Shipbuilding ruleset. Complex, but maximum freedom.

[Arcalane]

Turn off =/= remove completely. Those who want to build some ubership of course should be allowed to do so. Just no "my ship is stronger than yours" competition for them.

Like I was saying, I don't have any beef with it if it's a toggleable thing.

What i want is a situation when i make a balanced ship, my friend makes a balanced ship, and we watch them fight. With current limitless situation, it will end up with a battle of two crazily overpowered wonderwaffles

IMO, if you need a ridiculously complex rule system to do that, then you're doing something wrong.

Tournament rules are too simple, easily exploitable, and make too many limits. I want my fucking weapon modding! I want to resize sections to no limits! I don't want to be limited by 3 ship classes, i don't want any ship classes at all!

They have to make limits because of that exploitability. And then you still get people who still try to exploit that, or other rules that have to be put in place for tournament balance because the ship AI is not the brightest bulb in the house. Look at the fiasco in the first shipmaker tournament that was the Fey, for example.

Take in mind most of the tournament rules are probably only on their third or fourth major iteration so far, and there hasn't been a lot of heavy, specific fine-tuning and weapon/module testing.

[ArcaneDude]

"my ship is stronger than yours" competition for them.

There never has been one, instead of the Cold War, which wasn't done properly. So your point is?

Tournament rules are too simple, easily exploitable, and make too many limits. I want my fucking weapon modding! I want to resize sections to no limits! I don't want to be limited by 3 ship classes, i don't want any ship classes at all!

Weapons modding has only been tolerated once. No one asks for unlimited stretching, and no one whines about ship classes. So yet again, your point?

What i want is a situation when i make a balanced ship, my friend makes a balanced ship, and we watch them fight. With current limitless situation, it will end up with a battle of two crazily overpowered wonderwaffles

If that's the case, the two of you should try to balance your ships against each other, instead of making them stronger all the time. That's how it works.

Those who want to build some ubership of course should be allowed to do so.

Only about 1 % of the ships on this site currently in the works are uberwanks. So yet again, your point?

Look, I know you're trying to help out the community, but I have a tiny feeling you don't see the main idea of this game; Everyone builds what they want, how they want to, becuse it's fun. Not to balance their own ships against those of someone else. Balancing everything against each other would not only take away the diversity and realism (everyone has another self-invented universe, with different technologies, so the unbalancing is actually realistic), but also a lot of the fun. What do people do when they wanna have some fun? They build a ship. Oh noes! Now with these new rules, I have to make all those boting calculations! Nevermind, I'll go play the fratbox a bit! And thus, everyone get's bored, the community dies, the game dies, th15's wotk has been for nothing, and we all end up in the boredom gutter. Job well done for the person who made the rules in the first place. Or not.

EDIT; damn. Got ninja'd.

[kaaskopp]

Everyone builds what they want, how they want to, becuse it's fun. Not to balance their own ships against those of someone else.

so why do people start tournaments? why do new tournaments pop out every week, with 10 - 20 players taking place in them? there is a subforum for tournaments, some people have to like to balance ships amongst eachother!

[Daxx]

Honestly, whilst I'm of the opinion that a tournament ruleset should eventually be devised which is perfectly balanced and upon which everyone can agree (it doesn't need to be built into the shipmaker, although a third party program which could parse the shipbuilder output and generate a points cost based on a specific ruleset would be the absolute pinnacle of awesome), I don't think it can be achieved by increasing complexity quite this much. The fewer rules, the better - that is, the less complicated the ruleset the easier it is for people to build the ships rather than spending time working over complex calculations before building and tuning.

But this thread would be better off in the Tournaments subsection where those people more interested can have a look. I'd wager you'd have attracted far less bile from the regular casual builders if you had posted it there.

[KiT]

Honestly, whilst I'm of the opinion that a tournament ruleset should eventually be devised which is perfectly balanced and upon which everyone can agree, I don't think it can be achieved by increasing complexity quite this much. The fewer rules, the better - that is, the less complicated the ruleset the easier it is for people to build the ships rather than spending time working over complex calculations before building and tuning.

