Yeah, i just thought of this myself. A small optronic bridge would cost me ~80000, 20 Gold ingots cost me about 5000. The rest Materials are easy to gather. This looks like a good way to make money.
So i know this discussion is a bit a old still, but i just read somewhere else, that some people actually like the CPU system, and i don't get it. I have read a lot of where people arguing why they hate it or why they like the idea but hate the current implementation. I don't want to list any of this reasons or arguments here again as we all have read it at some point i guess. Probably more, like at two points or even more. But what i have not seen to this day is, an argument why somebody likes CPU, sorry if i missed something. I think somewhere i read something about it's good for MP restriction (besides it's not Size Class limits do a neat job here). And again i am sorry but CPU still bothers me and i know others feel the same, just today someone on the EXP server got a bit angry again when he talked about why Pyston quitted building and removed all of his workshop submissions. So this might be a bit harsh and pretty much strict forward but as i read somewhere (sorry i closed the tab and dunno where it was) that @Vermillion likes or at least liked the CPU system. So i wanna ask you (and others that like the CPU system): Why do you like it? What do you like about it? What do you think of the counter arguments like, it's limiting the freedom of building instead of just making it harder, it's unlogical, etc? Also rumors say that @Hummel-o-War reads everything here, so may i also ask what the dev team is / was thinking of all the critics this system got? I mean this thread is HUGE.
I think part of the complains is because people were used to building stuff without any limits and the CPU is limiting them now. I for example don't mind it, i find the increased complexity and difficulty of CPU quite entertaining, it gives me valid reason to come up with different builds for different purposes. F. E. i have an unarmed early game planetary SV for fast and cheap exploration and goods transport, which is probably something I wouldn't build in the earlier versions of the game, and I had a blast designing it.
1-2. It gives a sense of progression because until you gain the next tier you must overcome challenges (if your scenario design is set up the way). It sounds better than size class You can remove block count limits on certain devices such as weapons and let CPU balance the ship instead gameplay wise creating a more liberal way of equipping it. E.g. you can choose to create a glass cannon, lots of guns but minimal armor and hope you aren't hit. 3. As for CPU preventing creativity that's BS if you ask me, either you reconfigure CPU to fit what you want to accomplish or you play without the feature toggled on. The feature is meant as a means of both performance check and game balance, and must not be on in the first place should someone not desire it. You can use low CPU cost for a scenario where the difficulty level of POIs is satisfactory to counter one enormously powerful player vessel. I see CPU as a way of creating gameplay balance for a scenario. Or you can toggle CPU off if you don't play for the challenge at all but simply build whatever you like just because of building, which I can understand some people do. I see it's good that the feature exists and it helps to regulate the server load of my server and create balanced content for its scenario. Even if it wasn't for the server performance I see the help with progression to be enough an argument.
I like the CPU system because: - It gives us more options in gameplay (only things missing here: switched off devices have to consume nothing and the NPC crew should contribute to the CPU efficiency) - I think it's good to have a few more items for the endgame - I find a lot with the CPU system and the resulting efficiency simply more coherent and round
The original plan and design for CPU was a solid concept. Somewhere between A8 and the first and ultimately final implementation in A11 CPU changed directions. The final product that came out to experimental and eventually to public was a disaster; a functional disaster. But a disaster nonetheless. While the CPU system does manage a portion of what it was intended to do, it's not the gameplay balancing fulcrum it was supposed to be. Having been part of the testing from the early stages, I could see as changes were constantly being made to it that someone behind the scenes was determined to cling desperately to their failed implementation at any cost as the CPU tier limits were expanded again and again in order to fit the first draft of block CPU values into their scheme and failed spectacularly as more and more vital aspects of the CPU system were trampled by the mess piled on top of them. So for the first and second, what and why I like is the original concept of the CPU system as a specialization mechanic. It could've worked beautifully if the developer responsible hadn't taken shortcuts to get it running before it could walk. Even now, the bones of the CPU system can be easily but time-consumingly put back together to form a perfectly functional system as long as the supporting ligaments and twisted flesh are excised to let people get at those bones without interference. Even with those parts in the way, with the new internal configs it's possible to completely rewrite the entire CPU system despite the dev's insistence that it cannot be done. You just need to know what to do and how