Xaoc

Engines are not based on surface area, but just volume. Position also doesn't matter. The reason you're losing speed is probably because you're short of engineers. The game shows speed penalties because of crew shortages in build mode.

I have to say, I agree with you on all counts.

If someone has multiple ships, they have the right to come after you with all of those ships. If someone has multiple ships and want to come after you with a single ship at a time while they control it, they're a complete idiot, but they have a right to do it. Its not exploitative or unfair, they've spent the resources and time to get those ships. When it comes to mining and rushing to the center, then the later is already happening and the former would still be completely useless since you can just acquire the resources from a materials trader(and the credits to buy them from various other sources) far easier anyway. Such a crappy limitation is not the solution, the solution is to rebalance the progression in the game to make other areas of the galaxy more appealing and meaningful.

Nice ship, Subquake! You can avoid the lag from the thruster effects by covering up the thruster completely, but you have to design your ship so that the thrusters are perfectly in line with other blocks. The best way to do this is to make an array of thrusters that has sufficient amount of thruster for your purpose and then copy it. While pasting make sure your ships scale is same as your other blocks and then just make it just large enough to fit with the other blocks and then cover it up with some armor or hull or whatever. Make sure you place your blocks on the thruster so that you don't need to place any blocks to the sides of the thrusters. That can cause issues. Also unless you want your game to completely lag out, don't try to place two dense thruster arrays close to each other. Also you can reduce the amount of thruster blocks you need by just making the arrays wider. So you can replace your 8 arrays with 2 arrays that are 4 times wider and get better performance. I usually just use 1 array of thrusters in each direction and place them off-center, that'll give me all the thrust and rotation that I need. For PvP you might, however, have more thruster arrays. For visuals you can always have "proper" sized thruster that don't lag the game out when they make particle effects.

Mining, or heck, selling materials in general is not a fast money maker There are way, way, way, way, way, way and way faster methods of massing massive amounts of money. Mining and material sales are bout the slowest way to make money and teleporting to the materials trader instantly isn't going to change that much. IMHO, we should just be able to switch to ships via the player menu. Would also solve the home sector issue.

1. Salvage turrets can only salvage one tier above its material, same as mining turrets. 2. Salvaging above the turret material tier gives an efficiency and speed penalty, salvaging below the turret material gives a bonus, same as mining turrets. 3. Salvaging turrets and modules is random and can also be done with normal weapons, does not depend on anything.

You just have to check turret factories one-by-one as each factory has different stats on the turrets it produces. Tedious and boring, I know.

I agree that there is a serious issue with progression. What I did when I started a new galaxy in singleplayer was: 1. Sell a big space rock 2. Build the tinkiest smallest iron ship that would give me some more speed and an upgrade slot for the radar upgrade you're guaranteed at the start 3. Race to the wall around the center 4. Sell a few big space rocks at the center with the help of the radar upgrade for 1 million credits or so 5. Buy some Xanion and make a small exploration ship to sell more space rocks faster 6. Get enough money to build a proper freighter and start trading 7. Trade until I get enough money to build a proper combat ship 0 rocks mined, 0 Titanium, Neonite, Trinium used, full Xanion warship and freighter, great relations with a lot of factions near the center, time spent: 1,5-2 hours? TBH, there is a reason to return to the edge areas. With my Xanion warship I can destroy the stations of weaker factions with ease and make more credits selling the loot than I would ever realistically need. A single edge station can net me about 30-50 million credits if it has a good stock. What I would do is: 1. Make all materials after Iron except Avorion(and maybe Ogonite) mostly lateral upgrades with each material having specific strengths instead of being linearly just better from the last in all ways except weight. E.g. Naonite would make the best hypercores, Trinium would make the best shields, Titanium would make the lightest and thus the most agile ship etc. When it comes to hull hp all the materials would offer an different weight to hp ration with the extremes giving the best ratios, but at a cost. Avorion would also not just be the god tier material, instead it would be used to buff the exising materials in their best field. E.g. Avorion hypercores would need neonite, but would be better than just neonite cores, shields would need Trinium, but would be better than just trinium. Etc. This way the player would desire to have all materials, rather than just the best one. 2. Remove Faction strength scaling as it is now. Instead, some factions are just stronger and other weaker. Some prefer a few large ships, other prefer lots of smaller ships, etc. Factions near the core get more sophisticated with ships that have access to more specialized materials, but their fleets also become smaller. This way factions near the center aren't always stronger than factions near the edge, but for a single player ship they would still offer greater challange. Also factions next to each other would be at different strengths, giving players opportunities and challanges. 3. Different economic environments near the center vs. the edge. Example: Center sould be more industrialized, but have less raw resources, while the edge has more raw resources, but more agrarian production. Less claimable asteroids near the center. Make long distance trading more lucrative and trading with next door sectors and within sectors next to pointless, unless the player invests in owned stations or searches for specific opportunities. 4. More hostile factrions near the center and less civilized faction near the center as well. If you want to sell your loot or look for a safe haeven, might need to return to the edge. 5. More natural dangers near the edge. Dangerous nebula, destructive black holes when exploring hidden mass sectors, ambushes by rouge AI etc.

I don't know how helpful it is, but in regards to 2. and 5. Nothing will happen in a sector once its unloaded and sectors get unloaded 5 minutes after the last player leaves it. This would also mean no trade with any stations in those sectors. I've also heard that if the docking blocks are too close to the station core they won't work. Try building them father away from the core of your station.

First, thrusters don't care if they're covered up or not. Second you can actually take the idea of copy-pasting thrusters to a crazy extreme since you can change the size of the thruster array while pasting, allowing you to place thrusters thinner than 0.05.

Sigh, after having trying it for many hours and then making this thread. I managed to find the AI in about 15-20min after making it. -_- Thanks for the tip, anyway.

Have you tried putting your username in quotes?

I've found the AI boss in multiplayer previously on multiple occasions, but right now in singleplayer I can't get it to spawn. I've read the wiki and been trying hidden mass systems and empty systems at about half way to the core, but with like a hundred or so systems explored I haven't met the boss even a single time. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a command to force the boss to spawn?

If you play the game "properly", I competently agree that the combat gets way too boring with spongy ships around and past trinium, However, right now you can get super OP turrets from turret factories. I have 2.2k DPS laser turrets with +70% shield damage and pretty much every thing is melting before me. Even the multi million hp stations just explode in about 5 minutes. Just look for a turret factory that builds exceptional tier turrets that do more than 1k DPS and don't overheat or have overly high energy requirements.