please note this reality about the testing phase https://empyriononline.com/threads/a10-6-experimental-feedback-cpu.90920/page-9#post-371656
Das würde bedeuten,das ich ALLE meine Schiffe /Basen Umbauen müsste und es würde dann trotzdem nicht funktionieren.Das ist wieder eine unüberlegte und überflüssige Änderung,wie das mit dem Gewichtssystem.Mein "Kleines"CV hat (Nach angaben 59 Millionen CPU,wie soll ich das auf 1,6 Millionen runter Drücken??? Wenn ich nicht mehr frei Bauen kann,dann kann ich auch wieder Space Engineers Spielen.So langsam geht das Spiel zu Grunde. That would mean that I would have to rebuild ALL my ships / bases and it would not work anyway. This is again an ill-considered and unnecessary change, as with the weight system. My "small" CV has (according to 59 million CPU, like should I press that down to 1.6 million ??? If I can not build free, then I can also play again Space Engineers.So slowly the game goes to the bottom.
Agreed. I was really expecting to see the point where you can't brute force your way out of the CPU penalty a lot sooner. Maybe 25% instead of 50% for minimum efficiency? So you would need 4x as many thrusters to achieve the same effect as you would without CPU enabled, assuming a very large ship that is far over the limit. So a giant CV will still be able to fly around like a fighter jet, but it will have to be much larger and more expensive to achieve, not to mention chugging fuel like crazy. I know I'm going to get flamed for saying it, but I want a top speed penalty for being over CPU. Maybe not as harsh as the efficiency curve, but something. So a small interceptor type SV would actually fly faster than a hulking CV or a tanky heavy fighter. If it does this already I didn't notice, the details screen always showed 200 m/s no matter how bad my efficiency got.
Been thinking about the general idea of, "How to encourage specialization?" Seems to me that most of the 'real world' drivers are non starters at this point. Fuel is too abundant & the potential fun bits of building up a production system are already either way too fast or would take significant changes to established game play. Eleon has already said they don't want to become a physics sim, so a complete redo of thruster tech; possibly going the Space Engineers route of multiple types of thruster tech is out. Unity can't handle moving SI so trying to leverage Stress due to Force isn't gonna happen. Rolling back thruster fuel usage to rw efficiencies might have a slight effect, but again fuel abundance would reduce it's impact. There's a couple things that could possibly act as minor drivers, but may not be acceptable to the playerbase; 1) hard cap rotation to say 6 gees. based on dimensions, so larger = slower turning. 2) completely redo generators. make them much larger & heavier. would break most existing ships. There's only one thing I can come up with that doesn't simply 'not fit EGS', and doesn't result in breaking existing ships or punish players. Yet still encourage specialization. Any-To-Any Docking Which may not even be possible due to Unity limitations. And I'd guess the 'encouragement' is likely more in SP & Co-Op than in PvP. Things like a HV Miner teamed with an HV Hauler where the Hauler packs the Miner around on it's back to the mine site. The encouragement comes from being able to make a nice efficient Miner early on, and not really need much storage, nor fitting more than maybe a single turret for starting off, but being able to remove it once you have a Hauler that can defend the mine site from Troops & Drones. Similar for POI raiding. Sure you'd need to upgrade your Fighter as you unlocked new weapons and gather mats for better armor, but again there wouldn't be the pressure to try to make it haul a couple hundred tons as well. The HV, SV or CV Support/Hauler would do that and those could have the Med/Constructors/Storage. Dedicated CV fixed Drill Miners. No need for Warp/Med/Constructors or tons of storage or a bunch of turrets, the CV motherships' got all that. If the Any-To-Any Docking really isn't doable then adding in Capital Hover Vessels could cover at least the planet side stuff. CHV equivalent to HV starter ground repulsor engines could allow cheap, early game but 'heavy' hauler capabilities, compared to HVs, and could act as motherships for dedicated HV Miners as well as FOB for SV Fighters going out to take POIs. That's the best I've been able to come up with. What do you guys think?
Unity does not have any such limitations. It is a limitation of Empyrion's engine design. The entire concept of voxels, or block-based vehicles, is not part of Unity but is either something Eleon coded themselves or licensed from somewhere (e.g. bought something like Voxeland for the terrain). Ships are just turned into meshes underneath. You can dynamically add/remove blocks and the mesh is updated rather quickly. So why not simply merge two meshes together when docked so they behave like one single unit (rigidbody for the physics engine) and then disassociate them when you take off? That would allow any type of docking in unlimited combinations.
