Feedback Required Three things you absolutely DISlike about Empyrion

@BDAKiwi ...its on the Devs TO-DO List but its not that easy to do...

 

Keys bind are limited and useless for those with disabilities.
collision block issues that are less that a full block. This makes for chunky simplistic building. Ie windows and placing furniture on both sides. half blocks etc. Should allow for placement of other blocks or items. ( other survival games allow this) with same game engine.
More curved circular blocks for building types
sorry had to sneak in another one you can only change one colour on wpns and base and ship placeables, should be allowed to change more colours 2 or 3 on each items especially the blue on the gun turrets etc. tends to bias the whole look of what you are building.

 

1. The motorbike. Just ditch it. We can build basic low-level HVs from the start and there's even a damaged hoverbike given to us at the start of the game for free. The bike might have been necessary in the days past but now it's just a horrible and unecessary diversion.

2. The "Magic Transporting of Stuff". I get it, you need easy access to lots of blocks when you're building something bigger but could you come up with some other solution that wouldn't shatter my suspension of disbelief into pieces? Like, we could make builder HVs and the blocks could be stored in its inventory or something?

3. The NPC guards in the NPC bases who only act against *me*. Sure, if I steal stuff or start killing people then obviously you're going to react. This is fine. What is not fine is these guards just standing there doing nothing while hungry raptors rampage on your front yard! There must be at least the illusion that the universe exists apart from me. So, guards, if you see Predators inside your range, do your job. If you see NPCs from a faction that is hostile against your employer's faction then again, do your job!

 

If we are going to have the factory (which I love) the ease of placing things into it could use some help. Having to drag stuff to the hotbar, then go into the factory to drop stuff, then back and forth, seems needlessly time consuming. Especially after a sucessfull salvage/battle when there are tons of different materials and items that need to be dropped.

 

I spend a lot of time building so some of my dislikes are in that area.

Building/Blueprints
1- Lights and LED signs take up an entire block. I wish these items, especially LED signs, would act more like a texture and require no space.
2- Lack of scaling on texture text. The "text" textures should be a separate entity.
3- More size options on doors, shutter doors, ramps and boarding ramps.
4- More shapes for blocks. There are a few transition shapes missing that cause me all kinds of problems.
5- Insufficient information on power usage of components/exploding generators. A builder should be able to know if a build has sufficient generators or not - BEFORE they go into combat.
6- Lack of any sort of trusses, anti-grav plates or other device to span long distances for bases. I should be able to build a base with a hanger big enough to house a CV.
7- Disparity between CPU output on bases vs. CVs. They should be the same. I should be able to build a base 10 times the size of a CV, not the other way around! Silly!!!
8-Builder needs to be told when placing an illegal block. Statistics should show illegal blocks. I shouldn't have to guess.
9- The build time for blueprints is way too long in single-player. It either needs to be real-time or reduced by at least half.

General Gameplay
6- Current CPU implementation. I like the concept but the implementation is lousy.
7- Blocks using CPU. I get that blocks have wiring etc., but I don't get why combat steel blocks require so much more CPU that carbon blocks. Armored blocks should have greater weight, not CPU usage.
8- Weapons hard count limit. Stupid. If I want a CV with 30 minigun turrets, and no other weapons, why not? Number of weapons allowed on a ship should be based on CPU availability, power availability and storage space.
9- Not enough diversity in weapons choices. Lasers and plasma guns should not use ammo but draw power from generator. Expensive to build but free to fire. High power cost. Projectile weapons require ammo and medium amount of power. Rockets and missiles require almost no power but have really expensive ammo (in terms of build cost and storage usage) Etc. You can figure out the rest.
10-The inability to fire more than one type of weapon at a time!!
11- Turns shields on/off to warp. Give us absent-minded old folks a break! I've gotten shot up a couple of times because I forgot to turn my shields back on. If you need a period of vulnerability before and after warp, fine. Just have the shields on/off be automatic. I would even like the idea of a warp timer countdown or something like that.
12-Planetary predators are too weak. They're about right in the area around the escape capsule, but once you get away from the starter area, make them ramp up. Once I get a shotgun I have no fear of raptors.
13- Bases in general are nearly useless once you get a T3 or better CV. Start by doubling the CPU output on bases. Remove grow lights from the game or at least make them far less effective than plain sunshine. Double the effects of weight on CVs. Double the weight and CPU (but not size or volume) of constructors, weapons, generators etc. to make them much less attractive for use on mobile platforms. Furnaces should be a low-level but tiered component (T1, T2, T3) and remove raw material processing from constructors.
14- Sensors/Detectors are silly. Stop this "ping" implementation. They should be on or off. And increase the range or give us upgraded T2 and T3 sensors!
15- HV vehicles should be able to carry 5 times the weight of an SV. Anti-grav units should require minimal CPU or generator power. If you want to make HVs relevant, give them the ability to carry a LOT more weight. And give them a cheaper entry price for combat armor and shields.

