Uhh - another case of coversation hijacking... seems, as if i should be more cautious. I beg your pardon.
I'd argue that my attempts have been successful (at least as far as I've gotten in converting recipes), but it is definitely the case that CV/BA blocks and devices would become substantially more expensive than their SV/HV counterparts (to be expected given the disparity in size). This in turn would require more materials to be mined for CV/BA construction, which is also a solvable problem if the range of mining speeds is increased; for example, a 5x increase in mining rate (combination of higher damage and larger volume) per mining tool tier (including both handheld and vehicle equipment) yields the few orders of magnitude higher material gathering rates that CVs and BAs would require. Another issue with mismatches between component and finished block masses and material requirements is that it makes transporting cargo an inconsistent process. Instead of just caring about mass and volume, one also has to consider the form that the mass and volume is in. It's a weird complication that is an artifact of trying to split the difference between consistent mass and volume and no mass/slot-based volume (and yielding predictably inconsistent results). Finally, doing balancing between CVs and SVs is inherently difficult (maybe impossible) if block/device masses and costs don't scale as one would expect based on their sizes and capabilities. Consistent mass and volume for everything would make this balancing a breeze, relatively speaking. And if it were done automatically (as it ought to be), future changes to recipes and/or additions of new materials would be handled almost trivially (turn the crank and new values pop out where necessary). My overall take on this is that either Empyrion needs to embrace consistent mass and volume, or it needs to step back from inventory mass and volume. Either way, we need consistency, and that just cannot be done with the current compromise. I will say that I would be sorry to see Eleon abandon inventory mass and volume, so I hope that's not the path that's chosen. Not necessarily. There are three things at play here: absolute amount of resources available, resource extraction rate, and resource requirements. If resource requirements are set to scale consistently with item/structure mass, then resource extraction rates can be scaled to allow top-tier mining equipment to yield resources fast enough to build large structures in a reasonable amount of time (very large structures would still take longer). I'd argue that absolute amount of resources available should be largely irrelevant (especially for common materials); there's no good reason to severely limit the amount of resources found on any one planet. If the only way to force players off of planets is to cause planets to run out of resources, that indicates that the right incentives aren't in place to induce players to explore and move off-world.
BA/CV blocks certainly do need to a significant increase material usage, especially steel and up. Someone else already broke down the log usage-to-volume issue earlier in this thread and I have to agree with that as well. Gameplay wise, starter bases should be wood and concrete only; these materials are more than capable of creating large protective structures that should survive starter planet base attacks. Given a team of 3-4 players playing together, wood and concrete structures are likely to be skipped altogether. But, steel and higher should be far more costly than their current values. CV's especially need to be more costly and less effective overall in terms of materials to volume/lift capabilities. Currently, the volume/mass system is unfavorably tilted against smaller ships and highly encourage the use of cargo based, compact CV's. Here again, I disagree, for the matter of mass/volume. Increasing ore yield in response to an increase in BA/CV material cost is already irrelevant due to the current output of T3 Autominers on medium or better deposits. These Autominers produce 2 full stacks or more in 12 hours, while the materials to build them are readily found by raiding structures. Time from server start to deploying T3 Autominers with a 3-4 person crew was recently 3 days with the Alpha 10 release. Increasing them further simply increases the mass/volume required to collect ore, further putting the emphasis on cheap CV's due to their insanely higher ratio of lift. Increasing ore yield in response to an increase in demand only furthers the use of CV's and continues to diminish the need for SV's; in other words, it further unbalances the game. And yet, this too is irrelevant considering the drop rate for Steel and Hardened Steel BA/CV blocks in containers. A site above level 2-3 typically seems to yield 300ish of these blocks. Meaning I can raid 4 sites and comfortably make a wide range of bases or CV's. Absolutely. But it must also take into consideration the lift capabilities and cargo sizes for the different classes of ships as well or the system will continue to fail.
