Thoughts on Gigantism

[therimmer96]

Now that I think about it, last time I saw a ship large enough to be a titan it was on EE with Joelbrisco, a single person flying around killing people in his massive fridge.
Large factions dont really use titans that much as they are using medium sized ships in fleets to take down their prey

This is a good point.

Its to risky for a faction to poor all its resources into one ships. its less efficient and risks loosing most your resources in a lost battle.

 

[Nauvran]

This is a good point.

Its to risky for a faction to poor all its resources into one ships. its less efficient and risks loosing most your resources in a lost battle.

It's also quite boring to only use one gigantic ship in a faction of 20 people

 

[Edymnion]

It's also quite boring to only use one gigantic ship in a faction of 20 people

Well that would also be very stupid. A titan can absolutely destroy a battlefield, but its not invincible.

If you can field a titan, you should be fielding it as the backbone of a fleet.

Its the Death Star to the fleet of Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters in Return of the Jedi, and the same thing will happen to your titan as happened to the Death Star if your fleet isn't there to protect it.

 

[Asvarduil]

Well that would also be very stupid. A titan can absolutely destroy a battlefield, but its not invincible.

If you can field a titan, you should be fielding it as the backbone of a fleet.

Its the Death Star to the fleet of Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters in Return of the Jedi, and the same thing will happen to your titan as happened to the Death Star if your fleet isn't there to protect it.

I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but this is also a symptom of another problem in this game - to have a protected area to store your stuff and dock your ships, at present you're practically required to have a one-man faction. Thus, one-man factions field Titans, when they should at most have a single-person 'heavy' scout ship (something along the order of a light frigate).

I personally think fixing the 'one-man faction' problem will do a lot to combat gigantism without imposing a single mathematical change on the game, and will make small ships a better option since Titans will belong to factions, not individuals so much.

*: As much as I've argued against Titans in the past, I don't disrespect Titans - I have thought for months now that they're way too common, that's all.

 

[Panpiper]

Hey, I like being a one person faction, and I like flying around in the biggest, baddest ship on the server. (I have no life.)

Yea, ok, it's nowhere near the biggest ship you've ever seen, but it was hand built the hard way on a survival server with standard mining rules (and 'that' makes it impressive). This was three systems worth of asteroids and planets. I used it to eat another four systems and it's now ready for it's next iteration.

 

[Edymnion]

Oh I totally agree. The current faction setup is woefully inadequate at the moment. I've been a one man faction pretty much my entire time in Starmade for that very reason.

However, I am designing my current new faction home around that problem. With the advent of rail doors, I can link those to logic locks in order to make keypad entry systems.

I can then have multiple storage locations each behind locked doors that cannot be opened unless you know the code.

My personal space on the station (including my own personal factories and storage) will be behind an airlock system of logic locked doors to make sure nobody can sneak in behind me while I'm opening one and raid me. It'll be open one door, go through, have it close, then key in the passcode to the next door.

I can then also have separate "guild banks" for different levels of faction members by simply having multiple storage areas with their own unique passcodes that I hand out to the different ranks.

 

[Asvarduil]

Oh I totally agree. The current faction setup is woefully inadequate at the moment. I've been a one man faction pretty much my entire time in Starmade for that very reason.

However, I am designing my current new faction home around that problem. With the advent of rail doors, I can link those to logic locks in order to make keypad entry systems.

I can then have multiple storage locations each behind locked doors that cannot be opened unless you know the code.

My personal space on the station (including my own personal factories and storage) will be behind an airlock system of logic locked doors to make sure nobody can sneak in behind me while I'm opening one and raid me. It'll be open one door, go through, have it close, then key in the passcode to the next door.

I can then also have separate "guild banks" for different levels of faction members by simply having multiple storage areas with their own unique passcodes that I hand out to the different ranks.

That's pretty awesome. I'm still figuring out how the Rail system works. In my recent builds, I've made a 'turbolift' for my two scout ship configurations that takes the crew between the C&C center and the 'engineering' sections; I haven't figured out how to make an elevator that stops at a specific floor just yet.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Specific floors are a pain, but you can build a "simpler" version that just stops at every floor.

 

[karkinosz]

For a faction to work in the current starmade pretty much there's no personal property among members, simply because you can't enforce anything else. And to be honest, it works pretty well too.

Now if you are treating a faction like how you'd treat a job, to further your own wealth. Then probably the current starmade faction system sucks for you :|

 

[Panpiper]

For a faction to work in the current starmade pretty much there's no personal property among members, simply because you can't enforce anything else. And to be honest, it works pretty well too.

Now if you are treating a faction like how you'd treat a job, to further your own wealth. Then probably the current starmade faction system sucks for you :|

Communism does not work. I have eaten literally dozens of planets to accumulate the materials I need for a project. It has taken me days of work. If I did that in a faction in which people could simply take the fruits of my labor, there is no way I would ever be able to realize my project, or if I did it would be by doing a LOT more work while others freeload off of me.

I have never joined a faction. I do not see myself ever joining a faction, for precisely this reason. I am a faction of one, of my own creation.

