One of the biggest things that kind of annoys me with this game is how irrelevant HVs are in the grand scheme of things. There are a few things they do nicely, but overall they are the most limited vehicle, while also being the most difficult to build, which makes them far from ideal. HVs are the most difficult vehicle to build, because they are the only vehicle in Empyrion where weight distribution matters. A ship will fly without any issue if it's a stick with all the engines on one end and 100,000 tons of cargo on the other. With an HV on the other hand if they are off balance it will impact performance, all the way to having bits of it drag on the ground or causing danger of flipping over. That's not a bad thing, I like that you need to actually build them intelligently, but it makes constructing HVs much less forgiving than ships. The high lift capacity of HVs which would give them an advantage in cargo hauling when compared to an SV is completely hamstrung by the fact that when you're going up a hill of any kind your thrusters still have to push you up that slope. That means that any advantage you gain by having extremely powerful lift compared to SVs is immediately lost when you encounter a slope and need large amounts of thrust, just like an SV to get over it. Since you're always moving along the ground slopes are of course everywhere. So for getting around a planet and resource gathering you're not exactly at a real advantage, and of course the second you bring a CV into the mix, even a tiny one the hauling debate is settled in favor of ships anyways. A big thing that would make HVs a lot better would be if they didn't slide down mountains so easily, and the hover engines provided more "grip" to get up slopes. That way the lift capacity they boast would not be completely counteracted by having to deal with terrain instead of just going over it. Combat capabilities aren't great either, you sacrifice a huge amount of mobility for slightly better weapons, which are still pathetic compared to base weapons. Having to pack hundreds of tiny turrets onto an HV to achieve high firepower is also just silly, all the HV turrets should be the size of the HV artillery, and the HV artillery should be full sized. Having capital scale weapons on HVs would make them a lot more worthwhile if that's the only way to mobilize such weapons on a planet. Another big thing is that there is no proper tank cockpit for HVs. There should be a cockpit that is made to be buried inside of a vehicle without having to bury a glass cockpit in it, or having to put a chair in it. It's extremely difficult to create a low profile tank with the parts available. For that matter, a simple box cockpit with monitors inside would be a godsent for SVs as well. Another thing that would make HVs way more useful, and would be a nice functionality in general would be if instead of clone chambers we could build "Emergency Teleporters", that use pentaxid to extract a downed soldier with all of their gear. That way you would have a real respawn capability with your HV, instead of just a slightly different version of spawning nearby without any of your gear. Consuming a small amount of pentaxid every time someone is extracted would maintain a certain risk / cost to getting killed, but actually give you a meaningful functionality for the close chamber. As it works currently getting killed usually means running in and not caring at all if you get killed 10 more times until you are able to grab your gear, so unless you died under a capital turret that one shots you having a clone chamber is a minor convenience at best.
HVs suck at handing slopes. For that reason I find myself abandoning my HVs once I get an SV. Even if an HV could carry twice or thrice the weight, I'd still choose and SV because of this.
Well, I just have defeated the vanilla drone base with a stock HV equiped with 4 mini-guns and 1 Artillery gun without shields, armored steel. I did transform it in T3 however to make more cargo extensions and allow for a tool turret as alternative to the artillery gun. I had only to hower around the base to make a devastation of it, telling the artillery to only shoot against bases and the mini-guns against everything but animals. It worked very fine, I had only to do 1 manual repair between my attack waves. Agreed, in 1.5 the drone bases are much easier because there aren't these terrible turrets anymore, however I felt that the HV is still very up to the task. But this is only an isolated example, maybe not representative enough for you. One thing that would make a HV more enjoyable when driving it is: Instead of getting blocked by stones it would be fine if such obstacles would act as a ramp throwing you in the air for a short time.
Just because you can use HVs successfully doesn't mean they aren't awful compared to SVs and CVs. They simply bring nothing to the table that makes up for their massive drawbacks.
Totally. Currently they're only useful at the beginning and then quickly become redundant. Or at least more trouble than they're worth. They should have permanent advantages over ships so that you'd keep on building and using them. Would add to your suggestions: - Add some heavy weapons that can only be mounted on HVs - Same with better armor: Maybe new improved armor blocks only usable in HVs? - Perhaps make the energy efficiency of HVs even bigger? That is, make ships consume drastically more fuel than HVs so that you'd prefer HVs for jobs where you really don't need to fly. - Find some kind of solution to all those annoying terrain obstacles. As already suggested a boulder could just bump your HV into the air instead of completely stopping it. Similarly, while a big tree might block your HV, twigs and bushes shouldn't. Instead just destroy such if it happens to hit them. After all, it's basically a heavy tank traveling at a fast speed...
The really big issue with "Useful in the beginning" is that the progression in materials and XP makes it so you can't actually build a high end HV until you're already running CVs. I also think that basing the usefulness of anything on progressing through it isn't a good design unless your game has a definitive end to it. With an open ended game like Empyrion I want things to always remain useful.
