I think it was a case of people getting the wrong impression. It CAN help with performance, but it's not necessarily going to. The only way it will help with performance is if people were building massive buildings before and now they can't. Typically servers don't allow people to build that large anyways so those servers won't really see any performance gains at all from CPU. Nothing about CPU is optimizing the games performance. It's simply a means of restricting what can and can't be built, basically. There's a lot more to it when we start talking about going over CPU values and efficiency of the devices, but in a nutshell it's just a means of forcing specialized vehicles.
Anything that will affect ship performances and number of flying traceable/ trackable objects (projectiles) will affect pc performance. Mass/volume alone can't do this because players can control it, while CPU will be "enforced" and hardcoded. CPU will ensure that any ship will be forced under limits even with trade-offs. These are the 2 sides of the same coin, not one vs the other. I don't need to ask. Maybe you do ?
From all the communication I've seen, CPU will be as player-controllable as M/W restrictions with a config on/off switch and the ability to edit block CPU costs if not CPU amounts granted by tier. I don't think one is going to be more controllable than the other.
Biggest issue I foresee is this is a game with a marketplace for designs. Those players that like building and sharing designs will need to be mindful of all the various restrictions players could use (block count, M/V, CPU,...) . Players who decide the restrictions are annoying will be faced with a marketplace that literally can't guess what settings they've chosen (especially if they have decided to edit the block parameters directly) and thus the designs found there will be quite sub-optimal. Additionally, players as a mass tend to follow the path of least resistance. Most are not hardcore enough on any particular game to bother editing config files. Many won't even change much on a config menu. So the game has to become balanced for the default case -- which tends to be the most stringent one because that's what devs tend to do. That balancing -- especially across multiple dimensions of interlocking constraints -- is hard and typically unceasing. I will try both M/V and CPU. Because I don't use other people's designs and am quite willing to be a hardcore player, I may turn them off or directly edit the block parameters to better fit my playstyle. I'll be somewhat sad to go that route. Although my designs weren't particularly noteworthy, I did enjoy sharing them with the community. If I set up my own config, I'll stop sharing them since others can't/won't have the same experience with them as I do.
It was written in the skies with big, bright letters long ago that there were many changes to come that had the potential to render many builds obsolete. During all development, lots of players decided to use the workshop to showcase their creations despites that, but... many others did not. But a note on that : some players can still adapt their ships, or not, and that is surely not something that should impact the implementation of features in the game. As a consequence of the recent changes, we see it's now possible to reach double max speed in space and 70 m/s on a planet. That was asked many times for, by many players. Should we trash that to save the workshop builds ? I agree, and the developers agree too : this is experimental, and aimed at adjusting all that. I do the same, and I feel no obligation to play-test the experimental branch : I have a life and a job too. And solutions to "editing config files" have been proposed but are not a priority right now. It's just a shift of paradigm : players can still build ready-to-go ships for mass-volume/ CPU taken into account, or choose to leave their ships untouched. I would recommend some mention in the ships description, which is easier to do than a retro-fit. And another option is just to remove some of the devices and build "shells" with the basics, since many players use the workshop creations as a starting point and modify them to fit their needs. For all those players like me who can't spend a whole week of work on a mega-ship, it's always an option to get one from the workshop and customize it for my style and game. And for players that want to play an older version of the game that is still available, then all ships on the workshop are OK.. If all the workshop content is updated, then this content will be unavailable to players starting in V6 or V8, for example.
