Rather than speculation and feature requests I hope to maybe get some ideas if any from the dev team about what they think about the EGS water and what plans if any are considered for its future use. (I understand that at this time this is less than priority) Players are building boats, pumping stations, oil rigs and even nice scenic little docks and harbours based on players real world visited locations. And if you are one of those players please comment here about your builds and how you would ideally like to see them used in EGS waters. I built a lot of boats myself and of course I dont expect that the game should change to make them more useful, and indeed their usage may become impossible with a future update as they are technically using HV in a way other than what was intended by the devs. (perfectly happy to rebuild all of them to suit future water mechanics) I know a lot of people have a love for underwater activity too and are requesting submarine type vehicle usage. I just want a glimpse into the future here. I understand that EGS is a space and land based survival game but clearly we have been able to extend that to water play in some degree using the games existing physics and mechanisms with some of the communities recent builds. I pose some simple questions here for the EGS development team with the hope of frank and honest answers. 1- In the development teams assessment, is it even feesible to implement the added mechanics/physics of water craft in the current code base ? 2- water, will it ever be a physical/calculated force ? 3- Is it possible we will see something like a new type of vehicle in future such as WV ? allowing for submersible or float builds. 4- Would it be easier to simply add some more features that allow us to make use of the water more with our existing builds ? Genuine questions in the hope of genuine responses. I love this game and perhaps I am only 1 of few who are so interested in the water. However I have noticed an increase in random community efforts to build water related items since I started building boats, and that was indeed my hope, such is why I made so many of them in such a short time. I think if more features surrounded the use of water, it would certainly encourage a lot more marine inspired builds. I can promote the use of water even as it is as a viable playground. At present I have perfectly working boats with the exception of those that can travel faster than 32m/s for extended periods occasionally having a random high speed sinking issue. (physics simply give out in that tiny space between the water surface and where the hovers sit but as this is a bug that will only be known to the high speed boat builder, it will never become a problem for the development team to fix unless reported by a bunch of boat builders or users) Can we get a glimpse if any exist as to what the future may or may not hold for the waters of EGS ?
I can give some ideas: Yes - but more mechanics as opposed to physics(at least right now.) No. Think more; something like Minecraft. My understanding is that this has been tossed around a few times already in the dank stygian depths of doom that is Eleon's internal debate. They have not implemented it yet because they are a teeny tiny development team and they are prioritizing. Probably not. The trick here is that the game is set 300 - 400 years into the future. So for the same reason that 21rst era tech makes it hard to detect submersibles and ultimately calls for Terrans to make a different vehicle type, in the future things will likely converge - water will not be as much an obstacle for detection and engineering, and that will be reflected in SV's or CV's. Also... BA's. Likely more SV and BA than the others. Exactly. This is already in the works. I promise good things, but not speed of arrival.
Would be more feasible to add water-based mechanics to HVs to make them more useful. No need for a WV: Water Vessel when we have HV: Hydro Vessel depending on whether you use Hover Engines or Hydro Engines.
Thank you for answering questions on behalf of eleons development team, I presume then that you are in the dev team and have access to the answers you just posted from an absolute development team source ? Or did you do what the thread set out not to do which was speculate on behalf of the development team with no actual info being relayed from the development team itself ?? This answer is yet another speculation and also has no logic to me whatsoever and I would appreciate it not being used as a barrier against water craft, the water can be used no matter what era a people live in. Let me give you an example that blows your statement to pieces. a thousand years ago we were sailing boats to fish the oceans, what are we still doing today ? we are still sailing boats to fish the oceans, we have aeroplanes but we still sail boats to cross the oceans. And in 3 hundred years if humans last long enough to make hover technology ? I guarantee you that people will still be on boats making their simple honest traditional living. I therefore decree that the viability of water craft in this game is 100% legit and there is no argument in the history of mankind or this forum that can counter that. Anyone who even tries to counter that argument clearly had no insight into the lifestyle of a marine affiliated sailor or fisherman to begin with. (landlubbers) Also to further clarify a genuine use for water vehicles. we could have oil introduced to the game or some sort of resource gained from water drilling. We could as our ancestors did, fish the seas for the food we need. I see water survival being a very realistic and plausible survival concept. I see nothing in this game or in real life that prevents or eliminates the concept of water travel or water activity as being a plausible alternative survival method for EGS. @EleonGameStudios @Hummel-o-War @Pantera Assuming fractalite is not a development team member and has just posted answers that are not a direct source of yourselves. My few questions in this thread can only be answered by yourselves so please throw me a bone here before this thread turns into a bunch of useless speculative answers from your followers which leaves me with more questions than answers. Even if you say, no furious, we decided against anything water related, I would be happy just to have that knowledge and would not be resentful in any way. Just give me something to go on.
