GrimJahk

FTFY. Because that's not the point. This isn't about improving the gameplay experience for me. It's about improving it for all players. By the same token, why don't you write a mod that implements your dream system? I mean, from the way you write, you seem to know all kinds of things about development. I'm sure you could figure it out. I'm not a coder, I can't code my way out of a wet tissue. But, I sort of manage coders. I'm a software systems architect. In that function, UX and UI are my only goal. Getting the job done in the easiest and most streamlined way. Having interfaces and systems that flow seamlessly. With that in mind... I view projects like Avorion from the same approach. The DEV has a vision, when I see things that follow that vision but are "Rough" I make my suggestions. I join in conversations about others suggestions. I offer my opinions on approaches. If something adds to the project without taking away from something else... cool... if adding this new feature forces ALL users to jump through an extra hoop or three... not cool... Buy-in is the key. Lets look at the MODDING community as a great example. There are MAYBE a handful of MODs that every player that knows how to install mods has probably put in place... that nearly universal implementation means that the DEVs may take notice and implement that code into the project as part of the base. However, 85% or more of those mods are not universal. While they may be very popular with some, they are not so universally appealing, OR actively contradict the DEVs vision, so are not likely to be included in the Game Proper. You will notice that every idea/suggestion I make includes assessment of: the problem, what type of problem, what I see as the value, and the impact to the game in general. Then I see if it gets traction. If I get resistance, I drop it and move on... I have made a BUNCH of suggestions, most of them minor, some not so much... I commented about cargo looted in savage yards not being flagged as stolen since you paid for the right to salvage... in the very next update I was amazed to start collecting cargo in a salvage yard!!! I can't claim credit, as no conversation about my comment ever occurred, and I can't know if it was coincidence, so I just choose to believe that I made a contribution and keep looking for the next opportunity. That's an easy one. The better materials you have, the more interesting stuff you can do. The dev has already implemented a notion of ability unlocked by material tier. I think this is a cool system, and that it could be applied here. But how do you address Rarity? (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Exceptional, Exotic, and Legendary) is this based on the pattern of assembly? Is this based on quantities of material? How do you prevent every weapon from being Legendary? How do you even get to Legendary? The big problem I see with this vision (player built turrets) is that there are so many variables(details) that are dependent on what weapon you have... How about what have you considered for detail traits? What will determine the rate of fire? The Range of the weapon? I was actually after more specifics... and lets hash this out because I am genuinely curious. Currently, as a new player, in a starting ship I get a chaingun and mount it on my ship. In the first 20 minutes I fight a pirate and win and loot a new gun that is raring has interesting stats, in 40 seconds I have that new gun in place and am ready to fight with effectively doubled attack strength. Please walk me through your vision. How would/could it be for the first few hours of play Also an easy one. Blocks take up space. Blocks are heavy. These blocks will probably be fragile. Having one weapon that can do everything will be impractical, and you will likely lose to a specialized adversary. It's more efficient to specialize, so adversaries that specialize against you will always have an advantage - unless you specialize against them too. There will not be a single best. What counts as a good weapon will depend on the situation. This is where I think I really get confused... if every weapon in the game is player made, based on a formulae/build pattern/material combination... It will be maybe a week before ALL of the best possible combinations are posted on the web and they become the default weapon for 95% of the player base... even in "Balanced" sets. Every MMORPG player took the time to research what boss they needed to kill to get their epic loots. This system bypasses all randomness and just hands every player a win button. (Collect these 12 bits and place them like this for 12k Omicron) This seems disconnected from the point of design to your aesthetic... Does it even have to change? Why should blocks only require materials that we mine from asteroids? Why not have a barrel block cost steel tubes? Would this make manufacturing a fleet a PITA because guns are limited by cargo space? Yes. Is this already the case? Yes. Would having a real faction system where you can have stations and a resource distribution network that allows you to amass the required materials in one place fix this? Yes. Fortunately, I think the dev wants the latter anyways, so that probably won't be a big deal in the long term. Actually, I'm not even sure why materials like Xanion and Avorion aren't stored in cargo bays either (aside from how awkward upgrading your ship would become, that is). It seems to me that this is something that could be changed in the future, once ship upgrading and factions get an overhaul. Then again, this is a suggestion for a (much) later time, if ever. Actually I like that part about using existing ECON material, but HOW would you implement it into the the assembly of turrets on the superstructure of the ship? I hope that some sort of virtual bank/storage system is implemented, and with it having mass to materials.