First thing I noticed from the numbers and seeing spanj's video is that shields are way to high in cpu cost 16,300 for shields is dumb here's why 1 you want people to make more aerodynamic ships to do that we need to lose bulk bulk in heavy armored section to cut down on weight that means we need shields to protect from blast damage from missiles just ripping through the 1 block of armor so ya need shields 2 you have armored cockpits people are scared to use them cause they feel it's to exposed and feel they will get blasted apart in seconds (now I like them but others ya know) shields help with some of this fear 3 there a level 10 item we can use them before we can get the core extenders of 3 and 4 so they are way over priced for a level 10 object now if these are not good enough reasons I do not know what to say next the tier core system why can;t ya just make it 1 block so we can upgrade it using the multi tool this would make life simpler and still require use to have them parts the Mass and the number of them and the fact if you do not have all of them you drop right back to 1 is bad also your add in more mass to a ship and taking up slots that could be used for other things as it stands they have a mass they are able to be damaged and for a fully working tier 4 we need 4 blocks touching 1 of them blows up and poof we are at a lower tier or a 1 they probably will be low HP and very easy to kill like a core with this in mind I see some problems 1 a large area that needs to be secured with armor (weight of blocks + core extenders means a ton more weight and means bigger engines (this is something I thought ya wanted to avoid) now this means we are having to make ships bigger to protect these extenders and to have them in the first place we now have to refocus from are smaller more compact designs to make room for bigger engines and the mass of the extenders + more room aka volume 2 going from a tier 4 to a tier 1 will be death of a ship 1 lucky shot with lag or bad timing with shields will result in a dead ship and makes players feel anger over the difficulty of having to fix there ships that they have already made to work in the new system 3 having to make all the extenders is going to be a resource hog slow us down for no good reason than you feel like giving us yet another obstetrical to over come in making ships things I see that can help 1 if a partial block is going to take up a virtual area of a full block it needs to have all the same properties as that full block HP resistances everything (this is cause we fear the thin spots in are armors so we have to ether reinforce under them or end up making squarish ships (the reason for 5 block thick hulls) so lowering the shield cpu cost and making the blocks the same HP and resistances of all the same type no matter shape then the players can make less bulky and mass in ships and have more fun with thin blocks make sure some things that are useful and required do not cost a ton of CPU like cockpits ventilators, o2 stations and medical stuff(I am sure there's a big list) also look at the mass of items no reason a large constructor is 40 tons and the advanced is 60 ton they are just to large to move cool you do not need them to be heavy I mean my tank is 69 tons right now and is not much to it at all why is it just slightly more weight than a n advanced constructor this seem off to me and be careful your nearing the simulation over game this si a game right not a sim
I'm not talking about current builds or even anything that happens while the game is in early access. I'm talking about the game once it is released. The marketplace needs to be mindful of the restrictions the game has. Those who invalidate those restrictions will pretty much by definition get less value from the marketplace simply because those restrictions wouldn't apply to their game. If I do go looking for designs, I don't want to trawl through page after page of designs that would be great if I changed these parameters. I make designs for myself first. If my designs don't conform to the game expectations, I won't bother sharing those designs; there's no point and I certainly don't want to waste someone else's time as they try to figure out why my design works so poorly / can't be built and don't want to waste my time responding to people who didn't read my description that I use special settings so use at own risk. It makes the marketplace poorer. Do I think adding the constraints is necessarily a terrible thing? No. Do I think having multiple dimensions of interlocking constraints and giving the player base the advice of "just turn personally adjust them / turn them off if you don't like them" is terrible. It shatters the player base and destroys the sense of shared experience. It limits any value of a common marketplace. It makes actually tuning the constraints a lower priority since the players "can fix it themselves".
They are not in active memory. Only things near the player are actually loaded into memory. Functions are simulated upon return to a structure.
I agree with most, if not all, of what you are saying here; I do turn features on or off depending upon my mood or how much time I have to play, it has been one of the things that draw me back to this game. In answer to the big question by Hummel-o-War; yes I understand your explanation perfectly, just not what is really going to happen when we start using the CPU system and what nuances that have not yet been explained. Like others, I'm in the wait till we try it group. I feel also where the CPU brings another challenge to the game play, that in the end ships etc. will end up as they are now, similar in setup for the optimum, but with less elaborate details. I am hopeful that once you have gotten some feedback in EXP. that you reset the systems penalties for going over the CPU limits to what will be released so our testing will be relevant. (If this is noted somewhere I missed it.) Certain situations, time restraints being a considerable one, co-op play another depending upon you teammates styles/time, would have one choose to play a less complicated form of a game instead of the full feature version; I myself would not label players as lazy as I don't know their circumstances.
