Weylin

I've been getting some really weird scaling values where a block will show something like 1.975543 instead of 2, and on zooming in close, it is indeed a hair smaller and leaves a gap, which leads to confusing issues later in construction, as well as some unsightly "z-fighting" overlaps. Usualy doing a quick rescale snaps it back to the proper grid, but why are pieces getting into this mess in the first place? I make a point of keeping the block scaler up to keep an eye on this. Seems like using Match Block gets this scrambled result a lot.

And here I was just using them for placeholders. I would just set them up to designate spots I want to put a block type later

Can any of these ideas be added through a mod, and then later added officially?

I don't think I'd have the patience to draw what I hate so much, just so I can learn to break and bend it properly :P It's a steep slope to climb with no plateau in sight, and your self esteem is getting hit in the face by rocks dislodged by those 2 miles above you, and so are they, even kicking themselves when they realize how much further they have to go, and then they get higher just to further realize how much they still have to learn.

I guess this is one way to look at it... You have an entire faction to defend, 12 sectors in total, each one with valuable assets and nearly defenseless stations. Two neighboring factions and scattered renegade forces are set on taking or destroying what is yours, and supply lines are being disrupted at several locations at once. What fleet composition will you go with? Your resources are limited. 4 Battleships that are a solid check mate at every encounter? or... 1 Battleship for heading off major advances, 6 station defence destroyers, 12 frigates for patrolling the trade routes, and 24 corvettes for miscellaneous missions?

If we could figure out how to mod this in, maybe koonschi could implement it into the vanilla game? I'm still learning LUA and how this game uses it, so I got a lot of work ahead of me yet. As you said, the intent here is to bring it to everyone, not just us, and for those who don't want it, well, it'll be like it is for those who don't want to build their ships... go to the shipyard and specify one, or download one off the forums or reddit.

Maybe AI aggression could scale with proximity to the core as well? Like, at the outer rim they'll be really lazy about pursuits, but as you near the core they get fucking merciless and start using their engine boosters and such.

In that case it's more a matter of composition than size, I guess? If you go with numerous fast-tracking turrets and high mobility on a large ship, then you'll get utterly crushed by a heavily armored ship with weaponry optimized for hitting something of your size and handling. Thrusters have 1/8th the strength of basic hull, and armor is something like 3x stronger than hull, so you'd be hopelessly fragile against such a ship in any kind of direct confrontation.

I don't know, I think if an aircraft carrier tried to pull the maneuvers of the jets that it launches, it would probably snap in two and kill everyone who wasn't within a few meters of its center of gravity. Can we just assume that strong inertial dampening is only practical on smaller ships for the sake of this sheer rediculousness of 5km long battleships pulling a quick U turn because they have the thruster strength of 20 nuclear fucking warheads per second?

Turrets just stick out like a sore thumb on otherwise glorious ship designs. I mean, gray square platforms with a square peg with lightly beveled containments, and there's nothing you can do about it. Wanted to make a Homeworld 2 Pulsar corvette with those big sweet looking turrets? Too bad, have this randomly generated railgun with hot pink glowy bits because reasons! adventure! and RNG! and progression!

Are turrets right now based on pre-made models, or are they also randomly generated from building blocks? They're rather simplistic, just some blocks in a vaguely gun-like shape with a square base that has a peg in the middle. From the image below, using plasma for an example, they have small variations in barrel length and width, number of coils, and of course the color, but beyond that they remain very much alike within a certain grade. I couldn't see any correlation between appearance and function

I don't know why big ships need to be able to handle fighting their volume in smaller attackers, because there can be other reasons to have a larger ship. Just a few possible reasons off the top of my head that don't necessarily exist in the game yet: Logistics - It's much easier to manage a single large ship than a fleet of smaller ones Self sustainabilty - Larger ships could spare the room for facilities that allow it to go on long journeys without supply Support for heavy weapons - Large strong frames could act as platforms for heavy artillery that small ships can't manage As for small ships: Response time - They can get to a location very quickly Fight on their terms - They can choose their fights, they can look for weaknesses and blind spots and exploit those easily. Swarming - A group of small ships dipping and diving out of range and out of arcs can be extremely frustrating for a single large target to deal with, as they need to constantly reacquire targets and turrets need to rotate to new in-range targets.

I'm not sure if a branch in development would be necessary since these would be somewhat intertwined. I mean, we have randomly generated ships, AND the ability to make our own, so both of these are already available. All I ask is for that "making your own" to spread to more of the game, because weapons can be as much a feature of your vision as the ship hull itself! Also, while a slider interface would certainly be a huge step up from the current system for me as far as tweaking weapon behavior, I do really like the idea of designing turrets at the block level, especially when they need to comprise 20% or more of the ships silhouette. Maybe turret designs could be purely visual, while the sliders determine actual stats? So you could just generate a turret look for your parameters if you don't want to bother with making your own.