The situation with tournament rulesets can be explained in a very simple way: "Variety, simplicity, balance - choose two".
Current rulesets sacrifice variety - they have to force players put fixed section hp, they make people stick to "ship classes" etc. limiting the players' choices.

What i want to acheive is maximum customisability for everything - sizes, speeds, weapons, sections! Change everything, but watch the ship costs go sky high if you try something crazy. Variety is what i want to get, and to acheive this without ruining the balance needs alot of helping mechanics.
There are just some things which cannot be achieved with simple rulesets. Such as:
Complete weapon customisability (the main aim of my ruleset)
Some mechanic which would make it reasonable to put weapons on sections further form the core. (Secondary aim)
Some way to counter the abuse of regular and aegis deflectors.
Universality for any money setting. (ruleset should be well-balanced no matter how much starting money/points you set, at least i you don't set it to some completely insane amount).


Its boring for me to just create a cute little ship, put it in my own little universe nobody gives a shit about, balance it to other cute ships i have and then watch them fight, and then make a backstory about some epic war between generic-good-faction and generic-evil-faction... it all is just... too simple. And building extremely fatass superdreadnaughts is just too much work and not enough fun for me to bother. These ships never get to fight because they always kill my FPS anyway.

I want to have a good shipbuilding tournament, and by good i mean a one which doesn't limit me to some specific classes or limit my weapons. I want maximum variety, maximum number of different tactics and strategies to give to ships!

[reven1231]

right well it would be cool if the things (restrictions) in the tournaments
were put down in the code and had an on/off switch, but thats me cause i am lazy and work read the restrictions and understand them.
But your Entire idea is to much work, and the results won't be very helpful,
not in the long run.
so just stop trying on this one

[Impeached]

Making a new shipmaker program couldn't be that hard, all you have to do is make a text file with .shp at the end, then make the shipmaker read the ship's stats from the .shp instead of another format.

Maybe I'll do it...perhaps...maybe...

[KiT]

Making a new shipmaker program couldn't be that hard, all you have to do is make a text file with .shp at the end, then make the shipmaker read the ship's stats from the .shp instead of another format.

Umm, do you know how does the code in .shp and .sb3 works? I tried opening em with a notepad but that didnt give any good results.

[Impeached]

Oh, well .encs are opened in Notepad, so I assumed...

Never mind then. :p

[/researchless stupid ramble of Impeached]

[Daxx]

The situation with tournament rulesets can be explained in a very simple way: "Variety, simplicity, balance - choose two".
Current rulesets sacrifice variety - they have to force players put fixed section hp, they make people stick to "ship classes" etc. limiting the players' choices.

Interesting analysis; perhaps that is a truism for anything like this.

However, this ruleset sacrifices simplicity, and probably dumps balance as well unless you're prepared to spend ages tuning it. Even the current rulesets, which are much simpler and easier to tune, are being fine-tuned in terms of balance.

Developing the current rulesets has been an iterative process. Perhaps the ultimate end product will be one which allows weapon modding and all the flexibility you seem to be after, but that's way down the line and requires us to know things which we're still working out.

You've got some good ideas in there, but how about applying them one at a time to something we already know works? If they turn out to be brilliant, then they'll be adopted and it'll be easy to add more. Of course, the alternative is to just start a tournament and see if it works (and how many people will enter). Predicting how people will use a system is not easy, and I believe it's something we can only discover through trial and error.

Also what is with the wannabe moderating in this thread? Leave it to responsible adults, please.

[KiT]

However, this ruleset sacrifices simplicity, and probably dumps balance as well unless you're prepared to spend ages tuning it. Even the current rulesets, which are much simpler and easier to tune, are being fine-tuned in terms of balance.

Developing the current rulesets has been an iterative process. Perhaps the ultimate end product will be one which allows weapon modding and all the flexibility you seem to be after, but that's way down the line and requires us to know things which we're still working out.

When making basic cost proportions (how much should speed parameters cost compared to section parameters, etc), i was trying to keep close to the regular tournament rules. So, if in tournaments adding one 150hp section costs the same as adding 0.15 max speed for medium ships, it will probably be the same in my ruleset. The same goes with all prices - i was making my prices basing on the current tournament prices.

