Time to Talk..

[MustachedSquid]

Its time we talk about the game problems... I never played starmade before power 2.0 system, but after a long time playing and research I came to a conclusion that in some aspects Power 1.0 was better.

So, main reason, reactor stabilizers, the stabilizers need to be very far away from the reactor, this makes ship designs hard, because it limits us to very looooooooong ships, If I want to make a "medium" ship I need to skretch out kilometers just for a decent reactor????
Also why this way? stabilizers should be close to the reactor, why so far away?
I think Schime should rework this because ships are limited to super long sticks right now and that literaly kills alot of Imagination.

Next, Integrity, do I realy need to explain how this also affects ship designing? if I wanna make a CREATIVE and GOOD LOOKING SHIP whit nice AESTHETICS I will just end up getting 1 shot hit by a ugly stick!
This is super unbalanced and also limits creativity, for RP players this ruins 75% of the fun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are your opinions? also please explain the god dam logic about the stabilizers needing to be kilometers away from the reactor...

 

[kikaha]

Play more (integrity ????)

Imagine more...

i build RP, always and i'm far from being a one shot ship.

 

[MacThule]

So did you have a specific Suggestion? Like "reduce stabilizer distance even more than you just did?"

Otherwise this probably belongs in General discussion, not in Suggestions.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Before we begin, a few questions:
- How big are the ships you are talking about?
- What kind of power output are you expecting to achieve compared to each ship's size class?
- How do you arrange your stabilizers?

I've made several craft with some decent power output for size and none of them look like a "stick".
With regard to stabilizers specifically, the following things will affect your overall stabilization and by extension, your max reactor size.
- The total number of stabilizers on your ship
- How many groups they are in
- Their positioning and alignment, relative to the reactor
- How many groups of stabilizers are of equal size

Other things to note about stabilizers that do not directly affect reactor size but should still be taken into great consideration:
- You only require 25% stabilization for a reactor to generate its full power.
- It is highly recommended to stay above 25% stabilization or your power output will drop sharply.
- Your reactor will take increased damage if your stabilization is below 100%. This damage increases relative to how low your stabilization is.
- Many players will sacrifice (some) stability on compact builds. Examples; drones/fighters, miners, scouts small PVP ships. The amount depends on the player and the amount of risk they are willing to take.

 

[Captain Fortius]

I thought integrity was off by default now? (And good riddance to it)

I dislike stabilizers as well. The concept is nonsensical; Reactor parts aren't supposed to be far away from a reactor. Pretty sure if you took the control rods out and carried them over to the far side of a reactor complex, you'd get some spectacular explosions.
They don't add anything to the ship, you're just screwed without them.
On top of it, I doubt they would be actually necessary for game balance. Why bother the player, why keep track of excess code, and why run extra calculations?

Yes, one can manage using this system, but it is spectacularly bad, both for building and destroying a ship.

-Stabilizers should not exist. Reactors should just provide power. Explode when hit by weapons fire.

-There should be more ways for a ship to be destroyed; Damaged system groups should be disabled. They may leak power, explode as well, or keep functioning at reduced effectiveness for a while. If the hull takes a lot of damage (ratio of hull blocks to system blocks becomes too low), it should be considered as a structural failure, and also result in gradually worse effects, and eventually ship death (being literally broken apart).

 

[God mode]

I thought integrity was off by default now? (And good riddance to it)

I dislike stabilizers as well. The concept is nonsensical; Reactor parts aren't supposed to be far away from a reactor. Pretty sure if you took the control rods out and carried them over to the far side of a reactor complex, you'd get some spectacular explosions.
They don't add anything to the ship, you're just screwed without them.
On top of it, I doubt they would be actually necessary for game balance. Why bother the player, why keep track of excess code, and why run extra calculations?

Yes, one can manage using this system, but it is spectacularly bad, both for building and destroying a ship.

