Space Engineers - Say goodbye to Starmade and Blockade runner. - Games

Probably been done a lot before but I'm going to try and remake the ships from FTL into Space Engineers, starting with the Kestrel.

:(

[QUOTE=krail9;44592739]have you actually tried playing competitive survival? shit can be destroyed way too easily for how long it takes to build and frankly there's no such thing as an 'effective protection design', show me an effective large ship design that is plausible to build without taking an age and can't be gimped by a single rocket hit[/QUOTE] So tone down rocket launchers, rather than introducing bandaids.

[QUOTE=Solomon;44592742]D-Does someone want to play Space Engineers with me?[/QUOTE] I will, provided we're in creative with copy/paste so I can work on refining my bert design. also voice, if you're able. I hate the cold silence of space.

I actually wanna do survival. It's where I have the most fun!

[QUOTE=Trekintosh;44592721]Shield systems take all the Engineering out of building an effective protection design.[/QUOTE] entirely depends on it's implementation I was picturing something like blocks that could project simple, but quite large panels (so you'd need multiple of them placed strategically around the ship for full coverage) that'd block small arms at the expense of power but ignores larger masses like other ships, also they have to recharge and shit to function

engineering in iterations :eng101: [t]http://i.cubeupload.com/P64UsC.jpg[/t]

[t]http://puu.sh/8fJIa.jpg[/t] [t]http://puu.sh/8fJDq.jpg[/t] I tried

I've decided to try and remake my old first ship. [thumb]http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/469807722939929404/5CD048E30B6FC1D24DD96D8DCF34E4EE99509807/[/thumb] [thumb]http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/469807722939930349/FA1DA44E9BD42A4895D35681B07CF96CEA1F165E/[/thumb] It's slightly larger and more symmetrical than the mess that was the interior of the first.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;44593171][t]http://puu.sh/8fJIa.jpg[/t] [t]http://puu.sh/8fJDq.jpg[/t] I tried[/QUOTE] If this is supposed to be a kestral somebody beat you to it

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;44589748]What in the blazing fuck is with those giant barrels? In other news, I found "Decoy" and "Motor_Stator" in the CubeBlocks files. What might these be?[/QUOTE] Stator generally means something like alternator. Pretty much a generator. [editline]19th April 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=ForgottenKane;44591291]Reinforcing them is easy. The problem with really large ships is that their turn rate is VERY buggy and they take an hour to move anywhere without some tricky architecture. Not to mention the thruster damage change made that even harder.[/QUOTE] I never had a problem manuvering my fuckhueg ships once I started using the arrow keys instead of mouse.

[QUOTE=xxfalconxx;44592149]I've been testing automation of mining. So far, I've experienced a rousing success with something i've codenamed "bert". It's a very tiny pod, and i've a bit of work to ensure that bert doesn't go off into the void once he's finished mining through, but the initial automated drilling was a rousing success, which gives me hope for a micro-sized rig. I'll get back to you guys with some pics once i've prettied it up and worked out the kinks.[/QUOTE] [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1314915&p=44520532&viewfull=1#post44520532[/url] This is how I do my automated mining. I just added medium container at the back and the conveyor system to it since then.

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;44589748]What in the blazing fuck is with those giant barrels? In other news, I found "Decoy" and "Motor_Stator" in the CubeBlocks files. What might these be?[/QUOTE] I think motor_stator is most likely one of the parts used in the normal motor since the motor is technically two pieces the stator could either be just the base part or just the bit that rotates [editline]20th April 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Trekintosh;44592848]So tone down rocket launchers, rather than introducing bandaids.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure how a shield would be a band-aid, it would just add another dimension to design and combat, especially if it was a big power drain surely just nerfing missiles would be a band-aid fix? there's no reason why powerful weapons can't exist if there's a counter to them, a point-defence system would be an alternative

[QUOTE=krail9;44592739]have you actually tried playing competitive survival? shit can be destroyed way too easily for how long it takes to build and frankly there's no such thing as an 'effective protection design', show me an effective large ship design that is plausible to build without taking an age and can't be gimped by a single rocket hit[/QUOTE]Weapons have yet to be properly balanced. It wasn't too long ago that they had the same effective damage as a group of warheads, now they have difficulty penetrating heavy armour. [QUOTE=krail9;44594412]I'm not sure how a shield would be a band-aid, it would just add another dimension to design and combat, especially if it was a big power drain surely just nerfing missiles would be a band-aid fix? there's no reason why powerful weapons can't exist if there's a counter to them, a point-defence system would be an alternative[/QUOTE]Shields turn it into who can put the most numbers into their shields or weapons, and whoever's shields drop first essentially loses. It's what bored the fuck out of me with Starmade tbh. There are plenty of ways of balancing the game without resorting to a thing only ever implemented in science fiction because Star Trek couldn't afford better special effects at the time.

