Hello players,
We have another bugfixing update while bigger features are in work.
Fixes contain a lot of things that have been a pain for some time, but there is also a new item: the flashlight. You can buy it from the shop clerk.
Spawn on ships
Another feature is also the functionality that you can now spawn on moving ships. Even if the ship is moved after you logged out, and then in a sector that is currently not loaded, you will still spawn on your ship. This will work as long as you are in any way aligned to the ship while logging out: Pilot, in gravity, or simple spacebar alignment.
This currently is limited to spawn after logout, but mechanics will come for respawning on ships after death. There still have to be some gameplay aspects discussed, as you wouldn't want a player to spawn on a ship you just stole.
Ship Scores
Another larger feature which is still in the making is ship score. This is basically a way to automatically classify ships. Ship scores are aggregated from multiple simpler scores. As for example weapons generate scores from:
- damage per second
- hit probability (projectile speed, reload, spread)
- distance
- power consumption
These scores are then aggregated with the power score, and other scores to generate 4 main scores:
- Offensive Score
- Defensive Score
- Mobility Score
- Support Score
Since it's fairly obvious that these values have to be balanced, the main scoring process has been externalized to a LUA script to change it on the fly.
After a few iterations of initial balance not only will they make it easier to classify ships in the blueprint/website, we can also then use the scores to determine pirate spawning by difficulty, and adapt it depending on how powerful the combined scores of the players in an area are, which should lead to a lot better scaling difficulty and therefore more fun.
Exploit Fixes and Optimizations
There also have been lots of small optimizations in various parts of the game. For example, framerates on very large structures should go up a bit when higher max-segments are set in the options.
There also have been some fixes to exploitations of game mechanics like the shield drain/supply being overpowered. Also cloaking/jamming now has a reload sequence when switched off.
Balance
The block behavior config received some minor changes:
- Power consumption per second was changed to power consumption per tick, all related values were changed accordingly.
- EMP power damage was doubled, the power damage dealt to a ship is 2 times higher than the power consumed to fire that weapon.
- Shield drain, supply and power drain received some value changes, it should be balanced: Shield drain has the same shield DPS and power use as any other basic weapon but it gives you 50% of the drained HP. Shield supply is set to power supply levels, its power consumption is 10 times lower though since a supply transfers 100% of your own shield. Power drain, drains 50% less power than an equal EMP weapon but you gain 50% of the drained power.
- Shield drain and supply now allow supports.
Bugfixes
A list of fixed bugs can be found in the original post.
A message from schema: I’m currently a little ill, but I’ll do my best that for the next update, the shipyard mechanics will probably be done, as well as more portions of the fauna.
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema and the Schine Team