A lot of recent noise in the forums has focused on CPU for obvious reasons. Maybe some of the concerns could be mitigated if players understood why CPU is being implemented in greater detail. I understand the idea behind CPU to be ultimately a replacement for 'hard-coded' limits on devices/weapons that also incentivizes diversity. So its like a ship design 'currency' that you mostly spend on what you want your ship to be good at - rocket turrets, gattling guns, cargo transport, production, etc, or some watered down combination of several. Ships are very different from one-another, because they had to choose between lots of rockets or lots of cargo, or a bit of both. I assume this means Eleon would remove all the hard-coded limits, so you can have as many rocket turrets or thrusters as you like, but within CPU limits. I'm not really sure if this is what Eleon is doing, despite a bit of time searching. You can't please everyone when making a game, and an elegant vision beats a compromising attempt to do so every time. Also, time/money/labour should generally focus on improving the game not on marketing/explaining. But, if you can make transition periods smoother (avoiding losing supporters), and get better feedback from players (feedback posts might be more often useful), perhaps just a little extra explaining could be a worthwhile time investment, perhaps in the form of a short video or detailed blog post? Or perhaps I just didn't search properly? Is there a detailed explanation of where CPU is going available? I already read the front page posts, looked on forum, watched 90% of the recent developer interview by xcaliber. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I recommend watching the more recent Q&A with Spanj over the Xcaliber one. Since it involves clarifying the issues brought up with the Xcaliber interview that came about as a result of a language barrier. Xcaliber Q&A is with Taelyn. Spanj Q&A is with Hummel. Though somehow none of the people watching the stream realized that it was Hummel. They thought it was Taelyn until spanj thanked Christoph at the end and you can see all the people asking "who's christoph?".
They have been making tons of detailed posts during experimental to explain things and get feedback. The CPU feedback thread is up to over 1,000 replies.
Perhaps I'm looking at the wrong posts, I've only seen general overview. Yeh it's kinda hard to find the official Eleon position on things in the flood of users posts. I've been part of several lengthy debates around CPU, gave up on that thread though. Although I obviously read Hummel's overview at the start, it didn't really shed light on the ideas behind CPU, just what it was and how it currently works. Thanks, will definitely watch this. If I can get a clear picture of whether CPU will replace turret limits in future revisions, that would be a great starting point.
You've linked the forum section that I posted this post into? I don't really understand? Like I said I've read quite a bit of that already.
Could Eleon do this? Maybe, but they'd have to engage with the questions surrounding why they chose the very particular implementation they did, when much simpler ones would have done a better job. A lot of the details of the current implementation seem to be being explained by "because that's the way we made it" rather than any coherent vision of how the CPU system is actually supposed to work and drive ship design specialization.
From the other thread: Quoting myself: To expand on this, it's not nearly enough to say that CPU will allow for specialization. The how and the why need to be explained as well, otherwise it's just wishful thinking on the part of the developers. And it's the how and the why that have been completely missing from all official descriptions of the system, probably because it's actually very difficult, if not impossible, to explain how precisely the current implementation of the CPU system achieves the stated goals, and why this is even a good way of doing it. EDIT: The rest of @Hummel-o-War's post that I didn't quote is all details about the mechanic itself. It's important to know how the mechanic works, yes, but that's not the same thing at all as how and why it achieves its goals, and I feel like those two very separate concepts have been being convolved together (either intentionally or unintentionally).
Well I'd definitely say the developers have a right to shape their game however they like, but I agree the how and why are missing and it would be beneficial for the dev team to give an idea of what they're trying to do so we can more comfortably ride the disruption and so we can provide better feedback. I'm totally fine with the developers saying "we're trying to do <XYZ> and not sure if we've got it right yet. We'd like your feedback, although no guarantees that we'll move exactly the way you want, as we've got a long term vision in mind". Frankly a lot of feedback tends to be fairly half baked, and I'm really glad they ignore some of it. Mostly commonly people confuse what is useful to them in the game as opposed to what would make the game better (they want everything easier, bigger and without limitation - even where this cheapens the feel of stuff), or they ignore the implementation costs of casually demanded features. But a little more openness may allow the high-effort feedback to be more valuable, and harness the power of crowd-sourcing to make the entire project more sustainable/viable. After all, the big advantage of early access is getting your userbase on-board with the project.
