I think that trying to update the game while keeping it entirely backward compatible would be extremely difficult, and would eventually lead to a feeling of there being too many systems from various "times" of development whose general design tones would end up clashing. The devs have also shown they're not entirely committed to keeping it bckwd compatible - bye bye attachment plates, for instance.
Starbase Progress Notes: Week 9 (2022) - Spaceship insight
- Thread starter ElluFB
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The attachment plate case is understandable because the whole point is to remove them. You may argue APs may or may not need to be removed in the first place, but if they decided to remove APs, then they have to break some older ships. Even some changes like changing power requirements for thrusters and weapons at different stages of CA and EA were inevitable to some degree once they decided it had to be done.
The point is that this particular change (limiting heat capacity and heat transfer rate without a heat sink) is totally unnecessary and avoidable. People were asking for heat capacitors, and that's great. Those that wanted heatsinks should get just that, not this new thing that robs existing functions from existing parts. This type of change creates a fake feeling of having more choices but actually you just have to have it on most ships anyways so what's the point?
Also speaking of APs, where's manual welding? And on the topic of heat, where's radiator blocking? Two features that were promised earlier.
The point is that this particular change (limiting heat capacity and heat transfer rate without a heat sink) is totally unnecessary and avoidable. People were asking for heat capacitors, and that's great. Those that wanted heatsinks should get just that, not this new thing that robs existing functions from existing parts. This type of change creates a fake feeling of having more choices but actually you just have to have it on most ships anyways so what's the point?
Also speaking of APs, where's manual welding? And on the topic of heat, where's radiator blocking? Two features that were promised earlier.
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Well its not that heatsinks "rob" the existing functions, but that those functions do not really work in any meaningful way. Heat from generators and weapons are completely disconnected, and the direct seamless connection between sources and radiators means that there's not much heat management mechanics as there's just a need to have a number of radiators for the number of generators, and if you have enough they just work, otherwise they just don't. Introducing the heatsinks may work as a sort of "mana pool" for the ship, and that can support other features, such as boosters. You seem to be perfectly fine with removing something, but when something is added there's very strange disconnect.
On the topic of backward compatibility, I really don't think the game is in a state to be concerned about. I personally would like for standard triangle and box thrusters to be redesigned so that they would feature better modularity without the need to rely on overly small converters and other components that doesn't seem to play much role other than being better or worse based on tier. Thrustes should be possible to stack by length similar to Plasma, and they might even allow for greater variety of hardpoint sockets. Some equipment should have beam-sized analogues like Rangefinders, with the corresponding hardpoint variant, so that players would be able to make more compact ship designs. Maybe generators can also be improved with dedicated attachment components and socket boards better suite to work with ducts, and batteries might be redesigned to look more like a Sci-Fi device and less like a car accumulator. All of those updates and redesigns would probably merit a removal of legacy variants. All the new ship devices and machinery begin to look alien in relation to what the game had since CA.
On the topic of backward compatibility, I really don't think the game is in a state to be concerned about. I personally would like for standard triangle and box thrusters to be redesigned so that they would feature better modularity without the need to rely on overly small converters and other components that doesn't seem to play much role other than being better or worse based on tier. Thrustes should be possible to stack by length similar to Plasma, and they might even allow for greater variety of hardpoint sockets. Some equipment should have beam-sized analogues like Rangefinders, with the corresponding hardpoint variant, so that players would be able to make more compact ship designs. Maybe generators can also be improved with dedicated attachment components and socket boards better suite to work with ducts, and batteries might be redesigned to look more like a Sci-Fi device and less like a car accumulator. All of those updates and redesigns would probably merit a removal of legacy variants. All the new ship devices and machinery begin to look alien in relation to what the game had since CA.
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I was talking about the heat capacity and transfer rate limits, which are robbing those attributes from existing parts. It's literally in the progress notes.
