the next line of config. And from that we both built enough experience to work with the configs ourselves.
What i am trying to say is that you can learn and we can help you if you wish to. But yes, that's something that is going to include a lot of trials and errors. Which means time too. Hence why backing up stuff is important. Or using a 2nd install of starmade that isn't on steam for that sort of stuff.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

The agenda is that you guys are out here trying to turn this into a drummed up crusade and trying to make out like it's a huge conspiracy and the changes are maliciously biased. QuickFire is and always has been a band-aid to the current version of the game. Frankly if you're hating the game experience trying to make meta ships then you're wasting your time. The game and systems will still be changing later down the road and so will the meta. This is why the game community is still dead. Not because Quickfire made everyone leave, but because Power 2 broke everything everyone had, showed up incredibly broken and poorly balanced, and Quickfire has only tried to introduce some semblance of a coherent system to an already dead playerbase.

If you're playing StarMade right now the only thing you should be focused on frankly is improving your design and logic system skills. Make the hulls now and fit the systems in later when there's actually a point to the systems.

Literally more than half of these "anonymous comments" are directed at P2 and things outside of the scope and capability of config changes. Again reiterating that the chief problem is the game's issues itself and that config changes are not able to cover that up.

Incorrect.

Let's be clear about something. I came here looking for answers to a config-based problem. I worked with Forsyth on the problem because I never got a straight answer to what was going on. Captain Fortius popped in and spoke his peace. He and Tsnonak chiming in and the rest of us having a discussion at a time that is "inopportune" for you (and unexpected by us) does not constitute an "agenda".

Also, I put in the time and effort to learn how to build in power 2.0 and while I too preferred 1.0, my impression was that it wasn't as broken as you guys keep saying. Feeling the need to resort to islands and spaghetti ships to boost your power grid even after these options were identifed as exploits only shows that some people would rather use exploits to "win" at any cost than learn to work within the intended boundaries of the new system or any system for that matter. The same goes for weapons, armor, shields and everything else. I've said it on here before; it is not QF's Job to fix exploits or player behavior.

Furthermore, your telling me "go mod the game; it's soooo easy" or "go practice building" offers nothing in the way of a solution to the problem we were trying to solve and comes off as rather crass. Kindly keep your flame bait to yourself.

Our documentation is somewhat centralized in the same documents brought here. The philosophy hasn't changed, only changes in numbers.
As for the numbers, we have a script to show off interesting numbers out of the configs. Not all because that's not the point of this script to pretty print everything in the configs. And, well, it's up to the one pushing the changes to update the bot on the discord, i do not know if it has been done. But we do have a git hook to the git repository on the discord, so whenever there is a change the #git-updates channel on discord is notified.
And, well, i think that's it. I know, it's not something as documented as it could or should but we do not have much control over other stuff. We do not know if the next update to come will have our latest configs, the previous one or even tsonak's config for example. I'm sorry but that is the way it is. Quickfire and schine are both doing their stuff in their basements and sometime one needs the other.
And to be honest i think it suits both too. Quickfire can do their stuff without worrying about the game's development and possibly upcoming updates and the other way around is correct too. But as a downside there is no documentation about what version of the configs is going to what version of the game.


Oof.
It might be boasting but i asked for the revival of system hp way before qf became a more official thing. So way before the sentence you quoted were even thought about. And i've heard it a lot too, don't worry. But again we're not schine, we cannot bring back system hp.
One of our first config change was to bring back system hp by adding reactor hp to every block. Of course it didn't worked. Then we were stuck with waiting for schema to do something about it. I do hope he'll do something to bring it back but i can't tell for sure if he'll do so or not.
What now ? Give up and wait for a hypothetical and upcoming update ? Or do something about it now and try to have a playable game ? We did the latter. And we did quite okay from what i've heard. Yes, it's far from perfect and even today there is plenty i'd like to change if i could get my hands on the code and modify it just slightly. Like for example another set of config to separate acceleration and max speed for ships.
Yes, reactor are big, system draw a lot of power per block (which is how you get a big reactor, it's just looking at the other way around). But that was how you could get something "alike" system hp. That on top of a lot of people whining about system taking too much place in their precious ship. Smaller systems + the need for a bigger reactor ended up what we had. With manhattan's commit, the oversized reactor should be smaller.
But, well, as i said, nothing can be balanced as easily as it sounds. The only thing to balance out correctly ships is cost. And that's not going to happen before the universe update and since schema needs to do some side work, well that's going to take a while. Since we couldn't use cost, we used power generation to balance compare one ship to another. I'd be happy to reduce reactor's size to something less comical if we had system hp back myself. But, oh well. We're stuck waiting. At least modding is starting to come along nicely so maybe we'll have something interesting to play with sooner.
But, yeah. In general feedback are either pointing toward inherent problem of the current game we cannot fix in any ways with only config edits or are simply suggestions. Which is how the feedback turns out usually. In fact, all of your quotes here are things we cannot do anything about it.
I mean, i can answer just to prove a bit my point.
First three comments don't bring up any point.
Fourth comment is about power and more generaly complexity (and rewards for understanding this complexity) when building a ship. Which we cannot do much about it.
The three next ones are just asking for system hp. Which we cannot do anything about it.
And the three last ones are complaining about the lack of content... Which we cannot do anything about it.
So, in the end there is nothing we (quickfire team) can do at all on our part right now.


