we need to talk about losing

[Neon_42]

One of the biggest issues in this game is the inability to lose. People spend hours building and designing their creations thus it feels like time lost when you lose your creations. Inevitably someone will say "but you had fun building it right?" as if to say the building is just worth the time in itself. But here in this thread we discuss the problems with losing these creations. What ways can we mitigate the losing factor so that people don't rage quit. Station invulnerability does this somewhat, but it creates a very weird dynamic in the game in a PvP sense where you can't be conquered. Please post your ideas below.

Here are mine:

1. Players need efficient ways to repair their ships and stations. THis is possible currently by deconstructing a ship and building it with a new blueprint. However it would be nice just to doc with a shipyard and restore the ship without any extra steps. The same has to be true for stations. If a shipyard computer exists on a station it should be able to repair a station with a blueprint saved to it without having to deconstruct the station
2. Instead of blowing up a players works, instead if you reach the home base players could possibly levy a tax of some kind, maybe in faction points or resources. This would be much better than players blowing each other up and having someone rage quit. Of course if the tax goes unpaid then people would be free to destroy each other. A higher risk reward play.

I think that these two ideas are largely incomplete and need some serious brainstorming, however the issues related to losing exist. I'm interested in your ideas.

 

[kulbolen]

theres lots of small ways to do this, but it comes down to 2 big things here that really dont need any brainstorming at all:

most games have hard limits on what you can field... capping loss... and capping the amount of time it takes to prepare before a fight other than just adding more and more to try to maximize chances...

most games have an incentive to fight that can outweigh the cost of losing, giving the player at least enough incentive tofight to CONSIDER engaging.

starmade has neither.

homebases arent even a real factor; given proper incentive to fight, a player may risk loss and choose to undock.

cip, full pvp servers (which i personally like) can already choose to remove homebases. this does not force fighting in an environment where smart players know how to hide, or hit and run, and have no incentive to expose their home. they only fight when they all want to because its fun, which does happen a lot on those servers because most players who join share the mentality that fighting for the sake of fighting is fun... this is a minority mentality.

 

[Crusade]

Currently, there is no winning either - both parties fighting only lose blocks/ships. There is no real incentive to fight other than for the sake of it.

- Ship repairs need to be easier
- 'Winning' party needs a reward for winning, instead of losing blocks/resources. Perhaps credits or transfer faction points or resources from losing faction to winning faction.
- Astrotech beams need to be able to replace lost blocks - pulling from a block storage. This would allow support ships and more engaging battles
- Shield supply beams should not put the entity they're on into 'attack state', lowering regen. This would allow shield support drones/ships, lowering overall resource loss.

But yes, kulbolen is correct - Starmade currently has only loss. To mitigate this it needs rewards for winning fights.

Loot clouds are not enough

Perhaps automatic sector ownership if you dominate a faction - destroying a % of their ships or killing off a % of their faction points within a single system.

Taking a factions FP away should add it to your own factions pool. There should be a cap on generated FP universe wide, making players fight if they want to expand their territory.

Systems in conflict should also appear on the galaxy map, this would allow more people to see the 'war' or fight, and be tempted to get in on the action if it means more territory.

 

[kulbolen]

all good potential ideas. theres another problem, though. being a SUPERRREARLYYYY alpha (years later) it doesnt have a balanced economy. anyone can get anything they want in a matter of minutes to hours with a bit of gameplay experience and efficient play.

this isnt even considering the rampant exploits/bugs for duping stuff. i understand the games early in to address some of those issues, but at the same time, a lot of the drive between risk and reward relies on things like working economy. this game doesnt exactly follow a "short duration instanced arena pvp" model like most fps games and mobs and such, and most people arent here for a 5 minute pvp session.

although... in the absence of polished/finished/cleaned up gameplay model, a no risk no reward just for funsies arena server w mass tiering would be a fun way to get into some pvp, and probably provide tons of data on pvp balance/mechanics to help direct the game as it develops.

 

[NaStral]

The addition of a long range scan along with better scanning in general would be a huge help as well in forcing interaction. Ideally players could still hide if they put some effort into it, but there should always be a way to find your enemies in a way that is engaging, that puts you on the trail of your quarry.

 

[Comr4de]

only loss

| |o
|| |_

 

[Deleted member 678402]

This could be remedied with a station that spawns by default that a damaged ship can dock to, then asks the pilot for a payment in materials, then once payed the station begins automated repair of the ship while the pilot stays on the station in a rec center. Based off the episode of Star Trek: Enterprise "Dead Stop"

 

[NaStral]

Once crew is added one could even have a small chance one of your people would vanish and it would trigger a mini game to find them.

 

[kulbolen]

dead in the air ducts or banging in the cooler

 

[Lecic]

Do people not know about blueprints or something? You should never "lose a creation," just the resources that went into it.
Repairing a ship is as easy as docking it to a shipyard and repairing it- shipyards work fine for everything these days except, occasionally, wireless logic.
There's nothing stopping you from levying a tax on a player already- just ask Vaygr. Sure, we could have a mechanic for it, but it's already possible.