to do it. Those ugly leftover attachments will leave an ugly half-page display in the CPU statistics page and the change will break older blueprints using the current extenders though. Which is why this change will probably not make it's way into Reforged Galaxy. In order to get it all in working order, the developers need to pull off that extra leg it's got so it can stand up properly. For the third, counter-arguments vary wildly. One of the most laughable is the "limiting the creativity of builders". This argument stems from the fact that building blocks consume CPU (which they shouldn't, I agree), but it doesn't impact the creativity of builders since the scale of CPU consumed by building blocks is minimal, even on massive builds and is only really felt when building in a way that shouldn't be done, with or without CPU (E.g. making a giant square landing platform in space of armored concrete or combat steel, which is neither "creative" or useful). A prime example of what can be done is that supermassive dreadnought in my signature. That thing is a class 89 T4 at 490 meters long with 200+ fully furnished rooms with a full 2-layer thick hull of combat steel, an inner layer of steel and inner walls and deco of carbon composite and all weapons to their weapon limit, propelled by L and XL thrusters. It comes in at 10.1m CPU with a 0.9% penalty. So when someone says that CPU limits creativity, I know their problem has nothing to do with creativity and everything to do with greed. Whether the CPU system were fixed or not, they would never get what they want from it. The interconnected systems: I've been planning to do a whole in-depth feedback thread on these, but I suppose I might as well sum this all up now as short as possible. A11 rolled out with a new flight model and the CPU system. These two systems were designed and built to work together. Unfortunately, the lack of attention to detail and forcing to meet the approaching deadline derailed both systems and the stupid stubbornness of the developer responsible is preventing both from being fixed now that it's out. Worse still, the fear of incurring the wrath of angry players again for changing both systems and "ruining" their builds is preventing them from even considering fixing both systems. Since then, an attempt to mitigate the broken systems has produced an unwanted addition: The Mass-Imposed Speed Limit, that has also shut the door on a third party taking the time to fix both systems. There's not really time and people generally don't read a big wall of text without something to break it up. So while I would like to break down the flight model into its component parts and explain where all the stuff went wrong between it and CPU, no one would read it and it's basically off-topic.
Hard to really understand exactly what about it is failed except that the tiers offer way too much CPU output, or more that the gap between them is too steep.
Alright thanks you four so far. For the first, yes that would be cool. If the weapons limits would be lifted, Blocks costs removed. And then lets say you always calculate the CPU like: the first of a device consumes X CPU, every second and further cost Y (Y<X). This way you could build a ridicilous ship with 20 gatling guns, but zero other guns, and no mobile constructor or ****. For second (or 3.) This toggling CPU on and off. I mean long term this probably fucks up the WS in total. Devs probably know that so sooner or later CPU will be always on. Which, oh what ever let's not open that can here as well. So Vermillion, funfact first: I deactivated the signatures here in the forum not exclusively but especially because of you. Your Signature is or as least was way too bulky on my screen, i could not bear it anymore. About the rest as i wanna keep it short i just say: Well i hope the devs will "fix"/improve it sooner or later none the less. Probably not everybody will be happy with that "compromise" but in the end a solid building ground makes everybody less unhappy.
I strongly disagree here, more steps yeah why not. but less CPU no. I would even go so far, that it should allow more in higher not there tiers. But the cost for those ships needs to be immense not just in ressources but also in Volume and Weight it adds to the ship.
The difference between tiers is not balanced right. As for what the number is, is just relative, it's irrelevant as it depends on what you do with CPU. On a server 10M CPU may be too much CPU to play with, the ships become too big and like Vermillion wrote you can have an enormous vessel with 10M CPU. I think 10M is too much, I nerfed it to a max of 5M for the time being for game balance reasons (actually not performance).
On the other hand, I reconfigured CPU for elimination of max block count and I need to be restrictive, particularly weapons must be expensive so vessels don't become overpowered. I can't say the vessels have hampered opportunities for unique design choices and I actually don't have anyone with a T4 CV on the server because progression takes a while on it. On the other hand, a T3 can take on my Zirax Battleships and take them out so it doesn't lack the firepower to do so. A T4 CV can take on any encounter on the server even if I have cranked up the difficulty tremendously and POIs go through poorly armored player ships like butter. It's important to design ships well. I did however recently make a hefty increase of CPU costs for CV weapons just in order to balance things between T3 and T4. I have a certain vision of what each tier can do.