Well, welcome to starmade's config world. Ith and myself did the same. We changed numbers, looked if it did stuff, crashed or not and so on until we understood what we were doing. Then onto the next line of config. And from that we both built enough experience to work with the configs ourselves.
What i am trying to say is that you can learn and we can help you if you wish to. But yes, that's something that is going to include a lot of trials and errors. Which means time too. Hence why backing up stuff is important. Or using a 2nd install of starmade that isn't on steam for that sort of stuff.

A very thoughtful response. Thanks for that.

Regarding documentation: It's interesting to see that (according to Quickbot) the changes I observed are indeed in effect now. Which brings me back to my original question: Why is this being done when shields are already slow to charge and very power hungry?

Regarding System HP. By all means; boast all you want. Make some noise. Maybe it will bring some attention to this issue and give Schine a reason to reconsider. Out of curiosity, how often do QF and Schine communicate? Have they ever mentioned working on a solution to the limitations of P2.0? Are they actively opposed to bringing back Structural HP?

Regarding the coding thing; I appreciate the offer. Realistically speaking; I don't anticipate that you have the time to actively train me on how to interpret the XML code without it being painful for all involved. ...just as I don't have the time to reinstall/copy/paste the game every single time the game breaks.

If you have some pointers on how to control things like:
- damage and power consumption per weapon block
- recharge and power consumption per shield regen block
- upkeep and capacity per shield capacitor block
- thrust output and power consumption per thruster block
- stabilizer distance requirements
...then that would allow me to at least try to work on a config with a basic idea of what I'm looking for. Who know's? Maybe I'll end up with a functional mod.

I any case, any info you have would be appreciated.

 

[Forsyth]

I'd be happy to reduce reactor's size to something less comical if we had system hp back myself. But, oh well. We're stuck waiting. At least modding is starting to come along nicely so maybe we'll have something interesting to play with sooner.

Ok, so at least you've acknowledged that you have a plan for what you would like to do if you're able to. That makes me feel a little better. I'd like to know what the rest of your plan entails. Do you plan to tackle any other major issues when you have the ability to?

But...this piece of...I don't even know what...

Just a few words... because i'm forced to answer you guys. It's not like i want to but i'm forced to. Otherwise it would look like you are right.

I'm at a loss for words quite frankly. Look like we're right about what? And why is it an issue if we may be right about something? Dr. Whammy mentioned it in his post;

Did it ever occur to you that some of those who dared to questioned you might actually have a point?

Like seriously... if you hadn't led off with that, I'd have thought about what you said and tried to understand where you're coming from. But that piece of canned BS just tells me that you only are replying because you feel that you're backed into a corner.

Have you ever heard of the Condorcet paradox? Its original context is voter's preferences, but we're in the same situation here. Some prefer X course, some prefer Y course, and others prefer Z course. With voting, you can't exactly compromise, but with a game, you can. So we actually have a solution to the Condorcet paradox: Take the most agreed upon aspects of what everyone suggests and make that QuickFire. The changes wouldn't be as drastic, but they would be sensible and help serve as a more permanent solution. I mentioned my idea for what most of the community would appreciate here. Of course, I do not represent the community as a whole, but I do believe what I am suggesting is reasonable and non-destructive to future changes.

