Some thoughts and questions after about 20 hours of play.

[Radagar]

I posted this on Reddit as well.

 

 

So I've only been able to play since the early access release but it's essentially the only thing I've been playing since then. I'm at the point where my ship is mainly composed of naonite and I'm working on expanding my jump capability.

I've got a server set up with 4 of us playing. We're all having a blast exploring and upgrading our ships. I did turn down the collision damage because people were having single pieces break off the ship from a collision and having the whole thing get destroyed. It was discouraging for them to lose hours of mining/building when a single engine breaks off and instakills them.

That said I'm having a blast flying around fighting off pirates, mining, and joining in faction wars. I still haven't gotten into making more ships or stations for the fleet, that's next on our list.

 

Questions/Concerns/Bugs:

 

Sometimes the random item generation can get a bit wacky. A laser turret that has scaling energy cost of 10-20x what a normal turret has without an equally substantial payoff. The little bar that tracks the energy escalation actually grows beyond its limits and right off the screen. I don't know if it's intended or a bug. But it makes those turrets functionally useless. It's disappointing as they are usually higher quality turrets. If 40GJ of generation isn't enough to power a 30 damage turret, probably an issue.

 

What is the underlying process behind the research station? I know you put turrets on the left and it outputs a seemingly random turret on the right. Is there a way to control the output? Guide it to higher quality? Or is it all RNGESUS?

 

Turret Sizes, frankly there needs to be a way to scale the size of turrets. I'd really like them to be more proportional with the rest of the ship. That's a minor gripe though, and if there is a way to do it please tell me.

 

If you make a fleet of ships can they jump with you using your range? Or are we capped to crappy ship ranges?

 

Maybe increase the effectiveness/cost of thrusters so you can get the same power with less space. The volume of thrusters I have on my ship while still having it handle like a giant brick is kind of nuts. Plus all the thrusters firing is so bright you can barely tell I'm in a ship and not just a controlled green explosion. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it currently seems like my entire outer hull needs to be thrusters if I ever want to slow down in a meaningful time.

 

I'd like to see an upgrade type for weapon specializations, stuff that boosts specific weapon types rather than just adding turret slots. Also those turret slot additions are so much more valuable than the majority of upgrade types. Currently I've got a shield booster/sensor booster/and 3-4 bonus turret upgrades. They're just so good compared to alternatives. They're also necessary because the turret damage doesn't seem to scale very much so the solution is just more and more turrets. It takes a really long time to drop a ship with 35k shields/hull using 400 firepower of turrets.

 

I'd like to see more utility turrets too. Like the force turret but maybe energy vampire/gravity well/weapon jamming/mass increaser. Things that do more than just pew pew (not that pew pewing isn't fun) Forgive me if these exist and I just haven't made it far enough.

If I join the war effort of an ally, I think they should give me a map of their space and known enemy space. I've helped factions and still haven't the slightest idea where the enemy space is. I feel like that's something they'd share with their mercenary pilots.

Also as a tip for people starting out. Kill pirate ships, or at least be there to grab loot while NPC's fight eachother. Pick sides in a war and help, loot all the things. If you just try to mine ore and sell it for cash you're gonna be pretty poor for a long time and who wants to sell the stuff they need to build ships?! LOOT ALL THE THINGS.

 

I really do love the game and can't wait to see where it goes from here. Happily going to continue my quest to build the ultimate combat carrier. I'm thinking it'll be a lot less reliant on turrets and I can really take advantage of those upgrade slots.

 

I almost forgot. Please save the turret group settings over jumps. I have an automated turret group and I have to set them to autofire every time I change sectors.

[thedamngod]

I did turn down the collision damage because people were having single pieces break off the ship from a collision and having the whole thing get destroyed.

 

try to cover the ships with integrity fields from the integrity field generators. Everything in the field will be treated as one block and they will only be destroyed if the combined health of all of them reaches 0.

 

What is the underlying process behind the research station?

Try to put only turrets of the same type in there. That give you a turret of the same type as output. Also the amount of input matters for the output. Input 3 turrets and there is an 60% chance to get a higher rarity one, 80% for 4 turrets as input and 100% if you input 5 turrets. That should be the probabilities, if I remember correctly. I don't know about the properties of the output turrets or their stats. Those could be randomly generated like normal turret drops.

 

If you make a fleet of ships can they jump with you using your range?

If you are jumping to a sector which is out of the direct reach of AI ships, then they won't follow you. You will have to equip them with hyperspace upgrades or hyperspace cores.

