The Quickfire Initiative: Rebalancing StarMade.

[DrTarDIS]

You do understand that raising shield regen to similar energy efficiency of weapons means that armour becomes more or less worthless ? As it is much better to use that mass for more reactors, shields and weapons. It also raises TTK by 5-10 times depending on ship setups in question - as your shield regen will negate most of incoming damage and you still need to grind through the shield cap.

As a result we get ships with no armour. That take 7-15 minutes to kill even if they don't dodge or dip in and out of weapons range. And when shields finally fail the ships in question burn in seconds.

Only the case if armor isn't vastly cheaper to produce, and vastly more efective as a damage soak than the "active systems." Which is a economic balance point and to a degree the same sort of structural one that's been around for a while. Comes again that if the HP-pool (reactor HP now because why not) isn't a signed variable it's never going to be able to have a had "floor" and an open envelope for builders.

Now you're starting to see what I meant earlier about a "common pool to pull from" being important for pimary balance, ad a secondary(energy) pool for "active effects or actions." Block-count is more like "levels" than as an actual balancing pool.
guess reactor-stabilization is as close as is curently in the code for something to hijack, assumig it's a signed value.

 

[Zoolimar]

Only the case if armor isn't vastly cheaper to produce, and vastly more efective as a damage soak than the "active systems."

You can't make armour this effective due to limitation of blocks. There is a pretty hard limit of one block one meter that puts a dumper on this idea. To have armour effective enough to compete with shields like this you'll need much higher precision or each additional layer will give ridiculous jumps in armour protection.

Also in case you still do it your TTK will grow even more. You are proposing ship fights lasting 10-30 minutes. This is ridiculous.

 

[DrTarDIS]

You can't make armour this effective due to limitation of blocks. There is a pretty hard limit of one block one meter that puts a dumper on this idea. To have armour effective enough to compete with shields like this you'll need much higher precision or each additional layer will give ridiculous jumps in armour protection.

Hard disagree. Fairly certain you're ignoring my points on "what a common pool is" intentionally due to cognitive dissonance. That's fine, deadgaem will just stay dead.

Also in case you still do it your TTK will grow even more. You are proposing ship fights lasting 10-30 minutes. This is ridiculous.

Again, time-to-fill-blueprint; if it's anything more than a 2:1 ratio for accumulation to dismemberment it's not going to keep anyone ingame. (IE can mine and fill a blueprint with ALL materials from base including cook time in factories)
Mine, cook, fill in 10 minutes : a 5 minute fight is just barely acceptable.

The only time this is not true is godmode-creative or arcade brawling.

If you think 45minutes to an hour investment for 3-5 mins of combat is an acceptible time-trade...again, hard-disagree.

 

[Zoolimar]

Hard disagree. Fairly certain you're ignoring my points on "what a common pool is" intentionally due to cognitive dissonance. That's fine, deadgaem will just stay dead.

What the hell common pool has to do with the fact that you can't create anything thinner than 1 block? It doesn't matter if you can fine tune the overall mass of armour when you still can do it only in 1 point increments. It's not something you can just blob plop like shields, you actually need to account for geometry.

If you think 45minutes to an hour investment for 3-5 mins of combat is an acceptible time-trade...again, hard-disagree.

Then there is nothing to talk about. Because 30 minutes slugfests between two entities are just plain unsustainable for any game. Especially if the fights could scale up with more ships on each side and even more time to finish them.

 

[Forsyth]

1. if mobility is supposed to win against weapons, the mathematical method of that "win" matters.
2. if shields are supposed to win against weapons, the mathematical method of that "win"matters.
3. ad no matter which way the arrow turns it MUST be kept in that direction for the 3rd option.

