What do you guys think about a legacy server?

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

I've been looking back on the memories of old and decided that there is an opportunity for us here, especially for those who would be interested in giving Starmade one more chance, for the good old days.

The "good old days" was a game with a lot of missing features, performance problems, stability problems, etc; mixed with anticipation of what the game could become. It's the anticipation that's responsible for fond memories, not the missing features and other problems.

You can install an old version but you won't get any of the anticipation (that's responsible for the fond memories) back. Instead, you'll just ruin the fond memories by reminding people just how sad and broken the game was back then.

What you really want to do is get "re-excited" about what might be added to StarMade in the future. To do that you have to stop focusing on the past.

 

[Crashmaster]

Whatever you do, don't listen to people who try to tell you what you think or even worse, what you should think. Advice from people who ignore your reasoning and replace it with their own can reasonably be assumed to be biased and probably worthless.

I like the idea though it's far to summer-y for StarMade for me these days. Good luck.

 

[MacThule]

Summer ruins my game time as well. You must live someplace with a cold winter, Crashmaster

 

[Blaza612]

The "good old days" was a game with a lot of missing features, performance problems, stability problems, etc; mixed with anticipation of what the game could become. It's the anticipation that's responsible for fond memories, not the missing features and other problems.

You can install an old version but you won't get any of the anticipation (that's responsible for the fond memories) back. Instead, you'll just ruin the fond memories by reminding people just how sad and broken the game was back then.

What you really want to do is get "re-excited" about what might be added to StarMade in the future. To do that you have to stop focusing on the past.

By good old days I mean power 2.0. While you are absolutely correct that the fond memories came about by the anticipation that doesn't change that it was the earlier versions of the game where PvP was so prominent and considered the highlights of the game, which only got better until power 2.0.

This thread was more to see what version people would want, and your statement would be 100% correct by the results we've seen so far. So far most people want the latest version just before power 2.0, where a lot of the promised features are present, and others weren't already taken out.

I don't want that anticipation back as much as I want Starmade's PvP experience to return, as it was quite simply phenomenal, even through the buggy messes of the game. Regardless, you have in fact raised a good point, but would you personally be interested in a pre-power 2.0 PvP server?
[doublepost=1526339770,1526339536][/doublepost]I've added a Poll to get a numerical idea of the demand as there does seem to be some. If you guys really want this server to be a thing we need more people to actually say it because this is going to cost a lot (at least for us) and take a lot of our free time to maintain the server, so we need to see as much support as possible before we actually commit to this.

Either way I really appreciate everything everyone here has said, thanks guys! <3

 

[Agame3]

I still hope to relive the times when pirates were still providing the pirate hunters with a healthy income in blocks. Please choose a version without the need for cargo bays. The missiles worked, the logic was basic but what was implemented worked, the ships used to be in one piece before being shot down, when today it's quite the opposite... Do you really need shipyards to limit your ship sizes to enjoy the game?

You know you can simply place your core, build 100 or 500 or whatever you think is reasonable down from it, then add a docking module, dock it to your station, then build the ship just like in a shipyard. With no size limit, even if your home-base is just 2 rails on the opposite sides of a faction block. No prerequisites.

Before shipyards, if you needed 12 turrets, you built one and played with it until it became perfect for you, then simply blueprinted it and filled 12 BPs.

Shipyards changed all that freedom into more chains.

 

[Blaza612]

I still hope to relive the times when pirates were still providing the pirate hunters with a healthy income in blocks. Please choose a version without the need for cargo bays. The missiles worked, the logic was basic but what was implemented worked, the ships used to be in one piece before being shot down, when today it's quite the opposite... Do you really need shipyards to limit your ship sizes to enjoy the game?

You know you can simply place your core, build 100 or 500 or whatever you think is reasonable down from it, then add a docking module, dock it to your station, then build the ship just like in a shipyard. With no size limit, even if your home-base is just 2 rails on the opposite sides of a faction block. No prerequisites.

Before shipyards, if you needed 12 turrets, you built one and played with it until it became perfect for you, then simply blueprinted it and filled 12 BPs.

Shipyards changed all that freedom into more chains.

