INFO & FEEDBACK [Alpha 11] CPU Points and Tiers - How does it work?

an alternative to the CPU could only be the creation of different types of cores with a specific type of device attached to them, and the limits on these devices, the mass of the entire building and the number of blocks, it seems to me that the CPU gives more than this flexibility.

 

I guess the big thing I don't understand is this: what do CPU limits add to the game that couldn't be adequately emulated through imposing server size restrictions on vehicles? A size requirement of 2-3 would force most vehicles into the same specialization lanes CPU pledges to pave. So, my question is, why take the time & energy to program & introduce an entirely new mechanic that complicates more than it streamlines, especially when there's something already in place that can do all the same things?

 

Because the Game-wise Limitation of ship Size was exactly what other Gamers called "Gamebreaking", "Restrictive", "unpopular"...and some other words which I won't type in here

 

Those opinions won't change regardless of what sub-system is introduced to restrict player builds.

 

A small compact cargo SV with 40 t mass, interior cabin, shield generator, warp drive and with average flight agility already reaches tier 4.
And how does thruster placing effect flight efficiency? I´ve tried to place side thrusters in different arrangement but nothing seems to change.
The tier 3 and 4 extenders are 2X1 blocks in size. 4 tier 4 extenders occupy 8 block space. The warp drive on a SV already is a rediculous big piece of ballast. It will become very hard for new and unexperienced players to buid something that performes within the CPU tier requirements and which also doesn´t look like a box with thrusters put on.

The A10.5, 45953 CPU version of that SV I´ve built shows 100 % on efficiency level, even without any tier extenders added. What does that mean? Can I release this version for A 10.6 on the workshop without any extenders then?

No offense, I´m not in rage. I know, that values might change in the future. I´m just curious.

 

I believe it stands in the EXP that if such behavior happens you might send the Devs the BP in Question

 

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR VESSELS AND BASES that do not work with CPU - after reworking!

What means: when you have run out of possibilities or do not want to sacrifice your design or the purpose you build your ship or base further!

1. Upload the .epb file (or as a .zip with a password and send us the PW via Forum-Conversation; start conversation and add Taelyn and Hummel-o-War!)
2. Upload a screenshot of the CPU contol panel view

We want to get your blueprints for a closer analyzation and further CPU balancing!

Thanks a lot in advance!

PS: builds that have several dozen of RCS, thruster arrays and/or other devices "overstuffed" should be revisited at first with the original design and the task you made your build for and how good it works with SPECIALIZATION and CPU, in mind, BEFORE submitting to this thread!

 

Yes, I know that, but none of these are major advantages:

• The better weapons may seem to be an advantage, but consider that unlike a CV a base cannot fly away
• Furnaces just process materials faster, but usually you just dump stuff into it and walk away anyway, the power usage of a furnace is so high, and the idle power draw so high, that you may be better off just using two constructors anyway
• Since mass/volume limits were introduced, it often makes no sense to bring stuff back to your base to disassemble it, the only time I've really used a deconstructor is building one on-site at a POI I just conquered to help disassemble itself
• 3 combat steel blocks is stronger than 2 armored concrete, there's no real advantage to the better density - sathium+iron are actually easier to come by anyway since you can disassemble POI to get loads of it, by contrast getting cement in the later game requires mining with a drill

I tend to build bases because I like them conceptually, but there's always been kind of a "what's the point" issue of building bases versus CV's, and I think they made it worse with this system.

What I'd prefer to see is for them to REMOVE silly restrictions like not being able to build furnaces and deconstructors on CV's (which makes no sense), and instead just allow bases to hold a lot more stuff in total - more weapons, more devices, simply be larger.

The CPU system has the potential to make the game make more sense, by saying the limit on CV's is that can only hold and move so much stuff - you can't build a death star that can actually move with the level of technology known to Empyrion. Instead we have these limits:

• You cannot attach a solar panel to a moving object (despite the fact that we can do that with today's technology easily)
• There is something is so magical about a deconstructor that it cannot be placed inside a moving vessel - constructor and multitool have no such restriction though
• Despite the fact that turrets attached to bases and CV's appear to use the same technology, attaching it to a CV cannot fire in atmosphere, whereas attaching it to a base can - moreover, by "atmosphere" we mean just "near the planet" even if it is a lifeless moon with no atmosphere

Those limits make no sense. Instead, CPU should replace these limits, like this:

• Add more weapon variants. Longer range weapons, and weapons that can fire in atmosphere/gravity, may be more expensive.
• Increase the amount of thrust required to get off-world by a LOT, making it take a lot of CPU to make a ship that can travel from surface to orbit (thus leading to more space-only or ground-only vessels, and dedicated transports)
• Thrusters/RCS, warp drive, weapons, and shield should all require a LOT of CPU, so much that making a ship more mobile really limits the weapons and defense, and vice versa
• Remove limits on things like furnaces, deconstructors. This was an arbitrary gimmick to give you a reason to have a base. The reason to have a base should be that it has far higher CPU limits
• Remove limits on solar panels. If they have a hard time calculating solar panel energy while moving, then change it so no energy is generated unless you're sitting still, that would still be better than the current situation.
• Of course the end result of this may be that there's really not much difference between a BA and a CV, beyond "does it have thrusters attached". That's OK by me, and may lend itself to new ideas like movable space stations, bases that can rotate to face the sun, or whatever. It would make more sense this way anyway - consider the fact that floating bases exist. How'd they get up there?

That's just how I would do it. But I don't know their overall plan for balancing things, hopefully it makes sense.

 

But that just illustrates the point that the cap has nothing to do with technology limits, it is only an arbitrary gameplay restriction. The core in a base is basically the same as the core in a CV. But the core in a CV has a higher cap because it "needs" it for thrusters? This makes no sense.

If I choose to build a CV that doesn't move, it should not be able to be stacked with more devices than a base. This is all the more important since you can dynamically add thrusters, warp drives, or anything else, and take them off when you don't need them anymore and just put them in a box.

I am not sure if others have used this tactic, but I have sometimes built a CV on the ground with no thrusters at all, and use it as a starter base, instead of wasting resources on something that is stuck on the starter planet. Later I add thrusters on the side of it and launch it into orbit. It is quite fine if it looks more like a building than a ship. It flies and I can take it to another planet. Despite the fact I do this sometimes, I know this is cheesy, and I'm not sure it is a good idea to make this kind of thing even more advantageous.

 

Maybe they could share the same 'Flag' the Core itself uses.

My Suggestions: IMHO the most practical parts of Guns that CPU would be managing would be Targeting & Reloading, so theoretically one could exceed CPU toting a LOT of a particular Gun & try to Frontload a lot of damage, but in exchange, the CPU Overload would make for inefficient management of Gun Gimball Targeting & Reload Efficiency so as the Guns were continually fired they would struggle to maintain their Aim & the Shots would more wildly spread out & be unable to concentrate so well on the Crosshair till the Guns ran outta Ammo & needed to Reload, then the Guns would Reload & the CPU would choke on the processing load of all the Guns making the Reloading Process take much longer to complete & be less efficient. Moderate Overload, it's just harder for the Reloading to get done... if the CPU is overtaxed BADLY, the Processing could even start malfunctioning from Overload & 'forget' to Reload one or more of the Guns or mistakenly Reload only part of a full Clip, & if the CPU was Overtaxed obscenely hard the Reloads could even get performed incorrectly & cause outright Gun Jams... or worse...

Just please, Implement this in sensible ways like this & screw RNGesus... instead, logical consequences for logical actions & logical penalties for CPU Greed.

& to boot, there's only one place you can dig with that Drill to get that Rock... Everywhere!

 

Yes, rock is everywhere, but there's no way to automatically extract it with an auto-miner, so producing mass quantities of cement is harder in the late game where you are probably not mining manually as much anymore.

Most POI seem to be made out of hardened steel blocks or combat steel blocks, all it takes is disassembling one abandoned factory or reactor and you likely have enough Sathium to last forever, just plop down a deconstructor near the entrance, and start shoveling the blocks into it.

I'd like to see more bases made out of armored concrete, to mix things up better.

Autominers picking up a bit of residual rocks would be great. Not tons of rocks, just a similar proportion as what you get if you mined with a drill. The rocks actually have a use, so why not?

 

But that just points at a problem with how they implemented RNG loot. It is fixable.

If there are certain components or items which are needed to progress, they can affect the probability of finding them based on that. They can arbitrarily decide something like one you hit level 15, you should be finding at least one T3 core every 3 hours - you can find more than that, but if you find less then the next base you raid is guaranteed to have one, because you're below the quota.

This is not the only way, or best way, to do it, but my point is that if components, blueprints, or other things needed for game progression are added as loot, or only purchasable by traders, there's ways to force them into the loot tables by increasing the chance of finding them based on previous loot, your level, or some other factors. The loot is not truly random anyway, it is based on the container type (better containers drop better loot) - they can make it also dependent on other factors.

