[Should I get this game?]

2) Does it suffer from game-breaking bugs/crashes?

 

Aside from occasional crashes while building ships (lost a bit of progress, but autosave is a thing so it was okay), I haven't encountered anything of the such yet.

3) How does this 'dynamic scaling' work?

 

So imagine Space Engineers. You're building a ship out of blocks. You want to make a sloped side to your ship. You bust out your slope block, but instead of being limited to a 1x1 or 1x2 slope, you can stretch it out to make it as steep or shallow as you want. You can also increase its size/width so you don't have to place multiple blocks. Then, say you want to make some small details - you can take your standard armor block and shrink it down to 5% of its original size. You can also scale the grid snap down to get small details right, or disable it entirely and just eyeball it. On the flipside, you can also scale them up, allowing you to sketch large ships out of simple shapes, or cover large areas without using a lot of individual blocks.

 

The building system, and the amount of control it allows a player, is my favorite part of the game so far. Beyond that, it gives you more stuff to do with your creations, and the sandbox into which it drops you has significantly more going on in it (though the game is still incomplete).

4) Anything else?

Making your own AI-controlled ships is a lot easier than it is in Space Engineers. If you use a shipyard to build a new ship, it will automatically be assigned a captain, which means you can issue some simple commands to it. Though, the command system could use a bit of work, unless I'm missing something.

 

Admittedly, I've been so heavy into the ship-building part of the game that I've yet to experience most of the actual game.

[Resizable weapons, custom turrets]

Though, your Traverse and elevation mechanisms could aim fixed position weapons (within a size limitation) as if they were part of a turret, effectively functioning as such (perhaps with a slower response).

 

That's the point, yeah - The weapons themselves would just be blocks, and on their own, they might only fire in the direction you placed them in. This would make them usable as things like spinal-mounted guns, broadside weapons, or vertical missile tubes. Turret rings and elevation mechanisms would be used to make custom turrets for them. The response of these turrets might be dictated by the amount of mass they're supporting and the size of the mechanisms themselves.

[Sofa's Builds]

What the...? How in...? How did you...? Why is this...?

 

Your designs have left me speechless, and I usually don't check the design boards often anymore. I'm also liking the Homeworld vibe that everyone is noticing about the aesthetics, and the attention to detail is absolutely marvelous. And the scaling, I agree it's hard to do, but holy crap you do it so well!

 

Just one question: When do you plan on making Capital-class ships? Or if that seems too ambitious for you, at least a Frigate?

 

A capital-class ship is absolutely on my agenda. Just that I'm still getting used to the game and I don't have an awful lot of free time (12 hours at school from Monday through Thursday, and most of Saturday is spent at the machine shop)

 

Very nice :)

 

Would you share the ship files by any chance?

 

When I got more to post, sure. Or I might wait until Steam Workshop becomes a thing.

[Scale?]

According to the ship's stats, the scale of a single 1x1x1 block is 1000 cm^3, or 10cm^3

 

The implication is that each crew member only needs ~950 cm^3 to live in, which I am pretty sure is lower than the volume of a human body.

 

 

I think it would make more sense if each block were 10 Meters instead of 10 centemeters.

 

 

With this, I can finally calculate computer cores and module upgrades.. Probably

 

Edit: Apperently the values given to unlock module slots do not match the reality. You get the first upgrade at 48000 cm^3, or 48 units^3, intead of the stated 128000 cm^3 or 128 units^3. Also scaffolding does not appear to contribute anything to this, which is probably good thing.

 

Taking that into account, I tried measuring my latest ship, the Man'aan fast-attack corvette. If a 1³ block is 1000³cm, that means it's only 10cm long/wide/high, and the Man'aan would therefore be just over one meter long, despite weighing in at more than 1800 tons and supporting a crew of eight. So I'm either bad at math, the devs aren't as OCD as I am about dimensions, or the denizens of this fictional galaxy are tiny and build with extremely dense materials.

[Sofa's Builds]

Fast-Attack Corvette, Man'aan class

My first shot at a combat-oriented craft. Built in creative, the Man'aan is designed to operate in groups, acting to scout ahead of a fleet and run circles around an enemy whilst peppering them with bolter fire. Standard-issue scout/light combat ship until I can come up with something more cost-effective.

 

 

 

 

[The Empire Shipyard + a bit more]

Definitely not something I'd want to see jump out of hyperspace in front of my fleet; Very intimidating, very Star Wars.

[Resizable weapons, custom turrets]

Also here's more notes on the subject.

 

Here is a visual examples of how a custom turret might be built. Of course, it may very well be that they may not be built at all, because the game might not be built to support such a feature. Iunno, I'm not the game dev here, I'm just throwing it out there.

 

 

---

Below are some examples of the scaleable weapons players might be able to use.

 

• Beam projector
  Maybe an ion cannon or particle cannon? Point is, it might emit a continuous stream of energy in the direction it's pointing that delivers high amounts of pinpoint damage (or maybe penetrates armor to damage components), but virtually no area of effect. The size of the weapon might determine the amount of damage it does, as well as reduce damage falloff over distance, whilst increasing energy consumption, and maybe making it overheat more quickly. Being an energy weapon, it doesn't consume ammo.
  
