" If I was to be such a developer, I would be happy to see players making petitions for futile tweaks that only require me to change a value in a text file. It makes them so happy that they forget everything else for a while. I could do this many times and players would always react the same. Those among them who would try to signal problems with more complex mechanics and features, I would silence them easily with temporisation, or plainly ignore them, and to the others they would appear entitled for doubting my good will. They would be shunned, scorned, and shall never find peace on my Forums. " Kassonnade, the Evil Developer (chapter 3, sec. 4.5) .
No Modern Military that i know of has managed to completly vaporize their equipment but their are modern military personal that have managed to render their equipment effectively worthless to an enemy force. Furthemore i know of One Specific Example in a Fictional Sci-Fi Setting where they specifically put an antimatter missile into every single ship in a Friendly shipyard and most of the shipyard itself before running to keep a hostile force from gaining anything actually more useful then Tons of probably somewhat radioactive steel. In a different Sci-Fi Series i read it has not gotten bad enough for them to actually do so to their own ships but the protagonists certainly have the capability of vaporizing an entire ship. One encounter with hostile ship left the hostile ship "atomized into a debris cloud 1000s of Kilometers across". One of the later antagonistic "Countries" had scattering their own ships in pieces over a Light Year of space as their Standard Procedure if they could tell they had lost a battle. While their could be more lore support in game for such measures. Their is certainly precedent for things like that in Science Fiction writing.
THIS is what most people I talk to and play with want, @Hummel. Let us salvage. Salvage is a HUGE part of the game for many, if not most, of us.
If they were to put that much effort into developing the storyline I might go with it if the game was an FPS. It is a survival crafting/building game and you need materials to craft/build with. It is not like we are asking for the ships to stay forever. I would like 30-60 minutes, I do understand the need to keep the playfields clear now that the issue was finally explained.
Exactly . . . I mean Com'n! You gotta be smokin' some SERIOUS wall-to-wall carpet to NOT get how big a deal salvaging, along with looting and then hoarding and building are in this game. I absolutely DO NOT believe that anyone who was involved in making this masterpiece of grind and silly walks does NOT fully comprehend that. Why on Earth any of them would think it was a "good idea" to "restrict players capacity to loot and salvage as much as fair play would allow" I jut cannot imagine. My hunch: there are one or two people in this development team who are a bit off kilter and have disproportionate influence and the others struggle to keep them reigned in and working collaboratively toward a better end product. Because that is how you deal with those kind of people: remind them that you are making a god damn PRODUCT that puts food on the table and clothes on your children's backs. How do you make mor money? By making your consumers happy, and attracting MORE consumers. Stupid, irrational, inexplicable, annoying gamey despawn timers, a dozen different despawn schemes for as many distinctive in-game constructs and stupid rules like "cannot shoot a CV artirrelly gun in atmophere [wud umbalance duh PVP ewe know . . .]." I can still feel my systolic going up just recalling the moment I realized that idiotic rule is actually in the game, and it goes up even more when I consider that it is apparently STILL IN the game. Yeah, yeah, I can change it in a config I know. I can also go play some other game too . . .
This feature in its current state is, for me, demotivating. I don't even bother with ships in orbit I just avoid them. For me a 5 min countdown would be prefect. Loot and Salvage are core elements of this game, a timer is fun as it makes you priorotise what you want to loot and adds a sense of drama. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 BOOM!