Ok, this doesn't really make a lot of sense to me as I'm reading it. I think the big thing that's throwing me off is the oversimplification here. Yes, we have unguided weapons (C-C/B/M, M-M) which mobility can counter, but we also have hit-scan weapons (B-C/B/M), and we also have tracking weapons (M-C/B). Weapons size is also important to consider as larger ships will invariably mount larger weapons. The shield damage resistance chambers also play a significant role in the system.

I think in reality, the system operates more like:

Mobility beats Unguided
Tracking/Hit-Scan beats Mobility
High-damage beats Low resistance shields
Low-damage beats (en masse) High resistance shields
(Assuming equivalent defenses) High Damage beats low damage

And that's not factoring for partial counters and situational counters:
Mobility and Shields are partial counters to weapons, and vice versa (situational)
At long range, tracking/hit-scan beats Mobility which beats unguided
At close range, any weapon beats mobility

StarMade is not a shooting gallery where there are only one or two changing variables (for example, operator skill and target location). The battlefield will never be even. I've not listed all the counters and partial counters present, but if you wish to use your three points, then:
Shields and Mobility partially counter weapons, and weapons partially counter shields and mobility. Because of the variance of weapons and defensive strategies existing within the game, saying that any of them are hard counters is a vast oversimplification of what's really going on.

If you wish to contest anything that I have said, please provide a sufficient explanation of your reasoning and why you believe that I am wrong. Otherwise, we will not be able to have a civil and intelligent discussion about the minutiae of this game.

 

[DrTarDIS]

What the hell common pool has to do with the fact that you can't create anything thinner than 1 block? It doesn't matter if you can fine tune the overall mass of armour when you still can do it only in 1 point increments. It's not something you can just blob plop like shields, you actually need to account for geometry.

And you are not accounting for economy, the word I used before. if a blob of shields costs more than an entire layer of armor few will use 2 blobs of sheild. With shields covering a logarythmic bubble area it quite easy to balance the resource cost of either the surface or entire volume of that coverage. You are using "account for geometry" as a Red-Herring. The same way you were earlier using.

This again points back to "time taken to build the damn thing" vs "time taken to destroy the damn thing"

And one more: balance needs that "common pool" to be mathematicly mapped out to provide balance. Otherwise "Everyone picks zerg" because "humans and protoss are just plain weaker."

Then there is nothing to talk about. Because 30 minutes slugfests between two entities are just plain unsustainable for any game.

I guess EVE Online Titan battles all resolves themselves in 3-5 minutes? You did say "Any" game and a successful space-accumulation-MMO certainly counts...

Especially if the fights could scale up with more ships on each side and even more time to finish them.

More ships on each side would NOT increase the time of combat. Increasing time would be if they stood in an orderly queue lineup and waited to 1v1. The fact you think that having a 5v5 would take longer than a 1v1 or a 2v2 shows you don't actually THINK about how combat works. Starmade doesn't have "healers" to make a "tank" survive longer.
If anything SM combat is very similar to MechWarrior combat; if multiple ships fight each other they are not going to split off for 1v1, they will focus-fire at opportunity to gain an number advantage. That makes XvX inherently SHORTER than 1v1.

Compare to any other survival game: if 2 hours of "work" is invested in Rust to have an automatic gun and a choice of ammo types; even if you die in 30 seconds of combat the gun and ammo are not lost! They can be picked up in secods by the victor or whoever loots the corpse. This is NOT TRUE FOR STARMADE where destruction is ACTUAL DESTRUCTION and salvage takes lots of time.

If you don't LIKE the idea of "30 minutes to kill when both people spent an hour each accumulating resources(2 hours total)" as an example, you might want to think about how to reduce the resource accumulation time(eg: lowering block cost) or trying to push the "combat arena" version of the starmade server. (which is never hosted even by schine)

 

[DrTarDIS]

Ok, this doesn't really make a lot of sense to me as I'm reading it. I think the big thing that's throwing me off is the oversimplification here. Yes, we have unguided weapons (C-C/B/M, M-M) which mobility can counter, but we also have hit-scan weapons (B-C/B/M), and we also have tracking weapons (M-C/B). Weapons size is also important to consider as larger ships will invariably mount larger weapons. The shield damage resistance chambers also play a significant role in the system.