I Suggested something similar by having a Bill of Materials (BOM) where you could select a line item and then bulk replace a given block type with another. This allows for more flexibility in design and no longer requires taking your ship completely apart to get at the innards.

I've redone Alligator with new thrusters, now it rotates even better that pre-patch one :) Link to post YAYYYYY

+1 Adding to that, it is SOO easy to just play vulture and scoop up loots from other battles. I already commented on another thread about how war scavengers are frowned upon by all sides... You should take a faction hit if you are within 20KM of a fight and do nothing to help.

+1 Not unreasonable. ;)

Indeed. For one, this really isn't a problem unless the dev says it's a problem, so on some level, that's not a useful comment. For another, I'm not so sure that the dev is unwilling to perform such surgery. The only quote I've seen so far is in the "Read this first" at the top of the forum page. Where it seems Koonshi is implying that they are hard at work working on their vision, and, while they love feedback not all ideas may fit that vision. Scrapping the existing system that includes the reward system (well half of the drops), and the base of their crafting economics model (if you are no longer building turrets at Turret factories) may fall outside their current vision. Clearly, on some level, it is. Indeed, this game is crying out to be one, and I would like to see this as well. It would appear that the issue here isn't that my suggestion is bad, so much as some people don't like the creative parts intruding on their RPG game. I never said your idea was bad, I said it was difficult to implement without losing progress on the game in it's current form... additionally I stated that forcing people into a more difficult learning curve is not in the best interests of a new product. I point out that you don't even have that much freedom now. You can't even choose. You will have to learn the stats one way or another, even if you don't totally design every detail of your ship, else the pirates will eat you. If you really want, the dev could include some basic turret designs in the default templates, so that you don't even have to go shopping, but there's still absolutely no guarantee that the designs will match your aesthetic. You did get the point I made about the fact that I SUCK at design... I don't care about aesthetic. I care about game play. If I have to spend another extra hour trying to fiddle-fuck the components of a turret system to get better performance out of them, it's not worth my time to play. Bad idea. We also don't really want the game modes to be truly distinct either. We can already eliminate the adventuring part with creative mode, so those people are satisfied. The trick is allowing adventuring with minimal interaction with ship design. Perhaps auto-generated designs? You've already got shipyards that'll do it. The algorithm will just need tweaked to include turrets now. If that's not good enough, and you want some customization without having to go all the way, then I don't really know what to tell you. You can't really have it both ways. Templates and prefabbed designs are about the only compromise you can get here. That's exactly what we have now, the ability to customize a ship and plug in modules (and turrets)... you are the one saying that that's not good enough... I have a B.S in Computer Science. I know about a dozen programming languages. My favorite programming language is C (not C++). I'm currently working on a PhD in Computer Engineering. I know exactly what is involved. I could build this system. Cool, then why are you writing mods to accomplish this? Now, question for you... How do you plan for the evolution of weapons? Right now you can have thousands of options in the same footprint... I'm guessing that the material of the turret components will play a factor, but what about the bonuses that are currently added +xdamage to shields, Chance to pass shields, Overheating, Multifire... what complexity do you propose to not turn this into a Cut/paste of "Best" design.. What do you propose to replace the vid in the loot system that occurs if this system is used to overwrite the current Meta? What plan do you have for the economic sub system that was created (in part) to allow players to create their own turrets?

I was flying the Alligator and switched to Beta Branch... YIKES that hurt my head... took me two days of tweaking (Have I mentioned how much I hate designing ships?) to make it playable again, looks like crap now but flies in a way I can make work. I fully expect that the new paradigm will be in the launch.. Thruster slivers was broken.

Very creative. +1 for future content! What if it lead to discovering a tech that summoned The AI? Single use, pop into a faction that hates you and let loose an Angry AI... LMAO!