You're probably going to ask me what I think you should do, so I'll tell you. I think that when someone proposes something that maybe doesn't align with what your plan for the game is, you should take the time to understand what that person would like. Then, let the community decide whether or not that would be a good idea (preferably have the person who made the suggestion post it in a channel in the QF discord and do a reaction-based voting system). With that approach, there's a significant chance that you'll come across a suggestion that seems ridiculous at first, but after entertaining it and posing the suggestion to the community for evaluation, it would improve the game and keep people interested. There are small variations in this plan of action that would be acceptable, but saying "Your idea is a bunch of BS because it doesn't match what we have planned" gets us nowhere. In fact, I'd argue that that mentality sends us backward. If we could have had a civil and technical discussion from the start, I'd wager that we wouldn't be here now. But we are, and the issue lies not with the speakers, but the dismissers.

QuickFire is and always has been a band-aid to the current version of the game.

And what do Band-Aids do? They peel off. That's what will happen to QF on your current path.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Incorrect.

Let's be clear about something. I came here looking for answers to a config-based problem.

I'm referring to a majority of the posts you spread around the dock, not your posts here specifically.

Also, I put in the time and effort to learn how to build in power 2.0 and while I too preferred 1.0, my impression was that it wasn't as broken as you guys keep saying.

The playerbase's time of death disagrees.

Furthermore, your telling me "go mod the game; it's soooo easy" or "go practice building" offers nothing in the way of a solution to the problem we were trying to solve and comes off as rather crass. Kindly keep your flame bait to yourself.

Since when is telling someone to hone their artistic skills flame baiting? And you're not going to find a solution. The issue is within the game code itself.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I'm referring to a majority of the posts you spread around the dock, not your posts here specifically.

Then you're barking up the wrong tree and looking to pick a fight.

Go find someone else.

The playerbase's time of death disagrees.

...And because you're focusing on a specific subset of players and ignoring the players that you and your preferred subset don't agree with, you really don't know when that is.

Since when is telling someone to hone their artistic skills flame baiting? And you're not going to find a solution. The issue is within the game code itself.

1) You don't get to tell me what to do with my time.

2) The original question was about recent changes to QF configs; not the main game code. You did not help with that but instead started a pointless argument.

3) Plausible deniability is the last refuge of people who feel the need to save face after getting caught saying/doing something fucked up. Remember that.

Given the course you've chosen for our exchange, and given the fact that (thanks to Scypio,) I now have the info I requested, I'd say you and I have nothing more to discuss.

See ya!

 

[Tsnonak]

Didn't QF also fix the "tunneling bug" (I'm not sure what exactly it is, but I think I understand the effects)?

Pardon me for being cynical, quaint, and keeping it short in my last post.

QF did not fix the "tunneling bug", they helped "track it down", Schema "fixed it".
QF is about configs, not bugs.

the missile guidance fixes, missile capacity, cursor recoil, and max stabilization power is pretty much what was needed.

more like missile guidance improvement, they adjusted turn numbers... and attempted to raise missile speed beyond the AI limit, exhibit A:

"Hello players,
Update 0.202.87: Fixed missile speed for AI tracking"

QF set missiles so fast turrets could not track them.
capacity was fine, (opinions may vary).
max stabilization is also a matter of opinion, Schine did not set it to 25% for nothing...
all simple config adjustments, this overhaul was not needed to make simple game saving improvements.

Maybe throw in the armor weight adjustment, the Low/High damage shield chambers, and the chamber formula and I think most of the community would be happy with that.

The armor, system,weapon weight changes make no sense in comparison, (my opinion for what its worth).
Armor is now an unintuitive conundrum making standard armor useless, exhibit B:

25 layers advanced armor is better than 10 layers standard armor (outer layer) + 15 layers advanced armor (inner layer) against cannon.

test it yourself... and force wrapping your ship in basic armor against missile is just plain wtf.
The Low/High shield chambers bug was also coding, not configs, and I will assume you are making a double reference to the chamber formula previously mentioned.
... and you seem tobe delusional about "most of the community would be happy with that", have you read this trainwreck of a thread?

The changes are sensible, but they're not overreaching and confusing which would make the QF integration relatively seamless and natural.

sensible?!?...
they are "overreaching", this config is a total overhaul of systems, and armor is more screwed than just "confusing" (are you delusional?).
"seamless and natural", is that a joke?

 

[Scypio]

Ok, so at least you've acknowledged that you have a plan for what you would like to do if you're able to. That makes me feel a little better. I'd like to know what the rest of your plan entails. Do you plan to tackle any other major issues when you have the ability to?

