Another expectation regarding V0.x vs V1.x is the requirements to start a new game or not when patches are to be done. Should you for a V1 have to start a new game or update a server to experience all of any changes? With construction as one of the main parts, rarely need to adjust builds and BluePrints? (Some more fuel on the fire )
"Realism" is not only visual, it can be how things work together, and how it supports (or doesn't) immersion. Lots of player are asking (and asked) for realism, visual and mechanics, but the core point that is put forward by the developers now is this : as long as features are working, even if very basic, the code is there and they can "move on" with what is considered secondary : convenience, tweaks, fine-tuning, visuals, sound, etc. The problem is that developers know what they mean, but to get players to understand requires lots of technical blabla, upon which some players will argue as "you should do this, not that" & such, some even showing code snippets on the forum with a cube and one avatar to show "it can be done".... I'm not sure the devs should have to go through this while they know their game, and players only know how it looks and how convenient it is. What's the best way to help the developer at the present stage ? Tell them about real bugs and glitches, not about "visuals" and "convenience", which can be fixed anytime, and even by players if config-related. But complaining like players have been doing lately for "ships despawning" knowing that the devs are running in circles to try to optimize the game and limit useless blocks on playfields? That's plain selfish. Yes : selfish. All players want a game that runs better, and only the devs can fix that. So while they're busy at it, lets not gang up on futile "convenience" issues that don't suit our fancy. Selfishness and ignorance. Entitlement.
Since I started playing (can't remember when maybe a year) I've managed 595 hours and have loved every update. Maybe because I grew up with the ZX 48k spectrum and the 1mb Atari ST I'm a bit more easily pleased but that feeling when starting a new game is still fantastic and I love the graphics and music. (again huge improvements in the last year in space and planet look) Thanks for the clarification Hummel.
We shall have to disagree on this part, ships that I have spent game and real-life resources to disable despawning before I get a chance to loot is not a "visuals" and "convenience" it is a game mechanic. A game mechanic I see as a failure and diminishes my enjoyment of the game. I know no such thing. Why do I know no such thing? Because there has been no coherent explanation coming from Eleon. You may suspect that that is the reason and I think you are correct. There have been several viable suggestions to solve what many assume is the problem. Perhaps those solutions will not work. We do not even know if the team is looking into other options because they are silent on the subject. It is my opinion that any target I spent resources disabling, I should be able to loot.
First hint is that they already dedicated v10 to "improvements and optimizations", second hint is in the first "Moving to v1.0" thread ( https://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-galactic-survival-leaving-alpha-early-access.94778/ ) where we can see this : "For all subsequent releases, bugfixes and optimization as well as feature refinements and the big topic of effect and sound reworks might be more on the foreground." They can fix bugs when these are reported, and what are they doing the rest of the day ? They are 4 programmers... And there is not 1 issue to solve for "optimisation", it is a process that can touch a wide array of features, code and content. Reducing some texture sizes, reworking assets, LODs, datastreaming, timers, etc. Some of these are out of the scope of what Eleon can do as they are built into the game engine, but in fact they have been doing optimisation here and there all along.
that is my point. hints and suspicions The particular game mechanic that I believe is broken was not introduced until after Eleon made those posts. We are talking about a tree that fell and blocked the road, not the forest the road goes through.
Yes, the "just when I put the core it explodes" thing... The complaints are "I should be able to get my stuff" and the answer is "not meant to be like that". And yet we now have another version. That's why I suggested to just have the things explode : players don't expect goodies, and playfield is cleared rapidly.
if I do not get goodies I do not shoot. I expect goodies or i will spend my time elsewhere where I get goodies one of the suggestions is that those things that despawn be easily identifiable. Then you would know and be able to behave in-game as you chose with appropriate knowledge.
Well tagging "no goodies here" is as good as just not having them in game at all : why waste time ? But if it's an enemy running at the player, the goal is not "goodies" but "stay alive". The player still has to consider it. Why can't it be the same for a ship, like here ?
the OPV and the SDS are useing the same ships. There is for instance a clear difference between a Freighter and a OPV The OPV as i have been saying all time has NO despawn mechanic. It seems its dispawning anyway. Thus a bug. The SDS however wont be changed We dont have a hugh fleet of Vessels to seperate the two from eachother. We know thats an issue
I think it would be cool to have more ships like the drones and troop transports, just a few bigger of these, but made with models instead of voxels. Just a thought. I am absolutely sure that many players would gladly submit models, given some clear requirements. Not that we want to take away a modeler's job, but... there's a galaxy to fill up now !
May I ask what the reasoning behind this is? And don't be afraid to give a technical answer. The more we understand your reasoning, the less grief your going to get over this. And who knows? I'm sure there are members of the community that would be happy to share suggestions on how this might be handled more gracefully.
In Multiplayer we found out that 100's of those SDS Vessels where laying around per playfield. Players care about the loot not about cleaning them. From the start of A12 they had to dispawn already. This was all this time bugged. NO one mentioned it. It got found out after I had many complaints of lag on our Official Servers. When i discussed this internaly i heared it was known but we didnt know how this happend with the Official Server Save we found the issues. Each time you used the radar all those broken SDS Vessel showed up on the radar. Causeing masive lag. Haveing so much Structures on your playfields isnt good for the hardware in the first place. Neither the game likes it to much. Hence there is a max structure limit per Playfield. Things like this happened:
So why not just give them a reasonable despawn timer, like 30 minutes? Then players can still loot them and they won't build up to stupid numbers on the map. Could even implement a max limit of how many SDS (cored or not) can be on each playfield at a time, which would also prevent there from ever being hundreds of them per playfield. Removing looting and salvaging entirely just makes it feel like a waste of time to even engage them in the first place. This just points to a larger issue with the scanner in the first place. It shouldn't just display every single thing on your HUD in the first place. The scanner should only be for discovering them and then if you want it to display on the HUD at long ranges then add a marker from the map. The scanner should be for discovering only and not for displaying. This is why the HUD is so cluttered all the time and therefore the massive amount of lag.
They have a reasonble timer but there is another bug... Any POI / AI Vessel instand destructs once you core / remove core . This is beeing fixed in the NEXT update
Wow, thats a mess! Still, it would be nice for server owners/SP player to be able to configure structure despawn mechanics to suit their own needs. The ability to enable/disable dewpawning various structure types as well as setting the despawn times on a per playfield would probably be useful for scenario creators. Also being able to set despawn behavior globally in the dedicated.yaml for servers and adding this to the game options screen would be greatly appreciated.
Ive shared here how you can currently control it : https://empyriononline.com/threads/playfield-yaml-file.95114/ Just the SDS is off limites. I dont know if we want to open this Ill discuss the suggestions tho!
