FEATURE INFO Spawn, Respawn, Destruction settings of AI Vessels

I fully agree with you good sir.
I also must mention that there are a lot of static settings which would prevent husks cluttering up big servers.
It would be even better if the devs could expand upon those options.

Now it is like if a player haven"t touched his ship for X amount of time, it gets switched into an admin faction.
If it sits another Y amount of time in the admin faction, it gets deleted.

Now another game has some more option beside touching, like "is it powered?" "has it moved in Z amount of time?".
if these would be implemented, unmoving cored husks could be easily auto-identified:
-it haven't moved for 3 real days
-not powered up
-it isn't a base
Logically an used ship has power and/or moves around.

Voila! In 3 days all half-salvaged ship husks just disappear. Or a different time. Or another condition, like "offline protection is active".

Till that, admins can ban anyone who leaves half-gutted, but cored ships around as a house rule, plus the existing static options.

"Live long and prosper, or else..." - Vulcan Inquisition

 

A nice little horror story for big server admins out there:

Now I mine carefully - usually a drone precedes the patrol ship which gives enough warning.
The current planet we are on has a nice asteroid belt.
I usually do the Han Solo maneuver, fleeing between asteroids.
Sometimes I get lucky, and the patrol ship wedges itself between them.
So I consider that a win.
I never loot those caught ones, because what's the point?
Now we have seven partol ships vibrating inside that belt.
Sometimes they disappear, maybe the admin deletes them?
But there are always new ones to come.

 

If I spend time and resources in defending against/attacking a POI/ship I expect to be able to loot and salvage it (and maybe in the future capture for myself), even if it is on a timer.
If it is on a timer it must be visible/audible in which time you can loot the containers, say 5 min. If I don't put my own core in it then explodes after 5 mins. It should reset the moment I put my own core in and then give me a somewhat longer time, say 10 min, to salvage what I can and then explode. In the future maybe you have to use the 10 min to find multiple switches on the ship to disable the countdown in total to take over the ship as your own. If you disabled the countdown and don't set it private is explodes after say an hour.

If I'm not going to get to salvage the parts left after I've already blown up all the thrusters to stop the ship, why bother?
I would then rather just avoid them. The fact that they spawn in when attacking a stationary space POI means I'm not going to attack the stationary space POI, because I don't wish to spend the time, ammo and resources to repair after defending against the reinforcements to eventually loot/salvage the stationary space POI. Therefore I just skip ALL the space POIs/ships and concentrate my efforts on the ground based ones.

Yes, I know you can adjust/disable stuff in the config files. I start this game to play a GAME, not do admin. I have enough of admin/config/support/etc. each day at work. I don't want to have to fiddle with config files to play the game. Then I can just as well go play a different game/watch a movie/do some coding/etc. What is a non-technical player going to do when he finds out he has to delve into config files to play the game the way he wants. He is going to get frustrated, refund and uninstall.

TLDR
I feel the timer should be visual/audible in which time you can loot the containers, say 5 min. If I don't put my own core in it then explodes after 5 mins. It should reset the moment I put my own core in and then give me a somewhat longer time, say 10 min, to salvage what I can and then explode.

 

While I appreciate it has the potential to cause problems, I sorta want any CV's I've defeated to stick around - at least while I'm in the area and perhaps permanently, if I take the required actions to secure the ship. Having a method to bypass the self-destruct before killing the Core (which automatically triggers it let's say) would actually be pretty fun. Sure, you can blow the crap out of the ship from the outside, using your own CV or SV, that's a valid approach. However, if you really want time to loot, salvage or even capture (for use) that vessel, you need to be a little more surgical. Blowing up an enemy ship is cool, but taking an enemy ship and using it to blow up their stuff is way cooler lol.

