Ohm is Futile

March 2, 2017

building turrets always get messy, so no block based turret building. sure they look better and cover a multitude more of roles that way, but look at from the depth and starmade: there you spend hours building and you never get to the part where you enjoy the game.

the current system for turret is fine. if anything they could add weapon blocks - unturretted blocks that fire in a specific direction, dps based on volume, so that people could tune the weapon they have without getting messy with details.

anything that touches the topic of sub-entities, docking, self collision, hp-pool etc really kills accessibility

I tend to agree with you, though, I have to admit that I very much understand the appeal of "moar customization!"

I'm a dreamer, but I'm also a filthy casual in terms of play time and a block-by-block system would essentially keep me from playing the game.

Frankly I think building turrets like we do with ship blocks. Have basic building blocks for the turrets and then in ships system you can slot new turret system cards for various effects and damage and range and etc.

I see your point, as much as I would love to go on crazy theory crafting tangents to create custom weapons and try them out, the added complexity and time investment would also kill it for me.

Anyways, as I said, I don't intend to start a debate, I'm just curious of people's opinion on the matter and I have to say that I'm surprised by how one-sided the poll is right now. It doesn't seem to reflect the debate that's been going on around turrets. It's still early, though.

March 1, 2017

I'll admit, I usually turn safe mode off because it stops me from deleting certain blocks and I often leave it off after that. I guess I should test safe mode more, although I've found it fairly annoying so far because it also prevents deleting certain blocks although they wouldn't result in the ship's destruction.

I also use creative mode extensively, but crew is still a problem in creative mode as you simply cannot tell how a ship will perform mobility-wise without crewing at least the engineering department.

The greatest issue outside of creative has been to simply upgrade a ship to another material through copying and pasting the design and selecting a different template material simply because you need to remove the old useless copy. It's kind of annoying to switch game mode just for that, although given how frustrating this issue can be, it's certainly better than losing campaign progress.

March 1, 2017

Meh, I name my ships like this:

XYZ-### Name

XYZ is an acronym for the series the ship belongs to, which has to do with the purpose it was designed for.

### are numbers, with the first number distinguishing between different ships of the same series. Higher numbers are larger ships. The second number reflects major changes to an existing hull, it's still the same ship, but quite different. The last number is for smaller modifications, upgrades and such.

And then the name. Usually I'll pick a word category and go in order of "strength of the symbol". For example, my speedy combat ships are named Gale, Storm and Hurricane, in that order. The first number is also 1XX, 2XX and 3XX, with XX changing with regards to changes, upgrades, or major updates.

I sometimes add A, B, C, etc, after the numbers for what I'd call "sidegrades" or basically different options which can't necessarily be considered upgrades from each other.

March 1, 2017

Major wow. Build more. We'll find a way to finance you if we must, right? right people?

March 1, 2017

[...]

couldnt it be simplified?
game spawns x number of ships,

expecting them to take x amount of time to kill,

you beat them in 20% of that time,

game spawns next wave of ships with counters to specific weapon types.

the foundation of this seems to already be there in avorion with the holo/shiny/armour vs plasma/laser/kinetic.

no idea if they are used that way yet though.

[...]

is my idea of an adaptive system possible? if not i know to drop it and try to think of something else.

The problems are:

- With an adaptive system, the player may not feel like he or she is progressing in the game. This can be very boring.

- What do you base your adaptations on? If the player upgrades his ship and enemies scale with that upgrade, what happens to ships that were already generated? Everything in the system but the player gets wiped out by the next Xsotan attack?

- What if the player uses captains to command smaller ships and whatnot? Do things scale only based upon the player-controlled ship? The sum of his assets? What if the player leaves some ships behind, does the scale change?

- What if the player has a huge freighter with little weaponry? Do enemies scale off his volume? His mass? His omicrons? If the player has a tiny ship with lots of good weapons, do enemies scale off his volume/mass/omicrons?

It's impossible to work with. You have to stick with more radical options, such as a difficulty slider and such. You can implement variety in combat styles, though. This can create a different challenge for the player as one ship design may be suitable for one situation, but not another, even if the baseline difficulty is the same as right now.

March 1, 2017

Probably a lot of people would benefit. Also a word about how placing thrusters further from the center of mass will result in greater rotation speeds, ton for ton.

There's a lot that would benefit from being explained, better, but then again, the game is actively being worked on and things will change.

March 1, 2017

Basically what the titles says. Happens to me fairly often when I want to create a new design around an existing ship to avoid losing my crew (which then dies, because the ship is considered destroyed).

