Proposal for improvements to space
- Thread starter orton
- Start date
The player docking is absolutely amazing thank you for all the hard work on it. The next thing that would be extremely helpful is
- Add the looted and crafted ship part grading scale.
- Next to the stats on the ship parts there would be a score grading how good that particular stat of the part is. This will also prevent new players from accidently selling or destroying a ship part this could be worth a lot of money and prevent players from being taken advantage of.
To chime in on the point about a part grading system, there's one main issue with creating a system like it with the way loot in JTL is handled:
Determining the thresholds for "grades" of parts is tricky because the loot generation system uses an uncapped bell-curve distribution model to generate all the stats for every part. All components are given a base float value (a number with a decimal point), and a modifier value (another float/decimal that determines the "range" of distribution using the base value as its anchor.) This creates a system where, as I'm sure you may have experienced over time, parts that are considered to be unicorns far exceed what is a reasonable statistic (as there is literally no maximum or minimum cap aside from 0), and this poses a couple of problems:
1. Should you ever get a very high stat part, those parts are hard to make complete balanced builds for, thus becoming largely useless unless you have the necessary components to complete a build. On the more extreme end, this can take literally years to build a single component depending on the RE level, or it causes everyone who witnesses it being put into a bad project to cry out collectively and wish the Death Star destroyed their current location to end their suffering immediately.
2. Those parts are one of a kind and are either hoarded or purchased by people who are absolutely loaded with credits, or by successful scammers. Some parts can be so good that they skew the balance a bit unfairly in PvP environments; Extremely good engines with very low mass on interceptors, Armour RE10's with barely any mass but extremely high HP/Armour values, that kind of thing.
3. A grading system that relies on thresholds would need to be set definitively and never changed unless new parts and stat ranges are added. From my experience on other servers that had this grading system, they would change the grades dynamically depending on whatever the currently known server's best of that particular stat was. I don't think anyone would appreciate spending a lot of time and credits investing in a high statted W10 only to log on one day and find out that it's been downgraded a threshold all because someone looted a higher server's best VsS for example.
Using the bell-curve system, any ranges we came up with would need to be regarded as (because they are, really) estimates in most cases. We could run a simulated generation script of thousands at a time and come up with a different average each time, and some people may not even feel the number the simulation gives out to be reasonable.
A system that makes loot a bit more predictable and confined would make a grading system a lot better in the long run, but I definitely do agree that some kind of a system should exist even with the loot system's flaws. I understand as well that people like the "chase" of unicorn parts and "big number activate neuron" and worry that any kind of cap would ruin the loot or make things worse in some way, but I personally like to think of it in a more practical way, especially long term. I'm of the opinion that while you shouldn't get handouts, it shouldn't take 3 lifetimes to get the parts to build a toy just to barely use it. I also think that for the interest of preserving the game's balance, there should be a limit to stats in some capacity, but with the same weighting or more "generous" weighting than the game currently has.
That, and overall component balancing between tiers never really made much sense to me. It's not exactly intuitive to have the odd-level components being better crafted (with some exceptions) and the even-level components always being better looted. There should be elements that crafted components can achieve that looted cannot, and vice versa to give them their staying power. One system I was experimenting with was changing the overall profiles of RE level tiers.
Tiers 1-5 would be "low-rank" (if you're familiar with Monster Hunter) archetypes of weapons, shields, engines, etc. Tiers 6-10 would be higher statistic versions of the same archetypes.
For example, a Tier 1 weapon would do minimal damage, but would have a very high refire rate to compensate for this. Tier 2 would begin to sway more toward higher damage and lower refire rate so that you can find and fit something more to your personal play style and not be quite so restricted in part choice. Engines could have the lower tiers focusing more on maneuverability, whereas higher tiers focus more on top speed/acceleration. Middle tiers are more well-rounded, if that makes sense.
Some kind of system to supplement shipwrights with regard to looted gear beyond RE'ing would also be a huge boon, I think. Some reduction in shipwright costs would probably be helpful as well, but these are just spitballing ideas at this point. Would love to hear more thoughts and suggestions, and especially if you disagree with what I've written here. Glad to see some revival in the space side of things here.
