Hi, I've just read the post about the Zirax Gas Refinery using admin core "to prevent players from destroying it from their CV's cockpit". So the answer to an "unfair battle" is to make POI undestructible ??? Was it fair when I chose to start on swamp hostile planet, beeing chased the whole night ??? Is a battle or a war "fair" ??? As I already answered on that thread, I think it is our right to play as we want. I play SP, and it cost me a lot to build my CV and fill it with costly ammos. So is it a survival and space simulation ? Or a forced one way death trap dungeon where we are forced to walk like guinea pigs, to fulfill your moral way of thinking ? If I want to run all the time I play "The Forest" or "State of Decay 2", or whatever horror first person shooter you want ! So if I don't feel like dying a dozen times into cyborgs and whole army encounters, why wouldn't I effectively stay in my CV's commanding chair, plundering this nest under heavy fire, even if it costs a lot of ammos and destroy loots, to finally take a look after the smoke and fire have vanished ? Some will say it is coward, other that it is smart.... So if we can't play space battle, or space slaughter as you find it "unfair", or pirat's way please remove all the ship crafting, and revert back to the first step : naked on a hostile planet, eating roots and leaving in a cave. And rename the game, so that we know what we buy !
Indestructible bases are a necessity for certain types of POIs. They are marked on the map and can be skipped if you don't want to take them on foot. I think it can add some variety to the optional challenges presented to players. If every POI can be taken out with a minute of shooting then it makes everything feel the same. I think when used in the right way they add some unique challenge to the game. Only about 1% of the blueprints in the game have an admin core, the other 99% are free to attack in whatever way you want.
No, not in any way. As I said before, only quest POIs should be indestructible, and even then not all. For example, I never found a quest for the Zirax missle base. They say this is a new trend ... like a dungeon ... well, then one floor there should be filled with top-end loot. And so these points only annoy. This sandbox, I want to go destroy without doing quests, I want to go do quests ...
The Zirax are setup to be the antagonists in this game. Both the story and gameplay systems support this. The Zirax attack us. We attack the Zirax. We've always been at war with Zirax. These admin stations are in the game, but they cannot be fought. Therefor, they are in the game for a purpose other than to be fought. What is that purpose? How do these stations relate to the player in a way that doesn't involve combat? In the meantime, console/gm/di/destroy #### I guess.
But you can fight and destroy them. You just can't park your CV next to it, go get a glass of water, and come back to a conquered base anymore.
***You just can't park your CV next to it, go get a glass of water, and come back to a conquered base anymore*** You see ? You admit it yourself ! There aren't any free parkings around, nor any decent pub to have a beer while my DCA turrets clean these pesty zirax...
I'll put here the same I did in the other thread You don't like fighting your way through a challenging POI then don't, no one is forcing you to, there are plenty other POIs you can fight with Let the people that appreciate it have their fun as well.... And they are not indestructible, you can destroy them but you need to do it by using the self destruction mechanism inside the base
All right, I'm back in. Perharps there's a bug in the station, because when I'm in the infirmery, it seems I get shot through the walls... I found hidden turrets on the level below and I wonder if they're able to shoot through the upper wall, since there was nobody alive around... Enemies are continualy spawning, even in entire areas cleaned before. You should allow us to destroy at least the spawn points, but they are invisible. And so far, I don't find any console, clue to open the door security code... I found a secret area with the first blast door, but that's all. And NPC's don't seem to speak, apart the trader. Everytime I'm searching for a hidden clue through already cleaned areas, enemies keep spawning... I can't find the code for the safety office which lead to the solution... Am I missing something ?
