My apologies for the Double Post, but... THE SECOND CHALLENGE IS ALREADY UNDERWAY!!! SCRAM TO IT AS FAST AS YOU CAN!!!
First off, I'm extremely happy with the 5 votes my Bautang got (that means five people apart from me liked it - Success!) But just voting for "best ship" has some shortfalls - why did one ship get more votes than others? Why did four people people vote for looks in a couple of minutes, two spent a couple of hours testing each ship and meticulously working out pros and cons, and yet their votes count the same? Why did 9 ships (as of now) get 0 votes? Why did I get 5 votes (i.e., was it looks? was it actual use in combat? what was good about it? TELL ME) Perhaps it's just me (and I've only spent a couple of weeks playing Empyrion), but I just don't know yet what makes a ship good or bad (yet?); And challenge such as this could be a great way to improve ship-building skills - after all, each of the entrants spent at least a few hours building the ships within specifications; Am I really the only one who wants to hear some criticism? I've got a couple suggestions (maybe for future competitions?): "Judge panel" AND "votes", that add up to 50/50. Select few experienced volunteers that have played Empyrion for long enough / have a track record of great popular ships / whatever is a good qualification, and have them do a very short review of each ship and rate it, and then join the panel votes together with popular vote to declare winner. Panel members could focus only on single area if needed - say someone like Kieve or Fractalite judges the looks; Hicks judges the boom-boom. Each member could focus on what they deem important in independent fashion. Alternatively, have a simple yet effective requirement for each entrant - you have to review the entry that was before yours (i.e., you submit your entry in the thread, write down the name of ship that was submitted before yours, download it, use it for X/Y/Z tasks, write down what you didn't like, what you did like, where it under-performed etc.). Maybe even make people do something like the following: Here's a world save file. There's a pad with cargo box filled with materials on starting planet - spawn your ship there. You need to: 1) Take out the drone base that is 1000m north to pad; 2) Bring the loot in a single run back to the box on the pad. 3) Without refueling en-route, fly to the moon and pick pentaxid there. 4) Jump to system Y 5) Find and land on a pad inside a tunnel. Or something like that. Yep, you will have to spend extra hour reviewing someone else's clunker. On the other hand, you know that YOUR clunker will be flown around and reviewed by next person as well! In my humble opinion, this would make everyone feel like a winner - have someone spend some time with your ship and tell you what they liked / disliked about it. Here's a personal example of struggles of a young ship-builder: I focused on making as small fighter as I could with somewhat unique aesthetics (and a nice rear. I like to fly ships in 3rd person). Additionally, I wanted everything but the thrusters be covered inside the hull, and everything be accessible via shutter doors. I think I succeeded there (although it looks more like a cute miata that flies the more I use it). I'd say I am satisfied with it's looks and proportions, and from outside, I wouldn't want to change a single block (right now). Insides - well, initially it was just the stuff the contest required. It had 2 fuel tanks when I submitted it. After fiddling around with with spawning POI's, debug weapons and lots of copies of my ship, I found out that shoot one on the nose for long enough and a chain explosion blows out the cockpit, warp tank, o2, ammo boxes and forward fuel tank. So I removed it and replaced it with some additional armor - success, you can pretty much blow up the whole front section of the ship and it still can fly away. Pyston mentioned quite a few ships have generator issues; I looked at mine and holy-smokes, it redlines at 1g atmosphere, and has only single fuel tank! When playing my Dawn of Galaxy PVE game, I found that ~20 minutes of flight time is actually annoying. Lochigg mentioned that it would be a good idea to have an o2 station - and I really did not want to sacrifice my exterior looks, but that proved to be another serious drawback that I ended up patching in the back-underside in my SP game. Funny, but that single o2 tank works with a single fuel tank; You run out of fuel AND oxygen at similar time. But that is too short, so I'd need to find place for a second O2 tank. A re-think of all the internals is in order. A thing that worked nice practically - it's not that hard to parkour of the prolonged armor/weapon plate to get into the cockpit, and it actually serves quite well as an armor plate that is relatively easy to replace manually after taking a battering - success there. And something is still wrong, I just can't place my finger on it yet. I could piece some things from general feedback, but someone, tell me, what else? WHAT? Sure, time required to do a proper constructive criticism is comparable to the time it takes to build a ship, but hey - if anyone wants, I can try and find what I don't like about your ship so that you can build the next one better. Or maybe you could tell me why I'm wrong.