Yes, that's how we worked and how we will work. When issues arise that we can do something about we surely look at it if a solution can be done. Of course right now not much people play the game so not much issues that already reached our ears are raised if at all. And of course, some "issues" are intended.

Which brings me back to my original question: Why is this being done when shields are already slow to charge and very power hungry?

Same reason as always. Shields have chamber to boost them. Weapons don't. Since shields regen is close enough to weapons dps baseline (counting for the fact that there is some bug/weird damage application in some weapons) it means you can get very strong shields. And i'm sure you can agree that being forced to bring way bigger ships to beat someone else's ship is no fun at all.
I know it might not look like it for a player but from a higher point of view shields are very problematic. It's just a health buffer you can use before loosing stuff. As such it's boring because there's no risk here. If my ship has a very big health buffer before i loose anything i'm not worried about it because i will jump away before that happen. (Yes interdiction chamber has a hard code or bug cap of lvl 50)
Worst that that. It also means that in order to damage another ship you have to, at least, be very close in term of class. Be a little bit too small and you won't do anything even though you're just at 85% of its mass.
As a matter of fact, shields are a nightmare to balance because from a game design perspective they're this dumb. To add to that there are(or were at least) several bugs with damage application and so on. So you're piling on top of something bad already bugs.
And, well, shields number are just relative to weapons number. What would be effectively the difference if i would multiply everything by 1 000 ? Nothing. But that's something that can be hard for people to get by too. Shields are only relative to their counterpart : weapons. Try to keep that in mind.

Regarding System HP. By all means; boast all you want. Make some noise. Maybe it will bring some attention to this issue and give Schine a reason to reconsider. Out of curiosity, how often do QF and Schine communicate? Have they ever mentioned working on a solution to the limitations of P2.0? Are they actively opposed to bringing back Structural HP?

I will be honest. I do not know. There is "just" a few that speaks to schema in private, mostly ith. To prevent too much disturbance mostly. If anyone would simply have the ability to speak with schine you know well it would just turn into another suggestions stuff.
So i'm sorry but i do not know how and when schine will address the issues. But i do know they're aware of it.

For the part about changing configs, i'll do a short tutorial this evening after work. Tag me if i forgot.

Have you ever heard of the Condorcet paradox? Its original context is voter's preferences, but we're in the same situation here. Some prefer X course, some prefer Y course, and others prefer Z course. With voting, you can't exactly compromise, but with a game, you can. So we actually have a solution to the Condorcet paradox: Take the most agreed upon aspects of what everyone suggests and make that QuickFire. The changes wouldn't be as drastic, but they would be sensible and help serve as a more permanent solution. I mentioned my idea for what most of the community would appreciate here. Of course, I do not represent the community as a whole, but I do believe what I am suggesting is reasonable and non-destructive to future changes.

