I did't play 7.0 very much, so I don't know how long many of these changes have been in place, but yeah: I noticed that the small white O2 tank was absent from both the mobile constructor and the portable, which was irksome. Then I realized, the "suit constructor" requires ORE and cannot use INGOTS! In fact, they've made lots of small changes like this: removing things from the building capacities of this type of constructor but not that type, etc., etc. Another one that irked me: plastic depends on one thing: GRAIN. No other organic carbohydrate-chain substance will suffice! ONLY "GRAIN!" And then when you plant and harvest your grain, you can use it to make "corn"
Problems: That tech tree progression is based around the old resource distribution, of starter planet t1, moon t2, zacosium / estrium t3. This lead to build HV to get to T1, SV to get to T2, CV to get to T3. What's more, you could get a HV and SV with t1 materials, and a CV with t2 materials. T3 just gave you more and better. Now, with t2 materials being placed out in the sector, we have a problem. At the levels you can unlock items, you cannot get the resources to build them. Some items you cannot even build (level 5 RCS takes level 10 advanced constructor with z&e!). This leads to building many extra vehicles of marginal, or disposable utility. You build a base. You build an explorer HV to get around. You add a farm. You build a scout SV to explore and get some levels. You build a driller HV now you're level 10 and can get drills. With access to decent amounts of ore in a reasonable time, you now build a big, expensive, fragile and underarmed SV with a warp drive, no farm, and a pile of resources to go hunting for ores on other planets. You drill them by hand unless you were smart enough to cheat around the no HV docing on a SV by putting your HV in the factory and respawning. Having gotten a big pile of loot, you then come back to your starting planet, sit down at your base, and start working on a small, warp capable, base CV. Now able to finally carry your other vehicles around in your small CV, you can visit enough playfields to get the piles and pile and pile of advanced of resources needed for medium to large SV and CV designs. Finally, we can start to assault the POI on even the starting planet. This would be much, much simplier if some of the following changes were made: 1. Replace Sathium and Neodymindum on the starter planet moon in default random. This allows construction of small CV from the moon, and allow significantly easier "mobile base" exploration. Basically, go back to A7 progression. 2. Place S & N on one planet over from starter. While not as easy as "just fly to moon", this puts a reasonable limit on distance traveled and preparation needed before gaining access to t2 materials. 3. Migrate SV components down the tech tree, and CV components up. If you unlocked all SV components by say, level 12 (15 for the highest tier weapons), and didn't get any CV blocks til level 20, that would make the catch 22 of being able to build a CV, but needing resources you need a CV to get to less of a problem. It would also give SVs the weapons needed to assault POI on the starter planet, minimising the "go away, come back, go away, come back" problem. This final point is one of just possibly my seed, but with medium deposits and medium richness, I've explored about half the starter planet, and gotten only a couple of thousand iron from mainly 'small' deposits and i've seen one medium. If the devs intend for you to leave the starter planet and build so many vehicles (and bases, etc), then more of these low level resources would be good. Even hunting for the dang deposits is a chore. On a Class 4 planet, maybe 30+ small iron deposits would make hunting them not a chore. There's grinding and survival and progression, then there's aimlessly driving around in an HV for hours looking for ore.
I have before heard of Modders making Mods so awesomesauce that the Mod gets adopted into the Vanilla Game by the Devs with Modder Permission... the superior Elevators especially for Space Stations in Starbound come to mind... I've even heard of Modders doing such awesomesauce work that they get Hired by the Devs & 'Ascend to God(dess)hood'... Terraria's "Yoraiz0r" comes to mind especially... Alas... this is the kinda thing that happens when impatient people Rush the Devs... & no I don't mean you specifically are guilty, I speak this in broad general direction.
Blueprints appear incomplete Greetings everyone! Has the size limit been changed with version 8? I can't seem to fully spawn any of the space stations I was working on... I Usually extend to the maximum in each direction and then back it down to about 10-15 block per side to play it safe, but since version 8 all of them see to be missing large sections (except for the windows which is weird) and if I try to place anything near the windows it says "too far from center". I'd hate to have to scrap them, they are about a year's worth of work....!
Long known Bug, but still might be worth while to Bug Report in case your situation & Info can help with the finding & squashing of it... it's among the Top 10 Bug Fugitives from Justice of Empyrion.
