“Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! What ugly sights of death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;”… And behold it was Empyrion. I hadn’t played Empyrion since Alpha 11.0 was unleashed with the CPU (Categorically Positively Useless) abomination. Luckily I still had my Alpha 10.5 with Project Eden Scenario. And an advanced game save. So I spent a few hours playing the iteration of Empyrion that wound up being its peak. The best it would ever end up being. It would all be downhill from here. The Devs wanted to limit the size of builds so they came up with the most non-intuitive solution possible that does not correspond to reality. They implemented a Nerfing system that created this imaginary thing called CPU that became the true arbiter of all device performance. Whereas before device performance depended on the capabilities of the device itself, like in reality, henceforth device performance would depend on this completely illogical block called the Bridge and its Tier extensions. For some reason this one Bridge block now has more computing power than all the devices in the build. Totally irrational. Then they set low thresholds that meant even Tier 4 builds would be barebones. And in order to even reach Tier 4 you have to find 4 unique blocks in random loot. You have to do that for each ship. And for some reason steel and concrete blocks now use CPU power from the build devices so you need a Bridge block to handle the steel and concrete block CPU load as well. Or do steel and concrete blocks also need their own processing power? There is no plausible answer. These developments totally destroyed the immersion value of Empyrion. From this moment forward, every builder would have to mentally overcome this immersion breaking “feature,” and this would poison the motivational process that drives a player to build in the first place. The saddest thing about this tragic development in the evolution of Empyrion is the fact that CPU was never even necessary. And 1000s of hours of development time, more than six months in fact, have been wasted adding CPU code to every block type, shape, and device in Empyrion. For starters, in single player, the player doesn’t need extra large ships to win battles, and the player will not build or spawn blueprints that create load demand that exceeds the capabilities of their PCs. This is because they will experience frame rate drops and will limit their builds to scales that fall within the acceptable thresholds of normal performance from their PCs. Players with high end PCs will spawn bigger builds. With enough processing power no build would be large enough to drop framerates. In multiplayer the Devs only needed to implement a way for server admins to limit build sizes. This was already part of the game features. No CPU code needed to be added to every block type, shape, and device. They simply needed to use the already existing CPU value in the Control Panel to deny placing any more blocks on a build once the CPU limit is reached as well as to deny Factory spawning of a blueprint that exceeds the CPU limit. The CPU limit for the 4 build types could be adjustable by the server admins enabling high end server environments to allow bigger builds and low end server environments to limit builds to the necessary size for their performance thresholds. The CPU rates for each block type, shape, and device could be configurable in the Config file as well. But the Devs chose a different path. They chose to implement CPU as some kind of Holy Order that all the players have to beg for relief from. On your knees children. Beg for the totally unnecessary in single player CPU costs to be lower, for the CPU Tier 4 extension points to be increased from 10,000,000 to 11,000,000. If you grovel enough maybe the Dev gods will have mercy on you. But alas, this catastrophe was not caused by CPU alone. The Devs altered the flight system with intent to phase out the RCS in favor of a more realistic model where thruster position affects turning torque. However, they did not develop the Unity physics code concurrently. This unfortunate sequence of events translates into more wasted months of coding because when they do actually implement a physics library that makes object movement realistic with rag dolls, the new flight system code is going to be affected in a way that will hose up the piloting of ships. This sadly means more wasted time coding a new flight system that interacts properly with the new physics code. And then this story goes from bad to worse. The Devs did an interview yesterday and they openly stated that they will never implement true physics beyond coding for vessels to destroy trees into clouds that go poof on contact. This means that they aren’t even willing to code in the C++ that will allow vessels to rag doll properly. Never mind the deforming blocks. So I will always be able to get out of my Captain’s Chair and then turn the thrusters off while hovering on a planet and my SV or CV will never fall. If my CV or SV gets disabled mid-flight, it will always just freeze in place at some awkward angle and just stick there in the sky. It will never begin a tumbling rag doll fall to the ground and break up and leave a crater like what happens to newbie players in Space Engineers who ignore the Hydrogen Thruster warning when flying into a planet’s gravitational pull sporting Ion Thrusters only. Lord, Lord! Methought! What terrible realizations are these that pierce my waking consciousness? Alas, it is now clear. Empyrion will never be finished. This game will never have standard gameplay features like a realistic flight system with realistic physics. Vessels will always be able to park in the sky. Blocks will never deform and burn and smoke like real debris. Alas, another game bites the dust. Truly, it is as if that fateful day when Keen announced they would never develop NPC content for Space Engineers had returned to haunt us and strike a second blow to our space gaming hopes, and dash them to pieces. Pieces that don’t fall out of the blue sky but just stick there like flies on invisible flypaper. And I thought