Off the top of my head, I'd say you immediately run into the issue of a "small block" vessel docking to a "large block" parent (BA/CV) and having the small blocks suddenly balloon as they are upscaled during the merging process (or your large object shrink). Not to mention, when you dock, the blocks aren't perfectly aligned to the parent's grid (unlike when you're placing blocks) so the merging process would result in all manner of wacky errors if not done correctly. I had, at one point, advocated for CVs / BAs to switch over to a "small grid" and simply have large blocks count as 4x4x4 / etc shapes to retain their existing dimensions. But with that, you'd also end up with either the "large" grid being reduced to 1/4th its current size, or the "small grid" being expanded 4x, which for performance reasons is probably not ideal. Either way, that's a quandry Eleon would need to solve in order to "merge" small & large objects together. I think that's a big reason why they currently treat it as a Parent->Child relationship... which has its own drawbacks, but is the simpler method for now. Not trying to say it's an impossible thought, but I can see so many ways for Eleon to botch it up.
lots of interesting ideas in your post. The problem I am still having is I have no idea what the development team means when they use the word specialization. Until they clearly articulate what they mean how do we even discuss it nevermind build it
I agree with you. The game does not need more mechanics that slow down the progress of the players, but a more challenging AI that behaves like human players.
What on Earth is happening to Empyrion? I started playing this game with version 6. That was after I got fed up with Space Engineers. Space Engineers had/has the potential to be the perfect space game. It has perfect vehicle physics (and avatar in space physics). Not only can you walk in a moving ship, but ship damage looks real. Blocks don't disappear, they break, and debris floats away in correct free floating directions. Destroyed devices continue to burn. AI vehicles will perform maneuvers against you. They will hunt you, follow you, and surround you. I have engaged an AI vessel in space and had it chase me into planetary orbit where I had no choice but to finish it off in atmospheric aerial combat. And let's not forget the guided kinetic weapons that can hit a target 30 km away and even further (good fun). And the customizable gravity fields. And the OPTIMIZATION I.E. No lag on decent PCs (with reasonable builds). Etc, etc, etc... But where did Space Engineers fail? It had no single player content. Space Engineers = Great for Multi Player/Garbage for Single Player. Space Engineers has no NPCs, a crappy planet system, and 0 story line. Some Single Player value can be obtained via mods, but you lose the immersion when you have to manually configure mods to create single player content, and still no NPCs. You fight awesome AI vessels in serious challenges, but they have no NPCs occupying them, so BORING. And let’s not even mention the totally unnecessary Conveyor system. An absolute waste of time. These building games already take up too much time as it is. What kind of ***** would want to double that wasted time by adding a Conveyor system layer on top of the already overly complex (mostly by necessity) and tedious building structure? And on top of that, every other update breaks the Conveyor system, so that you can't even test your builds and you are forced to play in Creative Mode. Enter Empyrion Galactic Survival. Empyrion has (had?) no stupid Conveyor system. Empyrion has NPCs that you can gunfight with. Empyrion has a very good planet system with customizable solar systems. Empyrion has a general story line involving some warmongering Zirax who ambush a human fleet. Empyrion has/had a decent building system. I built some very nice vessels and I was expecting to have some epic ship to ship battles but then I discovered that in Empyrion the vessel physics are garbage. Blocks don't properly deform, and when they are destroyed they don't break into debris, they just disappear. AI vessels don't even engage you. They just follow a linear path and you have to follow them. And once you disable their thrusters they auto delete before you can even loot them. There are no NPCs on AI vessels, and you can't even Core them and make them yours. WHY? All things considered, Empyrion still offers a superior gameplay experience over Space Engineers. But now Empyrion is introducing a totally pointless CPU system, and on top of that they are planning an equally pointless Conveyor system. It’s like they are focusing on implementing the worst elements of Space Engineers while ignoring the best, and even inventing new train wrecks. What is it with this cultish obsession with scarcity? Empyrion already has the infrastructure that allows players to build amazing vessels and structures, so the Developers decide to needlessly restrict this via