Yes, naturally, thrusters need to be handled consistently on all ships, and of course none of this other balancing works if that isn't fixed at the same time. I'm frankly not concerned with loot drop rates at this point, by which I mean that's something that can (and probably should) be done at the end, after everything else is balanced. The reason is that looting (in my view at least) is an alternative path to mining, and until you have resource collection rates from mining sorted out, there's no point in trying too hard to sort out loot. Here's the setup I'm working off of in my mind: iron ore: 1 L, 5.18 kg iron ingot: 0.5 L, 3.937 kg, 2 ore -> 2 iron ingots (1 ore per ingot) steel plate: 0.05 L, 0.934 kg, 1 iron ingot -> 10 steel plates (0.1 ore per plate) small steel block: 0.6 L, 4.147 kg, 12 steel plates -> 1 small steel block (1.2 ore per block) large steel block: 38.4 L, 302.362 kg, 768 steel plates -> 1 large steel block (76.8 ore per block) Here, two (999) stacks of ore per 12 hours is the equivalent of 52 large steel blocks per day, which isn't exactly an overwhelming output when you need hundreds of blocks for even a relatively small CV. In any case, T3 autominers are top-tier mining tech anyway, so one would expect them to ease resource collection for large projects. The fact that they can be rushed into service under the right circumstances shouldn't have any bearing on balancing mining speeds; if it's a problem that they can be acquired so easily/quickly, then that's what should be changed, not how they're balanced with regard to other mining tech.
Recently seen a CV shuttle made with less than 15 blocks. 8MN of lift and 5.6kSU of storage with no warp capability. It's cargo and lift capacity have effectively removed the need for SVs from the game and you can build almost 4 of them in a day. My point is, that balancing isn't something to be done from a specific point of view. It should be done with a list of final goals in mind; goals which are about how the developers intend for the game to be played and the roles the various classes of ships and structures should fill.
All i can say, i don't like the way it is going. When mass and weight increases and we are talking about realistic weight we end up building like in SE, welding to gether blocks bit by bit because a whole block can not be lifted by a person. Please no. I am on the take that this game needs compromises in order to become and stay enjoyable fun. And not become some kind of construction workers work with needing spreadsheets to calculate everything in advance. I already don't like the idea of a possibility of being stranded on a planet just because of its gravity being so high and the plant doesn't have the resources to build additional thrusters. I would like a system in where you build (not engineer) a vessel they way you want it. You have to make tradeoffs in certain ways like what purpose does it serve what kind of devices you want it to have. But it should alwaxs be able to go everyway in the galaxy no matter what. In high gravity it should use more fuel, accelerate slower but never stay on the ground as long as you have fuel. I think it is more acceptable and people can get a grip onto being strabded because of having no fuel, rather than their ship design can not take of because they need to slap on additional thrusters. Many players of a game don't know physics to that depth to know whats going on or they simply don't care because it is a game they play to have fun. And if they have fuel but can not take of a planet, they will blame it on "bad game mechanics". There are physics simulations and engineering games out there already, so EGS doesn't need to become one too. And since the PvE threats in EGS are worked out way more than in games like SE for example, it doesn't need the "you failed at engineering so game over" type of threat. Mass and volume should have impact on a vessels behavior and storage capacity forcung the player to make choices. But they should not prevent a vessel from taking of an fly at all. That creates more frustration than fun moments.
Devices are substantially more complicated than just steel blocks, and a 15 block CV is going to be basically made of devices (6 thrusters, 1 cockpit, 1 fuel tank, 1 generator, 1 core, 1 container controller). In any case, my formulation, a CV directional thruster puts out 336 kN, and has a mass of 915 kg. Either the balancing is done in a consistent manner or you won't get consistent results. Ultimately that's what Eleon has to decide. As far as ship roles are concerned, I'd argue that the artificial divisions between ship types is a big part of the issue, and something that makes the balancing considerably harder, and the fact that generalist ships are still pretty much the best choice most of the time just reinforces the artificial divisions (because otherwise you'd simply cram all special devices into one ship). Much better would be for ship roles to occur naturally due to specialization (which is possible under a system that makes it infeasible to cram every special device onto one ship and still have adequate performance). It's hard to get completely stuck on a planet, though, particularly with current thruster stats. Planets with super-high gravity should be quite rare anyway (anything above 2g is going to be hard to walk around on). Otherwise, I keep coming back to the same point I keep having to repeat: players always have the option of dropping stuff out of their inventories if they've overloaded their ship and it can't take off. And if their ship gets shot up before they can clear out enough cargo, then it's just another case of greed kills (also true when players rush into POIs and get slaughtered by clever defenses). I'm not saying that the game UI shouldn't help players detect potential issues ahead of time (because it absolutely should). But, I am asserting that the idea of "if you push it and it doesn't move, then either you have to push harder or make it lighter" is something that I think all players can work with without much trouble. I still think the box of books analogy captures this perfectly: if a box of books is too heavy for you to pick up, then you either remove books from the box and come back for them, or you get someone to help you lift the box. Also, as far as calculations are concerned, the game does all of the relevant calculations for you anyway, and, by this point, players are used to checking the stats page for acceleration and turning rates. A cargo simulator dropdown menu would be a great addition, and if it were set to a midrange item (iron ore, for instance) by default, then players would automatically have an idea of the lifting capacity of their ship without having to do anything extra (it'd be factored into the displayed acceleration and turning rates). So, I guess I'm saying that I fundamentally disagree that the possibility of ships not being able to take off should be eliminated.