-Stabilizers should not exist. Reactors should just provide power. Explode when hit by weapons fire.

-There should be more ways for a ship to be destroyed; Damaged system groups should be disabled. They may leak power, explode as well, or keep functioning at reduced effectiveness for a while. If the hull takes a lot of damage (ratio of hull blocks to system blocks becomes too low), it should be considered as a structural failure, and also result in gradually worse effects, and eventually ship death (being literally broken apart).

This is really what confounds me. Schema tries all this wacky stuff with power streams and integrity and stabilizers and convex hulls, but completely ignores the simple, obvious, logical things like system disabling and hull-to-system ratio. Things that would be super easy to implement, yet still be way more effective than what we have now.

I can understand the reasoning behind using stabilizers instead of requiring a minimum amount of hull/decorative blocks if you think players are just going to build these in a single massive blob or something, but this is fundamentally misguided because the biggest negative effect of having interiors is the increased mass, not increased volume.

Stabilizers took MONTHS of development and testing and adjustment and they still don't work as intended.

Encouraging space within ships for interiors? Nope, it's super easy to completely fill a ship with systems and still achieve 25% integrity.

Allowing players the choice of a fragile reactor using fewer stabilizers, or a more robust reactor at the cost of needing more stabilizers? Nope, it's much more efficient to stay at 25% stabilization and spend that extra mass on armor around the reactor.

It's almost like stabilizers are completely useless.

Why are convex hull calculations even needed for reactors? Why not just use center of mass? There was no reason to force reactors into compact shapes when we had integrity, and now there's no reason because chambers contribute to ship HP and can be any shape. The only thing this does is inhibit creativity.

 

[Sachys]

so what everybody is agreeing on in this thread is... power was better before 2.0?

 

[MConlisk]

I like power 2.0. I feel it brings a more realistic approach to spaceship design. I agree it has flaws and downsides, but as for the idea it's sound.
From what I can see, from reading posts and comments, people don't like it because it's not easy to use. It sucks shine had to forego this idea because too many people couldn't figure it out.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

While I got fairly good at building in power 1.0, this 2.0 system is actually pretty simple to use. However...

- Some players are basing the overall effectiveness of their designs on the old 2 million e/sec soft cap.
- Some are not placing their stabilizers properly or setting proper alignments; leading to inefficient builds.
- Some are focused on min/max-ing and simply don't understand how to do this effectively with the new power system.

On the other hand, I agree that this system is highly flawed.
- Far too many stabilizers are needed to maintain "good" stability.
- Far too many system blocks (weapons shields and power) are needed in general.
- As mentioned above, hull/system ratios are FUBAR and decorations/interiors are punished; disincentivising creativity.
- Shield integrity still exists... Worse; there is currently no in-game way to tell what your shield integrity is.
- Chamber size requirements and scaling in relation to reactor size make absolutely no sense.
- Fleets do not respond to enable/disable cloak/jam; leading to friendlies you can't see without a strong scanner.
- The new Forced auto-charge of jump drives while in a fleet effectively cuts your power output in half if you place any power related blocks or a jump inhibitor is near by. You cannot turn this auto charge off and your only alternative is to disable default jump drives. ...which means, yet another chamber. ...more space wasted. ...more power consumption ...less rector capacity for other stuff you need.

 

[Ribbons0121R121]

make the DOOM BEAM not just remove your sheilds. and some sort of capacitors like the old power, and make them COMPATIBLE WITHOUT HAVING TO GuT eVrYtHinG

 

[Edymnion]

1) Stabilizer numbers and distance is something that can be easily tweaked as needed to find the sweet spot. We're still in alpha, and we have all of beta to tweak numbers to get them right. If you have a ship where you think you can't make the stabilizers work given the distance or numbers needed, then by all means, please export it and load it up so we (the players and the devs) can look at it. Simply saying "Oh it doesn't work right" doesn't help as it doesn't give anyone actual numbers to work off of. You post up your build so everyone can see, and we can determine if its just a case of you misunderstanding how it works (as in, the reactor design is inefficient), or if there is a legit need to have numbers tweaked. That is how you get things changed, you present hard facts and numbers.

