Until turret targeting stay automated and there is no vessel structural integrity empyrion can't be a pvp game. I've been playing this game since Mars 2016, started on HWS then moved elsewhere because of the custom rules. In my experience, PvP doesn't require skills, there are just a FEW things to know to build a cookie cutter brick, there are no tactics, no choices. Because of difficults bugs to fix, exploits and performance issues, we are very limited, fighting another vessel is awfully boring, I won't take the time to build "good" PvP ships anymore because I don't want to watch my turrets tearing layers upon layers of armor block and devices for another hour. I liked dodging fights, I fought a lot of bricks with small ships that couldn't hand a single explosive hit, guess what, I wasn't hit but the enemy bricks hit a thousand times was still flying, I'm not interested hitting a brick for an hour and PvP is only about bricks, all PvP ships are bricks. Why? Because of automated turrets, because of performance and balance they are restricted, damage is capped, design is limited, armor isn't capped, players make cookie cutter bricks. PvP needs manual targeting of turrets, we should be able to aim with free mouse in first or third camera view while flying with our selection of turrets grouped in hotbar, they should do high damage to reward good targeting, have different effects, we need structural integrity to punish design flaws. We need a targeting UI/tactical view showing the locked enemy vessel model, we should be able to click any block in this window and turrets would fire at it.
Enhanced targeting isn't something just needed in PvP- that would probably fall into the category of things we can all agree on
@woowoo not all PVP ships are bricks you clearly don't understand that. Look up the LiCorp series by NaStral or Scorpions legacy fleet and then tell me PVP ships are bricks. Please tell me some of the best PVP ships around are bricks oh wait you can't because they aren't bricks.
They are bricks, there is no other way with the mechanics in the game, they can be pointy, they can be pretty, they still are bricks, I've spent countless hours building PvP ships, I know the tricks, I've found and used exploits like a lot of other players because it was the only thing to get away of the cookie cutter brick design. Without using exploits and knowing mechanics, you build bricks. I looked at the details of your pvp ship on the workshop, it's the very definition of a brick and an outdated design using things that doesn't work anymore with awful maneuverability, there is no room for piloting skills with this, it's only meant to tank damage in a boring face to face, it's a brick. I won't pvp until automatic turrets are gone, it should be removed, it was a mistake, it the source of the main problems in gameplay for both pvp and pve. I bet replacing it with manual targeting will be much more satisfying for all players and will greatly improve empyrion. There is no reward with turrets, you feel nothing, I was very satisfied landing long range ballistic artillery shots before it was removed because pve players easily destroyed poi with it. Automatic damage dealing should be limited to one or two devices at very close range for auto defense only. We will come to it, it's the only way. Even in star trek you see Worf on the tactical console in battle, the ship advanced AI doesn't defend itself for ethical reasons. edit: I just checked and I'm happy to see long range artillery ballistic is back
Some of Scorpion's PvP builds available on the workshop have something like 100m/s plus in all directions. They also look great. They're not bricks by any reasonable definition. Large ships in the game shouldn't be used like a fighter with only forward facing weapons, and it doesn't make a lot of sense for large ships to only have one turret, so I would strongly oppose removing automatic turrets. I would however support there being a high CPU cost to turrets, and then having an ability to have manual-only turrets that don't cost CPU. I might also support there being a class of manual only-fire artillery weapons that outrange everything else. Some of these options could be easily tested out in a custom config. If people were really attracted to removal of automatic turrets, a custom config and server to test that theory should be able to attract some players to test it.
It's true the majority of players are SP. However, there's good reasons to design a set of underlying ship combat mechanics that are agnostic to the mode. I'd suggest the aim, even for SP, should be to allow fleet battles with multiple ships involved. In SP, they would be piloted by AI pilots, whereas in MP, more would be human. Its far better when AIs stick to same flight mechanics, because then the fleet combat still feels immersive, balanced and fair (no "cheating" AIs). This also means your PvP community becomes a free balance testing community for your AI fleet combat - they explore the strategies, then later when the AI is ready to be written, you know how to program it, and the combat has already been balanced so there's not obvious strategic holes in it (cheesy tactics).