I imagine that pirate loot would also be changed in some config changes, and as it is a PvP server, we'd be making sure pirates give a good amount of loot.

However the version is up to the feedback we get, and unfortunately we've gotten more for the version mentioned in the main post. Plus Qweesdy has a very good point, a lot of Starmade has been a buggy mess, so naturally people would want a version with as little bugs as possible.

 

[Agame3]

Pirates give a really good amount of loot even on default settings. And what is wonderful for me is that the loot is 100% random. Why use green armor when brown fits better? It doesn't matter brown is harder to craft, you get the same amount of each color and you never need to craft it. Why hull instead of advanced armor when they still have the same mass? Same answer.

As for the version... You will not be the only server on last version before power 2.0. But you could be the only one with a version with classical infinite storage of 35 types per chest.

PS: The only bug I noticed appeared together with rails. That being the fact that no matter what filter you choose, most of the times you will not see turrets in Navigation panel. This bug unfortunately is still present in the versions you like and in the current version, AFAIK. Schema considers it a feature, probably.

Most of the heavy bugs only appeared with LOD (load on demand) optimization. Things fall out of ships and out of docking ports when loaded long before or after the main ship, collision computation is crazy, in a hangar you will never see the same beauty of your ships through a window, because transparent textures are not rendered when looked at through other transparent textures, and so on. My favourite versions are before the optimisation took place so they are free of these bugs.
[doublepost=1526365590,1526362338][/doublepost]I changed my vote from "yes" to "no" and I think it needs some clarification. I DO want a server with a version before pow2, but I want a version when the game was really different, not a version when secondary reactors of the pow2 were already implemented, like a disease that just started infecting a healthy game. I want my game with no signs of that disease and I really hope my game will never catch it.

Since the poll actually asks if we want our game with a version before pow2, it will get a lot of "yes" answers. (one was mine, lol!) Unfortunately, the one who made the poll wanted to ask if we like from all the pre-pow2 versions, the very last one. And to this, the answer would be no. I bet some other people, just like me, voted Yes to the pre-pow2 and would vote "Oh, God, please no!" to the very last version, but that is not what they were asked about by the poll. Lucky me, I understood what the poll creator wanted to ask and changed my vote accordingly.

 

[NaStral]

Well, If you want a version before Aux power your going to be dealing with the power and shield injector era. Not the best time because of the laggy, volatile nature of those things.

 

[Agame3]

Well, If you want a version before Aux power your going to be dealing with the power and shield injector era. Not the best time because of the laggy, volatile nature of those things.

Neah, I'd rather mass-spam my ship interiors with old type reactors for their 25 e/s without shape, once I get my first 1.2 Me/s. After 1.2 Me/s you get 25 e/s for each reactor module anyway, so shape does not matter anymore anyway. With 25 e/s I need a volume of 40k to make the next M e/s.

I think (my memory could fail me, sorry if it happens) a docked reactor+power transfer would output like 1M e/s raw power, then once it feeds it into a large enough transfer sistem half of it is eaten by the sistem and only half of it transfers to the "main" ship. And such a sistem, besides being laggy and waving enemies "hey, shoot here to disable this ship, here!!!" would not be much smaller than a 20k volume. 20k volume when simply filled with power gen blocks gives 500k e/s silently, without collision lag and without alerting anyone where it is and what it does. And I tend to do whatever it takes to avoid lagging myself to death. Whatever it takes, except building small, lol!

Just like a floating bubble, the size of my ships tends to rise fast from one build to the next one till it hits the size limit stated by the server owner and stucks there for all the next ships.

Edit: For small fighters, power 3D crosses are quite enough for me. Up to about 4-5k mass if the ship is pure efficiency, no RP spaces. With RP, up to about 10k, probably.

Well, for a ship 10k+ mass, actually 4k for another Me/s is not a very bad investment. It is a bit unpleasant, but not a game breaker. Because I hate creating lag. My weapon systems create more lag than I like anyway when used.

