StarMade v0.19538 - New Thruster Mechanics

Hello players,

 

with this update the thrust system will finally be addressed to make gameplay, especially fighting, a lot more interesting.

 

Thrust System

 

Corrected Inertia

Inertia is now physically correct to mass distribution. This means, that if you bump a stick by either end it will rotate slower that if you would cause any rotation on the axis along the stick.

 

This also applies to your ship’s thrusted rotation. However, you can now influence the effect with thrusters. More on that later.

 

Max Speed Differences

Max speed is now thrust dependent. Your thrust to mass ratio determines how fast you can go. This should make smaller fighters a lot more interesting as scouts and agile fighters.

 

The minimum you will go is 0.5 server speed. The max is up to 3 times (with overdrive even 4.5 times) the set server speed at a 2.5:1 Thrust:Mass ratio. Going beyond this ratio will not increase your max speed. You can see your current values in the build mode stats.

 

Also, note that taking Structural HP damage will decrease your max speed.

 

Please make sure your server speed isn’t set to more than 100 m/s (to start with at least) after updating.

 

Thrust Customization

This often requested features gives players the ability to customize thrust.

We don’t think having to balance out directional thrusters by themselves is all that fun, especially on bigger ships, so we tried to make a simple solution that will in later stages also be usable in a crewed ship.

 

To change your thrust balance go to the “Ship”->”Thrust” tab in your top task bar when you are piloting a ship.

 

You can change what axis you want to put your thrust in: forwards/backwards, right/left, and up/down. You can also put thrust into your rotational thrust to make your ship turn faster. Changing thruster settings does take a little time though, 15 seconds to be exact. All these values are adjustable in the blockBehaviorConfig.xml, which is since the last hotfix also available as a mergeable custom config (check the customBlockBehaviorConfig directory in your StarMade installation folder).

 

You can now also inherit all the thrust of docked ships. Simply press the “Inherit Thrusters from docks” to enable this on your ship.

 

Flight modes

We have now included a newtonian flight mode to all ships. The old, dampening mode is still there of course although you’ll most likely not use it a lot anymore. The newtonian mode comes equipped with an option to enable dampening if you leave the ship, like a parking brake, so your parked ships aren’t floating away into deep space.

 

Capacity limit switched on

Personal stash will now have its limit switched on (you can still switch it off in the server config is needed).

To lessen the blow to people that didn’t follow the last update, all personal inventories that are overcapacity will automatically create a “block storage” meta item with all your blocks in it. You can take out as many blocks as you need at a time but you can’t put any blocks back into that item (except as admin, who can use this item to create rewards). You can move the item around and empty it in a high volume chest.

Next update we’ll enable chest bleeding when over-capacity. If a chest/factory/shipyard goes over capacity, it will drop blocks over time till it’s under capacity again!

 

The give_metaitem admin command has been updated to automatically adapt to current and all new meta items. Its description will also automatically be updated.

 

Also we forgot to mention in the last news, but as most of you probably already saw, you can now tether any storage from a friendly ship in the same sector. Just go to the storage you want to use and toggle the “Use as personal Cargo” button. Then a new tab will appear in your personal inventory to access it at any point, as long as you are in the same sector.

Asteroid spawning fix

The asteroid spawn system is based on temperature. Some asteroid types spawn near a star, in high temperature zones and others spawn near system edges where it is cold.

Some asteroids, such as blue Larimar would only spawn in very cold zones. Unfortunately this meant it only spawned consistently in system corners, the place where asteroid belts almost never cross.

 

We’ve adjusted all asteroid spawns now and you should be able to find the ones you need without a problem.

 

Because there’s not a lot of known information about what asteroid spawns where, Kupu has made some nice infographics to illustrate it, you can find them here: http://starmadedock.net/threads/asteroid-belts.22386/

New Blocks

Pink hull sets have been added to the game, including Crystal Armor variants, slabs and lighting options.

 

Faction Config Change

By request, a mining factor for unowned system is now available. Server owners and others that use a custom faction config must insert this new value into their config, else the game will not start (ParseException)! A better solution (by xml merging) will follow in the future...
 

Config changes

We implemented some changes to accommodate for the new thrust system

• Total Thrust has been reduced by 25%. This is just to compensate for the new system, most ships should still be capable of moving as fast as they could before.

• Cannon projectile speed is now 12.5 times the server speed, used to be 10.

• Missile projectile speed is now 2.48 times the server speed, used to be 1.98.

• Overdrive has been reduced to a maximum of 50% efficiency. However you do need 4 times less blocks to reach maximum effectiveness now. It also consumes a little bit more power now, 10 per block per second, used to be 6.66.
   

We’ve adjusted the complex crafting recipes for coloured hull.

• Standard armor: 1 basic hull with 1 standard hardener.

• Advanced armor: 1 standard hull with 1 advanced hardener.
   

Both hardeners use 1 asteroid ore which wasn’t used for much else before + some alloyed metal meshes.  

• Standard hardener: 5 fertikeen capsules + 10 alloyed metal meshes

• Advanced hardener: 4 fertikeen ingots + 20 alloyed metal meshes

Asteroid spawn chances are more or less equal so we can finally tweak other crafting recipes. There are several resources not being used at all and some get used too much. We don’t want the same resource costs for everything though but decreasing the gap between them seems to be a good idea.

 

Other changes include a new config option to increase mining  yield in un-owned systems. That’s set to 3x now, with other territory still sitting on 6x and faction owned territory on 12x.

 

Starting players now receive a lot more essential blocks:

• 350 basic grey hull + 100 wedges + 50 corners + 50 heptas + 50 tetras

• 100 power reactor blocks

• 100 thruster blocks

• 2 salvage computers + 50 salvage modules

• 2 faction modules

• 5 ship cores

They still get their meta items of course, but you don’t get any weapon computer or cannon barrels. If you want to arm yourself you’ll have to buy it from a shop.

 

We’ve also adjusted the volumes of all basic resources:

• Raw ores/shards and mineral blocks are 0.01 volume

• Refined resources like capsules are only 0.001 volume, to allow easy storage.

 

There were more volume and cargo changes planned but those got reverted, we need more cargo feedback to get a feeling of what you want, and what you definitely not want.

 

If you don’t like some changes and you know something better, feel free to make a suggestion here: http://starmadedock.net/threads/game-balance-suggestions.22101/

Bugfixes

 

T1000 Structure HP condition triggers don't work for thrust

T984 ratio to mass uses block count and not thrust amount

T951 Micro assembler can't be linked to cargo space blocks

T949 Infinite money Glitch.

T948 Planet textures disappearing.

T939 unload/load will drop blocks if volume used is bigger than default chest capacity

T937 No way to reclaim large item stacks

T931 can't split or merge multi slots when over or near capacity limit

T926 Cargo mass does not update correctly.

T870 Slabs act like full blocks with rails

T860 BufferOverflowException + render issues with mass placement of non cubic blocks

T786 Players that are attached to a ship via alignment share the ship's shield when shot.

T680 Ships not checking for collision before docking

T640 game config: computer limitation does not work and acts like group limitation

 

Thanks for playing StarMade,

- the Schine Team