Denition of bricks: Layer over layer of blocks. Thats what he meant by: I'm just translation, nothing more.
Voxel based survival ship building games are probably never going to be very fair and balanced for PvP. If you want fair and balanced PvP, you have to play PvP games with pre-built ships designed by experienced game developers. The closest we can get is making sure that all the weapons, defenses, thrusters etc are as balanced as they can be, but PvP players by their very nature will always fight very different from PvE ships. It's very, very difficult to make AI behave like a player no matter what game you're playing. EVE Online and Heroes of the Storm have made a lot of progress in this regard, but even still it requires constant developer updates to keep the NPCs even two steps behind the players. And even then, the AI in both games still has a lot of easily recognized and exploitable features. You can't make the AI behave exactly like players in PvP. Even some of the most advanced learning AI in existence can only play on a couple of Starcraft maps. You can't expect such AI in a game like this. Spoiler: Don't open if you don't want to read a long rant about what making "AI that behaves like a PvP player" would require. Game AI needs to operate under a different set of rules from players, and you have to balance PvE content with that in mind. Making Empyrion's PvE content be based on what players do in PvP is: 1: Virtually impossible, because it would take the best AI in existence literal years to develop, at a cost easily 100x the total budget of Empyrion. No game employs AI like this. It REQUIRES machine learning. You cannot have non-cheating AI in any other way in a game. Not feasibly given the budget constraints of most games, anyway. 2: Would be very boring, since the AI would ALWAYS build the most effective ship, and would pay no attention to appearance. Think PvP ships are bricks? Imagine if every AI ship was the same. 3: Would require a literal supercomputer to run the game. Not just having to simulate the AI, but having to do it in 15,000-20,000 solar systems, with multiple planets on each one, at the same time. Would possibly require more computational power than is even in existence on Earth right now. You're talking about taking the most advanced AI ever built, and somehow applying it to potentially hundreds of thousands of NPCs, in real time, in a game with randomly generated planets, and having them respond in realistic ways to what players do? You might as well create a universe simulator. In short, the AI cheats and plays by a different set of rules from the player, so you can't look to PvP players to properly develop and balance PvE AI.
Also I know some people will look at my above post and claim it has no bearing on the discussion, and I'd respond that PvP has no bearing on PvE content, outside of whatever scenario is running on a particular server.
All I know is I want all my guns or part of them to target the ship or gun or what ever I want to take out and all shoot at it at once. Because I told it to! No AI involved. Then to have a command to fire at will and then turrets can have their fun!
Any ship with 25m/s² acceleration is able to get to max speed, maximum acceleration and turning rate are the important stats, maximum acceleration = sqrt(ax²+ay²+az²), you can't see it on ship statistics, deactivate brakes, use 3 ways thrust in space, use particules to get your direction, it's how you break turret path prediction to avoid hits and get in their dead angles, wich isn't possible with any of those builds, their design is to tank shots, it's in their description. I never suggested to remove turrets, limit them to only one or have only forward facing fixed weapons. Turrets shooting projectiles (non hitscan, not minigun, cannon and laser) like the artillery turret have a greater range than stated on their description if you shoot them manually already, projectiles go further than automated targeting range. You can attack bases without anybody defending them with a simple artillery turret bp. Next time someone kite you, deactivate brakes, shoot manually your projectile turrets. Custom configs don't allow new features like free mouse aiming with grouped turrets like I suggested above. The range on turrets, their numbers are limited because of automated targeting and projectile life time performance cost mainly.
How could there be "unfairness" when everyone has the same freedom to design and build ? I think the problem is elsewhere. As for AI, unless there's a specific scenario calling for their invincibility, I have no problem with AI being defeated relatively easily. Games are meant to be won by players, after all...
I think there should be a range of PvE content from easy to hard. If all the AI is defeated relatively easily then it hurts the single player experience a bit.