Your description of a heat sink is precisely what I and most people (I guess) expected. Just a pool of heat, a temporary storage device, and nothing else. What they are doing now is making it also capable of higher heat transfer rates, which is fine until you realise this heat transfer rate is what existing parts already had in the first place. They are just putting heat transfer rate from one part to another. Totally unnecessary game design wise, downright disrespectful towards existing designs.
Nope. I will try to reexplain myself: For every change there are two parts: 1 the decision of whether this change is needed or not, 2 how this change is executed. The examples I gave were cases where I didn't agree with 1, but if it had to be done, the devs did what is the only choice available. In other words I did not agree that APs should be removed, but I agree that if they had to be removed, this change must break old ships.
What I have problem with this heat thing is that I can totally see why people want a heat storage device, but the way the devs execute this change I absolutely disagree with. It could have been just a simple addition of a heat sink that only stores heat, which satisfies the need for heat storage, and doesn't change anything about existing designs. I hope this explains my stance on this issue.
Nope. Aesthetic redesigns have no right to affect functionality. If it is different sizes then we should keep all sizes. And normal thrusters are already kinda stackable, at least triangles.
Your description of a heat sink is precisely what I and most people (I guess) expected. Just a pool of heat, a temporary storage device, and nothing else. What they are doing now is making it also capable of higher heat transfer rates, which is fine until you realise this heat transfer rate is what existing parts already had in the first place. They are just putting heat transfer rate from one part to another. Totally unnecessary game design wise, downright disrespectful towards existing designs.
Nope. I will try to reexplain myself: For every change there are two parts: 1 the decision of whether this change is needed or not, 2 how this change is executed. The examples I gave were cases where I didn't agree with 1, but if it had to be done, the devs did what is the only choice available. In other words I did not agree that APs should be removed, but I agree that if they had to be removed, this change must break old ships.
What I have problem with this heat thing is that I can totally see why people want a heat storage device, but the way the devs execute this change I absolutely disagree with. It could have been just a simple addition of a heat sink that only stores heat, which satisfies the need for heat storage, and doesn't change anything about existing designs. I hope this explains my stance on this issue.
Nope. Aesthetic redesigns have no right to affect functionality. If it is different sizes then we should keep all sizes. And normal thrusters are already kinda stackable, at least triangles.
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With respect, I don't agree with your interpretation.
If the point of heat storage is for future ship tracking, then people need a reason to use it. If you do not give it the function of quickly collecting the heat from devices to transfer to radiators, if you leave ships to function as they are, then people will not use it. All ships will be stealth by default.
Therefore there very much would be a good game design reason for these changes.
If the point of heat storage is for future ship tracking, then people need a reason to use it. If you do not give it the function of quickly collecting the heat from devices to transfer to radiators, if you leave ships to function as they are, then people will not use it. All ships will be stealth by default.
Therefore there very much would be a good game design reason for these changes.
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If we were to go with heat based detection, heat sinks should not be the only thing that is detected. Other things like radiators should also have detection, which removes the need to force heat sinks onto all ships. One, for most ships most of the time, you are not accumulating heat. If you are just cruising around and somehow accumulating heat, maybe you should fix your ship first cuz eventually it will overheat. So for most designs, your heat sinks should be at 0 heat when flying anyways. So continuing with your line of thought, any functional ship would be stealth when cruising. But then what's the point, only to detect ships when they are firing weapons a lot (to overcome radiators), but how often is that? That way we actually end up with more stealth ships than the situation you described.
So if you want heat detection, the right way to do it is for radiators to also have detection. Which then makes stealth actually hard (basically you have to use cooling cells) but still doable. This would also remove the need for any of the unnecessary heat flow and capacity changes because we no longer need to force people to use heat sinks.
So if you want heat detection, the right way to do it is for radiators to also have detection. Which then makes stealth actually hard (basically you have to use cooling cells) but still doable. This would also remove the need for any of the unnecessary heat flow and capacity changes because we no longer need to force people to use heat sinks.
