First off I'm going to start with the positives and say I truly believe the game gets better from one update to the next. Alpha 8 was a great progression with getting rid of the green walls on planets. Alpha 9 has some massive art improvements and I think with some trial and error I think the logistics sytem will be great for gameplay. BUT the range of weapons in this game is pathetic. I know this isn't a simulator but the range of weapons in this game makes WW1 rifles look high tech. Basically nothing in this game can be killed until it fills your telescopic sights. The base minigun turrets can't hit a drone until i'm able to engage it with small arms by which time its kind of pointless. I mean they fire a 15mm round which should have a range of at least a couple of Kms. I feel the nerfing of weapons range is simply to make up for poor AI. Anyway I would be intetested to hear others on this topic and want to make clear I support the direction of the game but this issue really ruins the immersion a bit.
I think, the low range of "ranged" weapons is at least partially due to the small areas we are living in. Taking into account the small radius of our planets (the biggest is ~10km), you can see another person in a flat terrain at max. 400m... weapons ranges seem to reflect this, while the games graphics does not. But you are right - it feels odd, at least outdoor. In POIs it doesn't matter. Besides, in my view there is another problem with weapons: recoil and spread. Those are, to put it mildly, out of balance. First: Turrets and mounted weapons have neither of them. This absurd and renders small arms obsolete whereever you have access to any kind of ship. Second: The RocketLauncher has NO spread at all, but a super heavy recoil. In reality, its just the other way 'round. Third: Quite the same with laser weapons: They have (little) recoil and no spread, while they deserve no recoil and just a little spread. And, of course, they are the weapons to be hampered the most by an atmosphere - their range should in atmosphere shrinking to armlength, while an assault rifle is quite unimpressed of air.
Yepp, "overdone" is a good word for this. I dont want to ban it, it adds to the game, its just... overdone More so, as with the simulated recoil i have a problem, that doesnt exists in real world: If the visor of my rifle jumps out of the target, i just bring it back. If i try this ingame, i have to draw the mouse - down, as "up" is the direction of the recoil. Always. So, while firing, my mouse goes down, and down, and down... 'til the edge of the pad is reached, what stops firing immediately. It this my own, private problem i just have to cope with, or else?
No I'm not happy with it at all myself. It just doesn't feel right. I really hate software that wants to force my mouse outside of my normal movement range so the creep does bug me. I would prefer these supposedly realistic features need a switch. To turn them off for those that don't like this feature.
I do not like the shorter weapon ranges. One could argue the scale of the worlds. That makes sense for 1 km versus 2 km. Too big of a range would make some worlds completely unsafe to travel. We only get the actual name and marker for POI when we are nearly on top of them. So I will accept that as a reason for the short weapon ranges. But that just means that if you give a weapon range of 1 km, then to keep things balanced you might also extend the range those POI are identified as a fortress or drone base. With the larger worlds, larger weapon ranges should be a bit more practical to get around. Of course, then it would also be harder to get to deposits within the matching radius of those POI. Someone said that the shorter ranges were to make the game more fun. Now that I question. The question might be “what is fun?” Do I attack POI from close range? Yes. Does that mean that I want weapon ranges to be short range? No. I attack POI from close range because my skills of hitting a tiny target at range are rotten. I am so bad that I could I park just outside the range of the POI turrets and I still cannot destroy any blocks with manual control of the artillery turret, even with zoomed in targeting. If the alien turrets aren’t too terribly imbalanced, I find myself taking less damage in my SV by getting up close where I can actually hit the turrets. You know what actually adds to the thrill of this? Knowing that backing up a mere 50 meters won’t be enough to escape the alien turrets, that I am well within their range. One of those encounters where the developers had radically swung the balance of the alien turrets, I actually did have some fun. The part where the turrets mopped up my tank in seconds was not fun in the least, just weeks prior that same tank could take on a small fortress. So the nerfing of my tank wasn’t the source of the fun. But to say that the whole encounter was without thrill would be false too. The part where I used the dying husk of my tank as shelter and ran for the nearest outcropping of rocks, now that was a bit of excitement. Knowing that I was escaping with my character’s life. Not some quick run for a few meters, but rather hasty retreat from large boulder to boulder until I was finally on the other side of a hill and out of sight. And, yes, I made it to safety. I would later return and get my revenge on the POI, and that too was fun. Fun is also getting shot at while closing in on a POI with my SV, while I move in closer to make sure I am actually shooting the turrets. I want to say that one prior version that I even dodged plasma blasts to get close enough to a POI in order to confirm it was the drone base. That too was fun. Fun isn’t always about the close combat. We all have different ideas of what is fun. With all that said, the reality is that to sell the game, they should aim for the fun that will sell copies of the game regardless of whatever I think is fun. When they shorten the range, I look at my 120 meter capital vessel and realize that the developers effectively reduced the firepower of the CV without ever changing the rate of fire or damage of the weapons. For as they shorten the range, that means my weapons in the rear of the CV not only lost the range the devs cut, those turrets already have about 120 meters less range