 

[Lecic]

Communism does not work. I have eaten literally dozens of planets to accumulate the materials I need for a project. It has taken me days of work. If I did that in a faction in which people could simply take the fruits of my labor, there is no way I would ever be able to realize my project, or if I did it would be by doing a LOT more work while others freeload off of me.

I have never joined a faction. I do not see myself ever joining a faction, for precisely this reason. I am a faction of one, of my own creation.

Really? A communist set up has worked fine for myself, karkinosz, and the rest of the people in Thryn. Though that's probably because we don't do a lot of the "personal ships" stuff. Everything goes into the faction fund for warships and other faction craft.

 

[Mork2]

Look at titans this way as well due to the system hp penalty for size a larger chunk of the ship will be left behind when you kill it. At 2.0 penalty each system block HP killed will be worth three times the system HP points for the total ship system HP damage. So you only have to kill 17% of the total system HP in blocks to do 50% system hp damage to the ship to overheat, leaving 83% of the system blocks intact. Of course you still have to kill off all the turrets and so on so a larger percentage of the ship will be killed while you finish those off.

I'm of the same opinion with the faction system. Your usually better off just being in a faction of one for security reasons. Unless of course you have a faction leader that likes setting everything for everyone to work or you can trust all the members. Since your a faction of one you usually fly the biggest ship possible to increase your odds seeing your unlikely to be travelling in a group. And your limited to one home base to safely dock to so it tends to have all your stuff there as well. Unless faction system changes or you get the ability to fly around in a small fleet.

 

[karkinosz]

Communism does not work. I have eaten literally dozens of planets to accumulate the materials I need for a project. It has taken me days of work. If I did that in a faction in which people could simply take the fruits of my labor, there is no way I would ever be able to realize my project, or if I did it would be by doing a LOT more work while others freeload off of me.

I have never joined a faction. I do not see myself ever joining a faction, for precisely this reason. I am a faction of one, of my own creation.

If a faction is full of freeloaders then that's an issue in and of itself. But I do understand your concerns in that you want the fruits of your own efforts to stay firmly under your control. Ultimately though myself and co. could have mined for that ship in a couple days or maybe even one these methods have their upsides and downsides.

Stuff in starmade ends up getting lost either way through combat or etc. So I've found it's a good idea to not get attached to a piece of work, since ultimately the server will reset or the server dies and its all lost anyway. But you keep factionmates pretty much no matter what.

Anyway this has really gone off topic so I ought to stop.

 

[StormWing0]

There's a rule around SWD HQ if you use resources from the HQ you have to replace them when able. I think we've rarely gone under 1k of anything.


Large ships aren't really an issue when they've got a new hull made of drones chewing away at it though. XD

 

[Edymnion]

Communism does not work. I have eaten literally dozens of planets to accumulate the materials I need for a project. It has taken me days of work. If I did that in a faction in which people could simply take the fruits of my labor, there is no way I would ever be able to realize my project, or if I did it would be by doing a LOT more work while others freeload off of me.

I have never joined a faction. I do not see myself ever joining a faction, for precisely this reason. I am a faction of one, of my own creation.

Yup, thats why I'm building those logic lock rail doors.
Keep the filthy little freeloaders to themselves!

Dug up the old thread I had over on the logics board with the basics on how to make the logic lock, if you're interested:
http://starmadedock.net/threads/rail-door-keypad-lock-logic-provided.7598/

 

[Krougal]

Wow, this thread still going all this time...sorta...I guess...not really on topic anymore.
Still (and I probably said it months ago) changing the maneuverability scales a bit would help (maybe...a little...like the HP system penalty...but most big things are really just a bunch of little things). As it stands once you go big, you might as well go really big. Like if one has a 5k mass ship with 1.0, 1.1, 1.0 rating one might as well build a 200k ship with a 1.0,1.1, 1.0 rating. If they up what is considered a small ship a bit there might be more reason to use them.

The argument about a bunch of small ships taking out a large ship is mostly irrelevant since pilots are in short supply and fleet AI is non-existant. You people that actually PVP, tell me how often is it going to be a faction of 5 in small ships going after 1 big ship, vs a faction of 5 in 5 big ships going after 1 big ship.

 

[Dire Venom]

Wow, this thread still going all this time...sorta...I guess...not really on topic anymore.
Still (and I probably said it months ago) changing the maneuverability scales a bit would help (maybe...a little...like the HP system penalty...but most big things are really just a bunch of little things). As it stands once you go big, you might as well go really big. Like if one has a 5k mass ship with 1.0, 1.1, 1.0 rating one might as well build a 200k ship with a 1.0,1.1, 1.0 rating. If they up what is considered a small ship a bit there might be more reason to use them.

The argument about a bunch of small ships taking out a large ship is mostly irrelevant since pilots are in short supply and fleet AI is non-existant. You people that actually PVP, tell me how often is it going to be a faction of 5 in small ships going after 1 big ship, vs a faction of 5 in 5 big ships going after 1 big ship.

Quite true. Ive only seen fleets with different sized ships during server events/battles.
Small ships should be quite maneuverable and be able to dodge large wepon fire to SOME degree, since theyre liable to lose half their ship in one shot.