List of useful but not so obvious features of EGS.

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by Furious Hellfire, Jan 2, 2019.

  1. Furious Hellfire

    Furious Hellfire Rear Admiral

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    There seems to be a change to cruise control function now.
    @Hummel-o-War

    When activated, cruise control no longer uses full power, impossible to ride at max speed now with cruise control.
    Not sure if that is intended or a bug so please let me know so I can adjust the above for fact ;)

    Usually the speed of your fingers with key presses activating cruise control, could determine how much power would be applied.

    A long hold of W whilst holding shift would guarantee full ahead acceleration in cruise, whereas a short tap of the W when using the shift key could result in very low acceleration and speed.

    It was useful and gave some flexibility with speed choice.

    EDIT: oh and my testing was with HV on water XD never even though to try other stuff.
     
    #21
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  2. Germanicus

    Germanicus Rear Admiral

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    Cruise mode...a balanced usage of Power, Speed and Fuel consumption. You as a Boat-Builder should know that term best.;)
     
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  3. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    The player could never climb steep cliffs with a HV having active cruise control, since day one cruise control was introduced.
     
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  4. Xango2000

    Xango2000 Captain

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    Recent patch added +1000
    Ctrl+shift+click... I think
     
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  5. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    I could add a few.

    1. THE L KEY

    It is documented as turning on/off base lights but has other functions which are non-obvious.

    The suit has a light. You might think everyone knows that, but not everyone does, particularly since early versions of Empyrion didn't have it, it sort of snuck in later. The fact you can build a flashlight also suggests that you need one, when in fact the flashlight has been useless ever since the suit light was added.

    The L key activates night vision if you have night vision goggles. You can even use them when you're flying a ship, which is useful when you need to engage a drone in your SV at night and are having trouble seeing it.

    2. THE P KEY

    Opens the control panel, which allows you to access any container or device in your base or ship. Maybe most people know this, but some people play for quite a while before they understand the full capability of this feature.

    3. All containers can store anything

    It may not be obvious to people that you can put iron ore into a fridge or ammo box, but you can. Useful to know with the new volume limits, when you want to pick up just a bit more stuff and aren't sure where to stick it.

    4. Eating cures radiation

    If you have been exposed to radiation, eating any food (or drinking juice) will round your current radiation exposure down to the nearest integer. So if it is at 0.7, it goes down to 0, if it is at 1.6, it goes down to 1.

    Therefore, if you just carry a stack of food and always eat something when you hit .8 or .9, you can withstand radiation indefinitely.

    5. The chainsaw is a viable weapon

    Not just for chopping trees. The chainsaw is the best short range weapon by far. It damages the target and also pushes it back a bit. Try it against bugs, spiders, and other critters. Far more effective than the survival tool, pistol, and so on.

    6. Right-click to access gun sight

    If you have a rifle, try right clicking and notice there's a gun sight that lets you zoom on the target.

    7. The fastest way to travel to a destination on a planet is to kite the atmosphere

    You fly approximately twice as fast in space as you do on the planetary surface. Moreover, when you fly in space you are traversing a sphere instead of a flattened map, which makes your speed appear even faster.

    If you are not scouting a planet but already know where you're going, you can point your ship in the direction of the target, enter orbit, fly for a while staying close to the planet, and periodically dip down into the atmosphere and see how close you are to the target. If you're still more than 2km away, pop back into orbit and follow the planetary sphere for a bit further. Cuts travel time in half.

    8. Solar power works best in orbit

    It may seem logical to use bases on planets, and ships in space, but in fact there's a great advantage to placing a base in space. Press O to level yourself, face the sun directly, then place a base starter block. Now, build a wall of large solar panels that directly faces the sun.

    You will get 24/7 solar panel at maximum efficiency which gives you at least 1400 PU. This is like 3X-4X what you can get on the surface of a planet, due to night, weather effects, and angle of sunlight. Build an array of capacitors and you can store extra days of power, letting you run furnaces and the like for a while off of nothing but a battery.

    You can build a base with massive storage, and easily find it from other planets using a waypoint. (It is much faster to return to a space base than a base planetside, where you have to first warp to orbit, enter the planet, and then potentially fly to the other side.)

    9. Windows, walls, shutters, and doors can face the other way

    Normally you would place windows on top of a full block so that the window frame is on the "outside" of that full block. However, this will prevent you from putting stuff right up against the window.

    Try instead placing a wall on the outside of your structure, turned 180 degrees, against your floor blocks so it slightly extends the floor out. Then place your windows, also turned 180 degrees, on top of that. (The tinting of the window will seem backwards but you can change that with the multitool.)