This doesn't take into account the big thing: people. People are going to optimize their gameplay based on how they like to play and what gives the greatest returns on their perceived investment. Right now, the volume/mass mechanic is optimized heavily towards CV only gameplay. CV's are clearly meant as force multipliers, ships that carry other ships around and generally provide heavy cover fire creating safe spaces. Secondarily, CV's might be specialized as cargo haulers but, this shouldn't mean that they should easily be able to do both. Mass provides the general mechanic necessary to prevent CV's from becoming both landing capable ship carrier and ground-to-space cargo transport; if a thruster rebalance is done that sees CV thrust dropped significantly. I cant say that I see a Small CV thruster putting out a mere 336kN of thrust is a reasonable measure. The Falcon Heavy puts out 22MN of thrust at sea level (lifting a meager 64 tons to orbit btw); by comparison, the game's fictional thrusters should be able to put out vastly more thrust. Limiting the small CV thruster to less than half a MN when an XXL Jet thruster puts out 1.33MN feels a bit harsh for gameplay. If, perhaps, Eleon was willing to add a calculation to the thruster equations that would give different values depending on atmosphere, then this would make much more sense. Especially if the SV Jet engines were the most efficient ground-to-orbit engine, with regular thrusters (SV Small and Medium included) being optimized for space. Given this possible arrangement, we would see SV's properly splitting the difference between the ground only HV and what should really be a far less maneuverable CV. CV's could still land given enough thrust but, reducing how much thrust they get overall and making them less optimal in atmosphere should see their use as flying fortresses lessened. Add the mass of carried ships into the equation and hopefully only especially large ships could carry both ships and excessive cargo, which is ok since properly landing such ships would likely only be possible over water. Add material costs to BA/CV blocks and we have a winner. This is why I said we can't have this conversation without also talking about balancing thrust. It just has to happen at the same time as long as we are talking about MASS. Now, here is a conversation that can happen after things are a bit more figured out. Right now, no, I cannot agree with you completely on just dropping things. This just comes right back to the issue of: Why do Combat Steel blocks take four times the amount of cargo room as Steel Blocks? Combat Steel blocks take up 60SU of space while their materials takes up 7.4SU; thats 12% the amount of space the completed block uses! And its only half the amount of space that a completed BA/CV Steel block takes! What happens when I am working on building things? What happens when I am tearing down enemy structures? Do I leave it? I only get 3 minutes because if it doesn't fit it get automatically dropped and goes poof! And those drop containers are known to glitch through the ground and then poof its gone anyways! No. Players shouldn't be that inconvenienced by this system. Mass/Volume should ask the player to make rational choices, ones that matter. No mechanic should punish for normal gameplay, which is how it currently works because of the arbitrary volume stats. The aim is clearly to have the player make a choice between holding 125 SV blocks and a more rational number like 16 or 30 Combat Steel BA/CV blocks. We can see the intent and are currently being harmed by the implementation.
I wanted to make sure I came back and addressed the mass portion of this because @geostar1024 has it right on the mass side of having things that are too heavy for your ship. A tiny SV just shouldn't be able to lift a CV XL Thruster. Damn thing weighs 433 tons under the current stats and lets be real, even re-balancing the mass of all the object, a small SV fighter just shouldn't have the lifting capability. So yeah, you take your tiny ship to a planet with high gravity, you might struggle. You take your tiny ship and fill it with BA/CV sized loot, maybe you don't take off. It was fun as hell when it happened to us btw, we ran an Unknown Artifact floating in the sky. Filled our ships to volume capacity and tried to take off. Couldn't go up, finally went straight, kinda. Fell right into the water and couldn't go anywhere, and all of us did similar variations of this trying to move our ships. One flipped over right there on the spot and couldnt move, one crashed into a forest, and one got going but had to stay pointed 70 degrees up into the air lmfao. Absolute blast having mass turned on.
