I'm back again... Is ther any plan at Eleon to temper the jetpack, currently it's like using a trampoline, faceplanting my char against door frames one or even half a block up over and over is not immersive, could we not have the minimum thrust turned down a bit and allow a steady progress forward without having to pogo everywhere with a gravity field? Pretty please
No, I want to choose the hight I assend to, not ping up to like a flee, The initial jet jump currently gives about 10 to say 15 feet thrust upwards, if I wish to step up over a small obsitcle I have to jump... (sometimes through a doorway) always maximum jump to hit head on ceiling and drop back to same place (in real life I would step up) if I wish to jump onto my small craft I can't just jump, (a bit too high for that) I have to use the jet pack, that takes me well too high and I have to glide down onto the small surface I'm aiming for... sometimes miss it and have to jet pack ping up again. A little more control and a little less initial power*, could allow us to negate the gravity and hold stable altitude I also find it difficult to glide up through an overhead flat doorway (drop hatch if you will) getting that trajectory right when constantly powering upwards and falling back down, a hover mode would make that easier too. It'would be nice! * you can still hold the key down to go higher at a faster rate. (even now we have demos with jet pack guys and they can hover, go forward, and every direction... surely the future can do that)
If you want to jump over something that doesn't require a jetpack, just turn off your jetpack. I bound mine to a mouse thumb button (same one I use for vessel autobrake). When I do use my jetpack, though, I never use the whole tank. You should always save some charge to feather your landing. Your knees will thank you. You do this by letting go of the jump key before you reach your maximum apex. This has been a standard video game control since Super Mario Brothers. I can't see how a jetpack having inconsistent thrust would make vertical traversal easier rather than more complex. I've seen situations where vertical movement is restricted, making jump paths tricky. We're probably all familiar with the wrecked Pelican on Omicron, and how certain rooms require some finessing to reach. It's difficult enough when the feeling of how strong your jetpack propels you is baked kinesthetically into your muscle memory. I've done a few builds where you had to enter the cabin through the roof. I still make a rule for myself that such vessels should not require a jetpack to enter or exit. It only takes a few steps or ledges to satisfy it. Call it the Char Aznabel affordance (he didn't like wearing pressure suits on combat missions). A simple half-walking-speed hover mode sounds neat. Maybe use the Pilot Mode input while on foot to toggle it and have health damage cancel it. I would worry about useful flight time. Perhaps a basic light suit would get eight seconds of hover time in 1G. Performance in heavier suits and with boosters could be derived from there.
We obviously play in very different ways, I can't explain it in any more simple a way than I have above, you seem to see what I've written in completely the wrong way, for me planetside the Jetpack is a must, as I use it to immediately get away from bugs/spiders/whatever, I turn it of in safety only I play with many mods of scenario's and can if I choose with enough boosters enter orbit with my jetpack, however, if I wish to cross a long lake/puddle for instance I can jet pack up and then feather the jetpack key and move forward... in a silly up and down movement... all I'm asking for is a keypress that would balance the thrust of the pack with gravity... or perhaps if just tapped would ko up a bit per tap and not drop down until the down button was pressed, (within jetpack thrust limits whitch I feel are too short) whe could still have the continual burst to go high... fine. I can take it up to where I choose...just like I can with my ship... I go up and stop at the altitude I desire and then go in the direction I wish, be it north, south, east, or even west. You will have to understand that there are people with different abilities that play this game and although I have 4500 hours here I have to think and concentrate when choosing a keypress, I even play from the direction keys on a very old keyboard because my hand and eye cordination is crap and using 'aswd' is useless to me. As for assending into my ship 'The Annix Nova' it has a difficult one side door laying flat at the bottom of the ship like a drop shaft... getting in through that while being shot at in space is difficult... in a gravity well it's almost impossible... but I like it that way
It sounds like what the OP is asking for is a Space Engineers style jetpack, instead of the Empyrion jump booster that we currently have. Let's be real here, the Space Engineers style of jetpack is what most of us likely expect when we hear that a game has a "jetpack". It sounds like the OP is asking for that basically, although perhaps with WAY less fuel time/flight time than you can get in Space Engineers. You can fly to space with just your jetpack in Space Engineers after all with enough fuel. That's entirely way too overpowered for Empyrion and its actual survival mechanics though, something Space Engineers doesn't have. So although it is the jetpack style I would prefer as well, and it is the jetpack I expect when I hear a game has one, having a steady thrust jetpack in Empyrion would just make a lot of the survival and POI exploration way too easy. For example, if we could hover with the jetpack then most traps and such in POIs become instantly obsolete as you can just hover past them, etc. It's cool, but it would likely take too much away from the game. I just don't see any good way to balance such a jetpack in Empyrion. You will have to increase the flight time higher than what we currently have for it to make sense (even if way less than Space Engineers) and that immediately nullifies so much of the game. Even if say speed was capped at walking speed and a low height it would still take away too much.