Could they sell it to more players? Yes. Will they be able to sell it to the majority of players that hate it? No. Most people that have bought the game and will buy it are going to be "survival" game players. What portion of them buy and play these types of games for building? Those players are going to be the ones that are going to have issues with CPU and those are the ones that are going to hardest to please because most survival games have nothing like this in them outside of a server setting that can be placed to limit building. Then there are those that dont "buy" for building, but still want to be able to build whatever they want. They will find out about this "punishment" and question why this game does it when others do not. No matter what Eleon's reason for this system is, its a hard sell to these people (like me). If you look at the Steam reviews, more than a few long time players have either changed their reviews, or finally gave a review of the game and are telling people to hold off purchasing because this game is now a thing that actually goes against its own description. Sandbox, create anything you can dream up...which is now punished by the CPU system. So, what does Eleon say to win those people over? Hey we realize you were playing something where you could build anything and now that creativity is a punishment but...we wanted to force everyone to use smaller or more specialized vessels? Or, we needed to put that into the base game so some potato servers wont struggle as much and they can get a few more FPS? How about, sure this game is a sandbox and you can build anything you can dream of but we want so if you dream to large you get a slap in the face? No, they are MUCH better off adding a Tear 5 CPU that gives 1000x the amount of CPU points that can be TURNED OFF for single/multiplayer. But that idea will never catch on because the vocal minority that wants to force every single person to use tiny specialized vessels will shout it down as they have done every other possible way to not even need CPU, like the server setting options to limit build sizes. We will just hear "but you can turn CPU off now", even after they are shown how the Workshop is already a clusterf*** with CPU and Non-CPU vessels mixed together which is going to cause havoc for new/inexperienced players that wont know what they are looking for when subscribing to things and will end up with items they put hours into getting and for some reason, is not performing well (getting a non-CPU ship while playing with it turned on). /SMH
If CPU actually encouraged specialization, that would be one thing. But as implemented, it does not. The devs have merely claimed that specialization is the goal of the CPU system, without explaining how the current implementation is actually supposed to achieve that.
If they wanted specialization they should have started with some "archetypes". That is, pick some example ships in the workshop that they consider appropriately specialized and want to allow people to build. Then pick some ships in the workshop that are "jack of all trades" monster vessels that they do not want people to build. Then design and balance a system that seems to divide these into categories. If they want the community to help balance things, we have to least understand what they're trying to do. I haven't seen anything more detailed than "encourage specialization". But the system they introduced doesn't really do that. It just puts soft caps on the size of the vessel. Let's say they want to specialize between the following roles: Fighter Miner Carrier vessel (This is just illustrative, not a suggestion.) So they don't want a single vessel to be equipped with a bunch of mining stuff, and weapons, and have the ability to carry other ships. But the CPU caps don't really scale with vessel size. So you can make a smaller or mid-size vessel that has all this equipment. Also, the ability to be a carrier isn't something restricted, because you don't have to build a landing pad (which takes "CPU"), you just need a flat surface. The CPU system doesn't solve this problem. I'm not sure if these were the categories they wanted people to specialize in, but regardless I'm still not seeing how this really does encourage specialization into any categories. If they just wanted to force people to make smaller ships, why not just do that directly instead of imposing this new system? I don't mind the idea but the execution is not very good.
Hard caps with early penalties. Not soft caps. Currently the cap is at 3 times the CPU threshold. The devs propose moving that to 2.25 times the CPU threshold.
Didn't know that, thanks. I had only run onto the soft caps, and missed the discussion on the other cap.