The Zirax Gas Refinery is a really successful POI, the code for the "self-destruction" is in a reasonable place so that you can find it. Also the spawner producing opponents from time to time is ok, only the game is a bit stupid here if it does it right in front of your nose. PS: The Ziraxe being able to shoot through walls is unfortunately a recurring bug in Empyrion
No unfortunately the Zirax Commander still has that bug and I have limited their spawn area to a minimum so it only shows up when required but it still happens As for the blast door there's a message you can read right next to it, it says you need to get to a specific area of the base... Before heading there though you may want to visit the Traders or Polaris Gas refineries, they are slightly different but you'll see they may help you when you're going trough the Zirax version
I did the Totally Overpowered recently. Flew up to the pirate asteroid, had a poke around. I found the shaft leading into bar from the outside I could get into by blasting some grates, same as I've done a hundred times before. They wouldn't break. Okay, I found the window outside leading to some kind of command center. My CV's lasers can't touch it. I finally find the front door, walk uncontested to the commander, threaten him into giving me the quest item, and fly out under pretty halfhearted fire. The core, NPCs in the command room, and another grate over a loot container were also all invulnerable. When I did this back in A12, it was a lot of fun discovering and testing the different attack vectors and fighting through to the end. This time, it was a glorified fetch quest. So what's the dietetic reason why you can't blast these POIs into oblivion with a giant battleship like any other, anyway? The symbol on the map for an admin core tells me the POI there is for administrative purposes, like quests locations and multiplayer hubs. I see those Zirax stations, and I think they're there in case I want to ally with them. So I've ignored them so far in my forays into Zirax space and gone after their freighters instead. Now I hear they're meant to be approached and assaulted by players on foot. That doesn't sound like a smart thing to do. THE primary thing Empyrion has going for it is its cohesive and complimentary gameplay systems. They create a possibility space for endless solutions to the game's challenges. Whatever the problem is, the best solution is the one you come up with yourself. It doesn't matter if it's not optimal, overly complicated, or drives other players up the wall. The creative process that produced that design, plan, or methodology was always the real point. Now you're telling me you want me to set aside that entire paradigm, leave my lovingly greebled and refined tool set behind, and try sussing out whatever solutions the POI's designer baked into it. The POI designers that blow up all the loot when I use a switch, training me to never touch them. The POI designers that drop you into a room with two anti-vehicle turrets, training me to scan every floor with multitool. The POI designers that turned us all into mole people because it's the only way to approach a POI. The POI designers that caused us to invent all these arcane solutions in the first place and now want to deny to us by using admin cores. I must say, I have some reservations.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that Eleon imposes specific rules for POIs and Dungeons, although even with these it's possible to make an extra effort to desing POIs in a way that the essential parts are "indestructible" and most of the other parts could be destroyed, for example. But if a quest requires players from worst to best to talk to a NPC in a POI, they have to either make that NPC invincible, not the POI (at most just a few rooms around the NPC. Given the amount of content required to fill a galaxy, maybe it could be a good idea to make a bit less elaborate structures, make them bigger with more room to fight (simply more cut & paste sections) and put less deco in there. While players are shown that they have to lower their expectations in the first hours of the game where they might not be able to build top-tier bases and ships the game could also do the same, and keep the more elaborate POIs for further from the starter sector(s). If I was to make a "big enemy base" I would not make 1-block corridors in it, and I would probably even "glue" many bases together and leave the "main" one in the center, with the periphereal ones just "access routes" that players might not want to "salvage" from A to Z. For planetary bases I would probably use lots of concrete, because it has a "dungeon" feel to its texture, and players will not be able to salvage it to build ships. For the "destructible" parts these could be secondary walls like the ones separating rooms, but the "main structure" walls could only have a few spots where players would have to look with a multitool to breach in. The game needs to give space to players for handweapon fights too, because shooting enemies in 1-block corridors and small rooms is boring. Want to put BA turrets in a room ? Make it a very large room with some pillars or blocks so players can still have fun trying to evade/ approach. So I'm all for "indestructible" parts, not the whole thing. It may just require a bit more work to build, and then maybe not, if design is more "spacious" than tightly packed. But better images than words for this, so maybe I'll post an example or two of what I have in mind, for comparison.