The answer you ask for is already provided in the post you quoted?

Let's take #1 there as an example. You'd have to carefully control weapon speeds and engagement ranges so that at X distance any shot at center-of-object from "weapon" cube towards "thruster" cube WILL miss if thruster cube changes direction. Not that hard when you define an "minimum engagement range" (EG the max distance of beams since they are instant hit scan) as the point where the 10*10*10 cube cannot avoid a missle or canon round moving at Xm/s to match with the beam hit scan. "Shield" cube then has to be tuned to "lose" vs that "weapon" cube over engagement time.

I should have said "will miss completely if fired at Center of cube while the cube is in motion" though. With the continued back and forth with zoolimar contributing the whopping target of "shields 1/4 as efficient as weapons" target point, that would have to make cannons slow enough at at the minimum range where a beam would instant-hit the cannon pointed 4 times mobility displacement ahead of the thuster-cube would still miss it's ass-end.

That kinda super lopsided "balance" is of course unsustainable, as it means people will ONLY want to use hitscan weapons even if they HAVE to get into knife-range to do it. As for trackers like missiles (which are only countered by cannons requireing the cannons to have a decent proj speed) the would need their turn radius equally nerved as well as their max proj speed.

 

[Zoolimar]

And you are not accounting for economy, the word I used before. if a blob of shields costs more than an entire layer of armor few will use 2 blobs of sheild.

Wrong. With your suggested change shields do not get damaged if you use enough of them. Which means in the long run they are much more effective than armour by your own metric. Making armour good enough to compete with these shields is non-viable due to 1 block being the limiting building unit.

Shields are rechargeable armour is not.

More ships on each side would NOT increase the time of combat. Increasing time would be if they stood in an orderly queue lineup and waited to 1v1. The fact you think that having a 5v5 would take longer than a 1v1 or a 2v2 shows you don't actually THINK about how combat works. Starmade doesn't have "healers" to make a "tank" survive longer.
If anything SM combat is very similar to MechWarrior combat; if multiple ships fight each other they are not going to split off for 1v1, they will focus-fire at opportunity to gain an number advantage. That makes XvX inherently SHORTER than 1v1.

That assumes GOOD coordination among the player ships. Very good. In most cases you will get a lot of mistakes and misplays that will allow the target to slip away, change places with another ship and so on. No one is obligated to stand and fight to the death when you have high shield recharge.

If we assume absolutely perfect mirror play on both parts:
1/5 to kill first ship
1/4 to kill second ship
1/3 to kill third ship
1/2 to kill fourth ship
1 to kill the last ship. One winner.

Or around 2.28 times more to kill all the participants on one side.

Assuming realistic coordination 4-7 times more.

Compare to any other survival game: if 2 hours of "work" is invested in Rust to have an automatic gun and a choice of ammo types; even if you die in 30 seconds of combat the gun and ammo are not lost! They can be picked up in secods by the victor or whoever loots the corpse. This is NOT TRUE FOR STARMADE where destruction is ACTUAL DESTRUCTION and salvage takes lots of time.

It doesn't. Initial setup and shield design take a lot of time. Actual mining and churning out ships is pretty fast, at least right now. The only problem is balancing resource income by ore types. You don't mine for an hour because you can't get enough resources, you mine for an hour because you need to get different types of roids to eat up. After which you have a surplus or resources to build multiple ships which can be built from a shipyard or blueprint in a moment.

Factory setup also takes time but it is also a self-sustaining system that doesn't need large amounts of oversight.

I guess EVE Online Titan battles all resolves themselves in 3-5 minutes? You did say "Any" game and a successful space-accumulation-MMO certainly counts...

