Repast from AppStore Interesting strategic ship building core. Cross clash of clans with Space Trucker New players might not latch onto fun part of game and miss out. Takes to long to get a ship that you have the space to be creative in building Find new opponent should be cheap coin price not premium currency. Matchmaking rank should be per ship: there is no point being forced to fight a Hammerhead with a Raven. Fleet Arena should use its own currency earned by payouts from normal play: You need coins for new ships. Design should accelerate player into a carrier class sooner. The early ships don't have room to be creative. It would add a lot to be able to rotate 2x1 & 3x2 items clockwise to fit. Repair bays should not repair themselves -- that is lame Game needs cross-session objectives with payouts --eg Repair 10,000 damage: payout 10celestium Game needs per session bonus Goals that encourage rebuilds: eg Deal 300 damage with lasers TODAY: payout free instant ship repair. When you complete the goal you get a new one immediately. Overall nice concept, needs design tune up for meta/long game November 2015: 3 stars, could easily be higher with adjustments -DemoEvolved (same on Twitter)
Unfortunately the shine is starting to wear off... So am about minus 100 in terms of wins vs losses. Most matchmaking puts me against people at lower level and lower ships, however I seem to get taken down a lot. I have experimented a lot with various combinations and occasionally seem to get lucky. But it's seemingly too random. Having 4 ships and losing all 3 battles for each is utterly soul destroying (kind of!). And then waiting 1.5 to 2.5 hours to have another full go ain't fun. Sure can drop currency on it, but trying to save for another slot. I guess that's the whole F2P model, so fair enough. But still, having timers increase for each higher level ship still seems odd. Maybe maxing at 1.5 hours would be a sensible limit across all ships. Matchmaking seems off too. Even with an awful run of losses - there seems no let up in terms of who you match against. Many times it puts you against the exact same player who has just destroyed you - happens a bit too often. Maybe just confirmation bias, but when you try and risk going all lasers or all missiles, you can bet the enemy ship is the perfect match against that. So yes, happens a little too often in my eyes. The building ships is still great fun, and nothing beats the feeling of any sort of win streak. But unfortunately, despite many many experiments and tweaking, being minus 100 for wins vs losses is pretty ridiculous - and I'm a long term gamer and have never been this 'down' for performance for any game in 25 years of gaming - street fighters, call of duties, league of legends, fifa, scrabble etc every genre of games really. Of course, maybe I'm just rubbish!!!
Hey DemoEvolved! Thanks for the perceptive feedback. I can see how the long progression curve towards the larger ships can be a deterrent to many more experienced players. It's always a difficult compromise to make; mobile players tend to be more casual, but the concept of the game is more hardcore than what is typically found. Finding the right balance between not throwing off the majority of easygoers versus appealing to a more seasoned player base can be difficult. I'll continue following Starside's performance to better gauge whether the current progression requires tweaking or not. The matchmaking system needs to respond to the player's competence. If you've managed to push your way into higher tiers with a lower class ship, it determines you're capable of handling it. If it were ship based, there would be nothing preventing higher level players from stomping on newcomers with the same ships, but better technology. The reroll -option isn't thoroughly designed, I confess. In its current form it serves as a method of rolling another opponent when you know you can't win someone, and is intended for very late game competition where players are more invested into their ranking. I'll probably have to revisit the concept, as you noted, since it offers no real benefit to earlier stages in its current form. The Fleet Arena uses Credits for a distinct reason. Players who invest into Celestium will gradually gain a surplus of Credits as they use Celestium for most purchases. It serves its function as a Credits to Experience / Celestium converter as intended, and will not see an economic redesign in the foreseeable future for this reason. The module rotation was also on the table in early stages of development. For the same reasons of addressing the mobile audience, this feature was dropped in favor of broader usability. Perhaps later stages of the game could introduce this Repair Bays self-healing is a tricky matter. I must say there is no clear reason to have it either way, there are valid arguments both ways. I'll keep an eye on this and consider it in more depth when time allows. The manner of quests / objectives you outlined are on the table. The current format of Daily Missions is the bare minimum design for it, and we are looking to expand the variance in the future. It's not the highest priority at the moment, but rest assured it is considered. And, to conclude, thanks for trying the game out, and let's see how fast we get updates rolling! I hope they flesh out your experience for the better Hey K-Dog! I hear you. There is quite a lot of randomness in the matchmaking, and I could look into the logic to see if there's something I could polish with it. In its current state, even when losing against lower class ships the system eventually stops lowering the bracket in which it searches for opponents. One of the main balance problems could be how Lasers work: they sometimes allow far smaller