Needs attention Feedback on Volume / Mass balancing values

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by Hummel-o-War, Jun 5, 2019.

  1. Vermillion

    Vermillion Rear Admiral

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    @cgw 2 If you want more realism than Empyrion in a space building game, you'd be better off with Space Engineers. Same sort of game, less survival aspects, more physics, less freedom. But don't come in here and demand that Empyrion be more like KSP when these two games share nothing in common.
     
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  2. Fractalite

    Fractalite Rear Admiral

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    Mr. CGW, please refrain from these condemnation/insulting tirades; you are missing the point. Players around the world still play the ever-loving bannanas out of minecraft and that is not even remotely realistic. I myself am keeping an eye out for the next baldurs gate and I am pretttty sure we do not have Illithids in the real world(...at least I hope not...)

    Emyprions strength is precisely that it sits inbetween a game like Minecraft and a game like Kerbel. Frankly, even mighty KSP still pales in comparison with Nasa simulators and some of the games/modelers I have seen bouncing around college campuses(my cousin just finished a degree in physics from the university of Chicago and has a VERY simple game that is just near ascii basic characters and deals with launching/sending objects into orbit.) We can build in multiple block shapes and the real kicker is that the textures are more mature but also a touch fantastic. This is just supposed to be a fun game. :)

    Reaching for more physics is cute and I know there are many on the internet/around the world that think of physics and the sciences like a pseudo-culture, but it is not what this game is trying to do. Do we have giant plasma cannons in the world as we know it? Or course not. If you have a criticism that the "balance" of some physics vs some sci fi is not being achieved or is being mucked with, that would be one thing, but try to refrain from trying to push this game too far into a niche.
     
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  3. StyleBBQ

    StyleBBQ Captain

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    @Fractalite & others have made some good points.
    And I'll admit that coming to EGS from Space Engineers almost certainly made the Magic Mass bits much more noticable to me.
    Also I like _some_ grind in the mining and building, makes it feel like I've accomplished something compared to Creative mode.
    And while I'm not a coder, I do scrip & automate a lot of repetitive tasks and if Eleon had a system with just a couple of 'knobs', instead of mainly manual entry, I do think that could be a good thing.

    So how about a system that leveraged a couple of materials for 'inflation' aka the 'Magic Mass' part?
    Every Carbon Ingot that massed 1 kilo would add 10 kilos to a block or device, or 5 kg, or 20 kg? Have that value be a setable option.
    Multiple ways to do that, could be via Ores to Ingots, or Ingots to 'parts', etc.
    (pretty sure I've got some logic backwards here somewhere...fuzzy brain)
    Though personally if the recipes stayed constant that would make the most sense to me.

    Advantages would be that players would have another 'difficulty' dial.
    Eleon would still be able to decide the real 'expense'; how many Common/Scarce/Rare Ingots, Components.
    And can still 'set' the As-Built-Mass, that the physics works with, as needed for balance, while accounting for it all. No slight of hand needed.

    Finally, I get that there are a lot of folks that this just isn't an issue to at all. And they don't want it to become one either. I fully support that. Though I'll ask that they consider that, to some, this may be a very squeaky wheel. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that an elegant & cheap solution that satisfies all is found and implemented at some point. :cool:
     
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  4. cgw 2

    cgw 2 Commander

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    You shouldn't follow an example from the game Space Engineers. It is an unsuccessful game.
    EGS is better. (more content.). In SE there is no physics.
    Destruction of blocks is not a physics and graphics. the utter unnecessary nonsense.
    From KSP it should be added physics to EGS. More from KSP there is nothing to take.
    Under physics. I understand it
    [​IMG]
    In each game there is the best and the inferior.
    It is worth taking the best from all games.
    What to become the best.
     
    #164
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2019
  5. jmcburn

    jmcburn Rear Admiral

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    What are you talking about??

    SE is JUST physics. That's what I hate about it and that's why I play EGS. I don't want realistic physics in a game. Some simple physics is ok, but I don't want a spaceship simulator. It still needs to be fun and not something I get headaches from when playing.