    Now you can place furniture, lights, and other devices right up against the window. This approach can be used with any thin blocks including doors and shutters.

    10. With the new logistics system, cargo boxes need not be colocated with furnaces and deconstructors

    The furnace is super-hot. You can't stand next to it. Loading it used to be a pain.

    Now, you can put the furnace in the basement and never look at it again. Just put a cargo box anywhere in the base that is convenient for you. Connect it to the furnace. Put a switch on the side of the box. Name its signal "Furnace", go to the furnace and connect it to the switch. Now all you have to do is dump ore in the box, flip the switch, wait for it to change to ingots, and flip off the switch. The furnace could be completely buried.

    11. CV's can be bases

    There is no rule that says CV's have to look like ships. You can make a CV that looks like a skyscraper, a factory, or a barn. In fact, you can build a CV with no thrusters or RCS at all.

    Why would you do such a thing? Well, in the early game, it might be hard to find all the neodymium and other materials you need to build a full CV. But no one wants to stay on the starter planet forever, why invest in making a nice base there? Instead, just make a little platform out of wood. Drop a CV starter block, and from it, make a building which is really just a base.

    Later on, when you're bored of that planet, you can slap thrusters on the side of the "base", add an RCS, slap on a warp drive, and fly to another planet. Then just find a nice flat spot, and land. Take the thrusters and warp drive off for now, put them back in cargo. You have a base again.

    Also note that structural integrity doesn't currently apply to CV's, so you can build some pretty crazy stuff this way.
     
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  6. Sephrajin

    Sephrajin Rear Admiral

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    @Ian Einman : I didnt know aout the rad-food relation, cool thanks! :)
     
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  7. Vermillion

    Vermillion Rear Admiral

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    Use the console command /tt to enable teleportation.
    Shift+Right click where you want to go on the map (works in orbit) to teleport there instantly.

    afaik, console commands aren't documented in-game and this one is a life-saver for building in creative.
     
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  8. geostar1024

    geostar1024 Rear Admiral

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    That seems like a bug or temporary placeholder effect, though. I'm not sure I'd want to rely on that behavior.

    "help" gives you a list of the commands, and sometimes "help <cmd>" will give you useful information about how to use a certain command (emphasis on "sometimes").
     
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  9. DeadliestIdiot

    DeadliestIdiot Commander

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    I recently learned (completely by accident) that holding control while holding the left mouse button to place a line of block allows you to place a plane of blocks
     
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  10. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    I'm not sure the radiation reducing due to food is a bug. I learned about it by reading, and I thought it was intentional.

    Is it a placeholder for something else? Maybe. But right now there is no medical supply that will take you down to 0 radiation. You can cure conditions like Radiation Burn and Radiation Sickness but only a shower gets you down to 0.

    Because of that, it would make sense that the effect of food is intended. It would be strange for food to "accidentally" affect radiation exposure like that, it seems deliberate to me.
     
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  11. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    So, I tried this out, and noticed that it's not just food. It's everything. O2 cannisters, health kits... anything "consumed" is doing this. There's clearly a bug somewhere (either not everything should do this, or the whole "feature" is a bug).

    Please follow the bug report I made on it for updates:
    https://empyriononline.com/threads/radiation-drops-on-item-use-consumption.48586/
     
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  12. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    It looks more like a bug than defined behavior, but if they get rid of it, I sure hope that they offer a portable method of reducing radiation to compensate.

    This is a trick I always use in the early game when I first go to the moon to get cobalt, because I always have only an SV and am far from home. You can reduce radiation effects (like radiation burn) but that doesn't reduce your exposure level. (Unless I missed something.)
     
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  13. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    There already are ways to reduce the radiation, but not conducive to "fun" gameplay. There's a few things you can do:

    1. Take a shower. Not possible with an SV, but only a CV. However, friendly factions will let you hit the showers at their place, and it still works.

    2. There is a pill and an injection that will remove the nastier effects of radiation. However, it doesn't reduce your body's radiation level, which is what you are after (and it means you will be ill again in a few). One of them you can make in a portable constructor, and the materials aren't overly hard to get (mushrooms, plant protein, and herbal leaves). However, it only removes the "burn" (first stage), and doesn't reduce the body radiation level.

    3. There is an injection that will make you immune to radiation for 120 seconds. Kind of hard to make, as it requires both fire and confetti moss scrapings. "Radiation Immunity Shot". Carrying a bunch around would be awkward, especially if M/V is enabled.

    4. If you go inside a building or ship (even one without power), you are protected, and your number will go down over time.