 

Please save the turret group settings over jumps.

That is I bug and i think koonschi said it will be fixed in the next patch but I am not certain.

[Radagar]

With regard to the integrity field, that was actually the source of his death. I only discovered this after reading koonchi's post in another thread. Basically he'd tired his entire ship into one block with the fields. He barely clipped the asteroid with the end of an engine but it was sufficient force to do his entire hull HP in damage. Without the field he would've lost the engine only, with it his entire ship instantly died. The wording on the field makes it seem like each individual block is stronger, but the reality is quite different.

 

 

Edit:

 

Also, thank you for the other information. It is quite helpful.

[Dinosawer]

 

What is the underlying process behind the research station? I know you put turrets on the left and it outputs a seemingly random turret on the right. Is there a way to control the output? Guide it to higher quality? Or is it all RNGESUS?

The more you put in, the better stuff you get (if you put in the max amount of turrets you're guaranteed one of a higher rarity iirc)

 

Turret Sizes, frankly there needs to be a way to scale the size of turrets. I'd really like them to be more proportional with the rest of the ship. That's a minor gripe though, and if there is a way to do it please tell me.

Turrets scale with material - Avorion turrets are gigantic, iron turrets tiny

 

If you make a fleet of ships can they jump with you using your range? Or are we capped to crappy ship ranges?

They jump with their own range at most, which you can extend with system upgrades and hyperspace core blocks to be as large as yours.

 

Maybe increase the effectiveness/cost of thrusters so you can get the same power with less space. The volume of thrusters I have on my ship while still having it handle like a giant brick is kind of nuts. Plus all the thrusters firing is so bright you can barely tell I'm in a ship and not just a controlled green explosion. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it currently seems like my entire outer hull needs to be thrusters if I ever want to slow down in a meaningful time.

Thruster capacity is currently related to surface, not volume. (that's gonna change in the future) Also, I'm fairly sure you can hide thrusters by putting something on top of them and they'd still work.

 

I'd like to see more utility turrets too. Like the force turret but maybe energy vampire/gravity well/weapon jamming/mass increaser. Things that do more than just pew pew (not that pew pewing isn't fun) Forgive me if these exist and I just haven't made it far enough.

There are also repair turrets (for shield and hull)

[thedamngod]

There will be some changes to the integrity fields, but I don't know if that would cover your problems:

 

Ship hitpoints is volume times the material´s factor? Do armor blocks add hitpoints factor or have they a different mechanic? E.g. armor blocks as outer shell, softer ones inside? I noted there is different armor versus inetic and electric attacks.

 

Connected to this is my question about the stuctural integrity generator: Removes the need to place armor or big blocks, you just to need to make sure to have overall high hp volume? But kinetic and electric armor still does count somehow? Do generators fail at a certain point or are they for the full range of hp online?

Ship hitpoints depend on the block types, their sizes and material. Armor adds a lot more HP than hull.

Integrity makes blocks indestructible, but as you said that makes armor a little superflous. Armor does protect from penetrating shots, such as railguns though.

But we'll make it so that the blocks take less damage, instead of none at all.

[Radagar]

There will be some changes to the integrity fields, but I don't know if that would cover your problems:

 

Ship hitpoints is volume times the material´s factor? Do armor blocks add hitpoints factor or have they a different mechanic? E.g. armor blocks as outer shell, softer ones inside? I noted there is different armor versus inetic and electric attacks.

 

Connected to this is my question about the stuctural integrity generator: Removes the need to place armor or big blocks, you just to need to make sure to have overall high hp volume? But kinetic and electric armor still does count somehow? Do generators fail at a certain point or are they for the full range of hp online?

Ship hitpoints depend on the block types, their sizes and material. Armor adds a lot more HP than hull.

Integrity makes blocks indestructible, but as you said that makes armor a little superflous. Armor does protect from penetrating shots, such as railguns though.

But we'll make it so that the blocks take less damage, instead of none at all.

 

Yes that change would be what the description alludes to. It would keep somebody from destroying their entire ship by hitting a corner of it too hard. It also makes armor and the like have a purpose because as it stands now as long as your field covers the whole ship you're never going to lose any blocks in combat until your entire ship just explodes. It also makes shields exceptionally powerful because hull damage can easily repair passively under a massive shield. My current ship has ~38k shields and 6k hull. Any collision damage I take is repaired over time and the shield can withstand an exceptional amount of firepower before dropping.