O i know all about the ADHD generation. They missed some tough love in their education. Unfortunately values of self exploration eludes them; a result of todays propagandasystem/brainwash technics that in some point in time will come back & bite them in the butt. Too bad i don't build for them, i build for me and share my results. Good to hear, lets not linger on trivial comparisons then, shall we ? Hahah Exactly , the never ending story caught in a loop. Let them boast about their testikels all day long. But we will respect the free will in choosing to walk their way nevertheless. Universal law, my brother. On my way to see what's it all about^^
One way a "competition" could be done for a "fighter" theme, is to fight with your creation on a MP server. Maybe even where you get only a certain time to repair (and paint/texture) for next fight (no repair to blueprint), with a penalty if changed something. My submissions here are to show how a "fighter" could be like (according to the criteria's given), if looks have low priority.
@Fractalite Thanks for this announcer posts! These are so much fun, and i totally read them in those Star Wars The Phantom Menace voices. Also @Tyrax Lightning I think we might need to talk about your Spice problem, pumpkin i mean. From the peanut butter pumpkin cookies to the spice drinks, when does it end! Fyi, the next challenge is not up and active enjoy! https://empyriononline.com/threads/zerog-challenge-build-02.36649/#post-219928
The poll won't give us a Winner. As you say, we all Won when we entered a qualifying vessel. But it will show us a favourite, the 'People's Choice', and I for one am curious as to the results. @Fractalite I hereby appoint you to the dubious position of 'official' announcer for all future ZeroG challenge events. I doubt anyone will argue with me on this. ^^
I have also been enjoying the announcer posts, and not taking them too seriously. As for the votes, I was surprised to even get one vote. I knew my build could fly. I was flying it all around creative from one BP to another I was working on--the game would probably crash if I had all my projects too close to each other. When I built that fighter for this challenge, I looked at what I thought my collections would need to round them out. I had plenty of fighters. One of my incomplete fighters even fit into the dimension restriction, but it had an additional restriction that disqualified it for this challenge so I didn't bother finishing that one--the restriction was no cobalt in the initial build but with the spaces to add all those things so I could spawn one SV to get to the moon and then take it to warp just adding the missing bits. Instead, I looked at my collections and saw the warship-medical clinic and decided that CV needed a war-ambulance to accompany it. So I didn't build my fighter to be pretty or the best, I built it for me, what I wanted. Similar thing for the next challenge, except I had already sketched a HV tank but never built any part of the tank in the game so I am finding the flaws with the sketch. And like my SV fighter, my tank has some restrictions I placed on it to fit into my collection (but not an ambulance this time).
I shared your concerns, all of them, it's a curse. This challenge was very broad. Build a fighter. Strangely enough, nobody defined what or where we were even fighting... to me, the enemy was boredom. I think the lack of criteria was intended to increase participation, and it worked, really well. To sum it up, I found myself spending hours comparing ships with no real basis for comparison, so I had to make up my own criteria. My judgement hand was deemed swift and unforgiving. I picked a winner, then I picked a few more entries I liked "just because". At the end of the day, the last ship standing simply means it got the most votes because of unknown reasons. Since everyone has their own reasons, trying to make sense out of them is a locked course for madness. Glean what you can from the other entries, all have inspirational material in them regardless of votes. Then move on to the next challenge. Don't forget to breathe.
I build for me as well, but with others in mind, or at least I try to imagine how people might use the ship. I never was. I simply replied to your post 394 when you questioned my ability with my post 399. You then questioned my ability in post 404 and I replied with a rebuttal in 412. Perhaps if you do not want people to compare themselves to you, don't bring it up in the first place. My initial reply to you about ships going into the yellow was a reply simply stating there are some things that people overlooked that need to be taken into consideration. I honestly had no idea your ship went into the yellow (I was actually referencing kieves), but you apparently took this to heart as me attacking you (when I was not) which is why you crafted your post 394. You were making an attempt to justify why your ship went into the yellow. But IMO there is no justification for it, and I proved that with my reply. My "trivial" comparisions was not about comparing ships in as much as it was showing that your points were invalid and I used data to prove that.