I mean, a PD turret can only stop so many missiles every second. Usually 10 per second, unless the PD turret is just a very large plate made out of chessboard cannon-cannon. I talk about the usual 2 barreled turret.
Example: Lets just say I am at a distance where my missiles will fly 2 seconds before they hit and the enemy has 4 turrets exposed, that can shoot at my missiles. This means he can stop 80 missiles. Now, lets say I am thinking about that moment ever since I start designing my ship. If I have the power generators and capacity to feed 1k missile modules, how do I distribute them? Do I want to make one "mother of all bombs" missile and see it detonated the second I fire it by a tiny crappy 10 mass turret? Or do I want the same destructive power split into 500 or so weapon groups, to shoot 500 small impotent missiles, but only loose 80 of them every salvo and still reliably deliver 75% of my destructive power to its target no matter what PD defenses my poor enemy is proudly wearing uselessly? So, the only limit of the number of my weapon groups shooting at a mouse click is the lag. If game freezes for me for a few seconds after I shoot, they are too many. If game freezes for less than one second, I am fine.

That means whenever I choose to fill up an empty space in my ship I loose from its beauty, but the ship itself creates less lag, allowing for even more weapon groups. No docked reactors = more weapon groups, less chances that my attacks can be avoided. Well, 4k mass is something, but it's definitely not as bad as docked power.

 

[NaStral]

Neah, I'd rather mass-spam my ship interiors with old type reactors for their 25 e/s without shape, once I get my first 1.2 Me/s. After 1.2 Me/s you get 25 e/s for each reactor module anyway, so shape does not matter anymore anyway. With 25 e/s I need a volume of 40k to make the next M e/s.

I think (my memory could fail me, sorry if it happens) a docked reactor+power transfer would output like 1M e/s raw power, then once it feeds it into a large enough transfer sistem half of it is eaten by the sistem and only half of it transfers to the "main" ship. And such a sistem, besides being laggy and waving enemies "hey, shoot here to disable this ship, here!!!" would not be much smaller than a 20k volume. 20k volume when simply filled with power gen blocks gives 500k e/s silently, without collision lag and without alerting anyone where it is and what it does. And I tend to do whatever it takes to avoid lagging myself to death. Whatever it takes, except building small, lol!

Check any faction thread from 2015-2016 And you can see clearly what people will inevitably do if those options become available again. Every major faction used this stuff. All power transfer blocks will need to be nerfed in the block config to prevent any use again.

 

[Agame3]

Check any faction thread from 2015-2016 And you can see clearly what people will inevitably do if those options become available again. Every major faction used this stuff. All power transfer blocks will need to be nerfed in the block config to prevent any use again.

Man, sorry, I have a bad habit. I want to say much fast. So I say a bit, post the answer, then edit it for clarification. The result is you answer to a 2-3 lines reply and a few seconds later it is a 2 pages wall of text. Sorry.

Please, read my edit of the previous message, see why I do not love and I think nobody should love docked power or docked shields. Well, inefficient people will keep being inefficient no matter what. They could even dock turrets on turrets on turrets because of the looks, lagging themselves to death. To each his own.

Even hulls are OK for me if they are less than 5% of the ship mass. If not, they are unacceptable. The lesser, the better. On the back side, thruster backs look cool enough, no need for a hull. On the front, weapon chessboard looks cool and threatening enough, no need to cover it with hull. Just give it a shape or something. On the sides... If the shield modules would look OK I would leave them uncovered. But they don't.

 

[Blaza612]

Man, sorry, I have a bad habit. I wnt to say much fast. So I say a bit, post the answer, then edit it for clarification. The result is you answer to a 2-3 lines reply and a few seconds later it is a 2 pages wall of text. Sorry.

Please, read my edit of the previous message, see why I do not love and I think nobody should love docked power or docked shields. Well, inefficient people will keep being inefficient no matter what. They could even dock turrets on turrets because of the looks, lagging themselves to death. To each his own.

While I understand your concerns, however I believe that you're hatred of power 2.0 as a:

disease

Is a little bit unnecessary, to be fair.

The reason we're looking at this version is because it's the latest version that simply works. Less bugs, less docked reactors, more optimization, and plenty for us to do. While going to the old-old starmade could be neat, there doesn't seem to be any desire from anyone else, purely for the fact that this version is that game, but better. Cargo ultimately proved as a great update and wasn't too restrictive at all.

