Valiant's Excessive and Insane Power Rework Ideas

[Dark_Inquisitor]

Spoiler: CAPTAIN, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!

I know that ALOT of people will disagree with me, but I think that someone have to say it;
Current power generation balance is, well... It's exploitable, to say the least. Especially after new update that brought new logic systems and shiled sharing. So, technically you can make a bunch of energy generators (like before), but now they are even better.

And as for fuel... What is wrong with it? Your generator is smaller. Works more logically, at least i think it's more logical for new players to buy few reactor blocks and put fuel in there, instead of wondering why they have to make ton of dimension-based sticks which are ridiculous.
Oh wait, I know what is it! I won't be able to fly my - let's be honest - small - as for Starmade - just 250m ship.
Hell, why no one wants to fly smaller ships?
THIS is the problem. Fuel systems will punish BIGGEST ships (and who'd like it?) and will encourage usage of small ships like shuttles (e.g., to fly to the nearest shop).
And I know that some of you are boiling from hatred already, so just let me put some reason behind my way of thinking;
In the most space-themed games that I've played, one of the most important thing about keeping your ship operational is to maintain them (supplies, energy, munnitions, all kinds of that stuff). And THIS is the factor that limit you on your quest for gaining control of the universe. Of course - big ships have their own pros and cons (mostly pros, not counting sucking up the resources) and this is quite obvious, I think.

Summing up; fuel is bad as it won't allow us to fly titans to scout territory and do shopping; but fuel itself could be the balancing aspect of the game and I don't really think it'd be THAT hard to understand that fuel is needed to maintain ships, nor that punishing for small and medium ships.

And, uh... These are just my thoughts. So before you'll say some very harsh words, remember that's just my opinion.
Thank you for reading.

 

[Valiant70]

Spoiler: CAPTAIN, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!

I know that ALOT of people will disagree with me, but I think that someone have to say it;
Current power generation balance is, well... It's exploitable, to say the least. Especially after new update that brought new logic systems and shiled sharing. So, technically you can make a bunch of energy generators (like before), but now they are even better.

And as for fuel... What is wrong with it? Your generator is smaller. Works more logically, at least i think it's more logical for new players to buy few reactor blocks and put fuel in there, instead of wondering why they have to make ton of dimension-based sticks which are ridiculous.
Oh wait, I know what is it! I won't be able to fly my - let's be honest - small - as for Starmade - just 250m ship.
Hell, why no one wants to fly smaller ships?
THIS is the problem. Fuel systems will punish BIGGEST ships (and who'd like it?) and will encourage usage of small ships like shuttles (e.g., to fly to the nearest shop).
And I know that some of you are boiling from hatred already, so just let me put some reason behind my way of thinking;
In the most space-themed games that I've played, one of the most important thing about keeping your ship operational is to maintain them (supplies, energy, munnitions, all kinds of that stuff). And THIS is the factor that limit you on your quest for gaining control of the universe. Of course - big ships have their own pros and cons (mostly pros, not counting sucking up the resources) and this is quite obvious, I think.

Summing up; fuel is bad as it won't allow us to fly titans to scout territory and do shopping; but fuel itself could be the balancing aspect of the game and I don't really think it'd be THAT hard to understand that fuel is needed to maintain ships, nor that punishing for small and medium ships.

And, uh... These are just my thoughts. So before you'll say some very harsh words, remember that's just my opinion.
Thank you for reading.

I've been saying this forever but people are just too addicted to their titans to see what's good fit the game as a whole, not just themselves.

 

[friendofvampires]

I've been saying this forever but people are just too addicted to their titans to see what's good fit the game as a whole, not just themselves.

i was talking about a similar topic in another thread and we concocted the idea that maybe instead of making fuel a flat requirement, make it provide a bonus, then up the severity of diminishing returns so that a small sip would benefit from fuel, but not really require it, while a titan wouldn't be stranded with no fuel, but would require it to function normally

 

[Stakhanov]

Another problem with those suggestions is their complexity , once you start adding extra balancing mechanics and workarounds for exploits. Simplicity can determine wether a suggestion has any hope of being implemented.

I don't see the point of balancing ships based on power rather than mass. Won't that encourage ridiculous volumes of armor blocks ? Mostly , it makes no sense. Also , accuracy statistics cannot really apply to seeking missiles.

 

[Dark_Inquisitor]

Another problem with those suggestions is their complexity , once you start adding extra balancing mechanics and workarounds for exploits. Simplicity can determine wether a suggestion has any hope of being implemented.

I don't see the point of balancing ships based on power rather than mass. Won't that encourage ridiculous volumes of armor blocks ? Mostly , it makes no sense. Also , accuracy statistics cannot really apply to seeking missiles.

