leto

Nice work on the retriever. I was thinking about doing the ORE line of ships too, since their geometry would be pretty compatible with the voxel system. Skiff => Procurer => Retriever => Covetor => Mackinaw => Hulk Could do the Orca and Rorqual as well. Caldari and Minmatar ships would also be on the list...All of their geometry would be easy to adapt... Caracal / Ferox / Drake / Raven / Rokh (Use armor plates for faction versions / camo :D) Stabber / Cyclone / Hurricane/ Tempest / Typhoon...not sure if maelstrom would be doable, but it might with some creativity... If you reaaaaly had some time on your hands...could do the Wyvern, Chimera, Nidhougger and Naglfar... *rubs hands together*

High hopes for this game's future...Quite enjoyed my 100+ hours. (For the most part) Felt compelled to post feedback. There may also be things on the wishlist that are in the beta...though I've not played it, and mechanics tend to change alot in alphas and betas. Will be sticking to my initial impression of the 0.10.2.r7448 release....for what it's worth. I also understand mods. "Play it the way you want, with mods!" This is actually really great. Though I suck at modding... I am, and will be, on the lookout for mods that can address the issues I might have. (I use the oos mod which improves the player-station interaction ALOT...so yeah, I like mods) What I liked Expansiveness : The universe feels very vast, my options also seem very wide as to my overall path and strategy to the core Shipbuilding : Felt slightly finicky at first, but quite good, and quite fun. Lots of options, and fun to see what you can make with blocks Weapon / Module Selection : Pretty wide, with a vast array of ways to customize my ship, including fighters! (derpy, but awesome) Procedurally generated systems, ships, etc... Always seeing new things is great. Active systems, with warring factions and pirates Story groundwork, obviously not finished, but seems interesting and has potential. Sorta reminded me of Starflight in a way. Player self sufficiency in the way of stations and mining stations. (oos also makes this quite great) Immersive backgrounds. (Planets, especially when you're "close to them" and they look huuuuge) Overall feeling of progression. Visiting previous systems after venturing into the core is fun(ny) Certain ore tiers having specialty modules the other tiers didn't have. Maybe add more / expand on this...Certain ship blocks that are only made from Trinium, or only made from Xanion, for example. Avorion Hyperspace modules allowing rift jumps. Just....thank you. On to critical feedback. Essay...Commence. -QoL Indication of Jump Calculation Progress A search function for factory / trader types in systems I've explored. Search box? Drop-down Menu? Something...Searching manually for that Laser Modulator XL factory I *KNOW* I came across 4 hours ago is soul destroying. Using "add note" is not a reasonable solution. (I have 40-50 systems with notes on them) More accessible Ship Velocity UI for my own ship. Targeting my own ship for a readout does not seem like a reasonable solution. My ship should have a readout for Velocity and projected inertia / stopping distance at the very least, even in a basic logical sense. Fighter hotkeys, or fighter orders more easily accessible in UI. Crucial with more than 1-2 squadrons of them... Tactical map toggle. I don't even try to bother with the tactical map because I value my mousewheel. I could change the bind...but that seems like it should be unnecessary. Reduced area of effect animations on shields for some weapon types (cannons and missiles are the main culprits) There are times that I literally cannot see anything on my screen due to this. Zoom out you say? But I'm trying to aim, I retort. Sound level reduction/balance for incoming projectiles. Just a bit too loud tbh. And nobody should have to turn their SFX settings down because of it. Plus, the in game music and ambient effects are nice and I'd like to hear them amidst the explosions. Greater docking range from the ports. This might solve gripe #2 which is derpy AI freighters ramming ports off the station. A big increase to NPC station docking block HP seems necessary, because stations without docking ports are infuriating, especially Accelerator XXL Factory's Some kind of indication on the map as to the jump range of the ships I have escorting me. Or I could just force my jump range to match theirs...or count squares...Ooooor hop in the ship with the smallest jump range and have my own ship escort me...I guess...either way is tedious. Remove shields on stations. Too performance draining. I'm running a GTX980, and my frames drop to 2 every time a large station cycles its' shields. Balance by giving a decent multiplier to station hull HP. This should save on performance, especially when a ton of other things are going on in system. ---AAAANNNDDD....Long, Skinny ships...Seriously...they suck. Either a major tone down to the way force is applied from turrets at distance from center mass, or loads more mass seeded on the long ships to keep them from spinning. Getting rid of long skinny ships seems like a last resort, as having them increases ship diversity, and that's good imo. You spin me right round is only funny the first couple times... - Difficulty (or lack thereof) -As a preface, my playthrough was on un-difficulty-modded-hardcore