 

[Agame3]

I dislike cargo and the limits to personal inventory that came with it. It is my own opinion and I do realize I am not a majority of players.
But I am limited for a few months to a pair of 4G high speed connections and those, while being more than enough for me to play anything, do not allow me to have an usable IP to host my own server for my minority on my own PC. For the same months, I will lack even the 20$ per month for professionally hosting a small server.

Since I can't host it myself I was hoping that you are also a part of this minority and we can meet together on your server. If not, no pb. Diversity is not just pleasant and useful, it is sometimes needed for any specie to survive. I don't want to try to persuade you to love the same things as I do if you do not love them by yourself. I just keep on hoping that sooner or later I will run into yet another person with the same game preferences like me and that he could host a server, for a change. (Hope is the last one to die

Until then, for the last months and probably for the next months, I will read the forums, try to be active here, and play single-player, trying to improve those of my ships I loved the most, making new designs, testing them against the always crappy AI, hoping one day I will get to play them in a multiplayer environment. No hurry.

 

[JinM]

Hey Blaza, just do the server. Ask Bene via pm on lvd discord on what version he considers to be most stable. Or ask the admin from genxova he responds quickly too. You got the overall player feedback you need some feedback from "professional" server owners now.

Don't sidetrack yourself in a discussion that only distracts you from reaching the finish line. I consider the opinions that are shared in this thread are around 70% only opinions, and like 30% of the stuff are actual knowledge. Gather facts not opinions. And I see no new facts coming around here. So go look somewhere else if you still need more information, and start acting before your motivation dies along the road of "opinion gathering". More making less talking.

 

[Sachys]

I think the last pre 2.0 version had some crippling bugs like broken AI / turrets, lock ons and shipyards (even if a bunch of exploits were ironed out).

I'd maybe be interested, and can think of a few old players who might return depending on the setup.

Edit: though myself and a few of them are in the EU, so ping could be an issue.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I still hope to relive the times when pirates were still providing the pirate hunters with a healthy income in blocks. Please choose a version without the need for cargo bays. The missiles worked, the logic was basic but what was implemented worked, the ships used to be in one piece before being shot down, when today it's quite the opposite... Do you really need shipyards to limit your ship sizes to enjoy the game?

You know you can simply place your core, build 100 or 500 or whatever you think is reasonable down from it, then add a docking module, dock it to your station, then build the ship just like in a shipyard. With no size limit, even if your home-base is just 2 rails on the opposite sides of a faction block. No prerequisites.

Before shipyards, if you needed 12 turrets, you built one and played with it until it became perfect for you, then simply blueprinted it and filled 12 BPs.

Shipyards changed all that freedom into more chains.

I thought this was still how everyone does it anyway. I have never designed a single ship in a shipyard. Just stick to using them as salvage yards and pretend all those other buttons are not there and you are fine. :D

Pirates give a really good amount of loot even on default settings. And what is wonderful for me is that the loot is 100% random. Why use green armor when brown fits better? It doesn't matter brown is harder to craft, you get the same amount of each color and you never need to craft it. Why hull instead of advanced armor when they still have the same mass? Same answer.

As for the version... You will not be the only server on last version before power 2.0. But you could be the only one with a version with classical infinite storage of 35 types per chest.

PS: The only bug I noticed appeared together with rails. That being the fact that no matter what filter you choose, most of the times you will not see turrets in Navigation panel. This bug unfortunately is still present in the versions you like and in the current version, AFAIK. Schema considers it a feature, probably.

Most of the heavy bugs only appeared with LOD (load on demand) optimization. Things fall out of ships and out of docking ports when loaded long before or after the main ship, collision computation is crazy, in a hangar you will never see the same beauty of your ships through a window, because transparent textures are not rendered when looked at through other transparent textures, and so on. My favourite versions are before the optimisation took place so they are free of these bugs.
[doublepost=1526365590,1526362338][/doublepost]I changed my vote from "yes" to "no" and I think it needs some clarification. I DO want a server with a version before pow2, but I want a version when the game was really different, not a version when secondary reactors of the pow2 were already implemented, like a disease that just started infecting a healthy game. I want my game with no signs of that disease and I really hope my game will never catch it.

