Earlier today 9 people were in-game from my faction there was an attempt to get 5 people to go do an event it did not happen because only 2 people would commit. Even in MP, there is only 1 pilot you can be sure of and that is your self assuming your internet connection keeps working. As the game stands now 1 pilot can control 1 ship. Whatever is to come of CPU that reality is fixed until the developers give us some other game mechanic
Multiple things stated as fact in those Q&A sessions have changed. For the purposes of this discussion, the most telling is that in the first it was stated that the reason for CPU was performance. I am glad you can read the minds of the developers I can not. However, I am unwilling to take your word for what is in there minds. I want to here an explanation of what they mean by specialization from them. And that is something greater than just a listing of ship types. But let us play with this a bit. Let us say we have this mythical mining ship it has no cargo capacity because it is not a cargo ship. What do you do with the stuff the mining ship has mined? Perhaps you could leave it in space as ore chunks floating about until you can fly the mining ship back to the cargo ship flying the cargo ship to the ore chunks floating in space. But what happens if the cargo ship is attacked on the way to get the ore chunks? why I suppose you fly the cargo ship back and get the combat ship to fight the attacker because the attacker will give you the chance to go get the correct ship. Of course, they will! Then after the battle, you can fly the combat ship back to get the cargo ship and fly the cargo ship back the ore chunks to retrieve them. Surely the ore chunks will still be there. That sounds like fun gameplay for all.
Not at all. Play Space Engineers and load any blueprints into a Enemy Combat AI Mod and the mod will put the AI in control of those vessels. I had many epic space battles that way. In X-Rebirth the Fleet Command Console has a map that you use to tell your fleet where to go and who to attack. ITS SO SIMPLE, once you have the game enemy vessel AI complete. You click an enemy fleet in the Orbital Map or on Planet, and the Squadron you are assigning is loaded with the enemy AI but targeting that fleet or vessel, and you are off to the races. Your fleet will behave just like the enemy fleet. It will attack the closest target. It will evade. It will strafe. It will surround. It will pursue. And you can watch from your Flagship CV or whatever you are flying or manually fly yourself into the fray. Empyrion could even develop missions where you need to use your properly "specialized" squadrons to punch a hole through the Zirax fleet in order for you to fly your vessel through to a mission target. These would work in both Multi and Singleplayer mode. In Multiplayer you would have the "we" to pilot your Squadrons but would still be able to use AI Squadrons if needed, and in Singleplayer you would rely 100% on AI to pilot your Squadrons. The key to all this is 1. Physics(hand in glove with AI) and 2. Optimization. What I just described is but a wee fraction of the graphics activity going on in GTA V, yet GTA V is lag free on weak PCs. Empyrion is rendering EVERYTHING when it should only render what you see, and it is not using tiered resolution models and textures based on distance to the player. They need to make 4 or so models with descending resolution of every block and texture, then render them according to distance from player. There is a more to it than that, but that is the general idea. This would improve performance more than 90% and virtually allow any scale in terms of size and volume of structures, not to mention turrets. But turrets will always be the biggest lag problem with too many. Space Engineers is the same way. 100 turrets is TOO MUCH. lol Servers should simply limit vessel turret count to solve that problem, but for Single Player, you can load as many turrets as your PC can handle. But optimization will once again allow for a much larger number of turrets to be present in a field without causing lag.
Space engineers also lags when there's more than about 8 ships in combat though on a server. At least from watching videos of said battles. Sim speed usually drops to 0.8 to 0.6. So while there's definitely room for optimization, optimization can only do so much. Hopefully Empyrion can get some of that optimization in beta though.
I think the CPU is just a way to make players waste more time doing the same things they were already doing, and maybe its inspired by some admiration for communism and the Green New Deal. Remember, there is no AI to speak of. Orbital Patrols and Planetary patrols will not pursue you. They are dumb as rocks. The CPU system is just there to keep you distracted from doing what you really want to do. Have epic ship to ship battles in space and on planet. Epic HV to HV battles. To enjoy the thrill of destroying bases with your CV Space Weapons fully enabled. I always enable them in the Config File. For some reason Eleon is consistently choosing to smother the game's MAIN ATTRACTION : EPIC Vessel to Vessel and Vessel to Base battles.
