Material and faction traits.

[Lannik]

Right now I feel the games materials are poorly balanced. This is not intended as negative criticism but how I feel about the various building materials and the way they encourage you to play. The way the tiers are set each material is significantly better than the previous tier which leads to no practical reasons to stay in low tier regions but rather mine only the bare minimum and blitz to ogonite regions and prepare to acquire avorion. As it sits nothing beats avorion components with ogonite armor.

 

I feel each material should have its own advantages over the others in a more balanced and overlapping manner. Furthermore a faction that say uses titanium would have the lightest ships therein be the most agile but lack durability but make great glass cannon harassment fighters or bombers while iron would likewise have stengths and weaknesses over say ogonite by making iron more durable HP wise but be much heavier with different resistances. Give xanion great shields, trinium best jump drives and cargo, naonite best engines ECT while each material is weak to various damage types in a Eve-ish checks and balances. This would also make each material combination useful late game to mix and match rather that lat tier beats all.

 

Having materials randomly placed around the galaxy rather than highest tier near center an lowest at rim so that the interplay is more exciting and forces you to look for your desired material and makes oddball matchups with warring faction more interesting.

 

Factions that use each different material region or combination of materials affect their style of play so that iron/xanion tend to be defensive armor/shield tanks with low firepower while titanium/trinium tend to prefer trading and diplomacy with better relations with neighbors but have fast agile ships that can respond to invasion more quickly than other combinations.

[SageThe13th]

Trinium is very good for cutting weight/cost even when you are using Avorion.  The same is true for Titanium before you hit the Trinium rich sectors.

[Lannik]

Indeed it is still light but my thought process is to expand  on that by giving every material strengths and weaknesses so that no material is the be all end all option and makes all end game viable  and encourage the mixed uses of many at once to keep value for low tier materials if not necessity.

[bit]

I like the idea - it would also give reason to have different kinds of ships for different purposes and give reason for certain factions/alliances/bases (thinking forward to future updates here) to be stationed in not-just-the-center.  It'd also make ship battles really interesing, trying to use ships that accentuate the weakness of targets.  Neat idea you got there Lannik.

[Lannik]

Thanks! I cannot claim full credit as my concept isn't truly original as I did steal a bit from Eve Online with their factional check and balances and applied it to materials. I do feel that only ogonite and avorion currently have late game value and anyone who rushes to those lose the ability to be challenged by the remaining 90% of the game and hurting replayability and diversity.

[Lannik]

Since avorion is the game's namesake it should have some unique and defining feature like block regeneration when damaged. A self healing ship if albeit slowly would definitely add value to offset nerfing it down to allow a competitive diversity of building materials. Right now it has the best stats in all categories save weight and armor plating which seems overkill.

[Thundercraft]

Trinium is very good for cutting weight/cost even when you are using Avorion.  The same is true for Titanium before you hit the Trinium rich sectors.

 

I've not had the experience of building with Avorion yet, but I wanted to ask:

 

With access to Avorion, which systems would you make out of Trinium and which of Avorion? Would you make your armor of Ogonite? Would you use Trinium for integrity field generators and such (where material doesn't seem to make much difference), while using Avorion for power generation?

[Ranakastrasz]

Ogonite armor has around twice the weight and durability of the same volume of avorium hull, and avorium can't make armor. As such, it makes *OK* armor, with the main advantage being that it uses a less valuable resource and, I think, less credits. Plus thinner armor means less chance of block loss (since each block is tougher) and a smaller hitbox, for the same mass.

 

 

Also, I think some weapons pierce through until they hit armor or exit the other side of the ship, so Ogonite is really useful there.

 

Titanium and trinium are pretty lightweight, so using them for anything that doesn't need to be that durable makes sense.

 

Trinium can be used to build any block, but it is still inferior to higher level blocks.

 

 

Making materials sidegrade makes sense. Something like this.

 

4 Tiers, with two materials in each, one is high tech, one is low tech.

 

Iron is standalone, terrible in most aspects. 51 Weight, 4 durability

 

Titanium has 25 weight, 8 durability.

Naonite has 35 weight, 8 durability, but also supports more components like shield and so on. Tier 2, but found in different sectors.

 

Trinium, 21 Weight, 13 durability. Extreme Flexability, lowest weight. Best generalist material.

 

Xanion. 27 weight, 20 durability. High flexability, but no armor, again.

 

Ogonite, 45 weight, 40 durability. Heavy, armor is only block type, but best armor in the game, save none.

 

Avorion, 36 weight, 45 durability, supports all but armor.

 

could also make materials key in certain blocks. Like computer cores or hyperdrives REQUIRE Xanion, or Trinium (which is generalist and found in small amounts everywhere)

 

Avorion can retain it's omnifunction, being that it is extremely rare and hard to get (Core containing, presumably, the happy fun stuff like Dwarf Fortress)

 

Iron is just garbage material, as a starting point. I would prefer it be useful, but not really sure.

 

Keeping two options per tier, approximately, might make things more interesting, and reducing the gap in performance might help too. Also, making certain materials required for some blocks could have interesting effects.

 

Just a few thoughts.

[Adonis]

Trinium is very good for cutting weight/cost even when you are using Avorion.  The same is true for Titanium before you hit the Trinium rich sectors.

 

I've not had the experience of building with Avorion yet, but I wanted to ask:

 

With access to Avorion, which systems would you make out of Trinium and which of Avorion? Would you make your armor of Ogonite? Would you use Trinium for integrity field generators and such (where material doesn't seem to make much difference), while using Avorion for power generation?

 

 

Trinium makes the best hangers, crew quarters, cargo bays, engines, and thrusters.

Oganite has the best armor hp per volume, but can be replaced with trinium if you don't care for density and just want weight as it's about half the armor at half the weight.

 

Avorion makes the best power systems hands down, so for example you use less space on shield generators for the same space spent on them at a lighter weight than you can get with xanion. This applies for power blocks like hyperspace cores, power generators, batteries, processors.

 

Edit: regarding integrity generators, i'm still unsure on the coverage mechanic, but i'll test it with different blocks to see if the progression is there like other powered blocks

 

Edit2: Seems Integrity generators are based on the volume of the block used so it doesn't matter what material it's made from regarding sze of the field created. Just cost/weight should be taken into consideration.

[Lannik]

Seems the opinion is mixed on tier system vs rock paper scissors in regards to alteration to the stats and traits of various materials.