You mean the ones where players have a WoW control scheme (well not exactly but still) and have the time to drink coffee and read a book? I doubt it's a good match for Starmade with its hands on approach for ship handling.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Wrong. With your suggested change shields do not get damaged if you use enough of them. Which means in the long run they are much more effective than armour by your own metric. Making armour good enough to compete with these shields is non-viable due to 1 block being the limiting building unit.

Shields are rechargeable armour is not.

That assumes GOOD coordination among the player ships. Very good. In most cases you will get a lot of mistakes and misplays that will allow the target to slip away, change places with another ship and so on. No one is obligated to stand and fight to the death when you have high shield recharge.

If we assume absolutely perfect mirror play on both parts:
1/5 to kill first ship
1/4 to kill second ship
1/3 to kill third ship
1/2 to kill fourth ship
1 to kill the last ship. One winner.

Or around 2.28 times more to kill all the participants on one side.

Assuming realistic coordination 4-7 times more.

Yeah no, not how that works realisticly. I see how you would think that, but just no. You are wrong and reality proves otherwise.

It doesn't. Initial setup and shield design take a lot of time. Actual mining and churning out ships is pretty fast, at least right now. The only problem is balancing resource income by ore types. You don't mine for an hour because you can't get enough resources, you mine for an hour because you need to get different types of roids to eat up. After which you have a surplus or resources to build multiple ships which can be built from a shipyard or blueprint in a moment.

Factory setup also takes time but it is also a self-sustaining system that doesn't need large amounts of oversight.

Did not include initial setup in my points either for ship design or factories. Purely talking about hunting required resources; the travel time of hunting them, the time to transfer them from ship to factory storage, and the time to "cook" them in the factory.

Feel free to do that math with an "absolutely perfect 1-1 gathering trip and factory specialized into producing this one specific ship" you'll probably end up with something like 20-120 seconds per-block depending on ship size. That's what I got the last time I raged at Duke regarding the new crafting system being utter trash. The old crafting with an infinite-loop let you reduce the time invested per ship to something reasonable for quick-combat (like 1 tick/block-type).

You mean the ones where players have a WoW control scheme (well not exactly but still) and have the time to drink coffee and read a book? I doubt it's a good match for Starmade with its hands on approach for ship handling.

I mean the one where players gather resources, process those resources, combine those resources, and LOSE THEM ALL if the ship gets blown up.
It's the same ECONOMIC MODEL. You do NOT get "FREE SHIPS" in either starmade or EVE, they are paid for in TIME. Combat is likewise paid for in TIME.

When the COST in TIME is excessive players naturally RUN AWAY FROM COMBAT or just ragequit once they lose.

The combat control model itself means nothing in relation to the actual supporting gameplay. Claiming that differnce does is a Red-Herring.

 

[Zoolimar]

Yeah no, not how that works realisticly. I see how you would think that, but just no. You are wrong and reality proves otherwise.

Then maybe you can show it? As far as I have seen due to Starmade allowing much higher relative speeds than many other games the distance in group fights is hard to control unless the team is keeping a tight formation and all the manoeuvrers are very simple. Most groups combats that I have seen recorded fall out into kind of barely controlled chaos with ships falling in and out of range. Except at time when one of the groups heavily outguns the other.

I don't see why it will change in any near future. Unless we get full Homeworld style RTS controls.

I mean the one where players gather resources, process those resources, combine those resources, and LOSE THEM ALL if the ship gets blown up.
It's the same ECONOMIC MODEL. You do NOT get "FREE SHIPS" in either starmade or EVE, they are paid for in TIME. Combat is likewise paid for in TIME.

You do know that most fights in Eve last so long due to TIDI? Not actual mechanics. As in game chokes on the number of ships and needs to slow down to process the fights. This is not a good model to follow.

 

[Scypio]

I don't see why it will change in any near future. Unless we get full Homeworld style RTS controls.

