That's odd... i've never seen more then one Drone Base on the same Planet at the same time... though to be fair the only Planets i've explored heavily is Akua, Akua Moon, & Aestus.
I'm sure it just hasen't been a priority yet but I'd like it if there was not only more and more diverse fauna in general but if the ones we have looked a little less like robots. They are for lack of a better word; clunky. Smoother animations would be neat. As for aliens, again, there could be more than just the one type and soem varriation in their numbers. Currently they spawn in in groups of 3. And always dirtrectly on top of eachoterh. its a little silly
You need to start thinking about more types of creatures like snakes, crabs, flying creatures, fish, and subterranean creatures.
Base Building and Solo Play Comments: I like to play solo, even in MMOs sometimes. Although I play solo, the reason I do play MMOs is to at least not feel so alone, even though I prefer that. I was getting a bit bored and needed higher end-game content in Empyrion, so built a base on Aitis. That was fun! I had trouble establishing a base, it was a challenge, as it almost seemed like I declared war on the planet by building the base (almost, but not quite. I had built near a drone base, and then received the typical drone attacks after you power up the base, but wasn't real war...that led to these comments). I liked having to be very sneaky to establish my first base on a very occupied planet. I would like to see these systems in the game expanded with what others have suggested: more faction type warfare. In this game I then needed more (less-rare) ore, but still wanted some challenge. So, I built a base on Omnicron. I am having fun, but would like more of faction warfare with the Xenu. Sure, there are random drone encounters, and this seems like the standard. Yet, I would like if I were to start attacking their installations that this war would step up. Seems there needs to be other planets with similar difficulty to Aitis, but with non-rare ores. Finite resources is also nice. There is, and could be more, of a RTS/Starcraft dynamic. In MMO mode, this could mean a group of players could go on a mass mining run and collect more ore than other factions, and then gain a victory from that. In single player, this could mean eventually the Xenu (for example) would run out of resources if the player kept up a successful combat campaign. NPC Colonists (friendly to player faction): Base building can get lonely and pointless. I built a base that is suited toward having one person survive. This doesn't seem realistic, or plausible, and effects my immersion. Nobody is making plans to, all by themselves, to go to Mars to live alone. Sure, there are "The Martian" scenarios, but that can get boring, especially with the lack of disco music (in game). I would like an option to open up my base to the public, and/or other factions, to visit or to become a member of the base/colony. Perhaps this could be a pacifist way to victory: in that, trading and opening up bases for (example) the Xenu to come and live could also reduce their faction's strength. They would have less being-power (akin to human resources?), that would then have less gathering power, and then the player could try and (peacefully) gather more resources, keep peace with possible warring factions through open bases or trading (giving good deals that then give more positive favor), and then win in by those methods. That is also a dynamic I would like to see. Since resources are finite, then just like playing single player in, for example, StarCraft, the enemy is also gathering resources as well. One of the winning strategies is to just gather more, build more, than your enemy. I'd love to see the Xenu mine for resources at the same ore spots: creating a need to defend or take them over. The NPC colonists could give base builders another fun dynamic to play with. A "Dungeon Keeper" aspect, if you will. Let's say instead of building a small farm with enough farm plots to just sustain myself, I build many, and have more food than one being needs. I could then open up my base, and eventually attract other colonists/aliens on the planet. Perhaps they land and try and settle. If they are given spare weapons and ammo, then perhaps they could also protect the base. That's another thing needed: if faction war were to occur, such as the player attacking bases, then the NPC enemies should also try and raid the base. This may also create the need for alien foods: foods the human player cannot eat, but can provide, in order to attract those types of colonists. The player could then just create human food, if human colonists are desired more. Would also like the NPCs to have just as finite of resources. If the player defends their bases, resource locations, attack the enemy installations: this reduces that NPC faction's resources, and eventually means the fight will get easier the more the player establishes themselves on the planet, at resource locations, etc. This was just some thoughts about base building, single player, and having a "Dungeon Keeper" aspect of the game.
I believe drones or any other creatures are generally very weak at the moment. Drones for example, they should be able to withstand against a bullet. But I found it weird to see them wobble so strongly when they are hit by a pistol bullet. Well, this goes for every creatures. Everything stuns them even pistol shots, making most creatures very easy to kill despite how tough they look. Well, I believe many creatures will have different behaviors and attack patterns in the future update. As in current build, most creatures except drones only attack like berserkers, even ranged creatures only shoot in x axis or else they will walk in like all melee creatures. Maybe they should come in waves from time to time and give challenge to defend your base. I noticed they don't come any more when nearby base is completely destroyed. So after that it makes the turrets meaningless. Well, my point is, creatures should have dynamic behaviors and be much more tougher so creatures can withstand different attacks depending how tough their armor is.