this CPU train wreck? They openly admit that it will have NO impact on performance, so why restrict the size of builds? Newsflash! The blocks are digital. They cost nothing. Detailed, fully functional builds are not using real resources. Awesome builds have no impact on the environment. It’s as if Ocasio Cortez is running the Developer Team. This must be part of the Empyrion (or Zirax) "Green New Deal." Yes the Zirax have subverted the Developer team and they are going to destroy Empyrion from within, just like the Commucrats are doing to America and the Planet. The term "Empyrion Galactic Survival" does not inherently imply scarcity. It does not imply that we will have to search planet after planet for measly deposits of 1000ish Promethium Ore which can only produce 400ish Fusion Cells which will only power a large Capital Vessel for a couple days on a planet. Using planet Earth as an example, we can see that one planet provides more than enough energy sources to sustain 7.7 billion people. According to aviation analysts Ascend, the total number of aircraft currently in service is approximately 23,600. 4.1 billion people flew in 2017. So WHY IS IT that in Empyrion you have to go to multiple planets and mine ALL the Promethium just to power a large CV for a week? WHY WHY WHY? When I see the term "Empyrion Galactic Survival" I think something more along the lines of Star Wars. I think, "Wow, you have to survive against a solar system filled with fleets of hostile Zirax dreadnaughts and fighters, planets filled with virtually impenetrable Zirax fortresses and Zirax HV Armies. I think I will need some state of the art ship designs in order to survive in a solar system dominated by superior Zirax state of the art forces." Then I play the game and it turns out that if you play the game honestly than you will spend most of your time mining entire planets of their Prometheum just so you can power your vessels for a week. AI vessels are a joke. AI bases are decent. Drones are decent. There are no AI HVs to fight. And now the Zirax can hack your core remotely during a base attack. WHAT? They should need to make physical contact with the core in order to hack it, which they would have a good chance of doing if they had a fleet of assault HVs that their avatars would occupy and jump out of once the base is breached and the core located. Can you not see how addictive that kind of gameplay would be? ESPECIALLY WITH TALKING ZIRAX SPEWING THREATS AND CURSES AT THE PLAYER! This is what players want from the block building space genre video game. They want to be able to start the game, harvest their resources, build their ships, and test them against the fully functional enemy AI in a fully functional physics environment. When the enemy AI defeats them, they will have to improve their ship design and try again. Once they defeat the AI vessels, the game should offer enhanced enemy AI NPCs and vessels to engage, up to a top tier threshold. Then the AI can start throwing larger and larger enemy forces at the player. You can currently get a sense of what this would be like by playing the Project Eden Scenario in Empyrion 10.5 and using the Item Menu to stock your state of the art vessels with intelligent immersion maintaining moderation (minimal time wasted harvesting resources and 0 time wasted spawning a great CV, SV, and HV because you don't have enough time to explore every planet in Project Eden believe me). That experience will be virtually 100% gamer euphoria, WHICH IS WHAT VANILLA EMPYRION COULD BE. Ideally this would unfold over a good storyline backdrop delivered and experienced via voice driven HUMAN NPCs. Empyrion is SO CLOSE to this (closer than Space Engineers). But now the Developers are making terrible choices. Here is the technical description of what the Empyrion developers need to do in order to achieve the full potential of the game. 1. PHYSICS! For GOD's sakes! Why can't Empyrion AT LEAST be on par with the physics capabilities of Space Engineers? If all you are capable of is reproducing the exact same physics as Space Engineers, Mission Accomplished! Add NPCs to enemy vessels, and you are SUPERIOR to Space Engineers. You blow Space Engineers out the Airlock. 2. Optimization. STOP THE LAG STOP THE LAG STOP THE LAG! TOP END PCS LAG WHILE FLYING A CRAPPY TIER I SV. GUNSHOTS LAG! THE GREATEST SOURCE OF LAG IS SHOTS. TURRETS, MOUNTED GUNS, LASER RIFLES ETC = LAG LAG LAG! This means that EVERY TIME a weapon fires, EVERY TIME, LAG LAG LAG! Also graphics cards are rendering the entire field. Come on! This is 2019. WHAT THE HELL! A graphics card should only be rendering WHAT IS VISIBLE. You can do it by block. Only visible blocks are rendered. If GTA can render Los Santos in 1920 without lag on crappy PCs, Top End PCs should NOT lag while flying a Tier I SV or firing a shot. Optimizing Empyrion within a decent threshold is NOT THAT HARD! 3. Storyline Missions delivered by Voice Driven Human NPCs. I would