The thing is, most planets probably shouldn't have a lot of active installations on them (and the ones there should largely be cluster POIs); the last thing I'd want to see in Empyrion is NMS syndrome. And while there could be more ruins than active installations, most planets still shouldn't be terribly built up. A proper sensor system would go a long way toward making large planets feel manageable (in that you could find things in a large radius if you built a powerful enough sensor array), and fix the current "blindly wandering through an endless wilderness" method of finding interesting things.
I don't think I can agree with that. If EGS aimed for hard sci-fi, maybe, but it's very game-y and already takes a lot of liberties with plausibility. Unless you're into PvP, it has very little going for it outside of crafting and conquering. Planets need much more to do, especially now that they're larger. It doesn't have to all be full-blown POIs, but more foot and aerial patrols, a greater (or any) illusion of agency from the Zirax and various factions, some interesting natural formations (like caves), anything to make playfields seem more alive or otherwise engaging — this would all improve the game.
Completely agree with you Undead, and everything you mention I have been pushing hard for, and more, like flowing water and alot more spawn points and the ability to create a terrain shape and save that manually created shape as a terrain xml file. So theres alot of things they could do to improve this, and I agree they really need to focus on that for a while and get the gameplay sorted out on planets and space. I usually post in the closed section for all of this stuff, but I have lots of posts in there so today I be different ! I like 8.0 but it does have some serious issues still. And we must be honest if we want the game to improve. I think the introduction to the start of the story was a good idea, Eleon need to now carry that on and not just leave it as it is for a year, but expand on that story and take us into mid game, then focus on the dynamics of how midgame is going to play out. Which involves automation and storyline , the levelling system and how that works and all of that stuff. Planets. But right now, the planets themselves need Tender Loving Care, there are to many huge areas of boring flying, our SVs need adjusting so we have a new starter block for atmo flight only and they need to go alot faster, like 80m/s fast, and they need to start looking at collision on planets and stop all of these Zirax from shooting through walls all the time. The first set of challenges needs to become a story we are actually immersed in, rather than reading everything on screens , we need to adapt a better system, using the sound files, Empyrion needs a system like Subnautica where your suit talks to you, immerse the player in the moment, Empyrion seriously lacks that. Scenario builders NEED access to the sound file system so they can also create there own stories and use a talking suit to express them, the scenarios will get a huge boost with a sound feature we can access. And thats before we mention the horribly short sound loops the game has and that alarm clock bird in the forest, 5 years of hearing that is driving people insane, a real focus on gameplay is desperately needed right now, the ratings are not as great as they used to be either. These are serious issues that are effecting the games ratings which eventually effects sales, the terrain detail in Empyrion is actually very low, basically all hills rolling into eachother, it doesnt shape the terrain very well at all in that regard, from day one Ive always said the quality of the maps you play on determines how immersed you are in that environment, credit to Eleon they have done alot of work on this side of the game but its just not right still unfortunately. You can make some strange shaped variants in the SSG but mostly its just basic patterns with splat map detail added on top , where a system of real beauty would allow us to shape the terrain any way we like and then save that to be used as a seed number or the like. That allows for us to shape terrain and make caves etc, allow players to find where performance and gameplay balance should be. Flowing water, not volumetric, to recourse hungry but a system more like MC where you can start water flow wiih a specific block, lets say a Tap block, and allow players to create lakes and creeks. Allow US to experiment with all of these things and see what we can produce, I think some of our maps would surprise even Eleon, in that we could create much more detailed maps at little CPU cycle extra cost, moddability is key to games like this. Space. Space needs some adjustments also. Playfields need to be made bigger, the idea Eleon were toying with joining the space playfields together so you can fly travel between them should be looked at in detail and an attempt to make that work I recon is a good idea. A new hyper travel system for CVs to boost there speed in normal flight up to 250m/s but cannot interact with any other players at that speed , so give it a super cool animation as it flies at such speeds, and give the hyper generator block a 15 minute recharge cycle to prevent running in battles. But a higher speed system is needed for space if we want the game to feel like were in space if we want immersion basically. The AI needs to also start and get organised in space, the AI in space is almost non-existant still, just basic stuff, some proper co-ordinated CV and SV attacks on players bases is needed in the orbit of the first planet they jump too. Water Worlds. Take a page out of Subnauticas portfolio and look at proper underwater bases, that drain the water out like in subn, add a heap of pre-fab building blocks similar to subn that also link to our normal building blocks, like in PN, merge those two features so they become one in the same game, open up the water worlds to a whole new environment, and add some really colourful under water plants. Introduce some more machines for such a base, Empyrion hasnt added many new blocks for a long time. Blocks. Empyrion is a block building game, a block building game in my opinion should NEVER stop adding new blocks, and block shapes. That said, Empyrion has been busy replacing all the Unity models so the model guys are busy, however, the blocks in the game, the steel ones , have not seen a new shape in months and months and months dare I say years almost. The game is desperately due for a heap of new building block shapes and for the missing shapes to be added also. Animated Blocks. We only have a few, one is the Offline Protection block, which is a rotor and can push you around unlike any other block in the game. Empyrion would benefit from a piston block even if it can only be used on bases. Retracting landing gear, a thing Eleon have talked about since 2015 but never introduced yet, please introduce it Eleon, it would be a great addition. A ramp could be a piston if a building block could be attached to its opposite end. Food for thought for those that say a piston wont work. The Offline Protection block a rotor.... On bases only doesnt effect CV battles. Automation. Food production, machines are close to impossible for Eleon to invent where it will work in every players base design, so the most practical way to approach this is by using helper bots, or droids, player owned ones to assist in automation, thats how to do it and keep the play immersed. Droids could be tasked with collecting ore, defending a position, scouting an area, drilling in a mine etc etc etc. 9.0 and beyond. Some of these serious issues need to be tasked into the 9.0 update in my opinion, halt the bad reviews as fast as possible and start expanding on the actual game itself. My 2 cents. Yall have fun now Empyrionites !
