Flux Coils were already pretty easy to come by as they only required Neodymium and Sathium. Power Coils are the real production halter. What we are seeing currently is that the progression spikes, especially in multiplayer, in a way that Neodymium and Sathium can be safely bypassed. Requiring Flux Coils in motors is most likely to cut ship sizes in favor of focusing on the next tier. This is proper progression, maintaining smaller ships in order to go out and get materials for bigger ones. The trade off here is to cut motors from directional thrusters. This is consistent with technology such as a Plasma Thruster and in game play it limits the use of bigger engines in the beginning. Also reduced in directional thrusters should be power consumption and output. With the new flight mechanics, a directional thruster placed far enough off axis and CoM should still provide plenty of maneuverability but, not strafing capability.
What we really need is more generic components. We're both trying to fit too many incompatible components into different components and devices that they don't belong because there's not enough lee-way in the components available to choose from. Copper Wire, Gold Wire, Electromagnets, Steel Tubes, Cables, Superconductors, Heat Sinks, Pistons, Thruster Components, Turbine Assemblies, Machine Frames, etc... Right now we have a lot of oddly specific components that don't correspond to anything, letalone spaceship parts. We get Carbon Nanotubes, that in reality are a supermaterial that massively outperforms anything we have in the game in both conductivity, strength and mass. For some reason we get oscillators, which in most cases would be classed as "Electronics" and certainly don't need their own item. Flux coils would indeed go into motors, but motors are earlygame and used in everything from doors to constructors and flux coils are mid-game which splits apart the devs' intended progression.
Agree, but the trick is that we should not artificially inflate component count just for having them. New components need to be somewhat specific AND broad enough. Like gold wire can be used in crafting of armor suits and boosters etc. Having a component that is only ever used in one device, is not a good addition imho. And, possibly there needs to be a progression like: cables for t1 devices, electronics for t2, adv. Electronics for t3 devices. This needs to correspond with devices available for such a progression (like Constructor base > large > advanced)
Higher tiers of components works, but some of the older unnecessary ones need to be either renamed or phased out. The Motorbike Construction Kit should never have existed since its sole function is an intermediary step. At no point in time does the player ever touch or handle the item since it's consumed as soon as it's crafted. Nanotubes > Steel Tube. Oscillator > Advanced Electronics Flux Coil > Electromagnetic Coil
I agree to some of this, absolutely, when paired with your other statement about it: Im not really seeing the point in some of the examples but, im just taking those at face value. I would take heat sinks and superconductors though! Wire isnt needed, its simple enough to say we make it on demand from the ingots. Electromagnet = Flux Coil, Steel Tube = Nanotubes, Cables = Optical Fiber, Mech Components could = almost anything. Take motors out of thrusters but retain them for jets, add heat sinks and superconductors as the big components to thruster [seriously look up that RL plasma thruster concept]. @Hummel-o-War Glad to have you in this part of the convo and Happy Holidays! As for some proper progression, here's what I've been doing in my balancing concept: Spoiler: Tier 0 Ingots Planks/Fiber [Fiber is really kinda a raw material treated as a T0] Stone Dust / Cement [Stone Dust is mostly an unnecessary progression] Plastics Spoiler: Tier 1 Steel Plate (Carbon Steel) Glass Plate Nanotubes Optical Fiber Electronics Spoiler: Tier 2 Hardened Steel [Seen as similar to Aluminum-Steel Alloy] Mechanical Component [Almost should be a Tier 1] Colbalt-Alloy Oscillator Flux Coil Spoiler: Tier 3 Computers Capacitor Motor Erestrum Gel Zascosium Alloy Spoiler: Tier 4 Power Coil Energy Matrix Yes, this means completely reworking all templates, which really needs done anyways. The idea behind this progression is that everything uses stuff from the tier before it and nothing but tier 1 uses t1 ingots, t2 requires t2 ingots, t3 requires t3 ingots, and t4 requires nothing but other components. Can it be tweaked? Absolutely, thats why I am posting it, to get feedback. Hoping we can move this entire thread away from complaining and on to looking at what would a good balance look like. Absolutely willing to start a new thread for game balancing and custom config but, @Hummel-o-War those always get better attention when you start them.
