The Stabilizer Fix

[Valiant70]

Of all the stabilizer ideas thus far, this gives the most freedom of design as there are several ways to deal with it, and it favors no specific shape of ship. Currently, you want one dimension as long as possible, and are forced to place the reactor at one end for maximum power. What we want is to make increased box dimensions and advantage, and allow the reactor to be placed almost anywhere so that people have a reason to use recon systems to find it.

Here's the fix:

The game calculates the total box dimension of a box that encloses all stabilizer groups (x + y + z = total boxdim). The higher the reactor output, the larger the total boxdim needs to be to make the stabilizers 100% efficient.

Stabilizers should ideally be placed on the edges of a ship in each axis. You can place extras anywhere. You can place the reactor anywhere within the box of stabilizers.

What does this accomplish?

By encouraging a certain size of box dimensions for a given amount of power, we leave room for decoration if desired. Otherwise, something like a nacelle is always a disadvantage over a ship without such details. At the same time, this doesn't make nacelles mandatory. If you take them off, you need more stabilizers, but at the same time having more stabilizers means it will take more damage to affect your reactor's stability. Durability goes well with a chunky, compact ship, right?

As for metagame builds that look like seven pods with armor on the front, go talk to Lecic about his ideas for eliminating the "dumbbell" meta. They should work equally well here.

 

[Lecic]

OR we can remove stabilizers entirely because they add nothing interesting to reactor design, or give them a function that isn't just "put some blobs of these in your ship somewhere" so they are interesting.

 

[Valiant70]

OR we can remove stabilizers entirely because they add nothing interesting to reactor design, or give them a function that isn't just "put some blobs of these in your ship somewhere" so they are interesting.

What about connecting them to the reactor via conduits with serious loss of power if the conduits are severed? Then there's a tradeoff. Add nacelles for a high-energy glass cannon (or armor them reeeeeallly well), or keep the stabilizers close to or in the main hull to protect the conduits better. That could lead to some interesting design decisions, as well as a bit more freedom in ship design.

 

[Zoolimar]

What about connecting them to the reactor via conduits with serious loss of power if the conduits are severed? Then there's a tradeoff. Add nacelles for a high-energy glass cannon (or armor them reeeeeallly well), or keep the stabilizers close to or in the main hull to protect the conduits better. That could lead to some interesting design decisions, as well as a bit more freedom in ship design.

Why ? Damaged reactor will already start losing power. For what purpose do you need a second type of block to do the same thing ? If you want reactors to be bigger just cut the energy production per block.

 

[Lecic]

What about connecting them to the reactor via conduits with serious loss of power if the conduits are severed? Then there's a tradeoff. Add nacelles for a high-energy glass cannon (or armor them reeeeeallly well), or keep the stabilizers close to or in the main hull to protect the conduits better. That could lead to some interesting design decisions, as well as a bit more freedom in ship design.

Because that isn't interesting. It's just a blob I need to wire to my reactors. Why do I need to do this? What does it add to the game? Because all it seems like you want is a half-baked justification for Star Trek ships.

 

[Dire Venom]

OR we can remove stabilizers entirely because they add nothing interesting to reactor design, or give them a function that isn't just "put some blobs of these in your ship somewhere" so they are interesting.

Lots of head-nodding in agreement :3

 

[Valiant70]

Because that isn't interesting.

I think it is.

It's just a blob I need to wire to my reactors. Why do I need to do this? What does it add to the game?

It adds another design choice: Stick your stabilizer out on a protruding structure and armor it to get more power, or keep it inside the hull to protect it more. Actually you could have a set of backups inside the hull in case you lose your nacelles, but you pay for the redundancy with additional weight.

Because all it seems like you want is a half-baked justification for Star Trek ships.

It would be great if we could get them at least somewhat usable in meta. If not, I'd just like to see as many different shapes as possible be made practical.

 

[The_Owl]

"It'd be great if we could get this odd shape that makes no sense in any universe other than it's own into the meta via a forced mechanic that would make ships that are not them even better, thus making them pointless in the meta"

 

[Valiant70]

"It'd be great if we could get this odd shape that makes no sense in any universe other than it's own into the meta via a forced mechanic that would make ships that are not them even better, thus making them pointless in the meta"

"We need a functional mechanic. If it works on Trek ships, great. If not, whatever."

 

[Zoolimar]

It would be great if we could get them at least somewhat usable in meta. If not, I'd just like to see as many different shapes as possible be made practical.

The thing is even with conduits nacelles don't make much sense. Doing a more hard sci-fi looking long frame ship, where conduits go from back to the nose connecting everything and could be protected by forward facing armor plate together with everything else on the ship is more mass / resource effective. Also ship will have a smaller cross-section turned to enemy and probably would be able to afford a couple additional layers of armor or shields.