about how Unity is a bounding box-based physics system that does not do volumetric tessellation which is necessary for block deformation. And yet Unity does allow for robust physics library coding. Movement in Unity can be realistic if properly coded. I remembered how Keen developed their own proprietary soft-body dynamics volumetric physics engine called VRAGE 2. Behold, VRAGE 2 allows volumetric objects to behave like real physical objects with mass, inertia and velocity. Individual modules have real volume and storage capacity and can be assembled, disassembled, deformed, and repaired or destroyed. Volumetric Tessellation Finite Element-based systems had been impractical for use in games due to the performance overhead and the lack of tools to create finite element representations out of 3D art objects. With higher performance processors and tools to rapidly create the volumetric tessellations, real-time finite element systems began to be used in games, beginning with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed that used Digital Molecular Matter for the deformation and destruction effects of wood, steel, flesh and plants using an algorithm developed by Dr. James O'Brien as a part of his PhD thesis. Digital Molecular Matter, better known as simply DMM, is a proprietary middleware physics engine developed by Pixelux for generating realistic destruction and deformation effects. DMM can be authored or used in Maya or 3ds Max to create simulation-based visual effects. And the realization that volumetric-based physics engines were the new standard set in. I now knew that the only way that Eleon would be able to make Empyrion into a game that has just the standard features of today’s games would be to switch to the VRAGE 2 or DMM physics engines, or some other volumetric-based physics engine. Or they would have to code their own proprietary volumetric-based physics engine like Keen, Lucas Arts, and Egosoft to name a few. What dreadful thoughts flashed in my head when I recalled that the Devs had declared they would not be implementing physics in Empyrion? The vision of a dead end rushing toward me at roaring speed took hold. How sad it was to see another game wither on the vine by its own choosing. Oh Lord! When will a good builder space game be developed? Darkness took me… and I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead… and every day was as long as a life age of the Earth. But it was not the end. I felt life in me again. I discovered… X4-Foundations by Egosoft with its proprietary volumetric-based physics engine. And I played. How I rejoiced when I realized that X4-Foundations allows you to fight Star Wars scale space battles with total realism. Mining, building stations, factories, and shipyards, NPCs, recruited ship crews of up to 450, a working economy, tons of missions, state of the art physics and deforming models, and ships that can be entered and walked in while they are moving, with NPCs inside as well. The AI is divine. It does what it is supposed to very well with virtually no hick-ups like stuck auto trading and mining ships, and if they do get stuck, you can usually get them unstuck manually from the powerful map. I don’t recall anything ever getting stuck unless I flew somewhere stupid. This game punishes stupid. Fast. And I always got loose. The X4 CHEAT MENU mod can also teleport you alone or in a ship if your ship is stuck. X4-Foundations allows you to fight epic real Star Wars scale space battles with fleets comprised of literally hundreds of ships, as this video plainly illustrates. Massive 375 ship battle | X4: Foundations This video showcases most of the combat related features of X4-Foundations such as walking on the docking pad of the giant Colossus Large Capital Ship while it is engaged in a close range battle with a much bigger capital ship, doing bombing runs on the large enemy ship from a medium fighter, and other visually stunning activities. X4 Foundations Epic Moment (Colossus Carrier showcase) vs Xenon I There are no videos that accurately illustrate how epic it is to command a fleet of 168 ships into battle with a comparable force. You just have to experience it for yourself by playing the game. It turned out that this game was the single player version of Star Citizen, which is currently the best space game in existence. I used the X4 CHEAT MENU mod from Nexus to get the resources to quickly build my Shipyard and Wharf and from them I produced my fleet of 1 Zeus Sentinel Large Capital Ship, 2 Odysseus Sentinel Large Destroyers assigned to escort the Zeus Sentinel, and 10 Nemesis Sentinel Medium Fighters assigned to escort each of my large ships, with each of those Nemesis Sentinels escorted by 4 Eclipse Vanguard Small Fighters for a grand total of 153 ships. Each ship was fully crewed with NPCs and the Zeus and Odysseus large ships can each dock 10 medium and 40 small ships inside, which is exactly what I assigned to each of them. All ships with subordinates were set to the Eagle formation, which envelopes the wing leaders with perfect swarms which will take the first shots from any direction. And I do this with no frame rate loss, even in combat with a comparable force. I also built my personal Nemesis Sentinel Medium Fighter escort group of 4 Eclipse Vanguard Small Fighters and 2 Nemesis Sentinel Medium Fighters, each with their own 4 Eclipse Vanguard Small Fighter escorts for a total of 12 small heavy fighters and 3 medium heavily armed fighters in my personal wing. With all wing leaders set to Eagle formation, I was surrounded by a sphere of ships that would take the first shots of any ambush, which allowed me to fly my Nemesis Sentinel Medium Fighter into the middle of epic space battles with a much higher chance of survival. Rarely pinned down, outgunned, and shot to pieces literally. And it will happen. Save smart. If you fly a small or medium fighter into any battle alone, you will have every enemy turret and mounted gun on you at once from all directions. It is spectacular to watch, when you achieve critical mass on enemy ships, how fast and how utterly they are exploded into scattered small debris that