My problem with the CPU system is that the developers did not explain the meaning behind it, but only said that it is for specialization. On MP Server the problem will arise that you are CPU-compliant but consolidated with the set size class. What CPU is doing at the moment is that the players have to build more structures than before, whether this is advantageous for MP servers, I cannot yet judge. Yes, I can also build huge vessels with hundreds of devices, decorative blocks and lights that only fly like a pregnant duck and a server gets strong lags. I understand that in single play the player wants to have a long and farm-rich gameplay to stretch the gameplay, but in multiplayer I also need long current runtimes because here when the playfield is used my structures continue to consume fuel when I am logged out. At HWS there is a size class calculator: https://empyrion-homeworld.net/tools/emp-class-calculator You have to take a look at the computing power of Empyrion to see what really leads to performance loss. Windows are such a thing, surfaces, decorative blocks, lights - everything has to be calculated. In my opinion, the size restriction is the best solution. I don't like the CPU system and that's why I lost a lot of fun. The best option at the moment is to adapt the CPU system yourself via the configs, but it should work reasonably well as Vanilla gameplay.
I highly doubt it. They've shown repeatedly that they have no idea how to fix it and every update they change CPU values in the wrong direction. The Tier limits shouldn't be expanded, they should be shrunk closer together as they were intended to be. THEN the values of the devices balanced to fit into the tiers, not the other way around. That's why the CPU fallback system exists and simultaneously never worked. The only reason that hasn't happened already and in all likelihood won't happen is because they can expand the tier limits by changing one number. But redoing all the devices and blocks takes days of calculating and measuring and they're too busy to do that. Also, because the CPU system is tied into the flight model, they need to not only change the CPU values but thruster output and power distribution; followed by the removal of the mass-speed penalty. So if it's gonna happen, it won't be by them.
Spoiler I would be very interested in hearing how CPU was originally supposed to work. I have no problem with the current CPU system, mainly because I don't find it limiting in the slightest, and only adds more gameplay (something I believe SP survival needs). But from the sound of it, you agree with those reasons, and still say CPU is a complete disaster compared to what it was supposed to be. I'd be very interested in hearing what it was originally going to be, and how it fits in with the flight model. I've devoted some thought to how CPU could be implemented in a way most players would like, and haven't been able to think of anything, so I'm intrigued by the idea that such a design is out there.
The biggest problem with CPU, expressed in hundreds of posts and a heap of reviews, is the fact it limits creativity. The fact that inert blocks have a CPU value is overwhelming evidence for it. No one can dispute that. When CPU came out it literally rendered over 60,000 blueprints on workshop, useless instantly. Its not obvious why people got upset ? Hardly anyone actually likes CPU. Hardly any servers run CPU on. Or W/V for that matter. And heaps of servers mod files to get around the limits CPU brings to the game...... Kinda says it all doesnt it. Some will defend it, but for this game it is an inferior feature that limits creativity. Alot that defend it simply dont know any better either, new players that have never played it on older versions or cant properly imagine a better system. CPU takes our only 2 flight control sets and turns them into something like NMS flight. CPU was about performance, slowing your progression and shaping how you build in this game. But the worst thing really is that, Empyrion could have introduced new flight controls, on new cores, with special abilities, and introduced proper true specialization and thats where it really fails now. New categories on workshop, stealth fighter, bomber, drop ship, etc, things like that with actual special abilities, an incentive for all builders to want to build on new toys, cores , starter blocks, its a hands down winner of a feature that diversifies the game 1000 time more and better than CPU ever could, was suggested long before CPU ever popped up and was ignored and now the game has limited building, period. The game now has just 2 flight control sets, SV and CV, and one is a clone of the other with tweeks. This game will never see truly unique ships with just two starter cores and two sets of flight controls. If you go to workshop now, and compare it to 2 years ago, the ships now, all look similar in shape because CPU forces you to build to a set shape for best performance. Rectangle basically. CPU has without question damaged the games creativity, and cost players, a lot of them, and cost long term builders. Sales dont seem to have been to effected but then the price was