I have not sketched out all the networks of tech/ore/solar system dependencies, nor have I managed to make it from a Default Medium difficulty start all the way to galactic domination. I keep realizing new dynamics and deciding to start over . . . So, you may be correct in some of your details. With that said, you and I go alternate playstyle pathways when you say: I assault POIs as soon as I have: (a) a T2 drill and one to three backups; (b) 30 or 40 drill magazines; (c) some armor; (d) the capacity to build a base with a food processor, a fridge, a farm and a medic bay; (e) enough resources to build a preliminary (very small base, e.g., BA_BareHouse_5) and enough additional resources to build and fuel a second copy of the same miniscule base (actually doesn't need to be as big, mainly just core, gen, fuel, medic bay, cargo box . . . armor locker, food proc, fridge, and enough concrete to enclose the "assault" base are optional) ideally at least a shotgun, but even that is not essential. That is all anyone needs to assault, and defeat MOST of the POIs in the game. Granted, there will be tedium, but the method is literally fool proof. *Note some of the tougher POIs require more potent explosive firepower to breach their bellies . . . The Method: (1) install my authohotkeys: https://empyriononline.com/threads/auto-hot-keys-for-empyrion.38368/#post-252417 (2) find a strong POI, we'll say Drone Base as that is a pretty strong one (3) After getting your "main" preliminary base setup and having harvested several cycles of crops and amassed a good amount of resources (e.g., if you were to use BA_BareHouse_# linked above), put an "Assault Base" (e.g., BA_Assault_Base_1 linked above) into your factory. (4) gather up your ammo, explosives, food, meds, etc. Should note, for a tough skin POI like Drone base, shotgun will not suffice to penetrate the combat armor. You'll need bombs or rockets, ideally about 50 of each or 100 of only one. Be sure to have at least a few bombs (25 at least) if you intend to mainly use rockets. There may be corners you have to blast around where there isn't enough space to use rockets. (5) if you have a miner HV use that otherwise, use your trusty T2 drill (6) get as close to the target POI as you dare, and tunnel down to about -20 to 30. Goal is to not go more than about 6 meters below the lowest level you'll need to be to get under the POI, but to never breach the surface either. (7) using either your HV or your hand drill and the autohotkeys, dig a long level tunnel to within ~85 m of the enemy POI. (8) spawn in the assault base so that it is either immediately under or below and slightly offset from the POI, the goal is to have little or none of the assault base exposed above the surface. It serves mainly as a spot to retreat to stash loot, and get healed. You can add a fridge, food proc, etc., etc. but I made the blue print as barebones as possible to get the job done. (9) tunnel through the base (to empty it of rock fill) and out the other side continuing to tunnel toward and under the target POI. (10) once you are immediately under it, tunnel up till you hit the bottom, goal is to NOT have any exposed gaps through which foot patrols or drones can shoot at you. (11) use the filler to set up a sharp corner and on the opposite side of that (meaning, create yourself a wall to duck behind), pick a block to start blasting at. Ideally get your floor level up just slightly more than 2 meters below the bottom of the POI (12) breach into the POI (13) have fun storming the castle! If you want it sporting and maximum loot, then don't use any bombs to blow up all spawners, farm them as long as you want. If you want to just defeat it quickly, find the core and blow it up asap. No need to ever leave the planet to be able to conquer any POI on any planet. Also, no need for any vehicles at all, though the motorbike is nice, and a tunneling HV might make the tedious part more bearable. ADDIT: and I don't mean to argue that this is the be-all, end-all playstyle and that it is the "right way" to play the game. I very much want the game to facilitate/promote varying playstyles, and I can certainly agree that, when it comes to attacking fortified positions, it does not do that very well. This "Russian Sapping" method I just outlined is virtually foolproof. How many respawns/healing sessions it take is strictly dependent on the FPS skill of the player, not on things like auto-aiming turrets and ridiculously lacking optics on ship weapons nor any facility to put a ship into an auto-pilot routine while the human player mans a turret. Basically, the ship-to-surface and ship-to-ship combat plays just like FPS and that is why it is not the preferred method, but Russian-sapping (or waiting till you can come back with a behemoth combat armored CV sporting a full complement of all weapons, which is apparently YOUR preference) IS my preferred method. Even if I HAD the behemoth though, I'd likely still opt for this method (or an enhancement of this method that made use of a T2 miner HV) for the simple reason: why blast his guns and armor and half his building to smithereens when you can get inside, kill the central computer, kill the staff and own the entire place!? I'm glad it is possible to do a Russian sapping infiltration, but I am disappointed that it is the ONLY really good option, and moreover disappointed that even still to this day, none of these POI have even a remote degree of defense against this method.