A branch is anything that is different from, and still exists alongside, the existing path. If the desired ability does not currently exist, and it is by definition a different way of accomplishing something that DOES exist, then it is a branch. As you said, intertwined. Yes the ability to make ships from blocks exists, players and AI both utilize this function. That "making your own" functionality was planned for, and exists in place. As far as spreading that ability, that means new code, new function, and a new set of analysis on balance and function. (That is the Branch) Currently the ship design has about (from memory) 25 different blocks that are self-contained and self-sufficient. They perform a function, (some are active) input = output. Provide power, get shields(etc). What you describe (or what was described above) is a collection (maybe 15) different blocks that are all interdependent, scaling is a new issue, adding in 5-6 blocks to represent a turret on a small ship means smaller blocks and alignment, (durability is a new issue) damage to any of those blocks now takes out the turret. so yet another thing to take into account... if you put 13 turrets on a ship at 5 blocks thats another 65 blocks to render and calculate... I really get your passion... trust me I do... but you have to ask yourself what percentage of the user base will actually use this? Does it warrant changing the focus of the DEV team? Is it such a game changer that not meeting current deadlines is an acceptable risk? These changes to the paradigm of the game are NOT trivial. People that do not write code, generally, do not know what is involved... Just the "slider to tweak weapon behavior" is a project all on it's own... which negates a large portion of the RNG factor that rewards grinding through the Pirates/Aliens. Again, "Maybe turret designs could be purely visual" is yet another spin from the above branch, who will code it, test it, how would it be different than the existing scaling manipulation of blocks, If you want something that is animated: another project... Which brings me to another point that no one (AFAIK) had brought up... these little self-contained turrets are finished, tested, and animated, units. The only thing on your ship that is actually animated... new "Turret Subsystems" blocks will have to allow for similar animation, this is possibly significantly different than what we have now. Additionally, if you now want players to have the ability to place animation blocks on ships at will, you run the risk of performance hits on servers Again, I'm not saying it's never gonna happen... Hell, they added walking around on stations to EVE after they said "Never". But at this stage of development, the DEV resources are already pushed to the limit, so doing a Large side project, for even 50% of the user base, is probably a low likelihood thing. A re-write of the core paradigm is not going to happen unless something is so completely broken that it threatens to ruin the game. (which this is not) There is so much possible with this game. As long as the launch goes smoothly, and the user base grows, I expect to see MANY awesome additions to the game. But first, the masses must be enticed. ;)

Amazing looking ships!

Any design that is functional under the evolving design specs would qualify in my book ;)

Interesting idea, only question is how to accomplish that... You are suggesting that they make a branch in the project, since there is finite DEV resources, and they have a timeline to publish... do they finish up Avorion as it is now in the Adventurers first? or stop production to begin the re-write of the Engineer branch? (Keeping in mind that the Engineering branch still needs the Adventurers branch completed to handle all AI functions)

For those of us that have the design skills of a blind wombat... But still like playing bleeding edge beta testing... We would LOVE it if those of you who are designing and testing the new thruster mechanics with your designs would share!!! It also might help if we had a way to know that your ships are DTW (Directional Thruster Upgraded) by adding in "DTU" to your thread title.

Could hamper this abuse by making ship availability based on Faction standing... or "Reconstruction cost" or BOTH... neutral =100% credit cost (not materials) to rebuild your ship away from where you stored it. (Admired = 25% of credits) Moving a fleet this way would be very costly (or put a timer on, on ship per hour?)

Actually sounds interesting... Since they currently level up, it could be a possibility. I would not expect to see much change in the short run tho, other things that a squeezing louder just now to keep the DEVs focused.

Which is not all that different than current warfare... each of these tech levels... materials as it were... are evolutions, we just get to do this on a very rapid time scale, and can go back down the chart to farm... Imagine taking an M1A1-Abrahms back to WWII just to have fun with the noobs... ;) Take an M4 Sherman to the Crusades... One axiom of war: If it's a fair fight, you are doing it wrong.