But this is what we did. We are going for the middle ground between what everyone wants. Our discord turn easily in a suggestion or wishlist for everyone but from the general feedback we have we are right in our decisions.
But if i leave one or two very vocal person saying "qf bad grrrr" then what appear is that they're right and we don't listen. Exactly what was said previous page isn't ? But since i came the argumentation changed.
I mean, that's a mechanism similar to politicians and famous people. If they're too shy about their private life and don't speak about it then people will start to imagine stuff and spread incredible and imaginative stories about said famous person. But at one point i'm also bored to answer and explain over and over the same thing. Shields are boring and i explained that a hundred times i think.
Look at tsonak, he's just being a meme at some point yet if he's the last one to have the word it will look like he's right for someone looking at the thread. Because nobody will read the whole thread to understand that let's be honest.
For example he's trying to lower our efforts concerning the bug. While he's right, we did not fixed them directly, we did tracked a lot of bugs affecting balance to fix them. There is even moncho that uncompiled directly the code to look at it and fixed a whole lot of bugs we didn't even were aware of. Big thanks to him for the amazing work he did.
Then he's speaking about missiles speed. As a matter of fact, there is two ways to balance missiles hp and pd. Fast missiles and low hp or slow missiles with high hp. We first went with the first solution and after some tests and tweaks it worked nicely enough on our server. But then some patch later some players were experiencing issues where their pd turrets had trouble tracking down missiles and shooting at them. While i do believe it is not an issue caused by our configs, since it worked nice at one point, we had to put a band-baid on this issue. So here we go, slower missiles with higher hp. Both ways work. I prefered fast missiles since it made it harder to outrun missiles and they lasted less time on the server (and so less load overall).
Then he's speaking about the thread in "general" and how he doesn't like many stuff. Then inbetween two words he says it's just his opinion so it's okay he can say whatever he wants and claim whatever he wants for the whole message. It's just his opinion.
But again, i'm not counting but this thread has a very high percentage of someone arguing against him. So of course if half of the thread is arguing against a very vocal anti-qf then half of the thread isn't for qf. But this doesn't mean half of the community is because in the end it's just one person.
One other thing to get from crowd and people in general. When they're angry they want everyone to know it. When they're happy they don't. Hence why there's so many work done on customer services.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Same reason as always. Shields have chamber to boost them. Weapons don't. Since shields regen is close enough to weapons dps baseline (counting for the fact that there is some bug/weird damage application in some weapons) it means you can get very strong shields. And i'm sure you can agree that being forced to bring way bigger ships to beat someone else's ship is no fun at all.
I know it might not look like it for a player but from a higher point of view shields are very problematic. It's just a health buffer you can use before loosing stuff. As such it's boring because there's no risk here. If my ship has a very big health buffer before i loose anything i'm not worried about it because i will jump away before that happen. (Yes interdiction chamber has a hard code or bug cap of lvl 50)
Worst that that. It also means that in order to damage another ship you have to, at least, be very close in term of class. Be a little bit too small and you won't do anything even though you're just at 85% of its mass.
As a matter of fact, shields are a nightmare to balance because from a game design perspective they're this dumb. To add to that there are(or were at least) several bugs with damage application and so on. So you're piling on top of something bad already bugs.
And, well, shields number are just relative to weapons number. What would be effectively the difference if i would multiply everything by 1 000 ? Nothing. But that's something that can be hard for people to get by too. Shields are only relative to their counterpart : weapons. Try to keep that in mind.

Part of the reason shields may seem OP (in the currently used build) is because missiles do significantly less damage to them and most other weapons (excluding BM and CM) lacked the damage output and/or fire rate to take them down efficiently. The other issue is that after a certain size threshold, the regen keeps the shields up; as it should, since you don't want to see a single X-wing slowly dropping your ISD's shields by itself. After all, why have fleets if all we're going to do is slug it out with each other, one on one?

Instead of nerfing shields even further like this, wouldn't it make more sense to simply raise the shield chamber capacity requirements and power costs? That way, you aren't hurting small to medium builds and you give the bigger ships a choice; have conventional strength shielding and some mobility via the appropriate chambers or have buffed shields and reduced mobility; running a greater risk of being hit with bombs.

Also, if you haven't done so already, you may want to take a closer look at that newer weapons config. I've been doing a lot of testing with them and found some interesting "features".

- BC in a 1:0 ratio was impossibly OP vs shields in my tests. An array as small as a 50 blocks, can drop more than 200k shields in seconds.
- C and CC weapons with damage values well below 400 per shot go right through basic hull as if their higher hitpoint count doesn't matter.
- There may also be a minor bug in the armor formula, I found that in some tests, 7 layers of ADV performed noticeably better than 9 layers.
- BB does less damage and has a substantially lower fire rate than regular beam.

Also, no more swarm missiles? Ouch! What sparked that?

In any case, now that I know this is the new config, I'll continue to test.

I will be honest. I do not know. There is "just" a few that speaks to schema in private, mostly ith. To prevent too much disturbance mostly. If anyone would simply have the ability to speak with schine you know well it would just turn into another suggestions stuff.
So i'm sorry but i do not know how and when schine will address the issues. But i do know they're aware of it.

Somewhat reassuring. Hopefully they come up with a workable solution.

For the part about changing configs, i'll do a short tutorial this evening after work. Tag me if i forgot.

Appreciated. I'll stay tuned.

 

[Scypio]

Instead of nerfing shields even further like this, wouldn't it make more sense to simply raise the shield chamber capacity requirements and power costs? That way, you aren't hurting small to medium builds and you give the bigger ships a choice; have conventional strength shielding and some mobility via the appropriate chambers or have buffed shields and reduced mobility; running a greater risk of being hit with bombs.