ships to get a lucky shot at that exposed reactor. This is also something I could look at from a purely gameplay balance perspective. The timers have been a topic many bring up. Currently the timers finally settle down only in the very last class of ship, but there may be incentives for limiting their growth at an earlier stage. It requires a lot of economic / designwork to model out, but I can take the time to rinse through the numbers. One reason for their continuous lengthening is the design principle of molding the game more into a "habit", with the player coming online a few times a day to go through their ships. The design was not intended to support or encourage veteran players to log on every few hours in fear of the burnout -style gameplay. But, as said, I will look into this matter and consider the pros and cons. There is actually no balance checks regarding what manner of opponent you go against: the opponent is chosen randomly from a rating pool around your own, so when you get those awful counterbuilds, it's just plain bad luck. My hope is that having enough players in the universe would balance out the meta so it becomes more clear at certain stages how people on average build. Based on your description it does seem like really bad luck. Currently the attacking players' win rates hover around 60% - 65% on all tiers, so it does sounds like rotten luck. I've been thinking about an option to spy on enemy designs that could help players rationalize why they are taking a beating from someone. For now I can only suggest doing radical changes in your design, things that seem completely unorthodox, and see if that tips the scales Happy gaming! -Ribatzki
Yeah, hopefully just a really horrible spell I'm going through. Last day or so, I get more wins from not playing and log on to see I've won a few and lost less!
To further clarify: The matchmaking system lowers the rating bracket in which it searches for opponents every time you lose a battle, down to a minimum of 3 steps. For example, if you are on rating 200, normally you would find opponents roughly between 180 - 220 rating. If you lose, this falls down to 160 - 200 rating, then 140 - 180 and so on. Let's say you win a match, the system will not immediately resume you to normal matchmaking parameters (to account for luck / misfortune), but raises the parameters by one degree, i.e. from 140 - 180 to 160 - 200. However, the system will never raise the parameters beyond the "normal" circumstance ones. Hope this helps! -Ribatzki
Why don't you post some of your builds? You must be doing something wrong to lose that much. I find balanced builds are the most effective all around favoring ballistics>missiles>lasers. But what sort of weapons you use should have a lot to do with hull design, engine choice, and ship mass since that will all dictate how the battle plays out.
I've been playing for a few days now and I'm sitting at 342 rating with 4 slots unlocked as F2P. My win loss ratio is down a bit (259:289) because of having 3/4 clearly outdated ships for a long time (Scythes against Hammerhead and better ~90% of matches) but still trying every battle to scrape up a few gold and XP here and there. Now that I've upgraded my ships to 3x Morningstar and 1x Rapier I'm definetely winning more than my fair share again even though on average people I'm facing have higher tier ships and higher level (I'm level 19 atm). The problem with the current matchmaking system is that as a new player with good designs your rating goes up uncontrollably and eventually you'll start facing only people with higher tier ships and better equipment even after 3 losses to bring down the matchmaking range. There are certain thresholds when "older" ships get clearly outdated one being the point when you start facing people with Repair Bays. It's next to impossible to win against any ship with repair bay and some armor and shields unless you're packing one yourself and you can't fit one into many of the older ships. Maybe later you can get enough burst damage with higher level weapons to beat them without Repair Bay of your own but when you first start facing them that's not an option. Right now I'm noticing similar but not as drastic jump in "difficulty" when my opponents are mostly packing torpedoes. It's not as bad as first repairbays as torpedoes can somewhat be countered with things I have access to and they aren't guaranteed loss anyways. I was seriously surprised to notice that you cannot drop in rating even when you lose 9/10 duels. In my opinion losing matches should bring your rating down not only to make the matchmaking system work better but also to make it actually competitive and not just about who has played the most. Anyways as a conclusion I gotta say I'm enjoying the game a lot so far and to keep it that way I'd like to see stuff like more varied daily objectives and more customization in ship building (ie. more parts and ability to choose part facing). Also the mentioned rating system change should be implemented so you would go down when you lose.
I was wondering how ships are used when I'm not online. Are my old designs flying around the servers or is there just one copy of each which gets instantly updated. And what happens if I leave a ship empty? Hopefully it won't be used in combat. Overall I'm still enjoying all the tinkering, which I spend way too much time on. Just as well the timers kick in. It's tying in well with a book I'm reading called Dreadnought; about WW1 battleships. The builders had similar decisions regarding the balance of weaponry, armour, engine power, coal storage etc, and combat was not so different. Often decided by lucky/unlucky shots, and bad news for a destroyer crew seeing an enemy battlecruiser emerging from the mist.