My problem with the core concept here in this thread is that the game is supposed to be (as I understand it) an RPG in space. Every other RPG game that I have seen, provides you with combat materials easily and plentifully throughout the game, so you can focus on your adventure. Change out gear as you find upgrades. Eventually as you get a better feel for how you play, design and craft your own weapons. The one thing that I dislike the most about the game is stopping my adventure to tweak my ship... This (to me) is the equivalent of pausing in an adventure to spend 2-3 hours of running your character to a Gym and do workouts, or go to a practice yard, again for a few hours in game, to learn how to use that sword you just picked up... Correct me if I'm wrong here, but as I see the core of your concept... lets put this in a medieval setting: Hello adventurer! I see you want to go fight that Orc! To do that you need to first design your weapon, have you considered which type of grip you want? Ahh lovely choice, now that kind only works with these two types of scabbard, but only works with this blade, and the cross guard you want prevents that from having a scabbard, so you can only use it.... GAHHH! I don't think it even needs to be this complicated. The answer to 'I don't wanna spend all my time designing ships and turrets' is the Steam Workshop. Look at all these games where players are designing things and sharing. Reassembly Space Engineers From the Depths Empyrion While this would require Steam Workshop support (which we want anyways), this is not such a big thing. If the dev slightly changes how templates are done, it should be easy enough to share templates for individual pieces as well, rather than just whole ships. Ok, I start playing a game... don't have a feel for how it works yet, no clue how to design my own weapons, and I should leave the game to browse through other peoples designs, in order to find something I don't know if I will like... .... you lost me. Even EVE didn't go this route. Arguably the steepest learning curve in gaming. Ok... playing devils advocate here... if all of that is implemented, what point is half of the loot that drops? What becomes the reward system? BEING VERY CLEAR... I actually love the thought and detail of the OP. I think it would be a great foundation of a combat system... But the problem here is that in order to implement that HERE, it would require major surgery to the core of this game and change the fundamental dynamic. Having a system you describe might greatly benefit a solid PVP based Space arena combat sim, but here in an adventure/exploration game it's a bit of overkill. -- My key point: This game appeals to me as an RPG in Space. Yes, it has building facets. But I want the explore, collect, improve, paradigm. I, personally, don't want to need to take engineering and design classes just to get to the good stuff... The key to a strong design is focus. Know what you want as a final product and remove what does not strengthen that. Because so much is generated on the fly, your system does not lend itself well to being implemented on the AI ships... these designs require planning and careful combat awareness to benefit from them. Thus, the PVE game would be crippled without a significant re-write to the AI combat routines as well as changing the core structure of the game.

+1

I also saw somewhere that if you bounce repeatedly between empty sectors (8+?) it increases the likelihood of triggering the event.

I like it. Create flavor and require some tactics. Shield Pen not needed in lowbie areas... etc.

I think there is a solution (or the seed of one) to this problem... Make a certain (undervalued) weapon type inherently stronger against shields, with the possibility that it makes them weaker... I.E. All plasma guns do <base> +50% damage to shields with random chance that they weaken (effect: all weapons gain 10% penetration for 10 sec) the target. This has the effect of making you vulnerable, and forces you to prioritize targets better.. and pay attention in case some of your systems have been hit/destroyed. This also encourages more variety of weapons used by players... You can also (for example) make certain weapons useless against shields (just as salvaging lasers are now)... to encourage more tactical approaches (better selection of weapons) This would making farming Pirates all the more interesting... Middle of a fight and a shield crippler catches up to the fight... suddenly you are taking hull damage and you have to re-asses your target priorities, or run like hell...

Targeting card is used for Seeker Missiles... so maybe...

This right here is the core thing for ANYONE that has suggestions to remember: If it can be added or tweaked, it has a chance... If it requires re-work or scrapping old code, the odds are SLIM that it will happen. This game is great, and we all have things/features that we'd love to see in the game. But the Devs have limited time to get this product ready for full launch... and ANYTHING that would threaten that is likely to be summarily dismissed. I, for one, am NOT a fan of the scaling turrets concept. It allows a starter ship to just invest more resources to do more damage... BUT that being said, I'm not the one that has to design balance into the game either... and I trust that the devs will make the right decisions around balance and I am looking forward to whatever they toss our way.

Stats page?

Care to share for those of us not able to locate such scripts?