 

[Valiant70]

The thing is even with conduits nacelles don't make much sense. Doing a more hard sci-fi looking long frame ship, where conduits go from back to the nose connecting everything and could be protected by forward facing armor plate together with everything else on the ship is more mass / resource effective. Also ship will have a smaller cross-section turned to enemy and probably would be able to afford a couple additional layers of armor or shields.

That's true, but that ship would have the option of adding some nacelles to get more power for the first part of the fight until they're blown off, allowing it to fire faster at the start of the engagement. It's situational, but definitely something I'd like to be able to do. Right now a glass cannon would just have to be really long.

The conduits running the length of the ship also mean a ship can't be blown in half and just say "Meh. You missed my reactor."

 

[petlahk]

Of all the stabilizer ideas thus far, this gives the most freedom of design as there are several ways to deal with it, and it favors no specific shape of ship. Currently, you want one dimension as long as possible, and are forced to place the reactor at one end for maximum power. What we want is to make increased box dimensions and advantage, and allow the reactor to be placed almost anywhere so that people have a reason to use recon systems to find it.

Here's the fix:

The game calculates the total box dimension of a box that encloses all stabilizer groups (x + y + z = total boxdim). The higher the reactor output, the larger the total boxdim needs to be to make the stabilizers 100% efficient.

Stabilizers should ideally be placed on the edges of a ship in each axis. You can place extras anywhere. You can place the reactor anywhere within the box of stabilizers.

What does this accomplish?

By encouraging a certain size of box dimensions for a given amount of power, we leave room for decoration if desired. Otherwise, something like a nacelle is always a disadvantage over a ship without such details. At the same time, this doesn't make nacelles mandatory. If you take them off, you need more stabilizers, but at the same time having more stabilizers means it will take more damage to affect your reactor's stability. Durability goes well with a chunky, compact ship, right?

As for metagame builds that look like seven pods with armor on the front, go talk to Lecic about his ideas for eliminating the "dumbbell" meta. They should work equally well here.

Everyone tried to poke holes in this with arguments about how stabilizers should just be removed or the mechanic should be made more interesting. All of which I find cliche'd at best. While I do think stabilizers are necessary Valiant. Your solution is either the same as what's in the game now or doesn't adequately replace or fix stabilizers.

By making reactor placement be anywhere within the stabilizer bounds it doesn't really encourage empty space in the way that Schema wanted or actually make it much different to the way that the system works now. Effectively, either the stabilizers are still at the edges of the bounding box in the same way that they are now, or people just fill that between space up with systems and armor again - limited only by the reactors power output.

Though your description of your solution doesn't work I do actually think I've finally come up with one after thinking for three hours.

My first solution (prompted directly by this post) was, what if the stabilizers have to sit within a torus-like shape around the reactor. They cannot be too far outside, or close to the reactor. I however quickly scrapped that on the grounds that it restricted building size even more. And, additionally, it bears no relation to the system of 100% stabilization that stabilizers work under now.

My Solution

First, scrap the concept of stabilization efficiency insofar as it applies to individual stabilizer groups. I understand that stabilizer efficiency ties stabilizer mass to the reactor mass, however I think that it is, when applied to one axis and one stabilizer group, a flawed idea.

Secondly, keep the minimum 0% efficiency bubble. This is good. This is nice. that bubble is the main thing enforcing the space requirement. However, there is still my final change.

Third, make stabilizer efficiency tied to distance in the sense that the sum distance of all stabilizer group distances must equal the distance that would (in the current one axis system) achieve 100% efficiency. If the sum distance is less then 100% then, by all means, require more blocks for the stabilizer groups to reach 100% efficiency. However, by doing it this way, the spaghettification issue would be solved, stabilizer and reactor efficiency would be kept, extra space would be encouraged, the axis would be multiple axes, stabilizers would be harder to focus target, and, above all, creativity would be preserved.

Edit: Link to my main suggestion post about this: Additive Stabilizer Distance - The Simple Solution

 

[Lecic]

it doesn't really encourage empty space in the way that Schema

Encouraging empty space is a bad and pointless mechanic. If you want an excuse for people to have interiors in their ships, push for crew, not a shitty, broken power system with this stupid stabilizer mechanic.

 

[Dire Venom]

Encouraging empty space is a bad and pointless mechanic. If you want an excuse for people to have interiors in their ships, push for crew, not a shitty, broken power system with this stupid stabilizer mechanic.