2) Power 2.0 does not limit build creativity any more than 1.0 did. 1.0 was FULL of flying bricks, death cubes, and pringles cans because that was the optimal shape for power generation. What precisely the optimal shape might be has changed, but the idea that "certain shaped ships preform better than others" is not new to Power 2.0. It has been here since the very beginning.

The biggest disadvantage to Power 2.0 is that it is MUCH more difficult to change the size of your power plant if you wind up needing more power than you expected. But honestly, I still prefer this to Power 1.0 because you know what? I haven't had to give any seminars on how power works in 2.0.

In 1.0? Hell, I used to run WEEKLY "classes" on servers for new players on how to wrap your head around how those hideous gordian knots worked. "Make a solid mass of Reactors, then chambers for whatever extra effects you want connected by conduits" is a HELL of a lot easier to explain to somebody than additive/multiplicative modifiers based on system boundary boxes. I mean, it used to be so complicated to generate power, it was damned near a mini-game in itself to see how much power you could wring out of a given space.

And really? The solid power plants we have now are basically the exact same thing as the old nested reactor boxes with the empty space filled with capacitors. We just simplified the build for them, and changed from spamming effect blocks into consolidated chambers. The end result is that builds didn't really change that much, they just changed conceptually.

3) Integrity has already been shut off for most things. Its still there for shields, which is annoying, but they've pretty much realized that it was indeed not working as well as they had hoped. And while people were right to point out that it wasn't a great idea, some were EXTREMELY rude and combative about it, which actively worked against them. Again, if you have a design that you like where integrity is proving to be a problem, then export the design, load it up, and make it available for the devs to look at and evaluate.

Provide definitive, hard evidence of precisely what you are having an issue with, and then be flexible when it comes to compromise in getting something that both sides can be happier with. Because we don't know what is actually simple or complicated given the coding for the game engine. The devs do. Odds are if something is "simple and obvious" then they've already looked at that option and have their reasons for not choosing it.

Overall, work WITH the system, not against it. Nobody wants to spend years of their lives working on something just to hear "You're stupid and don't know what you're doing!", they're going to dismiss you out of hand for that kind of behavior just like anyone else would. If they decide that some form of integrity is going to happen, then find a way to work with that system to get it fine tuned to the point its usable. And if it turns out that there is no good balance point to make it usable, then the devs will have tons of data and experience to back that decision up.

Because remember, the Devs are driving this car. We're just sitting in the passenger seat going "Oh cool, can we go over there?".

 

[TheDerpGamerX]

The problem I feel with Power2.0 is that it is more restrictive. If you want to have a decent ship you have to put the stabilizers a certain distance from the main ship, that distance is usually very long. While yes, you can add more dimensions to the reactor it only means that you'll need to make those sides longer as well. It forces you to build your ship in a certain way, and doesn't give the freedom of design power 1.0 did. While yes, you can make any shape really, its much more harder and inefficient to do so.

Yeah, Power1.0 was more complex in terms of axis trees. That was why it was good. With Power2.0 every ship is the fucking same. You have no freedom of design, its always make big reactor cube blob then place stabilizers really far away from it. In Power1.0 you at least could bend the axis trees around different shapes and it would actually be more efficient than just making a big cube of them. In Power2.0, everything is a damn cube. And yeah, you could bend the reactor around a shape now too, but depending on how you bend it it could cause your reactor to be less efficient due to stabilizer distance. The number one thing that people have asked for Schine to do is to just remove stabilizers. They serve no purpose and only make ship design more difficult, yet Schema has refused to do so because he could not give a flying fuck about what the players suggest. This would be fine except NOBODY in Schine plays their own game. Lancake, the bug tester, hasn't played in years, and I doubt does either. Schema NEEDS to listen to the playerbase as if he doesn't, he wont be able to balance the game. There will be no input from anyone who actually plays and therefore he would just come up with the worst possible numbers and concepts, like he did in Power 2.0. It is one thing to code the game and just put random numbers in there, it is another thing to PLAY the game and actually see how those numbers interact and calculate on a large scale.