I think it would be beneficial to have an option in the UI to disable/enable endless waves of drone attacks, this way the newer players would not feel overwhelmed while learning the game and the experienced players could still have it tougher. Possibly a menu just for the AI settings where we could alter some aspects of tier difficulty and AI behavior.
It'd also be fun to have that in Creative Mode to summon 'Test Dummies' for testing Combat Power on our Creations.
PLEASE give the SERVER ADMINS additional commands to be able to keep our servers interesting for our players. Most of my ideas are to provide the players additional challenges, as I want the aliens to fight back in some manner. Some examples; POIs - the ability to regenerate a specific POI (similar to the 'destroy' command, but 'regen' instead) - the ability to regenerate an entire playfield's POIs in one hit (saves us wiping playfields and starting again losing player's structures in the process) - the ability to set a timer variable, for POIs to gradually 'regen' themselves when they haven't been 'touched' for (x) period. Drones - the ability to create (x) number of drones, that will spawn and randomly roam the playfield - the ability to create (x) number of drones to specifically protect a resource node or POI - the ability to set a timer variable, for drones to gradually respawn and roam/protect POIs/resource nodes automatically Base/Resource Creation - the ability to create additional resource nodes (yes I understand the purpose, and how meteorites work) - the ability to spawn blueprints, inclusive of items located within items (i.e. ammo in ammo boxes, power cells in fuel storage etc) (so we can create our own defensive structures quickly and easily for player challenges) Planet Invasion - how good would it be, for the aliens on a planet to resist the player's visit/occupation of their planet? A playfield set to 'defensive' mode could allow the player's visit/occupation as such, but as soon as the player starts to be offensive, so will the aliens. - as above, however if the playfield was set to 'offensive', as soon as the player breaks into the atmosphere the 'patrol drones' actively seek the player out planetwide. The drones set to defend POIs/resource nodes would continue to do that, however perhaps have a larger attack radius - as above, but instead of just 'defensive' or 'offensive', a variable from 1-10 which sets this type of difficulty, from 1 being defensive, to 10 being offensive Additional Alien Faction - the ability for us, as admins, to create an alien faction of our own naming. We would then create a 'starter base' on a playfield, and this alien race will gradually build up resources by way of an inbuilt timer (admin variably controlled, from slow to fast, in increments) and establish additional POI bases and drones accordingly. They would be aggressive, and therefore actively defend their playfield in an offensive manner. i.e. AlienRaceName: BadAliens # Alien race name AlienResourceSpeed: 6 # How fast the aliens 'gather' resources (1 = slow, 10 = fast) AlienExpansion: 8 # Speed of Alien expansion for POIs/drones (1 = slow, 10 = fast) AlienPosture: 9 # Alien's military posture (1 = defensive, only attack if provoked, 10 = extremely offensive - attack upon planetary entry) AlienBaseLimit: 25 # Max number of alien created POI structures AlienDroneLimit: 50 # Max number of alien created drones AlienPursuitDrones: 15 # Max number of specific high speed pursuit drones I run quite a popular Australian Server, and would really like to have these types of commands and features to keep the game interesting for our players. At the moment, its too easy for everyone to have loads of resources, and things can become boring fairly quickly. People love the idea of teaming up to take out alien factions, so this would be an awesome way to keep the interest level. Andy.