I can live with this, extra features to compliment the existing, rather than restructuring the game to allow new vehicles.
Fair enough bro, did not mean to crash down hard on ya like that, sometimes we just need a direct answer from the man to make us happy I usually love a bit of speculation, in fact sometimes it is what I do best haha.
I don't know that I can have the same level of certainty, but I would say that where you have a large number of potential planets that include a subset with mostly a liquid surface, you're likely to want something that floats such as a BA. And, once you want something that floats, you'll probably want something to move about above and below the surface that doesn't sink to the bottom when you turn it off, as in not a CV/SV/HV unless they can be made to be buoyant.
I could easily see them introducing a new water-based vehicle into the game, however the question is now, 'When would this happen?' Water is obviously an extremely complex coding dilemma, therefore it seems to be pretty low on the priority list as the devs work on the core mechanics of the game. For me (not everybody just making that clear) water physics and vehicles are not the most important thing the devs should be working on at this point in time. I would prefer (not everyone just me) for the devs to work on fine tuning the mechanics of crafting, add more planets and other solar systems, etc; before diving head on into the water. And odds are, perhaps working on those other mechanics could give them a clue as to how they're going to implement and code the water. But that's just my opinion
What if you could build Flotation Blocks into a CV/SV/HV? Maybe you'd need a certain number of those blocks compared to the size of the ship for them to be effective, and if so, then it floats 50% in and 50% out of the water? It, of course, falls flat compared to realistic physics on many different fronts and makes the horrible assumption that you're always trying to float in water and not lava or liquid oxygen. Yet, in terms of processing, its pretty simple. Does it hit the "close enough" mark?
Indeed ! as I stated in the first post I understand that this is not priority, there is a lot of stuff they want/need to do in the meantime, and it is the case that I am just asking if there are any future plans, of course they would be later down the line if any perhaps much much later, I just want a heads up from them as 1 of the few interested in the water theme. To know if they plan on taking to the water in future or has nothing really been set in stone. Curiosity really ^^ For this with HV atm I either leave the power on or dock the vessel at its water height against a public or personal dock or marina on the edge of ones property, made a couple of docks to try that and it worked out pretty good, I had like 15 hv boats all docked perfectly on one large jetty/marina type deal as a sort of yacht showroom
Improving water simulation is one of the todos, but this is not even remotely trivial. I am afraid this will have to wait for a future major update. Having feedback on that topic piling up here is much appreciated
If HVs have special underwater physics (eg, behaving like a submarine when suberged), then combining that with procedural caves (terrain system could provide that) would make an interesting new option to explore structures and terrain under water. Also wrecks/POIs can then be placed way deeper under water. Here it would help to define air-blocks (empty blocks) for those structures. So the player can dive down under water, and then enter a POI that is walkable. Similar to oxygen, the game could identify non-water blocks that dont leak to the outside. If there is a leak, the blocks fill up with water again.
Just that is enough to keep me going cheers dude. I guess this will become a feedback thread after all Love the sound of this, I remember MC caves. And since we now have a feedback thread... I would like the idea of fishing for food, already we can dive and farm a lot of goodies from the sea bottom like plant protein(seaweed) in abundance for energy bars ! and lots of alien plasmas. on some planets at least as well as pentax and promethium. I can already live and survive on a boat at sea right now with the random promethium and energy bars XD The water looks empty, would be cool to have alien poi docks, the water lacks any presence atm apart from that new shallow water fish thing. Sometimes there are crashed cv in water at least. Would like to see more thoughts from the community on that. Generally the water looks great and puts together a nice backdrop or foreground in pictures, but it lacks simple effects like reflective surface, allowing my vessel to have a reflection or cast a shadow, though it will cast a shadow on the seabed. Because I am on the water often I see my boats every day looking like vampires as they have no reflections. It kinda makes the game feel unfinished graphically in that regard and I feel I am missing out on an awesome graphic addition there with the lack of those reflections. Moving on. Maybe a life raft needs to be added for those unfortunate wet escape pod landings lol I would say a portable dinghy that jettisons from the escape pod on a water landing would be fully awesome sauce. Like the bike but for water and the ability to make them later in game, this would be a helpful survival addition to those who get shot down over water. Especially if your on a ship and not having armour (helmet) with you at the time. Yeah I like to fly nekkid and without a spare armour on board !
Kudos to our resident boat wright, Furious Hellfire, for starting this thread. Some months ago I built a harbor scene. These are the only pics I could find. I used SVs with no thrusters for the boats. The cottages are all SVs as well. The smaller blocks made for a more livable feel despite the lack of dedicated deco in that size. Thanks to Hummel, we know that more watery goodness is planned. If it's possible without derailing anything, could we raise the speed of vessels in and under water now? Half of full speed would be a huge help.
