I keep encountering people saying this "You're not meant to never die in the game" thing. I disagree. It is Empyrion Galactic Survival, not Empyrion Galactic Inevitable Death, or Empyrion Galactic Death Simulator. Clearly the core point of the game is to SURVIVE. It may well be designed to make surviving quite challenging on even 'easy settings," and there is nothing wrong with that. One of the key reasons the mod is popular is that it makes surviving much more challenging. But it also offers much more rich and varied content and experiences that have little or nothing to do with risk of dying, and it also offers many additional methods and emergent gambits for avoiding death. As such, focusing on the idea that death is inevitable seems to me to contradict major core features. In my opinion, the inclusion of any game elements which are unavoidable and inevitably lead to death is not only a reflection of a profound misunderstanding of the games core design but some sort of twisted view of what is "fun" in a game like this or what is fun to design into a game like this. I completely empathize and understand that, designing to achieve challenge while also never creating "unavoidable and inevitable death" is going to be extremely challenging for a complex, open-world game like this. No user would be reasonable to take offense from a random death here and there. But when people say things like "You're not meant to never die," it makes me think they really do not understand game design in general or this type of game in particular. NOT DYING IS THE WHOLE POINT OF A GAME LIKE THIS. Saying "You're not meant to never die" in a survival game is like saying "Your meant to never win" in a game like chess, or countless other games. To be clear, the phrase DOES make sense for an arcade game like Ms. Pacman or Dig Dug or Tetris; but an open-world, crafing/exploring, adventure survival game like Empyrion is hardly an arcade game.
There's a difference between dying because you made a mistake as a player, and dying because it was a hard coded outcome out of the player's hands. I will, with very extremely rare and special exceptions, never balance something so a player who is properly geared, experienced, and skilled would always have to die. Walking into a room and getting blown up by explosive blocks without warning is not intended. Those POIs will need to be changed. Patrol vessels not showing on the radar until they start to shoot your ship is not intended. That is a game bug that I cannot fix. Getting your ship stuck in something and getting blown up is obviously not intended. That's again an issue with the game, not the scenario. Failing to not die because someone makes a mistake, that's intended. I do my best to communicate the challenges so people can have some idea of what they are getting themselves into but I can't warn about everything.
I accept death (and death loops) as part of this game because there are too many aspects of the gameplay that are unguided and lead to rapid deaths. You have no warning that getting attacked by certain enemies will give you parasites, and you can easily die before you figure out how to find treatment, if it's even available to you. There is no HUD indicator that your armor is at 0 durability unless you know to go look for it, nor any real explanation of the effect (i.e. that you might as well not be wearing armor). You can be wandering around a space POI without any clue that an OPV just flew in from outside scan range and whacks you with a missile. You end up learning a lot about this game's risks through trial and death. If you want to balance the game around the possibility of a player being able to do a no-death run without understanding all the subtle mechanics then the game needs a ton of extra UI and tutorial work. As it is now, the inconveniences of this design are balanced by the relative ease of respawning, though that in turn does leave the system accessible for abuse.
That's excellent news. Maybe a sound alarm or some text. Hehe. I don't mind those POIs but since there are 2000+ POIs with PE, I'm never able to memorize them. I'm not complaining. I never play Empyrion without PE.
Side Note: A Hardcore mode is possible. It can be achieved by removing the Survival Tent's recipe and by changingthe ability to Repawn Nearby to false in the game options.
No respawning at all takes things too far; the technology of the imaginary world includes "clone chambers" after all. It is simply that they are treated far too lightly in the game. The level of complications involved in using a clone in EVE Online is about right, though obviously the dynamics there are a lot more intricate and involve factors that it would be very difficult or impossible to include in Empyrion, at least without hardcore API work. ADDIT: Oh wait a minute, maybe I misunderstood you . . . so (a) remove tent recipe; and (b) change ability to Respawn Nearby to false . . . hmm!? This would basically give the player only two options to respawn? (well three if we count server play): (i) nearest clone chamber / biochamber (ii) "Fresh Start" (I'm not sure if this option ever goes away or not, clearly it is intended primarily for use in early game while still on the starter world) (iii) cb:reset, or the singleplayer equivalent: start a new session with the same seed Wow, why does NO ONE ever set their server like this!? Removing the functionality of the tent is a great start though. Obviously many players would hate it, but not all. The second step would be to remove the option to respawn anywhere EXCEPT a "friendly clone chamber/biochamber." I say friendly because, for example, respawning in the Zirax Radar Station clone chamber doesn't really make much sense except as an interim until the game play mechanics are fully worked out. I look at it like this: you guys have done an AMAZING job of enhancing this game, and a very large fraction of the enhancements have to do with strategic level operations: planning, preparation, reconnaissance, stockpiling, build up, appropriate use of all forms of warfare (evasive guerilla warfare, hit-and-run tactics, standard defensive preparations, various possible forms of assault, etc.), and perhaps most of all, your changes (at the strtegic/operational and tactical levels) all tend to promote a more careful, thoughtful, and team-oriented approach. But then all of this excellent design is just tossed right out the window when it comes to death/respawn. Death is generally inconsequential. Even with the "harshest" standard settings (drop all kit at death site) one can still use