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I'm a bit puzzled. I may be wrong, but right now there's no such things as heat capacity and transfer rates. All I remember there to be is heat generation parameter (expending coolant) and cooling rate (restoring coolant), and if the former overturns the latter, then generators begin to stutter. There's never a case where a generator stores any generated heat, and the only transfer limit is how much coolant the pipe socket can transfer (too great for most reasonable implementations unlike power) from and to the network.
No they didn't. The only values there are are cooling rates, which will remain. Just a pool of heat can be something more than "just" that, depending on which mechanics depend on it.
Fair enough. Don't forget, FB have also introduced the function to remove all APs during beam welding and its still there even after all this time. And yeah, they had to remove them because of all the excessive amount of meaningless objects they produced needlessly. I still believe Plate Welding should be considered, at least for adjacent plates that overlap by at least 4 snap points.
Sure, but to just reiterate what I've said earlier, there's no such thing as transfer rate, only the cooling rate - you cannot rob something from devices that wasn't there in the first place. As far as the introduced transfer rate limit goes, it seem that the only purpose of having it is to make the use of Heatsinks an essential part of the ship. Otherwise almost nothing would change and people would just used radiators to do the same thing they always did, and it would become even easier because now devices would have a small heat buffer which they never had before.
And yeah, you've have likely answered your own question about stealth up there. It is probably how they're being designed in the first place. You can use them to contain heat and reduce/break up your heat trail temporarily, though without transfer rate limit most people would just abuse the hell out of cooling cells to the same effect.
Aesthetics is a very minor part of what I've meant. I mostly meant to emphasize the functional improvements. And yeah, you can stack triangles... side-to-side only, which leads to "thruster wall" ships. This is very poor design state for something that was intended to support modularity. I would much prefer the same triangle thrusters, but which are made out of more solid components, which would allow you to fine tune the power and efficiency of said thrusters using different number of conversion chambers or whatnot, choose the hardpoint location by using different frame variants and scale the power by stacking multiple combustion chambers across the length of the assembly, all from the single nozzle. Much like how Plasma Thrusters work atm, but with fewer and smaller parts. This way, the parts themselves may not be just "better", but have different performance modifiers, requirements and diminishing returns based on the tech level and materials.
Same principle can be applied to generators and (perhaps) weapons to an extent, and when I imagine the potential of customization and more flexible ship design such a renovation would bring, personally I couldn't care less if its going to break the current designs, exactly because the system, where only tier and sheer amount of completely identical devices make a difference, brings me nothing but grief. Aesthetics is just an afterthought.
No they didn't. The only values there are are cooling rates, which will remain. Just a pool of heat can be something more than "just" that, depending on which mechanics depend on it.
Fair enough. Don't forget, FB have also introduced the function to remove all APs during beam welding and its still there even after all this time. And yeah, they had to remove them because of all the excessive amount of meaningless objects they produced needlessly. I still believe Plate Welding should be considered, at least for adjacent plates that overlap by at least 4 snap points.
Sure, but to just reiterate what I've said earlier, there's no such thing as transfer rate, only the cooling rate - you cannot rob something from devices that wasn't there in the first place. As far as the introduced transfer rate limit goes, it seem that the only purpose of having it is to make the use of Heatsinks an essential part of the ship. Otherwise almost nothing would change and people would just used radiators to do the same thing they always did, and it would become even easier because now devices would have a small heat buffer which they never had before.
And yeah, you've have likely answered your own question about stealth up there. It is probably how they're being designed in the first place. You can use them to contain heat and reduce/break up your heat trail temporarily, though without transfer rate limit most people would just abuse the hell out of cooling cells to the same effect.
Aesthetics is a very minor part of what I've meant. I mostly meant to emphasize the functional improvements. And yeah, you can stack triangles... side-to-side only, which leads to "thruster wall" ships. This is very poor design state for something that was intended to support modularity. I would much prefer the same triangle thrusters, but which are made out of more solid components, which would allow you to fine tune the power and efficiency of said thrusters using different number of conversion chambers or whatnot, choose the hardpoint location by using different frame variants and scale the power by stacking multiple combustion chambers across the length of the assembly, all from the single nozzle. Much like how Plasma Thrusters work atm, but with fewer and smaller parts. This way, the parts themselves may not be just "better", but have different performance modifiers, requirements and diminishing returns based on the tech level and materials.