I don't think shields are a death sentence for having competent ship design. Starmade didn't make a good effort at making it valuable to do anything other than make pure shield based designs. With a decent ratio of energy to shields and the way this game might work in a surival based multiplayer design, I'd see it fairly hard to really, really abuse shields in a serious way. Just toning down missile or rocket damage is going to make it about who can cram more rockets on their ship rather than who can cram the most shields on their ship. We cannot linchpin game design on one object or one variable performing "just right" that it feels right for everyone. Shields if properly done will help combat this in an effective manner and would add more variance to gameplay.

[QUOTE=krail9;44594412]I think motor_stator is most likely one of the parts used in the normal motor since the motor is technically two pieces the stator could either be just the base part or just the bit that rotates [editline]20th April 2014[/editline] I'm not sure how a shield would be a band-aid, it would just add another dimension to design and combat, especially if it was a big power drain surely just nerfing missiles would be a band-aid fix? there's no reason why powerful weapons can't exist if there's a counter to them, a point-defence system would be an alternative[/QUOTE] Shields are a bandaid because they're wildly implausible and it's just an end-all solution to being attacked or boarded, and before you say anything about gravity generators it has been stated on several occasions that they were just for the sake of gameplay, a shield can be avoided much easier. Missiles being nerfed would be a start, as right now they're far more powerful than they should be. How the upcoming large-ship rocket launchers should affect things is debatable. I am definitely for the point-defense anti-missile turret idea more than any sort of energy shield.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44594778]I don't think shields are a death sentence for having competent ship design. Starmade didn't make a good effort at making it valuable to do anything other than make pure shield based designs. With a decent ratio of energy to shields and the way this game might work in a surival based multiplayer design, I'd see it fairly hard to really, really abuse shields in a serious way. Just toning down missile or rocket damage is going to make it about who can cram more rockets on their ship rather than who can cram the most shields on their ship. We cannot linchpin game design on one object or one variable performing "just right" that it feels right for everyone. Shields if properly done will help combat this in an effective manner and would add more variance to gameplay.[/QUOTE]I really don't see how it would add variance to gameplay in the slightest. They would reduce the value of small ships quite considerably in combat, especially as currently they're weak against heavy armour and likely to get messed up pretty badly by the gatling turrets soon to be implemented. On the other hand, if they're sufficiently weak that a small ship can eventually chip through it if the large ship pilot is flying like a mong, then large ship weapons are likely to make them pointless; such that the energy would be better spent on weapons and propulsion. It also takes away part of the tension of combat. Any target who is weak enough in weapons that you can confidently destroy them before shields go down is therefore a no-loss target; whereas without shields, you have to weigh up the advantages i.e. is the target valuable enough to risk suffering damage or not? Small fighters are ideally suited to exploit design deficiencies in large ships. If someone is silly enough to have a glass-fronted bridge where even the blind can see it, then they're going to get rocket-faced. With shields, it doesn't matter nearly as much about fatal weak points. Granted, a ship without them will survive longer when the shields go down, but the ship will still rapidly accumulate damage to shield generators, power generation, weapons and so on; making survival until shields return unlikely. True, the balance is currently not right for weapons, but that will change. It's worth noting current deficiencies in safe building time are being worked on; asteroids are being optimised specifically so more of them can be placed in a much wider area, allowing for far more space between players. Then there's dedicated servers, factions and whatnot to better enhance teamplay and control of griefers or other undesirables. [editline]20th April 2014[/editline] Now point defences, that's imo a much better solution for rocket and missiles. Ammo-limited and not 100% effective. Also adds the dilemma of putting ammo into offensive weapons or point-defence; or energy if the devs decide to implement current US army laser point-defence developments. Though point-defence lasers would be hard to balance if the devs didn't also implement heat management.