Will be long but will cover much. Opinions obviously very subjective: First, spawning. It seems a bit iffy. Despite setting spawning of native creatures to low, it seems to gain momentum. In the first one, two days there's almost no fauna except of occasional neutral animal or a few, but days later there appears to be more and more creatures. A few in-game weeks planet-side (what can I say, I am more interested in the survival and planetary exploration than spaceflight right now) and when running or flying a hoverjet I keep on stumbling upon some creature every 10, 20 seconds and several of them at times. The rate of spawn should not increase over time. Some cap is needed for spawning taking into consideration how many creatures - no matter if engaged or not - were spawned succesfully before. Proliferation of life may work fine when one creates game with world full of it or visits a planet with such (could be a stat affected both by planet and game setting, I'd like that) but it's far too much on above mentioned settings. On top of that I've noticed that spawning has certain issues at times, spawning a creature not that far from me when I am traveling the wilderness - too close, making it pop into existence right in my field of view. At times, that creature disappears, other times it just aggroes me like if it'd be always there and goes for the kill. I didn't yet notice animals spawning in my base or near my spawn though, which is good and an issue a few other somewhat similar games had to deal with. Ratio of aggresive creatures to neutral on Omicron is quite surprising. The land is full of spiders and scorpions, then there are some desert worms but the rest of the creatures happen to show up far less often. May be intentional but reporting just in case. As for the stats of NPCs, they're balanced enough to be playable but hardly fun: Melee creatures deal considerable, even high damage but I suspect once we'll be able to create armors, it will be just right - though I'd still have average planet fauna damage the player a bit less. On worlds like Omicron, it'd be far better than instead of straight HP damage, there'd be additional risk of suit's integrity to be breached, making oxygen deplete slightly faster and require some basic patching (basically, new status effect). Ranged creatures, on the other hand deal too little damage in comparison with melee ones, even if they are very accurate. Frankly, I'd rather have a burst from alien assault rifle be more of of a threat than a mandible of some oversized spider, even if the latter could also hazard some venom. At the same time, it'd be nice if enemies would shoot more often when they have clear line of sight but also be much more prone to missing a bit when the player is moving and not charging straight at them. Toughness of enemies is hit-and-miss as well, IMHO. I understand that starting projectile firearm is some sort of improvised peashooter, but even on regular difficulty, it seems that every creature is somewhat bulletproof, requiring over a whole magazine of well-placed body shots to take down. I wouldn't mind obviously-armored, technological enemies like turrets and drones to be slightly more resistant to handgun fire, but all kinds of regular, "biological" enemies, from common animals to nightmares make pulse rifles, shotguns and so on seem underpowered. Hunting for meat with single, accurate rifle shots? Forget it, doesn't work at all, even with the second tier of a sniper rifle used against the smallest animals available - and that's a shame. And let's not forget about heavy weapons which also suffer from the same issue. Minigun turrets will kill stuff sooner or later, but often it is later, with such seemingly heavy weapon requiring dozens upon dozens of bullets fired upon long period of time to bring down even a regular, squishy animal. Maybe it'd be worth consideration to up the damage of all weapons, but also make certain enemies get percentage resistance to different damage types so light caliber, low-penetration shots from handguns or miniguns will be quite deadly to average animal, yet needing quite some firing to take down armor and installations, while high caliber ordinance will need as long to take both soft and hard targets, however long it'd be (and who knows, maybe there'd even be targets which are less resistant against small caliber or energy weapons more than bigger bullets at all?). AI needs some tweaking. Enemies blocked by bodies of their comrades don't fire their weapons even when I am very close and clearly in sight - I can shoot them back fine. Melee enemies are even worse, just standing there even if it's obvious they are not able to hurt me, yet I can hurt them. Maybe having them move out of player's sight to behind the wall and crouch there when player cannot be reached nor shot at could be an improvement - sure, it wouldn't help too much against experienced player, but at least it'd show that enemies aren't mindless puppets only charging to their death. At least when it comes to sentients - I guess wild animals very well should consider charge a valid tactic, at least till sustaining enough damage to make them want to flee (which would be also a nice feature for some not hyper-aggresive NPCs). AI of drones is also lacking. Especially the minigun ones which tend to keep on closing to player enough that said player is almost directly below them and thus outside of cone of effective range of fire - drones on-board weapons cannot simply target anymore and the whole thing keeps going back and forth in the sky, while one can just take potshots at it. Enemy detection of those things is also wonky, one time they can go straight at me from around 300m, other time they just fly around, nearly passing me by. Currently the difficulty of on-foot fighting in installations is almost solely dependant on either heavy turrets being inside or hordes of enemies coming from teleports. The former while sometimes quite punishing may be okay, the latter should be toned down. Maybe make a few less teleporters and place them only in a few key positions, but also spawn some enemies inside not tied to teleports? Especially in case of stuff like abandoned factory and its monsters, it looks kinda weird they spawn in through teleporters, despite being what seems like just monsters infesting the place. Beside that, native planet fauna needs more variety, including non-aggresive or even cowardly species. Possibly stationary or even slow, completely ignoring the player ones dealing area damage (for example, a plant that won't ever do anything to the player on its own, but which produces poisonous vapour in the area that will damage players without helmets) instead of everything being a melee charger. Some degree of customization to the current "sentient" enemies would be good (alien infantry snipers that don't patrol around but sit in the installations in lieu of turrets) - I'd rather have current models and animations polished and varied than new ones added. Lastly, that one is of far less priority but still - later in development, consider adding animations for each enemy being knocked back/down and dying from shots from different directions (and if you're ambitious enough - animations also differing depending on body parts targeted). It really detracts from the feeling of the weapon having any power when you fire a whole magazine on full auto into the enemy, for it to kinda just stop there and then roll over like if the bullets would have no impact, just kinda make it sleepy. In connection to that: I am quite surprised by this statement and would like more info. In all my playthroughs, no matter the planet or the enemy, big or small, organic or artificial, shot with basic pistol, tier 2 shotgun or a pulse rifle shows almost no reaction. Spiders keep going at me despite suffering steady stream of lead, drones maintain their course. Some creature will perform a small jerk at times, mostly noticeable when attacking them slowly with single-fire weapon but that only rarely breaks their stride. Till they die, at which point, like I've said, they kinda playfully flip over (unless they glitch in which case they will be shaking mid-falling animation). Perhaps it was something that was changed since Jaja made their post in May - in which case, it went a bit too far in the opposite direction and now every little thing is a juggernaut of unbroken determination when coming at me. Either way, the effects of weapon fire, together with its effectiveness, need to be more noticeable. That's all. Yes, it was long but I hope it'll help.