Of course they also talked about adding a quest, which is another fine way to do it.

 

CV T2 RCS is 1,250,000 cpu. Seems a bit excessive when the max is 1.6 mil. I dont see being able to build a ship large enough to use a T2 rcs with the cpu turned.

 

Ya forget... some of us like doing our own dirty work with Mining HVs instead of Auto-Minering... & some of us really like Underground Bases foundationed on the Bedrock... (& who knows? After getting this all done, there might be surplus Rock to Trade with Auto-Miner Huggers...? )

Numbers are not final... quite a few of them, including this one, are very way out in Left Field pending the Devs getting an actual clue on a actual sane CPU Number for them. Workin this kinda stuff out is a big part of the reason for the Experimental Branch. Feedback Feedback Feedback... Hone Tweak... Feedback Feedback Feedback... Refine Adjust... rinse & repeat till things are quite a bit better Polished.

 

So the solution is to introduce something that's all of that, except more restrictive, more complicated, more punishing, & made worse by glitches, abuse, or RNG? I'm failing to see the point.

 

That's the plan and the new series of planet-dedicated POIs that are largely made of Armored Concrete where possible. Both because it cheapens the material cost when salvaging and because it'd be more practical and realistic for someone to make a facility out of concrete after excavating the ground for the base to be built into. Armored concrete is also 10% stronger than combat steel and certain temperatures and weather on planets would prevent the overuse of steel alloys due to warping, rust or corrosion from acid rain.

CPU Extenders can also be added to the actual POIs, attached to the base as salvageable loot after taking out the core. Guaranteeing a 100% success at getting an extender against a worthy POI.

 

Why not ? If the developers go as far as creating a "cheesy" hacking/ shaman disabling attack on bases, if they really don't want players to establish a base on the starter planet, what's wrong with building a CV and putting thrusters last to leave the planet ? Does building a physical factory and feeding it materials to build a CV with "visits forbidden during build" until it is totally spawned make more sense ? Or simply spawning the CV via blueprint, that would not be equally cheesy ?

Of course this is based on the actual CPU limits as of today which may change. Nevertheless I don't see why using your method could be seen as "cheesy" because if I choose to build a CV by hand, how could there be any restriction on the order I choose to put my devices in ? Can you see how ridiculous it would be to forbid the player from using devices because "thrusters are missing" ?

 

You make really good points here, however, that is what THIS stage is here to address. The next few weeks will be all about fine tuning and finding implementation that makes sense. There is a fair chance that by public release, the system could be VERY different from it's current state. I'll make a statement on Tiers and size class further on...

I do want to address your concerns about damage causing performance loss for a moment, with a hypothetical situation:
You are flying around in a spaceship, and suddenly you are set upon by a hostile ship. they blow out your shields, and eventually damage some of the computer systems that run certain components on your ship...
Does your ship still perform at maximum capacity?
Sure, maybe you have redundant backup systems...but would they be as powerful as your primary unit?

Now, lets takes a less hypothetical approach: In the game's current state, when you start losing thrusters on one side of your ship, your ability to move in the opposite direction is diminished.
Considering that the systems need to be connected to the core (looking at this from a pvp perspective), if these systems get damaged, your performance would likely already be highly diminished, as the enemy would have already exposed your most vital systems. Chances are, you were dead anyways.

As for redundancies (and this is where i break away from objectivity to personal views) redundancy overkill is part of the ****** plaguing pvp (the area where this really matters), anyways. With that said, people who build for PvE rather than PvP dont usually do very much to protect their core. More often than not, you find the core prominently displayed in a room with only side of it remotely protected. These types of ships are often destroyed fairly quickly upon losing their shields, which I find hilarious since PvE turrets tend to target your Core, where PVP turrets don't have that option.
While on less objective views: I'm personally glad to know that CPU will end up having an effect on the size class people can achieve. As a previous server owner and admin, as well as an avid PvP'er, I can say with absolute certainty that this needs some serious limitations.
Go look at the way HWS has set up their size class restrictions in PVP zones. And then consider that they have the BEST hardware on any of the populated servers.
Then go to the official server and try to pvp in a max size ship.
People build without regard to how that build will affect playfield performance (and even WITH the intention to lag others out).
After all, Size Class, despite it's name, it a measure of performance impact (number of triangles to be rendered), NOT the actual size of the ship.
I always say, build smarter, not bigger...

 

Have you considered not using the SV warp drive for your cargo ship?
One of the things mentioned previously with the concept of CPU was more specialized ships.