Thermite is Fun!

[Lecic]

I'd really like to know more about these new thermite blocks though. How exactly do they work? How do they provide power? How do they overload and blow up other than getting hit?

They generate power based on their dimensions and block count. They provide power when you activate them in the hotbar like effects. They overload when shot.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Scypio The "everything" that's linear is the weapon shield damage per block, armor HP/added block and system HP/added block. That's about it. The weapons' capability to destroy blocks, is a whole other story.

I'd really like to know more about these new thermite blocks though. How exactly do they work? How do they provide power? How do they overload and blow up other than getting hit?

To a certain extent player/ship entities are linear as well. Fleets are changing that. But until controlling a fleet of three ships of a total of X blocks is just as easy as controlling a ship of X blocks, there is a push there to just build big, despite the many disadvantages.

Everything Lecic said. An interesting/micro-y aspect is that it works on its own auxiliary powerbar, which will continue to drain even if your main power is maxed, forcing you to remember to turn it on and off rather than just leaving it on. If you take a look at it in the dev build, be smarter than I was. I loaded the dev build in my main single player world and lost everything I hadn't saved to blueprints... Wups.

 

[KillaKrazy]

Why are people so against large ships? Is it because they are unable to build anything that matches it in size?

 

[Lecic]

Why are people so against large ships? Is it because they are unable to build anything that matches it in size?

Because they're laggier, take a very long time to build and refit unless they're bricks (and even then they take a while, just ask Nuclear Doughnut), because they're less fun to fly for a lot of people, and because the arms race of gigantism simply isn't fun.

It's not that people lack the skill or ability to build a 10 million mass ship. It's just not very enjoyable to most people to spend 2 months on a project (assuming you want it to look good and perform well) that will be outdated by the time it's done, when they could have made half a dozen 25k mass ships that won't have the problems listed above in the same timeframe.

 

[AtraUnam]

Why are people so against large ships? Is it because they are unable to build anything that matches it in size?

Due to the reasons posted above by Lecic; also because smaller ships allow for much more easily applied optimization and specilisation so rather than an arms race of 'who can build bigger' you get an arms race of 'who can built better' which is much more preferable.

 

[Endal]

I could make the explosions tiny but numerous that last for a long time.
I could make them strong and medium in radius that last for a very short amount of time.

The decision to go for either should be considered carefully, because either option would favour different "styles".
Fast burn would favour Meta-projectiles like torpedoes heavily because a faster burn means less time for things to screw up, provided batteries have explosion mechanics and numbers on-par with warheads.
Slow burn would favour ships as a whole because the damage is distributed slowly, you are not fully damaged in the meantime so you can still shoot the other guy with less loss of combat function.
Essentially it's either Destruction of the enemy first or Self-preservation first.

I could make it so that advanced armor on the outer layer of the reactor and armored layers inside would be enough to prolong your reactor's life/usefulness just long enough to justify for the added cost, used block space and added mass.

Now how would this work?

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Why are people so against large ships? Is it because they are unable to build anything that matches it in size?

Also, large ships are absolutely anti-fun. They are sluggish as hell, both movement and turn-wise unless you build half of them out of thruster blocks (because diminishing returns) and even then, their dimensional turn ratio makes them slow. Therefore you can't really rely on any main weapon other than swarm missiles because half the battle will be spent trying to get the enemy into your field of view; therefore you need to rely on turrets, which means you don't have to have any kind of piloting or positioning skill. It's just sitting there sluggishly moving around waiting for your turrets to do the job hoping yours are bigger than theirs, and your shields and armor last longer than theirs.

 

[NeonSturm]

Also, large ships are absolutely anti-fun. They are sluggish as hell, both movement and turn-wise unless you build half of them out of thruster blocks (because diminishing returns) and even then, their dimensional turn ratio makes them slow. Therefore you can't really rely on any main weapon other than swarm missiles because half the battle will be spent trying to get the enemy into your field of view; therefore you need to rely on turrets, which means you don't have to have any kind of piloting or positioning skill. It's just sitting there sluggishly moving around waiting for your turrets to do the job hoping yours are bigger than theirs, and your shields and armor last longer than theirs.

