Building

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by EleonGameStudios, Jun 26, 2015.

  1. Atola

    Atola Commander

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    What i find annoying about cntrl and god mode is when your trying to place plane of metal and you end up shooting 100km away- since cntrl is used both to go fast and to toggle placing a plane.
     
    #381
  2. SilvRav

    SilvRav Moderator

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    Control + shift + c/space = fast up and down
     
    #382
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  3. Neal

    Neal Rear Admiral

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    Wow, thanks!
    Didn't know that. Now i need just one more finger on my left hand, lol.
     
    #383
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  4. Irish

    Irish Ensign

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    Hello. I'm a relatively new player, but I have built a few ships now, and one thing bothers me. (Pardon me if this has been mentioned before)

    When trying to build a CV or when riding in one as a passenger, I really dislike the setup for passenger seats on a bridge. Either you simply place an empty seat, or you can attempt to make it feel like a bridge station by placing a deco station in front of the seat. Unfortunately, when that happens, and you are seated, it looks like the panel is about 10 feet in front of you. This really kills my immersion factor, and doesn't look that great on a bridge either, as it takes up two floor sections. Yes, I know it's possible to simply have multiple pilots seats, but that is an inconvenience because when getting seated, the pilot who's going to fly always has to sit down first, or everyone has to get up and then reseat after the pilot.

    What I would hope is that you folks could add a 'bridge station' style passenger seat, with some sort of display that the passenger could look at/through while riding. Another option could be a "standing" bridge station. With this option the player would enter the 'seat', but would appear to be standing at a deco instrument panel. I believe that either or both of these options would really enhance multiplayer ship enjoyment; both as a designer/builder, and as a player/passenger.
     
    #384
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  5. dogk

    dogk Ensign

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    LOVE the new creative tools in 7.0 - brilliant .

    BUT i have a GRIPE
    - the old WARP CORE was a beautiful, strange, difficult, fragile intense piece of technology as suited its function. Many a design has integrated the donut in exciting and creative ways.
    - the new warp core is just MEH - very underwhelming in concept and execution.

    Bring back the old warp core! I say, could be just a design option?...
     
    #385
  6. ion_storm

    ion_storm Captain

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    They will bring it back, as another device...
     
    #386
  7. Wayson

    Wayson Commander

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    On a construction note: I am a long time player of 7 Days To Die, albeit a game with its own host of short comings, their current 3-block-stretch option for building with blocks is a fundamental change in direction and one that I would love to see happen within EGS. Construction on any level within EGS is actually handled really well, however with a few minor alterations and additions I think it would become rather endearing. The key is that were continually receiving more and more options to augment our gaming experience, which is inherently vital. We, as the community just have to keep asking for game expansion in various arenas like construction.

    1/8, ¼, ½ and “Odd End/Corner Blocks” as finish tools would be welcomed additions…
     
    #387
  8. Green

    Green Ensign

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    On Blueprints:
    I've been a long time critic of the current print system. For one... If I build a CV without engines, and without a captains chair, I can build a fully functional CV to act as a base at level 3... Complete with air, constructor, and various other requirements. I can build it super cheap, after picking 30 flowers.

    I would like to see blueprints not locked to a level, but actually locked to a level + EVERY item unlocked in the tech tree to build that print. In addition, they should NEVER be constructed out of thin-air. I can have 20 completed blueprints, fly to a planet, and have everything on that new planet, in 10 seconds. Base, capital ship, exploratory vessels, etc. That is... strange.

    I would prefer a system of blueprints being a build GUIDE not popping out completed items at all. AKA phantom blocks, that you can lock in, OR a chest/system/thing you feed in resources, and watch it get built over the time.

    On building:
    Auto-rotate/block selection tools.

    For example, the LONG ramp, I put down 2 ramps if I mouse over the side that the 'short' ramp almost always goes, and I middle mouse click I want it to 'smart select' the blocks that 'pair' with that block I'm trying to place on.

    Same for angles and corners. You build the same corners, and fit the same pieces together over and over and over... They should snap/pop/lock. Basically...

    Angle, angle angle middle click, now I've got the corner... click to copy the old block.

    You could make building about 10 times easier with some basic SMART selection, and

    Also I've never gotten the copy tools to work, the is brutal. Middle click, ctrl-click, something... something to make that process work?
     
    #388
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  9. Wayson

    Wayson Commander

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    My hope is that the DEV's will address this at some time in the near future, but I wont sit by the Galactic Phone waiting for it to happen...
     
    #389
  10. Atola

    Atola Commander

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    The copy function IS difficult to follow where your at in the process. Only after failing many times and coming back to it over and over again do I think I understand how it works, and managed to use it successfully.