No pont? Why? Mass will heavy influence thrust needed to move your ship; more thrust = more power required to move the ship.
And as for power, I think that power changes MUST be followed by more config options for it.

i was talking about a similar topic in another thread and we concocted the idea that maybe instead of making fuel a flat requirement, make it provide a bonus, then up the severity of diminishing returns so that a small sip would benefit from fuel, but not really require it, while a titan wouldn't be stranded with no fuel, but would require it to function normally

Fuel with benefits?
Srsly thou - isn't it just like adding couple of solar panels to make sure that you won't be stranded?

 

[friendofvampires]

Fuel with benefits?
Srsly though - isn't it just like adding couple of solar panels to make sure that you won't be stranded?

not really, because what happens if you're in deep space, between galaxies? no planets, asteroids, suns, anything, so that means you could be systems away with absolutely no transport. If you're in that situation now, you can hit a shop, and there's one in every system, or a derelict, and salvage up a core, thruster, and power module to get places, in a fuel required situation, unless you can get fuel, you have to spacewalk to a place you can

 

[Valiant70]

not really, because what happens if you're in deep space, between galaxies? no planets, asteroids, suns, anything, so that means you could be systems away with absolutely no transport. If you're in that situation now, you can hit a shop, and there's one in every system, or a derelict, and salvage up a core, thruster, and power module to get places, in a fuel required situation, unless you can get fuel, you have to spacewalk to a place you can

1. This is why astronauts need core-like flight capability built into their suits. The current method of movement is insufficient, inconvenient, and unrealistic.
2. Exponentially increasing fuel cost sounds like a good idea to me. This would make small ships more efficient as well as cheaper. This would also make the early game easier because light ships would need very little fuel, or no fuel if we follow your idea.

Here's an idea. As maximum power output increases, the percentage of maximum that is generated by fuel also increases at a rate such that:

• A larger ship is always less fuel efficient, though it outputs more power.
• A larger ship gets more free power than a smaller one, but less of its total energy is free.

 

[Dark_Inquisitor]

not really, because what happens if you're in deep space, between galaxies? no planets, asteroids, suns, anything, so that means you could be systems away with absolutely no transport. If you're in that situation now, you can hit a shop, and there's one in every system, or a derelict, and salvage up a core, thruster, and power module to get places, in a fuel required situation, unless you can get fuel, you have to spacewalk to a place you can

As far as I know, even in space between galaxies light does exist; so you will produce some power, but that'd be a very tiny amounts.
So, you could crawl back home.

 

[Valiant70]

Everyone interested in fuel (for or against), please take a moment to visit my opinion poll: http://starmadedock.net/threads/curious-fuel-survey.8010/

 

[friendofvampires]

1. This is why astronauts need core-like flight capability built into their suits. The current method of movement is insufficient, inconvenient, and unrealistic.
2. Exponentially increasing fuel cost sounds like a good idea to me. This would make small ships more efficient as well as cheaper. This would also make the early game easier because light ships would need very little fuel, or no fuel if we follow your idea.

Here's an idea. As maximum power output increases, the percentage of maximum that is generated by fuel also increases at a rate such that:

• A larger ship is always less fuel efficient, though it outputs more power.
• A larger ship gets more free power than a smaller one, but less of its total energy is free.

1. I like the improved astronaut flight, though maybe a smaller acceleration than cores to balance it out

1. the original idea wasn't that the cost of fuel got higher, its that, through diminishing returns, it became the only viable way to generate large amounts of power.

and i think those are fair trades, and would work nicely

 

[Snk]

1. I like the improved astronaut flight, though maybe a smaller acceleration than cores to balance it out

Astronaut suits should not have a high thrust-mast ratio, so astronauts couldn't escape from planets. Cores are going the way of the dinosaur soon, so hopefully they shouldn't even be an issue.

 

[Valiant70]

Astronaut suits should not have a high thrust-mast ratio, so astronauts couldn't escape from planets. Cores are going the way of the dinosaur soon, so hopefully they shouldn't even be an issue.

You actually can escape a planet with a core. You just have to catapult it off a plate edge.

 

[Snk]

You actually can escape a planet with a core. You just have to catapult it off a plate edge.

That's horrible.

 

[NeonSturm]

OMG, every second post about fuel, but the OP contains so much more!

If you want a simple, block-based game, go play Tetris.
But we want SM for it's customizability!

I really like the idea about spatial-distortion or sub-space-distortion in Star-Trek-Language.
This makes a lot more sense than space-friction, even if it is just lore-wise explanation for a thruster's game mechanics.


Perhaps ships should be able to produce fuel from ambient power sources.
Then fuel would act like power capacitors, but with a longer charge/discharge time, adding another feature in the direction SM already goes with power-capacity.
(( Alternative Choice would have been : You could just make everything add/subtract from available power as long as it's on ))

That would also allow carriers to supply smaller STL ships efficiently while not supplying itself with it's additional repair/supply, FTL, ?Factory, Crew-Relax-Zones, ...