That being said, recently I feel Schema has realized his mistake and has began being a bit more open to input from the community. Many of the recent armor and rule changes were ideas that came from the community, and thats a good thing.

 

[Batavium]

Edymnion You have said in the past and now again on more then one occasion. That so long StarMade is created in something that you enjoy. Then you do not care about how other people experience StarMade.

In other words as long as you are happy no one else gets to choose something else.

Which for a SANDBOX game is bizarre and selfish.

Somehow you got it in your brain that StarMade can only be played in one defined way. Because Schema so happens to follow a linear route. A route YOU enjoy so damned the rest.

You are not alone a complete forum war was waged over RP vs PvP. Also ridiculous. Since StarMade is just a pile of building blocks in virtual space. With the server admins deciding how they would run their server. If you so happen to play multiplayer then you could choose a server befitting to you and if none existed then you could start your own. In single player it is literally you who is the god of all creation. Within the defined limits set by Schema.

And there in lays the problem. The power 2.0 problem. ChamberMade. Rather then have a power plant that provides a generated number for all other systems to use like Power 1.0 We now have a PRE Defined Tech Tree.

I can not change this tech tree in the configuration! I can not define my own chambers. Or if they need prerequisites or if it is one chamber fits all. I now have to build my ship around this predefined list of options and I hate it! There is no choice! StarMade allows for almost endless tinkering. I used to give multiple examples and help others in how each and everyone could set up StarMade so it could be played in their own unik way! The Edymnion way, the Batavium way, the insert random name way. Because every single player of this game has thoughts and wishes of how they would like to play StarMade. And Schema knows this! So why limit choice with a predefined system that the end user has no control over. It is so stupid! Such a terrible waste of creativity.

Yes we needed something to replace filling our ships with thousands of CPU power devouring blocks. But it should never have come in a bloody corset!

As for this:

Nobody wants to spend years of their lives working on something just to hear "You're stupid and don't know what you're doing!

If you stick the coming Universe Update to pretty much any version of StarMade. Then you get basically the exact same game. Plus or minus a few things. Since Schema has made an art form of reinventing the already invented. That is what has been done for the last 5+ years.

Mind you I fully respect Schema for the time and effort he put into this game. I wish to thank him most sincerely for the 10.000+ hours of StarMade “yeah really” It was a blast.

 

[Edymnion]

Edymnion You have said in the past and now again on more then one occasion. That so long StarMade is created in something that you enjoy. Then you do not care about how other people experience StarMade.

Yeah, I'm not rising to that bait.

Nice try though.

 

[IR0NSIGHT]

so to conclude the main problem with power 2.o is the stabilizer positions forcing certain ship shapes.
Also an idea from myself: i like RP and PvP. Hard to combine but possible. A big problem is having non- freefloat turrets that can a. turn 360 b. deal enough damage. The turrets tend to get to big quickly to look nice. So:
How about we make weapon blocks on turrets 10 times stronger, heavier, powr consument and costly (etc). basically have the same turret just 10% of its original size.
Makes small but mean turrets a thing and RP combined with pvp would be more possible.
Guns on the main ship would stay the same. noone gains any advantages, only turrets sizes are reduced.

 

[kiwispike]

Is the problem really "ship shape"

I think the problem is "power you want"

You will eat my ships in PvP. (gross generalisation)

But I shouldn't need to make huge disproportionate turrents in my opinion.

A fighter should be able to be small and nimble and still damage bigger slower ships.