Really Enjoying This Made an account just to post on here since it looks like the Dev checks the forum. I really dig this game. I love the fact that once a tech item is unlocked, there is no limit on how many can be placed in the ship. Contrast this with starborn anarkist, which makes you buy each item you place. Three things I'd like to comment on: I see the logic behind the fleet battles, but the current tuning seems way out of whack. The soft currency to premium currency conversion is way too low to be worth it. Might as well wait for the daily bonus and the guy who gives you currency for a "good show". In the tech tree stats, I wish the dimensions of the item were listed. I thought the shotgun was going to be a 1x1 based on the thumbnail. I was annoyed when it turned out to be a 2x3. If I had known the dimensions I might have saved my money for another technology. The warp drive determines the winner in most of my battles. If you're lucky enough to be the second ship to warp, your chances of winning the battle skyrocket. I don't know what the solution is, but it's something I've noticed. Basically if my ship starts warping early, I know I'm probably going to lose.
The shotgun is fantastic though. Pair it with a bunch of missiles, and you have a quick shield takedown paired with fast annihilation. I totally agree about the warp drive. Especially if you warp and the other guy does right after, it's pretty much game over. They need to make the timing more random between warps. It's one of the things that bothers me most.
Agreed about shotgun. It's really good as a front main gun to take down shields. I've been running shotgun+missiles+mines combo for a while now on my Morningstars and it's working wonders even against ships of higher level. Shotgun is sturdy enough to take a little beating too when you have repairbay so you don't necessarily need to have armor all around it as long as you have enough manouverability to prevent it getting hit for too long. I also agree about warp drives. They seem to be too often the deciding factor in a lot of matchups because timing of first jump pretty much decides the winner like you said. Also warp AI could really be a little less random. It's so frustrating to see your ship power up warp drives just to jump right in front of your enemy and hit the front armor with all lasers on board when in the last match you were just about to finish off your enemy with full frontal assault when he jumps right behind you and blows your engines and eventually reactor. I think Warp Drives might need a bit of balancing too because they seem to be way better (and popular) than any other engines available at least until Grand Ion drive. I'd love to see viable builds for fast and manouverable ships too, right now they are just plain bad because more often than not they dont even attempt to use their manouverability if they are already in range and facing the enemy ship. They just stick there shooting at front armor until your enemy jumps and gets position on you. What this kind of ships should do is always keep moving and try to get hits to enemy ships sides while getting out of enemy weapons fire cone. This would actually punish ships that use only warp drives because their turning rate is pretty crappy and they'd be often caught trying to turn to catch up the enemy but never actually managing until their warp drives are ready again. Also ships with long range weaponry should try to keep distance to your enemy which they currently don't really do. Revisiting the AI code for ship movement might be a good way to improve the game tactically. Also agreed with earlier poster that it would be nice to have a bit more info on things you're planning on researching before actually spending credits on them (main thing being the size of the part in question). Especially in the earlier levels it's often frustrating to research a new tech just to see that you absolutely can't fit it in your ships which means the money would've been better spent on upgrading one of your ships now and getting the research later.
