January 20, 2318

**Saturday, January 20, 2318**, was the day that the entire universe stood still.

## Description

January 20, 2018, saw the release of the much-maligned Power 2.0 update to StarMade. (full release post HERE) This update is perhaps the single biggest and most unwelcome update in starmade history. It's main features include:

* Replacing entity based reactors and aux reactors with a new system that would only allow a single reactor per docking chain.
* Replacing StructuralHP with ReactorHP.
* Adding stabilizers and stabilizer streams to try to tie reactor sizes to ship sizes.
* Adding reactor chambers to replace ship passive effects.
* Removal of power capacitors.
* Massively amplifying the damage output of weapons per block.
* Rebalancing of weapon damage. Most notable is than lancer beams now suffer from a major loss of dps in exchange for range over other beam type weapons.
* Beams and Cannons now queue damage the same way that missiles did in power 1.x. While this creates a noticeable improvement in performance, it prevents multi-output "drilling" making deep penetration weapons nearly impossible under current build.
* Restricting Shields to "bubbles" so that they can only protect what is inside of a certain range from the shield generator.
* Limiting most non-weapon systems to 20/ship and all chambers via the reactor points system.
* Addition of "structural integrity" mechanic that makes ship systems suffer from unrecoverable chain reactions of explosions once a system goes below zero integrity points.

## Zero Day Issues

While there were a number of bugs with this release, the things that were broken with this system actually took a back seat to all the problems where the system was working as intended. Due to the unintuitive nature of the new system, many players reported that their first several ships were so unstable or volatile that they either could not get their ships to basically function (flying, shooting, etc.) or that they could be completely destroyed by a single bullet from a handgun.

Equally problematic was that the people who could get a ship to work found that the power update was so unbalanced that defensive systems (particularly shields) were utterly useless. Many early prototypes could one-shot shields on ships over 10x their size, and a single well designed waffle gun could cause chain reactions across an enemy ship's many systems within seconds allowing a hit-and-run ship to barely damage an enemy vessel, then run away while it slowly burns into nothing.

These issues aside, perhaps the biggest complaint from the community was the loss of creative freedom. The new ships suffered from a crippling lack of options in ship designs since the new system so strongly encouraged a singular best shape by tieing power to distance. Shorter, wider ships were no longer a viable option. Even tall, wide, or segmented ships became unviable due to the stab-stream.

## Behind the Scenes

Many individuals and factions on all sides of the political spectrum reacted with uproar, with several, like Jake Lancia, Zorozeenee, FlyingDebris, Lecic, and Nosajimiki advocating the boycotting of Power2.0 servers, campaigning for Power 1.0 to remain, and demanding drastic changes to fix the state of the system.

The events of January 20 also indirectly caused the unification of the StarMade community as a whole as all previous animosity was put aside for the sake of the game. This external threat accomplished what neither FlyingDebris or the various alliances managed; to get the Vaygr Empire and Trinova Technologies working together for one singular, common cause, which was ultimately greater than their petty feuds.

## The Aftermath

Never before in the history of the multiverse has one event caused so much ruin to the designs of ships. In the past, similar events caused many ships needing to be refitted, but this update rendered nearly every old design so useless that refitting was not even an option. Countless hoards of ships were merely abandoned in deep space, and the machinations of their old factories and shipyards were simply turned off, never to again be used.

Being one of the last remaining old world factions to push through the update, MercDragon erected the Memorial of Power in their homebase in honor of the many factions and technology that were hence lost to annals of history.