Ohm is Futile

But turrets are fixed to the ship. They don't float on the hull. What do you think happens to the turret of a tank when it turns?! It turns with the tank. The only way a turret will keep facing the same direction is if its traverse speed is the same or higher than the rotation of the tank. In order to keep pointing the same way, the turret will need to rotate in the opposite direction at the same speed. But turrets are not tiny ships, they are very much attached. The gun is not floating on its mount, there are motors and gears pushing it and keeping it in place. Of course the ship's movements will affect the turrets that are bolted on it, even if you don't lock the mount. How do you think the gun holds on the turret? Dark magic?

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2236.0.html

Inertia 1. a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. "the bureaucratic inertia of government" synonyms: inactivity, inaction, inertness; More 2. PHYSICS a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force. Until proven different, turrets are part of ships. One could make a case about barrels being flung around based on the power of the motors, but it makes no sense. In real life, if I stick my arm out the window of a car and the car turns, so will my arm (unless it happens very suddenly and I'm not strapped into the car). Turrets actually do not track at infinite speeds. If they did, you could take the starter mining drone and whip by an asteroid, so long as your turrets have line of sight on that asteroid and you can keep you mouse pointed on it, it would fire... but they don't fire. They stop and rotate. Quickly, mind you, but it's not infinite. I'll agree that targeting is not perfect, but I otherwise don't think I understand what you're trying to say. A modern tank is able to move its barrel in both directions at the same time. Not sure what your point is. Yeah, targeting is not perfect and yeah we could have more options for our energy expenditures, although there are power options for which systems drain first and... you know... YOU can let go of the trigger button or decide to hold it to finish an enemy off. As for range, mods could do that, maybe Koonschi will do it in the future. In the meantine, you can approximate the range difference between ship center to ship center by actually keeping in the mind the position of your turrets and your relative ship size.

All you need is ships built with the new system in mind. If anything, you can make nearly everything more agile using the new directional thrusters... Plus, you can also enable the retrograde marker in the options and actually use your forwards thrust to brake, in case you feel like you can't brake fast enough. Besides the changes to the individual blocks (thus requiring ship redesign), it should feel mostly like it did before. ???

Yeah, except thruster placement matters. @MrVorgra Yeah, but we already don't use fuel anyway, so gyro or thruster consuming electricity... result's the same.

I'm not even going to get into that anymore. Here are my comments on the actual suggestions: The initial idea was practically From the Depths, Avorion Edition. If you have played FtD, you know it's not exactly a game where building gets done quickly, not to mention that tweaking things, especially weapons, is not an insignificant task since things work off the number of blocks attached to specific components along with adjacency requirements/bonuses. It is quite complicated. Then we have the "planet explorers" suggestion, which is basically just picking and scaling a defined and limited set of components. Ok. That works, but it's essentially the same idea as having models and tweaking what goes into the turret using sliders and checkboxes, except it's done visually. Then you slap the turret on your ship. I'm all for that. Relatively simple and gives people control over what their ships are using. Then we have the chimera of both, at least from what I understand, which is represented by Zippy's graphic. This is worse, in my opinion, than the planet explorers' idea, because you still need to account for your weapons in your ship design, which compounds complexity when designing. In turn, that means you need to plan more and, more than likely, need to spend a fair bit more time building your ship/weapon(s). Given it sounds like you're mostly scaling a predetermined set of components, like the previous suggestion, it's still better than going full FtD, but still fairly complicated compared to the current system. The reason I'm criticizing those ideas so much is that, from what I Koonschi posted, I think he means for this game to be relatively simple and to allow for creativity. I don't think increasing complexity is within his vision and part of the reason I love this game, personally, is also because it's both simple and creative. Then we have my idea(s), one of which being very similar to the "planet explorers" option, except I went for a more UI-oriented approach. I do, however, recognize the merit of a more visual approach that choosing between a set of blocks and choosing their size may be more intuitive, so yeah, good idea there in my opinion. My other idea is to stick closer to the current system: instead of building your own turrets, you reverse engineer turrets you find through drops (or from upgrades using research stations). Doing that basically destroys the turret and puts a basic blueprint in a menu similar to ship designs (so you can erase turret blueprints you don't want anymore to avoid cluttering the UI). Then, you could visit a turret factory and spend materials/credits to build turrets based on the blueprints you have. Optionally, you may be able to alter the basic stats of the turret to a degree depending on the initial stats of the reverse-engineered turret.

Well, obviously. I also agree with the points Weylin just brought forward.

I see your point, although I'm not sure how feasible it is to deny access to higher tier materials given the size of the galaxy. The one thing I'm not sure about is how do you scale difficulty if you have all the materials available everywhere? Sure the density for each material is going to be different, but still. Even if you re-arrange how materials behave and in what ratios you need them, how do you difficulty?