You go about your business, making dysfunctional cool-looking stuff or making very functional crappy-looking things and you decide you don't want this big chunk anymore, so you use the box selection tool and delete a bunch of blocks and *POOF* your ship has been destroyed, you have been kicked out of build mode and you respawn, losing all your stuff. Removing stuff a few blocks at a time doesn't seem to help. I've tried taking apart the bits I don't want anymore in smaller chunks and it gets very unpredictable as to whats an acceptable removal or what results in your ship being destroyed.

Note: I never removed all the blocks. It also happens even if there is technically more mass/volume left than I am removing at one time.

I'm not sure what causes it, perhaps the game considers the ship has lost more than its total pool of HP, but then when is the pool of HP calculated? When you enter build mode? When you add blocks? Once every X ticks?

It's weird and very frustrating when it happens.

March 1, 2017

My concern is actually that there isn't going to be a benefit to it unless it's quite volume/efficient, in which case it becomes hard to balance in the sense that "why wouldn't I install a cloak on my ship?"

If it's not very volume-efficient, then is it going to be viable? For fighting, what's stopping me from pointing my turrets at where the shots are coming from and wrecking you because you don't have as much shield/armor because you spent X amount of volume on cloaking. Even if I don't see you, I could shoot you, so what's the point anyway?

I can't figure out a whole lot of other reasons why you'd wanna cloak and how it would make the game more interesting. Perhaps with a high alpha/range weapon setup and a highly mobile ship you could uncloak, volley a ship, cloak and move to a new position to fire again and thus avoid return fire against ships with low range/sensor power. It's about the only possibility I see.

March 1, 2017

Alright, first, I'd like to point out that apparently Koonschi has decided to work on turret blueprints. Details are unknown as far as I know, correct me below if I'm wrong.

Second, this does not aim to be a debate, but rather a poll to know where people stand. There is an active and detailed debate here: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2236.0.html

This is simply what I gathered from weeks of reading posts about turrets. This way people know, at least in terms of concepts, what has already been proposed. This avoids repetition and allows people to give their opinion without having to read half a dozen threads and probably close to a hundred posts.

Details about each options:

Option #1

Diablo-like, A-RPG style mechanics similar to what is already in-game. Basically, voting for this would be the same as saying that you like hunting for equipment and turrets and would prefer to do away with any crafting mechanics.

Option #2

For convenience and aesthetics, you would like to be able to choose at least how your turrets look by designing empty shells block by block or through picking a model within a list (list could be expandable through modding and such). Placing these designs would allow you to drag and drop the current RNG-generated turrets into them so that they have those properties, but look better or fit with your ship's style and looks. This could also be dumbed down to placing ghost images of turrets and having an interface to quickly drag and drop turrets onto those ghost images for quality of life regarding changing your loadout.

Option #3

This option is essentially what we currently have, with or without tweaks such as "blueprinting" turrets to reproduce RNG-generated turrets at turret factories, having the ability to place ghost blocks that generate slots to drag and drop turrets for easier placement/replacement or rebalancing the current drop/crafting system.

Option #4

Turrets would still be separate entities from ships that you can slap on surfaces, but you would have an interface/build mode similar to what we have for ships. Block placement/stats/volume would dictate the stats and then you could put them on your ship for a credit and material cost. The game would need another procedural generation script to outfit NPC ships and to sell pre-made turrets/designs at equipment docks.

Option #5

Merge ship building and turret building. You get weapon blocks that affect how it will behave. The best way to illustrate that is to look at "From the Depths". You can go from making the core of your ship a weapon that fires directly forward to anywhere like small turrets with custom firing arcs, range, ammo, damage, fire rate, etc. The would also need another/a new procedural generation script to outfit NPC ships.

Again, not posting this to create a debate or discuss details of how to implement each option, but I'm curious as to what our local forum dwellers would prefer.

I set the poll to run for a week starting now (March 1st) and set it to one vote max. You can view results after voting, I don't want current results to skew your opinion. Be careful, I did not allow to change options.

March 1, 2017

Even when upping HP and DPS of enemy ships, there will always be one problem remaining: You build your own ship. You define how beefy your ship is. This means you also define how long you can take enemy fire, and that means that there is no possible buff to enemy DPS or HP that will make you happy long-term.

If I up the DPS by 500%, you can just build a ship that has 5 times more HP and we're in the same situation again.

If I up the HP of enemies by 400% combat will take a lot longer and will be extremely boring if you don't have enough firepower, but enough HP.

