Hello Empyrion Devs! Just popping in to check and see if there are any plans to ever improve MP PvP stability. I asked a few friends who still play and they say it has not improved. So, do you have plans to improve its stability, or maybe do a Kickstarter and rebuild the game from the ground up and unleash its true potential? (Or rather the potential I think it has)
I'm just curious, but what kind of weird skewed poll is that? I mean, you aren't asking for multiplayer server stability. You are asking for PvP stability, whatever that means since you haven't really explained it in any shape. Then the other option is that the devs should essentially abandon their game and start over from scratch, from kickstarter no less, again seemingly for your vision of PvP (which again hasn't been explained, just saying). Or the third option of just no. "Would you support plans to - no". lol I don't know. Just seems like a weird poll without any explanation of its real intentions.
I've played Empyrion since Alpha 3.0, and I've seen the game get increasingly laggier in PvP battles. So by PvP or MP stability, I just mean improve network performance so you can have proper fights without dropping to 5 or lower FPS. I guess it SHOULD have been phrased as network stability, so good catch. And yes, I do think they should polish this version up as best they can, do a Kickstarter to raise funds, and rebuild a better version in an engine that would allow them to add more features - walking around on ships. I haven't played for a few years, so I check in with people now and then to see how the game has changed, improved or broken. They've done some really cool things, but a lot of the key features people ask for seem unfeasible with Unity. I think you could call this Empryion version a decent success, but I feel like they could do more and better with a different engine and some funds. I just added the poll as an afterthought as I saw it was an option and was curious what other people's thoughts are.
Please, come in and vote/leave your thoughts. I love Empyrion and wish it will grow into the potential I think it has, but the if no one else shares that vision then the devs won't move it that way.
Talking about fps drop in MP. Well, that depends on how you're playing and what scenario, and also, what your PC is. If you're on RE, expect a bigger performance hit. A lot bigger. I've seen PvP vids from RE, and they look pretty, but the FPS is bad. RE allows way more turrets on a ship, ship class size limits are often much higher, and the added effects probably don't help much either. Thus, the framerate takes a big hit. (some times with or without the s) Official/vanilla settings often limit CVs to size class 7 for spawn in, and the weapon limits are the default, so it's reasonable. I've seen some pretty hefty battles with acceptable framerates. That said, it can sometimes take a big hit depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of the planet deco, the planet itself, or nearby POIs. Me, I run a pretty beefy rig too (3070ti with Ryzen 7 3700x, 32G RAM, and everything on NvME) but I like high settings and 1440p. So if you're on a toaster, don't blame the game. Lastly on that note, if you've not played in a long time, a bunch of updates may have improved performance on your end. (YMMV) All that being said, yes, I think the game needs heavy amounts of optimization in both general performance and network performance. Even with tiny ping, player ships can jump all over the place, projectiles vanish mid-flight, teleports fail frequently, ships will glitch and float all over the place when trying to land, just to name a few. Lots of stuff related to the database, but also stuff that just needs a lot of TLC. Improving this will mean far more than the small PvP community, so it's worth putting in the work I think. Likewise, game performance is horribly unoptimized. I think at some point it has to do with the engine limitations, but there's got to be improvements that can be made. There are still some serious hiccups that occur seemingly at random. I get random lag spikes here and there and they've not improved in a long while. So short answer, yes, the game needs optimization. Not some shortcuts here and there to ease performance, not band-aid fixes, but really tearing the engine apart and getting down to the root of the problems. That can take serious manpower and requires people very familiar with exactly that sort of thing. I suspect Eleon is not equipped for that task. Just the nature of small teams. An engine change an a ground-up rebuild would be cool, but it would do nothing if a lot of shortcuts were taken or the right guys weren't involved in the project. Going with something like UE might make a bunch of default assets look cool, but would be a waste unless great care was taken to make sure such an undertaking accomplished its goal. Likely not feasible.
Empyrion has a massive netcode issue, it doesn't matter what you play the game on. I've played it on an older potatoes, mid-range PC and a top tier gaming computer (3080, i7, etc etc etc) The last time I played was last year, I've also spoken to people who currently play and they confirmed that lag is still a huge issue, because again the netcode needs a massive improvement. I do appreciate you taking the time to troubleshoot though. I do hope they consider a crowdfunding option to rebuild the game from the ground up, because you are right they can't just keep band-aiding it forever.