+1
They seem to have learned all the wrong lessons. As has been pointed out by many experianced players, an interior and decour does not have to come at the cost of ship performance. Interiors and decour is not an issue.

 

[petlahk]

Encouraging empty space is a bad and pointless mechanic. If you want an excuse for people to have interiors in their ships, push for crew, not a shitty, broken power system with this stupid stabilizer mechanic.

+1
They seem to have learned all the wrong lessons. As has been pointed out by many experianced players, an interior and decour does not have to come at the cost of ship performance. Interiors and decour is not an issue.

I agree that ship spaces should have actual uses beyond just arbitrarily being empty. However I disagree with the notion that stabilizers should not exist or cannot coexist with any additional systems. Is Schema's reason for stabilizers flawed? Yes. Is the current implementation of stabilizers flawed? Yes. Does that mean that it is completely unacceptable as a mechanic and cannot be revised to make more sense? Hell no.

Stabilizers are a perfectly legitimate mechanic intended to help preserve balance between reactor size, ship size, and among players who PVP. Simply because the reasons behind a mechanics choice come from flawed places does not discount those mechanics as utterly worthless.

Stabilizers are a perfectly sensible balance choice and mechanic. Schema's second reason for stabilizers (as quoted by Valiant in his post) - that they be a mechanic used to tie ship size to reactor size - is a perfectly valid reason. Moreover, I firmly agree that players who value aesthetics should not be inherently penalized for their play-styles by the mechanics choices of the game. Does this inherently make PVP players' and aesthetics players' ships equal? No. And nor should it. However the stabilizer mechanic puts players who value aesthetics and players who value PVP and PVE on a more even playing field. Both against each other, and against the environment. Moreover, and most importantly, the new reactor system drastically decreases the learning curve and increases the accessibility of the game in general. This is important for not only attracting new players, but for overall player retention as well.

In closing, I would like to kindly ask Lecic that you refrain from arguing against a system that you know is going to be kept anyway. There stands a chance that we can convince the developers to modify stabilizers in such a way as to make them a more enjoyable and palatable mechanic. However, there is no point in arguing against the mechanic as a whole when you and everyone else already knows that it isn't going to be entirely removed.

Enjoy your winter break guys. Enjoy the holidays.

 

[Dire Venom]

As far as simplyfying power goes, taking it from a soup of groups to a condensed block works fine. I'm sure newer players especialy will appreciate it.
As far as stabilizors go, if they had just been a bit more open or engaged with the community about them they could already have been fixed imo.

Just go with addative stabilizor distance with low effc. zones around them and the mechanic does from one dimensionsal to 3.
Much easier and more engaging to work around. That's all they need! Makes sense, uses current mechanis and supper easy to do!
By far the easiest fix for the current build right now if they plan on keeping it.
Sadly I doubt they will be taking much feedback on stabilizors seriously, and will likely stay with the cureent one because "It's good enough" and "We don't get what you guys are talking about".
I hardly ever see them on the suggestion or disscusion forums anymore. By all means, a lot of this is volentueer work, but it kinda feels pointless posting here anymore if they won't read any of it.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Honestly just remove Stabilizers entirely.

There is absolutely no purpose to them other then creating a forced space requirement, Schine if you want people to build interiors in their ships then reward players for doing it in the form of game mechanics *cough* NPC crew *cough* rather then punishing players by creating a dumb useless forced design choice.

 

[petlahk]

Discussion - Removing, Improving, or Finding Alternatives to Stabilizers

 

[MacThule]

give them a function that isn't just "put some blobs of these in your ship somewhere" so they are interesting.

Give them the function of bounding interior spaces and say that imaginary ghost crew in that interior open (decorated?) space is what is keeping the reactor stable. By working on it; engineering style.

It's so stupid that people are simultaneously pushing for "interior space" and at the same time we have tons of bulky interior components that could literally be converted into that very space by changing them to define enclosed areas rather than be solid bricks.

Then who cares how long it takes them to figure out implementing actual crew, we could still gain all the gameplay benefits having crew will confer while they figure that out AND we will make stabilizers and chambers far more compelling by them not being giant blobs that literally compete wtih navigable interior space.

 

[MacThule]

Honestly just remove Stabilizers entirely.

There is absolutely no purpose to them other then creating a forced space requirement, Schine if you want people to build interiors in their ships then reward players for doing it in the form of game mechanics *cough* NPC crew *cough* rather then punishing players by creating a dumb useless forced design choice.

The extreme irony being that even if modified to effectively force interior space, stabilizers literally compete against interior space at the same time by being one more component you have to fill your ship with when you might rather be installing a crew compartment with that part your mass budget.