If you want a compromise, I could see assigning zero CPU costs to carbon composite blocks. They have basically zero utility as armor, anyway. They can be painted however you like, cover all the normal structural block shapes, and have very little mass. This makes them the go-to decorative greebling block.
A possible way out of the CPU dilemma is to give NPC crews a CPU value that pays for the structure. Many servers (like mine too) use e.g. 100,000 CPU per crew member with which the setting up and "populating" with NPC crew elements is meaningfully integrated into the game.
The main point of my post is that you can build CVs much, much larger than bases and this makes no sense to me. Not even a steel base could be built to the size of a CV due to the vast difference in allowable CPU points (1.3M vs. 10M). It might make sense for a larger structure (with more blocks" to cost more CPU but I see no reason why rooms built concrete would be more difficult to pressurize than rooms built with steel. For that matter I can't see any reason why hardened steel should cost more CPU than regular steel nor should reinforced concrete cost more than regular concrete in CPU.
I never said Hardened, you did. Nor did I say Armored. AND you didn't answer the question. EDIT: As for CV amounts vs Base amounts: The Devs already said they wanted you to live a Nomad lifestyle. Can't do that in a non-mobile base. Also: I never actually said I agree with them about CPU (I said it was silly, actually) numbers. And those can be altered. I'm playing Reforged Eden atm, so I wouldn't know Vanilla's last update as to exact #s.
I've been doing RG myself of late. The lack of a true medium thruster is a limiting factor that wipes out any gains from the removal of CPU from armor blocks. A sub-optronic ship with useful armaments basically has to get by on one- and two-block maneuvering thrusters. I had strip all the hardened armor, a quarter of the guns, most of the cargo capacity, and most of the agility from my cruiser just to get it to fly.
It sounds like we pretty much agree on this. I don't understand from the DEVs perspective, why one type of building material should require more CPU than another. A room built of concrete would not be more or less difficult to pressurize, power or light than any other building material so the CPU costs should be the same. As for a nomadic lifestyle, why limit ANY play-style?? If a player is happy covering the starter planet with a mega-base, why should the DEVs care - especially in a single-player game? Even on a server, these types of decisions should be up to the server owner and should be regulated with global server settings. As a game designer, I would think that more options lead to more happy players. This is why games with open-ended modding end up lasting so long and become so popular because it allows those games to cater to an even wider variety of play-styles! But for me, I like to publish my designs on the Workshop so I have to build them to "default" limitations such as keeping the CPU under the default settings so just changing the settings on my local isn't really an option. At least until some mods become a de facto "default" as Project Eden could become.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. The base in the picture has less constructor storage and so forth than the carrier next to it. And in truth, constructor's CPU isn't really that much on a T4 structure. The biggest CPU usage is on the building materials, not what's in it. That base is close to being ready to publish on Workshop so you'll be able to see for yourself. It's downright modest compared to the Leviathan super-carrier.
LOL I know, right? I've been contemplating adding on to my garage but I'm not sure my PC can handle the load. It might make my refrigerator stop working!
I don't object to a CPU system. I just have some strong disagreements with some of the CPU costs and the seemingly arbitrary and non-nonsensical limitations it places on ship and base building. It unnecessarily limits build options and play-styles. The Class system for ships and bases provides a handy way for servers to limit performance hit server resources so why ALSO use CPU?
If people are building multiple bases to get around the arbitrary limits to base size, I would think that results in an even larger hit to performance and in effect defeats the purpose of the limitations to start with? Why not just give people what they want?
CPU limits are a gameplay mechanic, not a method of throttling server load. They're meant to increase the cost of larger and more complex ships proportionally with their greater capabilities. Having multiple aligned bases in the same immediate area has its own challenges, such as each BA having its own independently-ticking base attack timer. Every choice is a trade-off. That's what makes a choice interesting. If you find CPU interesting, but the CPU costs of armor blocks are causing you trouble, switch to carbon composite. They're very cheap and provide the same structural integrity for half the CPU cost of steel. I use them for pressure hulls in all my CVs, and save actual armor blocks for the exterior. I've even built whole civilian small craft using them in lieu of steel because it's so much lighter and cheaper. If you don't want to play with CPU, just don't play with CPU. I think it's basically tennis without a net, but if you're not playing tennis because you care about being good at it, then the net was never going to be helpful to you anyway.
Would you play tennis with a net, if the net was 8 foot tall? @Alendi Istari is suggesting CPU needs tweaking, not removing. I think so as well.
Tennis with an eight foot tall net is called volleyball. It's not better or worse for it. It's just a different sport. Has OP tried making a base out of carbon composite blocks instead of concrete? They take only five CPU. Concretes take eighteen. You could make a base with over three times as many structural blocks. You could also just use cheap blocks for the interior and tougher blocks for the exterior, and still make it much larger. That's how the Leviathan does it (says so right in the description).
But, would you play tennis (with a racket) with an eight foot net? Yes you could but it would be a pain and the games would be boring. You know where I'm going with this.... You can try and change it all you want... End result is, as many have already said in other thread, CPU needs tweaking.
If anything, bases should have more relative CPU available than an equivalent ship. Bases are stationary, they can't be moved at will like a CV can, so they should be able to have at least as many devices as a CV. The reason CVs have more CPU is that they also need thrusters to move, unlike bases, so that's why. But even with needing propulsion, you can still fit far more on a CV than you can on any base. Bases have a much lower "soft limit" on devices and structural blocks than a tier-equivalent capital vessel even when you take propulsion systems into consideration, and that's just not right. The advantage that bases have is access to solar power, which if built in space close enough to a star can provide infinite power, but you give up being able to travel.
I have considered making a base out of carbon but chose not to because carbon has so few HP compared to concrete. But, aside from that, I think you have completely missed the point of this thread... namely that it should be possible to build bases much, much larger than CVs, not the other way around and that CPU is what is prohibiting this. If you disagree with the OP, I'd truly be interested in hearing your perspective on it.
Raven, if you gave CVs and bases the same number of CPU points, you should easily be able to build a much larger base since you don't need so spend CPU points on thrusters, RCS units and other CPU intensive components that bases do not need. And I'd be happy with that design decision. And also, as far as Structural Integrity goes, a ship should be subject to the same or even stricter SI rules since a ship moves and a base does not. Even in the micro-gravity of space, the stresses of acceleration would be much greater on a ship than on a base.
