Terradoss

while yes you can, the reverse is also true, you CAN manke things in the factories that no drop could compare to. Honestly I would suggest that this latter observation is the norm by a wide margin. I literally just posted in another thread about a similar topic where I noted that after a significant number of hours in game (i forget exactly how many, 100ish maybe?) I couldn't recall a single instance where, after I crafted my first set of factory turrets, I looted a turret that stood out as better than what I'd made. Even when looting higher tier, higher tech turrets. At the moment I feel like the power gap and bonus stat consistency between looted turrets and crafted ones is too large and probably needs some adjustment. Whether that be through some of the suggestion regarding reverse engineering in this thread (which have some substantial merit!) or some other means is open to debate I guess.

+1 I approve of this idea. Its a QoL change as far as the interface goes, I'm really quite used to seeing this ability to scroll by screen edge in other games and programs. Feels quite intuitive. I often find myself trying to do exactly this before realising i cant and remembering to right-click-drag. Would like to see this! :)

I tend to agree with you here. I'm fine with factory produced turrets being more expensive, because they are certainly significantly more powerful. That said, It's possible that the relative difference in power between looted turrets is currently large enough that at some stage it could be.....narrowed slightly? I can't think of a single instance whereby I looted a turret that was better than whatever I had crafted. Even when the looted turret was of substantially higher tech level. I think the only time I ever used looted turrets was until i was able to craft my first factory set, at which point that set was categorically superior to everything i came across until my next crafted set. And the next, and the next, etc. Not suggesting that its impossible to loot better turrets than you have crafted, only that with a sizeable number of hours into the game for me now, I can't recall it ever happening. The point I'm trying to make I guess is that in my experience, looted turrets don't seem competitive at all, except when they're your only option very early in the game. Be nice if turrets we picked up off wrecks were worth considering for some reason other than "sell, get creditzz" with a little more frequency!

Yeah, I feel like the reputation interactions are something that needs some tweaking. I'm certainly not all that thrilled with it at the moment, but I also think that it can probably be fixed pretty much entirely when it receives some attention. That said, I do comprehend that there are probably more pressing priorities at present.

I approve of this idea. +1 For those of us who are obsessed with symmetry, being able to combine mirroring on multiple axis' at the same time would be quite useful.

I think you're right. Large ships seem to inflict more damage from bumps. One one hand it....sort of makes sense from a logical perspective, but we really cant be punishing capital ship captains with instant immutable abhorrence for a love tap (even from a big ship!) My ship? Is big, but I didn't feel like it was "planet dwarfingly large" or anything. It's a 13 slot ship. About six and a half million tonnes. just over 100mil worth of volume. Evidently large enough to cause space station insurance companies to go into panic mode when i request permission to dock >< I almost feel like larger ships should have more leeway when it comes to docking space. Should be able to do it from further away or something. All of my ship upgrades have been increases in size and mass, but this one is the first that seems to have reached a point where it is giving me noticeably more trouble when it comes to manouvering to dock.

I'm not averse to the concept of some minor penalties for accidents, but the scale of such penalties needs to be appropriate. There are a number of words I could use to describe the penalty that was imposed on me for my accident. "Appropriate" is not one of them! :P I've effectively had to abandon this part of space for now, since there's no particularly efficient means of rep grinding that I've found to raise reputation from its ultimate nadir :(

Yeah I've tested this some more since and its absolutely correct, the research station has a level. My results with stats and weapon traits other than tech level were still a total crapshoot even on a higher level research station, so that's still an issue. The process is slow and costly enough already, having to create lower tier weapons and upgrade them at a ratio of 5:1. The additional RNG on top just seems unnecessarily punishing.

+1 also. The amount of time i spend mousing over systems in the map trying to find one factory or another, this would save me hours! >.>

Station was perfectly intact! As was my ship. Obviously there was a damage calculation performed that the game decided was drastic and justified a 200,000 reputation loss. It just seemed somewhat (massively) disproportionate to the nature of the actual impact was all =/

Sooooooo, I recently upgraded to a substantially larger ship and whilst going through the teething problems of learning to fly the new shape and how to manouver a ship this large (its really, really big) close enough to a station to dock, i shifted my camera a tiny bit too far and bumped the station. Literally, bumped the station, traveling at zero speed with very minor rotational momentum only. BOOM instantly lost 200,000 reputation with the faction who owned the station. I went from maximum possible positive reputation to the absolute WORST possible reputation instantly. As a result of the intergalactic equivalent of a fender bender. I get that crashing is not cool and that people don't like it, but this level of response strikes me as ever so slightly unreasonable =x In lieu of this actually being fixed in the short term, (early access etc), does anybody know of a way to manipulate faction reputation through the console or game files? I spent a pretty solid amount of time working that reputation up to maximum and the faction has a significant number of factories and other facilities that I use quite frequently. I figured I'd check to see if anyone had discovered the means to do this before i consider whether to regrind 200k rep (kill me now plz) or ragequit (for a while) :P Thanks!