Oh, I definitely agree that there should be vast quantities of natural formations to explore, and more mobile faction presence would also be welcome, but I see little to be gained from copying or even distantly approximating NMS's near-uniform layout of POIs (whether they're actual installations or just camps or wrecks). At this point, planets are now large enough that simply flying around on them isn't sufficient to find any particular thing very quickly. This naturally leads to the need for a sensor system to let players locate interesting things. That then ties into combat, resource harvesting, and data collection; data then leads to a need for a research system and secondarily enables missions beyond simply "kill that thing". Research allows for a proper tech tree as well as lore and story. At that point, you then finally have a variety of things to do in the mid- to late-game. So, planets feel empty right now because there's not a lot in the way of game mechanics that make use of them, but that doesn't mean that we should simply fill them up with random content everywhere. What I think I'm trying to say is that what's placed on a planet should be placed because it makes sense for it to be there (because of the history of the planet), not because there's an empty region larger than some maximum allowed empty region size.
I am in agreement with 98% of what is being said in the last few posts, but one general theme that I pick up on from several of you, which I'm not sure I agree with is: planets feel too desolate and empty. I don't know how many folks called for "bigger planet" and "bigger playfields" but I know I was a vocal and repetitive advocate of it. I have no idea if it was me, or us, or someone else, or themselves who "listened" to these pleas for bigger planets, but in any event I'm very happy with them. I have now played on half dozen worlds with 8.0 . . . well maybe only 4 or 5. Maiy is probably the biggest at size 4, Elverius and some other random temperates in the 3 size ballpark and then one small random seed temperate the name of which I forget which was size 2 or perhaps 1. I found the difference in the sizes on those planets to be quite dramatic. The smallest one (whether it was 1 or 2 I cannot say for sure) felt just about like the older planets; perhaps not quite that small, but small enough that (a) it was a breeze to explore it with a low level HV (much less an SV) and (b) it felt a little bit cartoonish. Not horrible, but a little bit. Then I contrast this with Maiy (the "hard start" planet in Dawn of Galaxy). I've been piddling around on Maiy for probably 20 or 30 hours of play and I STILL have only explored about half of the planet, perhaps 2/3rds. You know what: that is fantastic. It is a "planet" after all, and it SHOULD feel vast. I'm not quite sure what it is that people are taking issue with. Most of you are experienced players, so I don't see how you could be getting put out by the planets being a bit "empty," especially when you can pretty much choose your planet size. Perhaps you are concerned about how new players react when they start playing the game and wind up starting on a size 4 or 5 planet and wind up roaming for 20 minutes and don't find El Dorado with a Epic Two-Handed Vorpal Sword and a free Battlestar Galactica, so they get pissy and go write a bad review? People like that are going to find something to complain about no matter what you do, and if it really seems like a problem then the best solution for Eleon is to compose one or two "starter" scenarios where this issue (as well as any other issue which is deemed potentially offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the newcomers to the game) is addressed by insuring that certain things spawn close to the player, and/or the planets are Dr. Seuss size or whatever.
The thing is ... what you call "NMS syndrome" is kind of what Empyrion already does. You find the same stuff pretty much in all playfields. There just ain't much of it. The game needs a robust faction system, with each faction having its own aesthetics and technologies, possibly accessible by the player only through some kind of reputation mechanic. Providing the designers and art team are up to the task, this is far preferable to covering up a lack of content with vast, empty planets. The planets feel empty right now because they are empty. Of course, the solution is not throwing "random content" all over the place. However, as I said earlier, all EGS really does outside of PvP is a build -> conquer gameplay loop. If that's the development M.O., then the devs should provide more to build and more to conquer, or else Eleon could risk cutting the legs off their own game. Just as an aside, a great many studios use internal content saturation rules—e.g. a mobile player should encounter something interesting every X seconds.
