I suppose the difference comes down to playstyles. I enjoy a long and slow game, and quite like the "fog of war" on a planet, since for me it makes planetary exploration more interesting. I was hoping to make space exploration in the game more interesting as well, (at least for me). At the moment there is space travel but not a lot of space exploration since we already know most of what we are going to find before we travel. I guess we probably both find the contrast between not knowing what is 1km away on a planet vs knowing quite a lot about about something several AU away a bit odd and hard to rationalise, but our preferences are opposite! Wasn't there a suggestion that the planetary fog of war could be made an option a few versions back?
Yes it was suggested but the closest we got was modifying the yaml file. A toggle would give both preferences regarding playstyle a choice without having to modify files. I am afraid that old suggestion is swept under the rug; for now.
I had spent a bit of time updating my sector file...... and got an exemption in mapping start.... Has anyone had any success with the new sector file on a custom scenario?
I saw a server advertised that used it. Go back and double check your sector file. Probably added an extra space somewhere there shouldn't be.
Here's what I think you should do: System Redesign Keep systems fairly small - they shouldn't have so many terrestrial planets. Our own solar system only has 4. Should be 3-5 max. Give planets more moons, the engine supports more than one. Default config should allow it. Add gas giants. It is OK if you can't land on them. Their purpose is to allow moons (or rings) to go around them. Redistribute minerals a bit. Starting system should have only small deposits of zascosium & erestrum, more distant systems have more. Warp Redesign Shrink AU distances between planets to be more realistic. Jupiter is only 5 AU from the Sun, Mercury & Venus are less than 1 AU. The cost to warp in-system can be 1 pentaxid per 10 AU. That means traveling between most planets is only 1 pentaxid, with a few that might be 2 or 3. The cost to warp to another system should be 10 pentaxid per light year. Systems might be anywhere from 3 to 20 light years between them so this is a lot of fuel compared to traveling within systems. Remove all limits on the number of pentaxid tanks you can have. How much fuel is loaded into a tank should be your choice, it should not be how range is limited. Put a maximum range on an SV's drive of something like 100 AU. An SV can now be used to travel anywhere within a system. Only CV's can travel between systems. Advantage of this is that now the difference between an SV and CV drive is now more clearly defined - SV can travel within system, CV required to travel to other systems. Right now it is sort of weird, just an arbitrary line drawn at 15AU, which in the real solar system would let you travel pretty far. I'm not against stuff like jump gates or wormholes or whatever, but since you can't walk around on a moving ship, any type of travel that is not instantaneous is not practical for gameplay. It seems like there are better places to invest your limited time than inventing new travel mechanisms, more important would be adding different content in the other systems so it feels like there's a benefit to going there.
There are solar systems with many more planets than our own and I think for gameplay reasons there should be more than 3-5 per solar system, assuming of course that there are a wider variety of planets to explore than we currently have. It really depends on how many planets total they want the default game to have of course.
FInally.... Fixed... or errr, uhh, updated. A bunch of typos from me manually reformating and condensing 1600+ lines from the old sector style to 900 lines or so.... An Event playfield was the biggest culprit in the end. Had to comment it out for the time being, and will trace it's issue.... hopefully....
If you want to see a server with Multi-Solar-System implemented look at this thread: https://empyriononline.com/threads/...rd-by-der-rentner-treff-de.91342/#post-376324 The Server is public and runns with the latest patch without problems!
My thoughts about future space travel: The warp drive works quite well as a short range jump system. To go from planet A to planet B, as everyone knows, all you need to do is to be anywhere in space above planet A and simply aim in the right direction, and the ship's drive itself engages the jump or opens a tunnel or starts the dematerialisation or whatever it does. To travel interstellar distances without using ridiculous volumes of pentaxid, I think we are going to need some external help, unless there is a completely new drive system coming - and this would with CPU/retrofitting of everything be a bit problematic, to put it mildly! A fairly common trope in SF is the idea of a jump point, or rather a pair of jump points - one simply enters one end, which is at a particlar location in solar system 1, and subject to playfield loading times, the ship emerges instantly at the other end in solar system 2. The jump points in each system would be towards the edge, in a playfield location more than SV jump distance from any other planet etc. A solar system might have several jump points to different solar systems, scattered around the edge. To find them one would need a jump detector, since the point is small and invisible without the detector (with a gate I guess one could see it from quite a distance, so I prefer a point). It could be that with a Mark 2 detector one can see additional jump points that take us to otherwise unreachable solar systems, and/or allow longer jumps that bypass adjacent solar systems. As to where the jump points come from? They could be natural phenomena, or perhaps they were created by a long gone alien race (or perhaps they are not actually gone but have retreated to certain solar systems and can be found there) or perhaps it was the Talon before they renounced their technology to take up a pastoral existence?? Or something.
I'm also of the opinion that there should be less terrestrial planets. And yes, there should be more moons 2-3 (like Titan). Gas giants should have at least 5 moons. It should be possible to get it close to the star(s) in the same way as for gas giants - no landing of course . The descriptions of the planets should be extended with additional information. The longer we stay on the planet / discover / complete the mission, the more information should appear in the description.
I long for habitable moons! I want to build a base on a moon with breathable atmo around a gas giant! Imagine the scenery!
As I see the current state of the Star-System: In the face of future, multiple, Star-Systems i would suggest to have the current Warp-Drives 're-designed' to Jump-Engines. The requirement for reaching a certain acceleration to be able to jump may be replaced by a new type of engine with the only purpose to fold space. For that purpose the "shift" of power-supply from Sub-light-engines towards those Jump-Engines might be done by simple sliders while the ships still move forward only by the mass-inertia. Traveling between Planets of those Star-Systems could go with much increased speeds while the actual travel between Stars are performed by those Jump-Engines only (Galactica / Star Wars and many others). The current look of what the Devs have designed for us is, hopefully. only a WIP as those transparent Planets are ugly. The partially reset but with the old handling with mouse left/right button is what makes "walking between the stars" a lot easier. Btw., I like the new background picture of the Star-Systems. The next-logical- step should be the rotation of planets around their parent stars and those of the moons around their planets. Might be on the Devs "To-Do"-List already.. .
FYI, I made a simple mod that simulates this.... And jeez, did we have to undo the new sector file format? I spent x hours reformatting my sector file..... only to have 11.1.1 squash it... I don't understand why though... as the new map system worked with old and new sector files....
I am specifically referring to reducing the average number of terrestrial planets, while adding gas giants and more moons. If they did what I suggest there would be more to land on in each system, not less. There might be solar systems with more planets than our own. However, Empyrion only exposes terrestrial planets you can land on. They default to 7 planets per system. (Maybe that's changed, I tend to override it.) None of those are gas giants or dwarf planets, they're all worlds you can land on. Furthermore, our own solar system has 7 moons that are larger than Pluto, 2 of which are bigger than Mercury. If you presumed that our solar system was sort of "average" (we don't know enough about smaller exoplanets to really make a definitive statement yet, but let's say it is) - then Earth's solar system would have at least 16 things you can land on. (More if you added some of the smaller than Pluto stuff.) And that is with only 4 terrestrial planets. Of course, some systems might be a bit larger. But I don't think any solar systems exist, or could exist, which have a huge number of planets. I know your scenario does now, but after they introduce separate systems, I presume you would break it up. I think that traveling to other systems will be more interesting if the systems are smaller, or at least have fewer populated planets. If every system has planets of every different type, the systems all feel the same.
Sooo.... any word on this? Are we scraping the whole new system? That would be a shame, as it did tidy up the galaxy a bit.