Within the silent time of the Year...if you can call Silvester a silent time.. thoughts about Weight of things are re-occurring. Focused on Large and/or Advanced Constructors they are ridiculous HEAVY. I looked up the weight of Steel...our good constructors cover a space of 8 Blocks. Even if 1m³ Steel would only be 1x1x1m (not 2x2x2) the weight of 8 m³ of Steel would be about 63 tons. Same do we face here BUT our Constructors present themselves not as Steel-Only Blocks but rather a combination of mechanical devices. My suggestion would be 1 - 3/10th of the current weight make them Devices again and not compact Steel Blocks...sidenote...even 8 Blocks of Steel are weighing less than one Constructor.
You think that's bad? You should measure a CV XL Thruster. 442 metric tons or the mass of two Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built. Yes, that's right. Those CV thrusters weigh as much as two of these (228T each). Realistically, a constructor isn't much different from a highly-advanced 3D printer, so it would be lightweight, fragile and most assuredly Hollow. You'd be lucky for it to be over 2 metric tons.
@Vermillion had to start with the earlier stuff before jumping on Thruster. 228.000tons or 228ktons are a tiny little bit more than 442tons. Wouldn't you agree?
On closer inspection we're both wrong. 228,081 gross tons empty. The actual mass, which is apparently so unimportant on cruise ships that they don't even measure it and don't put in anywhere is estimated at 100,000 tons. My bad. still, 442 tons is heavier than a Saturn V rocket (empty) at 163T. Though not if you include fuel though (2,970T). Probably a better comparison since a Saturn V is about 25x the size of an XL thruster.
I'm certainly in favor of more components - I'm also very much in favor of adding some additional ores - Silver, Nickle and Aluminum. Silver and Nickle would be great for components, sub-components and a few new things: Nickle, along with Iron, is already used in applications where heat-resistance is a must. See: https://www.nickelinstitute.org/about-nickel/nickel-alloys/ So I could see this being added to thruster recipes for anything bigger than a medium thruster. Silver is highly prized for its electroconductivity - much higher than Gold, and would be a great material for use in: CPU Extenders, Armor Modules, and for specialized Sub-Components we don't yet have, for creating other things. Finally... Aluminum... Foremost, as a light-weight block material, stronger than carbon blocks, lighter than steel blocks. Amazing stuff for HV's and SV's. I might even go so far as to recommend replacing the 8 blocks surrounding HV and SV Cores in the HV and SV Starter block with Aluminum, rather than steel. Yes, this does mean more resources to add to playfields, and more resources for players to collect, hoard, fight over, trade, beg for - whatever. These are actually good things. Nickle should be an incredibly common ore, right along with Iron, Silicon and Copper, and found pretty much anywhere. Silver should be a bit more scarce, less so than gold, more common than Erestrum or Zascosium, perhaps somewhere between Cobalt and Neodymium. Aluminum... I would say should be right about on par with Cobalt or Sathium. Finally, there is one more sub-component, that can go hand-in-hand with some more new blocks: Ceramic Oh, where or where could we get this? I can think of two great sources, already in the game - Skeletal Remains and those weird, white coral clusters that turn up in nearly every drop of water everywhere. What would we want it for? It's commonly used where heat-resistance and light weight are necessary, like, hmm.. heat-shielding for space-craft re-entering the atmosphere. Applications could include: A full set of Ceramic Blocks - tougher than carbon, not as tough as aluminum, except where laser fire is concerned. Give these a nice, low DamageMultiplier when struck by laser fire, and you've got both a neat, new block AND some ship-building strategy all in one. Armor Modules Other Items that Exist already that We Can't Craft. Other Items that Don't Yet Exist, that We Can't Craft, but should. Is that both Specific and Broad enough?