to begin with. However, the fact that I put weapons in the rear of my CV probably demonstrates that I don’t play PVP. Now, I can think of one design that might actually be strengthened by shorter ranges. The PVP cube of doom. Someone explained to me that despite what I thought about giving my turrets in the rear of my CV a clear line of sight forward, in PVP that is not really that powerful. The wedge shape of the Star Wars Star Destroyers is not effective with short range weaponry. What is powerful? Putting your target in range of all your turrets at once. In other words, if you put all your weapons at the front of your vessel, in a single wall, then you will have the advantage in combat as you keep this wall of weapons focused on your opponent. If their weapons go the length of their vessel, then you will always outclass their vessel. All you have to do is simply get just close enough for all your weapons to engage the opponent, then keep your opponent at that range. Keep them from closing, and the battle is yours. This way they taste the full wrath of all your turrets while you only feel the wrath of their closest array. And after you overwhelm the first layer of turrets, then close in to take out the next layer of turrets. Rinse and repeat as needed. So shortening the ranges means that rear CV turrets will be even more useless in the close combat PVP situations while the player who puts all their weapons in a single wall can be rest assured that the very size of their opponents’ vessels is a weakness.
Learn how to edit config.ecf people. Everything is in there. I always change weapon ranges, charges ranges and make capital turrets all fire on planets. I do not see any problem with weapon ranges anymore. 1. Open config_example.ecf 2. Save it with new name Config.ecf 3.Find the weapon you want and change its attributes. 4.Save and exit. 5. Profit...
Editing the config is ok, but it has drawbacks: - its a lot of work, to keep this file up-to-date.value and even existance of parameters, devices etc is about to change at every update; not always those changes are mentioned in the patch notes. You have to keep track of this manually by comparing the config-example.ecf before and after every update. => work - gameplay is balanced with every update, so you probably want to adjust your personal balancing on this. This means not only updating the config.ecf, but playtesting the outcome. => lot of work - your gameplay experience is no longer matching those of others. You will note that while joining in discussions in this forum; more important: your bugreports are questionable as they belong to altered gameplay. - your blueprints are tailored to your playstyle. With those tweaked config.ecf this does no longer fit to others, what means, that your blueprints are useless to others vice versa. You loose any benefit of the workshop. For this reasons we are seeking for a canonical balancing of things, everyone can at least live with (even if its not optimal for one or the other).
I don't play PvP either. And I almost never put weapons on the rear of my CV, because it's just impractial. The game mechanics are such that the most efficient build is: have multiple layers of combat steel on one side of your ship (front), and pack as many turrets that can fire that way as possible. Very effective against POIs as well. And it doesn't matter if it's a CV or an HV: you just make your vessel have a "thick skin" in front, and as much forward-facing power as possible, and "face-tank" the target. The only "turrets" I ever mount on the back of my ship are the asteroid drill turret and multitool turret. Keeps them from being shot up during combat, too, because the AI likes to target... turrets! Why is this the most effective strategy? Turrets can auto track and rarely miss. Your ability to fire a gun isn't as critical as your skill in selecting the right targets for your auto-firing turrets.
I just wanted to come in here and give my opinion on weapon ranges. It all comes to a balance but I lean more towards the realistic (as far as science fiction is concerned) type ranges. Right now things seem very artificial and arcady. I know the word "arcady" can be taken as an insult but I am just using it to describe a combat system (ranges in this case) that leans more towards "fiction". I would like to see more "science" involved in the combat and less "fiction". Ranges are just one part of it. The ranges are drastically too short. The planets are large enough to increase the range. Im not a fan of being forced into close quarters combat. I like to look at things from a distance and engage from various ranges depending on the situation. Sometimes it makes more sense to move in close and sometimes it makes more sense to snipe from a far. Those choices are not in the game. I know bullet drops are a thing in certain more simulated type combat games. I would like to see a science fiction take on something like Ghost Recon franchise and Rainbow six Vegas 2. Arma is good too but I understand that it is the extreme. Most of the time combat is happening from really far in Arma (realistic of course), but for fun game purposes I wouldnt go as far as Arma. I think balancing this game play is one of those tasks that should not be taken lightly. I believe, at least imo, that most of the target audience are scifi lovers. We tend to be a bit on the older side at least I believe. This means that the target audience leans more towards the "science" in the "science fiction". Take fiction into account for that which we dont know or which could provide more fun. I dont believe, however, that the target audience likes the arcade type combat. Games like Empyrion which immerse the player in a survival role play are a bit more expected to lean towards the realism where possible. It breaks you out of that when you see arcady combat with tiny engagement ranges. I would love to see increased ranges on all sides and with that increase spread. Plasma cannons shooting at your SV which is zooming past the base should miss but be a threat from longer ranges. There is a lot more that I can say on this but I will leave it for another thread. Im with you on increasing the combat ranges to a more realistic standard. I am unequivocally not a fan of the small, arcady, ranges.