For the answer to that question, Forum Search for pumpkin related things in Posts made by me... & even after the last one of those i've done... it's still not the end... it's "To be continued"... after I think up more stuff... I think Bjorn has an attitude problem & I wouldn't miss him if he were to suffer an unfortunate... 'accident'... Honestly i'm surprised Jenn's not doing the Announcing. She's Charismatic. In the absence of goals or objectives, I operate on the assumption that the 'goal' of the Contest Entry is to sit its ass on the Contest Show Room Floor & try to win the Contest, then after that it's kinda sorta outta a Job. Let this be a warning & a Aesop to those who think they can just skate by through Life on just Looks alone.
So I noticed that when I look at the poll results, the results are overwhelmingly for ships that are aesthetically pleasing, but not too useful outside of that. Given this is a ZeroG competition, I shouldn't be surprised by that I guess, but I figured I'd explain my method of voting for my 5 votes (such as it is) and why people should look at maybe more than just looks to judge a spacecraft. My methodology knowing the game and such went like this: Sure, pretty ships has it's category, but what about other stuff? Since this is for SVs, I had a few categories to break it down into: 1. Aesthetics (it's a purdy ship!) 2. Utility (Is it useful? Does it have fancy widgets?) 3. Maneuverability (not just how fast it goes, but also power usage, fuel time, etc...) 4. PvP (yes, there were a few ships that were designed with this in mind, almost all of them ignored) 5. Blended (has a case for at least 2 of the 4 above) To properly judge the ships, I did the following: -I actually flew all of them, at full fuel, and some I fired weapons (if it wasn't obvious how the weapon setup was). -I poked and prodded all the shutters, doors, etc... -I tried to get my way into every ship if possible -I checked the stats for speed and other factors Once I did this for every ship, I marked potential candidates for each of the 4 types (some I gave 2, for the 5th vote). Very few actually didn't get a mark, like I think 3-4 ships were just "meh" in my mind. After that, I got down to narrowing the choices, and I'll explain which ones I voted for and why: 1. Asthetics: XYU I voted for this one and pretty much had my mind made up once I actually looked at the interior. For some reason the mix of colors and icons tastefully used inside the ship were great, and was something I never would've expected looking outside the ship. The interior is very impressive for a ship of this size, and really is a hats off for the interior. The exterior wasn't anything special, but it's because of that you look inside and go "wow". Really cool ship. Honorable Mention: SV-Hollowman (neat concept, would've been a utility contender if it had floodlights) 2. Utility: SV-Rigger This was a hard choice, there were a number of cool builds that had a lot of practicality built into them, and they were also tastefully applied with looks. Ultimately though, the SV-Rigger was just the right blend of weapons, storage, and passenger space to make it something that deserved the top title, surprisingly by not having the best of any three criteria I chose. There are so many good choices that I give 3 honorable mentions here, because it was a super hard call for me. Honorable Mention: Assault Scout Pod(a forcefield cockpit is interesting, plus autodoors is cool!), T4 Phantom (4 enclosed seats), Teardropship (4 seats, could be a dogfighter?) 3. Maneuverability: Intermission There were a number of ships that were quite fast, but Intermission was a build that not only was fast, but was hands down the most nimble, capable of turning on a dime in a fraction of a second, >35 min flight time (on a turn burn), and had a huge forward momentum of speed. Very few ships considered RCS as a factor in their builds (and one didn't have any!), so this was a really neat factor for this ship, and also was what sold it to me. Honorable Mention: Boomerang (super fun to fly, just wish I could fly it longer!) 