There are only so many variables you want/need people to have access to. Also, KSP suffering from this? With some mods maybe, otherwise I disagree. 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. Yeah, but for most part we have two to three lines of cosmetic blocks whose sole function is to armor/shape things the way you'd like. Then we are left with very few functional blocks, most of which are only affected by volume and impact a single, easily-understood variable. Turret design would add a significant number of functional blocks, not to mention force players to go through that process. This is something you point out later yourself, is remedied by shipyards, a solution which isn't available for turrets (but could be I suppose). Allowing players to involve themselves in either the adventuring or the engineering to the degree that they want is clearly the right idea. Indeed, this is an instance of one of the principles that you'll find in all of the good 4X games - make the complexity optional. Some players will dig in, and some won't. That's OK. Even for the ones that dig in, the learning curve is made shallower by not forcing them to learn everything all at once. Agreed on that. 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. I am also of the opinion that templates and prefabbed would be better than implementing a complete, block-by-block crafting system.

Interesting ideas for future content. Also, an anomaly could be used to give players a "safe" zone where no NPCs spawn and so on so they can edit their ships and whatnot. +1

Only regarding weapons/turrets: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2236.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1292.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1811.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2035.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2219.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1830.0.html This is a different topic of its own. http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1797.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2235.0.html http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2062.0.html ...but to answer you anyway: Inertia: except turrets are part of the ship and rotating the ship should affect turrets. I believe what you mean is tracking speed. It's being discussed elsewhere and is a possibility to balance turrets vs ship size which I think has some potential. Second suggestion: probably the realm of mods. Third suggestion: yes, agreed, better controls and control over thruster behaviour (namely auto-brakes) would be nice. Again, being discussed elsewhere...

Easier yet would be to tag ships/threads with the last version they were updated for.

Wait, what? I mean, I kinda see your point, but I think specialization should factor in to this. A speedy glass cannon with high DPS/Alpha should be able to destroy/severely dent a bigger ship (depending on proportions, obviously) that is built to sit there and whack other large, slow ships.

The one thing I thought you were considering when you first posted that is the retro-compatibility of those designs... Not sure how the game reacts if you're trying to load in plans with the directional thrusters in a version that doesn't support them. But good point either way.

The problem is that, currently, there is little incentive to build ships with superior profiles or ships that can somehow exploit speed and/or positioning in combat, because those values are rendered moot by mostly linear scaling of everything and turret accuracy. So yeah, in that sense, moar HP and moar DPS is really all it boils down to. I just don't think the problem really stems from shield implementation.

Except that's a fairly large project, development-wise afaik. You're creating two very different game modes. Haha, yeah, I see where you're coming from. I still think offering different models and creating an interface to balance what goes into the weapon in the form of sliders and increasing/decreasing cost proportionally to scale and performance would be the best of both worlds. Then you could hit the workshop for different models, but you still get to customize the functionality of the turret without the time investment that placing individual blocks requires. Perhaps even building upon the current system, one could reverse engineer a dropped turret, be given a certain degree of freedom to tweak the stats and make a blueprint out of it to be reproduced in a turret factory. That doesn't rule out the current system, allows players to just build a funky mess of RNG-dropped turrets for quick and dirty upgrades, but gives an option to OCD designers with limited time, like me, and also caters at least partially to the more radical ones with more time on their hands.

There's a mod currently that kinda allows this (minus ship storage), but I can see why people would want that in the stock game. +1

Agreed on the indicators and also agreed on being able to turn off the braking thrust when you're not providing any input.

I did a very rough cal based on the volume stat it shows when adding (as I had to remove and rotate many of them to directional thrusters), and it was approx 10% of volume, definitly not 10% of mass though, There is quite a lot, they just arn't visible in the picture, the ship itself is pseudo hollow which has allowed some pretty darn decent sized directional thrusters, and yes those ones in the center (which although look the largest are infact the smaller portion of thrusters) are sort of redundent, however they did supposedly add to the rotation, and I already had them there so why the fuck not. But yes, I'm not after gyros to become my source of rotation speed, but to supplement my current use of directional thrusters, and I don't really see the need to strafe in large ships due to my ability to tank, and due to there being no added benefit to fixing weapons into a certain direction. I feel it would be a nice addition to players ships Center of Mass, another design factor we can use to build our ships around. Hmm. One thing you can do and might already be doing is focusing on two axis rather than three. Specifically, if you ship can roll, it doesn't matter as much if either pitch or yaw is bad as long as one is good enough, because then all you need to do is roll like a plane to maneuver. Anyways, generally speaking, I tend to prefer to have fewer blocks with more applications than the opposite. In that sense, I feel that gyros are unnecessary. However, I can see the purpose in making aesthetically pleasing designs a bit more maneuverable without having to concern oneself with thruster placement as much. Then again, it's hard to judge whether or not your ship should be able to turn/accelerate better. The problem is that with different materials comes different densities and as such you need to adjust thruster volume to ship mass rather than comparing volume to volume or mass to mass since thrusters don't perform better with higher tier materials. None of them are hidden, obviously they are hidden in the picture due to the boxes everywhere. I meant to place more inside the hull, just not all of them. That way your ship has visible thrusters, but has extra thrust coming from concealed thrusters. Hopefully, that allows you to reach your functionality thresholds and retain the aesthetics.