@VISION305 One of the big issues with long range right now is render range. If it's not rendered, you can't see it to shoot it. This is another issue, but there's a host of things with render range that would need tweaked before real long ranges could be implemented. :/
Well, the "problem" with the render distance of targets seems to be taken on as the Devs took a big step forward be lifting the FOW further which may, hopefully, lead to a re-inventing moment of Sniper Rifles being able to use their advantage of range again.
Agree 100% ranges are waaaaay too short. I have to get in way too close to POI turrets to get hits in with rockets while they get to pelt away at my ship all day however.... Also noticed that the turrets seem to take much longer than before to react. I had first noticed on my HV (turret would take forever to shoot down drones) but the POI turrets are taking long as well. In fact with the rocket firing range being so short now I noticed that I could pretty much just go directly to the turret, like the nose of my SV cockpit touching it, and nothing would happen for a few seconds. I was able to destroy them one after another just by staying level with them before they even started rotating.
Thanks for the reply. I do understand the issue with rendering. However, the range of weapons used to be a bit longer before. At this point in time it seems that you can already see targets in the distance but you cannot hit them because of the artificially reduced ranges. For example, drones, turrets, and bases you are able to see from a pretty good distance but you still cannot fire at them until you get up way closer. For the time being I dont think the reason truly is because of the rendering. I think, if I remember correctly, the devs stated that they were bringing combat to an arcade style by design. I think this design is flawed and doesnt mesh well with sci-fi survival. A game where you can have hunger and broken legs but then when it comes to combat you cant shoot the target with a rifle until they are up close. I respect the decision but I think it is a mistake and the target audience (I mean most the people actually playing this game) probably doesnt like arcade style combat. EDIT: If I recall correctly, the devs didnt do a survey or anything. They just made that decision at some point and went with it. It is alpha so testing gameplay like that is necessary imo but I hope that soon they try the other approach to see how people like it. I mean a more realistic approach at combat in a science fiction universe of course. I think they will have a more positive feedback if they did.
@VISION305 Worst case, you can change the ranges on weapons to suit yourself In this folder: Empyrion - Galactic Survival\Content\Configuration There is a file, Config_example.ecf This has all the items in the games with their configurable values. All the weapons are in there (or should be: I only looked for Sniper and Assault Rifle), and you can re-config the ranges (range is listed) however you would like, and perhaps work out better ranges for what is a balance between practical visibility and realism? (rename the file per instructions at the top after modification). I'm not positive a longer range would be beneficial right now, as my usual issue is "can I even see it/target it", and if I can, I can usually hit it.... so I'm not sure a longer range would help right now... but perhaps you can see them better than I?
Yeah I have messed with the config before. Not super fun to do imo. Trying to keep track of balancing all that yourself plus who knows what else you didnt think of to balance it. The draw distance, in my experience, is much further than the weapon ranges.
The Multiturrets are not really a weapon but i have to say that specially the range of the CV Multiturret is ridicilous short. If you want to repair a space base with it you nearly have to touch the base with your CV (and so you often do touch it)
I don't mind the recoil, but I do mind that my avatar doesn't attempt to correct for it. When we fire, recoil moves the site. Fine. And then the avatar should bring the weapon back to center. If we decide to pull the trigger before the avatar is done centering the weapon, then the recoil should become cumulative.
nice idea, that the avatar itself does the work of correcting (its 'own' error). At first i liked it, but: it severely cuts down on the dps rate, as firing is going to be slow then what is the avatar supposed to do if the target is moving? should it have implemented a tracking system? if not, it will me guide back to the outdated position, that i have to correct again. and if i am moving myself? tracking system? - then, please, i'd like to do the whole thing: command 'fire on recognized target' to the avatar destroys independently the defined targets; i just have to move around. I think, it would be much more simple to just cut down on the amount of recoil (rocket launcher and laser weapons are NOT supposed to have any recoil at all!) bringing some random in the direction the recoil move the weapon. Yes, in real life its mostly upwards - mostly. Not always and not only, because the shooter knows about it and takes countermeasures.