This is a survival / building game with a healthy dose of FPS and space combat. One thing I love is all the different ways I can go about acquiring my first ships; mining, raiding POIs, the tedious conversion of stone if you're a masochist, and in the starter missions you can take over the damaged hoverbike and the damaged SV near the Heidelberg. That sets a precedent for new players, an expectation that things are lootable and usable. My first encounter with a patrol ship was EPIC, as we started on a planet with one and our base was nowhere near ready when it found us. Two of us managed to take it down, got in to start looting / salvaging and it despawned. That was super frustrating, but not nearly as bad as the instant destruction of vessels so there is no salvage possible. Here are my assumptions on this: 1) Ships need to despawn to preserve server functionality. - As a server operator, I understand and support the despawning of the clutter. But there is no real set time this needs to happen. They could hang around until the playfield is unloaded from memory and I'd be ok with that. My gut says 30 minute despawn started when the ship is disabled is about right. 2) Players need to feel a sense of accomplishment and reward to enjoy a game. - Getting some good loot that increases you net capability after a hard fight with a ship is a major boost. Seeing all that loot go up in an explosion with no opportunity to collect any of it is a kick in the teeth, especially after a hard fought battle. Again, this pushes toward a reasonably long despawn timer on all NPC opponents. 3) Salvage is a huge part of this game. - If it wasn't a major part, then we wouldn't have multi-turrets for that very purpose. Nor would we be able to place cores into structures to claim them as our own. Again, longer despawn timer, but I will also suggest that placing a core into a disabled ship immediately changes to a new ID and ship now owned by that player and the despawn is canceled. I love the idea of gaining some new toys by capturing them. Our faction isn't called the "Renaldi Salvage Corporation" for nothing. Here is the thing tho. I can't come up with any reasons at all why the destruct / despawn needs to be a few seconds. In fact I challenge the Devs to please explain why they feel near instant destruction is necessary. Its clearly NOT server stability, that's covered well enough in number 1 above. I love this game and have well over 2000 hours playing it, and have been hosting a server for most of that time. There have been many things I find frustrating, but this "feature" combined with the very negative attitude presented by a Dev in another thread made me seriously consider moving on to other games. Bottom line, I want the ability to salvage what I kill, even if that is only getting components instead of whole blocks. I want the option for me and my players to use what we capture. And most of all, I want mechanics that are actively demoralizing to be removed.
This isn't a Rant just some plain facts: ( Understand i play SP mostly not on Servers though a friend does set one up so we can create on it and bring in new players. Your killing this. I don't have the bandwidth to set up a server myself ) Why should this even be a thing in SP play ? You call this a feature when you battle and finally win only to take away the prize ? This is how to kill a game. This is massive disappointment for the player. This is a Huge let down not a build up to set the player looking to battle these enemies of humanity. Sorry is that your intention? if it is you succeeded. Playing a game is something most people do for fun. And for many other reasons as well. Some to retain their focus so they can function in life. Some to just have something fun to do. When you do this and call it a feature you shoot your self in the foot. And you lose players is that the idea behind this? Because of this so called feature, i don't even look to do this in game anymore. This is one of the ways people get rarer materials as well in game. So what if they want the ship or base to use in the game. Maybe it's better then what they themselves can create. They still have to upgrade it. spend resources to fix it up to what they like and so forth. There are so many possibilities from capturing these ships and you have effectively taken that away from the player. I have over 2000 hours in this game and have a lot of people that i have got to purchase the game and now play. Some are already leaving the game due to some of these so called features and the massively unbalanced game play they find in the game, Buggy game play and so forth. The state of the game is ready for Beta, at least there if you have to make some major changes it's possible to do. Hope you reconsider the path you are starting to go down before you kill a game so many love and do content for. Finnish what you have started and make it Great. Not just another game some one will possibly buy and then quit when they find out these so called features do to their game play and then face the disappointment that many of us are starting find. News travels very fast in the gaming community. Biggest grape vine i have ever seen.
i realy dont like this de-spaw. a lot of bugs to fix and u implement this demotivating thing... u spend a lot of time and money to take of one off this ships and now cant loot... cant look inside and see the ship... cant enjoy the game... what are u thinking? i play since alfa 3.2 over 1000 hours of game, i buy over 10 licences to give to friends... and this is the worst feature ever implemented. After this feature was implemented none of my friends is online... ur server whit more then 20 people online every day now have less then 3 people loged in all day long....
i have a crazy idea. what if the npc vessel...wait for it...never respawned? (therefore negating the need for it to ever DEspawn) POIs on the ground dont respawn so why do patrol vessels need to? planets have a number of pois that exist when you enter that playfield. same for orbit. so why not just say that the space playfield has a certain number of CVs that exist, then after you destroy them, they dont exist anymore? when you destroy the zirax drone base on a planet, zirax dont build a new drone base.
There is a logic to this.. When play was limited to a single system, respawn and regeneration mechanics were vital. With the galaxy in place, perhaps not so much anymore...