Agree. But big ships are still good as carriers if you prefer to have mining, a cloaking-scout and everything always with you.

Most games has some sort of ship-size tiers.

1. Ships piloted alone
2. overlap of 1&3
   
3. Ships for which you have turrets or a crew
4. overlap
5. Ships for which you have both crew and turrets or fighters.

Perhaps it will be the same in Starmade with NPCs and separated entities on the same ship such turrets with their own power-supply.

 

[Malacodor]

Also, large ships are absolutely anti-fun. They are sluggish as hell, both movement and turn-wise unless you build half of them out of thruster blocks (because diminishing returns) and even then, their dimensional turn ratio makes them slow.

So big ships are bad because they were heavily nerfed because big ship haters complained. This doesn't explain the hate against big ships in the first place.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Nobody "hates" big ships. They dislike gigantism, there's a difference.

 

[StormWing0]

The main reason is big ships are sometimes so laggy that they crash people's clients. Also their shear size means they are a royal pain to fix after battles. For me it's easier to build 100 ships each a 10th the size of a titan and murder the titan because some fool came with it alone.

 

[Malacodor]

For me it's easier to build 100 ships each a 10th the size of a titan and murder the titan because some fool came with it alone.

Building big fleets is just another form of gigantism.

 

[jontyfreack]

no, its not

 

[Endal]

Building big fleets is just another form of gigantism.

No.
Making one large ship is harder than making a smaller ship then producing it in quantity.
However, large fleets of smaller ships need a competent admiral to lead them or they will just be a pile of scrap flying into deathtraps.
It's harder to be a tactician than playing an FPS.

 

[Groovrider]

One of the biggest problems for myself seems to be that there is no definite guide as to what is a big ship/titan. Real disadvantages start well before you get past 100,000 mass, yet many will say that 100,000 is not that big or a titan. On the server I played on the limit was 60k mass for ships. Does that mean my 59,000 attacker was a titan? Everyone seems to be fearful of their own private worst case scenario but if my worst case is 200k mass and someone else's is 2 million, how is any real discussion supposed to take place? The biggest ship does not always win. Good ships and good tactics will always prevail.

 

[jontyfreack]

for me a titan is a ship that has a dimension over 1km and is not a stick, so something like 1001m x 500 x 500 would be a titan for me. others use mass, but because I am mostly an rp builder, its easier to go by size because interior space on some ships could take off about 100k mass in some scenarios

 

[Malacodor]

No.
Making one large ship is harder than making a smaller ship then producing it in quantity.
However, large fleets of smaller ships need a competent admiral to lead them or they will just be a pile of scrap flying into deathtraps.
It's harder to be a tactician than playing an FPS.

So the difficulty is shifted from building to tactics, but total mass still matters as before.

 

[jontyfreack]

So the difficulty is shifted from building to tactics, but total mass still matters as before.

not really, you only need about 1/4 of the mass of a large ship in smaller ships to kill it, so if anything its more for building better ships than your enemy, not just larger ships because each smaller ships needs to be well built so you can start to get away with using smaller fleets to destroy larger ships.

 

[Lancake]

Now how would this work?

Like this,
Left has only armor on the outside of the reactor
Right has that too but also sheets inside. Makes it less block efficient but also less blocks die from random explosions.

 

[Endal]

So the difficulty is shifted from building to tactics, but total mass still matters as before.

Total mass matters, but because we don't only have one type of weapon, one type of ship, the tables can be turned against bigger ships by good control of smaller well-built ships.
Additionally, on a quantitious scale the skill of build for ship is mutiplied, so shitty ships will form shittier fleets, good ships will form better fleets. It is crucial that smaller ships are built better to balance the mass difference between it and the larger adversary.
[doublepost=1473087618,1473087461][/doublepost]

Like this,
Left has only armor on the outside of the reactor
Right has that too but also sheets inside. Makes it less block efficient but also less blocks die from random explosions.
View attachment 31603

Have armour values affect explosions huh, that sounds neat, would encourage strategic armour placement rather than all-or-nothing styles