Alloys

[Horten]

Hi there, love this game and playing it a lot with friends. I really enjoy it but theres one thing thats bugging me and thats the how useless the first ores get after some progression. At some point in the game you just leave it behind you and never use it again. So heres my idea how to give it place in the later game: Lets create Alloys that need Iron, Titan, etc. for their creation. Maybe to create special Armor or Weapons, some type of high level goods, what ever you can think of. 

 

Just something to make the early Ores worth mining again.

[BenWinston]

Hi there, love this game and playing it a lot with friends. I really enjoy it but theres one thing thats bugging me and thats the how useless the first ores get after some progression. At some point in the game you just leave it behind you and never use it again. So heres my idea how to give it place in the later game: Lets create Alloys that need Iron, Titan, etc. for their creation. Maybe to create special Armor or Weapons, some type of high level goods, what ever you can think of. 

 

Just something to make the early Ores worth mining again.

Good idea, that.

 

Or perhaps a smelter facility can be added to the build-able factories list that uses iron ore and produces Iron ingots that can be sold as a commodity? (obviously other metals as well but can only run one type of metal at a time.) Thus turning the excess unused metals into a sell-able good like gold and diamonds.  Factories and other manufacturing stuff can buy them since most everything takes metal, right?

[DivineEvil]

Well, there's very few games (at least of what I'm aware of), that somehow maintain the value of early-game resources in the face of late-game analogues. There's nothing inherently wrong with leaving the old stuff behind. Low-grade materials can be mined much, much faster with the better, more efficient mining/salvage turrets and sold for credits, and you also can use them for stations, which do not depend on the size compression and efficiency of better materials unlike ships do. You can have a parallel disposition towards the weapon turrets of lower grade, but then the same logic goes - if you got a better sword, why would you care for you old, rusty one? Maybe you can some particular memories associated with a weapon turret, but that doesn't apply for the materials.

 

What is the point of bringing them back, apart from Iron, that is used heavily for Inertial Dampeners until Avorion and for producing cargo shuttles?

[BlackGazebo]

I'll have you know that I'm always seeking out Iron near the core for inertial dampeners.

 

More seriously - if Avorion later develops into something more along the lines of X3 or EVE, there's still going to be an economy for lesser ores in manufacturing ships and modules for less experienced players, or for building cheap replacement ships for things like solo PVP. 

 

But I don't think as a single-player game there's any point to giving lesser ores a purpose late-game, especially since they become rarer the closer to the Core you get.  It just makes the process of improving and adding to your ship more tedious than it already is. 

[BenWinston]

I'll have you know that I'm always seeking out Iron near the core for inertial dampeners.

 

More seriously - if Avorion later develops into something more along the lines of X3 or EVE, there's still going to be an economy for lesser ores in manufacturing ships and modules for less experienced players, or for building cheap replacement ships for things like solo PVP. 

 

But I don't think as a single-player game there's any point to giving lesser ores a purpose late-game, especially since they become rarer the closer to the Core you get.  It just makes the process of improving and adding to your ship more tedious than it already is. 

 

Actually, the idea about turning them into a commodity late game was precisely because of the rarity closer to the core. Supply and demand; iron and Titanium gain value once again in the core.

 

However, keep in mind, this is only a suggestion, and not everyone plays the game simply to get to the core. There's pirate hunting, and all the commerce options. Add the ability to build and sell fighters and shuttles, or even bigger ships and *poof* a whole new facet to the game is available. really, with only a little work, this game could be... well, infinite, really - think about it.  A player founded corporate conglomerate could easily become the size and strength of an NPC faction.

[BlackGazebo]

Titanium is absolutely worthless for ship construction once you hit Tritium, though.  Cost per unit != value.

 

People who play the game to hunt pirates absolutely want to be stronger, and the way to achieve that is to work your way toward the core.  Coincidentally this also introduces harder pirates.  This system works. 

 

And you CAN build a player-run faction the size of an NPC faction if you so wish.  You can build ships in shipyards (I think there's a mod for this?) and have them crewed and send them off to collect expensive ores from systems nearer to the core and bring them back, or not.  You can build mines and manufacture turrets to your heart's content.  You can send an armada of armed ships to gigadunk on your neighbors.  But I don't really understand how your original idea would transform this, except by making things built far away from the core arbitrarily more powerful than they already are for no specific purpose. 