Imo, real cohesive fleet battle could be a thing if you had fights with like 20 players on each sides at least. Current side of starmade's pvp is with too little amount of people engaged to get any real tactic when everything fights. Plus, not to mention people are used to think in 2d. Not in 3d when it comes to military tactics. I'm sure there's people here capable of that but my point is that thinking about a strategy on the field like that on a 3d scale with no point to spot where you are easily is also much harder for both the guy doing the strategy and all of the troop following orders.

But i'd like to see a starmade server's not blowing itself up with that much amount of player in a few sectors before guessing anything. Maybe people will fight in a somewhat orderly fashion. Most likely it will still be a mess after a few glances.

 

[Zoolimar]

Well in theory yeah, it's possible. But with no mechanics to support it you'll need team voice chat and commander with iron will and vocal cords made of steel. Plus really a lot of training. And even then anything more complex than - turn to X and follow my lead while targeting Y - probably gonna backfire horribly. At least there is no collision damage.

 

[Forsyth]

The answer you ask for is already provided in the post you quoted?

I wasn't asking a particular question. I was merely noting some things that I believe you omitted in your original post.

 

[DrTarDIS]

You do know that most fights in Eve last so long due to TIDI? Not actual mechanics. As in game chokes on the number of ships and needs to slow down to process the fights. This is not a good model to follow.

Red Herring. Time dilation is purely because of resource limits and happens in starmade too. (EG: someoe with a retarded amount of salvage beals strip-miing a planet faster than chunk-change limits can keep track of)

I'm talking a vanilla 1v1 manno-a-manno titan combat. Or ANY ship combat. Bigger the ship, the longer the time-to-kill. That's agai a Level/scalar metric and not really applicable to "overall balance" other than that a 10k ship SHOULD take longer to die than an equivalent 1k ship. If not true: drone swarm is the only viable tactic, meaning balance is off.

Yer wrong on "1 block means armor is useless" purely because of the inverse square law. You are close to my point about "common draw pool" being necessary by pointing it out though! EG if the <reactorHP> </reactorHP> part of each block got switched to systems(thust,reactor,chambers,shieldregen,shieldcapacity,weapos,computers) having negative RHP values and hull/non-system blocks(logic, rails,armor1/2/3,decorative,etc...) having positive RHP it would accomplish in one fell swoop what stabilizer-distance tried-and-failed to do: Making ships rely less on "thin coat of paint over a system brick." The current "thicker armor gets more damage-resistance(unless bug crawls out)" metrics also scale to make armor more viable as surface area increases with volume.

 

[Zoolimar]

Yer wrong on "1 block means armor is useless" purely because of the inverse square law.

Weapons scale with Mass
Armour thickness scales with Size which is power 1/3 of mass in approximation

The only reason armour is not useless above certain size is cause armour formula uses armour thickness in power 3. But unlike armour rating HP of armour doesn't depend on armour thickness and thus at small sizes it creates certain problems.

EG if the <reactorHP> </reactorHP> part of each block got switched to systems(thust,reactor,chambers,shieldregen,shieldcapacity,weapos,computers) having negative RHP values and hull/non-system blocks(logic, rails,armor1/2/3,decorative,etc...) having positive RHP it would accomplish in one fell swoop what stabilizer-distance tried-and-failed to do: Making ships rely less on "thin coat of paint over a system brick." The current "thicker armor gets more damage-resistance(unless bug crawls out)" metrics also scale to make armor more viable as surface area increases with volume.

I don't know what the hell this unformatted stream of consciousness means but reactor HP for blocks doesn't work. At all. It's currently just an atavism for most blocks.

 

[Forsyth]

I don't know what the hell this unformatted stream of consciousness means but reactor HP for blocks doesn't work. At all. It's currently just an atavism for most blocks.

