Please stop making undestructible POIs with admin cores

Now that would be an interesting option in the game.

 

It's not a question of whether or not admin cores belong in the game. They certainly DO belong. Quest and other fixture POIs would be impossible without them, not to mention the Civilian faction.

The question is how, if at all, appropriate they are in general raiding POIs that exist for player to attack, overcome, and loot. Empyrion is a game about the creative building of solutions. General raiding POIs that use these cores are not in harmony with this. The inability to chose your own attack vector and methodology doesn't make the experience more challenging; it makes it feel broken.

Some justification is needed for a POI to be unassailable by our ships, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. It can't just be that the designer wants players to go through the funhouse the way the designer wants it to be done, and it's their funhouse, not yours, so there. It needs to be made clear this is something special, something apart from the average fuel depot or listening post. Think of Vault 11 from Fallout: New Vegas. These POIs could be small mini-adventure experiences about anything you could design a POI for. Destroying the core needn't even be the objective. You could have one where Polaris mercs are attacking a pirate hideout, and you have to chose a side. You could help some Talon zealots cleanse an old temple of Legacy infestation. You could help a mad scientist complete his life's work by bringing him parts, either from the derelict ruins beneath his lab or your own stockpile. As long as it's self-contained, it probably doesn't matter where the world seed sticks it. I can easily imaging POIs like this becoming the stuff of legend.


Some ideas I'll put down;

- Trading and player hub POIs with admin cores should be both totally unarmed and indestructible. Zero positive feedback should be given to a player who mistakenly attacks one. Guards defending such POIs should nominally give no XP and drop no loot.

-Quest-relevant POIs with admin cores should be configured in whatever way the quest designer wishes in service to their writing with as little restriction as possible.

-POIs with admin cores meant as general raiding content need to be adjusted. If nothing else, the core should be swapped for a standard faction core. Far preferable though would be for short mini-quests centered around these POIs to be created.

 

I absolutely support the use of Admin Cores for POI's that are Necessary for Missions, either SP or MP.

These structures should either be Unarmed, or they should be capable of being Disabled, either by destroying any turrets they may have, Generators or Fuel Tanks. If they are Essential, then perhaps they should have their own special kind of Wipe, that regenerates them when the player is a given distance away from them for a period of time, something akin to wipe playfield AdminStructure to regenerate any Admin Cored constructs on a given playfield.

 

The technology shamans of the Talon have developed an approach for attacking these sorts of bases that they recently shared with me over roast ripper dog in honey with spiky lemon dip- magic...

replaceblocks <POI id from di command> 'TurretEnemyLaser' 'TribalFirepit'

... I pointed out that this felt like cheating but they laughed and asked me if I ever wondered how the Zirax could take control of my base without actually entering it or why wrecked ships floated in pieces over the ground.

"I will never understand you humans!", laughed the chief, "Magic is all around you ... it's up to you to decide when to use it but don't punch boulders and complain it hurts your hand!"

(okay .. that replace doesn't work because of size mismatch .. that's what I get for writing a joke without play testing it! =)

 

bump. this thing is getting out of hand, basically all combat is becoming mini-quests to figure out how whatever contrived internet rando decided *I* had to play the game.

just make it opt out for players that aren't interested in story-mode. a single switch in the single player world generation menu, "toggle invulnerable poi" [y/n]

I repeat, want the admin core on your server or adventure? sure, go for it. leave a flag in the world setup for people that enjoy the good game build mechanics instead of this bad puzzle quest

 

You know how much I like and appreciate your creativity Ravien. But there are TOO MANY Admin cores, or at least there have tended to be over the years. Using an Admin Core should be a last -ditch action which is reserved for those POIs where it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for some reason related specifically to game play and user experience (POI makers philosophy or tastes or vanity are irrelevant).

Any trade station? Yes MUST HAVE an Admin Core.
Any POI that is specifically required to visit as part of a narrative? YES MUST HAVE an Admin Core.

I cannot think of any other instance where an Admin Core is absolutely required, even if the POI designer might, in their vanity, imagine that it would be neat to include it.

Please keep in mind: All the things WE create in this game which make it onto either a public accessible server, or the workshop, are in fact, NOT our property. Technically, even the stuff we make on our own hard drives is not our property. All content made for Empyrion is owned by Eleon. Obviously it behooves Eleon to be a cordial steward of their property and engage in an open-access policy; this has been a crucial part of their business model for years.

As such, all of us who create with the intent to provide content for other users are ultimately behooved to either (a) offer what we offer and not give a damn if it is popular or used or bastardized; (b) or if we care for it to be used, or popular and not bastardized, then to try to satisfy the apparent 'modal' desire within the target user community.

I personally stick to (a) because nothing I make amounts to more than a ship or a base or a small vehicle. It is easy. I really don't give a damn if anyone takes anything I make and turns it into a Ronald McDonald Clown car, or if they like it, or if it is actually used. But if I were gonna strive for (b), I'd be listening to complaints like the ones in this thread, because obviously, anyone at any time can take anything in this game and redo it to their liking and what is more they can repost it on the Workshop or host it on a server. People, in fact, do this constantly at this point.

 

Puzzle POIs. For example the hacking satellites around the sun in vanilla or all the custom ones I've added.
Puzzle POIs like the abandoned tomb.