TL;DR:
A visual system for filtering parts is an absolute must, regardless of the system currently in place, I agree wholeheartedly. The only concern I have is how to actually formulate the ranges for each grade/tier when you consider that loot generated has no theoretical maximum or minimum (excluding 0) cap to statistics, so no matter how unlikely it is, you could always loot something with a stat that is beyond reasonable, and that part would be... completely impractical to use, and a bargaining chip for the people with enough credits to afford to buy something that statistically rare.
The JTL loot system is a bloody mess, don't ya love it?
Determining the thresholds for "grades" of parts is tricky because the loot generation system uses an uncapped bell-curve distribution model to generate all the stats for every part. All components are given a base float value (a number with a decimal point), and a modifier value (another float/decimal that determines the "range" of distribution using the base value as its anchor.) This creates a system where, as I'm sure you may have experienced over time, parts that are considered to be unicorns far exceed what is a reasonable statistic (as there is literally no maximum or minimum cap aside from 0), and this poses a couple of problems:
1. Should you ever get a very high stat part, those parts are hard to make complete balanced builds for, thus becoming largely useless unless you have the necessary components to complete a build. On the more extreme end, this can take literally years to build a single component depending on the RE level, or it causes everyone who witnesses it being put into a bad project to cry out collectively and wish the Death Star destroyed their current location to end their suffering immediately.
2. Those parts are one of a kind and are either hoarded or purchased by people who are absolutely loaded with credits, or by successful scammers. Some parts can be so good that they skew the balance a bit unfairly in PvP environments; Extremely good engines with very low mass on interceptors, Armour RE10's with barely any mass but extremely high HP/Armour values, that kind of thing.
3. A grading system that relies on thresholds would need to be set definitively and never changed unless new parts and stat ranges are added. From my experience on other servers that had this grading system, they would change the grades dynamically depending on whatever the currently known server's best of that particular stat was. I don't think anyone would appreciate spending a lot of time and credits investing in a high statted W10 only to log on one day and find out that it's been downgraded a threshold all because someone looted a higher server's best VsS for example.
Using the bell-curve system, any ranges we came up with would need to be regarded as (because they are, really) estimates in most cases. We could run a simulated generation script of thousands at a time and come up with a different average each time, and some people may not even feel the number the simulation gives out to be reasonable.
A system that makes loot a bit more predictable and confined would make a grading system a lot better in the long run, but I definitely do agree that some kind of a system should exist even with the loot system's flaws. I understand as well that people like the "chase" of unicorn parts and "big number activate neuron" and worry that any kind of cap would ruin the loot or make things worse in some way, but I personally like to think of it in a more practical way, especially long term. I'm of the opinion that while you shouldn't get handouts, it shouldn't take 3 lifetimes to get the parts to build a toy just to barely use it. I also think that for the interest of preserving the game's balance, there should be a limit to stats in some capacity, but with the same weighting or more "generous" weighting than the game currently has.
That, and overall component balancing between tiers never really made much sense to me. It's not exactly intuitive to have the odd-level components being better crafted (with some exceptions) and the even-level components always being better looted. There should be elements that crafted components can achieve that looted cannot, and vice versa to give them their staying power. One system I was experimenting with was changing the overall profiles of RE level tiers.
Tiers 1-5 would be "low-rank" (if you're familiar with Monster Hunter) archetypes of weapons, shields, engines, etc. Tiers 6-10 would be higher statistic versions of the same archetypes.
For example, a Tier 1 weapon would do minimal damage, but would have a very high refire rate to compensate for this. Tier 2 would begin to sway more toward higher damage and lower refire rate so that you can find and fit something more to your personal play style and not be quite so restricted in part choice. Engines could have the lower tiers focusing more on maneuverability, whereas higher tiers focus more on top speed/acceleration. Middle tiers are more well-rounded, if that makes sense.
Some kind of system to supplement shipwrights with regard to looted gear beyond RE'ing would also be a huge boon, I think. Some reduction in shipwright costs would probably be helpful as well, but these are just spitballing ideas at this point. Would love to hear more thoughts and suggestions, and especially if you disagree with what I've written here. Glad to see some revival in the space side of things here.