I think (and you may have already figured this out) that he's indicating that a ship has some sort of "functional HP" that systems detract from and armor refills. I think it's an interesting idea, but A) It's exploitable (just slap an armor cluster in the middle of a ship and then proceed as planned) and B) It adds one more thing to the already (IMHO) somewhat steep learning curve StarMade has

 

[Zoolimar]

I think (and you may have already figured this out) that he's indicating that a ship has some sort of "functional HP" that systems detract from and armor refills. I think it's an interesting idea

So basically transform ships into HP sponges where you need to deplete HP bar?

 

[DrTarDIS]

So basically transform ships into HP sponges where you need to deplete HP bar?

It would mean system-heavy ships would have have VERY LOW functional HP bar, from a MINIMUM number of "not e/sec" blocks. Below the minimum scalar the ship would have negative RHP and auto-overheat, and the more "durable" you wanted your ship to be the more you sacrifice on relative number of "active systems"(like weapons or shields or thrusters or salvagers) for your block count.

This creates hard-floor and open envelope for ship design balance at every conceivable size. This is opposed to "cookie-cutter" and "metabuild" that is often seen in/after every single knee-jerk "durrr I nails on something new and play with numbers after when exploit discovered" "balancing" the game has so far received.
I'm not the only one who noticed this imbalance:

I must admit; while vanilla wasn't perfect, it was not nearly as restrictive as what we have now. I think QF originally started off with a good idea but over time, personal preferences and bias took precedence over balance and playability. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you only build or play one way.

Says it all, Whammy. You says it all.

Back at Zooli:
I made several points about this(the need for floors with open envelopes) BEFORE the code was deobfuscated for modding, back when SYSHP was a thing under the "old power" days. The issue with implementation of it was a single variable(System HP per block) being defined as unsigned(this means it can't be negative) in the obfuscated .jar files. With .jar no longer obfuscated(so sayeth Schine) it's literally ctrl+f to locate the section defining the "reactorHP" variable type and converting it to a signed double to allow the change.

I don't know what the hell this unformatted stream of consciousness means but reactor HP for blocks doesn't work. At all. It's currently just an atavism for most blocks.

If for some reason "reactor HP for blocks doesn't work " its obviously because the call to that tag has either a typo or a comment tag in the .jar which is again ctrl+f for anyone who has any business accessing the github.(and logically anyone actually worth talking to about balance)


If you really can't delete the inline-bracketed comments/examples of the "steam of consciousness" bit (either mentally or with the convienient word-editor of the reply function) to read a very simple sentence....that explains a LOT as to why you can't actually understand what tiered-balance and balance metrics in any game are. I bet you lose at cardgames more often than you win lol

I think (and you may have already figured this out) that he's indicating that a ship has some sort of "functional HP" that systems detract from and armor refills. I think it's an interesting idea, but A) It's exploitable (just slap an armor cluster in the middle of a ship and then proceed as planned) and B) It adds one more thing to the already (IMHO) somewhat steep learning curve StarMade has

A) that's not an exploit, it's working-as-intended. Where a player chooses to put their "structure" or whatever you want to call the +RHP is not anyone's concern.
->ALL block damage would automatically remove from the net HP pool (that's a simple "absolute" that is already part of the games code) . It simultaneously makes "RP ships" naturally tankier, and makes "slap together ugly brick" have a minimum "floor" for meta balance.
B) Eh most of that steep learning curve is because of retarded "we need this for balance durr dur" and can be excised like the cancerous tumour it is when the actual defining pools are standardized. For all I care the same +/- system is already in place for reactor% chamber shite, it's just USED WRONG.

 

[Forsyth]

Bigger the ship, the longer the time-to-kill.

Why do you think this config is called QuickFire? It's not called SlowKill or UltraEndurance or some other combination of words that basically says "long, tanky battles."

negative RHP and auto-overheat

So having negative functional hp would incur debuffs on a ship? Would those become progressively worse as the hp becomes lower?

A) that's not an exploit, it's working-as-intended. Where a player chooses to put their "structure" or whatever you want to call the +RHP is not anyone's concern.

