[Ejection seats for fighter pilots!]

Something like escape pods, that you can pick up afterwards, is planned by the devs :)

that, kinda makes my last suggestion a moot point.

::)fair enough.

[manually set which blocks are tied to specific integrity fields.]

this way people could 'zone' their ships to allow more survivability.

it'd certainly be easier to lose a chunk of a ship in collision than the whole ship.

[suggestion: lifeboats & escape vehicle]

would it be possible to get lifeboats or a way to build an escape vehicle into ships to save the crew? even if it meant the rest of the wreck got blown into smaller parts when these launched, i would like to be able to rescue crews from lost ships.

 

since not only can it be time consuming to get specific crewmen for larger ships, but the time needed to level them up. and from a roleplay aspect it could add another aspect to gameplay of saving ones lost crews.

[adjust captain sallery by crew size?]

this would be reflective of real life too afaik. since the captain of a river barge with 10 crew doesnt earn as much as a liner captain with 200 crew.

[Gameplay, metagame discussion]

unfortunately, the only solution i have seen to half of those issues, is adaptive AI.

and those things are so hard to make that even monopolies like EA fail at it.

 

on top of that, there needs to be enough balanced play/counter-play options for both ai and players to use.

 

the other half is in the persistence in quiet sectors the devs are working on now.

since then you will be able to build your own stations and claim territory. giving value to early sectors.

adjusting the costs of materials would also help, since if its easy to spam titanium/iron ships but costly to mate single ships of high tier mats, then establishing and maintaining mining claims in early sectors wold by more important.

[jump destabiliser stations.]

jump inhibitor stations would be, a station, that reduces jump range of untrusted ships in its sector radius. a type of strategic military station that would allow player and npc factions to prevent enemy fleets jumping straight past defences.

 

not like the ship types that prevent jumping altogether though.

[weapon balancing suggestion(from concern)]

Yes, a very difficult task, that will most likely never be achieved fully without crippling the game (which we won't do). But we can at least try.

i hope i can help with ideas, even if i cant do anything on a technical level.

different perspectives etc.

 

thats the thing with any multi-player game. people found a way to 'pvp' even in nationstates.

and even if a game is just single player, it kills replayability if you figure out the win button.

 

pvp balancing how O.o we can make ships the size of small stars...

quantity has a quality of its own. while one big ship could be crippling to the sector its in, its not going to be guarding its supply chain. which a player with a fleet could take advantage of.

not to mention, AI fleets in future may not take too kindly to having a deathstar on their border.

 

the ability to build 'limpet' type small ships that land on big ships hulls and eat them with salvage lasers could be devastating to a ship that had any blindspots in weapon coverage. there is already a foundation of an rts mode in the game to support such actions.

 

though i havnt played it, i have been told that in X3 the npc factions would build up fleets to try and match other factions. on their border.

[The Nav-Computer is calculating jump route, standby...]

my solution to this is to plan my next jump the moment i arrive.

ymmv though, since i dont tend to jump to systems i cant see an object in on sensors.

[types of captain(for ai)]

those sound good too.

just couldnt think of other ones when posting earlier.

 

and you are right about the civilian COs too!

--light miner comander: prefers smaller rocks, runs away from enemies

--heavy miner commander: flies right to the biggest rock it can see and parks beside it

--miner, retired military: knows how to use armed turrets(+2 armed turrets)

[other stats for weapon balance]

though im guessing they might already be there as a soft stat of some sort, could these be added in a more developed way as stats to be traded against in balancing?

 

--projectile velosity.

higher projectile speed would make long distance targetting of moving targets easier. and its makes sense as a balance stat because it could mean more recoil to throw off aim, or reduce ROF.

 

-- armour penetration.

the ability to damage internal blocks at the cost of lower damage to the first thing hit is a pretty old balance trick in games. and also applies to real life, since a faster AP round could go clean through a target creating 2 holes and doing nothing else.

 

-- AOE.

even in ww2 small(er) calliber shells could be set to detonate at a curtain range, having "flack aoe" as a trait or stat could be applied to more weapons

 

-- point defence.

this trait could allow a weapon to switch to a higher rof or wider spread at close range targets, at the cost of lowering other stats.

depending on how or if armour negates any damage if could add more depth to maneuvering in a fight.

[weapon balancing suggestion(from concern)]

im slightly worried that the way turrets work here are going to end up very mmorpg in nature. ie, an utter complete failure of any attempt at game balance. where people just go and make "top level uber rare win button" that is just better.

 

would it be possible that the quality levels, while applying greater bonuses as you get higher quality, can only apply those to fewer stats?

hopefully in a way that would make rare or exceptional technically the the strongest. then after that exotic and legendary would be degrees of specialising.

 

i really hope this game can avoid the mmorpg balance issue of "this one just works better, dont bother with the others" making other options a waste of resources.

[Regarding building turrets over found stuff]

Is it possible to find stuff from ship battles that can outdo turret factory stuff? I would hate that found stuff can not come close to built turret stuff. I know they max at exceptional so that's good. I will get a screenshot of this when I'm back home lol.. it's quite a super miner. But it kinda makes hunting down wreck and ship battles pointless if you could never outdo turret factories

while yes you can, the reverse is also true, you CAN manke things in the factories that no drop could compare to.