TL;DR:
A visual system for filtering parts is an absolute must, regardless of the system currently in place, I agree wholeheartedly. The only concern I have is how to actually formulate the ranges for each grade/tier when you consider that loot generated has no theoretical maximum or minimum (excluding 0) cap to statistics, so no matter how unlikely it is, you could always loot something with a stat that is beyond reasonable, and that part would be... completely impractical to use, and a bargaining chip for the people with enough credits to afford to buy something that statistically rare.
The JTL loot system is a bloody mess, don't ya love it?
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This w
This was a ton of great info and incite.
I think a simple grading system would be the most beneficial. Sticking a letter grade to the part based upon an estimated average.
F-Way below average
D-Below average
C-Average
B-Above average
A-Exceptionally rare.
We can even break that down further to F+ or - D+ or - C + or - and so on.
A color change of the text when the part is a B or an A to be a better visual queue as well would be beneficial.
While I have a basic understand of this bell curve loot generation system it has to have theoretical limits based upon probability. This is what could be done to generate the grading scale.
This would also prevent a change of the grading system thus preventing a person from buying a part with an A class stat only to have it downgrade to a B class stat a few days later thus likely reducing the value and investment of the part.
The nice thing about space parts and the economy is it is self-correcting. You can list a cherry part for an insane amount of money but if no one is willing to buy it then it never gets sold. Additionally, a grading system would also prevent unknowing players from selling a part to the junk dealer that could have fetched them a pretty penny. Then we start moving into supply and demand theories, as more grade A parts hit the market prices will come down, simple supply and demand, self-correcting market.
This was a ton of great info and incite.
I think a simple grading system would be the most beneficial. Sticking a letter grade to the part based upon an estimated average.
F-Way below average
D-Below average
C-Average
B-Above average
A-Exceptionally rare.
We can even break that down further to F+ or - D+ or - C + or - and so on.
A color change of the text when the part is a B or an A to be a better visual queue as well would be beneficial.
While I have a basic understand of this bell curve loot generation system it has to have theoretical limits based upon probability. This is what could be done to generate the grading scale.
This would also prevent a change of the grading system thus preventing a person from buying a part with an A class stat only to have it downgrade to a B class stat a few days later thus likely reducing the value and investment of the part.
The nice thing about space parts and the economy is it is self-correcting. You can list a cherry part for an insane amount of money but if no one is willing to buy it then it never gets sold. Additionally, a grading system would also prevent unknowing players from selling a part to the junk dealer that could have fetched them a pretty penny. Then we start moving into supply and demand theories, as more grade A parts hit the market prices will come down, simple supply and demand, self-correcting market.
That’s a good Idea but what would be better is each stat get a color when it. Good to keep that part you will see the color. That they can just pin what you want higher or lower. In the channel for new players that do know.
Appreciated!
I agree that a visual coloured text system should be implemented, and it'd be nice to have the colours for each threshold configurable to match a user's liking, but not the actual thresholds themselves if at all possible, since that then will turn what's supposed to be a more objective grading system fundamentally into a purely user-by-user subjective system, overriding the basis of the thresholds set according to the data the grades are based on, if that makes sense.
Using probability as a means to determine theoretical limits is a fair approach but still a bit dicey because of statistical outliers. They can and will exist with the system as it is which makes the grading system trickier for another reason:
What do we want to base the grading system on, precisely? Do we want to base it on rarity, or part performance, or the results after RE'ing? (In the case of VsA/VsS/EPS/Refire on weapons, these all round to the nearest .010 quite predictably unlike any other stat.) A lot of the issue I see with the grading system on other servers, and even in my own experience is that up until around C+ and B tier components, the mentality of the grading system starts to shift from usage and "strength" to rarity and potential trades/sales which blurs the line of what the grading system is supposed to represent, if that makes sense. It can represent both, but I think any kind of a grading system should be pretty clear on what exactly it means when you see a letter grade next to a part.
You definitely have a case of diminishing returns with parts in this game as well, so I guess it's natural for that overlap, but I think having some way of showing the grade as it relates to performance is better than rarity, but it could be included in the same grade letter as a percentile, or something.
... Though then what percentile do you reference? The overall probability of that stat across all the averages on the server? Or percentile based on simulated probability of getting a drop in that range? Because if we ran simulations of multiple hundreds of thousands/millions of rolls, you'd get a different average every time; Enough to skew the grading system or even percentile in a significant enough way as there is no absolute cap (aside from zero, like I mentioned) to stats.