    A few things that come to mind about why its so difficult while I don't have the game open is:
    1. the use of the PASTE button has two different meanings that are similar but not the same based on where you are in the copy and paste process. Perhaps change button label such as "View copy" followed by "cement blocks" depending on the state of the operation.
    2. The "Parts" are really just a saved "Selection area". It should be labeled that way so that there is less confusion and expectation about how they operate.
    3. I think the remove selection and a different button (delete selection? I'm at work can't check...) are easily confused and at times can look like they do the same thing. Perhaps label these buttons "Delete Blocks" and "Select None" would be less confusing.

    Copy and paste is a HUGE tool improvement but the GUI needs to be better!
     
    #390
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2018
  11. LiftPizzas

    LiftPizzas Rear Admiral

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    It is rather confusing at first because there are two "levels" of paste, and you have to use tricks to bring the clipboard form one build to another. Also the "delete everything inside the selection" and "select none" are badly named. I made a video on the processes etc that lays it all out. :)

     
    #391
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  12. The Tactician[ Λ ]

    The Tactician[ Λ ] Rear Admiral

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    the current building system is good, tho limited, needs more blocks and shape types in the near future and a working cut/paste system as well as atm symitry is off by 1 block so needs a fix
     
    #392
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  13. piddlefoot

    piddlefoot Rear Admiral

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    Unlock the grid limit in SP Creative and put a sound warning in so when were building if we hit the Survival MP Max size limit it beeps so we know were going over that limitation for MP and let it be, we should be building to whatever scale our PC allows us too !
     
    #393
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  14. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    We need more building materials. (Please see my recent post under "Resources" for some comments about some ores I suggest adding, the relevant ones here are aluminum and hydrocarbons.)

    Plastic

    In the real world, a lot of manufacturing uses plastics, and this is only increasing due to 3D printing. Yet in Empyrion, plastic is only used in a few deco blocks. It should become a major building material. First it needs an abundant source - making it from biomaterial like corn is OK, but that is not the only source of hydrocarbons. We should have a "hydrocarbon" resource (sources can be oil, coal, methane, but it could be rolled into a generic resource).

    From that, plastic can be used in the following ways:
    • Introduce a "plastic" building block, which can be made into any shape. It is a weak material, about the strength that wood is now, but it is very cheap, and also fairly lightweight. Like wood, it can be used in bases, but not vehicles.
    • Allow making plastic windows. They are a cheaper (and weaker) substitute for glass windows, but they can be upgraded to glass windows in-place.
    • Introduce a "high density plastic" building block, which can be made into any shape. This is a much stronger material, not as tough as steel, but lighter and potentially strong enough to use in ships (at least in the interior) to reduce weight.
    • Introduce a "transparent acrylic" building block, which can be made into any shape. This is as strong as high density plastic but is see through. Basically, this is plexiglass/lucite. You can use it to make large transparent walls, ceilings, and floors, for many new and interesting effects.
    Wood

    Wood exists in the game already, but is unrealistically weak. I think people think wood is weak because they are thinking of woodframe construction like a house, but this is not solid wood, it is a wood frame with paneling/drywall on it. Using solid wood, or laminate wood, is quite strong and in fact would be on par with normal (unreinforced) concrete. If you don't think so, consider two scenarios:
    • Imagine making something tall and thin as a tree trunk, out of concrete. Without steel reinforcements. It would crumble. But a tree can stand.
    • Imagine taking a hammer to a 2 inch (5 cm) thick wall of concrete. That isn't very thick and you'd bust right through it. Now do the same thing to an equivalent wall of plywood (laminate wood). Good luck breaking through that.
    My point is wood is tougher than people think, and should be a stronger building material than unreinforced concrete (but certainly weaker than armored concrete). What I'm not sure is what plain old "concrete" is supposed to be in Empyrion - is it reinforced with steel? If not, definitely weaker than wood.

    I tried making a base out of wood, and it can look pretty cool but it is just too fragile, I slightly bumped my HV into a pillar and it almost completely brought down my base, because it was only like 50 HP. Crashing the HV into a large tree in real life would do severe damage to the HV.

    Aluminum

    Aluminum is used as a lighter alternative to steel in many applications. Steel is 2.5x the density of aluminum. Of course, aluminum is weaker than steel, but for the inside body of a CV or SV it is a viable material (not great for outside combat plating). And aluminum is very common.

    Having aluminum available as a building block for vehicles would be great. And while there's no reason to build a base out of it, there's no reason to prevent it either. Aluminum is a common material, and should be plentiful on most planets.

    Note that modern day aircraft and spacecraft are predominantly made of aluminum, with some steel or titanium parts where extra strength is needed.

    Carbon Fiber

    Carbon fiber is a composite material that is becoming a major component of airplane construction (and likely has a place in spacecraft construction). It is half the weight of steel, but generally stronger.