floats away until it hits something. Then I built 1 Atlas Supply ship for each of my 3 large ships and one for my personal escort wing. All my subordinate ships and all the ships in the wings that the other 3 Atlas supply ships are assigned to auto dock and repair and restock missiles on these supply ships. The Zeus Capital Large Ship also resupplies small and medium ships. The Atlas will also resupply large ships. When a fleet is fully stocked it can deploy on long range and multi task large missions, such as wiping entire sectors clean of Xenon, or starting wars with normal faction alliances. In combat, tactics were key. This was just like playing battles in Total War: Rome II. The powerful map allows for pinpoint precision control of your entire fleet or each individual wing right down to each individual ship. Victory or total defeat and annihilation depend on your micromanagement of every ship in your fleet with precision timing. It is all about critical mass, and timing is key to achieving that. If an enemy defense station and its fighters and drones get critical mass on you, total loss of your entire fleet can occur in less than 60 seconds. The same goes for large enemy fleets. I had to open all the subordinate wings in the tree so I could select every intended ship inside the map and tell them who to attack or where to speed to. I learned that small and medium ships should be ordered to attack enemies directly, but large ships should be ordered to fly to the target object, like a large ship or station, and not told to attack. Large ships arrive at destination much faster that way, and attack anything in range. Not all fleet commands work as expected, but if you learn how to properly use the map to micromanage your fleet in combat, you will see that you can literally make every ship do exactly what you want them to do when you want them to do it. You just have to master the map command system. Play it like the battles in Total War: Rome II. Also, all homing missile types can and must be locked, but only on proper targets. When targeting large ships and stations, missiles must be locked onto modules instead of the whole ship as it is with small and medium ship missile targets, and instead of aiming at the module you can stop at a distance and use keys to select the nearest module and then rotate through them all as the modules are highlighted in game. There will be dozens of turret, shield, thruster, and other modules. Once all modules on a large enemy ship or station are destroyed, then your lock on key will lock onto the main hull of the ship itself, as if it was a small or medium ship. Review the key assignments thoroughly before playing, as well as basic gameplay tutorial videos. There are great ones. There is nothing like doing a bombing run on a large enemy capital ship and firing a slow moving heavy nuke from 100 meters away at a shield generator and then turning to get out of range of the nuclear explosion before it detonates in a few seconds, bypassing the enemy anti-missile beam defenses and picking up an enemy turret's attention in the process. And then having to boost a couple kilometers out of range before your shields go down. Damage is super realistic. Get hit in an engine in a battle with your shield down and you are a dead duck. Your thrust will drop significantly. No more boost. Suddenly your escort will have outrun you, and you are surrounded by enemy fighters and dozens of guns are firing at you from above, below, the sides, the front, the rear, literally like Robotech and Star Wars. Relying too much on your small and medium fighter wings on the one hand or on the 3 large ships on the other will result in their loss. Total loss. Victory lies in successfully integrating your tactical usage of both types. You want all your small and medium fighters to arrive on the Defense Station’s position at the same time, as a swarm, in order to limit the 40 plus enemy turrets to one target per turret. Your small and mediums will evade effectively enough for their shields to protect them for at least a minute. You want your 3 large ships to arrive in range of the Defense station the moment your map shows that your swarm of 3 wings have completely covered the Defense Station. Do this right and the Defense Station will completely explode in a couple minutes or less. Do it wrong, and you will be looking for a new fleet of 153 new ships. It is also vital that you trigger the Defense Station’s fighter and drone fleet and then lure it out of range of the station to kill it there before you send your fleet to attack the station and thus enter its scores of turrets’ range. Attacking a Defense Station that is defended by its full complement of fighters and drones can be done successfully with the tactics I described above, but you will suffer heavy losses. Alas, the only thing X4-Foundations lacks is planets, but even so, it is certainly good for countless hours of the most intense Star Wars: Total War style epic space battle game play ever. Also, it is single-player only. It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions. Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. We know what we are, but know not what we may be. This above all: to thine own self be true.
Sorry lost me at “Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown! Then I saw the wall of text and understood what he meant when he said "what pain it was to drown."
My famous quote from Tennyson's Ulysses - And so we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are, - one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
@ greenmanalishi I can only agree to the first part of the contribution. From the Movie Blade Runner "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die." "Ich habe Dinge gesehen, die ihr Menschen niemals glauben würdet. Gigantische Schiffe, die brannten, draußen vor der Schulter des Orion. Ich sah C-Beams, glitzernd im Dunkeln nahe dem Tannhäuser Tor. All diese Momente werden verloren sein in der Zeit, so wie Tränen im Regen. Zeit zu sterben." I had also been able to write time to go, but I didn't want to change the quote under any circumstances.