 

Maybe there could be more specialized purposes for each material like there is with Iron before reaching Avorion, so that there's a need for a trans-galactic supply chain to build the most powerful spaceboats, but blowing up the short list of raw materials with the addition of alloyed materials is just adding a hurdle with no function.

[Kamo]

I'd like to make ships costing more Titanium, but I have the feeling Titanium is the rarest material after Avorion because the enemy ships scale up but not the asteroids :-\.

So mining gets less efficient than salvaging the scaled up enemy ships for later materials ! Why hunting for a 110 000 Xanion big asteroid to mine into 90 000, where two common pirate encounters yield 220 000 to salvage into 90 000 ??? ?

The only material where it maybe wouldn't happen is Iron because the Iron Wastes are huge compared to the other regions of space, so half my miners would mine it ::).

 

However, mining has just been hyperbuffed because of the shiny new map orders, which'll probably allow miner fleets to run circles into asteroid field sectors, getting back to work as the first sectors' asteroids respawn :).

[DivineEvil]

Actually, the idea about turning them into a commodity late game was precisely because of the rarity closer to the core. Supply and demand; iron and Titanium gain value once again in the core.

 

However, keep in mind, this is only a suggestion, and not everyone plays the game simply to get to the core. There's pirate hunting, and all the commerce options. Add the ability to build and sell fighters and shuttles, or even bigger ships and *poof* a whole new facet to the game is available. really, with only a little work, this game could be... well, infinite, really - think about it.  A player founded corporate conglomerate could easily become the size and strength of an NPC faction.

Yes, but the suggestion is a statement for developers to consider and act upon. A good suggestion has to clearly state what should be done, and then the reason why it should be done for the betterment of the game. With the suggestion given here as it is, we will either get the alloys, that are better than the pure materials, which will make the pure materials meaningless and applying them more tedious, or allows that are weaker than the originals, which will in turn render them unnecessary.

 

Like BlackGazebo have said, the only feasible way to somewhat improve the value of lower-tier materials is by making them better than other materials in some particular fashion, like making Titanium Thrusters and Naonite Engines more powerful for the same volume, where at the moment all Thrusters and Engines has exactly the same output and differ only in weight and durability; And these changes has to be to the magnitude, where players would actually consider sacrificing that durability and weight for the benefits granted. Even then the value of these materials won't change, perhaps only the frequency of trade would.

 

Other than that, Avorion as it is now has players too independent in their needs to facilitate any real commerce, aside from turret, module and material trading. Some of it does exist now, but limited in what players can reliably offer. Each player in itself is a faction leader, because he holds the control over as many ships and stations as he can afford to and is technically its immaterial, immortal agent. The only question is how much time you can spend on the development of that faction.

 

Personally I find the situation with materials more than manageable. Setup of the commodity trade market and general combat balance worries me much, much more, which is why I keep lobbying changes on those all the time to no avail.

[unbekannt1984]

Hi,

 

 

Yes, but the suggestion is a statement for developers to consider and act upon. A good suggestion has to clearly state what should be done, and then the reason why it should be done for the betterment of the game. With the suggestion given here as it is, we will either get the alloys, that are better than the pure materials, which will make the pure materials meaningless and applying them more tedious, or allows that are weaker than the originals, which will in turn render them unnecessary.

well, those alloys don't need to be stronger then the original materials to be useful. And we shouldn't think just about alloys, there are also composite materials (think about carbon-fiber or glass fiber epoxy materials, ferroconcrete,...).

 

Let's think about the top material at the moment: Avorion.

The biggest problem with Avorion is: There's no Avorion Armor, if you want to mount Avorion Turrets on your ship, you can't get the benefits of Armor. If there was an Armor-Alloy, that allowed mounting Avorion Turrets and that stops railgun-projectiles, I'd use it, even if it doesn't have significantly more hp then Ogonite Armor.

 

Which other advantages would alloys offer? Well, if you just started a game and start progressing towards the core, you usually have got tons of the old materials, the first material that you encounter that is not available in the whole galaxy is Naonite.