Basically, I'm happy if a defeated enemy CV depsawns after I leave the area, I chose to leave, the ship got tidied up. However, if I go to the extra effort to surgically strike at that ship, board it, disable the self-destruct and only then take the Core out - it should stick around until I leave. If I then place my own Core to aid salvaging, it should stick around for a couple of hours after I leave - I might be shuttling loot / parts back and forth. If however, I add my own core and start repairing it, then fly it away, it's MINE and will be treated like any other player CV. This would be my preference as someone who's exclusively Single Player at the moment. However, I of course acknowledge that others have different preference here, so having some readily-exposed (not in a per-playfield .yaml) to control this would be great. Having options based on what type of CV might be useful, be it a civilian freighter or a Legacy battleship, the former being allowed to be captured, the latter perhaps now - based on personal / server preferences.

One of my most fun interactions with a Planetary PV was when a combination of bugs played in my favour - this shouldn't have happened, but I was glad it did....

Quite early-game on a Hard planet with PV, my fledgling, though luckily mostly underground, base was targetted by the PPV. I had no vessels of my own at the time, just hand weapons but I managed to "shoot it down". I pop that into quotes as I think it wasn't entirely me, more that the vessel didn't have quite the thrust for the environment it was in (Bug). Add to that, rather than remaining horizontal during flight, which it could just about cope with, it tilted down quite sharply (bug?) at one point - one assumes trying to follow me running about on foot beneath it. Due to its weak forward-facing thrusters it crashed...but shot down sounds better

The PPV crashed into a shallow lake near my base, a bit too near really as it still had fully operational turrets, even though it was effectively disabled. It did not self-destruct (bug) and that was GREAT...for me. Using a sniper rifle and lots of rounds, I managed to take out a couple of the turrets (that was tough) so I could approach the vessel. I then used explosives to gain entry to it - yes, the vessel, surprisingly, was fully solid at this point and not ghosting as they often do. It gave the odd twitch as it tried to move, but was basically stuck fast.

Once aboard the PPV I looted the interior - there wasn't much - and found the Core. I blew the Core and the ship didn't self destruct (bug) and placed my own core and it still didn't self destruct (erm, bug?) I then proceeded to take my time breaking down this ship and salvaging the parts to, ultimately, create my own CV. I did try placing a new cockpit in this vessel, but it was set to NOT be captured in this way. Shame.

How much fun was that? Lots is the answer, lots. Downing a PPV, disabling its turrets, boarding it and taking it out from the inside was EPIC. Now, what if this wasn't just a sequence of things not working as intended, but this behaviour was supported? Well, I'd have encountered defences inside the PPV, perhaps spawn pads etc. - it was a very basic PV. What if I had to be careful not to blow up the Core but had to disable the self-destruct first, killing the Commander and stealing his override key? How cool would that be?

I think this approach would translate well to space-based vessels too, allow us to ultimately capture these ships and fly them (game options) but expect more enemies to warp in when you do. Of course, this isn't simply a free CV, no, we've disabled it first remember, so it'll need some work before it will move. Huge risk and a decent reward. Fun.

We can all build our own CV's without ever firing a shot potentially, that can be fun. The opposite extreme though is to take one from another faction, do it up and fly it away. Personally, I could see myself getting a little hooked on this and ending up with a landing field - or several - full of my trophies

Just my slightly long-winded thoughts on the subject.

Scoob.

 

Do you really believe the developers want the players to avoid and not interact with something they spent thought and development time implementing into the game? If so, why would they implement it in the first place?

No, there's a clear reason that they've even stated as to why this system is the way it is. Because the buildup of ships on larger servers was causing performance issues.

And of course there could be other contributing factors, but none of them truly justify this system. Maybe they feel that the reward of taking control of a capital vessel is too great a reward for taking one down, too much of a power jump so to speak if you build something to cheese taking them down. if this was the case, then that's more of a problem with them being too easy to take down (low risk - high reward) that could be changed by making those ships harder to take down and more powerful.