Servers are starting to slow out of bordom. Need Admin tools to rebuild/build new POI bases where the guns work properly. Need to be able to create more planets on the fly and update it with a simple restart. Need updates that wont require wipes, you guys created a awesome game and I love the new stuff you put in.
I've had the respawn timer on Fast for my last three play-throughs, and have had to restart each time due to being swarmed. It seems that they respawn before the last spawn has been killed, so enemies just build up and up until it's essentially impossible to kill them (8 enemies swarming you, each one needing 50+ assault rifle ammo to take down) I had assumed the timer started when an enemy died, which I suppose is my mistake. I think a lot of people might just assume this though, because many games work that way. I also think that some variety in enemy size would be cool, with smaller monsters like plant monsters being fast moving (very hard but not impossible to run away from), inflict low damage and lower hp, but bigger monsters (alien gorilla/tyrannosaur/tentacle monster) having some serious hp and being more worthwhile to run from in early game. IMO the way things are right now you really are better off running from everything. There isn't much point killing enemies apart from drones. Each kill costs you Iron and Magnesium, with 1-3 pieces of meat as the payoff. Meat has virtually no value if you already have a few edible plants growing at home.
Ok so in the hope that that the developers are still checking these (there is some great stuff here) i thought i would post too. What do you think about the current NPC (creatures and drones)? - Should there be more / less? More or to put it another way I think that the drone attacks need to be tweaked up once you reach another level in your building/level, For instance when you place an advanced constructor or a small ship block. I also feel that once you have started hitting the Alien buildings that landing craft/alien soilders need to start attacking you. Single player - my 2 auto cannons with 500 rounds have lasted me the last 10hrs gameplay, This is more of an issues with the multiplayer 3 base auto cannons havn't fired a shot in the last 30hrs gameplay. - More / less powerful? Hmm powerful enough for most but more nasty stuff. I loved the addition of parasite but poisoning etc. could be stepped up. - NPCs on each planet? Would like them to have slightly more interaction, Talon's attack when you attack T's but would be excellent if you could trade with them. - General importance of NPCs? Important and could add and extra level when the game progresses i.e. Missions, quests etc. - Other feedback? Somthing more for killing Woodmen would be nice. Thanks for reading.
There is a lack of animation for all NPC,especially for Talon villager.They move like ghoust trough other NPC and have no behavior to surrounded Hostile NPC.The Animal packs are also like ghoust and have no behavior each other.The predators must hunt the herbivorous and must have more and more animations.Animation for climbing slope is more important,also to have limited angle of climbing.Will be fun if the humanoid NPC patrol around the Station ,not only to stay inside like animals in pen.