EDIT-

The community has a problem with losing. Too many people put all of their eggs in one basket on a single ship. This is not a problem with the game, which actively encourages NOT doing this. This is a problem with the community.

 

[Az14el]

Can't think of a loss that hasn't taught me something about the game, Knowledge is a pretty good reward, and you won't get much of it from shooting pirates and test targets, at least not beyond the basics. When you get stomped by a close-to-even or lesser mass ship you know you have some improvements to make (or you know, when you get stomped period, same game same blocks etc), yay improvements. That said its 100% true that survival-based-PvP is not catered for at all.
Losing can be fun but in SM it's mostly just frustrating-as-shit whether or not you have a good reason to fight in mind, Which is a damn shame if you're a "main protagonist" type.

Not that there couldn't be an easier/quicker/less risky way to test your shit than relying on LAN or a cooperative admin with nothing better to do. We have an official battlemode & many other server-side options, even mods to do this, but battlemode is largely ignored, as is Ares Mod at the current time, servers cater to whats popular (survival/building), and keeping an SM server alive can be pretty costly to boot.

 

[kurosawa]

Time and effort put in to getting materials and building stuff far out weighs the rewards for losing .

for me anyway, mining in this game is boring as hell i usually dock up after a few rocks and just quit the game for a day, shooting pirates is equally boring and spending time trying to see that elusive loot cloud is just lame.

If the player could spawn full AI controlled mining fleets in there home sectors it would help a lot, these fleets could also be targets.

 

[NeonSturm]

What if admins spawn a ton of resources for the winner of a PvP Event for 20k block ships?
And what if the peoples which enjoy PvP the most would post a how-to-enjoy-PvP tutorial?

What if ships yield information about where they were before you killed them? (scan data)

 

[Edymnion]

Its been suggested before (I know, I suggested it) that when Faction Points become useful for something, that winning fights by destroying ships could grant FP. Get a mechanic in place to more reliably judge the strength of a ship, and award scaling FP based on that.

Give a reason to go out and fight.

 

[madman Captain]

First thing: I dont have a problem with losing, BUT why I should fight? The anwer is simple: FUN!
The reason why games exist can also be answered with: FUN!

So why I'm not fight in starmade?
To anwer this I will adress some problems I have with starmde fighting:

-Defence systems: we have only two different types of defences (Armor and Shields) (three with AMS) and all of them can be overhelmed just
spray enough bullets.

-Weapon behavior: Just one example: Three weaponsystems (Cannon, Cannon+Cannon, Cannon+Pulse),
and what is the differense betwin them?
You changed the firerate. (slowly clapping Hands)

-Weapon balancing: "weak" weapons are strong and "strong" weapons are weak. Seriously the gamemechanical damage cap of rapidfire weapons is ten f***ing times higher than slowfire weapons.
"But madman, on the paper the weapons are balanced." Oh yes paperclean balancing, BUT we dont play this game on paper!

-Effect systems: only four of the nine exist effect systems are really usefull in battle.

-Turret behavior: with enough Rail Mass Enhancer even a 2000 mass Anti ship turret react like a tiny AMS turret,
in my eyes the biggest immersion breaker of the game.

-AI: dump as f***

-Flight behavior: It's need polishing. I think its a personal thing but flying ships in starmade just not feel good.

-Sound and visuals: I need a optical and acustic feedback, if a weapon not sound good and look good when it shoot than it is a worthless weapon course fireing this weapon dosnt enjoy me.

 

[Neon_42]

theres lots of small ways to do this, but it comes down to 2 big things here that really dont need any brainstorming at all:

most games have hard limits on what you can field... capping loss... and capping the amount of time it takes to prepare before a fight other than just adding more and more to try to maximize chances...

most games have an incentive to fight that can outweigh the cost of losing, giving the player at least enough incentive tofight to CONSIDER engaging.

starmade has neither.

homebases arent even a real factor; given proper incentive to fight, a player may risk loss and choose to undock.

cip, full pvp servers (which i personally like) can already choose to remove homebases. this does not force fighting in an environment where smart players know how to hide, or hit and run, and have no incentive to expose their home. they only fight when they all want to because its fun, which does happen a lot on those servers because most players who join share the mentality that fighting for the sake of fighting is fun... this is a minority mentality.

In some sense this is a problem. A war is a non consensual act. Which is why it is so interesting. If you only fight with people who want to then there really isn't any real conflict.

 

[Edymnion]

In some sense this is a problem. A war is a non consensual act. Which is why it is so interesting. If you only fight with people who want to then there really isn't any real conflict.

Good thing we're playing a multiplayer video game for fun and not going to freaking war.

 

[Neon_42]

Good thing we're playing a multiplayer video game for fun and not going to freaking war.