I think 2.0 went towards balancing what's on your ship, therefore limiting your systems/size

It does unfortunately have the side effect of creating a "most economical build" of a cube. But nothings perfect.

If it's done for the reason I think. Its great. My 2.0 ships are definitely closer to viable than my 1.0 (in refrence to other players.)

 

[DrTarDIS]

1...honestly, I still prefer this to Power 1.0 because you know what? I haven't had to give any seminars on how power works in 2.0...In 1.0? Hell, I used to run WEEKLY "classes" on servers for new players on how to wrap your head around how those hideous gordian knots worked...it was damned near a mini-game in itself to see how much power you could wring out of a given space.

And really? The solid power plants we have now are basically the exact same thing as the old nested reactor boxes with the empty space filled with capacitors. We just simplified the build for them, and changed from spamming effect blocks into consolidated chambers. The end result is that builds didn't really change that much, they just changed conceptually.

I had some serious laughs trying to explain reactor rotation to people. That is another minigame and sillyness that could/should be automated if "simplicity of construction" is actually a virtue.

I'll go out on a limb here and say the various "minigames" involved in system construction were the actual FUN part of the game for people like me who enjoyed finding creative methods to get better performance. With those gone/nerfed there's very little to maintain interest in the 3D pixel art that SM has become.

...if you have a design that you like where integrity is proving to be a problem, then export the design, load it up, and make it available for the devs to look at and evaluate.

See "build a thing" in my signature. Tell me if it works in the newest build. I'm not feeling the hassle of updating again to check it out. Thread itself should provide a good example of my thought process and issues.

Overall, work WITH the system, not against it. Nobody wants to spend years of their lives working on something just to hear "You're stupid and don't know what you're doing!", they're going to dismiss you out of hand for that kind of behavior just like anyone else would. If they decide that some form of integrity is going to happen, then find a way to work with that system to get it fine tuned to the point its usable. And if it turns out that there is no good balance point to make it usable, then the devs will have tons of data and experience to back that decision up.

Because remember, the Devs are driving this car. We're just sitting in the passenger seat going "Oh cool, can we go over there?".

True enough, and if you think of SM as just a "showroom" for shine engine itself that's a good way to look at it. Only problem is that the parts I'd(we'd) need to edit to work well are obfuscated code.
Back in the SysHP days I tried to make a viable balance mechanic assigning negative HP values to things like defensive and offensive systems to control size categories. Cannot do because the value in config went to unsigned value in the .jar and I couldn't find the relevant line in the .jar via standard unpack to alter it to a signed value to complete the test.
More recent example would be how rechargers choose which capacitors are connected (can't force a choice if overlap). Other minutia detailed in that signature link.
There's also an issue with enabling/disabling various options within the obfusated.jar rather than in the config files, EG factories on ships.
I'm too lazy to cross-authenticate to join the Discord, feel free to bring it up in my stead.

...And there in lays the problem. The power 2.0 problem. ChamberMade. Rather then have a power plant that provides a generated number for all other systems to use like Power 1.0 We now have a PRE Defined Tech Tree.

I can not change this tech tree in the configuration! I can not define my own chambers. Or if they need prerequisites or if it is one chamber fits all. I now have to build my ship around this predefined list of options and I hate it! There is no choice! StarMade allows for almost endless tinkering. I used to give multiple examples and help others in how each and everyone could set up StarMade so it could be played in their own unik way! The Edymnion way, the Batavium way, the insert random name way. Because every single player of this game has thoughts and wishes of how they would like to play StarMade. And Schema knows this! So why limit choice with a predefined system that the end user has no control over. It is so stupid! Such a terrible waste of creativity.

Yes we needed something to replace filling our ships with thousands of CPU power devouring blocks. But it should never have come in a bloody corset!

+1 truth
Chamber made is a PITA. Would be nice to cut the tree part out and just have everything with a single branch and effectiveness by ratio to total ship mass/power/dimension rather than reactor itself.