I'd rather add other, more meaningful changes to the game combat. I've got some changes to shields in mind, as well as changes to weapons that can penetrate shields or disable ships (including yours) or parts of them. These are just thoughts, not promises.

Agree 100%.

Something that would be nice would be new procedural generation patterns for ships to produce ships with specific qualities and new AIs to take advantage of these qualities, creating diversity and new possibilities beyond bigger = better.

March 1, 2017

1. ...or shift-click or anything, but yeah an option to "quick-move" items would be good, agreed.

2. It's possible by placing edges back to back. Although, since edges are a thing, I would imagine that diagonals would be possible, at least graphically. That would open more aesthetic options.

3. It's because scaling happens in two directions, which can put objects at half values and make matching them more difficult. It gets better when you start building from higher scale blocks.

4. Stick a pole block, then it works pretty nice. The issue I have though is that sometimes your ship destroy themselves in building mode when you remove too many blocks. Very, very annoying.

5. Turn off "safe mode". Place a block. Remove source block. Save your new base if you want, then you can apply that plan whenever you build a new ship.

March 1, 2017

Sounds good and fun in theory, how do you balance it in practice?

You already have to spend significant amounts of volume on generators, engines, thrusters, shields, etc. How do you balance cloak blocks so that they are both practical, but not overpowered in terms of volume/efficiency?

As for the little tidbit on sensors providing a boost to scan/map radar range, I think that's already planned.

March 1, 2017

I am quite impressed by your ability to produce ships with such details and such practical stats. Those are gorgeous, realistically-sized and priced. Love what you did to mount turrets, too. Much impressed. One caveat, though, that braking thrust, *takei voice* oh my...

I mean, yeah, you can turn the ship around and use your forwards thrust to brake, but with such high top speeds and only above-average yaw/pitch stats... It must be quite the art to utilize that speed and not drift to hell and back when trying to dock... or perhaps I'm just too lazy and need to learn to fly.

Absolutely pleasing to look at though.

March 1, 2017

Slew of updates: Check out the new AMR series for all your trading in dangerous space needs, an upgrade for the Nomad and a new SW design, the Hurricane, a fast 6-system bare sleek military hull!

Check it out in the original post.

Screenshots:

February 28, 2017

I like your idea. You still increase profit as cargo capacity increases, but the reduced margin per item makes it less crazy.

...and let's be honest, money can buy you just about anything in this game. I've dabbled with trading and made millions upon millions very early in my game and with little effort.

When background simulations hit for player-empty sectors, this kind of fix would be nice I think. It's not entirely related, but I'd like to add that perhaps a "better" script for procedural generation of stations, especially trading outposts and factories would be nice. Right now it's kind of hit or miss with regards to resource availability in the sense that there is very little logic, at least ostensibly, to where which factory is spawned and finding routes can either be laughably easy or an absolute nightmare.

February 27, 2017

1. Didn't know about that limit, does sound a bit limitative.

4. Yeah, and/or make the Xsotan/pirate attacks less frequent. As it is, I've had Xsotan and pirates chain attack sectors for a fair amount of time even when still near-ish the starting sectors.

5. Agreed that jumping takes a fair bit of time. I don't find it that annoying when you're actually doing something in the sectors you are visiting, but exploration becomes rather painful when you have to wait a fair bit after something you cannot influence. Hyperspace cooldown can be improved though, so no complaint there.

6. That was how it was meant to be, although maybe not exactly to that scale, but Koonschi did want larger ships to "feel" slower.

8. Good idea with being able to buy some colors. Not sure I agree on vibrant, though. I find it hard to paint something and not have it look like some kid had a go at it with crayons. I'd actually like some colors with toned-down contrast and/or chrome effects and such.

10. More better, yes!

11. Sure, why not...

February 25, 2017

Gyro

- Still trying to figure them out, you need enormous amounts of gyros to ad even .01 rads to the vessel I was testing it on (which massed 0.43Mt) so it could be they are meant for smaller or even larger vessels.

I like the ability to disable/Enable systems, I feel as though the inertial dampeners should seperate flight assist, that way you could disable flight assist yet still have the ability to cancel out the last few .0Xm/s of velocity when needed.

Or a numerical Speedometer so we can more easily manually stop the vessel.

Agreed on the speedometer.

Can't wait to try out turning off the autothrusters. All I did was hop on to see if my ships showed a reduction in rotational power, which they didn't.

As for gyros, didn't test, but I'm going to hazard a quick guess:

It's either: a UI glitch (like directional thrusters mistakenly reporting thrust in directions they can't impact, my money is on this option) or they aren't quite balanced yet due to it being a new block with a new mechanic or it's indeed underpowered. (...or you aren't using enough?)