and I did not die (or even felt scared of dying) once. I've seen the mods that add even bigger numbers to ships, and I didn't run them for a reason...but more on that below. In my opinion, what hardcore needs is difficulty expressed in hostile ship-types and composition rather than the numbers game! Bigger number should not (doesn't) equal more difficulty. In the end, it equals more time spent farming safely to get bigger numbers than them anyway. There is some hint of what I want in the gameplay mechanics already, but it's not related to difficulty and could definitely be exploited better. Sure AI ships can be bigger / more heavily armed sooner, but you can actually use mechanics already in the game to add a more interesting difficulty curve... ---Examples of potentially fun and interesting difficulty with respect to at least hostile pirate and Xsotan ships : - Faster AI Ships : You can't disengage quite so easily now, unless you build your ship around it, making a choice : Better HP or better Maneuverability. Let's be honest, AI ships are too slow, and as the game is now, it's not only easy to run away from any other ship, but incredibly easy to kite them effectively while in reverse. This is the main reason I was never worried about dying. - Frequency of ships with fighters increased when you hit Trinium. (Punishes full-loadouts of big heavy guns too, and gives more purpose to chainguns/lasers/tesla/lightning and the auto-target function as well...like AA guns on a battleship shooting down planes while the cannons focus on bigger targets) And...I only saw 1 single ship use fighters against me my entire playthrough, and it was a faction ship, not a pirate/alien ship. (And they were fun to fight against, and deliciously annoying) - Frequency of ships with shield piercing weaponry increased (slightly to "a bit"). So you want to stay light by stacking on a bunch of shields? Well, your hull HP sucks, and they know it sucks too...Encourages clever ship design with regards to module placement, armor coverage and mass to power ratio. I had designed my ship with this in mind, and was sorta disappointed when the amount of shield-piercing AI was so rare. - Increased AI engagement range. Within reason. No need for 15km Chainguns. But a small extension in range, and a more consistent mix of ships with both short and long range engagement capabilities. I rarely see them shoot past 4-5km. - Use the force, luke : Chance for a dedicated force turret ship mixed in with the pack. It can either suck you into place and hold you there to get mauled, or push you around a bit, making it harder to aim. Combine this ship with a warp jammer ship, and now you have some real scary times. Early tiers would have fairly weak force turrets designed to harass very small ships, so not as effective if you're bigger than them. Ships towards the core are trained by Darth Sidius and can use the force on bigger ships. (These ships should be slightly slower and weaker than the rest as well, as they'd be the most annoying) - Reconstructo! : Chance for 1-2 dedicated repair ships mixed in to help out their buddies. Also seeded to be slightly weaker in shields and hull. I'm sure we could think of more fun things to tweak difficulty without playing the numbers game, which include bosses as well, but that's the general jist of my argument for that. - There should be a very noticeable difficulty jump once in the core, with a steep curve towards the center. It *should* be scary, the threat of death *should* be real when going from Xanion to Ogonite / Avorion, especially on hardcore. I wanted to think "holy crap this place is scary", instead I thought "meh, not much different than just outside the ring..." - Oh, and pirates should be made a bit harder...they are laughable compared to Xsotan with regards to tankyness, firepower and mod drops. Pirates should have some epic booty, yarrr... - Ore Types / General Progression Ore-type / material progression felt mostly good! though I wish Ogonite wasn't overshadowed by Trinium for usefulness on larger ships. (Skipped Ogonite entirely, as it wasn't worth the hp gain for weight, and Trinium was very comparable) Reduce rare resource quantity available in stations near the core. Possibly just remove Avorion for sale from resource trader altogether, because it really didn't feel all that rare or special at all when it was for sale at basically the first or second system cluster I came across in the core... Better Turret scaling with respect to what it's made out of. Possibly weight the RNG to favor Material > Tech Level > Quality, and restrict material with tech level. (I.E. with 6 ore types and a max tech level of 52, Iron would be Tech level 1-9, Titanium 5-18, etc...) Seeing Iron turret > Avorion turret at all, felt wrong. Module / Turret drop progression. Less grey/white modules towards the ring, less white/green modules inside the ring. Ships are more epic, and should drop more epic loot. I did notice that this happens overall, but an even more distinct change would be nice. Possibly a slight boost to drop rarity in higher difficulty settings too! - Ship upgrades (specifics) I'm sure there's a whole slew of fun upgrades in the works. Like Jump Calculation Reduction Modules, and Cloaking Modules...so I'll ignore that and focus on what's already here. Re-work a couple useless modules to be [more] useful - Examples : - If even some of the suggested difficulty tweaks occured : scanner module is now automatically much more useful for figuring out who the support ships are before they get up close and personal - Same goes for Thruster Module, since AI are now speedier - Mining upgrade : At the very least, add +efficiency to mining ore of the type they scan for. Higher quality = higher %. (Legendary = 25% more efficiency? nom nom) Possibly add +mining range / damage mods for Exotic / Legendary. Would need to affect turrets only...mining fighters with +eff. would be imbalanced. Also, the highlight range for a legendary should be for the sector, or at least 50km, in my opinion. Found most of the upgrades pretty useful overall though. Though I feel the ability to hot-swap them "whenever" felt a bit cheesy. Would be interesting if on the higher difficulty settings, you can only refit ship upgrades at a Repair Station, Shipyard, or Equipment Factory. Adding to the above idea, on higher difficulties you should only be able to make major repairs at a Repair Station. Sorry, but build menu -> repair out in space still felt cheesy, even with the 30 second combat cooldown. Maybe a Repair Module, or Mechanics Block could allow for limited repairs to blocks that have been blown off with said difficulty mechanics. - Turrets (Specifics) Would like to see greater range differences for sure. Railguns / Cannons / Unguided missiles out to 15-20km+ for example. If AI ships got a speed increase, it would take skill to kite with these, and balance would be intuitive i think. As it stands now, I pick weapons strictly based on highest real damage output (cooldowns taken into account) and bonuses / energy friendlyness...with no real regard to range given AI ship speeds and 4-5k standard engagement range (Railguns are the obvious choice with +% shield damage +% hull damage, 7-8k range and no energy buidlup) Single vs. Double vs. Triple etc... actually meaning something. Triple turret should do 3x damage right? I think I saw a turret that attempted to reflect this in its' stats with a " 'damage #' x2" modifier on it...But I don't really see any notable difference between different turret configurations offhand. If there is indeed a difference, the tooltip isn't very clear about it...something I'll have to pay attention to - Saved this next bit for last since I understaaaaand #pre-alpha. But this is my feedback on the pre-alpha content so... Questline / Story / Immersion - A Large majority of the "Getting to the core" questline wasn't actually very fun. They were tedious at best...annoying and frustrating mostly. But I felt there is a ton of potential in it -The main questline actually seems like a great tool to further introduce game mechanics to the player. - I did stumble across the NPC that gave me the scanner naturally...and I hunted around the yellow sectors like it advised me too and got started on the first quest...But as soon as I put the two coordinates together and realized that it wanted me to jump out to the edge of the map with my pitiful +4 range, I said nope...screw that, I'll be back later once I have more jump range. Good mechanics should make time fly by, bad one's make the player wonder why their time is being intentionally wasted. For those that made it out to the edge and back early game with +4-5 jump range, I salute your dedication (masochism). I've seen that wormholes can be spawned...So why not, when both coordinates are put together can we not spawn a wormhole chain starting from those coordinates that leads us through a series of wormholes and other beacons to the edge where the 1st key is? First, this introduces players to the wormhole mechanic, second, enhances and enriches the story by having us interact with the aftermath of crazy space rifts, and THIRD, saves alot of time most people would rather spend heading to the center, exploring, trading, shooting pirates, and doing a bunch of other things that they'd LIKE to be doing.... rather than waiting for their jump drive to recharge and their computer to calculate the next jump for an hour. Make that an hour and a half, because : Rifts. The bossfights were fun, especially the AI. And the boss swoks encounter was fairly amusing, though I wish there was more text options for annoying him, and unique ones for annoying his successors. (Why are you swoks VI? oh, because I've killed your 5 predecessors, haven't you learned your lesson yet? Aren't you scared of me by now?...) Oh, and with faster AI, it would be worthwhile to actually use the stone blocks to fight the M.A.D. scientist. TBH, his dps should be made such that you should be obligated to use them to negate his damage, even in Trinium / Xanion ships. The smuggler quest was my least favorite. The actual factories for some of what he wants are super rare / rng dependant. - Trader roulette is not fun. Stations that sell what he's asking for but have 0 in stock are not fun. Stations that HAVE what he wants in stock but have had their docking blocks rammed off by terrible freighter pilots is not fun x10. - Being a smuggler themed quest, why not set it up so you have a choice, since he says "get them however you can". You can still take the tedious 'easter egg hunt' option if you'd like, but the main theme was smugglin' right? I'd totally be up for trimming down some of the derpy AI freighter