4. PvP: SV20_StyxA_tubes076b PvP ships are purely functional, based heavily on the game's meta of weapons, armor blocks, and thrusters. That said, they typically end up as super-ugly and uninspired flying bricks that generally are overspec'd with thrusters and an absurd number of guns and ammo boxes in 5-block thick armor. So I was really happy in this competition to see someone submit a ship that at least tries to build a ship that says "**** that convention". Tubes may not be the "best" PvP ship from a PvPers PoV, but it does try and be one to a modest effect, with having a really clever separated thruster design, enclosed weapons, enclosed cockpit (kinda), and a good amount of fuel tanks for extended combat. I didn't get a chance to see this fire guns, but I think it would've been just fine in a PvP server as a cheap ship that's easy to get into PvP with. Honorable Mention: WY-SV-LREEMRSC.v01.FR.01 5. Blended: XT 1 While definetly more pretty then functional as a ship, the design of it was the opposite of the XYU. Instead of going in and saying "wow", you say "wow", go inside, and go "huh". The color and textures used on this ship give it a regal kinda feel, the lighting and other stuff helps in this regard. However, once you go inside you see a nice 2 seats behind the cockpit, ventilated, and also nice and compact set of stuff (armor locker, crates, etc.). While not truly utilitarian in nature, it's a nice touch on a pretty ship. In addition the weapon choice is a big plus if you were to use this in PvP (not sure if it would be a good idea tho?) Honorable Mention: Wasp (Fast, compact, 3 seats)
Another note on the Hollowman: I realized after this post there *was* a spotlight on the ship, but I was thinking more inside the ring. I also didn't see the forcefield for some reason when I used the ship, the idea is really ingenious, kinda think it should be the honorable mention of Blended, tbh.
Why thank you! With all the in's and outs here at ZeroG I don't think I could even begin to compete with @Fractalite amazing announcing skills! Besides this week ZeroG has had some power troubles with Project Aria. Priceless research is being done there and it would be devastating if power was lost at that facility.
There's space in the Boomerang's structure for more tanks and RCS, I left extras out because I personally don't like my ships too twitchy and had hit the challenge build requirements.
As there are no set criteria for judging - it really is up to people for themselves to decide what's important and what's not. Having said that, I appreciate that you tested the ships thoroughly
Gratz to those that got many votes! (Discovered I missed submitting that post). In PvP spirit you do not submit your best fighters (or inner solution), in case you meet your own creation
Thanks for this great analysis. It was very interesting. I admit, I was one of the quick voters, and I feel a bit humbled and ashamed now. My criteria was basically aesthetics, performance (based on stats page if included as a screen shot) and cool features (if exhibited in a screen shot). I've loaded and test flown a couple of the ones that interested me (mostly during the challenge as stuff was uploaded rather than all at once), and my top pick I am actively using in game because I like it. I don't think I'd ever do the combat testing, as I suck at combat and so probably can't fairly judge ships. I still do want to check out the save game and maybe mess with more of the entries in person, but I've been busy with other stuff. One suggestion to address this issue (in future contests) is to have separate voting for several categories (similar to your 5). Some categories like aesthetics could be for everyone, and some could say you can only vote if you've done X (loaded it in game, flown ship around, combat, etc). There could be category winners and an overall winner (most votes from all categories combined). This would also mean the people willing to do more work would basically be getting a larger share of the voting power, which I don't have a problem with. This would of course make more work for Jenniphurr, so this is of course Jenniphurr's call. Another option is to just say you can't vote unless you load the save, try each ship as least once, and go through some set of required testing. This might improve the accuracy of the results, but as was discussed earlier in the thread, even spending 15 minutes on each ship this is a 10+ hour task. Not everyone is willing to do that, so it will decrease inclusion and possibly community interest.
Here lies the problem. On paper all that stuff would make for a awesome time, but in reality it takes time. Voting is a novel idea but from learning from this experience I believe just gathering everyone together creating towards a goal is a great achievement. Do me a favor load up that world save and look around for yourself. You'll get lost in there and can see all the hard work everyone has done. I know some might disagree with me, but I think gathering everyones build's into one common Challenge collection would be good. Almost like a workshop within a work shop. Then everyone gets some spotlight with all the challenge details. Then maybe down the line would could revisit a vote, but maybe vote more on the challenges that we enjoyed the most.