Such a bad example, it has an admin core because people were destroying the core before finding the commander making it impossible to complete. There were also complaints from people who said they were forced to attack them, lowering the pirate faction standing, and that they wanted a peaceful solution to it.
Well, I also just went through a Ziras gas refinery. Events included having to dodge sector patrols in a throwaway warp SV, clearing the same rooms several times, failing to find a way to unlock blast doors, ignoring all the loot because I had no ship nearby anyway, getting bored of slowly wandering around aimlessly in combat gear, clearing the same rooms yet again, getting stuck in a room after killing some scorpions and sentry guns, turning on godmode just to see what the heck was going on, and eventually deleting the whole thing altogether to make sure I could at least do that. I recall the base had a teleporter aboard I could use to escape after my ship was destroyed. I wonder how that was supposed to work after the switch destroyed the core. At least the pirate's hidden base worked as content at one point. Adding a peaceful solution was a really good call. Making it otherwise invulnerable for no reason was not. At most, one container holding the quest item needed to be invulnerable as a failsafe. A long time ago, in a galaxy 2.5 million light-years away, I loved making ships in Space Engineers. There were very few problems to solve, but those that existed still provided a degree of impetus for creative problem solving. Now, here in the Andromeda Galaxy, there are FAR more problems to create solutions for. Every new experience teaches me something to incorporate into my designs. For some reason, these admin core POIs are divorced from this experience. They not only don't require creative problem solving, they are immune to it. You cannot invent the CV that will defeat them. You cannot C4 your own way through them. The only path through is the one the POI designer intended. "If you want to get the loot, solve my maze!" they seem to be saying. Building a ship with plasma and artillery cannons, spending time earning the tech points, gathering the materials, building the infrastructure to produce them, none of that mattered. I have a better idea if you want people to explore intact POIs. Store most of the loot value around those targets turrets love to go after. Make players shoot through some ultra rare loot containers of they want to take out the core or generators with their big guns. Make THEM responsible for deciding how to proceed, and let them own the result. If they can railgun snipe around the loot, good for them. And another thing. If you, as the POI's creator, can't clear the entire thing on medium difficulty in a reasonable amount of time without dying, tone it down. One room in that gas refinery had like a dozen Zirax, cyborgs, and sentries shooting at me. They even respawned after I finally godmode'd to clear it. The room was basically impossible to fight even with 300 armor, a stack of health vials, and a plasma cannon. These POIs are PvE content. They're meant to be engaging encounters for players, not impenetrable walls for try-hards to bash their heads against.
People have explained why some POIs have admin cores. To be honest I don't like using them in POIs except where neccesary. But sadly they are necessary for some types of POIs. You simply can't do some things without them. They add more variety to the game's challenges. You shouldn't be able to attack every POI the same way. You do not have to attack admin core POIs. You can simply avoid that content. The other 99% of POIs in the game do not have an admin core. Allow players who like the added challenge the option of taking on these more unique POIs.
My only real beef with admin cores is there should always be a way to destroy them... whether pre-damaged or a destruct switch or some other mechanic at the end of the quest if need be. Once the POI has fulfilled its main purpose, the player should be able to scrap/take over/whatever they want to do...
Even then there are a few times you can't let players take them over (needed for story on a server, or any kind of puzzle POI where taking them over would easily reveal the signal logic used so players know how everything works). But yeah for anything like a dungeon it should be able to be taken over at the end.
I've read you. And all the same I remain strictly convinced that admin kernels are evil that must be eradicated. Rather, prohibit their use at points of interest, even if they protect some trading posts or just points of interest of RP content. I played FF 14 for a long time, the change in genres and even types of game happened precisely for the reason that I got tired of the rules by which something must be done, for example, this dungeon is passed like this and only this way, this boss is passed only by clearly performing such actions. It was not just that my friends dragged me to the EGS. And then the f*cking unnecessary admin kernels appear ...
That would remove a lot of creativity in the community and completely break some of the major servers in the game. It would even completely break my scenario. I'd have to remove almost all of the custom missions and story.