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;44589748]What in the blazing fuck is with those giant barrels? In other news, I found "Decoy" and "Motor_Stator" in the CubeBlocks files. What might these be?[/QUOTE] Stator is the static part of any motor, in this case it's the thing you place on blocks, and rotor is the rotating part you put the blocks you want to move on. The "Rotor" in the game is named completely wrong, it should be either just motor or servo

One of my ideas for balancing the weapons. A possible balance would be Gatling guns are good at damaging components but not armour, wheras missle launchers are good at punching a hole through armor (not neccesarily massive holes though) but do not much against components, that way you'd have to punch through the armor to get to the components inside, and could also encourage people to try and keep their components protected as much as possible. It's also make gatlings pretty good against light fighters, as they tend to have their components exposed. Plus, the missles should, in my opinion, do less damage than they do now, so rather than spamming them, you'd have to be crafty with using them, repeatedly hitting a spot to open up a hole wide enough to get to the components. Or even maybe different types of Rockets, AP, which are good at cutting small-ish holes into armor, but not damaging components and HE, which would be the opposite. Maybe even give guns AP ammo too to augment them, which would make them more effective against small armor blocks rather than big armor blocks. AP Missles would do to light armor, what missles currently do to heavy armor, and to heavy armor it'd take a couple of strikes in the same place to force a breach.

After watching Nerd3's video of survival I really want to try it out myself now.

[QUOTE=RayvenQ;44595520]One of my ideas for balancing the weapons. A possible balance would be Gatling guns are good at damaging components but not armour, wheras missle launchers are good at punching a hole through armor (not neccesarily massive holes though) but do not much against components, that way you'd have to punch through the armor to get to the components inside, and could also encourage people to try and keep their components protected as much as possible. It's also make gatlings pretty good against light fighters, as they tend to have their components exposed. Plus, the missles should, in my opinion, do less damage than they do now, so rather than spamming them, you'd have to be crafty with using them, repeatedly hitting a spot to open up a hole wide enough to get to the components. Or even maybe different types of Rockets, AP, which are good at cutting small-ish holes into armor, but not damaging components and HE, which would be the opposite. Maybe even give guns AP ammo too to augment them, which would make them more effective against small armor blocks rather than big armor blocks. AP Missles would do to light armor, what missles currently do to heavy armor, and to heavy armor it'd take a couple of strikes in the same place to force a breach.[/QUOTE]I think your HE and AP suggestion would be better than the first; makes more intuitive sense for ammo types to differ in effectiveness against armour and unarmoured components than doing a rock/paper/scissors approach with the base weapon types. Also means there could be some good decisions to be made on-the-fly about what kind of ammo and weapon you use for what target e.g. does one use the AP gatling or AP rockets for that fast-moving large ship; is that slow small ship sufficiently slow to one-hit it with a rocket instead of taking time spraying it with HE gatling; should one use a HE rocket in that hole and maybe have a larger chance of missing, or reliably chip away at the interior with HE gatling etc etc etc.

I'd argue that HE and AP is unnecessary complication.

These shield discussions make me vomit in disgust. They make zero sense. Every sci-fi thing: "oh hey an old sci-fi trope that was made for cheep TV set designs - lets add it to EVERYTHING"

I'd say if we're going to discus weapons... Two armour types and two weapon types. Ballistic and Thermal. One armour type Is almost impervious to kinetic damage, but happens to be a strong conductor and lets energies go straight through. The other hull type laughs in the face of energy but Isn't too tough against ballistic damage. There could be other things too. Like, for example, a military and civilian reactor. One's more efficient but the other is resistant to damage and emp.

there won't be any energy weapons, keen's already stated that pretty clearly

Fuck all of your ideas, I want Acid Weapons to be a thing, there's nothing better than watching it burn through metal.

[QUOTE=GHOST!!!!;44596141]Fuck all of your ideas, I want Acid Weapons to be a thing, there's nothing better than watching it burn through metal.[/QUOTE] I don't think liquids are good in a vacuum

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;44596131]there won't be any energy weapons, keen's already stated that pretty clearly[/QUOTE] Which is pretty dumb, we already have laser point defense systems, and there's nothing unrealistic about coilguns or railguns either

You can already build railguns, no? [editline]20th April 2014[/editline] I mean, gravity-based accelerators work quite similar

[QUOTE=Thunderbolt;44596247]Which is pretty dumb, we already have laser point defense systems, and there's nothing unrealistic about coilguns or railguns either[/QUOTE] rail/coilguns aren't energy weapons, and laser point defense systems aren't an offensive weapon