That is a possibility. But it doesn't change much in the end. Either we render the chamber useless or it's still a mandatory. The players won't have enough space for one or two jump drive chamber. Which start to be more bothersome than anything.
We could simply nerf to the ground shield chambers too. But it's not interesting don't you think ?
As a matter of fact, i believe shield are in a somewhat okay spot. If you want them to have a feeling of being useful you need some chambers otherwise it's not that good. Which was the intended purpose of chambers after all.
I understand that shields are something that should still be felt useful without the need for chamber. But now chambers are also part of the game and you have to keep them in the balance.
The more time passes the more i believe shields should just be this little extra amount of health to prevent you from repairing when an isanth spawn and shoots at you but nothing else. But well, configs are still far from that for now so you're safe.

Also, if you haven't done so already, you may want to take a closer look at that newer weapons config. I've been doing a lot of testing with them and found some interesting "features".

We did and in my opinion it looked okay. But i will trust Manhattan that did surely much more extensive test than i did on the subject. He probably only uses one weapon combo too on his ships. Which is comprehensible, knowing how weapons and effects work right now.
Again, re-evaluating weapon combos znd effect will surely become a thing in the future if they are, and i honestly want them to be, reworked again. Because it's dumb as fuck in a gameplay perspective.

And also, there will surely have some re evaluating of everything if it ever get fixed fully, aside from much needed changes. Because for example beams register twice their damage sometimes...

Also, no more swarm missiles? Ouch! What sparked that?

Mainly because there is no reasons to still use swarmers. I mean, the output penalty is removed so you can split yourself your missiles. But if you want to cheese and swarm with missiles you need to use the missile capacity. Which can be harsh if you want to spam a dumb fuck amount of missiles at once. It gives also some depth when playing with more than one missile. For example you could imagine a volley of 3 weak and low hp missiles and then one big nuke hidden behind. Plenty of little interesting thing you could imagine on your ship. Though i'll be honest it's not top tier level of mechanic depth. It's still a little something interesting.
And, the last point for it is that less missiles means less load on the server.
In the end, i don't see much cons to the removal of swarmers. They're still here, just singular heatseekers now.

 

[Forsyth]

are you delusional?

I may be delusional, but at least I don't have to quote myself to make a point

 

[Reilly Reese]

...And because you're focusing on a specific subset of players and ignoring the players that you and your preferred subset don't agree with, you really don't know when that is.

I know when it was because that's when SMD became a 1 post a week type of place.

1) You don't get to tell me what to do with my time.

Spoiler

3) Plausible deniability is the last refuge of people who feel the need to save face after getting caught saying/doing something fucked up. Remember that.

It's very clear what I said.

 

[MeRobo]

Today the weather is bad. This is clearly the doing of the QF cabal. Meanwhile these so called community members, who are actually not community members because I say so, completely fail to fix issues they don't have the tools to fix, which again shows that this poorly disguised conspiracy against the community is achieving nothing positive. We, the community, are still waiting for this shady clique to deliver a texture pack fixing certain issues within the current default texture pack yet we haven't seen a QF texture pack. Have you seen the official QF texture pack? No? Just further proof of their ineptitude.
Where is the Damage Pulse reintroduction? Nowhere to be seen. If QF actually was a community run initiative and not a secretive group, Damage Pulse would have been reintroduced already, as anybody actually engaging with the community could tell you that nothing is needed anywhere near as much to please us. We, the community, want Damage Pulse with AMS capability, yet again QF fails to deliver what they promise.
Speaking of old features that would get new support if this "initiative" was community run: No word of QF supporting the pre-rail docking system. Scandalous!
QF not addressing the lackluster crafting system clearly shows that they intend to keep abusing shipyard bugs to gain an advantage when playing on one of the many well and alive multiplayer servers. Soon we'll probably find about them having connections to Starmade's most infamous factions and individuals, for all we know some of their so called community members might just be RedAlert alts.
And let's not get started about QF doing nothing about META weapons like Null-Pointer-Torpedoes...

 

[Dr. Whammy]

That is a possibility. But it doesn't change much in the end. Either we render the chamber useless or it's still a mandatory. The players won't have enough space for one or two jump drive chamber. Which start to be more bothersome than anything.
We could simply nerf to the ground shield chambers too. But it's not interesting don't you think ?
As a matter of fact, i believe shield are in a somewhat okay spot. If you want them to have a feeling of being useful you need some chambers otherwise it's not that good. Which was the intended purpose of chambers after all.
I understand that shields are something that should still be felt useful without the need for chamber. But now chambers are also part of the game and you have to keep them in the balance.
The more time passes the more i believe shields should just be this little extra amount of health to prevent you from repairing when an isanth spawn and shoots at you but nothing else. But well, configs are still far from that for now so you're safe.