Hey everyone! Thanks for the discussion and feedback again. I'll do my best to answer some of the more burning questions here. The matchmaking aims to balance out your win/lose ratio at all times. It is quite common at lower ratings to actually get winstreaks that bump up your rating so you'll constantly face slightly unfair opponents. I'll have to reiterate the logic behind this, but I'll also illustrate the reasons for doing this. Many of our above average players experienced frustration when having to grind a hundred matches against weak opponents before getting a challenge, and this is the way we decided to counter the issue. The old method also did not incentivize investing in larger ships when you were already doing fine with the small ones. This is clearly something that has not yet found perfect balance, but I'll keep working on it. Your previously victorious designs will sometimes be saved onto the server as potential enemies for other players. When a ship is empty, the server merely uses the previous layout for the initiated battle. The update logic behind this system is a finely tuned system The Fleet Arena is a difficult thing to balance. For many players the price point is a bit prohibitive to compete, but were it far lower, there might be too much of an easy way to grind levels and Celestium without actually having to learn ship designs. The Fleet Arena, as all balance features, are under constant scrutiny by yours truly. I follow the performance and interactions of all the features of the game daily, and once I have enough reliable data, I can make more judgment calls on the balance. Thanks for the input! Module information highlighting the module size was dropped earlier in favor of a less cluttered UI. The general logic is also that all weapon systems are always worth the purchase, and their size-to-power ratio is carefully tuned. I can see how the non-transparent communication may be an issue for you more deliberate and theorizing players, so the size inspecting feature is one that I'd happily consider implimenting once we can free up a programmer for that. The Warp Engine has always been an extremely difficult design to balance. First of all it is inherently random, sometimes causing a huge difference and other times being completely worthless. The problem is excaberated when both players are using warp engines: the game definitely favors the one who warps second, especially if your warp frequences are relatively alike. There are two existing ways to counteract this. First: put less warp engines in your ship. Your ship will have a greater probability of avoiding the useless warp that is countered one second later. Second: try out the Afterburner. If someone warps on your side, that thing (coupled with a few Ion Drives) will kick you into a crazy overdrive in the blink of an eye. Regardless of these designs, there may be reason to lower the impact of the Warp, and I will consider the best option for this. The AI movement is quite basic at the moment. I see no reason to not elaborate on this further down the line. Some things, however, I am hesitant to touch. For example, having a long range sniper vessel with really good AI would be way too powerful and frustrating to battle against. Outranging your opponent would quickly become the winner strategy at all levels. Some of the AI's stupidity is also intended to maximize variance in performance. Your Rating actually starts dropping at higher Leagues, but it may take a bit too long to get there. I see no reason I shouldn't experiment with lowering that threshold to add more competitive layers early on too (and to balance out the matchmaking at the same time). It's been long under consideration as it is. I'll do my best to find a solution that works best for players of all skill-levels. And, about the shotgun: it's a really, really good weapon. It's that good because I love it as a designer. Keep it cool! -Ribatzki
Thanks again for taking the time to answer the concerns of your players. I can get behind your logic in most answers and trust you have enough data to make correct decisions regarding balance etc. The matchmaking system concern however might be a bit more complicated: I think above average players will keep playing the game if they see the potential even if they have to grind out easier opponents first before getting a challenge. However if a recreational (for lack of better word) player gets a lucky streak with his few ships and bumps to a rating where he constantly gets faced with opponents he just can't beat he will get more frustrated than the above average player would get for the easier opponents and guess which player is more likely to quit the game before even really starting? Also regarding the warp engine balance issues: I don't see afterburner as viable counter to warp engine as enemy always gets a few side/back hits on your ship even if your ship decides to use the afterburner to quickly turn after the warp. So even at best it's not an even trade but a win for the guy with warp engine unless your ship would actually use it's increased manouverability in combat outside warp situations like I mentioned in earlier post. However I understand your concerns regarding sniper builds...it's a tough thing to balance. I'd love to see some kind of EMP missiles or mines that prevent opponent from warping (and perhaps also prevent shield regenaration for short duration) if you manage to hit his ship (not shields) with one. Another suggestion to further balance the warp engine would be making their power consumption go up according to ship size (which also would make sense from physics perspective).
Yes, thanks Ribatzki for the further explanations. It's helpful to have so much background information. I guess no two players will have the same experience but I'm impressed how well everything is working together at this early stage of development. There's a good balance between success and failure, incentive and frustration, but that could be because I'm still ahead. Probably more by luck than judgement. My win ratio is decreasing though, from 2:1 down to 1.5:1 as I encounter tougher opponents. I'm at level 16 with 3 ships which are plenty for now. I like to go with different themes for each one, e.g. slow with many turrets, fast with light armour, or just using the latest version of everything that can be accomodated. I'm trying to get away from reliance on the warp engines as others become available. I haven't used the fleet arena so far because of the cost and risk but that's ok. Will have that look forward to in future. Something I would find useful when assessing battle performance would be different coloured laser beams for friendly and opponent ships as I often cannot tell which ship is firing.