Makes my head hurt just thinking about it haha.
P
But that is like legends. If they want to do something different. Maybe an items that you can place a bunch of items in you can flag not to sell that worth keeping. Than can post min-max for each lvl that they can look at to go with the file link you can uses or whatever it in link in the pin part.
You mean to make a container item to put parts into to evaluate them first and refer them to a min-max guide or something similar? Just making sure I understood what you're suggesting, because we shouldn't want to shy away from genuinely good ideas just because they are already done by other servers. Unless I misunderstand, adding a container item just to evaluate parts adds an extra step that won't make much of a difference to newer spacers, since they won't know about it or what it does until way later, and likely already sold/scrapped a bunch of good loot by that point.
Having a colour-tiered grading system intrinsically in the examine window with the looted part is very user-friendly and makes sorting through loot much, much easier and less time consuming. Despite the system's flaws, it's genuinely a great idea.
What I am saying you do is have a color just for mass like blue. Min dam green. Max dam red and can have after inning an items a color part yellow for needs a re to be worth it. More as a help part if you feel like doing that. The no flag will help incase someone does not notice the colors. Plus if someone is color blind can’t make the difference.
In my opinion it should be based off of a solid single source metric. Say the pre-RE'd parts minimums listed in the RE Guide on the guides sub-forum, which is *I think* pretty close to the metrics from live. Maybe grade it as Red tier for stuff under the described minimums to RE, Yellow for On Number, And Green for what my guild collectively calls a "Cherry" part. If it wasn't a headache it might be worth it to color code them based on each statistic the part had; coloring each as checked by the agreed on literature master list. But I understand that would be a HUGE undertaking.
The way the system on legends is it’s to lame. The grades and colors have is way out of order. I look at many parts in all I tried they have. Know the level of the part lvl 10 engine is pointless. If the hard cap is 120 you can basically figure out the rest. Once the system is set the only thing you need to know is bare minimum to keep. Plus you want the plan stand out colors since see lvls per grade in color can be more pain to look at. It’s easy to whip of your note thing and compare. Know when you should keep it part to color it yesterday in the section. Know what you say but Looking at multi day colors light to dark is more hard look at. That is my opinion of that.
You mention the Legends system being "lame" and "way out of order" but their colour pattern matches the rarities you'd find in items in the vast majority of modern RPGs:
Grey - Junk (This colour wasn't used by them by default, but I know some people modified theirs to use this colour/tier.)
White - Common
Green - Uncommon
Blue - Rare
Purple - Ultra Rare
Yellow - Legendary
Red - Epic
Legends assigned letter grades with base colours according to this template (both for part rarity AND for their performance), and their "+" grades were lighter versions of the same colour to help stand out. I believe Resto actually included the rarity % in each stat, which I think would be a more informative system than just a colour and letter grade (as letters on their own with no context are up to interpretation.) Besides, Legends allowed you to customize the colours to your liking, so if you do have some form of colour blindness, (or just hate the standard colours chosen, whatever they are) you can easily tailor it to a palette that is comfortable for you to look at using hex colours like the game already supports, unless a system is added ingame to easily change them.
The system I'd personally go for is for a fusion of all 3; Coloured text, letter grade, % of rarity. A lexicon or legend at the bottom of the part's examine window could be included to explain each colour, quality, and even the % rarity meanings. Setting the thresholds is really the only weird area still.
You're right that it's very easy to just open and use the notepad ingame, but wouldn't you rather spend more of your time actually in space, flying, playing, and using your loot rather than sitting at Kash all day, staring back and forth between stats on an out-of-game resource to check whether your parts are worth keeping or not, and for what quality of a build to use them for?
I can't tell you how many times I've needed to re-check parts whereas having a simple easy-to-see highlight system will tell me that information at a glance, saving a tremendous amount of time. Before this system on Legends, comparing parts hurt my eyes and gave me headaches, and I was in a guild where that grievance was shared, especially because we ran group convoys every week and would loot 20+ crates each session. The notepad just did not cut it at that point if I wanted to retain my health and life outside of SWG.