I'm a big fan of more water-related stuff. Water Mechanics Real fluid mechanics are tough, but I'm thinking that something primitive could be done to make water fill vacated spaces. If I dig a mine, the dirt layers move out of my way. If I fill/flatten, the dirt layers fill up. Why can't the water blob have volume added to it in the opposite way at the same time? I know it would be problematic to have people connect two lakes with a manmade canal or something that sophisticated, but when someone just digs next to, or at the bottom of, a lake it just doesn't seem like it ought to be that hard to fill it with "water". I'd like to make underwater bases, and have a pump (or just a ventilator) that removes water from anywhere that is air-tight, otherwise it floods to water level. If you can fill/drain areas based on water level, consider supporting tides near the coast, and flooding after rain. If you ever did go the route of real fluid mechanics... how about mud, quicksand, and lava flows. Boats I don't personally love/need floating blocks for real boats, in the game as it is now. However, I would be very interested in seeing water transport become more viable. To do that we need real oceans and rivers. I don't think that a true boat has a purpose in the game, since HV's can do the same and are more flexible. However, if there was some economic/trade network aspect to it, like you could assign vehicles to carry goods between places, and boats were cheaper to run than HV's, then maybe it would make sense. A floating vessel will always be way cheaper than a hovering vessel to operate. I'd love to have a reason to need a boat. And need a bigger boat... Underwater I would love to see underwater creatures and POI. Need underwater weapons. Lasers should work underwater, with lower range. Maybe add a speargun. A submersible would be awesome. It should work like an HV except in the other direction. Just making it an option for HV's would be great, shut off the thrusters, turn on the turbines, and go. Some of the mechanics of how underwater environments might work could be used for other planetary situations, like gas giants or liquid ammonia oceans on cold planets.
As far as actual water physics is concerned, the devs can probably take a lot of shortcuts. Moving through water is easy enough if you simply consider it to be very dense air (and neglect most of hydrodynamics); then you can use simple lift and drag models just as would be possible in air, the only difference being a much higher density. Water flowing between voxels is tricky if you want to conserve mass accurately but also not implement a full fluid solver; offhand, I don't know a good way to do this. I suppose we could always go with the Minecraft model of voxels refilling themselves if they have enough full neighbors, and allow removal of water inside airtight structures. Technically, right now most blocks have so little mass in them that they'll easily float (there's not too many CV/BA devices that are more than 8 tons per block); any kind of armor is a flotation device . The range would be low indeed; assuming the optimal blue-green wavelength is used, absorption is around 5% per meter. So, intensity drops to 50% after 13.5 meters, 10% after 45 meters, and 1% after 90 meters; probably a laser would only be good for damaging things out to 25-30 meters (it'd still be quite good for mining and close-range cutting through blocks, though). Probably torpedoes would be the main weapon of choice. Or one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APS_underwater_rifle
Distributing water voxels is probably less of a problem than displaying them. POIs have a limited dimension (not like Minecraft, that is continuous), wich helps with keeping a "floodfill" calculation in bounds. However, the surface area between water and air voxels is tricky to visualize, as Empyrion mixes different techniques (terrain, water surface polygons, non-even rotation of POI blocks, small blocks of SV and HVs). Whereas minecraft has an even grid of 1 cubic meter voxels, where watervoxels have a natural volume as any other block. So underwater air areas should be either completely enclosed (a calculation as for oxygen) or completely flooded -> up to the normal water surface. Transitions can then only occur at POI windows and doors. Each of them have a tint (glass, focrefields) anyhow, that make the surface transition less obvious. (Else the underwater environment is suddenly displayed like the normal surface outside, the tint can make that less obvious) When the player leaves an air block, and enters a water block (though force field doors), the display changes to the underwater effect, and vice versa.
In another thread I suggested the range underwater be about 10% of the range in air. So yes, mostly as a short range or point blank weapon. Point is it should work though. My thought was that the range of the laser in game isn't just a range on effectiveness due to absorption/beam spread, but is also taking into account accuracy. In space, the range should be thousands of kilometers, since there's not much to weaken the beam, nor would it spread much. But you can't HIT targets effectively at long range, so I kind of interpreted the range as being a limitation of the scope (or targeting computer for mounted weapons). But I'd be totally fine with a 30m range or even lower underwater. But it ought to do something, not just say "doesn't work underwater".
Honestly, lasers ought to have the highest range of any weapon; practically, this should be the draw distance (basically, if you can see it, you can fire a laser at it). As compensation, lasers should consume a lot of power, do continuous (and hitscan) damage, and have reduced damage with distance due to beam divergence. This would make them a great low-lethality deterrent at long range, basically signaling to an incoming potentially hostile ship that this structure both has lasers and enough power to use them at long range, so better scram (and without probably destroying any blocks in the process). Agreed.