suggest looking at X-Rebirth for a perfect example of how to implement this into Empyrion. The only reason X-Rebirth isn't better than Empyrion AND Space Engineers is because X-Rebirth has no planets, and it actually is better than Space Engineers, now that I think about it, but not quite better than Empyrion. But VERY close. The player could rescue a human NPC that voice explains the current main mission storyline (Human fleet ambushed by Zirax when coming out of hyperspace) and then offers the first mission to the player (find the CV ruin or whatever it is). Alien, Talon, Polaris, and Zirax NPCs could also give missions and have scripted dialogs with the player during avatar to avatar or vessel to vessel or vessel to structure and vice versa combat. Simply put, a Skyrim NPC interaction element could be added to the game, making it irresistibly addictive. These last three points are all I really wanted to say. If the developers of Empyrion accomplish these three things, Empyrion will forge a new genre of gaming, inspire many copycats, become a classic, and become immortal. If they only accomplish the first two things, Empyrion will become a GREAT game but never a classic and eventually someone else will create what Empyrion could have been and surpass them. If they continue down the Ocasio Cortez artificial scarcity Hammer & Sickle road they will lose most of their players. Space Engineers will pick up most of them, despite the game being virtually dead for single players. Eventually someone else will pick up where these two companies left off and complete the obvious and reap the glory and riches. The Space Engineers developers already declared that they have no intention of making Space Engineers a full game. Will the Empyrion Developers do the same?
By specialization they mean making a vessel for hauling Cargo, hence heavy storage, or for Combat, hence minimal storage but heavy armor and guns, or for Exploring, hence fast and light with minimal storage but lots of thrusters.
Yes, and almost as importantly, it needs OPTIMIZATION. Top end PCs should not be lagging. That means most players will not bother.
No that is what most of us think of as specialization no definition has come from the developers. If it turns out that is what they mean who exactly is going to pilot all those ships? In the base SP game, it is you alone landing on an alien planet in your underwear. There is no we to pilot all those ships. If a lone human stranded anywhere tried to be a specialist rather than a jack of all trades they would die.
I would certainly appreciate it if a moderator could provide some clear examples of what Eleons definition of "specialization" is. Not trying to be a pain or insulting, but we're pretty International here and English isn't the most precise language, sooo?
Could really use CV>CV docking or some kind of fleet warp mechanic. Even allowing SVs to have a T2 warp drive that gives them max range could help a little, if the other suggestions require significant dev time.
That right there _could_ be a great example of 'specialization'. Have the Warp Engine T2 cost so much CPU that you could only use it in a very basic, but fast in order to run away from fights, Long Range Warp Shuttle.
But their is a "we" in multiplayer. So this indicates that Eleon is moving in a multiplayer direction. However, X-Rebirth does offer a solution to that problem. In X-Rebirth you build a fleet of vessels that you can enter physically and command as a group. One of the negatives in X-Rebirth is that you cannot pilot the vessel you are riding in, other than this one "SV," but you can command them as a fleet, telling them where to go and who to attack. The CVs in X-Rebirth also have 300 drones that you can deploy into a battle. Now imagine building a fleet of CVs and SVs and being able to assign your vessels to a Squadron Command Console and then controlling them from your Flagship CV??? Sending Squadrons of Proxima Skiptracers into battle against a fleet of Zirax CVs and SVs? With proper optimization, all types of scaling are virtually unlimited. You can have massive vessels and LOTS of them with no lag, so long as your graphics load is properly optimized for a reasonably powerful PC.
That's a lot harder when you build ships from scratch though. In a game with pre-built ship models, it might be possible, but it's a lot harder in a game like Empyrion. Dual Universe and Starbase both look like they are trying to do this though, but I don't know if Unity is up to that task.
They already have in Youtube Q&A sessions with Spanj, XCaliber, and probably others, and its as I explained earlier. Specialization means building vessels for specific tasks such as Exploring, Mining, Hauling, and Combat. Here are the links to the Q&A Sessions. Developer Q&A with Spanj | Alpha 10.6, CPU system, Flight Controller and other upcoming changes. Developer Q&A with XCaliber | Empyrion Galactic Survival | Discuss A10.6 with Eleon Developer Taelyn
