I guess I have been going through a construction fest recently and everytime I think I get near the end of it, something else crops up that is probably less important but much more interesting or probably more accurate - less annoying to make So - another new addition to the growing family of newer vessels. This time a dedicated T4 fighter that was made for the Zero-G challenge 10: Work on the new bases is stalling mainly because my desired style of base tend to require alot of concrete (landing spaces with extra bricks to satisfy the broken SI system) which with the current ludicrous CPU costs of concrete means they often just hits a dead end in the form of a T2 build that just plain suck functionality wise. I don't like CPU as is anyway, but this specifically is getting really annoying with the result that I tend to stick with my little separate and relative primitive shed style bases. This is an aspect of space engineers blue printing and its projector system that I really miss as in that you can have blueprints for extensions instead of only the complete structure. So I used to have blueprint for an early base, then later extended it with landing spaces, more factory space, turret mounts etc etc. Am I the only person who really hates the CPU cost of concrete? In fact concrete in general seems to be a complete pain in this until you can swallow asteroids whole - early game digging rock out of the ground with the current conversion ratio of stone to concrete is almost impractical so I only use those huge surface rocks for it.
And that I suspect is why Eleon are maybe not getting loads of feedback on how awful some aspect of it are - many people who hate it think screw this and switch it off and are never heard from again on the subject. While I build mostly only for myself (ie I'm not a workshop builder 1st) I do publish anything I think is useful, so I have to be CPU compliant and thus play with it on. TBH I think it was a mistake allowing it to be switched off (same with mass/volume) as really they have no reason to review it and are probably lacking in the majority of the feedback they may have otherwise received. Edit: In co-op games the only way i can have it switched on is by giving the team an advanced core at the start to ensure at least the starting base is excluded from CPU because the concrete thing just ends up being a complete turn off for everyone as otherwise we quickly hit the T3 brick wall (pun intended) before we can even get out of the starting system if they are left to build the way they like to as they are just not as familiar with the game as me. They are all ex-SE players so expect to be able to lay down basic structure blocks without being penalized.
They had their feedback in the weeks following the implementation, even after they patched it to some extent. You were just late to the party. But just like for the various "weapons stats" modifiable with "skills" the CPU is just another tool to tweak the game to our likings. It's a less easy to circumvent "hard limit" if tacked to a specific device (and not smeared all over the place and blocks etc) so players have to play "by the rules" but only in a strict context. And that was the objective from the start, Eleon made it clear that it was up to server owners to adjust values to what suits them.
That is true of course and TBH because it was in place *before* I started to play, then I am probably more accepting of it than many and try to persevere with it. TBH if it came in after I was already used to the game, I might have given Eleon the finger and fully expressed my feelings on the subject to the extent of getting myself banned and then never looked at this game again. The thing is I dont want to have to tweak the game. I can and I do for the most annoying decisions that we are able to reverse without breaking vanilla build compatibility (sadly many recent awful changes and the many other long term issues cannot be accessed via confi). I could make concrete cost 0 or 1, but that would break build compatibility. The ability for us to edit should not be a crutch to support bad choices. They should make well thought out choices in the first place allowing modders to enhance rather than mostly fix. Putting aside that I strongly disagree with Vermillion's choices around CPU for galaxy reforged the reality is he should never have needed to do it in the first place had it been in a decent place to start with which is wasnt. Instead, we now have a massive destructive chasm down the middle of the community - reforged compatible or vanilla compatible but rarely both. And what are Eleon doing to mend this? Nothing as can as anyone can tell and instead are off chasing butterflies or whatever new and shiny thing attracts their attention for the moment (only to be most likely left half done and forgotten in a few weeks or months).
There is no problem with compatibility with the way I mod my game, because I do not replace blocks/ items to avoid mismatch and geometry/dimension problems, and I mod CPU to have no impact, so even older workshop builds should be OK apart from the extremely large ones. Like I wrote previously : I aim to use the limiting "extras" like CPU and mass/volume for a specific purpose, but leave the most part to be unconsequential. As for Vermillion, we had our fights on playstyle, and we're at both opposites of the spectrum on this. He has the right to mod his game like he wants, and some players like it, but it's just not what I want to do do. For example all the ships fixed weapons in my test scenario have unlimited ammo/ lasers and only cost "energy". Quite the opposite of "grindy" and lots of fun in action without feeling paranoid about spending ammo.