Starmade? What is the situation there? I haven't played it for a year or more so I'm a bit out of that loop.

Lot's of ways to balance it, but overall I just want to be able to store ships and set my home location, even if it requires an above friendly standing to do it. Doesn't even have to be the repair dock, specifically, could be its own station type, or shipyards instead, it makes no difference.

The mouse itself is fine, it's just that when rotating the camera, or doing a roll manuver, it's sudden. When rotating the camera, there seems to be a minimum angle step, so the camera only rotates in 0.1degree increments. All I'm suggesting is to make the camera act somewhat physical, as though it has some weight and inertia. Makes it immensely easier on the eyes. If it's not worth dev time, I'd like to work on it myself.

Oh thanks, my bad, didn't realize I was on the other section.

This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes: One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game. Adventurers The Adventure has to deal with lots of RNG in terms of weapons, loot, and upgrade cards, and submitted player designed ships could be browsed through at the shipyard, categorized and sorted by desired qualities to find the ship just right for their style of play and price range. Engineers In the Engineering route, everything can be implicitly designed by you, from weapons, to modules. You still have the progression of money earned through trade, and resources gathered through combat and mining, but you take pride in every one of your creations. The tools would exist to let you build your dream ship, but wouldn't be a requirement to play. I hope this would be a fair compromise to alleviate this whole 'learning curve' concern, and the back and forth between hardcore ship making nuts, and filthy casuals :P

Thought about that a bit... Perhaps shield strength would scale up as size increases, but recharge rate would go down. On the flip side, smaller ships would have weaker shields, but would recharge really quickly so they can take several glancing hits.

If a ship and its crew is small enough to not require a Sargent for peak operation (As in, no red crew shortage alerts), allow fighter pilots to assume the role of a Captain, enabling that ship to be given orders. It just isn't worth it to put a $7500/h unit onto a small and expendable escort ship. Imagine the case where you only need a $150 mechanic and a $300 gunner to fully run the ship in question. Fighter pilots seem like the prime candidate for a ship of this caliber, as there really is no crew to lead and give orders to, and the handling at this size tier would be akin to a heavier strike craft of some sort.

Even if the AI is decent, you're faced with this problem: If you go with a squad of small ships, you will suffer losses all the time, individuals will be picked off one at a time and will be a total loss of materials and crew. When this happens, your overall strength diminishes and a fight can snowball out of your favor because of it. With large ships, you tend to stay in fit fighting shape and at maximum firepower until you are destroyed, there is no diminishing effect unless you lose turrets.

I really envy your talent here, I can barely manage to draw cartoon animals and starship silhouettes

From what I gather, the "Rail" type turrets would behave kinda like the phaser banks on star trek? As in, the source of the beam can follow the contours of the rail? I really like this idea and have been trying to find a way to suggest that but you just went and did it and then some. I've been bouncing ideas around on how to do pivoting turrets too, and I guess I can chime in with my thoughts on that. Rotor turrets could be designed seperately, like in a seperately rendered window (Like the shipyard window) These could be saved as their own file, and used on all ships you want them on, as well as present as part of their save data. First step would be designing the base of the turret, the segment that turns side to side, and a tool would exist to let you mark the attachment and pivoting points for both the ship and the cannon segment. Second step would be designing the cannon, which would be the part that aims up and down, and an attachment and pivot point can be marked on this as well. You presented the suggestion very nicely, it's what I've been trying to suggest to multiple games for several years now but can't seem to find the right words to describe my thought processes, or really go into as much detail. In my minds eye, it makes a lot more sense, bases and cannons snapping together nicely, angle constraints easily set and preemptive collision checking throwing an error on angles that cause intersections... Anyhow, I hope we can have a nice back and forth discussion with the developer about this, because I truly think it will make the game rise above all the others who insist on only having predefined weapons on otherwise creatively free games...

I wonder if gyro blocks should be the entire decider for rotation, while thrusters just manage translation. Maybe engines could have an inherent 50% reverse thrust power as well

Right now it feels like the only way to go with your ships is bigger and bigger. What if, for example, I wanted to run as a large squad of agile fighters, or mid sized bombers? Can these alternatives be viable at all? I think many weapon projectiles need to be slowed down to allow for active evasion by smaller ships, and bigger ships need to run into heavy Thrust to Weight Ratio issues that greatly limit their speed and maneuvering to sane levels for something of their size. Don't get me wrong here, I don't think big ships should be discouraged, I just think they need to have a role that they excel in, but also several vulnerabilities so they aren't always the best choice for nearly everything. For example, torpedo weapons or fixed death beams that are a significant threat to capitals, but effortlessly evaded by smaller ships. On the other hand, smaller ships could be eaten alive by lighter weapons such as seeker rockets and flak-like weaponry.