population. Script it so that he gives you coordinates of some neighboring faction systems, and you have to go in and pirate some freighters for the goods he's asking for. The "Give me all of your cargo" command could also be of use here... -There would be guaranteed drops for what he wants in the systems marked (with maybe some extra illegal cargo to sell at the smuggler's station), but you have to take the faction hit, and potentially deal with the scary ships that will surely come violence your boat for attacking poor unarmed freighters in their system... - This way, the player is introduced to piracy and also gets to make the choice : Demolish some faction rep to make the mission easy and fun, or wander across the galaxy for 5 hours wondering why, oh why, do I even bother. - I won't comment too much on the end-game, as it's definitely unfinished, and I look forward to seeing the end-game in Avorion fleshed out. The final fight (even though the quest-line mechanic didn't work) was actually pretty fun. Though it felt like the alien ships coming through kept getting weaker as the fight went on.... Immersion I'd like to have more interaction with the NPC factions. I'd also like for them to have some more character, something endearing about them as a whole. I again think back to starflight, and seeing a little portrait of the race I was talking to...Something similar could work here...I know the game is procedurally generated, but races and their portraits shown when you hail them could be based on the seed they are generated from...Something, anything to make them more than just blocky shapes with shields, guns and thrusters floating about the galaxy would go a looooong way to breathing life into the rift-torn galaxy. - Main idea, I'd like to be able to hail / communicate with just about every ship. Hostile...or not hostile, with differing reactions based on their feelings towards me, and different reactions based on their racial traits. Under info I saw that some are shown as dumb, others as aggressive, etc... I'd like to be able to chit-chat with the local faction defense fleet (the roamy corvettes and destroyers in system) about current going-ons with the local pirates and maybe pick up some hints on where they might be coming from, maybe ask if I could aid them in the next few incursions as a mission. I'd like to ask freighters about profitable trade routes, and have them tell me to piss off if my faction standing is too low, or give me some good hints if I'm admired. I'd like to be able to take the piracy route, and hijack the travelling salesmen, getting them to send real distress signals of their own, for hapless ships to warp to. - Lots of other things to help immersion, but I'm sure alot is also planned / in the works. Hopefully some of what I've mentioned so far! Pirates could use a bit of love as well - I think it would be fun if they got some things unique only to them, that you couldn't get anywhere else...so that choosing the life of piracy would have its' perks. (An increase as to how much you can make at the smuggler's hub for stolen goods, for starters). - Also, if you're hijacking ships, they should emit distress signals of their own to summon random reinforcements for you to pillage. (Improving standings with pirate faction) So yeah...That's the bulk of it... Overall a positive experience, definitely loved it for what it was. Looking forward to Avorion's future!

Just started about 12 hours ago. Really diggin' this game so far... Didn't really delve too much into any in-depth tutorials...wanted to experience the game as a noob fresh and ignorant. Had a suprisingly successful ship evolution for my first run through to Naonite, so I thought I'd share! I really wanted to start with a small ship, and evolve it without starting over, trying to maintain the ships general theme / look as it evolved...So far I think I've accomplished this! (Though about 5 of my 12 hours of gameplay have been shipbuilding lol...) Here's the 3 ships in order and the material-type associated with each stage in it's evolution. Each stage / class as I imagine it... Frigate (Iron) http://imgur.com/bNU5lys => Destroyer (Titanium) http://imgur.com/QVbcgQH http://imgur.com/Q3XE6S0 => I would designate this "Serpent Class - Heavy Assault Cruiser" (Naonite / Titanium Armor) http://imgur.com/h06gl96 http://imgur.com/rlFsjl4 http://imgur.com/qcHc2BV http://imgur.com/Yd0S1VD http://imgur.com/OJO42rZ Rather happy with the Naonite evolution's final result. Inspiration was drawn from the Vagabond in EvE online, (one of my favorite HACS) and the Zuul cruisers from sword of the stars. Went for a more sinister / aggressive combat look. Not the biggest fan of the way thrusters look at this scale...so I simply imagine they're missile bays instead! (Missiles would be sweet in this game...but I haven't found any yet) It 'seems' rather practical and econonimical too, coming in at ~130k credits, ~1k titanium and ~16k naonite. Offhand stats are 5k HP, 4k shields, ~5.5GJ output, 2.5GJ consumption, 550 m/s crusing, 1400-1500 m/s boost, jump range of 6, 4 module slots and 120 base cargo. The handling is also suprisingly good, and feels quite natural to pilot. (I went the immersive route, rather than pure min-max performance) Couple combat runs have proven that it can definitely hold its' own against bigger Nanoite alien or pirate ships.