And yet another round of "don't change anything or I'll quit"... One thing I learned on these forums is that even if players jump down a bridge from despair against some change, adjsutments will come after some time, and new players that come in with the game in a "changed" state have no problem with it. Just look at the CPU for example : the same complaining circus went on for weeks (and still goes on a bit) but most players either moved on or "left the game" ... But new players come in and don't see a problem. Do you get the point ? The delay can be modded to any delay in the yaml file, for those who can't bear it.
I have just been made aware of this thread, and unfortunately even though there are many explanations about it, the circular logic of it still confuses me. But as far as the differences between "Loot" and "Salvage"...does it really matter? I can see when it's storming POI's on foot: Little resources used+Full Loot/Salvage of devices and blocks=potential of insane farming. When it has to do with Orbital things, it makes no sense: Orbital object/PV requires boarding in order to access containers to loot them. Object/ship cannot be boarded in order to loot containers while moving. Boarding requires thrusters to be disabled. Disabling thrusters and movement causes hidden de-spawn timer. Destroying core to enable salvage of parts and devices (the main reason to engage them in the first place), causes a self-destruct that destroys all containers/devices. With the guarantee of resources to be lost during engagement (through ammo used and repair costs), what is the point to engage in the first place, when the main motivation (to salvage and dismantle devices for their components and devices themselves), is taken because everything explodes and get destroyed as soon as the thing is cored...most times before a player-core is placed (the only way to recover whole blocks with Multi-tool). From what I can see. With the way it seems to be set up. This mechanic ensures ventures to devolve into nothing more than a very expensive practice fight, with nothing left to the carcass to take away other than the resource components of the construction blocks themselves, mainly only all Iron-based. (plates, mech. components...titanium if you're lucky to get something with hardened steel) Anything more than that (Sathium, etc.) will only cost way more than it's worth, because ships made with Combat Steel generally do way more damage to you before being taken down. I can see (to a point) the reasoning behind a game mechanic like this, to slow down farming of high-tech ships...but here's the thing. It's not very practical, because unless someone has a veritable vault of hoarded resources that they don't care about repair costs, it's better to just go around them instead of sinking time and resources into something that will guarantee not to profit. Who is going to risk a high-component, multi-hour (if not days) build, for just a handful of metal from whatever structure blocks are left? And if it's for Faction-grinding, that can be gotten in much easier ways.
Of course it matters : loot is inside containers, and if these CVs were like drones (which they will be at some point, from what I understood) then all what players would get would be loot from the dead CV corpse, before it despawns like drones do. From what @Germanicus told me on another thread, the modelers from Eleon are actively making new ship models for drones and patrol vessels, based on actual "block" ships for design. He may correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I understood.
Just my two cents. This is disappointing part of the game, there is no reason to go after the ships. So I just avoid them completely. It can be fun but lasers eat trough your shields so quick, you lose parts and weapons, eat trough a ton of ammo and get nothing back. It so much more satisfying to go after the stations or land based POI's as it gets more rewarding. So please do something so we can at least be able to strip them of there parts to pay for the loses.
My thoughts on this I'd like to see options instead of something being forced. One of the key features for this game has always been how flexible the settings and configs are. Forcing such a big change to game play (for many) is a step in the wrong direction I feel. I get the need to make sure that wrecks are cleaned up. This is especially important for servers but even for those who have long term save games. Having all of the ships basically be non salvageable leans towards what's the point in fighting them in the first place except for the fight itself and a bit of loot. When comparatively players could engage with a POI and get both loot AND resources. I know where I'd rather spend my time and effort between the two.
Maybe this is exactly what the developers want : players may try, but they will eventually have to give up and run away. And for the reinforcement mechanic to work there has to be more and more ships, and if they're all voxel-based computers will melt after a few waves, provided the players were able to fend them all off until then. This would be logical if developers want players to move around more than one or two systems to be able to build a somewhat capable CV. That was foreseeable when they gave the SV some warp capacity, and now rendering CVs harder to build and maintain in the first system. What's the point of making a whole galaxy and having factions and player submitted content for additional factions if players can simply wipe them all out right from the start ? Just making hypothesis here, based on a tendency. If players have better explanations that don't revolve around the developers being crazy and trying to piss off everyone, it could be interesting to read.