    /jmc
     
    #165
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  6. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    I have been playing games since the first pong games on the 2-knobs plasting thing plugged in a TV. I saw all kinds of physics and "magic" and I don't need to come from Space Engineers to notice physics problems in a game, and I guess it's the same for lots of players. Sprite-based rpg had an "encumbrance" system a long time ago, and loot-based games sometimes suffered from this, and sometimes it supported the "logic" of the game.

    I know you speak for yourself, just so you don't misinterpret my reply here. First, don't forget that we are in a "condensed" version of the game, with starter and endgame loot just a few clics apart on the same playfield. That may change when they "scale up" everything, and as usual some "experienced" players will complain that they can't have their candy easily like before. And even with that in mind, we have to keep reminding ourselves that new players struggle with the very basics of easy game start. And... not all players that are not fond of realistic physics in a game come from "creative".

    This can come later with mods I guess. Here's an idea: instead of "grinding" over and over the same content for months, why don't you take on a few free coding tutorials on the web ? It's not as difficult as most people would think, and once the general concepts are understood it becomes quite addictive!

    I really think that a first pass on the subject would be to give reasonable mass to the whole list of items and objects, minus the ones we know will stack up to large numbers. We don't carry 999 constructors in our backpacks, but lots of ammo can add up mass that goes unnoticed. For the "obvious" and mandatory devices, have reasonable masses that are intuitive for the noobs like mass/ density of water (1000kg/m3) or steel/promethium (~8000kg/m3) or even uranium (~19000kg/m3).

    One example among many others : the fuel tanks.


    Fuel Tank (T2).png

    This can of fuel is 2x2x4 meters, for 16 cubic meters. If we use water density then we're around 16 tons, round it to 20 for the "structural" part. We can see "675 CPU" which makes me wonder what kind of tasks such a can needs to prform to require so much CPU power... Fuel capacity of 2700, a promethium fuelpack is 8kg/ 30 fuel units, so the tank contains 90 prom. packs, but 90 x 8 kg = 720 kg. Where is the remaining 74 280 kg of the T2 fuel tank? And even if we take promethium mass, we can't say that if fills the whole 16 m3 : the container also has mass. With promy, the T2 tank should weight in at ~120 tons, + the container. Should all fuel packs be heavier to follow this ?

    So, to make a long story short, there is absolutely no consistency between masses, volumes, power usage and you name it, for all ingredients and objects, with the odd exception.

    So a 1st pass would be to AT LEAST get most of these values coherent and "intuitive", and easier to balance after by playing with other values. So in that, I guess I agree with @geostar1024 : to rely more on "real world values", because most masses are placeholder numbers which often make no sense. There are whole groups of blocks of greatly varying sizes that share the same mass, like NPCs at 1 kg or all medic items at 100g.



    I can't figure that some players would like "realistic physics" with completely arbitrary masses and volumes, for one. Secondly, "difficulty" does not equate "chore" in a game. But without a first, long and tedious adjustment of the starting data, there is no need to start the discussion on physics at all. When making simple designs, players are facing blocks that share the same volume, but with masses ranging from 90kg (core) to 40 tons (rcs) or even 60 tons (rcs T2). Are some devices wasting space just for fun, and others completely filled with metal ? Even the desing of the blocks shows the contrary (compact core, rcs with holes and gaps).

    My guess is that lots of players don't want to waste play time doing things that feel like work. It doesn't mean that they don't care about balance or physics.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 29, 2019
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  7. cgw 2

    cgw 2 Commander

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    WHERE??? I don't consider the destruction of ships to be physics. It 's just an unnecessary feature.
    About physics I meant KSP, not SE.

    The more features. The more interesting the game is.
    That 's why I love EGS. EGS surpassed SE in functionality .
    for an
    farming
    trade
    oxygen
    water
    NPC
    Base
    it is less than critical bugs

    Necessary to understand what does Eleon.

    1. Game from which the doesn't hurt head .
    [​IMG]

    Or
    2. Best game. Maximum functionality (Minimun bugs).
    There must be functionality.
    But a moderate doesn 't need to push everything into the game.
    This functionality should not impair interest in the game.
    Some boring details are not needed in the game.
    Even if they it is much functional.
     
    #167
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2019
  8. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    It is necessary to avoid cluttering of playfields in multiplayer, so it doesn't need to be absolutely realistic to fulfill its purpose.