Naonite allows you to build shields for the first time, but it also offers advantages in generators (which you need to power those shields) and so on. So you would focus your efforts on constructing shields and upgrade your generators with the first bits of Naonite.

 

If there were any Naonite-Titanium or Naonite-Iron Alloys or composite materials, that would allow you to quickly upgrade your Armor or other important parts of your ship, wouldn't you use those?

 

What's about properties of the materials? The first thing that comes to my mind is weight... Any Alloys or composite materials with Titanium or Trinium shouldn't be too heavy. Using those as Armor could offer some advantages to stats like maneuverability and acceleration/braking (well, just because of the mass).

 

And finally we've got some blocks like the inertial dampener, which can be built just out of Iron or Avorion, because of some subspace-properties... Well, maybe some parts of these blocks could be built out of Trinium or other materials, too. These slightly upgraded versions might offer just little bonuses (like weight-reduction and maybe slightly improved stats).

 

You see, there is no need to make alloys, composite materials or "mixed blocks" overpowered. There could be some minor advantages, like ferroconcrete offers to buildings (on earth).

[BlackGazebo]

Hi,

 

 

Yes, but the suggestion is a statement for developers to consider and act upon. A good suggestion has to clearly state what should be done, and then the reason why it should be done for the betterment of the game. With the suggestion given here as it is, we will either get the alloys, that are better than the pure materials, which will make the pure materials meaningless and applying them more tedious, or allows that are weaker than the originals, which will in turn render them unnecessary.

well, those alloys don't need to be stronger then the original materials to be useful. And we shouldn't think just about alloys, there are also composite materials (think about carbon-fiber or glass fiber epoxy materials, ferroconcrete,...).

If it pleases you, we can call them "composite materials" instead of "alloys" but it's conceptually the same thing.

 

Let's think about the top material at the moment: Avorion.

The biggest problem with Avorion is: There's no Avorion Armor, if you want to mount Avorion Turrets on your ship, you can't get the benefits of Armor. If there was an Armor-Alloy, that allowed mounting Avorion Turrets and that stops railgun-projectiles, I'd use it, even if it doesn't have significantly more hp then Ogonite Armor.

That's kind of irrelevant given turret mount blocks - you can just mount a strip of Avorion Turret Mount on top of Ogonite Armor.  This is a non-issue.

 

Which other advantages would alloys offer? Well, if you just started a game and start progressing towards the core, you usually have got tons of the old materials, the first material that you encounter that is not available in the whole galaxy is Naonite.

Naonite allows you to build shields for the first time, but it also offers advantages in generators (which you need to power those shields) and so on. So you would focus your efforts on constructing shields and upgrade your generators with the first bits of Naonite.

 

If there were any Naonite-Titanium or Naonite-Iron Alloys or composite materials, that would allow you to quickly upgrade your Armor or other important parts of your ship, wouldn't you use those?

Again, I don't really see this as an issue - as you progress through the campaign, you come upon materials that aren't great at everything, but will improve something.  You're just introducing a buff for no particular reason (it's not like this point in the campaign is challenging enough to justify a buff to armor).

 

What's about properties of the materials? The first thing that comes to my mind is weight... Any Alloys or composite materials with Titanium or Trinium shouldn't be too heavy. Using those as Armor could offer some advantages to stats like maneuverability and acceleration/braking (well, just because of the mass).

Again, it sounds like a buff for no purpose.

 

And finally we've got some blocks like the inertial dampener, which can be built just out of Iron or Avorion, because of some subspace-properties... Well, maybe some parts of these blocks could be built out of Trinium or other materials, too. These slightly upgraded versions might offer just little bonuses (like weight-reduction and maybe slightly improved stats).

Inertial damps are fine.  If anything, I'd say that materials should be *more* specialized, like Iron, so that there's some reason to be holding onto materials that are right now made worthless once you hit Trinium.  You're suggesting everything get less specialized.

 

You see, there is no need to make alloys, composite materials or "mixed blocks" overpowered. There could be some minor advantages, like ferroconcrete offers to buildings (on earth).

It's not about things being over or underpowered.  This is still ostensibly a single-player game.  It's about somebody spending time coding and texturing and creating UI elements for the things you're describing so that you can have slightly better armor before hitting Trinium, which is completely unnecessary. 