There was a few things here in the post that didn't make sense to me. First off, you dont need an HV to mine, you most definitely don't need to build a 2nd HV just to mine Zas and Erestrum or Sathium and neodium, i just use my t2 drill for those or even t1 with the f5 drone so i can get enough to build a different ship. Second you talk about a planet to big for the speed of an SV.... huh? What would you use then an hv? a CV, both of those are slower than an SV both in and out of atmosphere. Why would you need to build a small CV to explore other planets? that's what a warp SV is for. The way progression worked for me, was build a small base, get a t2 drill build a sv, find promethium, build sv with warp go get the other ore i need on the moon and other planets. Pretty sure I had an advanced constructor early too just from killing drones and looting them when they attacked. I really didnt even attack any poi that had defenses until after my higher tier sv with rockets. I didn't make a CV until long after i had every type of ore and went straight to the CV i wanted there was no middle small CV stage, I didn't bother with a hover either at first, sure they dig faster but its not like you cant dig with the t2 drill. Most of the mats i got for my big CV came from disassembling a poi once i had a t2 assault rifle and a ship with rockets to take out the turrets.
Small o2 bottles come from the survival generator as well as small water bottles you make it in the suit survival constructor and place it outside the base.
I can build a HV miner at level 10. I have such a vehicle. As such mining with that weak, slow, obnoxious drill + drone combo is *over*. I have passed the game threshold to move to the next stage of play. As such, going back to it, feels absolutely terrible. So when I warp an SV to a new planet, I'm not going to mine by hand / drone, I'm going to do it fast, easily and in the manner of the gamestage I'm at: With a HV. The planet is too big for the speed of a SV. It's too big for the speed of a CV and HV. The game got larger, but the content didn't increase, so it's more spread out, and takes longer: It's gotten less fun. Why do you need a CV to explore other planets? To take the HV you're using to drill. Heck, I have a CV design I use just for carrying my HV around the same planet because navigating through trees is something I have moved beyond. If you want to have your SV to the stars hand mining game, thats fine. But when the tech tree and general gameplay suggest an alternative style of play, one with constructing small, economical capital vessels, and using unlocked tech such as HV drills, this should either be supported, or not permitted.
Any possibility of getting any visual indication of over stressing structures? Currently, there is no feedback and new players can build structures only for them to just suddenly crumble and self-delete for no readily apparent reason. Just a simple color shift, or maybe some sort of visual indicator, or a message, or just straight not allowing you to place blocks that would cause all your work to suddenly explode without warning would be pretty nice thanks. Basically, It's not readily clear what the engine considers a stable supported structure and you can very easily get middle fingered.
Why is that hidden as a debug setting? It seems like an essential build tool you would want to present to new players.
sorry in advance if this is the wrong place but im having hostile stations spawning too close to planets. if i try to get close to the station i transition to the planet instead
I only play single player and occasionally co-op. I know we're in still alpha before anyone mentions that. I'll just stick to gripes regarding salvaging here. I don't want to go off on a tangent about having no speed controls for vehicles or the AI not responding to you blowing up all their bases. I also won't go into the imbalances of resources, but as a TLDR, neodymium was the rarest resource in my play throughs. 1. Multi-tool nerf This one is the worst change I've ever seen you make Eleon. Stand down early weapons kits, you have finally been dethroned. This change creates extra unnecessary grind. Grind isn't fun and it doesn't replace progression. The new start you've implemented with the survival tool and building up towards your first weapon and armour is progression, this is not. The multi-tools also already have progression in regards to their dismantling and repair speeds. Getting around this unnecessary change requires a core to be slapped onto what we're salvaging so we can retrieve the full block. In addition to this, you're actually encouraging us to use the blueprint factory as a storage facility so we're not missing out on resources. This one in my opinion has to go back to how it was. It solves absolutely nothing this way. We still have new players dumping 999 ingots into the factory, becoming confused and angry that there's no simple way to get them back out again. Fix problems, stop inventing problems that didn't exist previously and creating fixes for them. This is weapons kits mentality all over again. 2. New Blueprint system The blueprint system has been a dodgy implementation for a long time in my opinion but this new iteration has to be the one of the worst yet. Another solution looking for a problem? What logical reason do you have for making the factory devour ingots/components that aren't being used by the current blueprint? To get around this, I have a blueprint that uses them all. There's even a blueprint on the workshop that does this as well. This change was especially frustrating to see as we still have new players dumping 999 ingots into the factory and are completely confused that there's no simple way to get them back out again. "Go in creative and create a blueprint". Not a solution. This blueprint also comes in handy due to the multi-tool change, but I've covered that above. 3. The HV grinder Where is the logic in removing its ability to munch the rocks on the surface? I must have missed all the complaints on the forum about this major problem. This large, unwieldy addition to an HV was practically worthless before but thanks to this change, it is now completely worthless. I'd suggest allowing it munch those rocks on the surface again and also buffing it's damage against organic enemies massively. We might see some fun spider munching designs appear as a result? 4. Salvaging Wrecks I don't tend to do a huge amount of mining (surface mining mostly) and part of my gameplay style is salvaging from POIs and the ruined ships. I do think you're missing out on potential here by not having some ruined vehicles around, rather than just having everything a base. When I found fairly clean and crisp crashed CV, I thought you'd finally done it, you've added a ruined CV for us to get flying again. Sadly it wasn't the case, it was yet another base for me to add a core to and retrieve more objects to throw into the blueprint system.... Blah. Salvaging and component scarcity are a major part of the game, which is especially true early on. Robinson Protocol needs to pick up on this and rather than telling you to build a HV, it should be pointing out a wrecked HV for you to fix. Great way to introduce the building mechanics as well as the mechanics for how these vehicles are made. We originally had to travel the galaxy to acquire the various ingredients for components such as power coils. These recent changes don't really tie in well with that vision and just encourage players to seek workarounds so they don't lose resources. Ultimately, using the blueprint system as an inventory isn't right in itself, using it as an inventory due to an illogical change elsewhere is worse.
