The main staircase in my mountain stronghold is quite a feat. However, after a few days playing - I'm going to have to do the pragmatic thing - I'll put in an elevator
I ran across a ship review from Space Engineers on Youtube this morning. I liked the ship so much that I thought I'd rebuild it. And after about seven hours construction time, here is the result: The ship is so far only a hull, but already fully able to fly. Spoiler: Statistics The original design is from Space Engineers from Hombre. Spoiler: Viedeo
This is probably a very FAIR assessment, and it is why I have still held off on getting into modding.
It's a specialized ship designed for PvE; where the first Stratus performed spectacularly against any ground-based POI once shielded. Better than any SV and cheaper to run. Unless you're just referring to the interior having a big bridge and bedrooms and a mess hall. In which case, it's aesthetics. It adds an atmosphere of believability to the ship which is just as important as a nice exterior. You wouldn't want to walk around a big ship with only two rooms and the rest is solid steel. It would be ugly and off-putting, which is why PvP ships are never used to market any game.
I guess what I'm saying is: it makes sense that a lone PVE player can operate a small or even medium vessel alone. But it would be neat if there were more reasons to build massive ships (with crew amenities, and "crew blocks," etc.) other than mainly aesthetics. I love that the game allows building very large and very pretty and also very functional vessels. I just wish that it was not as easy for a lone player to operate all of them no matter how big and complex they are. It would enrich the game, both PVE and PVP, but as long as it was toggleable with an option switch it could satisfy everyone.
Well.... There is no SubV starter block, and water still fills everything (except sealed cockpits), and weapons don't typically work under water... but... A small, sleek SV can plunge into the water pretty deep and still function. I have one on a base where I built a landing pad under the water and can stick my SV to it by coming in at a fairly steep angle and powering off the SV. It's goofy but it does work. Looks cool taking off for sure. But no, there's no "You're Meant To Do This" method, which is OK, since there's not a whole lot under the water, save alien plasma, plant protein and the occasional Pentaxid crystal.
Ship NPC crew won't be possible until eleon remake the collision system, which Hummel said it's planned in the future in the Q&A stream. Which will allow players to walk around on moving ships and ships won't pass through each other or weird out when impacting each other. Proper impact damage from crashing into ships will probably also be a thing.
Even just an highly abstracted NPC crew system using pretty much ONLY the existing NPC blocks and an additional interaction pane, and then behind the scenes adjustments to the maths. Lets just say: they apply maths similar to those underlying CPU and activate it in any given session with an options toggle On/Off. As your ship gets bigger (analogous to CPU points) efficiency goes down until you add "Crew Points." Crew points come from "Crew Blocks." They'd need to define the roles and how each one added to or subtracted from ship dynamics, how much they cost to hire, how much they need to eat, what amenities they need on board the ship to have high morale, etc. 3D games with collision physics are great. But not every single aspect of a game where that is the main mode of play HAS to be done that way. Look at the abstractions they've done with cargo and moving it around using the "Logistics" example of the tool bar. If I were in charge of the project: (a) I'd insist that these "living world" dynamics needed to take front seat in development and stop focusing so much on everything needing to be manifested with animated 3D models and all the logic to run that stuff (talk about memory overhead!); (b) start putting together the rudiments of the system now and release it incrementally the way they have done other stuff. In the end, that might lead to fully 3D locomotory NPCs with sleep-wake schedules, who can fight along side player in close quarters boarding actions and voice actors and back stories and side quests and a whole plethora of other rich and tasty stuff. But it makes more sense to start "basic" and get the underlying "economics" and "technicalities" of how NPCs would function as crew in the game squared away first. You hire them, then you get the option to create their crew block in a constructor (or else it just appears in an inventory). Then you can place them. Better have a bunk and whatever other amenities they need setup! Now you get the benefit from having that particular crew man on board. As far as anims, models and textures, pretty much what is in the game right now would function just fine to start with. Mainly just give a "Crew Management" pane (similar to the current CPU pane) and change the source code to implement the mechanics. See how it works! THEN, if it is a "winner," go to the trouble of developing all the NPC behavior logic, more anims, etc. For a great example of all these dynamics in a game that is much, MUCH less graphics intensive, everyone should check out Start Traders Frontiers. Great Game! Ship-to-ship collision and being able to move around inside ships while they are in flight sound great, eventually. The former is pretty much essential to the game I think, the latter would certainly enrich it a lot. But I'd say NPC Crew Dynamics is more important right now than anything else for this game. That gives an edge in on real IMMERSION and engagement with the user (the players bond with the brash Klingon Princess type they hired who died nobly in battle account for their never ending vendetta to wipe out the Zirax type stuff . . .) Narrative, back story, characterization, quests, goals. Those are also essential to the game, but I've been saying that for years and I while I see them moving in directions that suggest they want to go there, they have moved pretty slowly, so I dunno. If this game could actually develop a stock campaign of some sort, with a cast of characters, quests, moral compromises, economic and strategic decision making, 'team building,' etc. it would be astoundingly good. It is already one of the best games I've ever played. It was good from the start, and has only gotten consistently better, and it seems like they'll just keep making it better for as long as it takes; so those are my dreams for it!