Wood - 3 SU Concrete - 10 SU Armored Concrete - 36SU Steel L - 15SU Hardened Steel L - 30 SU Combat Steel L - 60Su ... etc They are all apparently 2m x 2m x 2m (I understand that 2m is the dimension of a large 1U large block) - ie volume = 8. How the hell can a bunch of things that are the same dimensions have difference 'volume' metrics? You already have a mass metric so you dont need to double account block in this manner unless your inventory system is fundamentally flawed. I suggest that not only is this utterly non-intuitive for us end users, it is going to be hell for you to maintain as you are not following the simple development rule of calling stuff what it actually is, so new hires will end up misunderstanding this as well and implementing buggy and/or hard to maintain code because their assumptions based on what the thing is called (based upon common understanding of the dictionary definition of 'volume' in respect to a thing that has dimensions in 3d space) will also be wrong. I wonder also if you are already suffering from this (accidental mass squared effect) given the sudden transition from being able to fly fine and an SV being unmovable due to being over weight. I haven't even got into the also broken mechanics with respect to how mass impacts top speed in scenario where it just should not.
If they were realistically sized, you wouldn't be able to play the game since you wouldn't be able to fit anything in your backpack. The assumption is that the blocks take up different sizes because they're being unpacked into a kit-set like state to better fit in your backpack. A steel block has less components than a combat steel block, so takes up less space when packed up.
I don't think components have much if any correlation beyond 'more' or 'less' that something else (if that). Actually looking into a sampling of masses involved (components and products), it seems like this lot may as well be just a bunch of random numbers. Suggesting these are collapsed kits maybe have some merit as the guess of an outsider, but I hardly think you are in a position to be making such authoritatively stated responses worded as indisputable fact or were you in the team meetings that decided all this?
Wow, so hostile. Notice how I said "assumption"? I'm in as good a position as any to make a guess. The only difference is that my guess fits the facts, instead of being angry that the facts won't adhere to my guess.
I take exception to people presenting what is their opinion as indisputable fact. If you had said, I think, I believe or whatever, then great, but you didn't and instead tried to present as fact, which is basically lying and you got called out for it. Ignoring it wont change anything, a kick in the nuts might
No. You are wrong in every single account. I stated only two facts. 1: With realistic volume, you would not be able to fit a block into your backpack. By your own "idea" you store a whole block as-is in your backpack. Which would be 8000 liters per large block (2m*2m*2m). That is an indisputable fact. To deny that is to deny the content of your own post. 2: A Combat Steel Block has more components than a Steel Block. This is also an indisputable fact, because that's exactly the component ratio of a steel block to combat steel block. The remaining comment in my post clearly listed it as an assumption. Not a fact. Considering you used the same word in the same way in your post, there is no possible way to declare my post as being false without declaring yourself a liar by the same token. What's actually going on here is that you are unhappy that my explanation makes sense and you can't fault it. You can't even fault my post except to state that i'm somehow lying despite a step-by-step breakdown of the 3 points I made in my post; two are facts with references and citations to back them up, the other is a clearly worded assumption of my view that fits the numbers presented in opposition of your own assumption which does not. So please, quote me in my post without excisions on where i'm lying and I shall recant if you can prove it.
Having played with the system a bit in survival overall I'm quite happy with it, but I'd like to see a few changes. 1) The default capacity of old style blocks is too small by a factor of at least 4 or 5. My old SV/HV designs fit 250 su, which is crazy considering the player can carry 600. 2) I don't like that storage blocks are used as walls. I'd much prefer that the storage blocks that look like storage can be merged with blocks they touch the way the extension blocks merge to a controller. A hauler with a massive capacity should need to have a room full of boxes and shipping containers. 3) I'd like warning if you're trying to pick up a block with the multitool that can't fit in your inventory. I can't tell you how many large thrusters I've had fall to the ground and disappear before I could expand my cargo enough to pick them up. Or at least extend the drop box duration from 3 mins to 10 or 15. 4) No where in the keybinds could I find that F4 was the logistics I had to figure it out by searching the forums. This should be more clear and rebindable.
I believe the player's limits are so you can play the game. You wouldn't be able to carry anything with a realistic backpack size. Cargo containers have their realistic volume though (not including the block itself). Each block is exactly 125L (SU) of volume.