[suggestion for rifts as a solution for resources]

saw something like this in the steam community forum, thought id repost it here.

i saw people saying they wanted start sector resources to respawn, and i think i saw a dav post saying they didnt want AFK mining because its boring for new players to have no resources to get started with.

 

so what about using rifts? if rifts could/would move through space slowly, possibly forming and being attracted to systems marked as having been mined out, they could be a way of replenishing sectors. the 'tail' end of the rift could even leave bonus resources for players/factions to fight over.

 

anything fixed, like a station or mine would be put into stasis while this happened, reappearing in their sector after the rift passed.

 

i guess something like a massive multi-sector spanning 'nexus' ala that trek movie.

[types of captain(for ai)]

as much as i would like to know a lot more about plans for developing the ai, i also have a suggestion about captains.

 

could different types of "CO" be implemented with different styles of flying?

eg's;

strike ship captain: would keep the main engines at full power making lots of course changes to dodge fire and joust with targets

wing commander: would rely on fighters, keeping the mothership/carrier clear of most enemies.

strike group commander: will organise other ships into formation to focus fire

auxilliary ship commander: will escort friendly ships and support them(im guessing shield and power boost beams will be added along with the hull healing beams.

battleship commander: focusses on winning by maximising firepower/dpm

 

there are likely a whole lot of other 'personalities' that could be created, but these are the ones i could think of at the moment.

[Changes to be made: A message for the Devs]

if you want to stay small then you are going to need many.

though at this point in the early access, the ai is too weak to understand how to use agility to avoid fire, and fleet control is clunky.

 

namely, if you want to be fast and nimble, build yourself a big battleship to get into slugging matches with big guns, and fix you with heal beams while you do the surgical thing in your strike ships.

 

but i do agree with the point about turret numbers. perhaps basing it on turret footprint area? this would let people have many small turrets or fewer small turrets.

[Build Mode suggestions]

--visual progress bar for upgrade slots.

--refit mode> the ability to make blocks invisible so i can work on whats under them, without having to rebuild

--split mode> the ability to visually split the ship apart along its x, y, and/or z axis

[Profanity / swearing / explicit language (I approve^^)]

yer all just prejudiced against british punctuation.

[Ship class? Frigate / Corvette / Battleship?]

the point of classifications in a game like this would be to tell the player some "at a glance" information.

13ths system covers that in a way applicable to this game very well.

giving volume(how big is it?)

tech level(roughly how good are its weapons armour hp?)

its class(whats it called?)

 

answering those 3 in a clear way is very useful, and provides that information more clearly than just a volume list of classes solely named after eve.

 

by all means, have a separate system/subsystem saying what the faction id and intention for the ship is to provide factions with character of their own.

[On Thruster Mechanics]

i know some say its  rude to post ideas like this, but from what i am reading here things seem to be going pear shaped.

please check these ideas i had about thrusters and engines.

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1826.0.html

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1828.0.html

i just hope they help.

[retro-thruster engines + new way of distinguishing thrusters from engines]

mind changed.

not looking forward to testing. :o

[retro-thruster engines + new way of distinguishing thrusters from engines]

yea. saw that, and looking forward to seeing the changes.

but this suggestion covers different aspects to the things getting changed with thruster strength or how its calculated at the moment. or will be after the change.

[about upcoming change to thrusters.]

As for the idea of preventing players from creating thin sheets of Thrusters... Why? What purpose does that serve? With the way thrusters are in the beta branch, we need a larger volume of Thrusters than the volume of ship Engines just to get something that handles better than a flying bathtub made of uranium.

 

The ship I'm designing now has a much larger volume of Thrusters than Engines. Yet, I'm still forced to create these Thrusters in thin sheets in order to have a decent Brake Thrust. Doing it that way comes with a disadvantage, though: Thrusters in the form of X-Y thin sheets have noticeably less Pitch / Yaw / Roll thrust than if the same thruster volume was a single Thruster. (This can be verified by using 'Merge Selected Blocks' to combine them into a single block.)

clearly, FrOm WhAt im ReAdIng ;), its not working then.

 

its not a matter of "preventing", its a matter of having a system that means its not needed to do something as counter intuitive as as having layers of thin thrusters blowing through each other to create more thrust than if you hit merge to create a single block.

 

P.S.: I'm thinking that those of us who spend a lot of time designing ships will tend to get tired of having to redesign them every time the way Thrusters or Engines work is radically changed.

this is early access/open beta. the point is for players to find and respond to things so they can be changed to be better in the actual release.

kinda missing the whole point if you are arguing against changes during a period dedicated to finding and changing things.

[How to Make Tiny Ship Cores & Upgrade Your Ships Materials.]

to shrink the core, order a small ship from the shipyard. they come with smaller cores.

[The problem with crew salary]

i figured the crew pay system fills the role of preventing people breaking the economy by building up ludicrous funds that they can manipulate everything with.

as happens on mmo games.

 

also, you wont be backsliding with what i said. temporarily inconvenienced from progressing when you want to do something again, sure, but nothing about it will force you to sell off or scuttle ships & stations due to crew costs.

 

and even then, the loot you could/would pick up from casually wondering the galaxy for a few days wound likely by worth millions

[How far can ships being piloted by a captain jump with you?]

switching ship and re-ordering follow/escort for each jump.

if it has low power generation compared to usage it will take a longer time to recover jump power after it drains the stored power for the first jump.