Empyrion's jetpack is actually what the standard jetpack is in most games. A short burst of speed and altitude and minimal, uncontrolled ability to hover, with a low fuel amount and quick recharge. At least that's how almost every game I've used a jetpack in has done. Space Engineer's jetpack is actually the rare kind.
But, Empyrion is not 'most games' In a similar way to your own view of how to play and enjoy Empyrion (that many people use) you address things that bug the way you play, this is one of the things that bug me in the way I like to play the game, however as @TwitchyJ rightly points out it could make POI's a little too easy (as can doing them over and over) I can only allow myself one life per game playthrough,* and early on I never even got off the planet before a restart with the crashlanding, so every single move I make can be the last before I have to start again, it makes me cautious about risk taking and annoyed about continually face planting a doorway that should easily be my saviour from a heard/bunch? of spiders/bugs/ripperdogs/bullets or even dinosaurs, a tad of control to get the right hight and forward motion (seen demonstraited in real life) would be appreciated. An alternative could be a separate pack (though I'm not in favour of this) powered by Promethium pellets giving 1 min each, so not as easily available in early game, and pretty wasteful to use all the time when having to constantly reload it. However, I'm not a game designer, just an old bloke that likes to play solo the way he likes to play (thats why I'm about to go config for 38 solar pannels to line the roof of my pantheon courtyard, because it's an aesthetically pleasing amount) I've not played Space Engineers, (when they took my money for Medieval Engineers then near immediately abandoned it for Space Engineers I decided they would have no more) *I can't find myself respawning in any game, it just doesn't seem right, perhaps that why I find than the journey is far more enjoyable that reaching the destination, I take no pleasure in reaching the end of the road.
Keep in minds that's not how the game works, and is therefor your own personal restriction on how you play that the game shouldn't be balanced around. Respawning is part of the game's mechanics.
I know. We see things differently, I for instance feel that if a game has respawn as a feature then the studio expects the character to die... therefore it's too difficult to do in one life, therefore it's hand holding, providing a safety net. But without our differences things would be pretty dull.
I mean you're not wrong, as there are games that also use the SE style jetpack but typically more survival and action oriented games use a jetpack similar to Empyrion's.
Of the two I can think of that focus on combat to the degree Empyrion does, one (Warframe) has it as a unique power in context of its already very robust movement system, and the other (Satisfactory) has it as a perk for progression and both a perk and tool for infrastructure building. So say the idea was to just rip off Satisfactory's hoverpack completely. The most direct interpretation would probably be a very expensive suit booster that lets you fly freely within range of a wireless device. Tracking range to structures like this is something already done for logistics anyway, so it's not a big new burden. Skip the power draw bit as not worth the trouble to keep track of in multiplayer. You can see fairly readily how this sort of hovering jetpack in survival would be handy for construction and repair chores. It'd basically turn you into a larger, more capable F5 drone. The occasional bug or raptor waiting to ambush you outside your base would be easier to deal with. To use it in a planetary POI, you would need to park your own vessel(s) right up on top of it, which is done usually anyway for logistics access. To balance it, I'd probably say you get the same warning you do when going too far from a logistics connection before plummeting from the sky. Armor and oxygen capacity would probably be reduced by a large value, if not a percentage, as though to save mass. You'd get the same recoil effects as when you fight from a jetpack in space. I imagine having a hovering jetpack booster would also disable normal jetpack functionality entirely. Not a problem with a light suit, but with a medium or heavy, you're committed. I guess that's a concept for a non-"trampoline" jetpack. Thoughts?
I like the idea, though the wireless device would confuse me a bit... sorry, I'm a simpleton, I don't even understand how to make the teleporter work with a switch thing... so I have a teleporter or have a shield*. when stuff gets too complex it often confuses those with brains that work in a different way, I fill up my li'l fella and walk back and forth to the ship in a POI raid, and put it all in different containers, sometimes many many trips! (but that's cool) However, I normally have to break immersion for base building and go god mode, if I wish to create a basement then I have to place underground walls and hack all the rock out from inside them, (god, that is so ugly, I don't know why we can't create straight lines like the POI's do) Sorry so easy for me to go off topic... I guess it's how my mind works (or doesn't) *and to be honest I don't understand why it should even work that way, those that understand always do it and those that don't understand just suffer, so why not just make the thing work with the shield turning of/on automatically (yes I've tried putting sensors and switches all over the place but I just can't make it work for me, I just get frustraited... so it's one or the other)