The whole point of field-salvaging is that you are only able to retrieve part of the block/device that you're salvaging. If you place a core and claim the structure first, then the multitool can work with the core to determine how to retrieve the block/device intact instead. Since you only get part of the core back, you then have to decide if it's worth it to retrieve entire blocks/devices at the cost of losing part of the core's components. We currently lack two main things which would largely take care of the other issues you've raised: disassembly of finished produces/intermediate components into ingots (easily doable once multi-template recipes are possible), and tying the blueprint factory to a physical device. A secondary thing would be for the repair bay/blueprint factory/shipyard to keep track of all items put in it, rather than immediately breaking them down to their component ingots.
I would like to leave my 2 cents about the game being a new player. I have had the game about 2 weeks and played about 60 hours thus far. with friends that have played the game for much longer. my first impressions on the HV class, it can be very unstable, flop all over the place and and when compared to the SV it is just a major pain. i love my SV even though i still suck at flying it, glad their is no collision damage or i would be fixing all kinds of dents. i need for my HV the ability to see what level i am, both the horizontal angle and the roll over angle. i have gotten myself stuck digging for ores and spent several hours tring to dig myself out. the auto leveling button helps, and the angle lock also helps, but when you cant see what way is up or down and are stuck on rocks that prevent the auto leveling from functioning, its not till you get out of the HV you figure out whats up and down. i have resolved to dig such a massive hole that i can see the whole thing from above, or use the drill turret to dig because of this. mod support could help address this need. if you get too closed in, the exterior view gets stuck in a view that leaves you unable to see the rear or sides, and not being able to see those sides results in the inability to see the rock/tree you are stuck on, until you get out. the HV: why do i have to switch weapon modes to destroy rocks verses ground, when i am using the HV/CV drill it should blast away everything, rocks, trees and ground alike. the harvester can give more wood obviously, and it should also harvest any plants too, why else call it a harvester? the hand drill needs a mode to blast away trees, having to carry a chain saw just for wood gathering is another inventory hogging thing. sure keep the chain saw, and allow it to give more wood, and chop wood faster, but any drill can chop that tree you are stuck on, even if it gives little/no wood. must make that free survival took to get rid of that random tree i seem to get stuck on every now and then. mod support could address this im sure. also it would be much more wonderful to have drills and auto turrets for my SV, or enable the drills on the CVs for PVE. i also believe that for server managers a universal PVE flag for the entire server should be available, (every play zone, so that team kills don't happen) mod support could probably address this. no offense to the focus on balanced pvp for this game, i will not be sampling it, as my player skills, or should i say lack there of, will result in my constant death, which is no fun for me. i stopped playing pvp games many years ago and have no desire to play them any longer. building ships, it would be so nice to have the piece for the first time placing snap to the angles that would be closest to the thing you are already building, you can still change it and move it around, but when you are pointing at a specific spot and select a shape that is just right to fit 3 sides, it should know what that is and rotate it's self, if you don't like that then you can move it to whatever and it will not try again till you select a new shape. likes: i do enjoy flying around in my SV, the CV is pretty much the same just more fuel hungry with better weapon support. the graphics are pretty good. no real complaints there. the poi's present somewhat of a challenge and the random bug/alien usually ends with my death, annoying till i get used to what they sound like and know what to listen for.
On the starter planet: Find a biome that is desert or all sand (it should be large in size). Drive the bike around for a while. You'll encounter a Desert Gollum. Kill the Gollum and it will provide many of the rare resources, including Sathium, Neodymium, Erestrum, etc. There are a few desert biomes on the starter planet, and each has 1-2 Gollums. The Gollums regenerate daily. I can collect 20-40 of the rare resource ores each day.
player list with B key should be disabled, and faction list online/offline status, that is used for attack purposes to spy if opponent faction members is offline,or how many there is online, that have been key strategy long time for everyone, and that is absolutely stupid, you should not know that kind of info, you should only see your faction and allied member status, in game observation should be the thing to plan strategies, not lists that show online status of opponent