@greenmanalishi I must admit I kind of glazed over past the first paragraph or so, but probably read enough. From a recent dev q/a stream (spanj on 13th): CPU will apparently get some life past the current tier 4. Maybe a tier 5 or open ended extensions - ie bigger vessels than currently allowed. There is also the possibility of excess CPU (provided by the extensions) acting a buf on the kind of thing they nerf when you are under. RCS cost will probably get reduced back to something more sensible. The current state of the game is that they are just cramming features in, some working well, some not so well with the intent of revisiting them during a beta phase.
Are you referring to one of the posts here? Or to ELEON? If you mean ELEON I suggest to watch the last Q&A on Spanj's YouTube Channel - >
When this game first came out is was very enjoyable. Now with all the changes being made I myself think it's getting a little to complicated and I am no dumbbell. I have built my own systems for the last 15-20 years. I don't play a lot (2670 hrs) and every time I log in I have to learn something new.. not for me. I think I will just save a little room on my hard drive and delete this game. It's been fun while it lasted.
I just came here to say that I see disturbing parallels between the CPU system and the downfall of another game that used to be very dear to my heart: StarMade. I don't know if anyone else has made this comparison, but here's the story: StarMade was an incredibly fun sandbox. It had Minecraft-style voxel graphics with many of the same gameplay elements that makes Empyrion great: block-based ship creation, the ability to take off on a ship of your own creation and go all the way from the surface of a planet to a space station to another solar system. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of me and my friend building ships and a space station, raiding planets for resources, making absurdly powerful ships that were just a matrix of hundreds of guns, and generally just having a blast in this amazing sandbox... But then the devs ruined StarMade. Instead of just bug-fixing and adding new fun-based features, they kept adding to the complexity. They were worried about gameplay balance, especially in multiplayer. That was the problem: this was a sandbox. A place to have fun. It was not the place for rigid rules and restrictions, but for whatever reason the devs felt the need to add never-ending complexity to StarMade, until the game was too complicated for new people (or returning people) and even for the experienced people it just became a grind and a slog. Last I read the developers started to lose interest in regular updates for StarMade, probably because so many players (like myself) gave up on it and it drained their enthusiasm. Even if the option exists to turn CPU's off, I would argue development time would be better spent on adding new fun features instead of bogging down the gameplay with restricting features like CPU. It's wasting dev time and turning people off. People just want to build stuff and have fun, they don't want to have to think about CPU restrictions or grinding for scarce parts. If I wanted complexity and realism, I would play Kerbal Space Program. I don't want that out of Empyrion, I want to build sci-fi spaceships. Just make a fun sandbox. Honestly, most people probably don't even care about gameplay balance in a game like this. tl;dr: Basically I just want to draw that comparison - StarMade was ruined by complexity and restrictions which made the game too complicated and too much of a grind-fest to be fun, and the same thing is happening with this CPU system.
Я полностью согласен с вышеизложенным, игра была сделана очень сложно. Было бы лучше сделать реалестер воды. даже в Minecraft физика воды присутствует. Вот полная задница!
Even I can use a translator to have a least a Clue what @brecers is writing here Water Physics was stated several Times had so far no priority over the more complex stuff. Unity provides pretty good quality Water Physic assets but I am pretty sure our Devs can do it even without them. Unity Asset Store: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/dynamic-water-physics-2-147990 and a Demo
[QUOTE = "Germanicus, post: 385539, member: 24653"] Даже я могу использовать переводчик, чтобы хоть немного понять, что пишет здесь маленький Путин:закатывать глаза: Физика воды утверждала, что несколько раз пока не имеют приоритета над более сложными вещами. Unity предоставляет довольно качественные активы Water Physic, но я уверен, что наши разработчики могут сделать это даже без них . Unity Asset Store: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/dynamic-water-physics-2-147990 [MEDIA = YouTube] NphefjVyG9o [/ MEDIA] и демо [MEDIA = YouTube] xGLbiVtVCOE [/ MEDIA] [/ QUOTE] Маленький Путин? Я не виноват, что ты не знаешь самый мощный язык в мире, например русский! Учите, пока у вас есть время. Учите и не ждите, пока мы заставим вас это сделать! неуч ...
@brecers - Sorry but if you are unwilling to translate yourself - I don't do it for you any longer - therefore ..welcome to my ignore List
Yeah, I saw that, really like the idea of excess CPU providing a bump to some systems. As it is you hit tier 4 very quickly, may have a lot of room left over.