The point of the thread is that losing is so costly that it causes people to rage quit. If you not looking for conflict then maybe single player is for you. The point of the game is explore, expand, trade, fight, and so on. The sandbox is very big, and losing your structures causes people to rage quit. War is just one aspect of this game. Lets not be dismissive here of the issue.
[doublepost=1489522910,1489522564][/doublepost]

Do people not know about blueprints or something? You should never "lose a creation," just the resources that went into it.
Repairing a ship is as easy as docking it to a shipyard and repairing it- shipyards work fine for everything these days except, occasionally, wireless logic.
There's nothing stopping you from levying a tax on a player already- just ask Vaygr. Sure, we could have a mechanic for it, but it's already possible.

EDIT-

The community has a problem with losing. Too many people put all of their eggs in one basket on a single ship. This is not a problem with the game, which actively encourages NOT doing this. This is a problem with the community.

We know about blueprints. But we still cant save them to a ship or repair a ship without deconstructing it first. Read the OP. I agree with the second statement that the community has a problem with losing and getting too much attached to one ship. The question remains how to mitigate these issues. We cant just dismiss them.

 

[NeonSturm]

-Defence systems: we have only two different types of defences (Armor and Shields) (three with AMS) and all of them can be overhelmed just
spray enough bullets.

We are supposed to have five: Evasion by size, effect-hardening of shields/armour, outranging/running.

-Weapon behavior: Just one example: Three weaponsystems (Cannon, Cannon+Cannon, Cannon+Pulse),
and what is the differense betwin them?
You changed the firerate. (slowly clapping Hands)

Pulse is good for turrets which rotate on a rail around a station. They can recharge while being out of range.​

But the main point is not to make them different but to make them unique in look.
You can have a giant-bullet-of-death or a pew-pew-chainsaw.

I think ROF should be non-fixed as with a slider again but divide damage by ROF, especially when projectiles penetrate until their damage is spent (this wasn't the case with good-old cannon-only-starmade).
We should also introduce ammo-clips in form of power-capacitors and an optional bulk-recharge option and overheat-penalty.​

-Weapon balancing: "weak" weapons are strong and "strong" weapons are weak. Seriously the gamemechanical damage cap of rapidfire weapons is ten f***ing times higher than slowfire weapons.
"But madman, on the paper the weapons are balanced." Oh yes paperclean balancing, BUT we dont play this game on paper!

You need a summary of all variables that matter in combat and how they relate to each other.
After that, you can make good paper-math and a documentation explaining it to newbs.​

-Effect systems: only four of the nine exist effect systems are really useful in battle.

Push is for torpedoes.
Maybe torpedoes become more balanced once auto-placed collision-lag-free minefields for stations and better AI are a thing.

Push/Pull/Stop are or should be the same effect but is split to 3 blocks because how the game works.​

-Turret behavior: with enough Rail Mass Enhancer even a 2000 mass Anti ship turret react like a tiny AMS turret,
in my eyes the biggest immersion breaker of the game.

Do you like 1 Anti-Ship or 10 Anti-Drone turrets with the same overall dps and turn-rate?​

-AI: dump as f***

Yes, we need tag:regai. I am working on it but schema needs to link additional environment variables to display blocks and fix the broken hardware support in latest versions (can't see blocks since Christmas lightening update).​

-Flight behavior: It's need polishing. I think its a personal thing but flying ships in starmade just not feel good.

Will you name an example? Robocraft has had worse behaviour, but I guess you think about StarConflict-or-better?​

-Sound and visuals: I need a optical and acustic feedback, if a weapon not sound good and look good when it shoot than it is a worthless weapon course fireing this weapon dosnt enjoy me.

Agree.

I also think we should be able to define the firing pattern and synchronize our broadside turrets via logic.​

 

[madman Captain]

Will you name an example? Robocraft has had worse behaviour, but I guess you think about StarConflict-or-better?

Fractured Space or Dreadgnought for medium to large ships and for the small ships X3 TC or Star Wars Battlefront II.

I also think we should be able to define the firing pattern and synchronize our broadside turrets via logic.

Yeah firing pattern sounds good but I want more, I want control all my turrets together via third person view .

Do you like 1 Anti-Ship or 10 Anti-Drone turrets with the same overall dps and turn-rate?

I just dont want that a large turret can react so fast that it can hunt fighters, for this I have smaller AA emplacements, you know Pourpuses, give things a right to exist.

Pulse is good for turrets which rotate on a rail around a station. They can recharge while being out of range.But the main point is not to make them different but to make them unique in look.
You can have a giant-bullet-of-death or a pew-pew-chainsaw.
I think ROF should be non-fixed as with a slider again but divide damage by ROF, especially when projectiles penetrate until their damage is spent (this wasn't the case with good-old cannon-only-starmade).
We should also introduce ammo-clips in form of power-capacitors and an optional bulk-recharge option and overheat-penalty.

But when the weapons have no difference then you should not wonder when I say fighting is boring. Give rapidfire weapons spread and let Can+Pul make larger holes and instandly we have three different weapons witch make figthing a lot more interesting.
I mean only Missiles have interesting subversions.

We are supposed to have five: Evasion by size, effect-hardening of shields/armour, outranging/running.

Evasion... tell this an AI Can+Can turret or a beam weapon. Effect hardening dosnt count, its still Armor/Shields. And running isnt defence its retreat.