If some fuel's gathering rate would be based on "mass^(3/2), mass^(volume/surface)", peoples would avoid flying in titans all the time; If a server has this setting.
If some fuel's gathering rate would be based on ship mass, peoples would use different entities for fuel gathering and flying around.

But: You could still have your mobile base.
Just use your mobile huge base to FTL and a small corvette or trader ship to fly STL- and scouting- operations near your mobile base.

 

[Valiant70]

OMG, every second post about fuel, but the OP contains so much more!

If you want a simple, block-based game, go play Tetris.
But we want SM for it's customizability!

I really like the idea about spatial-distortion or sub-space-distortion in Star-Trek-Language.
This makes a lot more sense than space-friction, even if it is just lore-wise explanation for a thruster's game mechanics.


Perhaps ships should be able to produce fuel from ambient power sources.
Then fuel would act like power capacitors, but with a longer charge/discharge time, adding another feature in the direction SM already goes with power-capacity.
(( Alternative Choice would have been : You could just make everything add/subtract from available power as long as it's on ))

That would also allow carriers to supply smaller STL ships efficiently while not supplying itself with it's additional repair/supply, FTL, ?Factory, Crew-Relax-Zones, ...


If some fuel's gathering rate would be based on "mass^(3/2), mass^(volume/surface)", peoples would avoid flying in titans all the time; If a server has this setting.
If some fuel's gathering rate would be based on ship mass, peoples would use different entities for fuel gathering and flying around.

But: You could still have your mobile base.
Just use your mobile huge base to FTL and a small corvette or trader ship to fly STL- and scouting- operations near your mobile base.

Ambient fuel sources sound interesting. Most ideas include a free-power reactor that outputs a small amount of power. It would be interesting if it could synthesize free synthetic fuel when not operating at peak output too.

 

[lio_oVo_oil]

How about having factions be able to produce fuel at some rate that increases with an increased number of faction members? Have some sort of block that synthesizes fuel from the void, but distorts space to an extent, therefore making it only useful when only one synthesizer is present in each sector. The rate, however, would increase less per extra faction member, and possibly decrease as more of the synthesizers are deployed? Oh, and they may only be deployed within faction-claimed sectors, to make claiming sectors important.

 

[Battle]

I think the idea of balancing a ship around the size of the energy systems is a good idea (not only because I had similar ideas with another approaches posted once). :P

However, regarding energy and fuels, I personally both like and dislike consumtion of fuel. On the one side I think it is nice to have something with limited usage, on the other side I would not like it if it only revolves around spending more money for something.

However, one way is to have energy generators working just like now but with the option to boost them with fuel. So for some cruising through the galaxy you might want to use regular generators... but for some sort of engagement in a war you might use fuel to boost your powers by like ~30-40% (configurable). The problem here is, that it might result in players to be forced to use the best stuff to achieve the spike of their ship's powers... and that this will define the normality of all combat. The other problem is, it will solely be based on how much off that stuff you carry with you... making it mostly just be a simple moneyburner. You would want to consider each of your travels, if they are profitable enough. Or, if it is too insignificant, it means it's just some sort of annoyance... something not to forget about from time to time.

Regarding the previous problem... what if one has storage devices in their ships, which carry the fuel. Like fuel tanks. The fuel tanks can only be restored at checkpoints (shops, stations) for just some money or even for free. Their restriction would be limited availability rather than pure money to spend. In that case the additional efficiency could be like the 2-4 times of normal (or making them scale down to 20% efficiency when using no fuel). Plus make that togglable, so it is not wasted when not needed. Also: Alternative reactors, which grant less power, but work without fuel, granting an alternative to those ships who might only rarely want to go to checkpoints.

However... stations could store fuel the same way in huge tanks to fill the tanks of ships. It could be necessary to transport that fuel from time to time with big transporters from shops or other places to those stations. This could also be interesting, as reasons for transporters do not exist yet.

 

[tabbot]

I wouldn't mind fuel or thruster-propellant.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Why not have both?

There are a lot of resources, that are just plain useless right now. Like i have too many of certain crystals, and not enough of others. So why not have these resources be used to make higher tiered blocks. Like an engine or generator that uses lava, or a mineral?

So we keep the normal "tier 0" blocks, but when players get more established, they can create better ships with higher tiered blocks.

This will also make more unique ships, with different systems, and encourage creativity.

 

[mo05mAn]

I actually don't like the idea of balancing ships on power. I have a massive ship just to carry small ships. the big ship would then turn fairly fast, the mass should have a say in the turning of the ship.