If i can make a further remark about this, currently when i fight with my friends, the loot that drops seems to be allocated to a specific player, but this allocation seems to have a relatively short expiry timer after which it becomes available to anyone and is a free for all grab, added to which the loot itself seems to disappear after what I consider to be a relatively short time as well. The result of both these is that often everyone involved just immediately burns towards loot as soon as it drops in the event that it might be theirs, so that the first allocation timer doesnt expire and someone else picks up the loot. This makes it feel like we are, in a sense, competing with our friends for loot. The focus should be on the fight first, the loot afterwards, without having to worry that we're going to lose it to someone else, or lose it to its final expiry timer. Perhaps some changes to the system designed to alleviate these issues might be useful?

I hadn't actually considered this at all. It didn't occur to me that research stations might have their own "level" so to speak and that it would affect the outcome. That might indeed explain the results I got in terms of reduced tech level with the current system. That said, I still think the system would, overall, be more consistent and useful if it were to conform to the principles behind the changes I suggested in the OP. As an aside, its easy enough to tell what Tech Level a Turret Factory is in game at the moment by looking at the tech level of the items you can craft at them. If there is indeed a "Level" attribute for research stations, is there someplace that this is made evident? I can't recall seeing anything anywhere that would've indicated what the "level" of a research station would be. Perhaps the only way to determine this is based on the tech level of items you get out of the research station after the process is complete? I don't like this much, its fairly obfuscatory, but perhaps I've missed something else that would allow the determination of what tech level items a research station would produce without actually having to spend turrets in order to find out?

Hiya Koonschi and Team! I've been playing around with upgrading some weaponry through the research station and I thought I'd give you some feedback on my results. N.B - I recognise that gameplay balancing and whatnot is probably a low priority at this point, but I have the information so I thought I'd make a post anyway. N.B.2 - The following information is based on my limited testing of the research system. If there are more substantial results that contradict my findings or if the underlying mechanics of the system are in fact working as intended, then obviously the following post will be of limited value! So here's the situation. I started out with 30x Tech 41 "Exceptional" (yellow) Launcher weapons. These weapons were all identical having been created in the same turret factory. They had the same damage and identical weapon traits. A screenshot of these launchers is included below. http://imgur.com/a/q0UUi I then decided to "upgrade" these through the research station. I made the assumption that since I can't craft Exotic or Legendary Tier weaponry in a turret factory, the logical means of weapon progression would be to craft exceptional tier weaponry and slowly upgrade it over time. At a ratio of 5:1, I plugged all 30 of my Tech 41 Exceptional Launchers into the research station and got 6 Exotic Launchers back. I have included screenshots of each of the 6 Exotic Launchers I created from this exercise below. http://imgur.com/a/rVIHS As you can see, the results are......confusing and rather disappointing! Each of the exotic turrets I got back seemed to cap out at Tech 33, despite ALL the input turrets having been *significantly* higher than this to begin with. Additionally, whilst SOME of the new turrets had SOME of the same traits as the original turrets, the results illustrate that it was kind of a crapshoot as to what weapon traits one gets when combining turrets in the research station. The exception to this was the auto-firing trait, which seemed to transfer in 100% of cases. Otherwise it seems......very random! Furthermore, the primary stats varied WILDLY on the new turrets. So much so that I really can't see how they could reasonably be construed as having any relationship to those on the input turrets. In practically every instance, I consider that the turrets I got back are inferior to those I used as input turrets. One or two of the exotic turrets could possibly come close when considering the weapon traits I suppose, but its arguable at best as to whether they do, while the majority of created turrets certainly don't, and are not upgrades. As a final test, I took five of the new exotic launcher turrets and combined them in the research station to create a legendary turret! (Ooooh purple!) These are the turrets I combined: http://imgur.com/a/KJenr Aaaaaaand this is the legendary turret I got back: http://imgur.com/a/ei3T7 Follows the trend of the previous test in returning a turret that I'd consider to be inferior to those I put in to get it. As I mentioned earlier, I realise that this is probably a gameplay element that hasn't really been developed much at this point. That's OK! But I would like to make the following couple of suggestions for whenever you opt to take a look at the system: - The system should create results that are based on the characteristics of the input turrets, rather than the seemingly random result that occurs now. - Tech level of turrets created should , at the very least, not decrease under that of the input turrets. - Base weapon stats should not be random and should DEFINITELY be an increase over those of the input turrets (Perhaps an increase over the averages if input turrets with variable stats are used? Not sure about this.). We're buying the new turret at the ratio of 5:1, it should represent a significant improvement. - Turrets created should have weapon traits that are reflective of the input turrets (Or select from the pool of traits if multiple types are present on the input turrets). These traits should also numerically increase, for the same reason as the base stats (5:1 ratio). - Also, as a UI consideration for quality of life, if at some point the system is redesigned to accommodate the above, having the interface display the turret that will result from the combining process BEFORE actually having to click the button to combine, would be really useful. Of course if the intention is that players aren't meant to see the result before investing, then this change obviously isn't one to consider. These are just a few observations and suggestions I've made based on the messing around I've done so far. Its worth noting I don't know how things like tech level and weapon stat/trait numerical values are derived, so its entirely possible some of these suggestions would have interconnected results that may require consideration. Thanks very much developer people! Keep up the great work!

Appreciate the reply. I shall continue to track progress and endeavour to once again indulge in an intergalactic multiplayer experience if and/or when data streams enjoy enhanced compression! Keep up the good work.