also lowered again. Servers took a hit though. So no I dont believe for one second, after the literally Hundreds of critical posts Ive read about CPU, [ that I can paste in here if you like ] that its actually improved the game, that might be true for 10% of the total playerbase at best guess. CPU should be completely removed from inert blocks. Im a veteran of this game, from before it went live, I play mostly online in MP, I talk daily to people in this game and this genre, the overwhelming majority Ive spoken too do not use or like CPU, and a lot of people also find the Logistics system confusing also. I dont like CPU, as someone who has watched this game evolve from just a few assets to what it is today, and expand on creativity for 5 years, only to then decimate it with one update, after putting such a huge effort into this game, was extremely disappointing, and to not remove CPU from inert blocks, is why I absolutely HATE it. It could be so much better with just that one improvement. But what really should happen.... Add new starter cores with new flight controls, and some new workshop categories, and let players creativity run wild with new designs on new flight control sets with new special abilities. There are literally no limits to what you can do with that system and CPU could be used to compliment it if inert blocks loose the cost of CPU. Empyrion needs proper specialization, proper ship classes, properly defined and new flight control sets. Every plane on Earth has wings and an engine, but they dont all fly the same, different turn rates, yaw rates, roll rates, pick up speed rates, top speed rates, ceiling heights etc etc, all parameters of flight control sets, of which Empyrion addresses none but the space flight control set we currently use. 1 flight control set for everything. No building choppers or planes or jets, no opening up off creativity or workshop, just everything is now just CPUified. Forced in creative, another issue. Should I fill the rest of the page ? Its such a bad feature for a game of creativity in my opinion. I absolutely love Empyrion, best game ever made I recon, for me anyway, but CPU, is nothing short of depressing for a builder, to the point where it makes you really think whether to even load the game up, I have found playing Empyrion much harder ever since CPU came out. I find myself in creative building bases. Its seems like a pointless waste of time to build ships until CPU is fixed and we get new flight control sets, new ship classes effectively. I know there are many other veterans that feel the same or similar about CPU, but it comes down to how much Eleon care about ALL players and not the select few that like CPU, telling people to just turn it off does not cut it, when CPU can effect the flight controls it becomes a much bigger issue, and when the old flight controls are changed with no option to keep the old ones, and no new flight controls, its pretty limiting and totally forced on the players. But you know, what do stupid old vets know ay.
I like the idea of specialization which was put forward as something CPU could accomplish, but from the beginning i was skeptical, it sounded good but didn't make sense. From the first testing it wasn't going to work as intended because CPU was about values of numbers rather then specialization of to the point, clear, and direct. The idea of specialization should have been implemented by Core tiers and not by CPU tiers in my humble opinion. For example, if i want to specialize Small Vessels; a tier 1 can't build a warp tank, that should only be allowed with a tier 2 or 3. A tier 1 sv should only be allowed to traverse the Space system it originated from. A tier 2 core sv would be considered a more advanced sv that could travel its own Solar System instead of just its own space. And maybe a tier 3 core sv can travel other Solar Systems but at a much shorter range then a Capital Vessel. What i have learned from years of playing games is that players need clarity of foundation to fall behind and to understand the game, its meaning, and where their path lays ahead. Right know Empyrion lacks that. But i see this game as being fertile for change and growth into a much better game. Right now the gameplay is too repetitive and you could see this in its architecture as well. Here you can find a more extended analyses of why CPU is not the right tool to use for Specialization. cheers https://empyriononline.com/threads/...lly-solid-foundation-of-specialization.91536/
10 million CPU points and too large ships? lol, apparently a big ship you think the 5th size is "30x50 meters" ..... I will say this - 6-7 million CPUs are just a normal PVE ship, which will not fall apart at the first volley of flying bricks in which the pilot sits in the toilet, because there are no more decks besides the 3x3 toilet. For normal PVP ships with several decks, at least 15-20 million CPU points are needed. Otherwise, there will be only 2 types of ships in the game 1 - PVE ships and PVP ships without design, without decks, just black, flying feces of a cuboid shape - these are some PVP ships placed in the limit of 10 million with the rare exception.