Today in Empyrion... I did nothing. Same as yesterday. I sit there looking through recipes while editing configs. My goal has been for the last two days to give an alternative config that establishes real life volume and mass for everything, or as close as possible without ruining the ability to play the game. Alas, after reaching the calculations of CV block materials, i found that it's impossible without a greater degree of freedom in customization from the hardness of the terrain to the amount of ore/stone dropped per cubic meter of terrain to achieve realistic values. So... i'm probably gonna have to abandon the project for now. Spoiler: Horrible math Currently we convert iron ingots to steel plates at 2 ingots per 10 plates. Realistically, it would be 2 ingots per 1 plate; with 6 plates per Steel Block S (1 per side, 50x50x1.5 foamsteel core). Doesn't sound so bad, right? Until you run the numbers on a CV block that's 16 plates per side at 96 plates or 192 iron ingots per block (hollow). That's bad, but not impossible. It's also almost accurate to the current mass of Steel Blocks too (1132.8kg vs 1000kg, so i'm on the right track) What's impossible is that the amount of average iron ore per deposit sits at around 750 iron ore. I actually had to get up and pace my house to determine the dimensions of a deposit to work out that it's around 1.5 million liters of volume (medium deposit); which would mean that each chunk of iron ore would be around 2000 liters (about the size of a fridge). Which is too big for the player to carry and if there were ever weight restrictions the 10.3t it would weigh would crush the player and any HV wouldn't be able to lift it off the ground. It's roughly 1.34k iron ingots per 2k liters of ore at 0.75L per ingot with an ore purity of 50%. Which works out at around 1m iron ingots per medium deposit (10,425 Steel Block-Ls with realistic build costs). Enough to build roughly one MS Titan per medium deposit... I think. So unless we gain the ability to set the hardness of the ground with the config and the yield of ore per block of terrain excavated, realism ain't gonna work on the large scale. If we kept the ore at a carriable size and weight like it is now, but increased the ore drop rate, we could spend days grinding the same deposit instead of emptying a dozen planets for a couple of CVs. Good for long-term multiplayer sustainability. Server owners wouldn't need to reset ore deposits as often and controlling terrain and ore deposits has real value. This would also need to apply to stone as well, since realistic values of crushed stone to concrete are 386 cement per block of concrete (1158 crushed stone per concrete block). The only other option is to take away some more realism, which I would have to do anyway for block carriability.
All Realism ends(for me) as soon as I use blocks instead of metal sheets /plates to build the Hull of a Vessel.
I've been tinkering with planet tech recently... I'd intended to return to NMS for a while and "cool off" from this whole CPU debacle, but as it turns out, Hello Games did another of their "Let's change the biome generation and retroactively mess with everyone's planets!" and turned my latest homeworld into... something less than satisfactory. So, figured I'd make an attempt at recreating some planets in EGS instead. The above planet is inspired by the game Sky Break, a somewhat mediocre but rather chill little game that I quite love for the overall atmosphere. It's actually meant as a backdrop to my real planet project, Tranquility, but I got a bit carried away. "The massive world of Broken Sky is known for its plentiful iron deposits. Due to its oxygen-rich atmosphere and frequent heavy downpours, this mineral-rich world is stained red from oxidized deposits." (Yes the name is crap, I tried a few and just ran out of ideas. Feel free to suggest a better one.)
Beautiful ship indeed!! I just wished Empyrion had the same features that SE has which allows this ship in SE to be a giant rail gun throwing explosive blocks at other ships..
I'm starting to love the new Dock with any ship feature. I was repairing one of my SVs on another planet and since I haven't built a CV yet I had no way of getting my new SV I built and the old SV I was repairing back to my home planet UNTIL NOW!! This really is a helpful feature.
Yep. I think International Space Station's pressure hull is in the 0.254cm ballpark (1/10 of an inch). Also it is made primarily of aluminum if I recall. There is no possibility to do realistic designs in a game system with 2 meter thick blocks. Not said as a critique, just pointing out the fact. One way the game could be made "more realistic" (though it would likely be a real chore to do it without changing source code): Introduce "Moiety Blocks," meaning, all blocks have two portions (inner/outer, upper/lower, cabin/hull, machinery/hull, whatever). Then, anytime "hull" is included from the drop down list, the user would specif the thickness and material. This way you could have a "cabin" block which was exclusive of any other block, but could be passed through by player: 50cm airspace on most "inside" aspect/machinery (perhaps half of the requisite "2 contiguous blocks" required for an O2 tank, or the 1 requsite for a locker, or whatever)/hull.
I built a new CV, completely unlike anything I've seen or built before, and took it out on a little test flight. It almost makes me want to PvP... almost... if for no other reason for the reaction to its.... most unusual configuration. I did take to to pay a visit to a Zirax Drone Space Base.... the results were brutal to say the least. No pictures yet - haven't painted it, but only because it's going to take a while.