February 24, 2017

How do you tell what your lateral thrust is?

Numerically you can't... That's why I pointed we need those stats.

You know, you can hold left shift and mouse over your own ship to select it. That will show the velocity value, you can then look at that from a complete stop and also compare it to the top bar to see how it measures up with your max velocity.

It's not perfect, but it does provide a numerical estimate.

February 24, 2017

Ohm Industries' quick reference catalog:

EC series: jack-of-all-trades
EC-301: 5 Slots (121,581$ - 16,810 Titanium 2584 Naonite)
EC-302: 5 Slots (158,550$ - 16,894 Titanium 6774 Naonite)
EC-303: 5 Slots (217,857$ - 25,121 Trinium)
======================================
SW series: speedy combat ships
SW-112A: 3 Slots (29,486$ - 3,844 Titanium 1056 Naonite)
SW-112B: 3 Slots (27,361$ - 3,844 Titanium 792 Naonite)
SW-113: 3 Slots (38,066$ - 4,900 Trinium )

SW-201: 6 Slots (545,107$ - 26,320 Titanium 46,880 Nanonite)
SW-202: 6 Slots (678,687$ - 73,700 Trinium)
======================================
AMR series: multi-role
AMR-101: 5 Slots (282,983$ - 14,353 Naonite 17,305 Trinium)
AMR-112: 5 Slots (441,714$ - 14,916 Naonite 33,724 Trinium)
AMR-113: 5 Slots (506,702$ - 25,728 Trinium 22,912 Xanion)

AMR-201: 7 Slots (2,485,351$ - 43,673 Iron 246,088 Trinium)

Orignal post@FreddyAVO: There's a link between the individual models and the pictures. They don't work?

February 23, 2017

-3.141592⁰

February 23, 2017

- At this point you will probably have a ship that accelerates and breaks as you like and rotates as you like, that spends globally less volume on maneuver related blocks... Finished? NO!!!!. If you have been abusing Directional Thrusters (as you should... :) ) you will realize your ship barely strafes at all, which is very important not only for combat but to not having to perform too many main thrust rotations when travelling. Well, you have 2 options: Spend dedicated directional thrusters perfectly aligned to the CoM (so they do not change your rotations) or convert some of the direction thrusters on the "corners" of your ship to omnithrusters that give better overal result when you are concerned about lateral thrust (remember that omnithrusters "waste" some thrust on break thrust, so compensate for this by going for 1/3 ratio when "balancing" engines thrust versus break thrust in the first step).

I really doubt balancing matters when you want to strafe. I've never had my ship rotate itself unless I was specifically inputting something that generates yaw. In fact, I would strongly suggest to put your strafing thrusters away from CoM so that they can double up as yawing(and/or pitching/rolling) thrusters.

Also, my own personal tip is to break up thrusters that are near the CoM into smaller pieces that don't cut across the CoM. This also increases rotation potential. The only downside is that you have a lot of smaller, weaker pieces around your ship then.

February 23, 2017

Ohm Industries is proud to present its first line of designs.

To be sure you are selecting the appropriate product for your needs, be sure to pay attention to the specs of each schematic and, for quick reference, look for the following tags to help you decide:

[spoiler=explaining letter codes]U - Designates a hull which has internal space and/or is made of a single material, convenient for upgrades.

U - Designates a hull which may have a little bit of internal space or is made of a single material and could be upgraded with some effort.

U - Designates a hull which would likely require severe disassembly and reassembly to be upgraded.

C - Designates a hull which was designed for combat.

C - Designates a hull which is combat-capable, but not ideal or designed specifically for that purpose.

C - Designates a hull which is not meant for combat.

For more information, please read the design purposes for each line of ships.

Quick buyer's guide: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2306.msg12133.html#msg12133

Dropbox folder containing all the ships: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cxdofu2fyztd2tx/AABe2DgFRfNUeC1ghItcZKlya?dl=0

News: New ship and models in the AMR series! Check out the new Rhino!

===========================================

Exploration and Commerce series. (EC)

This series was meant for new captains to use as a series of stepping stones to carry them and their dreams further with each iteration. The main features are their low cost, quick flight capabilities, decent generators and, for bigger models, their cargo capacity.

EC-1XX Pioneer

U C

The Pioneer is the first and smallest ship of the EC series. It features no cargo bay, but it is ultra cheap!

[spoiler=pictures and xml]

Model information:

EC-101: Dirt cheap! Made exclusively from iron.

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