If such a system were to be implemented, I think it is reasonable to consider the fact that players with established and preferred ships/builds would opt to put an armor cluster in the middle (maybe useful, maybe not) as opposed to potentially needing to do a complete redesign. In any event, I'd like to pose a couple of questions:
1) Is there a possibility of interior complexity diminishing in favor of having a large hp buffer to offset battle damage?
2) Would thrusters need to be modified to allow for the (theoretically) higher mass of ships because of how they would be affected by such a system?
3) Would turrets share the hp pool with the parent ship or have their own hp pool?
4) Could such a system be derived from the structural hp that was used in the old power system?

 

[DrTarDIS]

A)Why do you think this config is called QuickFire? It's not called SlowKill or UltraEndurance or some other combination of words that basically says "long, tanky battles."

B)So having negative functional hp would incur debuffs on a ship? Would those become progressively worse as the hp becomes lower?

C)If such a system were to be implemented, I think it is reasonable to consider the fact that players with established and preferred ships/builds would opt to put an armor cluster in the middle (maybe useful, maybe not) as opposed to potentially needing to do a complete redesign. In any event, I'd like to pose a couple of questions:
1) Is there a possibility of interior complexity diminishing in favor of having a large hp buffer to offset battle damage?
2) Would thrusters need to be modified to allow for the (theoretically) higher mass of ships because of how they would be affected by such a system?
3) Would turrets share the hp pool with the parent ship or have their own hp pool?
4) Could such a system be derived from the structural hp that was used in the old power system?

A)If Quick-fire doesn't include equally Quick-build; it should be called Quick-exodous.

B)No, having negative functional HP would just mean "it won't turn on" and be stuck in constant offline/overheat state till despawn. I suppose you could change the curent "systems debuffs" part of the XML to include negative HP states to stop "i'm building it" despawns while still including "no thing works" debuffs untill it becomes over 0. Conveniently already in the xml/gamecode (if not often refrenced)

C) The game needs to let the players have envelope freedom like that. Without that the 3d MS-Paint that is starmade will simply continue to be left to rot. Sandboxes need sand and imagination not tarmac. Most likely ships that had a "reasonable ratio" of blocks beyond "I puts 1 layer of paint arounds mah deathcube" wouldn't need any modification. If you're looking to milk an actual number out of me I'd spitball something like 4:1 hull-to-systems with all numbers being equal(they prob shouldn't be though). Same spitball would be +RHP value as the inverse of blockHP. Same spitball would have ~2:1 ratio at "bare minimum" +HP and overheat on the fist shot that got though shields.

1)sure. There is currently the same possibility, but without a "floor." Keep in mind what most of current ship mass is dedicated to.

2)No more than they currently need it due to "basic tripod" being off-balance(above posts). Thrusters themselves should probably be drastically reduced in mass to simplify the implementation/builder math, but that's another discussion. The only ships that would "need higher mass" would be the deathcubes every-single nailed-on idiot-balance idea like Stabilizers/stab-beams/etc is designed to eradicate anyways.

3)How do they currently work? Do turrets have RHP? Suppose the new one would give them "more" functional RHP, but I'm thinking it would be "tuned off" by being a docked entity unless there a reason to comment-out that part of the engine. Points out that "free RHP" from a core should be enough to offset the minimum 2-block active systems of a micro-turet(or a space-bike), and the minimum docker/rail combo should effectively double that "freebie".

4)Yes, if the systemHP variables were redefined as signed(+/-) as I said before. It sadly wouldn't work well do to ArmorHP and all the Effects associated being depreciated, and that pre-depreciation state being in obscured codeblocks from old versions. Fell free to look back though my post history for in-depth posts regarding balance in that old system. Unless Duke (or a Moderator-with-a-power-complex like we had in the "forum wars") nuked them they'll be around 2016-2017 time. Probably in one of the many "balance" threads, and the letter to schine one.