Therein lies my concern. There is so much emphasis on chamber effects and not nearly as much on basic systems effectiveness. Chambers shouldn't be standard issue, they are meant to allow special abilities and provide buffs to existing systems. As such; a chamber buff does not justify nerfing a basic system found on every ship. We shouldn't have to use mobility chambers to avoid handling like a wet sponge; just as we shouldn't have to use shield chambers to have a decent defense. This is where many of the complaints of bias and restrictiveness stem from.

With regard to shields specifically; under the last config, regen tanking vs weapons of similar size is already a non-starter, so now we're at buffer stage. And once the combat starts, your shields aren't coming back any time soon. Lowering their capacity simply because "someone might run away before we kill them" comes off as a rather biased response based on being accustomed to always using chambers.

We did and in my opinion it looked okay. But i will trust Manhattan that did surely much more extensive test than i did on the subject. He probably only uses one weapon combo too on his ships. Which is comprehensible, knowing how weapons and effects work right now.
Again, re-evaluating weapon combos znd effect will surely become a thing in the future if they are, and i honestly want them to be, reworked again. Because it's dumb as fuck in a gameplay perspective.

And also, there will surely have some re evaluating of everything if it ever get fixed fully, aside from much needed changes. Because for example beams register twice their damage sometimes...

Can you confirm the current configs/build combo to use? I've been using 202-87 with the newest configs and I can assure you; there are things worth a second look. B/C 1:0 specifically.

Mainly because there is no reasons to still use swarmers. I mean, the output penalty is removed so you can split yourself your missiles. But if you want to cheese and swarm with missiles you need to use the missile capacity. Which can be harsh if you want to spam a dumb fuck amount of missiles at once. It gives also some depth when playing with more than one missile. For example you could imagine a volley of 3 weak and low hp missiles and then one big nuke hidden behind. Plenty of little interesting thing you could imagine on your ship. Though i'll be honest it's not top tier level of mechanic depth. It's still a little something interesting.
And, the last point for it is that less missiles means less load on the server.
In the end, i don't see much cons to the removal of swarmers. They're still here, just singular heatseekers now.

Personally, I don't use the MIRV feature of swarmers but I do see the heat-seeking function to still be very useful. Their usefulness is only limited by a player's creativity. With the multiple output penalty gone, you could have turned off MIRVs and left them as heat-seekers. You'd get no more spam than regular outputs and missile capacity allow and they'd be much more useful than the current MC combo.

 

[Scypio]

Personally, I don't use the MIRV feature of swarmers but I do see the heat-seeking function to still be very useful. Their usefulness is only limited by a player's creativity. With the multiple output penalty gone, you could have turned off MIRVs and left them as heat-seekers. You'd get no more spam than regular outputs and missile capacity allow and they'd be much more useful than the current MC combo.

Oh, i just realized. Manhattan did put everything into lock on for some reasons. I thought it had the same and old combo i did set up.

Therein lies my concern. There is so much emphasis on chamber effects and not nearly as much on basic systems effectiveness.

We looked for a long time at systems only. But you have to agree that at one point we cannot balance shields without chambers THEN balance chambers. That's because we did it and it didn't worked. Because shields are a dumb mechanic from a gameplay perspective, applying chamber to them makes them even worst. All of that is because of extreme. You can go the other way around of instead of flying giant gun with thrusters you fly a giant shield blob with thrusters. One of the two solution, at least, gives something to come out of space battles. Finding the balance is in theory possible IF you don't have something that moves the balance around in only one way. Aka chambers. Either we nerf the chambers to being complete trash nobody uses them or we don't.


So now, onto the short tutorial.