    The more components are added, the more CPU/ GPU will work, to a point where many players can't play the game because of poor performance. That is why some degree of abstraction is required in games, and also that is why "games" are more fun when they give "chances" to players : there are no odors, shadows are very imperfect, we can't feel the air movements around us, same for sound that can't have thousands of instances simultaneously like in real life, and the player avatar is quite limited in his movements and abilities. Games are just a sketchy approximation of a narrow palette of real life things, like motion, colors, textures, dust, and large amount of dirt and little objects everywhere.

    Now go play and bring back some relevant suggestions for THIS game, based on what you think of THIS game. :D
     
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  9. piddlefoot

    piddlefoot Rear Admiral

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    In SE the Physic's are far advanced of this game, by design.

    SE does have physic's, blocks that are ripped of a hull tumble and roll through space on there own orbit and trajectory and the mass effects how much damage is done on impacts.
    Physics plain and simple.

    KSP just take that to a whole new level of realism, nothing more.

    But any way you cut it, both of those games are physic's based.
    Its literally there main feature they have built there entire game around.

    Empyrion has arcade physics.
    But none the less they are physics.
    There just not realistic.

    Does Empyrion have gravity, end of argument.

    There just different physics.

    Now Empyrion can not handle the type of physics either of these games use.
    Unity has some pretty cool physics add ons itself, and I have personally sent some of those to Luke who runs the show at Eleon and his comments were simply put, for physics like that we are going to loose dozens of other features, and the AI will forever be lousy.

    Empyrion is more of a focus on actual game play and that requires some pretty tricky AI coding in the longer run.

    Eleon have chosen the right path here in my opinion, no question about it , good AI trumps good physics alone.

    I get why some people want it though, I mean SE physics are good fun, KSP is a little extreme for me but its the same reason why people want such features, I see such features coming to Empyrion through modders.
    And we will then see in extreme detail, why the devs didnt do it. Lag.
     
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  10. cgw 2

    cgw 2 Commander

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    I really don 't care about these cubes how and along what trajectory they cast from the ship in the explosion.
    I won 't even see that in the game. It 's beautiful, but why do me need it?

    I understand by the word physics:
    The realism of how to put a ship into orbit and fly to another planet.
    Thrust-to-weight ratio
    https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Thrust-to-weight_ratio
    Gravity turn
    Docking
    ISP (specific impulse m/s)
    https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Specific_impulse
    Delta-V
    https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Advanced_Rocket_Design
    fuel quantity
    Total mass
    Fuel mass
    Dry Mass
    Orbital velocity
    fuel consumption engine
    acceleration ship
    Acceleration of gravity
    Speed of flight of the device.

    This fly the exact and realistic with physics on an ellipse, where gravitation of the planet influences your flight.
    but not on a straight line (without physics (as by car) on stool)

    [​IMG]

    In EGS there is no it unfortunately.
    Because it will make game more difficult. For me more interesting.
    Because to me more time will have to be engaged in construction of the ship.
    And developers mod will not be able to make it as it is very difficult.
    Difficult even for Squad as it appeared.
    On that they also have begun to do KSP2 (as big objects in orbit very strongly lag.)


    Yes someone likes to fly as on the car without physics.
    I consider boring have sat down and have departed as on the car/stool.
    But in space not the same that on the car.
    There the impulse is important and infinite flights without windage.

    Physics as in KSP it really takes that when you are able to reach with real physics other planet, it is such pride to goosebumps even bewitches.
    In EGS has sat down on chair(stool) already on other planet.
    That's it this fantasy seems to me boring. As you can fly by all planets on stool?

    The most gorgeous in EGS is VoxelMap of it is not present in KSP.
    Also in KSP you will not construct base on other planet and you will not depart somewhere further. Yes there is mod but it does not work.

    In SE it is impossible to throw out the earth back in hole (it is grief)
    Instead of making game they did Medieval Engineers.
    In SE often very terrible bugs and critical because of which it is impossible to continue to play.
    In SE there are no those opportunities. which are, in the game EGS.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 29, 2019
  11. Taelyn

    Taelyn Guest

    This is a game. Not the real world. Neither this is KSP. This is EGS

    Build by us (Eleon). While we look to other games (as every dev does) we still want to give it our own thing.

