I posted this in the Top 3 Suggestions thread but folks have suggested I post it as a standalone idea. Allow for downloaded workshop bases and ships to be included in the procedural generated algorithm. It would be cool to see Polaris, Talon, Kriel, etc. trying to shoot you down with community-created (or your own created) ships and bases. Not only would it add nearly unlimited variety to enemy ship and base designs, but it could even be worked into storyline (e.g. a faction stole your blueprints).
People could of course exploit this to create loot pinata ships that the other factions would spawn and you get basically free loot, but that's hardly a reason not to consider this idea.
I think it needs to be a curated selection of workshop builds, but otherwise agree that would be a good idea.
I thought this was the original intention behind them adding the POI tabs on the workshop but it just ended up being another partially implemented feature. They added in the POI CV/SV/HV/Base tabs on Steam and then never gave us a way to natively implement them into the game. They laid the groundwork for it on Steam and then just stopped and never implemented anything on the game side of things. So close....
That was more for sharing POI designs for use in scenarios. However it also would make it very easy to add them to a custom game, but it requires using a custom scenario and some file copying to do so.
I can't find the posts anymore but I swear I remember reading from one of the devs that the POI tags would hopefully eventually lead to a native way to implement them into the game. If that is just me misremembering, or a dev that spoke out of turn, I don't know. The forum search function leaves much to be desired, so I simply can't find the posts anymore. Half the time it just straight up refuses to give certain results even though you have the wording perfect in the search, and other times it refuses to show posts past a certain number of pages even though there are more. Although it would be far from the first time we were told something would happen that never does. Like when we were told in October 2019 that we were getting new workshop filters to narrow by CPU tier and efficiency. That never happened... "- Players that going to the Workshop will get new FILTER options to narrow down their search by Tier and Efficiency. " https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-11-cpu-points-and-tiers-how-does-it-work.90876/
Ahhaha. Wow. Almost a year later and still not implemented. And they "RELEASED" it. Wonder how many other promises haven't been fulfilled.
Not to digress from my original post, but I give Eleon credit and benefit of the doubt given their development team is super small. It seems all survival sandbox games are plagued with "biting off more than they can chew" with lots of promises and ideas that don't always come to fruition. That said, my group of friends and I all agree: Empyrion has made a TON of progress since we last played it 2 years ago. We compare it against 7 Days to Die (another top-tier survival sandbox game) and their development only inches along - and they have a larger dev team. Empyrion and 7DTD are still well ahead of any other survival sandbox we've tried.