Hey all! Thanks for the continued discussion, and thank you for your kind reception once again. I'm back to bring some answers and propagate more discussion. The warp engines are a complex design from many perspectives. Increasing their energy cost with ship size does not seem intuitive though, and it might be difficult to communicate to the player, and make it harder to "learn" how much power you need on board. However, the frequency at which a ship warps is determined by the ship size: for example, a smallish Dart class vessel (roughly size 20) will warp every 10 seconds or so, while a larger vessel, such as the Valkyrie (size 30+) will warp only every 15+ seconds. I don't have my spreadsheet here at the moment, so this is just for example. The player can install multiple warp engines, but their benefit has diminishing returns. The balance question is to either make the Afterburner a bit more powerful, or then the Warp Engines do their thing less often. We actually had EMP missiles in the game early on! I removed them. They proved to be horribly stale gameplay: their use was based on hampering the performance of your opponent. Instead of being a match of who can duke out more punishment and sustain it, it became a battle of who can nullify the design of the other. It might seem like a messy answer, but the feeling of battle just wasn't there, and they did not provide enough of a fun-factor to warrant living into public production. I've been tossing this idea around the office though, that instead of a warp-disabling module, there may be a warp-altering module. Imagine getting forced to warp in the enemy's cone of fire every time. Or having your warp turn you backwards every time. It may be too powerful and could potentially make the game even more about guessing your opponent's build, so that's why it still sits in the drawer. Perhaps I'll revisit more viable counter designs later. The game will get progressively harder the later on you are. This is by design. There is a bit of variance, of course, based on player skill and luck. My designs aimed to create a global win ratio of about 60% for the attacking player once the early stages of the game are over. I'm happy to hear it's working out. And I'm elated to hear you're trying out brave new builds. The meta can always be broken, and there are builds that even I haven't thought of yet The lasers can be confusing. The graphic indication is instant, the only clarifying factor being the burning effect on the target. We've had two options on the table (possibly both simultaneously): make the lasers different colored for opposing players, and give the lasers a fast "charge up" animation where they don't instantly hit the target (think along the lines of the Ori beam weapons from Stargate). I'd like to have both, but they're in the backlog as things that were not absolutely essential to our game launch. I hope to have them implemented in the future. The Fleet Arena is designed to have quite prohibitive prices for ships around your own level. It is a very powerful tool for grinding Experience and Celestium, and the cost had to match that. However once you are already around mid-game, the early ship classes (Corvettes, Fighters) are so cheap that even a non-payer can easily run a few rounds. Naturally the benefits won't be as great, but it can provide that needed boost to level up or get the Celestium for a higher-tier ship. But do be careful. It is a very unforgiving design. If any of you feel like it, I'd also be happy to comment and guide on your ship designs if you want to post screenshots. I've done a few pretty crazy (and good!) ones myself, and maybe they will come to light as well -Ribatzki
Another couple of days has passed and now I'm at level 25 with three Wanderers and one Morningstar sitting at Rating 561 and steadily rising. I've been doing minor tweaks on my initial laser builds with the Wanderers and now I have about 90% winrate against mostly higher level ships. Guess I'll wait until hitting level 26 to upgrade my last Morningstar and get a Warrior instead of another Wanderer so I can test out some new parts like the Arsenal Wall which I can't really fit into Wanderers. After testing afterburner again with higher level ships that have way more space for engines I have to say that it actually is useful tool especially since multiple warp drives have diminishing returns as you said. In the earlier ships where you can't really fit any powerful engines along with the afterburner it really isn't that good. For example boosting your two basic ion drives in a Morningstar design is kind of lackluster. But oh boy how my Wanderers move when the Afterburner kicks in and boosts Vectored Thruster and a couple of Small Ion drives. This reminds me that it would be nice to see your ship weight in design screen and perhaps also have some more insight on how the weight actually affects ship movement. From what I've seen it looks like you've used physics modeling to calculate ship movement (ie engines have certain power and cause acceleration in certain direction so heavy ships not only move slow but also are very slow to change direction their ship is moving in). What also interests me is does engine position in the ship build or the ships shape (and size) itself affect the ships movement? In other words does a small ship with two basic ion drives move in similar manner as a bigger ship if both ships parts total weight is the same? Also I still think you should include the block sizes for part descriptions at least when player has enabled the "Expert Module View" from settings.
Have ducked back in the other day to approach with a fresh head! Currently sat at rating 366 (Woolfman). Wins 399 Losses 636!!! Bittersweet as I'm position 57 in the top 100, Silver League, which a seems ok. But real bad win/loss ratio, especially if we should be averaging 60% wins as the attacker. Am still winning more when I'm out of the game oddly! Still, I just need to get over the losses and enjoy the few wins I get each session. Any wins are still a sweet feeling!!! Currently got : Starbridge Morning Star x 2 Rapier Broadsword Level 22 448 celestium 900k currency Will prob stick with 5 slots for now, get rid of rapier soon too. Tempted to drop celestium to open up next couple of ships but we'll see. Generally laser builds seem to work best, and are most common enemy type I see. "....must...ignore....loss ratio......"