I tested out my new ship over the weekend, decided to see how it fares against a Zirax dreadnought. Not the usual sitting behind it and exploiting blind spots like a fighter but, going toe-to-toe with it in a straight up capital ship slugfest. And I got obliterated... I then loaded in the dreadnought to see what is what, and holy crap! Never inspected it closeup, it seems the weapon limit memo didn't reach the Zirax. So I went back to the drawing board and armed up my ship. Out the window goes the game rules again. If the Zirax don't bother with weapon limits, why should I? It is now armed with 10 fixed rocket launchers, although arranged in broadside manner so it's 5 per side. And plenty of turrets. I feel that the sheer amount of ammo needed (and CPU cost) is enough to balance out the uptick in firepower. I kept a version of the ship that's still rules compliant, I guess I'll upload both. But yeah, it would be great to have a softer cap on weapon limits. I don't know if the "21 limit" still applies though.
Hahahahaaa ! Completely nuts ! This is going to be loads of fun ! I can walk on a plane... that is really cool. I left the back face culling enabled just to show the geometry, but to save performance we can show only one face. Now we can use this to expand any structure, and save lots of blocks for bulky cubic spaces. That is an insanely cool feature. .
The key to destroying this thing (quickly) is being able to face tank it at near point blank range while also retaining full combat effectiveness (all important weapons and systems remain fully intact) despite that your shield is down. Face tanking it means being able to within loosing a layer of combat steel armor every second or so until you kill it. I designed a vessel specifically to kill this thing and it takes about 40-60 seconds from first contract to dead dreadnought. If interested - see a few pages back in this thread for pictures and a video of a test of the first prototype video. The problem is the vessel is not a vessel I like to use - its a very awkward shape to park anywhere, very big and very heavy relative to its overall utility and hangar is too small etc. I have others that have managed the kill, but they are not as effective despite being better armed simply because they cant face tank it as well and again suffer from generally usability issues - bridge at the back (compromised 1st person view), compromised agility due to heavy damage sinks and anti-missile barriers etc along with awkward weapons placement (they cant be at the front as they get destroyed). TBH - I generally just run from them. I have also tried silly no-limits vessels that can down its shield in a couple of volleys, but there is something wierd and buggy feeling about how its dual shield seems to behave when you use overwhelming firepower against it - set a shield for 100k and I can take it down in one volley with a vbast number of plasma turrets. That thing still needs two such volleys to erase its 100k of shield. Now i just avoid them as an excessively cheaty exploitative vessel that isnt worth fighting. Of course you can also fly around it in circles for an hour or so and slowly damage it that way. But I find that while it will start shooting you at 1.2k, you will only start shooting it at under 1k.
How did you do that? New functionality in the beta branch? I see even temp and radiation is stable. Now I wonder if walkable asteroids can be possible...
That's my test scenario's space playfield. I used the new Decals feature, with 2 decals (grass and dirt) made solid with the new "Collision" option. We can then position them via the savegame's decals.txt file, refresh position in game, adjust, etc. This is just a test to see if collision is working ( it is) and it opens a lot of possibilities. Now with this we have "planes" in the game, and we can use it to replace walls made with thousands of blocks, use transparency, and even show or link to mp4 files that will "play" on the planes. This makes possible to animate textures, or make videos displayed on a screen, moving fog, laser walls, waterfalls, etc. These can be used in dungeons (admin POIs, indestructible) and we can make practically what we want with these.
Yeah, pretty much. I never knew they were as excessively cheaty, always thought they were just very well designed and built. Clearly not so. But anyway, my new ship is more of a carrier anyway, only one layer of combat steel armour so, not really meant to take on dreadnoughts. Awesome. The new decals feature has a lot more to it than I initially thought!
I am just curious what their structures look like. When I am playing a vanilla game, I can build a large, very functionable base out of concrete with all the basic necessities and still be quite under the CPU limit for T1. T2 base would be like a mansion to me. Are they building like huge warehouses or something? Or arming it with max limit turrets? Have they tried building support buildings (separate garden, individual turret towers...) to lessen the load on the main base?