And to the note of why have all this stuff if players can 'just wipe them out,' its an open world sandbox game. Developers shouldn't police how people "should or shouldn't" play the game. Great games give players options to do what they want to do. If I want to go around doing quests for factions and making friends and avoiding ships I should of course be able to do so. But if I want to be a renegade pirate and take down whoever I want, then I should be able to do that too. Taking away player's ability to choose how they want to play the game almost exclusively results in frustrating the playerbase, especially when its in such an arbitrary way.

 

The one thing i miss being mentioned here when it comes to the patrol vessel is the invisible walls. The last few times i interacted with patrol vessels in space and ground i ran into a bunch of invisible walls that made moving around in em in one case problematic in the other even near impossible, as they are not just invisible but also indestructible i think.

Besides that i think that any sort of timer needs to be longer then a single digit number of minutes AND better shown to the player, whats with those invisible walls, are they supposed to be there?

 

Did you destroy ALL thrusters? I just learned 3 days ago that you must destroy all thrusters to board. Yes, that ts correct loose most of the neodinium.

 

Nobody said you can't interact with anything in the game. Do it if you want, nobody will stop you from attacking ships or POIs. But the developers can tweak their game as they want. Funny thing here is that players can also do this even while the game is still in development.

The developers have been facing player inertia on so many topics they can't take it much seriously anymore. For you it may be like the end of your fun in the game, for them it's just another player thinking he's the one developing the game.

 

It's peoples opinions on how to make a rubbish feature better, as my great suggestion in post #33. (last paragraph)
If the devs take it on board then great, if not then there is nothing I can do about it.

Have they personally told you this?

 

The current SBD destruction seems at best to be a slapdash/stopgap measure, from what I have seen it needs lots of improvement/balancing.

I think that I can speak for most people when I say that risk/reward ratios greater than 1 is not quality gameplay.
Currently, the ratio with SBD is risk/0 or near 0 which is even worse.
The ratio for the others is not much better since most explode all worthwhile loot/salvage (unless you're looking for base armor blocks) in 250 secs (4 mins and 10 secs) or less, that I argue for most NPC builds isn't enough time to even give the interior a once over much less loot/salvage much of anything. That is not even taking into account getting close enough to exit your sv/cv or the time to find a good way in.

I think the countdowns should be much longer especially in regards to the size of some of the ships in the default scenario, I think a 10-15 minute timer for vessels that are uncored or otherwise disabled by default is fair with the whole thing being disabled (when/if the ability to fully take ownership of these ships becomes a thing) or at least extended by an hour or two once a player pops a core in it.

Also, have all times be in the config files, with fields to enable/disable the mechanic entirely for those that want it. A console command to temporarily disable it like SI would be helpful as well. A bonus would be to allow the default settings on this to be overridden on a per-playfield basis to allow for server admins to host special events or other specific circumstances.

I will now echo a lot of people here on the forum now: the mechanic as it stands now makes ai controlled ships nothing but an annoyance at best.
On a related note, I would love a quick way/easier to disable the Space Base Defence mechanic in its entirety outside of setting the chance to 0% min and max for all factions. Even just an SBDSpawn = true/false in the FactionWarfare.ecf would suffice.

 

Player death is also a rubbish feature in all games, yet...

Maybe my French background is having me writing this in a bad form. Let me re-phrase this :

The developers have been facing player inertia on so many topics they can't be taking it much seriously anymore.

Better ?

 

You are a very funny guy. I thank God I wore my corset because I think my sides have split....

 

Nice **** posting

Look: some unpredictability is a GOOD part of any game. Related to this, "risk" is a part of any actual game; "Reward" is a part of any actual game too. However, all risk, no reward is NOT a good part of any game.

Significant game play elements which (a) can simply be avoided; (b) offer all risk and no reward if engaged, are ridiculously BAD design. There just simply is no debating the point.

 

You're a... no, already said that.

This is purely subjective, especially if nobody here knows exactly the entire purpose of the design. Players here sometimes speak with "authority", but we're not dumb, and neither are the devs.

And by the way, there is reward with xp and loot to some amount. So right here, big "fault" to push a point.