    The material itself (carbon) is very common, the cost is more about the manufacturing cost (energy and equipment). The source material here would be hydrocarbons or organic material, but it would take a lot of time/energy to produce.

    Titanium

    Titanium is as light as aluminum, but as strong as steel. That makes it an interesting potential building material. It is much rarer than aluminum or iron, but would be very valuable to build vehicles out of due to the lower density.

    This material may be redundant in purpose with carbon fiber but would add another ore to the game, if that was desirable.

    Relative Abundance

    "The mass-abundance of the nine most abundant elements in the Earth's crust is approximately:
    oxygen 46%, silicon 28%, aluminum 8.2%, iron 5.6%, calcium 4.2%,sodium 2.5%, magnesium 2.4%, potassium 2.0%, and titanium 0.61%. "

    I point this out because you will note that the most common metal found on earth is not iron, it is aluminum! (Silicon is a semi-metal). The reason that ancient civilizations used iron and bronze (copper+tin) is because those metals were easier to work with using primitive technologies. In the modern world the cheapest metal is by far aluminum which is why every soda can is made out of it.

    These distributions are a natural result of the nuclear fusion process in stars, so they are not likely to be radically different on other non-gas planets.
     
    #394
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  15. Neal

    Neal Rear Admiral

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    Amen brother.

    This's, although not at high priority afaik, is needed as soon as possible, because so many people are building things for the game at the moment and with a likely late introduction of those materials, most creations would have be to made all over again.
    I think it's safe to say that many certainly won't creat whole ships or Bases of one sinlge material alone, so a console command to replace it will not work, not even if you could select an area and replace building blocks, because it is much more complex.
    Many of us certainly will want to have a hard outer hull with a light inner structure to make a vehicle as light as possible. If plastic, aluminum, and titanium get introduced laste in the games development, basicly everything that has been created until that date will have to be remade again (except for some stationary buildings maybe).

    As insignificant and negligible as it may sound at first sight, i think it is very important to have those building materials as soon as possible in game.
     
    #395
  16. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    To prevent what players build now from being obsolete when parts of the game change ?

    Unless we get a definitive roadmap describing what is left to be done to get the game in Beta, "builds protection" is a bit premature. At the very best I would suggest that most "builds" that players don't want to see rendered obsolete by the game moving forward should focus on making "generic" ships that don't rely on a fine balance.

    If we are to get shields at any point, then all ships built around a hull-only "defense" will have to be rebuilt to include shields... or not, with possible heavy penalties. And since some additional devices might also appear later in development, all builts leaving no room for adaptation will have to be refitted... or not, etc.

    The problem may not be so much that "materials/ devices/ mechanics have to be made ASAP" to prevent builds from becoming obsolete : the problem may be to consider anything built presently as "definitive". I understand that for players who greatly favor "building" over all other aspects of the game the content of their "workshop" page may be important, but honestly they should keep in mind the fragile status of anything they make at this stage of development.

    The same reasoning can apply to "old saved games protection", and this will only help debugging major releases faster by keeping all those players wanting to salvage their games from the previous versions off the bugs report thread. We all want the game to move forward (I guess) and neither the "workshop ranks/ contents" nor the hours put in an older versions of the game should not be major concerns to stall development. My humble opinion, for what it's worth. :)
     
    #396
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2018
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  17. Neal

    Neal Rear Admiral

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    That's true.
    I hope that the game contend we have now, is only a small fraction of the final release version.
    But as long as the devs don't come up with a general roadmap we can only guess.
     
    #397
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  18. LiftPizzas

    LiftPizzas Rear Admiral

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    I've been asking for plastic blocks so we could use them to sculpt a shape (like on a ship) without significantly affecting hitpoints and mass. I think it would be important to allow these on ships, because right now the only blocks you can add are very massive and pretty much ruin the performance of a ship, meaning you are forced to choose between performance and aesthetics. Here's an example of what I mean.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
    #398
  19. jadefalcon

    jadefalcon Captain

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    Vertical flattening for making sheer cliff faces.
     
    #399
  20. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    I suggested that they distinguish between "cheap plastic" and "high density plastic", and if there's more than one level of plastic, I don't think the lowest one is suitable to withstand the forces a ship would put on its structure.

    I do think they should bring in multiple levels of plastic, as well as materials like carbon fiber. Composite and polymer materials are really the materials of the future. In this game, you can't even build a ship out of aluminum. The Boeing 747, which is old and being retired from service, is made out of more advanced hull materials than an Empyrion SV. You're confined to hull materials that were used to construct battleships in World War II. You have to balance realism with making things fun, but materials like plastic, aluminum, and titanium are common enough that most people understand their relative benefits, so I don't think introducing materials like that would over-complicate things.
     
    #400
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