    Of course, this is rather boring, waiting for your rads to go down, and the last server I played, our unpowered, un-turreted base was attacked by drones (that was a very interesting and fun time: we barely had enough bullets in our rifles to do it, but we shot them down by hand), so that could be a problem... but any sort of solid structure will protect you.

    On the Arid world, it is not uncommon to get radiated fog early in the game. You can protect by adding solid blocks to any wreckage to basically seal yourself in a box (no door required). A multitool (even the "salvage" option of the survival tool) can remove one block. As long as you have crushed rock to make more blocks, you seal yourself in and release yourself indefinitely, as needed.

    Of course, it's rather boring standing in the box, waiting for the fog to go away/your level to go back down (it does reduce over time). But it's possible (not what most people would consider "fun" gameplay), so something to keep the game entertaining and still within the bounds of realism is in order to reduce radiation.

    Of course, it could be that the Devs intend high radiation to be kind of a warning as to difficulty/game stage: if there's high radiation, you shouldn't be here unless you are high level/late game, and have a full "mobile base" CV, complete with shower, heavy armor, and plenty of pills handy (the ones made from funky stuff you can't grow, like moss scrapings, but can be made with lots of pentaxid and such) to deal with the high radiation (or: n00bs need not apply!)...
     
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  14. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    I know about most of this, except:

    If you go inside a building or ship (even one without power), you are protected, and your number will go down over time

    Really? I've not noticed that. Are you sure it isn't because you ate food or something? I've never noticed the number go down naturally, but I may have just missed it.

    Shower only helps you in a base or CV. I only have to deal with radiation in the early game usually before I have a CV. I did conquer a defense tower for the sole purpose of putting a shower in it once, but rarely build bases on the moon because there's not much there to make me want to stay.
     
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  15. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    Pretty sure it goes down .1 every few mins, just as it went up.
     
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  16. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    .... I was wrong.

    I tested this, and what I thought was a natural reduction was probably the food bug. I didn't see it drop. However, I wasn't able to sit in my shelter as long as I would like, as I had a rados patrol vessel right over my head, so it's possible sitting long enough, it will drop--or it was just the food bug.

    However, sitting in the shelter keeps it from increasing (it does protect against it), even if you have no power (the icon will go white instead of red).

    This makes radiation accumulation a rather large issue: it should drop off over time once you are out of the exposure!
     
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  17. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    Thanks for testing it. I don't think it drops naturally. There's a lot of things that make it drop, such as eating (which is intended), or using oxygen bottles or medical kits (unintended).

    Food reducing radiation is not a bug:

    https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-6-0-out-now.11547/

    Changes related to Temperature and Radiation System:
    - Added radiation pills
    - Added temperature increase / decrease to food
    - Added radiation reduction to some food
    - Pentaxid Crystals, Promethium and Erestrum ore deposits are now radioactive
    - Added radiation and temperature to blocks and devices (eg Warp Drive, Generators, Thrusters, etc)
    - Implementation of Temperature Format Changes (C/F)
    - Added impact of temperature / radiation to difficulty setting (Low, Normal, High, Off)
     
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  18. geostar1024

    geostar1024 Rear Admiral

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    Below a certain point, perhaps, as your body repairs the damage and flushes any radioisotopes that you may have ingested (or that got created while you were being irradiated). Above that point, though, and your body simply can't fix things without help from external sources before your organ systems shut down due to excessive cell death.

    It makes me wonder if the devs were intending to add an explicit property for this to food, but never ended up getting around to it.
     
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  19. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    ... I believe the whole thing is a bug.

    Alpha 6 was a long time ago.

    WAY back when, there were some specific foods that did reduce radiation.

    They were difficult to make, and it specifically said their radiation reduction (and how much) on the tooltip. They needed specific materials.

    However, they later completely revamped food since, and most of those foods were removed and replaced with the medical items (pills, injections and such) that we have today. None of what we have lowers accumulated body radiation, though, if sitting inside doesn't (and I really thought that did work at some time, and that DID make sense, as radiation has limited life...)

    However, it's pretty clear that if this removed (as I expect it will be), then there is a new need for ways to reduce body radiation, as the ONLY way to do it is a shower (which isn't always available).

    A "Radiation rinse" item or somesuch to do the same as if with a shower would be helpful.
     
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  20. Pach

    Pach Rear Admiral

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    Yes, but at that point, none of the little medkits/pills we have in the game are going to help, either. :)

    And while we want a good dose of reality, it *IS* still a *game* and there should be a way to counter it, not carry around 0.2 radiation on your body for the rest of your life, until you find a shower.

    You'd think swimming would wash that off, too...
     
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