There seems to be a lot of M/V problems stemming from problems storing blocks. Specifically armor blocks, concrete blocks, just... blocks in general. For which, I had an idea: Remove the blocks entirely from survival. No more compressed mass, no more house-sized concrete cubes in your pocket. Instead, blocks are replaced with a tool (in survival, not creative) not unlike the Texture and Color Tool. This tool, when right clicked opens up a the shape menu like we have now (with material choice tab); that's used to place the blocks from components in the player's inventory. Block costs now scale with shape instead of costing a full cube. That means blocks can be more expensive or cheaper based on their shape, so more realistic values can be achieved (e.g. A Steel Cube L costs... let's say 32 steel plates, while a slope costs 16 steel plates) without ruining gameplay for the less "enthusiastic" players. Looting POIs also becomes easier, since components are easier to carry than full blocks and have more uses than just getting a stack of Hardened Steel Block-Ls. Blocks are constructed on-site, preferably with a self-assembling animation. The compressed mass/volume of building blocks is now no longer an issue; The wastefulness of expending a full block's worth of steel for a tiny metal cap is alleviated; and now players no longer need to deal with that terrible inventory-connection UI for placing blocks.
inb4 "I don't want to weld blocks like in SE" comments . . . In any case, I think this could work. The obvious difference between this and what SE does is that the welding is done implicitly, which fits Empyrion's level of abstraction. EDIT: The one downside could be that now you have large piles of components sitting in inventories. However, the player's inventory is so small anyway that this shouldn't be a huge issue. An upside would be that repairs could be done in a more proportional manner, by streaming in the fraction of materials needed to restore the missing HP. Repairing ships with the repair bay would then actually require a variety of materials besides iron (if not just armor blocks were being repaired). Also, it's generally the case for most things that the final assembly step is the fast step (compared to resource extraction and processing, and making intermediate components).
I'd like to point out that modern IRL rockets are mostly fuel, and that their dynamics are governed entirely by conservation of momentum (the rocket equation, in particular) and energy. Empyrion thrusters don't conserve energy, so any comparisons to IRL rockets aren't going to yield useful results. The most basic SV right now can almost lift what the FH can lift while being mostly cargo and consuming very little fuel. Nope, balancing thrust can be done after balancing mass and volume. Once we know the proper mass of everything, then we can decide how hard we want it to be to move things. IRL, that's determined by physics for us (via conservation of energy), but it's a free parameter in Empyrion. And getting the proper mass (and stored volume) of things depends entirely on deciding how much of each raw material we want going into each object (whose densities we can pick as close to their real values as possible since there's no good reason not to); this process is anchored by the requirement that players be able to carry certain items (like weapons), which sets an acceptable mass range for many components. Once we know how much material goes into all items, we can also set mining rates to fair values.
Issue is we NEED a thruster update. Im playing since a7, and eversimce there were requests to improve hvsv thrusters.. With the mass/volume 'active', this has become even more urgent. @Hummel-o-War mentiomed an incoming thruster update, im eager 'to see' it! I like the idea of building blocks from components in survival, as it fits the different size, hp and mat costs. This would also help to have a distinct cost between sv and cv blocks rather than '1 steel ingot per block'. Therefor, in the long run, will help to get a consistend, playable, weigtht system. IMO.. Eleon should make: 1 cv 1 sv 1 hv which resembles what they want for this games future, so we (builders) could 'orient' ourselfs at, eventhough the values wouldnt be in place just yet. Specialy in regards to CPU im very curious what and how they'd build vessels - that are mv compliant as well. Becuase if only a handfull of ppl is able to make ships that fit all these reqs.... the game WILL die, because all the creativity is gone. 3 ppl are never as creative as thousends.. eventhough they might build 'better'. Also, we cannot talk about mass volume without talking about cpu as well.. As i mentioned in other places, one cannot have a hvsv with 32k storage AND enough thrust to lift off a 1g planet while staying inside the (current) cpu limit. Or is one not supposed to get that much storage for hvsv, then why is the max there? By that I question wether or not we should be able to build meaningfull transporter sv's that are mv capable. Tbh.. with 30m long svs, i have issues to park them in my 30m long (starter) cv...