I like the suggestion, although it introduces a potential abuse: moving a large number of ships across the galaxy by using a single ship with the ability to jump long distances. Stick your fleet in a dock, jump across the world yourself, and poof you've got a fleet halfway around the galaxy in a few jumps despite only one ship being designed for quick travel.

Not entirely unrelated: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2108.msg10836.html#msg10836 Also agreed about YouTube and names appearing everywhere, not desirable.

I like your vision of covered blocks and I also share your opinion that gyros are largely unneeded.

And there goes that manufacturability I was talking about. You are right, there are possible simplifications to this system, although your version would actually result in less variability in weapons and tactics. Using a modifier block system actually can make things easier on the devs, so they don't have to implement so many different weapon blocks to achieve sufficient customizability for each player. From the reviews of From the Depths on Steam: I will also point out the weapons system in Starmade, which is not far off from what I am suggesting. I haven't heard any complaints about that system, aside from the fact that it is poorly documented. Except this is Avorion, and not Starmade nor From the Depths. I don't think Koonschi wants to make a clone of any of those two games, though I'll agree that having an official statement on what the vision is for weapons would be useful. Anyways, that said, the current appeal of the game, to me (and Koonschi has stated that he wants this), is the relative simplicity of the creative process. In other words, being able to place blocks anywhere, being able to hide blocks, etc. Turrets built from adjacency bonuses, tiny bit by tiny bit goes against that grain. Also, it's not because a steep learning curve becomes second nature according to some reviews you quote that the process becomes faster. Going the FtD route will turn off a large number of players and cater only to a much narrower audience, I would think. Finally, I'll have to agree with GrimJahk, stopping my gameplay to upgrade my stuff is boring. I love to design stuff, but I also love that it doesn't take me days of work to create something nice and functional. I also enjoy actually playing. Your suggestion goes against that grain, too. Then don't. Well, isn't that helpful in a conversation. 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. Except then you're back to square one, since you're basically using turrets that are not made for your ship. Finding something specific on the workshops can be a problem in and of itself, not to mention the disappointment of not making your own stuff/not really understanding the mechanics... and it also seems to stray from Koonschi's vision of simplicity, in my opinion. It looks like you might want to take your own advice, and actually read the posts you're replying to. I made a new thread because I felt that this was a new suggestion. I didn't want it to sound like it was a modification of an existing suggestion, because it isn't. I considered what I had read, and, most importantly, I considered all of my experiences with other games that have gotten this wrong before, and proposed what I thought was the most sensible suggestion I could come up with. Guilty as charged, I missed that bit and skimmed, because I felt I understood the gist of your suggestion from that and because words. Bad habit of mine, I'll concede, still feel the same way after reading more thoroughly, though. Despite having read those other topics, you still created a new thread when there's an active one that's quite similar: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1292.0.html That thread has references to a system using blocks/sub-blocks to create turrets piece by piece. The truth is that I reacted the way I did precisely because I feel this ties in to that thread. Perhaps I need to read more in-depth, but I don't share your feelings that your suggestion is all that different from stuff mentioned in there. Anyways, I guess I'll try moderating myself since I'm not a moderator myself to be handing out that kind of comment.

I was hinting that people should probably make an effort to read other threads before posting. I did that with my own idea and still got told someone had said something about this before, which is fine, in my opinion. It is good that people are pointing out the issues with weapon/turret balance, too, it's just that it's all over the forums, so why not consider what other people suggested, first? Why not give your opinion? Why single out your idea and not consider potential issues that may have already been raised by other people about similar ideas? I am here precisely to try and give my two cents on how to improve this game. That other people feel the same is not a problem either. The problem is that people go around creating a new thread every time their idea is slightly different from someone else's and I think that is a bit concerning because then we are only throwing a million different iterations of similar ideas at Koonschi without a dialog, without analysis. That concerns me. I don't want the suggestions board to look like a meaningless dump for the dev/mods. I suppose I shouldn't concern myself with that, moderator domain. I'm just too passionate about this game, I treat it almost like it's my own. Back on topic, I'll agree that I'd like some kind of system to standardize turrets or at least have a bit of control over what I can use. I still think designing custom turrets block by block is a bad idea, no matter the implementation. Blueprinting existing turrets and having them "copied" at a turret factory seems like a more elegant fix.

You can check in more depth what I think about gyros here, but... http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2062.msg11435.html#msg11435 I know how gorgeous that ship is, but you do seem to have a fair amount of thrusters closer to the center of mass than they need to be. Even trying to guesstimate the proportion of thruster volume to everything else volume, it feels like it's not that big of a percentage of your ship. So don't hide all of them? Also, did you switch some thrusters to directional thrusters? Well placed, they will do a lot more for your ship than the regular ones can ever hope to accomplish. I agree that some ratios feel off. Rotation and max velocity vs forwards thrust come to mind, although the latter seems okay judging by the screenshot(but it's also true that we have no idea how much volume is spent on engines). OH! Ooooh~ Oh, I know, use the cannons to steer!