To be more specific : AI pawns do not need to be hard to kill, there could simply be more of a "dumber" kind. Most players agree, IMO, that foot combat against NPCs is tedious and boring, visually and tactic-wise, because they lack animations, aim perfectly (sometimes through deco), and don't really give satisfying "victory" feedback to players when defeated. For ships, I don't know. Drones seem ok, they could be a bit faster and maneuver better, rely less on firepower and more on agility. This has been done long before today in many games, but I feel Eleon is far too concerned about players crying about difficulty. There could be a middle ground where AI ships don't feel sluggish and slow and being invulnerable laser balls zipping everywhere too fast for players to catch.
I think one thing that could be of great help here, either for PvE or PvP, would be a proper "cover" mechanic. A "crouch" could do, but could be exploited in PvP if players get a reduced damage advantage while moving. A cover mechanic would require players to be very close to an object, and this would allow some amount of protection from explosions (splash damage), and an appreciable reduction of direct hits from handheld weapons. Crouching in front of POI turret fire should yield no advantage, evidently. Giving players a way to use approach tactics and use the environment as cover would surely help lessen the feel that AI is too strong, it could render exploring POIs a bit more fair for many players who don't want to go through the same maze 20 times to learn all its difficulties to properly avoid them. One-shotting players should be the exception, not the norm. Players prefer having a chance to change tactics or to evade, especially if there is no way to assess the power of the opponents before exposing themselves. Balance should always keep that in focus, IMO. In many games, even most bosses don't one-shot players and allow for some running around to adjust. For ship combat, the whole meta needs to change. CVs can't be used to dogfight, it is utterly non-immersive, and causes computing problems for huge ships. I am also against relying on auto-turrets for the main damage dealings, and would much prefer a long distance, very powerful front gun, that would entice players to think twice before getting too close to a mothership. Auto-turrets should be for proximity defense against little, agile fighters getting in close range, not to be used like "pirate vs royal marine" 18th century cannon combat in close quarters. Indeed there are many things that could be done to make PvE and PvP more fun, and the main obstacle may be that many players do not wish to change the way things are right now. Edit : I almost forgot... The tech tree and leveling system are actually what can cause "unfairness" and unbalance, since evidently players who spend the most time on a server get advantages that players with less time to play will not get. There has to be ways to protect the new players, or progression has to leave combat possible between veterans & newbies, without putting either category inside a box. A "cover" mechanic could already solve part of this, as beginners could protect themselves to some extent and still return fire, even if they don't have access to the upper-levels equipment and advantages. If some players are already discussing about the fact that respawning is too trivial and has become a way to circumvent difficulties, and propose to make death more "punishing", then maybe we can also look in the opposite direction. If "death" is the result of a fierce and tactical combat, players should not feel cheated to the point of abusing the respawning option. So players must be given more chances, not the contrary (ex. cover). This could be adjusted per difficulty level, of course. There is nothing epic to tell about a battle won by respwaning more often than other players, each death caused by one-shots... And there is nothing epic to tell about a ship combat victory where ships were parked next to each other and turrets did all the work while players were watching TV.
True, but by removing automatic turrets it seems like you're effectively achieving this - why waste CPU on multiple turrets when they don't increase your DPS? Why even both with turrets when you can use a much stronger set of 4 or 6 front facing weapons, with the added bonus of getting to move around while you're firing (especially in PvP)? Apart from the single case of using a artillery tank to siege attack a stationary target, I'm confused as to how you believe turrets would get used if they aren't automatic?
The stats of the turrets wouldn't be the same, the removal of automation allow to change this, I want to increase damage and range of all turrets, less shots but more effective if you know where to aim. There is too much shots, a 1v1 is 42 turrets shooting, we have 0 visibility, there are much less simultaneous shots on a 64 players battlefield server than in a empyrion CV duel. A slow turning capital ship would have a better DPS because he wouldn't have to face his target, all the brick designs can barely turn and have to face the enemy because of how they set turrets. It allows teamwork inside the same ship, a pilot doing maneuvers impossible with bricks, a gunner aiming at the enemy, able to switch to any target around, today you don't do any maneuvers with bricks, you just get in range of your turrets and tank shots in a face to face.