There are many issues though. My weapons pricing system is based on the weapons basic stats, meaning that if you set Gatblaster's parameters the same as of regular blaster, they should cost the same as of regular blaster. but this means i can't just set the final prices for weapons.
Im currently trying to fix weapon pricing system in such way, thay weapons cost roughly thesame as they cost in current tournament rulesets.

Its far from completion though. ive completed the basic formula, but it makes bad results and im trying to fine-tune it, which it totally hard.

Of course, the alternative is to just start a tournament and see if it works (and how many people will enter). Predicting how people will use a system is not easy, and I believe it's something we can only discover through trial and error.

Thats what implanning to do after i finish making the ruleset and make an excel file simple and comprehensive enough for general public. It will mostly be "Put all ship stats - receive ship price" mode. You'll have to add everything though - all ship weapon stats, section parenting - everything.

Also what is with the wannabe moderating in this thread? Leave it to responsible adults, please.

hehe, im not against this flamewar. It draws attention to the thread... not in thr most pleasant way tohugh

[Comus]

When Master Chief thinks you're posting useless spam, perhaps you need to sit back and think about it.

NOW, BACK TO THE TOPIC:

What version of the tournament rules does everyone like best, and what improvements could you suggest, especially for custom weapons?

[Master Chief]

When Master Chief thinks you're posting useless spam, perhaps you need to sit back and think about it.

What do you mean? Are you trying to subtly imply something?

EDIT: I realised that I haven't gone back on-topic myself, so...

What version of the tournament rules does everyone like best, and what improvements could you suggest, especially for custom weapons?

I prefer the current ruleset, not the one that this thread seems to be promoting. It allows for more people to bend the rule to such an extent where tournament civility can be considered absent. And it's more familiar, simple and fun.

[Daxx]

Jesus fucking Christ, this thread went to hell in a handbasket.

If the Moderators could erase the rest when alls said and done I would appreciate it greatly

No, keep the posts as they are for posterity, because this is bloody hilarious. You're trying to take the moral high ground and you're playing the victim card like it's the only one in your hand; but when all's said and done you're acting like a whiny 12-year-old, and that "retaliation" was so laughable I almost thought for a second that it was a joke.

What version of the tournament rules does everyone like best, and what improvements could you suggest, especially for custom weapons?

I prefer the current ruleset, not the one that this thread seems to be promoting. It allows for more people to bend the rule to such an extent where tournament civility can be considered absent. And it's more familiar, simple and fun.

I'm all for helping him to complete these rules so we can run an experimental tournament. It might end up being horribly broken, but we'll learn a lot either way about how to go forward in the future (what we can and can't add to the current ruleset, how this one could be improved). When I get an hour or so free I'll contribute more fully.

[Admiral Evars]

I actually had an idea like this myself, glad to know I'm not the only one.

My idea was a little less complicated in terms of math, largely to avoid a difficulties in calculations and make optimizing easier.

The basic idea was that you purchased a core for a non-trivial amount of points, and that core grants a default movement value, somewhere between three and five (this would require playtesting). You then add sections, each one of which added a penalty to movement and turn radius. You could purchase additional movement and manuevering for extra points, but as you did your points would steadily become less effective (ie you would get less advantage per point). Then you add weapons, each of which costs both points and power. Power is generated by sections (I had originally intended for it to simply be the number of sections, but I really like the section-parenting idea so I'm going to steal it ). Hopefully no more than fairly simple addition and subtraction, and complex enough to have some variety.

One other thing KiT, is that since you are going for maximum complexity, there is a better way to do turnrate. You would use, rather than a ships mass for a penalty for maneuvering, use its Moment of Inertia. A ships moment of inertia is the sum of the mass of each section times its distance from the center of rotation squared. So a ship with two components of mass 20 a distance of 3 away from the center would have a MoI of 20(3)^2 + 20(3)^2 = 360. I'm not using that for my system, but I thought you might be interested.