• Mass Driver
  Kinetic weapon that balances penetrating power with splash damage, which might consume both ship energy and ammo, but not as much of either as missiles or beam projectors. While the scale of the weapon might affect a shot's power and range at the cost of ammo/energy consumption and rate-of-fire, it might also be possible that length and width have different effects - the weapon's width may affect the damage dealt by a shot at the cost of ammo consumption, while its length might affect its accuracy and penetrating ability at the cost of energy and fire-rate. Smaller mass drivers might be capable of rapid fire, while multiple mass drivers assigned to the same weapon group might fire in a sequence.
  
• Missile tube
  This weapon launches relatively slow-moving missiles, which can track targets (not sure if these already exist in the game). Since they're slower than mass-driver rounds or energy beams, they have no penetrating effect, but can deal significant AOE damage. The launcher's size might alter the missiles' area of effect, at the cost of ammo consumption, rate-of-fire, and the missiles' maneuverability. Clusters of smaller tubes could be useful for making swarm-missiles, dishing out saturating fire and warding off smaller enemy ships, whilst large tubes might launch slow moving dreadnought-killers that would be virtually useless against smaller ships and must be used sparingly.
  
• Flechette gun
  Space-shotgun that might fire off a cloud of shrapnel. The cone of fire might be affected by the gun's length; a shorter gun might have a wider spread, while a longer gun would have higher concentration of shot on a smaller area, and/or greater range. The gun's width might affect the amount of shrapnel per-shot, at the cost of ammo consumption and rate-of-fire. Small, turret-mounted flechette gun arrays, with broad cones and high fire-rates, could be devastating to fighter squadrons, while large flechette cannons mounted in the hull of a frigate or cruiser could be fired at enemy fleets with reckless abandon, forcing them to disperse.
  

 

[Resizable weapons, custom turrets]

Do I sense a 'from the depths' fan here?

 

[Less Breaking, more Braking!]

I think being able to rotate engine blocks in different directions would help too, so one doesn't have to rely exclusively on little RCS thrusters.

[Resizable weapons, custom turrets]

Admittedly, I haven't seen all the game has to offer since I've been so hooked on building ships, so please tell me if I'm at all mistaken.

 

As far as I know, all the weapons in the game come in the form of small, pre-made turrets. A few ideas to enhance ship weaponry could be the following:

• Scalable Weapons
  Just like other resizable blocks, but they shoot stuff. These might come in the form of static weapons such as mass drivers, beam weapons, and missile launchers. Making them larger might increase their power, while costing more energy or reloading time. It may also be possible that weapons exceeding a certain size can't be mounted on traverse/elevation mechanisms (see below), and must instead be mounted in a ship's hull (ie: a massive, forward-facing railgun made to obliterate capital ships).
  
• Traverse and elevation mechanisms
  Traverse and elevation mechanisms might act as rotors and hinges respectively, allowing one to create objects attached to a ship or station that follow the player's aim. This might allow for the creation of custom turrets by building blocks, weapons, and certain other components on them. Another possibility could be a mass limit on these mechanisms - they might come in different sizes, which can support more mass (and heavier armament), but take up more space and move more slowly.
  
• Magazines
  For projectile or missile-based weapons, one might be required to designate a storage space for ammunition. A larger magazine might permit one to store more ammo, while gigantic weapons may require equally massive magazines just to have any ammunition at all.
  

 

This idea might require some further elaboration or visual references, so I might try and add some of that when I have the time.

[Vovolov's ship(s)]

I dig them curves

[Scale?]

Are we working with any sort of scale in this game? Is there any way to tell the dimensions of a ship?

 

I'd been considering a 1x1x1 block to be 2 cubic meters up to now, but my scale is based on somewhat contrived logic (a 1³ crew quarters block adds one crew; assuming they provide enough room for a 185cm tall person to stand and move around in, 2 cubic meters seems like a nice, round dimension).

[DAQ - XS class]

Yeah, it's not showing up for me either

[Dead8Eye´s Shipyard]

The Liberty is a seriously imposing piece of work.

[Newcomers, introduce yourselves here!]

Spent all my winter break playing Space Engineers and got a hankering for a more macro experience and a means of building ships more flexibly. Scored Avorion on Steam earlier after seeing Scott Manley talk about it and it hasn't disappointed so far. So now I'm in hot water because aforementioned break just ended and I know this is gonna take up my free time instead of my studies.

 

The fruits of my poorly-spent time will be posted here.

[Sofa's Builds]

Just got this game off Steam and I'm already very much a fan of the building system. Pictures of things I've built will go here. Maybe faction fluff when I feel like it.

 

Type 1 Mining Vehicle

First ship, built to get started in the game. Armed with mining lasers, a salvage beam, and a single gun turret.

 

Drone bay

Cockpit, since you can kinda see in through the glass. Scaling is a little tricky in this game though.