[unbekannt1984]

Let's think about the top material at the moment: Avorion.

The biggest problem with Avorion is: There's no Avorion Armor, if you want to mount Avorion Turrets on your ship, you can't get the benefits of Armor. If there was an Armor-Alloy, that allowed mounting Avorion Turrets and that stops railgun-projectiles, I'd use it, even if it doesn't have significantly more hp then Ogonite Armor.

That's kind of irrelevant given turret mount blocks - you can just mount a strip of Avorion Turret Mount on top of Ogonite Armor.  This is a non-issue.

It is an issue... You just don't understand it :P

I've got about 12 million Avorion and just 500k Ogonite. Now you tell me to get back into a boring part of the galaxy, to collect an obsolete material just to build the armor for new ships. And even worse, I'd still have to put another ugly block on top of that armor, just to be able to put a turret there.

 

What's about properties of the materials? The first thing that comes to my mind is weight... Any Alloys or composite materials with Titanium or Trinium shouldn't be too heavy. Using those as Armor could offer some advantages to stats like maneuverability and acceleration/braking (well, just because of the mass).

Again, it sounds like a buff for no purpose.

Well, there may be a little buff, but just like the missing Avorion armor, there simply doesn't need to be a buff.

[BlackGazebo]

Let's think about the top material at the moment: Avorion.

The biggest problem with Avorion is: There's no Avorion Armor, if you want to mount Avorion Turrets on your ship, you can't get the benefits of Armor. If there was an Armor-Alloy, that allowed mounting Avorion Turrets and that stops railgun-projectiles, I'd use it, even if it doesn't have significantly more hp then Ogonite Armor.

That's kind of irrelevant given turret mount blocks - you can just mount a strip of Avorion Turret Mount on top of Ogonite Armor.  This is a non-issue.

It is an issue... You just don't understand it :P

I've got about 12 million Avorion and just 500k Ogonite. Now you tell me to get back into a boring part of the galaxy, to collect an obsolete material just to build the armor for new ships. And even worse, I'd still have to put another ugly block on top of that armor, just to be able to put a turret there.

You can literally make the turret mount as thin as you want to, just as long as it's wide and long enough to mount the turret base.  You can paint it the same color as Ogonite if you so wish.  You're complaining about material collection being boring, yet your whole idea is based on forcing people to collect more materials to do what they already do just fine, with an insignificant stat buff being the only reward.

 

What's about properties of the materials? The first thing that comes to my mind is weight... Any Alloys or composite materials with Titanium or Trinium shouldn't be too heavy. Using those as Armor could offer some advantages to stats like maneuverability and acceleration/braking (well, just because of the mass).

Again, it sounds like a buff for no purpose.

Well, there may be a little buff, but just like the missing Avorion armor, there simply doesn't need to be a buff.

If there's no buff, what's the point of collecting two materials to make one block when you could do the exact same thing with one material?  Again, this idea just leads nowhere.

[DivineEvil]

well, those alloys don't need to be stronger then the original materials to be useful. And we shouldn't think just about alloys, there are also composite materials (think about carbon-fiber or glass fiber epoxy materials, ferroconcrete,...).

Well considering the material/credit costs for different blocks, all materials are seem to be used as a composites. The majority of the block function is provided by the given material, and credits are used to purchase and assemble varied internal components, that are made of all sorts of other materials.

 

Ultimately, we can argue an addition of composites or even completely new materials as long as there's an actual problem to solve. There isn't. The objective here is not to demonstrate the advantages alloys give. It is to demonstrate why they are necessary to make the game better by introducing something otherwise unavailable or by solving something otherwise unresolved.

At the moment the idea doesn't seem to offer neither of those.

 

Let's think about the top material at the moment: Avorion.

The biggest problem with Avorion is: There's no Avorion Armor, if you want to mount Avorion Turrets on your ship, you can't get the benefits of Armor. If there was an Armor-Alloy, that allowed mounting Avorion Turrets and that stops railgun-projectiles, I'd use it, even if it doesn't have significantly more hp then Ogonite Armor.

