eduty

Thank you for the feedback. All good points. The r/avorion felt a little one sided. Perhaps do nothing with the current drop rates, but make cargo loot a bit more common from pirates and wrecks. As a player, I've found friendly stations superfluous after Na space. I typically pull enough credits and ore from vigilante justice and salvaging to keep the fleet afloat. Only time I really need stations is to pick up crew and craft the occasional fighter. The rest of the Galaxy feels like a novelty outside the space combat and endless ship tinkering, but that could just be a personal play style issue.

Floated this idea on r/avorion and the feedback was positive. Right now, a player ship can survive on ore and credits alone. There's no reason to ever have to stop at a station if you don't want to - and that feels like a missed opportunity. It's a big, vibrant, galactic economy, and the player should participate (at least a little). To do this we decrease drop rates for ore, credits, and turrets. We modify wrecks to drop cargo when destroyed or salvaged, with that cargo being a mix of generic supplies and turret components. If the player wants to cash in on their loot, they'll need the cargo space to store it, and they'll need to find stations to buy it. With the availability of turret drops decreased and turret components increased, the player will need to make greater use of turret factories to stay armed. There are more suggestions on the r/avorion thread, but changing the loot spawns is the core of the idea. Hopefully a not-too difficult modification that will make the habitable sectors seem more important and necessary.

The paint job and glowy bits are exceptional

This has grown into a bit of an obsession with creating a full line of Trek inspired craft to take you from the outer reaches of iron space and all the way to the core. You can find all the ships in the collection linked below. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1417901883 These are not exact replicas and they're not to scale (starfleet ships are tiny by Avorion standards). Each ship is based off a series of templates that are also available on my Steam workshop. Could be useful if you're looking for relatively low-poly curves. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197990011091/myworkshopfiles/?appid=445220 Feedback, thoughts, and comments appreciated.

I wonder if there's a way to make sectors of space trigger "spawnable" events. Check to see how much mass of wreckage/asteroids are in the sector and if there are any present players. If there are no active players and the mass is below a certain value, respawn a new random event in that sector. Could be wreckage. Could be a new faction getting settled. Could be asteroids. Etc. Space is big with a lot going on. It's not such a stretch to assume something happened in a sector when nobody was watching. Also gives you the feeling that the galaxy is constantly moving and changing.

It would be nice to just have a "design mode" interface that doesn't require an entire creative mode galaxy.

Ditto. Also an issue if your ship needs more than 2km of space to brake from boosting.

I really think this is the way to go. Directional shields create an incentive to keep moving. In the early game, you naturally have to dodge as blocks start to fly off. Or maneuver to hit areas of the enemy with weaker blocks. Overall shields remove that necessity. Consider shields abstracted as a big cube with 6 sides: fore, port, starboard, aft, dorsal, and whatever the nautical term is for the underside of the vessel (navel?) Shield generator blocks operate like directional thrusters. Their effect is calculated to a certain direction based on facing. All the shields facing a single direction add to the HP of that side. Shield generators are naturally nerfed as each generator is split one of 6 ways, rather than adding to a massive total HP value. Ships get infinitely more interesting as they get "weak points" where there are less facing shield generators. You're now trying to fly your ship and shoot to keep damaged shields out of the line of fire, while simultaneously trying to keep your enemy's weakest shield in your ideal firing arcs.

On another note, I'd like to see the gradual repair of a ship require materials. As it stands, if my ship doesn't lose any blocks, it can go from next to no HP to full HP without any material input. If the repair crew is patching holes in titanium armor, I'd think they'd use up some titanium in doing so.

My thought would be to just abstract ammunition production and have a weapon decrease your ore reserves as it fires. Example: Firing an iron chain gun uses 1 iron ore / second. This incentivizes weapon diversification and leads to more tactical choices. What resources can you devote to this encounter? Do you have enough resources to see the fight to completion? Should you keep one or two common material turrets mounted to deal with lesser threats? What combination of mining/salvage is necessary to keep your fleet fight ready?

as word of wisdom, save your money. and don't over hype, you doesn't know how the game ended up. it could be worse, it could be good. and of course, no need to rush, but i hope we get the feature worth of its time, and max for EA games are 2 years top. so time is essence. Not saying it's the end all be all view point, but my personal experience as an IT professional and developer is that software as a service is a superior business model to one-time retail sales - and it tends to be more fair for all involved parties. You can only sell so many copies of an application, but a subscription is a dedicated revenue stream to continue improving the product. If future updates ruin the experience, players can cancel subscriptions and take their money elsewhere.

Since we're update speculating, here are some ideas on how new weapons and combat may be balanced/implemented: Overheat and cool down times on defensive weaponry and large coax guns Crew, energy, and/or slot scarcity AA cannons may chew through fighters, but assemblies have improved fighter construction time, reduced resource costs, pilots are more readily available, and hangars can hold/launch more craft Crew losses. Hard to operate all those weapons when the gunners keep dying. Ammunition. When fired, turrets utilize a small amount of resources (probably corresponding to their material). You could put a couple Avorion chain guns on your ship to battle fighters, but that's going to be an expensive encounter. Turrets get dedicated block mounts and can no longer be placed willy-nilly all over a ship. Turret blocks have moderate HP compared to hull and armor, and weapons are easier to blow off during prolonged battles. Directional or limited shield areas. Your ship is no longer a big flying chunk of shield HP. Each shield generator only projects a force field in a certain direction or a certain area, making ship facing and maneuverability more critical to long fights. Weapon status effects. In addition to increased hull, range, shield damage, etc. Guns can also slow enemy ships, deplete power, deal damage over time, add time to hyperspace recharge, and disable auto-turrets for a brief period of time. Electronic warfare. Decreases the accuracy of auto-fire turrets and fighters. Cloaking technology. Get the drop on your enemies and disappear after a hit and run.

Has anyone pitched a Patreon or other voluntary subscription based system? Not sure how the rest of the community feels, but I'd committ $10-$15 a month towards continued development to keep the project funded.

The walkthrough videos are greatly appreciated and better fit the format of Avorion. You could make small, succinct tutorials on how to perform specific tasks, but you'd still need a longer video showing how ALL the things you can do in the game come together.

Agreed

Minor bump and divergence of discussion from a previous engine cosmetics post: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2017.0.html Totally not critical, but can add more "flavor" to players interested in faction building and achieving a specific look and/feel to their fleets. Add exhaust trail effects to engines and thrusters Create additional engine and thruster blocks (or effect palette) for exhaust trail effects (complete with thematically appropriate engine noise). Flames, distortion, light trail, etc. Coloring engine/thruster blocks changes the color of the effect. Maybe make those effects specific to different material tiers. Iron could be more old-school rocket and advance up to impulse/graviton type engines. Add hyperspace jump effects Create additional hyperspace blocks (or effect palette) for jumps. Warp, fade-out, gate-out, implode, etc. Coloring hyperspace blocks changes the color of the effect.

Any idea what the speed cap is? It'd be interesting to see if you could get above 299,792,458 m/s.

Stumbled onto Avorion on Steam after burning out on Reassembly and Robocraft. This game satisfies a very special itch. Even in its early release, it's right up there with X3, Elite:Dangerous, and EvE.