I'd have to say the biggest thing ruining my enjoyment of the game is the mis-classification of NPC's. If they walk around on the ground and can't hurt my SV or BASE then they are NOT 'Aliens' they are Predator/Prey. Or create a separate 'Drone' category that Base turrets can use. Here's an example: I'm on Masperion and I was going to rebuild an alien outpost as my own - I gave up, packed up and left. Why? Because the turrets were determined to shoot the 'Alien' bugs that are EVERYWHERE! So when a drone finally pulls up and start blasting the Base to pieces, the Base does nothing because it's out of ammo! Now Masperion has no other resources accept Promethium and Zascosium (really? Then how did the aliens ever achieve space flight? Shouldn't all their ships be biological and chitin-armor based?) So imagine how hard it is to keep ammo supplied in turrets that are determined to waste it! General Comments: I tend to play games on a custom Hard level. Enemies hard, and resources at Standard/Medium . Mining is enough of a grind and difficult enough since it seems that at least one of the ores you need will be always be clustered and hidden on the far part of the planet (or I just have really bad luck) - the motorcycle does help some with that. The little brown spiders on Aqua are nasty! (Good) They easily hide in the grass and are hard to shoot. Spiders on Omicron are easy to hit on the flat desert, even at night, and are a great source of meat. I'm tempted to say you should switch them - the small fast ones belong on Omicron and the big ones on Aqua! It's very hard to hunt on Aqua because most animals run from you - so you can't get head shots! All enemies still can't lock onto you if you're above them. Drones are trivial to take out if you build an SV with enough vertical hover capabilities. All drones get spun around so much from rocket damage, even the big ones, that they never get a chance to return fire. This is too easy. Enemies are limited to coming straight at you - even ranged enemies like Croghum - they run up to the edge of an elevator shaft, or get stuck on a wall, and you can head-shot them and they will just stand there. Turrets seem to track even better now - its much harder to take down outposts, but at least the hardened steel seems balanced to the task. On an outpost with lots of turrets I'll need one or more repair sessions to my ship - which feels balanced. I mostly play the game with the Adv Pistol. With head-shots it can do lots of damage. I found I largely ignore the assault and pulse rifles because their magazines are too small to kill an enemy without one or more reloads. The T2 Sniper rifle can be nice, but it can be hard to get feedback on whether your shots are hitting or not at long ranges. The laser pistol and rifle have the longest ranges but 'bullets' move far too slow to be useful. When I need up-close fire power I use the chaingun. I've never used the shotguns as their magazines seem too small, but I'll have to try them out and see. Over-all, the game starts out difficult to survive. Sometimes I have to run around all over the planet mining while hiding because I have no ammo. But once I have a Base setup with one turret on top, and I build a simple SV to help with resource gathering, the difficulty gets way easier. After the standard two drone attacks on my base, they seem to give up. And once I've cleaned the drones out of an area they don't seem to come back. Would really like to see drones scale up over time as they "resist" your presence on the planet. Maybe as resource sites get mined out they become bigger and more dangerous around the remaining sites? There is really no 'role' or use for building a hover craft. Not in single player anyway. Possible solutions: Planets where air travel is very dangerous. Perhaps they are always fogged in like the swamps in Masperion? (Makes the game too dismal.) Or flying alien 'stations' shoot down aircraft and make air travel nigh impossible? Even that doesn't seem enough. Maybe these planets are not only covered in drones (as they are now) but some have also been "infested" by the aliens. What if some planets had fist-sized bugs that could come up through the terrain and swarm over you when mining? Certain resource points could be marked as "infested". Or maybe the player needs to carry a portable scanner? Ooooh, you could even add a flamethrower weapon just for these small enemy types! Now maybe hovercraft come standard with a "sonic disruptor" that will keep the bugs at bay and allow the mining of these sites. These small enemies could spawn in waves, so that a persistent adventurer could mine a little before fending off the next wave. You could also add an early warning "swarm-detector" device that would work like a pole-lamp, but chirps and flashes just before a wave attack. These small enemies leave no bodies or loot when they die and they endlessly respawn with attack waves coming faster the deeper you mine. Now you have a real need for a hovercraft! After considering the 'no ammo' problem that often happens in the early game, perhaps you should introduce a solar-powered or biofuel-based pistol to the game. Perhaps the survival constructor could build a fast-charger that could be remotely deployed if it's solar-based. This pistol could be reloadable, but would still only replenish its magazine over a 2 min time span. Equipping a pair of these pistols could get the player through most single NPC encounters. Maybe you require the player to carry Rock Dust and Biofuel in their inventory in order for the weapon to rebuild its ammo.
Yes you can get Headshots on them... walk right up to them & then shoot them right in the Face with a Shotgun. Also, try hunting Raptors at night where they then attack you aggressively & unprovoked instead of run like chickens. Also, you're wrong about HVs having no use... they are very Fuel Efficient little dudes, they can hold Base Loot for you, or Ore from Mining so ya can Mine multiple Nodes while eating Food stocked up in its Fridge, they can defend itself from Turrets, & they don't even have to be big or complicated to be of use. (Though later in the game Artillery Turrets can be fun to play with, including vs Large Drones. ) Also, did ya know that ya can kill stuff with the Chainsaw too? (& HV Harvesters!)