Planets feel desolate and empty because they are, and not just in the POI sense. Biospheres are crap, and there's pretty much nothing going on except some wonky drone attacks and the occasional even wonkier patrol vessel. "Vast" is not synonymous with "desolate and empty." You can have a vast planet teeming with life and activity, or you can have a vast planet scorched by its host star or cratered under nuclear bombardment, devoid of anything except a handful of research outposts. Empyrion needs some of both and everything in between, but right now sits somewhere in meh territory.
Agreed, and I would not want to see the devs proceed any further down that route. In fact, they should flip and burn instead. Indeed. There needs to be stuff going on in the background that isn't directly related to what the player is doing (or where they are). The work the devs are doing on building queues that function when the player is far from them gives me hope that they can eventually apply similar code to entity relationships when those entities aren't near the player. As long as it's an average X seconds with a large standard deviation, sure. At least build->conquer gets the game to the level of Minecraft, but obviously that's also kind of the bare minimum these days. Right. Planets don't feel alive because they really aren't. There's no simulation going on behind the scenes, just the RNG placing enemies near the player. Even just a few simple predator-prey loops would be something (however terrible StarForge was, even it had a predator-prey mechanic, and you'd stumble across carcasses every so often, which was great because the neutral mob took some time to take down manually).
Put this way I agree. Leave the size, leave the ecological scattering (mostly) as it is. Leave the foraging distributions (mostly) as they are. Add narrative, tension, drama, comedy, tragedy, catharsis, etc. It is an extremely engrossing tech demo. In fact, it is better at what it does that most games that have tried these themes: including I would say Minecraft (well not exactly, Minecraft has the benefit of nearly a decade of vibrant development and an ocean of user modifications and community splinters, but placing this game at Minecraft's "three year old stage," yes this game has Minecraft beat even at Minecraft's own game). But it has the POTENTIAL to be orders of magnitude more than it presently is. It has the POTENTIAL to make Oblivion, Morrowind, all the Fallouts, the Witcher series and probably even Star Citizen look like second rates stuff. It has those POTENTIALS.
I can see many players, including the never-tiring @Scoob , may have gotten a bit burned out by the constant re-starts from scratch lately. That shows where the game got most of the work put into. We still wait for shields, automation & new stuff like @piddlefoot mentioned (and others also). And Eleon can go only a certain length in showing us the "game story" to avoid spoilers, and having to do something totally different - again - so the story stays "fresh" for everyone upon release. They did say they had lots on their to-do list, but I would welcome (and surely others the same) some "News from the Devs" regular updates on a thread showing us what they are working on, asking us to test specific things, etc. Interaction is at a bare minimum right now. Keep us posted, @EleonGameStudios . We do appreciate your "feedback" !
It doesn't seem like we're that far out of agreement on this. I suppose there's any number of ways they could "flip and burn," but what they're doing now clearly needs rethinking. You're right about potential, but I think you're overselling Eleon's narrative capacity. Maybe they've secretly hired a world-class writer, who's crafted a story for the ages that will drive the likes of CD Projekt Red to hide in shame. I doubt it, and that would be quite an unreasonable standard to put on EGS, but who knows? Regardless, the life and death of Empyrion is going to hinge on gameplay, and this is a case where I frankly couldn't care less about story. Sure, I'd like the background information brought up to a professional level and revealed in a logical manner in-game, and some dialogue would be nice, but I'm playing because I want to build ships, fly ships, fight aliens, and blow stuff up. Thanks for that post, by the way, @piddlefoot. Maybe Eleon should hire you onto the design team. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, and I know they're a small company, but the stuff you're saying right now is stuff the devs should have said at the concept level years ago.
I think you might like this game WITH story a lot more than you anticipate. I come from a strategy/war-gaming background. Those two genres really are separate, but there are a few games where the two genres blend together: the Civilization series, Europa Universalis, Herts of Iron. Even games like Total War and most of Slitherine/Matrixes libraries include pieces of "building" and "designing." But your strict, "pure" war games do not involve building. You get a map, an order of battle, and a rule set and you have to solve the problems the game poses, which are often either strictly historical, or alternate historical without much contextual extent or flexibility. What the two genres share is: a rule set, a population-level (or at least group level) set of processes over which the player must steward and analyze in order to achieve success. They differ mainly in the extent to which the player can create new "pieces" or "moves" to try out on the game board, but "story" is not something that actually differentiates them. Plenty of gamers use "strict" wargames as a medium to tell epic "After Action Report" yarns. Have a look at the Matrix forums War in the Pacific sub-forum under AARs. Maybe the potentials to which I allude are too lofty. But with the correct staff and the proper team dynamic, I really believe this game can go as far as I suggest.