No - firstly I am only considering the concrete part - not anything functional. Second, were talking about normal sized core base with a load of concrete for outside landing areas for many vessels and some mess about space for people to make stuff etc. Obviously the grow areas are much bigger than normal (several players to feed), but fabrication areas etc are normal sized. I also use separate defence tower structures, so typically this means the core base may at most only have a couple of sentry guns, so basically no turrets at all. Even so, you can easily max out T2 with just concrete. Most of the base tends to be underground, maybe a large hangar, but mostly lots of concreted space outside for medium sized HVs, SVs and some smaller/medium CVs etc - just landing spaces not in front of hangar entrances etc. In solo I often use separate structures for these to keep them all T1/T2. Then add if it is on uneven ground, then it needs regular support structured under it for SI. It very soon mounts up. Even when just me in single player, I sometimes like mid game bases that often are near max T1 or even T2 just from concrete blocks before anything functional is added at all. I could hunt through some old save games I guess to see if I can find examples, but just from a couple of recent solo base blueprints: This is 60K CPU concrete: This is 160K CPU concrete: TBH I find the first base too small past L15 without additional landing pad structures (so big CV on another structure next to it). The second base is a good sized base for me, but really needs a little more landing space for my taste (one of the two CVs is awkwardly parked). Well yes - but they are used to space engineers and tend to have WTF moments when they realise they have to manually shunt stuff around (instead of having docking connectors between the separate structures to automatically move stuff around). Personally my most used base design are my oldest and simple sheds (on my workshop) where apart from the starter shed, everything is a separate structure, but TBH I grow tired of manually shuffling stuff around between them. The second base above was an attempt at consolidating several of them into a single base and having an OMFG (?!?) moment when I saw how much CPU proportion was taken by just concrete. I have other little high functioning bases on there as well that are compact, but they lack integrated landing spaces at all never mind useful sized ones. I dont mind building separate landing pad and repair pad structures, though TBH it gets annoying when the game decides it wont let you place them closely and so the ones one extreme ends cant connect with each other over wireless so you have to walk to the middle and transfer standing there instead. Maybe most people just dump there vessels on the ground, I like to have landing spaces for everything and sometimes prefer those landing spaces to be within the rectangle of the main base which usually prohibits a separate strcuture.
Wow, those are really nice bases. I must just be really simplistic in my builds as those look like full on POIs. Great job, but I can see why they are high in CPU. I suffer from being more utilitarian....like no reason to have separate rooms if they are not completely functional, but it keeps my CPU low. I put together a few things in creative to spawn in when needed, like a small/medium landing pad with basic supports, garden house, turret towers....all ready for dumping the materials into the factory and I like the look of auxiliary buildings verses one large structure. I like the challenge of CPU but highly disagree that it should include things like concrete blocks, or any block for that matter if it does not have a power function.
I think I am going to jump into a creative session and try my hand at a multiplayer starter base to see where it stands.
I only just noticed something peculiar. During a survival game, it started to rain. It was quite windy and I glanced over to the radar/map thing and noticed it was 26 deg.F. I'm thinking it ought to be snow! Hardly a game breaker, and I never really paid attention to it before. Perhaps it's not fresh water, but very salty water resistant to freezing, or maybe something else altogether. Just thought I'd mention it. BTW, I just spent a laborious week having my computer rebuilt. It was supposed to be a simple upgrade of components and wound up a major rejuvenation. A week without my EGS fix during the pandemic shutdown was a serious bummer. All better now. (for the computer, at least)
Backed up and uploaded my carrier but, I've been mostly toying around with the Zirax dreadnought. I like it! It's as intimidating as it looks and absolutely beautifully made. It actually gave me an idea for a Zirax gamestart scenario in which you'll eventually earn a (playable) dreadnought as a reward. It would be even better if I could use a Zirax model for the player character, could be possible but armour and some weapons will probably bug out.
Been trying to survive in a MP server for the first time. And its awesome. Difficulty seems to be amped up, and its a Reforged Eden scenario. After much effort, established a base, spawned my first CV, and made it into space. With some effort, was able to upgrade my starter CV and get into my good "End game" cv. So have been mainly struggling with getting used to a universe that is always going on, even when I am not there. So things like fuel/food/oxygen are something to contend with again. I decided I needed a dedicated mining CV, as mining with just a drill turret is worlds better than anything I had done, but sometimes still takes too long. So while searching for Sathium and Gold, I came across an Imarate Destroyer. I wasnt planning on combat, but felt it time to just see if my reforged modified Asteria Destroyer could hold up. The fight took a LONG time, as I mucked about debating to destroy turrets, or go for generators. After finally settling in, getting my constructors churning out more and more ammo, I finally managed to stop the Zirax ship. But, the weakness in my CV is no manual weapons, so I couldnt target the core personally. After some careful maneuvering i was able to get a plasma cannon lined up just right, and drilled in and killed the core. I then was met with that irritating "hidden block" bug, and couldnt loot. I had heard something about the ship still having thrusters caused the bug (somehow) so I figured Id try it out, and set about destroying all of the rest of the small thrusters on the ship (just two). And boom...I could loot whatever freely. After gathering what I consider fair loot (no epics, just a dozen or so Optronics bridges and fuel) I had to repair my ship. Seems the old Asteria is a tough bird, but I had lost about 4 turrets in the fight. So, lessons: My ship can hold its own with any Zirax ship smaller than the dread, but it takes flying. Directed weapons make battle MUCH easier as you can just drill a hole to the core. Combat steel is my friend. And though I intended on mining sathium for my new mining CV, I was able to "mine" the wreck of the enemy destroyer for as much as I needed.