the cheese of respawning near the dropped backpack to get it back and suffer no real consequences except a ++ on the death count, and some lost time/effort/food. Anyway . . . maybe one of these days I'll actually "finish" playing the game, get off my lazy old ass and dive into the fancy fricking manual for Eleon's API and see if there is anything that cna be done. -=-=-=-=-=-- On a completely unrelated note, me and a buddy who runs a server (Ash Reforged Eden) were talking about another dynamic, and that is that the game presently tries to serve two very differnet playtyles: (1) sit tight and farm; (2) roam. This is fine and this "mode" in which both playstyles are viable should never be elminated. But we were wondering what it might be like if one tried to setup a server in which the "sit tight and farm" mode of play was damn near impossible? There are 40,000 some odd thousand star systems out there; but setting aside the need to roam around for the Project Eden missions, there is honestly not much "requirement" to move around, though this is less true in standard singleplayer mode than in multiplayer mode. ADDIT: for example in my current session on Ash server, I have a good survivalist CV, I finished the Xenu Mainframe and I am half way done with Engineering class. I set out away from Beta system, and warped to three or four systems and within 25 light yeras from Beta I found a system where I can find most of the exotic/advanced stuff I'll need to get to end-game tech (not progenitor stuff, but right up to that extent). Because POIs respawn, I can literally farm this system and its asteroids (and its copious queantities of Zirax POIs) for a very long time before I am forced to head out to more systems. It is not an inherently bad thing, but we (mostly me) were wondering what it would be like if less stuff respawned on servers (mostly POIs). My understnading and experience is that in SP NOTHING respawns? (not sure about asteroids). What if a server were setup with things more along these lines? Would it be possible for such a model to be popular for more than just a couple guys playing coop? Obviously, if the expectation was that the server would be open to the public, the starter sectors would have to regenerate, and this is where the first complication comes in (at least based on my buddy Ash's understanding). If POI regen is off, then NOTHING regenerates(?) including the story line sites. Given there are at least a half dozen or so Heidelberg POIs and probably nearly twice that many Titans this may not be absolutely prohibitive for a general access server, but it would obviously limit how many people could do the story line on the server. Also, if POI regen is off, NO ASTEROIDS respawn at all? That seems bad. Maybe asteroids should respawn slower but not at all seems like it might be pretty harsh. Maybe not? What do you guys think?
I absolutely agree. But once one has achieved a high-level of mastery, a mode which REQUIRES that high level of mastery is pleasing. This is always possible in single player mode because we are all admins for all our sp sessions. Just delete the save file and start over. The discussion really revolves around server play, and the question of why more truly "hard core" servers have yet to emerge. I've only encountered one server that billed itself as "hard core," and that was basically because it used almost totally vanilla RE settings (and was PVP)! NOT because it restricted respawning in anyway. A lot of us have a lot of hours with this game and this scenario in particular by now. The game and the "mod" are reaching maturity. Maybe it is time for some truly "hard core" servers? ADDIT: and I should add, PVP in this game cannot be considered to be truly "hard core" in the hardest sense of the term until such time as (a) Respawning is appropriately restricted (no tent, no nearby no "Fresh Start"), and if no clone chamber available then game over man); (b) Virtual factory allowing "SV squadron + Battleship flotilla in the pocket" is fixt . . . just setting construct spawning to require a platform addresses that to a great extent, but being able to toss stuff in the factory in the field should perhaps be more restricted too. . . . one thought I've had here . . . The idea of a player creating caches of materials which a friendly NPC faction can come pick up (for a fee of course) and add to their "factory account" is plausible. But instantly picking up a whole POI worth of loot and plopping it into the factory account takes that abstraction too far I think. In terms of a game play mechanic: (a) add a new type of core to the game, call it "Cache;" (b) this can be placed anywhere much like a base starter block (with the typical restrictions on proximity, etc.); (c) it doesn't provoke base attacks, but it cannot be underground and it does lure enemies from within a certain range to come investigate; (d) it has infinite storage capacity: (e) once placed it is useable by player faction to stick stuff into; (f) maybe has built in wireless or else one can be added . . . (g) cannot place any other devices on it, it is inherently defenseless and servers only one function: big pile of stuff; (h) the model for it could maybe be one of the large cargo boxes or maybe four of them glued together into a big box; (i) 12 or so in-game hours after this thing is placed, it despawns and everything in it transfers into players factory account. There are probably some exploits which this would create or facilitate but I don't think it could possibly compare to the present exploit of having infinite access to factory account anywhere, anytime!
But buddy seems to think that that will "break story lines?" By which I understand: any given instance of a story POI will not respawn. So if one guys has already done Heidelberg or Titan on one of the starter playfields, then next guy will have to go to the next one? If there are only a handful of guys playing on a server this does not really seem like a big deal.
That's correct, but you can manually regenerate specific POIs or even set up EAH to automatically regenerate all POIs on a planet on a set schedule if wanted.
Hi @ravien_ff , I'm enjoying the scenario. Just a minor matter - the blast door access code in the Fuel Depot (Odd Temperate starter) appears to be wrongly shown on LCDs. There are two digits shown for the third position and none for the second. I verified this after taking out the core.
My automatic rich asteroid drills ignore the dronite asteroids. They mine netronium asteroids just fine CV laster rich asteroid drills work fine manually.