I've a PvE player with a 1.5M T3 vessel who fare pretty well against my Zirax Heavy Battleships, and he "only" got T3. He could achieve a more grandiose ship at 5M and T4, nothing would stand in his way. That you would fight in 15-20M ships in PvP there's no wonder why people whine the game's lagging.
That people would think they have the right to dictate what other server operators would like to set the performance limits for their own server too [ CPU ] , and then ''whine'' about ''whiners'' for playing how they would like to play is rather ironic and funny, wouldnt you agree ?...... We agree on most things champ, but this Im sorry we dont. This game is an EA game, by the time its finished, PC and servers in Data centers etc , will be much more powerful, Unity will have had many updates also by then, along with Empyrion, its premature to completely limit building with arbitrary limits that dont make any logical sense that force people to build and play how someone, anyone else wants them too, it rude, and disruptive to our current playerbase of which almost ALL have complained about CPU, in some form or another, of which if you check uncountable numbers are still not happy with CPU , the whole point of Empyrion from day one was to include as many people as possible, features like CPU just limit that and go directly against that very principle Eleon has had from day one, but credit to the devs for at least doing something about that, its not perfect but its much better. Heres some perspective for you.... There is a hell of alot more ''whining'' about CPU buddy, than there has ever been in the games entire life span for big CV battles in a server lag, CPU has cost more players, damaged more workshop BPs, ironically CPU has cost you and any other MP gamers, at the CPU update most servers lost numbers, some never recovered and some even vanished, and some of them were servers that had been around from the very early days. Heaps of builders stopped building. Our playerbase divided. We copped a heap of nasty reviews. We copped literally hundreds of negative posts about CPU across half a dozen different forums, I see absolutely nothing amusing about this whole ordeal at all sorry. Very sad to see that happen to our game, this game, the best game ever, Eleons baby. Very annoying to watch the fracturing of our playerbase at such an EPIC large scale. All of this because of one update, CPU and the flight control set change. None of the MPers caused this. I know I sure had nothing to do with bringing such a miserable restrictive feature to Empyrion, Ive been against this system of restriction from day one. Limits we need, logical ones, CPU, we do not need at all. Personally if I was the main shareholder of Eleon, I would be f_____g p___ed at the PR for this mess, probably isnt an actual PR guy but anyway in Eleon I dunno but what a mess this turned into,, this was something that was easily see-able as dividing a playerbase and there were better options for specialization and the fact it wasnt really specialization...oh man....... Yet it went ahead under that banner anyway. Yea we are stupid, but not that stupid. Maybe your hating the wrong thing champ. Most CPU threads end up with, well hundreds of complaints, followed by the same few that defend it by attacking people for how they play. Common theme. CPU is not in the spirit of what Empyrion has been from day one. The devs realized that, thank goodness, and added a non CPU core, and a couple of other things to get around it a little better. But CPU is by no means a ''great '' feature, it is not a feature that will ''attract'' thousands of new players, its not a feature that ''opens up creativity'' , no, we missed that mark for one simple reason. The developers were not looking to expand on creativity at the CPU update, they were looking to control performance on a grand scale across Empyrion entire server platform, regardless of who operates or owns it, which in turn also means less work on performance updates because they can simply change a CPU limit and make everyone conform to the new performance spec........ What none of you can see that coming ? The other main goal of CPU is to slow progression, increase grind and thats fine, its how we do things that matters. CPU is the wrong way to do this. How can any of you defend that feature. And how can anyone not see how much better it would have been to just add new starter cores with new features, classes and abilities. And even to this day, adding such new cores with new flight controls can only bring new players, its not a restrictive feature in any way shape of form, it opens creativity up to many new things NOT POSSIBLE in Empyrion right now. I mean workshop right now would be abound with hundreds of new builds, specialized, unique ships and bases, a feature that has the potential to attract thousands of new players is not even being considered. And there would not be over 60,000 BPs that are useless now. There would have been no need to update a single ship to still use them effectively in a survival game, its such a sad thing to miss the mark by such an EPIC amount. It could still be addressed, but it doesnt seem to me like the developers are all that interested in opening the game up to actual real new classes of ship or opening the creativity up properly to include NEW things, rather than a restriction of old things we already have. But anyway, I guess its easier to blame MPers than the people who actually gave us CPU........ Strange.