 

This is not a feature I have personally explored much but it seems to me the risk reward is all wrong. There needs to be an opportunity to gain significant reward or this will just be ignored by players. Ultimately the despawning reduces the immersion - more so when it happens so quickly. Spanj provides a good set of suggestions above and this could be combined with the destruction causing physical damage to the player and player ships but the reward potentially much higher. Ultimately the reward could even be capturing the ship if this is feasible.

 

XP is not a reward post Level 25, which a player is very likely to be by the time they are taking on these "SDS" bastitches.

As far as it being "subjective:" there IS a reasonably narrow range of things which legitimately count as "game" even restricting our consideration to the narrow range of things we call computer games. The points I've made about risk/reward ratios and unpredictability are central to almost any definition of game. In sum: including a game play element which defies the definition of a game IS ridiculously bad design, particularly when it is strictly punitive.

I'll pose the same question here that I posed to Taelyn: if having these things despawn/dematerialize/vaporize so quickly that they cannot even be interacted with, much less looted is such a "good move," then why not just do it to ALL DROPS in the entire game. Ask yourself that question and you will understand why doing it is bad design.

ADDIT: and I would add that, setting "all drops in the entire game" to be effectively inaccessible to player interaction IS a feature in many games. Many games do not have drops at all. So it is a legitimate question which gets at the core design of THIS game.

War in the Pacific Admiral's edition has ZERO "drops." When you defeat an enemy task force it sinks. When you shoot down his planes they crash and burn/sink. When you defeat his regiments, they rout/die/flee/get capture. Player nets NOTHING by the way of "drops" from any of these outcomes, and it doesn't harm the game one bit. Why? Because it is a completely different kind of game with a completely different design. "Drops" are not part of the risk-reward cycle in that game, as is true of many games.

 

"Level 25" is also a feature that will undoubtedly get some revision at some point. I remember seeing not long ago that there would be some kind of "skill tree" in the game, but that seems to be on a shelf somewhere. So for the time being, the real problem is not that there is no XP reward, but that we get to top level too quickly. This is a whole topic in itself, but it shows how players tend to lose the wider scope when focusing on isolated features.

Here again : it is not "strictly punitive" by quite a stretch : players can simply avoid confrontation altogether. I refer you to the Witcher 3 guards, for example: we can kill every monster in the game, but not the skinny guards that keep insulting us even when we're a hero. Annoying ? Surely. And most players called that "bad design", but there were reasons for this, and it stayed that way despites all. So when players say "bad design" they just ignore all technical aspects that are included in "design" - performance and balance are also part of "design" and only the developers here know where they are going, and how much headroom they need for what they planned next.

Because there are many differences: POIs and ships are made of voxels (++computing) while critters and drones are models (--computing). When seeing the game from PvP experience, for example, we often see how PvE content is considered "bad design". And the same for PvE players looking at changes aimed at better PvP balance and server performance. Those are also part of "design" and although many players disagree, the developers have to make choices.

 

I TOTALLY agree with you that features which are "good" for PVE might well be "bad" for PVP and vice versa.

I've been suggesting they need to fork their code and experiment with reconfiguring so that many (eventually perhaps all) code in the game runs in one of either two modes: multiplayer mode or singleplayer mode. It wouldn't necessarily "double" the size of the code base, though it would inherently increase it a lot (a lot of it being redundant chunks that differed by only one or two values or identifiers, such as bool DeSpawnTimer = true, versus false . . ., etc.)

 

Like @piddlefoot often mentioned, making the game to work smooth in multiplayer is a sure way to make the game run smooth in singleplayer, because of the higher reuirements regarding optimisation. So more optimisation = more room for content, eventually. And we also have to keep in mind that the developers do read our rants and suggestions, and there are many great solutions that can come out from the many brains involved in this process... provided players are focused on the end goal, and not on the temporary satisfaction of maintaining playing habits in a limited timeframe relatively to the whole game development process (stalling development).