But will that change anything for those against CPU? Perhaps some, but most have already stated they do not want a system that is going to punish creativity. There was even a group of people back around the time 9.0 was coming out about how to make the game so there would be more specialized ships while also expanding the game by introducing more items. The idea was to first make different sub-catagories to ship types. Hauler/gather/tank for HV, explorer/fighter for SV, Hauler/attack/mobile base for CV. Some even suggested things like... Make large cargo parts for Hauler HV ONLY, mid sized ones for a gather HV ONLY, make small sized ones for tank HV ONLY. Make the most powerful HV weapons only for tank HV, with medium weak defensive weapons for the other HVs. The above example created a good amount of new items, expanded game-play while also making the player create more specialized ships. Yet isnt actually necessary since just having the sub-categories set in game and on the Workship would get people to make those types of ships so there would be enough designs that people would at times use them...but clearly "Sometimes" is not enough. Some want it FORCED on everyone either to help Multi-player, or because for some reason, people should not be allowed to have "fun" that is different than the way they have it. Either way, other games do not do this in their base game, its done via server settings. Madness.
It's a bugaboo of mine. Eleon was issuing misinformation that it was a soft cap. When pressed, they confirmed it is a linear decay rather than the apparent exponential decay the offered description best represented. I want to make certain everyone is aware it is in fact a hard cap and the proposed 2.25 times the CPU threshold isn't too far ahead of where penalties start to apply.
Eleon has said nothing to imply this will replace turret limits. The CPU proposal by @geostar1024 did that, and many people have been hoping for that, but the stated reason for introducing CPU was to encourage vessel specialization, it was not intended to replace turret limits or simplify anything. So I don't think that's their plan.
Yes, I am a "survival type" player as well and generally agree. I don't mind the CPU system as much since I have a preference for small ships anyway (thus my designs tend not to stress the limits) but I still think their approach is not right. What they need is a vision of what the game should be, and a roadmap of how to get there. The roadmap should mostly have changes on it that drive the game toward that vision. They do this sometimes, e.g. with "multiple solar systems". But for something like this, the point isn't clear. What is the goal? "To encourage specialization." Why is that a goal? How does this bring the game closer to the vision? (???) Do the changes made achieve the goal? (Not really for reasons mentioned above.) They spent a lot of time tweaking numbers on something that doesn't really add much to the game. What the game needs is more content. More aliens to kill, more quests/stories to uncover, more planet types to explore, more devices to make, more vessel types to make, more weapons, more to do. Is there anyone who doesn't want things like this? They have been adding a bit of content, there are some good things in v10 and v11. But a change like this actually takes a large number of blueprints and makes them useless, which has the effect of removing content. I like the new windows and railings and stuff but I don't think they make up for what this system seems to subtract.
Agreed, but the question remains. Can they give you an answer that will make you want CPU knowing it takes away content already created...along with hindering future content since it must be based on CPU? There is no "answer" I will accept. I will only accept the Tear 5 CPU idea I gave above (and in more detail on the feedback thread), or removing it altogether since they sold this game to me with "sandbox" and "build anything you can dream of" on the games page coupled with the items that were in the Workshop at the time many of which will be well over 200% of the T4 limit. I already removed my original review and replaced it with a new one recommending no one buys the game at this current stage since Eleon can bring this game even further down on the quality level with future big game handicaps.
Well, for CPU, no, because they have only taken stuff away, it does not add a benefit. I think there are situations I can accept them adding limitations. For example, volume was something I did not care for how they implemented it. But I understand it was intended to help things seem less unrealistic (you could previously load a deconstructed giant base into a little HV and take it with you). I did not like how you had to have cargo extensions to increase volume capacity, which invalidated most existing designs. But I actually found that volume and cargo mass did add to the game. It made survival more challenging in some ways, when salvaging a POI, you had to pick and choose what to take with you and it made the early game more challenging. I like some amount of realism, I don't expect 100% realism but I appreciate the fact I now need a bigger vehicle to carry more stuff. I was still able to build whatever I wanted, I just couldn't load 9990 iron into a hoverbike anymore. With CPU I don't see how it adds anything. The system doesn't really work to encourage specialization, it just encourages making smaller ships. "Encouraging specialization" is a questionable choice anyway (I still don't like the fact I can't put a mining laser on an SV). Unlike mass/volume the system is not more "realistic". How would plugging in a food processor use CPU of the ship's core?