I run mods in GTA V where I have 5 vehicles with 20 walking, talking, shooting NPC passengers in my squad shooting the hell out of 10 police and army vehicles and dozens of cop and soldier NPCs while 10 jets and a bunch of helicopters are attacking my squad in the middle of crowded Los Santos with NO LAG. Its called optimization. Empyrion has none. That was the point of my post. They had 2 jobs and one nice to have job. 1. Physics/AI 2. Optimization 3. Talking human NPC mission givers and Talking Zirax and Polaris and Talon. Instead they focus on a flight HUD that is useless with no physics, and a completely useless CPU artificial scarcity enhancer and time waster. They are focusing on distractions to keep players from reaching the stage where they realize there is no space or vessel to vessel combat worth mentioning. Attacking bases with a CV or SV is ok the first couple times. Once again, physics and AI. Your Project Eden scenario breathed some serious life into Empyrion. If they continue to neuter and handicap what is already lacking, I'll just stick to playing Project Eden in 10.5. No vanilla scenario comes close, expecially with CPU. Project Eden with the big 3 must haves I described is the key to making Empyrion a classic. A game that captivates everyone who tries it. Like Mass Effect 2 or Half Life 2. And it would become huge in the multi player scene too. Forget the "Less is More" double speak gibberish. Less is LESS. MORE is More.
There is not much "specialization" possible with a 200 000 CPU points budget for tier 1. The basic set of devices needed for "space life and travel" on a CV cost between 40 000 and 90 000 CPU, without warp or fancy constructor, only minimal cargo : The warp tank is included because it can also serve for shield, and I kept cargo at minimum. Also included an ammo controller because I don't see any ship without at least 1 weapon in Empyrion, especially singleplayer. I did a version with the thruster M : Now we're at 88 000 CPU, some room left for "specialization"... Lets get some weapons to make this a fighter... 123 000 CPU. I have 2 rocket guns, not a complete hull but that's hardened steel so just imagine it's a complete hull of plain steel. 4 turrets, a T1 shield, and 75 000 points to go. What can I put next ? - repair bay : 25 000 -repair bay T2 : 50 000 -warp drive : 30 000 -more thrusters M at 13 000 each ? -advanced constructor : 40 000 -cargo boxes ? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now I would like honest opinions : is this what some players call a "Jack-of-all-trades" ? And does adding other devices in the list I made transform that ship into a "specialized ship" ? My honest opinion, regarding what this ship can do with the allocated budget : not a lot, even if I try to make some "specialization" out of it. At best, it would be a mock-up of specialization, trading the few guns for more boxes for example. A flying restaurant ? The cooking tables are expensive but I could fit many fridges... Wow... Is someone going to tell me that I should remove the armor locker ? Or maybe the ventilator ? I even left the O2 station out, no toilet, no shower... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Thrusters XL cost 533 000 CPU, and the T4 cap is 1,6 millions. That means maximum 2 big XL and not more. Why use it at all ? CVs can't use drag & lift in space, and needs to brake too. Thrusters L ? I can see "specialization" : a ship that can move fast sideways vs a ship that can move fast vertical vs a ship that can move fast forward-backward. With the same kit of needed devices, plus a pinch of weapons. I feel like that "specialization" is more a role-play thing than an actual design case, because most devices are required for virtually any CV, with little variations on quantities with CPU. A ship with 6 guns and 4 turrets is a "fighter" but if it has 20 cargo boxes it is a "hauler" ? I didn't even load the ship with ammo and minimum materials.
Besides individual devices needing balancing, what if CPU started at a higher number? For example the current CV tiers are: Tier 1: 200k Tier 2: 400k Tier 3: 800k Tier 4: 1600k What if they were something like: Tier 1: 400k Tier 2: 800k Tier 3: 1200k Tier 4: 1600k Obviously coupled with further balancing of the numbers, as well as removing the CPU cost for non-functional ship parts such as hull blocks and deco. This would make it less punishing to build a small ship, while still allowing noticeable and meaningful upgrades with a new tier. Just random thoughts.