If someone doesn't like puzzles then they don't have to do the puzzle POIs. But to remove any and all puzzle POIs from the game would be really sad to see.
Not every POI needs to be a "shoot out the core with your ship" experience.

 

You could just not do the puzzle POIs. Like 99% of the POIs in the game still use a normal NPC core. The admin ones are clearly marked on the map.

 

Ignoring them is often not an option (like invuln with turrets near the richest ore deposit?). I don't want puzzles, and sure as heck I don't want invulnerable poi shooting me down just because I passed nearby.

Besides, why are you all so annoying toward player that want to play the game the way they like? I'm not going around ordering people not to have an admin core. I'd love to have an option so admin core don't work in my personal, private, singleplayer world.

Why in the seven hell is that so bothering you creators? Sorry to hurt your precious poi, but step up the puzzles/quest or let me sidestep them.

If someone likes them, or if it's needed for some multiplayer function, or if someone want to play the questline, power to them! But there's literally zero reason as to why someone that don't want to should be forced into these puzzles, which often cannot be ignored.

Moreover given how annoying is having a invuln structure in the way is and how bad the quality of some puzzles are, having an option for players isn't that much of an absurdity.

Again, we aren't asking to remove invulnerable pois for everyone.

 

Destroy the turrets on the poi and move onto the ore then, doesn't mean you have actually go through and complete it in order to defang it

 

I'm not telling you how to play your game I'm giving you a valid option of going up to that ore safely without having to step foot inside the admin core poi. If there are turrets on an admin core poi that can't be destroyed then yes that's an issue.

 

You have the option of changing it yourself already. It's actually very very simple and easy to do. Would take you literally 2 minutes to do yourself with only a basic knowledge of how to copy and paste part of a text file and then admin cores wouldn't be any different than standard npc cores in all of your single player games.

Should it be an option? I disagree if only because then players would go right back to destroying important story POIs and getting themselves locked out of missions like they used to before admin cores were widely used for story POIs.

Nobody is telling you how to play, but it is a game and games have certain mechanics.

 

I am all for options in games. We have the option for using CPU and other things in the game. Why not options for admin core and if you want the ships you defeated to despawn or not?
Put the admin core ON as default and put a description on saying that if you are playing the story line then it's advised not to change this.
Again, I go back to Minecraft where you can turn sooo many things on or off, like firetick. Ok these are commands you type in but I'm sure people would be happy with more choices. The more choices you have playing a game the better it is.

 

You kind of missed the point of what Ravien was saying Spoon

 

I mean in Minecraft you can't break the end portal I don't think (please correct me if I'm wrong though).

 

There is a way of doing it. Same as you are not meant to be able to break bedrock, but there is a way.

 

The problem I can see with having an option to render "admin cores" like other destructible cores is that players will break quests, and since it will be the result of the developers allowing this players will inevitably ask for logical next step : make quests unbreakable. The only escape door for this would be to completely disable quests along with disabling admin cores, or else this will require re-work of all quests and POIs.

So for your "own private singleplayer game" there are lots of workarounds to get lots of ore, not get one-shotted by random POIs or enemies, have better tools/ weapons, etc. What you are asking for is similar to be able to go through walls in another game, and this can be done with cheat codes usually. Since it's your own private singleplayer game, who cares if you use codes ?

 

As already stated many times, admin cores are a must for campaign story POIs. They are also necessary to build certain types of POIs that are meant to work like "dungeons" even if they are not part of the campaign story. As long as the latter ones are used *sparingly* there's no problem. That is, if you seem to encounter admin POIs "too often" then the problem is not the POI using an admin core (because it has to use one to work as intended). Instead, the problem is then the spawn frequency of the "dungeon type" POIs.

A couple suggestions:

How about adding a config setting that controls the spawn frequencies of certain classes of POIs? I know that POIs are generated at start so changing this setting won't affect POIs already spawned but you certainly could set it at the start of the game.

As an alternative or an addition to the above, how about making the "indestructible until completed" an actual part of the game universe? That is, give it an explanation that makes sense in the logic of the fictional universe.

For example, how about adding a superior type of a shield generator? Let's call it "Structural Integrity Force Field Projector" or something like that. Doesn't have to be available for the player but it would be an *alternative* to using the admin core. What this device would then do is duplicate the admin core effect of "blocks indestructible unless specifically set to be destructible" *but* the integrity projector *itself* would always be destructible. The other difference is that there would be a visual effect from shooting protected blocks so that the player sees that there's a force field shield in place. Also, since the "admin core" and "shield protection" are now separate ways you could allow separate ways to deal with them. The admin core would protect against infinite amount of damage whereas the shield could be depleted with enough firepower, where "enough" would be "really lots and lots" so that the setup would work in the usual case. This would offer the player an alternative. The idea is that it's *easier* to deal with the POI by "dungeoneering" it but if the player really didn't want to he could resort to brute force by spending lots of resources.

Basically, it's the game design principle "don't forbid the player to go off the plot, just make it hard for him to do that". It always feels better for the player if he at least has the illusion that he's in control and can think that he has meaningful choices.

Yes, the above is an "admin core in all but name", almost. The important part is that "almost". If he could, even in principle, conquer it by other ways, I think that would actually be enough to make players feel fine with these types of POIs.

Then you could strictly restrict the true admin core to just the campaign story POIs and necessary trade stations.