Here's my two cents. Automated turrets. Without these I probably wouldn't waste as much time playing this game. People talk about the fact that capital vessels shouldn't fill the role of giant starfighters, but if you take away all but one automated turret, then everything must be a starfighter. I play SP and I use CV and HV specifically for those automated turrets. Why? Because I don't have to spend 100% of my time shooting any threat to the vessel. I can actually get out of the pilot's seat and go explore a POI or check out the sunrise. The few times I have had my HV or CV shot up while I was away from the cockpit was often because I accidentally triggered a hostile reaction from the local faction when I had shut off the weapons of my vessel specifically to reduce the chances that my vessel would shoot the wrong thing in the faction territory--which meant I accidentally destroyed something myself instead of my unattended vessel doing so. Take away the automated turrets and I doubt I will explore anything more than a resource deposit here and there. Certainly nothing that would take me away from the cockpit for 30+ minutes--I think someone else mentioned the tedious nature of personal combat with AI mobs. I would not nerf the range of the automated turrets. Though I do love the idea of being able to target with my turrets while flying from the cockpit of my vessel. Another game I have played allowed you to switch turrets from automatic targeting and tracking to a secondary mode where the turrets would attempt to shoot and track the primary target you were shooting your fixed weapons at. Fixed weapons. One of my frustration with HV combat is that I only have one fixed weapon. And the advantage for using fixed weapons is somewhat limited. I use HV because they had one clear advantage over SV, as long as their turrets actually had targeting on the POI, all weapons would fire. While with my SV, I would be limited to one weapon group. I know some people use tricks to fire multiple weapons in succession, but for some of us trying to fly the SV and fire the one group of weapons is challenging enough. I am left wishing I could assign multiple weapons to combined groups. Say one group of energy weapons and another group of projectile weapons. Granted, I can think of another PvP game where you cannot combine weapons into a single group, and that game is strictly group PvP, so that game forces you focus on maximizing limited weapon types. I have played more than one game that gave a clear damage per second advantage to fixed weapons. Granted, some of those games also included a type of weapon between full automated turrets and fixed weapons, a sort of limited radius turret--it was often limited to a forward arc but could track the target somewhat within that arc. The more limited the arc, the greater the damage bonus. So the more you had to track the target with flying skills instead of relying on the automated targeting, the greater the damage per second. I have seen this in several games. Take Star Trek Online or Elite Dangerous for example, both of which offer PvE and PvP experiences. I realize that both those examples use fixed ship models that you only customize the upgrades. I also saw something similar in Robocraft, although almost everything in Robocraft is a turret and only the available arcs tend to vary. Though mostly, I wish I could have at least a second fixed weapon choice for HV (my personal vote would be rocket launchers) and at least sentry guns for SV--so I don't have to constantly worry about threats when I step out of the cockpit and walk away from my SV.
Strictly speaking, it's not quantity that counts but quality, or "DPS" in the case of weapons. So of course the game could be made so 1 turret could deal more damage than a hundred, to put it simply. But I don't personally advocate for reduction of turrets of nerfing them at all. I think they should be the main CV weapons against small attackers, but not against other CVs - I'm talking about size here, see my previous post, and keep server performance issues in mind. I would not. I would rather make all their ranges more uniform, but give the "main gun" of a ship a 3x range minimum, could be more, so this becomes the weapon used by "aiming with the nose" of a CV when considering another biggy to tackle. I don't want to go into the minute details of this idea, I expect readers to make a small effort to visualize how this could make battles much different than the actual auto-turrets-shots-tanking. Imagine the frontal weapon being able to kille the shields in 1 shot, then poke a hole through a ship with another shot, large enough to take many devices out in the process. Would players risk getting in range of another CV if they can't return equivalent firepower, or if they can't evade ? That's why CV vs CV is so cheesy now. Ne real risk, just damage soaking and relying on auto-fire. I'm not talking about small zippy fighters circling around a biggy, here. And I will repeat this: many changes can be done to make PvE and PvP more fun, but the problem is often that players don't want to change the way things are right now. Why ?