    Let this stay a game. If this has to be the real thing then first no one would play it. Second I wouldn't want to be part of it.

    Games are supposed to be fun. Get your head of stuff after a hard day of work. Not give you the next headache and heart attack from more stress :D
     
    #171
  12. RazzleWin

    RazzleWin Rear Admiral

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    @cgw 2 Mate if I understand you correctly your asking the dev's to turn EGS into a simulator for space. It sounds like you might enjoy No Man's Sky more then EGS

    I wonder if were not confusing things here. To get a rocket off the ground into space and then land on the moon or just in orbit were talking about just pure math based on the laws of physics. That's why the commador 64 or the trash 80 was able to do moon lander simulators or flight simulators with just simple graphics. Look at the size of KSP it's no where near the size of EGS in file size.

    But to hold our ships together or even our bases your talking about a different physics. The physics engine has to keep all these parts together unless something acts on them to break it apart. So the larger our builds get the more the engine has to work.

    Now we start adding pistons, linkages, rotors this is where the physics engine really starts to have to work hard. The more you add the more things get jittery and it will just flat explode. Depending on the precision of the floating point system used will decide how much harder the engine works. That's not counting the time the devs would have to put in to tweek all the numbers to keep things tied together and not explode.

    At least this is how things were explained to me by our programmers of the time. Oh I'm sure things have changed in the power of the engines that we use today. But these things would still apply today. It just means we can do more then before.
     
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  13. Supay

    Supay Captain

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    KSP... My son thought I would love this game and to me it looked stupid. Bought it and returned it, as it was not for me.

    As for ESG... Nothing realistic about magic rocks that can be turned into super fuel. So much of ESG is fantasy, I think going to hardcore physics you would loose most the current player base. Rockets that can carry you to outer space in a few secs and travel insane distance in mins isn't available right now and no amount of math can tell you how to make a rocket run off magic fuel and so on.

    Personally I think weight and volume need to be little more forgiving than they are currently. Advance rockets and so on should be some what light. Design first seeks to make it happen, than refine the idea. To refine the idea you need to make it stronger, lighter and use less fuel.

    Just my two cents!
     
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  14. cgw 2

    cgw 2 Commander

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    No Man’s Sky this the same EGS. in other execution.
    That there the same fly as in EGS. But there is no construction of the ships and real physics.
    No Man’s Sky not the real world.
    And game with real world probably does not exist.
    In each game there are minuses.
    If to unite
    EGS
    No Man’s Sky
    KSP/KSP2
    ASTRONEER
    Minecraft(+mods)
    X Rebirth /X4
    Elite: Dangerous
    EVE Online
    SE
    etc.
    these games in one very heavy game. It would be something.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 30, 2019
  15. RazzleWin

    RazzleWin Rear Admiral

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    Not trying to be mean or anything but maybe you should just stay in the real world and not worry about playing fantasy games. I for one play to escape the real world for a few hours.
     
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  16. StyleBBQ

    StyleBBQ Captain

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    @Kassonnade , I appreciate the detailed reply & should apologise for not linking my earlier post in this thread as my post above, this page, was basically a continuance/expansion. https://empyriononline.com/threads/feedback-on-volume-mass-balancing-values.49695/page-7#post-351769
    Basic premise was;
    "... provide a workable framework to allow all mass to be accounted for, without extreme tedium."

    To paraphrase: use Carbon & Silicon, both extremely common as Rock-&/or-Coal & Sand, mineable basically anywhere, for most of the Mass.

    So rather than 2,000 kilos of Steel for a Lrg Block, use say 100 kilos Steel and 1,900 kilos of Carbon (nanotubes?) & Silicon (Silicon Carbide?).

    Above I was trying to describe a way to add an option for players so that those that prefer not to mine every kilogram could choose a setting that worked for them, and it could just effect the 'cheap' 'heavy' stuff. So a player with time limitations could dial it way back but still enjoy finding & mining the rarer ores. And still have a very similar experiance as a different player who has the time & prefers to mine every kilogram.

    So just to be clear; I would prefer a consistent system where all mass was accounted for. But. and this is why the above post, not at the expense of a large part of EGSs player base.

    To your points, and forgive me for using numbers rather than full quotes.