You can first cover your entire ship with Ogonite armor, and then just make gaps in convenient places to place Avorion turret bases, hull, crew quarters etc to mount turrets to. There's actually nobody in my knowledge who would specifically target the turret mount to disable it, because its just faster and easier to destroy the ship entirely. It also has little bearing on railgun projectiles, because they do multiplied damage to the ship itself regardless of what they hit. As long as that's how the railguns work, nobody gives a damn about armor special feature, and everyone is using it simply for greater amount of ship HP given per unit of mass.

 

Which other advantages would alloys offer? Well, if you just started a game and start progressing towards the core, you usually have got tons of the old materials, the first material that you encounter that is not available in the whole galaxy is Naonite.

Naonite allows you to build shields for the first time, but it also offers advantages in generators (which you need to power those shields) and so on. So you would focus your efforts on constructing shields and upgrade your generators with the first bits of Naonite.

 

If there were any Naonite-Titanium or Naonite-Iron Alloys or composite materials, that would allow you to quickly upgrade your Armor or other important parts of your ship, wouldn't you use those?

No, because shields, energy blocks and protective hull (in case you're using it instead of armor to be more mobile) are the only blocks feasible to upgrade with Naonite. Everything else works perfectly fine as Titanium. Lack of Armor and other blocks in specific materials is a deliberate design choice to encourage mixed use. When you got tons of old materials, you sell them, just like you sell the outdated turrets when you have something to replace them with. This is the primary way of acquiring credits to meet the increased expenses of more advanced galaxy regions.

 

The only thing I can derive from the arguments given so far, is that you want a circumvention of the deliberately designed limitations on materials, which makes them better or worse to be used for certain things and choices associated with it. Unfortunately, I still fail to recognize why these limitations is an issue.

 

What's about properties of the materials? The first thing that comes to my mind is weight... Any Alloys or composite materials with Titanium or Trinium shouldn't be too heavy. Using those as Armor could offer some advantages to stats like maneuverability and acceleration/braking (well, just because of the mass).

Yes, or you can just plate your ship in Hull instead of armor, which gives you exactly the same effect. Or you can cover the nose of your ship with armor, and keep everything else wrapped in Hull. You can even substitute full blocks of Hull with Crew Quarters or Cargo Bays, which will cost more, but weight less for the same amount of HP and associated capacity bonuses. All of that with a single material. You know, because Avorion actually allows you to build you ship however you want.

 

It is difficult enough to balance the stats of a ship design as it is (unless you distribute and calculate them preliminarily, like I do) by just placing and removing blocks, and you suggest to make it even harder by introducing new materials? There is such a thing as "too much choice".

 

And finally we've got some blocks like the inertial dampener, which can be built just out of Iron or Avorion, because of some subspace-properties... Well, maybe some parts of these blocks could be built out of Trinium or other materials, too. These slightly upgraded versions might offer just little bonuses (like weight-reduction and maybe slightly improved stats).

Well, maybe not? Maybe players should just build the inertial dampeners to fit the ship? Maybe the massive weight and power demand of Iron inertial dampeners is a feature, that has to be dealt with, and not a bug?

 

Slightly upgraded versions that give slightly improved stats do not warrant the introduction of entire alloy mechanic, especially considering the same effect is acquired by simply modifying the block layout. Such features can be justified for the games, that use predefined modules with specific stats - there you would like to have mods/refits, that allow finer tuning. In the game like Avorion, where you can scale the systems to half-meter accuracy and get stats precisely relative to that scale, it is entirely redundant.

 

You see, there is no need to make alloys, composite materials or "mixed blocks" overpowered. There could be some minor advantages, like ferroconcrete offers to buildings (on earth).

Ferro-concrete does not offer "minor advantages" - its a combination of materials and structure, that makes the original components obsolete, and allows all of the modern skyline construction. It is used specifically because the introduction of a steel framework effectively covers the flaws of the sheer concrete for comparatively low difference in cost.

 

Similarly, Steel is used specifically because introduction of a tiny fraction of Carbon into the molecular structure of Iron produces the material, that is better than pure Iron in pretty much everything. In this situation for someone to use pure Iron, is if they cannot afford to forge Steel or if they specifically need Iron for unconventional uses (i.e. chemistry).