Marketplace ? What are you talking about ? This was already the case when "airtight" constraints were added. Just another case of needing to follow development or staying behind. I mentioned a zillion times that players should put their ship's stats on their "showcase" because most of them only build for aesthetics, and some ships behave like bricks already or are totally unfit for combat, although they have "the looks". The "workshop" is not a marketplace. If some players see it like a "marletplace" then maybe they should think about why they offer their builds to the community : to help them play the game, or for their "personal exposure" which is mostly an ego thing when no money involved ? How many players care more for the ego of workshop publishers than for the relevancy of ship design ? I could say the same for players complaining about features because it impacts their own personal playstyle : are they thinking about the game as a whole, with a wide variety of player preferences, or just pushing by selfishness ? I also want to point out that for the last year, the players that populated the forums regularly were dedicated builders for the most part. They enjoy building and challenges, they even make contests out of it. And once everything will be "balanced" we may be in a better position to judge the impacts on the whole game, not just on some player's perception.
As I pointed out though, if you were already building within the limits of the CPU system, even before it was a thing, then nothing at all changes performance wise. CPU in no way optimizes anything by itself. If you were already building a ship with x amount of blocks and x amount of devices that ship will still be just as performance demanding under CPU as far as the game is concerned. If you are using less guns and less thrusters with CPU then you were using before, then sure you will see a slight performance boost simply because you are building smaller. It won't do a thing beyond that though, which I'm pretty sure is what @Scoob was asking.
I believe the official title is "Workshop". It is in effect a marketplace of ideas/designs/time invested paid for with referrals and likes. The big difference is changes in early access especially those that involve new functionality are to be expected. A shattered player base where large segments use different rules in a released game is to be avoided. Oh, so you did know what I was writing about, but wanted to make some point or other about "good" vs. "bad" reasons people might post designs. OK, whatever. Personally, I'm just happy when they do. I don't care about their psychology at all. I always posted my performance specs as part of the image previews.
"Likes" that are unrelated to ship's design relevancy to the game mean nothing apart from "looks good". And "the looks" of a ship has nothing to do with its utility. Some builds would probably require hundreds of "real play time" just to gather the materials while offering not much for a singleplayer game (the vast majority of players). How many players are interested in this ? Let me replace "shattered playerbase" by "variety of playstyles" and there are no problems with that. To the contrary of what you pretend, offering lots of possibilities to make customized scenarios, playfields, mass/volume+CPU+weapons+ recipes custom configs allows for a wide variety of server setups to please a wider range of players, and the same for single player or coop games. Lots of replayability. The contrary is what you propose : streamlined, monolithic game design that risks losing all players when changing game elements because all players do the same thing. You're judging my post in retrospective : I could not know because you did not mention it. Now you see that we may think the same partially, but that wasn't clear from the way you appeared "protective" of the actual "workshop drama"...
Taelyn mentioned specifically "performance" and what kind of ship designs caused issues, in the video with XCaliber. But besides that, since they probably plan to enforce limits that are not only cosmetic, they allowed double speed in space and 1.5 on planets, which seemed impossible to achieve a few months ago. But let's not forget that the game may not run as well today as it did last year on lower-spec machines, so for these the "performance" issue is very real, even with minimal builds, and they are de facto excluded from multiplayer.
I'm not talking about my understanding, I'm talking about what's been said previously. Things were worded in a way that made performance seem the primary reason for the CPU system from what the devs were saying in the earlier discussions, now it's become a "might also help performance". I just wonder why the emphasis changed so much. Hence my query about whether something was simply lost in translation perhaps. I even commented on this myself by questioning whether they were assigning CPU values do devices based on how much processing power said devices typically used. I also asked why one large ship would be worse than several smaller ones in a given instance. We were talking primary MP here, so if a Faction can't all be on their giant Flagship, they might bring one smaller ship each instead. These CPU limits don't really worry me, I build small, efficient, ugly and purely in survival. Making elaborate BP's in Creative isn't my thing. I am interested how this impacts others enjoyment of the game of course and whether it's a "challenge accepted" moment with the new restrictions or a just "turn it off" one. Scoob.