Since the poll actually asks if we want our game with a version before pow2, it will get a lot of "yes" answers. (one was mine, lol!) Unfortunately, the one who made the poll wanted to ask if we like from all the pre-pow2 versions, the very last one. And to this, the answer would be no. I bet some other people, just like me, voted Yes to the pre-pow2 and would vote "Oh, God, please no!" to the very last version, but that is not what they were asked about by the poll. Lucky me, I understood what the poll creator wanted to ask and changed my vote accordingly.

Old stack based cargo was an administrative nightmare IMO, especially with randomized pirate salvage that could give you 100 different block types. While it was smaller, it was much harder to organize. A better variation for small cargo is to just make new cargo 100x more efficient. That way it stays small, but you can do everything from a single storage block.

Check any faction thread from 2015-2016 And you can see clearly what people will inevitably do if those options become available again. Every major faction used this stuff. All power transfer blocks will need to be nerfed in the block config to prevent any use again.

I'm gonna have to agree with Nastral here. If you revert too far back into power 1.0, you will be inviting all sorts of exploit technology that too many people already know about. If you let me go back to pre aux, I would just make a ship with infinite power and shield regen that is immune to all status effects, armed with massive overdrive hyper arrays, and could instantly charge a single block jump drive bypassing inhibitors, and would be impossible to land a hit on even if it was not invincible because I'd be tricking AI targeting to fire off into empty space, and because I know how to zero rails, I could make this ship just as big as anyone else's vanilla ship without any extra lag.

unless... this sounds like a fun time to you.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, and you'd see these ships start getting spawned on day one of people showing up on your server because of dooping and market exploits.

 

[MacThule]

I think the last pre 2.0 version had some crippling bugs like broken AI / turrets, lock ons and shipyards (even if a bunch of exploits were ironed out).

That is a very important consideration.

Many of the core systems in the game were consciously allowed to break down as the devs moved towards 2.0. I can think of the example that I felt the most: fleet mining - at some point during the Winter of 2016/2017 they brought fleet mining up to the point where it worked near-perfectly... For one or two iterations... Then the next major update broke the shit out of it and they haven't bothered fixing it because they're playing the long game and it'll be fixed in a way that works with the new systems when they have 2.0 fully implemented and move towards beta release (or whatever - that's just my theory).

So the version chosen for a "legacy" build is going to be extremely dependent upon which specific features the admin feels need to be operational.

Because there isn't a recent 1.0 version where "most" things are working.

Before cargo may legitimately be the most stable version with the least broken features, but it's also missing a lot of the good stuff that was added later. It would have been so nice if they had stabilized the worst bugs in a version of 1.0 and locked that in as a stable, no-support legacy edition people could be playing on until enough of 2.0 is out for some real play to occur again (though at this point, 7 months on, it's getting close anyway so my gripe on that point is fast becoming moot).

 

[NaStral]

Fleet mining was never great. It should have never been introduced. If I had a dollar for every ounce of salt from players disappointed with that damn mechanic and bothering me or Benevolent about it, thinking it was a server issue we’d be filthy fucking rich. Same with shipyards.

 

[Sachys]

Before cargo may legitimately be the most stable version with the least broken features, but it's also missing a lot of the good stuff that was added later.

Actually I think the performance update patch was more stable - the hotfix one to fix cascade lag. Problem is all the exploits that were fixed just prior to 2.0 would be there too (as they would be in many cases for the version you refer to). Anybody doing a legacy edition needs to somehow script some fixes or something for those, take the broken final version, or be available as an admin as often as possible.

 

[NaStral]

[QUOTE Anybody doing a legacy edition needs to somehow script some fixes or something for those, take the broken final version, or be available as an admin as often as possible.[/QUOTE]

Haha, Enjoy the inevitable admin hate.
[doublepost=1526415544,1526415143][/doublepost]The best bet for a solid legacy server is going to be the version right before power 2.0. Anything that doesn’t work correctly is going to have to be treated as special interest trash and no players would be entitled to any support messing with those features.