Agree that HVs are not exactly compelling most of the time. They are also really horrible for mining to the point I have pretty much given up with them and modded HV drills onto SVs instead. In an unmodded game with cpu and limits on, they are however about the most destructive thing (not that that is saying much) you can trash bases with on a planet once you can make a T4 HV. Even a T3 HV with a few rocket turrets can be quite destructive even if you cant direct its destruction as much as with an SV. There is also the option of combat HVs with drills on them for tunneling assaults which is still the most low risk and effective way into a non admin cored POI. However, that is only really because you cant (in vanilla) add the more destructive turrets to SVs, nor do any of the usefully destructive CVs weapons work on a planet, so really HVs seem to be used more because everything else is artificially crippled to encourage this use in the absence of anything else. I play a modded game that removes all the type restrictions and really that leaves HV to be used because it the only thing I can make at lvl 1-3. By level 7 about the only use an HV gets is grinding trees - yes - basically a lawn mover. At level 20 I do happen to have a highly destructive and agile T4 HV that I often make (for completeness more than need), but by then, I have kind of got bored of doing POIs the slow way so just pummel most of them with a CV until dead (as its space weapons work on a planet due to my mod) and half the time I cant even be bothered to loot/salvage them - just needed it dead and quickly. HV are also a complete pain with lots of trees - even with the grinders on the front (which eleon tried to discourage by massively cranking up their CPU cost at some time recently). Hills + trees than HVs can end up just being an exercise in frustration. To be fair, I dont see the situation really being any different in space engineers either with its wheeled ground vehicles. At least they dont slide down slopes sideways, but otherwise have pretty much the same problems (with the addition of being fragile and tending to get written off when they flip or face-plant which often happens) so people only really use them because they are cheap on power and otherwise fly in that too.
In Space Engineers ground vehicles serve a purpose as a stepping stone to space if you play through the progression of it, because you can build them from much simpler materials than spaceships early on in the game. They are also well thought out enough that people run servers without spaceships just for the fun of having everyone duke it out with massive landcrawlers and combat cars. The energy economy is also a lot better in space engineers, efficiency pays off more. They allow solar panels and batteries on vehicles, and allow you to charge batteries from bases, so if you build a vehicle with efficiency in mind you can genuinely save, resources, and be energy independent. Since the game allows you to operate entirely on solar and hydrogen it doesn't have to make uranium abundant. In Empyrion there is no real reason to go for efficiency because fuel is abundant, and the time you save by using a SV or even CV instead of an HV can be spent harvesting a hundred times more fuel than that cost you.
My shields on a good-armed SV will evaporate soon so I need to go away to reload them - or stay there and take a lot of damage. With CVs I need to mount all planetary guns on the low side to make them shoot downwards with moderate success, also it's a cumbersome brick to move a CV above a ground target, how can SVs or CVs be better?. I don't have all these problems with a good and mobile HV, I cannot see your 'massive drawbacks', they don't exist for me. Supposely you're playing with a crap HV, look for a better one on the workshop, at least you get the right building ideas. And it also depends how you play, if you don't move a lot you are an easy target and it's no fun, even less so with your SV or CV.
At the moment i see the HVs as a progression thing that help you get started..... But maybe they need to be Re-contexed .... in real life - you sort of got a progression of: Ground Vehicle -- > Aircraft ---> Orbit Capable Craft -- >(Solar system capable --> star capable warp) Each with Fuel and weight drawbacks.... Maybe HVs can be extended to be a Planetary bound vehicles Class Sort of Hovers + Planetary Aircraft + maybe sub-ocean craft maybe (no space access) I suspect that Empyrion as an engine would have lots of wheeled vehicle problems (too many collision and stuck potential problems) Sooo make HVs Low power requirement planet bound vehicles maybe that gain advantages from a thick atmosphere (for lift) maybe add zeppelins and sub-sea ability snd better 'moleing' to them keeping them as very fuel efficient mining/utility vehicles. Theyre basically the specialised things in the Pods -- Thuderbird 2 drops
Now, that's actually a clever idea! It could be done by splitting the SV/HV mountable thrusters into two: - Rocket thrusters: the same as the current ones, work in both space and atmosphere, large energy requirement and fuel consumption, mountable on SV --> these you use to build a spaceship - Jet engines: new type, work only in an atmosphere, smaller energy and fuel requirements, mountable on HV --> these you use to build an aircraft Meaning that HVs could then actually fly. This would make them immediately quite a lot more useful and extend their usefulness way longer. Their drawback would simply be that you can't go to space with them. For example, you could have the technical implementation be so that on planets with an atmosphere their power would gradually drop when you get higher and higher, thus creating a "soft ceiling". In space and on planets with no atmosphere they wouldn't work at all.
nice limiting mechanism -- and if you wanted to reduce the number of thrusters - maybe a vectored thruster to deal with up/down/fwd/back diections bit like the landing ship thrusters on Aliens 2 maybe?