What you need to do to make it work, Kassonade, is you need to make sure you are facing East, then stand on one leg whilst simultaneously rubbing your belly button and pinching your nose, and then hop around in circles whilst chanting "Zirax Mirax." Only then will you be able to achieve the CPU enabled specialization that is required of you. Its a variation on Ctrl Alt Del, but designed to ruin space gameplay instead of PC user experiences.
And I thought it was the color... again ! But yes, @ravien_ff , quite obviously. Low caps leave "specialization" to imagination more than to real design.
I'm actually of the opposite frame of mind. I don't understand why CPU values have to be scaled so astronomically high. You could achieve basically the same results by shaving three to four digits off those figures - and, of course, stop doing the Stupid Thing™ by charging CPU points for blocks and deco. Mentally, it's a bit easier to juggle the numbers if you're sitting at, say "550/600 CPU" and have to choose between five thrusters at 10CPU each, twenty cargo boxes at 5, and so forth. (*I remain open to the idea of armor - ie, sathium blocks like Hard / Combat steel, and Armored Concrete, costing CPU points, but I refuse to compromise on the idea of basic building blocks or fluffin' deco objects being part of that deal - now more than ever, thanks to @Taelyn™ telling us the reason for that decision.)
Did you look at the numbers from Kassonnade's post? My Anubis CV isn't even that big and its 100 million CPU. Its not even fully detailed. I had to taper part of the hull because I was going to drop below 30 m/s and I wanted to keep the mileage as low as possible because every Prometheum deposit is small for some reason. An entire planet cannot sustain the energy needs of my one CV.
Well my guess was that by giving us high numbers they left us more room to play, because with low values we can't go much lower if needed obviously (thinking about the config file, that is). I did not even test my rig on a planet, I just wanted to have a visual starting point as to which devices are relatively "normal" to have for a "spaceship" in Empyrion, and apart mining and fighting I don't really see how differences could be so striking as to see "specialization" in a glimpse. If I had done a little more effort I could have made a full hull, because what we can't see is the space needed around the hot/ radioactive devices, that require "dead space" to be able to move safely inside the ship. Also add to this that players can always multi-tool devices on the fly, which renders the concept of "specialization" a bit moot...
I also spent a few hours trying to make a spreadsheet some time ago to help a bit when building, but numbers are all over the place or just missing. They changed CPU values and they are not in the config file, so I have to look in the game to find what they are, and it becomes tedious. Having all the values in an easy to read format somewhere could help us making "test designs" knowing where we're heading. Right now it's not intuitive, and from my example it's not clear what set of devices would make a big difference in the ship's primary "role". And what about DPS, mass/volume added to some non-cargo designs vs the mass of weapons, and the fact that players can redesign a ship at anytime, switching a 50 000 CPU device for two dozen cheap CPU devices for example, would this not prove that "specialization" is merely an artefact to promote smaller builds, simply ?
Of course I looked at the numbers. Tell me, what's the functional difference between a shield generator that costs 18,000/200,000, and one that's 18/200? I mean, putting aside the fact that the devices aren't balanced properly to begin with. I suspect the biggest reason for values that high is to allow a large ceiling for blocks, but given that virtually everyone who's looked at this CPU business considers that concept patently stupid (in whole or in part), I'd rather they shave a few zeroes off everything, stop penalizing us for every block we use, and simplify the whole thing down. It's not really a hill I'm prepared to die on though, just saying it's one more facet of the system that's needlessly obtuse. Yeah, that is a thing. Granted, I'm also operating on the notion that if they shaved it all down, devices would feel a bit more sensible too. Say, 2 CPU for a small thruster, 5 for a medium one, and so forth - just pulling numbers out of hats, but you get the idea.
When diving in the numbers it becomes very apparent that for the most part they have been thrown without much balance in mind. Just look at the volumes or masses, or energy input vs function. I saw lots of "volume = 100 SU" for very different objects, "energy in = 1 PU" the same, rounded numbers for batches of blocks, etc. It's hard to focus only on CPU values with all these in mind ; it feels like measuring the fuel consumption of a car with flat tires...
Is anyone else unhappy that they backtracked on leaving the factory as base resources instead of the Loot/Vendor special items for CPU Extenders? Or was I delusional that that's what they said in the Q&A.
The special items are added to the factory. happend with the last EXP update Thursday We Always said we would do that