    1) Agree. Some folks notice certain things, EGS might be their first game and a player may immediately notice the 10 Plates = a 2t block.

    2) Thanks for highlighting this, I did not intend to imply that Creative = Easy or anything similar. It was a poor comparison. What I was trying to convey was that I personally enjoy the early, boot-strapping phase of most survival games. So having that part take a while longer is generally a plus for me.
    And you make an excellent point about the current progression vs what it may be in Beta/Gold.
    I've been playing EGS since before SI and the current mining speed is so fast now it feels like cheating, heh :)

    3) Who knows, maybe some day. For now *Nix, shell scripting, TCP/IP stack tuning, Jumpstart build scrips & trying to keep up with all the hardware, patching, etc., keeps that area pretty well saturated.

    4) Completely Agree!

    5) Did not mean to imply arbitrary masses, at all. The built masses would be the same. Just that the person with time constraints has a 'secert helper' to do some of the grunt work for them.
    "..."difficulty" does not equate "chore" in a game." True... yet playing with Mass & Volume enabled & if for instance a Lrg Steel Block used 2,000 kilos of Steel Plates, then it could be argued that this would lead to players 'needing' to make more complicated & expensive vessels in order to haul all the mass, so 'more difficult'? Agree though that 'difficulty' would be a poor title/description for the 'knob/s'.
    -Wasn't trying to start a physics discussion here. Was clarifying that the proposed mechanic would not change how a ship built with one setting vs. another setting behaved.
    -The same volume but very differing masses is more of a game-play/balance piece & up to Eleon. I'd just really prefer that all the mass, whatever it winds up being, is accounted for.
    >>> what I'm proposing is a system where Eleon can set both the 'cost' and the 'mass' seperately. Steel would be 'expensive' compared to Carbon or Silicon, yet only be a small fraction of the mass. For fantasy bits like Constructors if Eleon, due to feedback, decided to lighten one by 5 tons, but thought the amounts of Iron/Copper/etc. was fair, then they could simply change a "mass" value and a script could then adjust down the amount of Carbon/Silicon(new kind).
    Edit: clarification; all Ingots/Components/etc. would have their own masses and count towards the 'total mass'. The script would have the logic to fill-in missing mass with some ratio of Carbon & Silicon. So in the Config recipe there could be a 'ratio' variable, but there wouldn't need to be entries for 'X Carbon blocks' & 'Y Silicon plates'.

    6) "My guess is that lots of players don't want to waste play time doing things that feel like work. It doesn't mean that they don't care about balance or physics."

    That's exactly what I was attempting to 'solve'. While working within the current EGS framework. Doing a thought experiment where every kilo was produced by the player mining it, with the current mechanics, made it pretty clear that not only would that be one heck of a lot of mining, but the hauling of that tonnage would cry out for drastic changes. Salvaging is a different beast here.

    ++Basically Kass, I think we're definately on the same general page here :D. My sincere apologies for my less than stellar writing skills :(.
     
    #176
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  17. piddlefoot

    piddlefoot Rear Admiral

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    If you expect full on orbits of huge bodies in Empyrion, seriously dude your kidding yourself.
    Sounds to me like KSP is actually the game for you.

    But Empyrion will never see such physics that you describe , there is enough lag once playfields load up with lots of CVs now, so there just is no head room left for such a whacky idea.

    We dont own super computers or even main frames.!

    We pretty much all run home PCs, never going to cut it for such a huge amount f fluent movement in one playfield.

    Give Universe Simulator a go, its interesting.
     
    #177
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  18. cgw 2

    cgw 2 Commander

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    Not an option
    VoxelMap + Real Phisics = these are incompatible things.
    Must choose
    or VoxelMap (Impossible high speed, Impossible large size.)
    or Real Phisics+height map
    Therefore, with the idea of KSP orbits are not value/meaning.

    KSP2 this is the same KSP 1, but only just the next version. Not expect something great from KSP2.
    There will be no VoxelMap
     
    #178
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  19. sillyrobot

    sillyrobot Captain

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    G'day Folks,

    Has any pass to rebalance Mass / Volume happened? I ask because the topic is 4 months old and I wasn't around to see the original values to know if there are any changes.
     
    #179
  20. geostar1024

    geostar1024 Rear Admiral

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    Not in any significant way, no.
     
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