Yes, I have a bit. Oddly enough though it's the start of the game that I gain the most enjoyment from. Once I have adequate resources for a CV build I start working on that, occasionally popping away or even off-planet if I run low of anything. As has happened several times, I've burnt out at the point I have a fresh scratch-built CV sat on a landing pad attached to my base. Getting a CV built is late-game for me as, once I have a CV, I sort of lose interest to a degree. I do think that the game needs some content / activity that really allows CV's to shine. For me a CV is the only way to get to more distant planets of course and I hope, one day, the only way to jump to other systems. It's also great of course for carrying a little fleet of HV's and SV's if the player so desires. Multi-player aside, I think the game would benefit from more things that might challenge a player-built CV. Currently everything can be out-gunned or out run so, unless the player deliberately places their CV in a compromising position then things feel quite safe. I thought it might be fun if there were playfields the player had to fly through (as a waypoint) to get to other planets. These "deep space" zones could have different threats like a Zirax fleet or other interesting distractions. Brain is a bit too frazzled at the moment to suggest any specifics lol. That said, basic functionally still needs work in my view. Turret engagement and targetting can still often be sporadic. Indeed this is currently where the "danger" to a player CV (and BA and HV to a degree) lies. Turrets failing to engage that Space drone or ignoring that patrol vessels Turrets despite being explicitly told to shoot them is irksome. So, having your CV taken out due to buggy turret is frustrating, yet having it taken out / damaged by an AI vessel that successful gets through your fully working defences is epic. Oh, and lag shots *sigh* need I say more? Scoob.
Indeed, lots of small story-driven events could fill the post-CV building void. I'm thinking about fetch quests, "contracts" to eliminate specific NPCs or small / medium/ big POIs, items to be obtained in hazardous places, transport missions, etc. These could effectively "force" the player into areas/ situations where they have no reason currently to risk their assets. And this points towards a more fleshed out reward system, maybe tied with the economy (missions for credits).
Something is needed to challenge the player (and their assets) at this later game-stage, that's for sure. I play predominantly Single Player these days, but I could see such challenges being great for co-op or Faction play. The enemies in question don't even have to be Zirax in origin, but perhaps a random "Pirate" type faction that wants to rob your resources for example. I'd love to see the AI capable of actually disabling a vessel via shooting out its weapons and thrusters, before attempting a boarding operation for example. Little pods - like the Escape Pod, or a block-built SV - actually trying to breach a CV would be cool. I've build some fairly large CV's in the past, and breaching the hangar bay and attempting to find the Core would be fun. However, we still need the basics working reliably first of course, so some more robustness there would be welcome Scoob.
An autopilot on a planetary surface with an SV or CV (hovering over the targeted area) is easy to implement. An autopilot for an HV is more tricky, it needs more advanced obstacle avoidance, but still doable. The problem is, what should the player do while travelling? There needs to be some tasks then to keep the player occupied. That could be administative/crafting stuff. Or running around the ship while on autopilot. The advantage of an autopilot is: the movement can be kept very linear and stable and predicatable, allowing to get around several multiplayer synchronization issues when running around in flight. Maybe only allowing to run around a moving ship when the ship is on autopilot. When the autopilot disengages (destination, attack), the ship will slow to a halt, meanwhile locking the movement of the players in place. In COOP, taking over manual control requires all players to be seated. An autopilot + meaningful tasks while travelling also allows the game to use larger travel distances (space and surfaces), as the trip itself is less boring than just looking out the cockpit window. The player can then do activities like crafting, farming and planning while travelling. Another option then are manually controlled turrets. The autopilot keeps a steady course, but the player can manually shoot down drones. Similar to WW2 bomber planes. The turrets then can be limited to be only used manually to not break the balancing.
If we can eventually dock an HV to an SV, I'm not terribly concerned about HV autopilot, but it would still be nice to have the basic ability to lock the throttle on any vessel. Can you not already run the SV constructor in flight? I don't think I've ever tried. I've wanted landed-use-only automated SV turrets since I started playing this game. Manual fire in flight might work, maybe with a restriction to one turret. Seems to be contentious whenever it comes up, though.
It's contentious because the devs and some players are very attached to HVs as a completely separate type of vehicle from SVs (when really they're two specializations of the same basic type), and believe that no one would build HVs if SVs could mount turrets, drills, and heavy armor. I think HV-like ships definitely have their uses as heavy transports and combat platforms, and that appropriately setting block/device stats would lead to hover-based ships being preferred for some applications and SV-like craft being preferred for others. In other words, I think SV/HV should be merged .
How the hell do you use the config file anyway? I've been making changes to the one on my personal server, but none of the changes get implemented..