I agree completely that the ingredients need to make sense with the mass of the final products, 1000kg is not that far off for a steel block in fact its probably under mass by a good amount since a 1 m^3 block of mild steel has a mass of around 7500 kg, though we can assume the interior isn't solid and is comprised of various supports etc rather than solid steel. The steel blocks seem to be about 5 ft square based on the size of people to the blocks. As to how much a ship should be able to light a blackhawk helicopter has a max takeoff of around 10,000 kg. As we are dealing with thrusters and much more futuristic tech I could see an SV easily being able to list 5 times that amount with a somewhat normal amount of engines, this includes the mass of the vehicle itself. I have not tested, but the lift should also be effected by the gravity of the planet you are on with those numbers being a multiplier of 1 for earth standard gravity. I would start with figuring out a basic mass for each base ore and ingot based on real world weight and volume and then use Moonsugars suggestion for the recipes and ingredient determining the mass of the final object with it being the ingredient total mass times 0.9 as some material is usually wasted in making a final product. While we dont want to greatly increase the amount of ore used to make each component for example 50 steel plates for one cv steel block, the Ingots in empyrion could be larger mass and volume then what is used standard today or more ignots could be required for one plate with more coming from a single piece of ore to maintain balance. The made up elements could be equated to a real world counterpart for example sathium should be similar to the additional weight used to make hardenable steel or more dense steel plates.
CV/BA blocks are 2m on a side; a solid block of steel with those dimensions would be ~62 tons. A CV/BA steel block with a mass of 1 ton would be hollow with solid walls that were just 6 mm thick. Alternatively, it could have thicker aerogel-like walls. But, in any case, there's just not a lot of material in most Empyrion blocks. Having been involved in discussions surrounding mass loss in recipes in the past, I think I've come around to the idea that it would be an ok abstraction to not have mass loss for most recipes. The main exception would be ore refining, as there one could expect a large changes in mass (reducing oxides, for example), and it would be a way to make rarer materials harder to acquire (you'd have to mine more ore to get the same mass of refined material compared to more common materials). However, I disagree that we don't want to increase the amount of ore to make certain components. CV/BA blocks should require 64x the materials of the equivalent SV/HV block; otherwise things just don't work (which is the current situation, wherein the factor seems to be 10x in most cases). Indeed. Tungsten is a good proxy for sathium, for example.
Having worked with literally tons of steel, and other materials for many years. Figuring out ways to move it, how to set it up, where to make the changes to it that are needed, I can tell you one thing for certain, that's a job, not a game. EGS is supposed to be a game. Which implies, that it should at some point be fun, not another job you have to do.
We already have the tools in-game to work with large amounts of materials, in the form of the logistics system and modular cargo containers. It's true, however, that the tie-in to the signal logic system for setting up automated production is still missing, which would make things considerably nicer. To me, it seems like managing flows of resources is a core aspect of a survival game. As you progress, the types and amounts of resources may change, but fundamentally you're always going out to acquire more resources to process and apply to your survival. In the process, you solve a series of puzzles related to logistics and combat (the essence of a survival game, I'd argue).
True, but you seemed to be arguing for less control since in real life a steel cube would weight 62 tons. I see this "in real life" argument all time. Just pointing out that EGS is "supposed" to be a game. A game based in the far future no less, and people constantly talk about how real life isn't like that. To all those who say this, I say it's a game, get a grip.
What I'm actually arguing for is self-consistency. We don't need to be using solid-density armor blocks (though that would be an interesting experiment in its own right, especially with the introduction of "shields"); what we need is for blocks to consume resources proportional to their size. Ultimately, you can handwave any explanation you want for why blocks fall in a certain density range (mechanically, it would be determined by the recipe and the stats of the components, all the way back to the raw materials); but whatever it turns out to be, it needs to scale consistently. A CV/BA armor block of a particular type needs to consume 64x more resources than an SV/HV armor block of the same type; if you build an SV and a CV of the same absolute dimensions, they should both have similar performance (bonuses for larger thrusters notwithstanding). This is the thing that's missing right now, and why the whole mass/volume system feels like a mess.
I agree, but if the devs decide to make CVs respond like the HVs current do, it's pretty much game over.