• First you'll need a code editor. Why ? Because it helps a lot. It helps to keep indentation automatically without worrying yourself about it as well as taking care of the format of the file for you. Of course coloured text is a must have for any code is a must have too. I personally use visual studio code (and every following screeshots will be made using it). It is a good editor though it can be a bit heavy in term of size and loading time because it has a lot of features you probably won't be interested in. As such, a lot of people (and what i recommend) use Notepad++. This code editor is really lightweight. However of course it is a bit crude in certain domain. It's ok for editing xml files, Ithirahad has been using it for all of his edits.
• First, lets talk a bit about some generalities. The configs files for starmade are divided in 3 files. Blockconfig.xml is the file that takes care of the block individual hp as well as recipes for the factories when deconstructing the ore and stuff. BlockBehaviorConfig.xml is the file that takes care of everything else in the configs. Like power generation, shield capacity and so on. Then, EffectConfig.xml is for all of the chambers effects. However for this last one you will need to go into the ingame editor to change it otherwise the checksum with the hash won't be correct and thus the config won't load at all.
• Now some other generalities about xmls.
  • In an xml when something is like that <Value></Value> it's the same as <Value/>.
  • In <Value>X</Value>, the X is the value of the element value.
  • In <Value Attribute=X/> the X is the value of the attribute Attribute. The attribute is one of maybe several other attribute of the element Value. There is no real difference between the two way of storing the data but they are really different in term of code and in the overall xml tree.
  • A xml file architecture is called a tree because it look like one. It doesn't matter to understand this for our purpose here but if this interest you there is plenty of documentation about it online.
• Most of the values in the config files are floats. If you do not know what it is, it's simply a number with a coma. However it's not the case for everything. Sometimes you cannot place floats but like 99% of the time you can. Of course use points and not comma there.
• Now onto more proper example. Here in this screenshot below you have the base cannon weapon.

Don't look at the OLD part, that's for the old power system. The NEW part is what interest us.

• Here Damage is the damage dealt by each bullets per module. Which means that if there's 2 modules of basic cannon, they'll deal 40 damage and so on.
• ReactorPowerConsumptionResting is when the weapon is resting aka when the weapon is charged and wait for shooting.

• ReactorPowerConsumptionCharging is when the weapon is charging.
• Distance is off the distance configured in server.cfg. In this example WEAPON_RANGE_REFERENCE in server.cfg is set up at 2 000, which means 5 000m, or 5 km.
• Speed is based off THRUST_SPEED_LIMIT in server.cfg. Same way of thinking above.
• ReloadMs is the plain blank reload time in mili seconds.

• AdditionalPowerConsumptionPerUnitMult is the added power per outputs. In our case it's 0.

Now onto slaves, that's where the fun comes in.

• First off, every value are for 100% slaves. Which means that if you have for example 10 dps per second per block, it would only be for 100% slave. If you are at 50% slaves, in this hypothetical case it would be 15 dps per block.
• The style attribute can either be nerf, buff, skip or set.
  • Skip is the plainest of them all. It simply ignore everything else and you will have the same stats as the base weapon for this combo.
  • Set is quite simple too. When you use this, it sets up the value to what you write into value.
  • buff is when you want to add more to this stat. To calculate it, you take the value you did set up in the value attribute and then add 1 to it and then multiply the result with the base value for the weapon. To put a mathematic formula there it should look like this : ComboValue = BaseValue * (1 + ValueForCombo).
  • nerf is when you want to reduce the value for this stat. In this case it's simpler. You just need to divide the base value by the valye you did set up there. For a more mathematical formula it should look like this : ComboValue = BaseValue / ValueForCombo.
• For every other elements for each combos it works the same. Don't touch about the linear stuff and keep it as it is.
• Now, onto shields

• ShieldLocalCapacityPerBlock is as its name suggest, the capacity added per block.
• ShieldLocalDefaultCapacity is the base capacity of ships.
• ShieldLocalRechargePerBlock is the recharge given per blocks.
• ShieldUpkeepPerSecondOfTotalCapacity is as its name suggest it. it's the upkeep per seconds and per total capacity.
• ShieldLocalPowerConsumptionPerRechargePerSecondResting is as its name suggest. The power used by the ship when the shields are resting per recharge. Same goes for charging. So to get the power consumption per block you need to multiply the recharge per block to know it.
• Now onto thrusters
  
• ReactorPowerPowerConsumptionPerBlockResting is the power consumption per block, as the name suggest. And then resting and in use.
• The tmr is the simple ratio between the thruster and the mass of the ship. So if you have twice the amount of thrusters than your mass you have a tmr of 2.
• To get the amounf of thrusters you need to do this formula : TotalAmountOfThrusters = ((NumberofThrusters * UnitCalcMult)^
  PowTotalThrust) * MulTotalThrust.