Adding an automatic no-sell flag to parts that meet the thresholds would be an interesting solution! I just want to comment on my concern about it being a bit oversimplified:
If you made a Weapon 10 with high max damage and low minimum damage, it would be extremely inconsistent in DPS and would lower its performance and potential value. If it also had a high EPS and low Refire, you'd sap your capacitor clean in no time flat (especially with multiple). Some of those stats actually round up and/or down during the RE process as well, so I think it's important to preserve the quality of part stats within the information given, not just simple categories of KEEP, TRADE, SELL TO VENDOR, if that makes sense.
If you're at the stage in your space career where you look at parts in Keep/Trade/Vendor categories, then you can just use the system for assigning a colour to how many credits signs you see, lol.
I get where you guys are coming from though, it's just that JTL's loot isn't as simple as we'd like to appropriately treat it with a simple system, much as we'd love that to be the case.
I like
"The system I'd personally go for is for a fusion of all 3; Coloured text, letter grade, % of rarity. A lexicon or legend at the bottom of the part's examine window could be included to explain each colour, quality, and even the % rarity meanings. Setting the thresholds is really the only weird area still."
You are taking the system and making it better. It also allows people who are new to space to easily understand when they have looted a good part. The complexity of space can be overwhelming to new players for sure.
I saying use color but one in per area not lvl. Make it a shade of the color so everyone can see it clear. Using shades of the colors you can miss things. But if you need to do research on what is better.
If you want to make space better using certain options like who uses multi guns to fire all at once. Plus make it easy to kill the corvette here like on legends. You have a big difference damaging it. This with just gun. I know right now I can say I need help to kill it on evolve. I do space but suck at kill corvette solo. But on legends they made it easy for mouse user in space. Plus that would also get people for suck at it to give it more of a chance.
If you want to make space better using certain options like who uses multi guns to fire all at once. Plus make it easy to kill the corvette here like on legends. You have a big difference damaging it. This with just gun. I know right now I can say I need help to kill it on evolve. I do space but suck at kill corvette solo. But on legends they made it easy for mouse user in space. Plus that would also get people for suck at it to give it more of a chance.
What did they do to make mouse and keyboard better for space? I play with controller and very rarely joystick so I'm not familiar with M&K and don't personally prefer it although I know a chunk of players do use it, so it'd be neat to know.
I feel like colour per area (per individual stat) might be oversimplifying the system in a way that will create a new problem, personally. Unless you also made more colours for individual stats, seeing Engine TS, Weapon VsA, Capacitor Recharge Rate, and Shield FHP all being the same colour would be extremely confusing wouldn't it? All the colour tells me in that method is that I need to keep the drop, but having the colour match the stat range tells you why you need to keep it and how good it is without needing to research it just for that confirmation; Especially if the examine window has the explanations down below.
The reason why setting a colour to a grade for thresholds would not just be a better system for quick filtering, but is actually pretty important is because of the way stats like Refire rate on guns are handled. Every time those are reverse engineered (and/or even slotted into a ship raw), those stats will round up or down to the nearest .010. In the case of RE'ing, a .787 VsS and a .785 VsS, or a .324 and .321 refire rate could end up in very different places (especially the .005's), but they all end up in the same places post-RE if they fall into a specific range. (0.320 and 0.321 refire will both end up the same stat post-RE, but 0.322 will be a threshold worse off.)
There's actually merit to pre-rounding some stats to force them into a range for RE to take advantage of, or to just check for duds before RE'ing. (Like Weapon 7 refire rate can be rounded down to .320 pre-RE to push it into what Legends considers "C tier", because the threshold for C tier begins at 0.321 iirc.) This makes the post-RE weapon's outcome more predictable where those stats are concerned; Making VsS red and VsA blue would just be really confusing and not tell you anything that important at a glance other than just to keep it. Not all stats should be pre-rounded though, as the likelihood of ruining the stat is higher in some ranges.
Research time should be done when you're about to build/RE something. Especially if you're only looking to use B tier or above and C tier or below are just automatic sales on your own vendor for other people to use, for example.
There is a text document that would help you evaluate your Space Loot, and I used to have a spreadsheet version of it that I made myself.
Beyond also has an ingame evaluation system, they have you go to a terminal in Mos Eisley spaceport. I don't think either system is needed.
Maybe not NEEDED, but those two systems on those two servers are a HUGE QOL improvement.