Same principle can be applied to generators and (perhaps) weapons to an extent, and when I imagine the potential of customization and more flexible ship design such a renovation would bring, personally I couldn't care less if its going to break the current designs, exactly because the system, where only tier and sheer amount of completely identical devices make a difference, brings me nothing but grief. Aesthetics is just an afterthought.
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There is a heat capacity to generators and weapons currently. Generators seem to have a very small but noticeable buffer before shutting down. Weapons on the other hand literally have the data field StoredHeat in them. So yes devices do have heat capacity right now. About heat transfer, I may have forgotten to write "heat transfer limit" previously. This limit was what I was talking about. There are no limits now, other than for the pipe socket board. In other words most things have infinite heat transfer rate. So any additional limit is robbing functionality away from the current parts.
That only removes APs attached to beams that could be welded, which wasn't the issue at all. Welding was added way before APs were removed, by then every ship that could use welding have used welding. The problem is art builds and/or other less conventional builds that had to use APs to fill small gaps due to the lack of custom beams/plates and the rigidity of the welding system (you have to have really good contact). This is why manual welding was promised, but I haven't heard from it since.
See above. In this case I wouldn't even call weapon heat capacity "small", as the barrel should be the best heat sink and radiator for a gun anyways.
If like I proposed, heat sinks are used for stealth, and radiators are the "loud" option, transfer rate will never be an issue, and there shouldn't be transfer rate limits at all. If a ship wants to go stealth, it would turn off the radiators, which then leaves the remaining operating time completely dependent on the heat capacity of the heatsinks, and not the heat transfer rate. No matter how fast or slow heat is transferred, it's ultimately decided by the amount of heat a ship can store before overheating.
I was talking about stacking front to back. Not a perfect stack but doable. Also a while ago the devs talked about alternative longer nozzles for thrusters, never heard of it ever since.
Also there's nothing wrong with thruster walls, it's a design choice, not good looking but a perfectly reasonable choice.
This is exactly what the tier system is trying to do. The current modular design of thrusters, generators and weapons allows for future additions like you mentioned. For example there could be a more accurate AC barrel made from some moon ore. The current design allows you to just swap the barrel, not the entire thing. If anything the current modular design is what allows for future additions.
That only removes APs attached to beams that could be welded, which wasn't the issue at all. Welding was added way before APs were removed, by then every ship that could use welding have used welding. The problem is art builds and/or other less conventional builds that had to use APs to fill small gaps due to the lack of custom beams/plates and the rigidity of the welding system (you have to have really good contact). This is why manual welding was promised, but I haven't heard from it since.
See above. In this case I wouldn't even call weapon heat capacity "small", as the barrel should be the best heat sink and radiator for a gun anyways.
If like I proposed, heat sinks are used for stealth, and radiators are the "loud" option, transfer rate will never be an issue, and there shouldn't be transfer rate limits at all. If a ship wants to go stealth, it would turn off the radiators, which then leaves the remaining operating time completely dependent on the heat capacity of the heatsinks, and not the heat transfer rate. No matter how fast or slow heat is transferred, it's ultimately decided by the amount of heat a ship can store before overheating.
I was talking about stacking front to back. Not a perfect stack but doable. Also a while ago the devs talked about alternative longer nozzles for thrusters, never heard of it ever since.
Also there's nothing wrong with thruster walls, it's a design choice, not good looking but a perfectly reasonable choice.
This is exactly what the tier system is trying to do. The current modular design of thrusters, generators and weapons allows for future additions like you mentioned. For example there could be a more accurate AC barrel made from some moon ore. The current design allows you to just swap the barrel, not the entire thing. If anything the current modular design is what allows for future additions.