 

Uhm...and which THREE of those above listed 24 Points do you ABSOLUTELY DISLIKE?

 

1) No true modding API. The community could do so much...
2) NPC Animations - The NPCs look terrible...it looks like a fan project, not a professional game. Players should not see NPCs T-posing, ever.
3) Players on Roller-skates - Sliding off of blocks is the most annoying thing. Why...why is this a thing. Please fix!!
4) Quest progression does not work for co-op players - Tasks in missions only get completed for each player, not for people playing together. This is especially annoying for kill type quests. If on person kills 3 of 5 and another kills 2 of five...all five are dead...but no one can complete the quest.
5) UI Waypoints - The screen clutter is real and there are no real ways of managing you waypoints. Give us ways to turn them on/off, make POI waypoints disappear when we remove a core, let us visually filter what we see on our HUDs. This system really needs work.

 

1. Devices being locked to a single person. Some of the biggest offenders and Containers, Constructors, and Control Panels. If someone is accessing any of these, nothing else can. If someone is in a container, a constructor can't interact with it nor can anybody else. If a constructor is opened, nobody else can open it. There are only a few devices, like turrets, that should be locked.
2. Difficulties (realistic impossibilities) in completing the 'main storyline' with multiple people without constantly skipping objectives. POIs don't reset, preventing people from completing objectives normally. If multiple people are on the same stage of a quest that spawns limited targets and one person gets more kills, it can prevent others from getting enough kills to complete the quest objectives. All nearby kills (or at least kills from those in the same faction) need to count towards everybody's kill counts. This really needs a look at some point. I've figured out, as the server admin, how to at least force POI regeneration to help with some of it... but it's a manual process to bypass what should be happening automatically.
3. Inability to take over planet AI ships. The first time saw and then proceeded to take down one of these was a great victory for us. We were looking forward to putting a new core in it and replacing what was necessary to get it back to functional. We were honestly hoping that it had a template saved so we'd be able to bring it back someplace with station services and get it repaired. It was REALLY disheartening when neither of these were possible. Worse yet, we were already weighted down with ore because that's what we'd gone to that planet for to begin with (the AI ship was a complete surprise, this was the first time we'd encountered one) and since there was no way to get the ship flyable (and I now know that even if you do the game will just flat out tell you that the ship can't be piloted) the whole effort was basically wasted.


Some other frustrations
4. The magic factory. I've been told that plans are to change it, but I really want to emphasize how weird the entire thing is. There are several different better ways, Eleon I hope is looking at better ways to handle ways to construct entities from blueprints.
5. Physics enabled NPCs. Fairly standard practice for NPCs is to make them 'kinematic' with all of their physics controlled by character controllers of various types. This can prevent issues like NPCs sliding around on surfaces they shouldn't. Ever watched a fast moving raptor oscilate back and forth because it's just sliding across the ground? Or do you sometimes get frustrated by how it seems like you just slide off of surfaces on a ship that you feel like you should reasonably be able to land on? All of these issues are caused by the standard unity physics system being applied to actors rather than character controllers being used for them.

 

Things I absolutely dislike

Top 3:
1. The nonchalaunt reloading of weapons and shaking it done. Might as well shake your wanker while your at it lol. Reloading needs to be done under 3 seconds. Take a look at other FPS games. The animation should show you holding your weapon at an angle away from you while quickly reloading. While under attack, you litterally have no time to stand around with a stupid smile on your face while your shakin it for 5-10 seconds. Joking aside, this really does bother me.

2. The lousy limitation of texturing and placement of stuff on planets. Learn to properly use spherical coordinates and properly texture and map the planets so they no longer have bald spots.

3. Getting shanked by a drone that randomly spawned nearby, while trying to mine an asteroid. I think the biggest problem with this was their explosive damage destroying everything inside the ship, like it had no armor. That now is fixed (hopefully) in the experimental version.

Other things:

4. Hire a real NPC artist or buy better assets. The humanoids are just low life lousy lol Also consider using pathing lines until you get better at AI programming. It just stupid to watch NPC's stuck in elevators or walking all over stuff or getting stuck in a corner. Also we need a better avatar with the ability to customize facial and body features (you know, like other games do?)

5. Improve the motorbike or get rid of it already.

6. Take a look at the HUD. Game starting is slow. It's better than what it used to be, but still bad because you are loading too much stuff up front (which UE4 games are notorious for yet this is made in Unity). Also why does it take several seconds to load a small UI that show a confirmation when I want to delete a save game? Why is it taxing the drive so much? It should be a simple graphic that only affects the drive if it's doing something, like deleting.

 

The only thing I really want to touch on right now is the poor flight model. I am guessing it's just not a high priority at the moment and that is why it is not fixed yet. Some time prior to launch it needs to be updated to a proper model where mass affects your acceleration, not your top speed, etc.

 

Enemies can crouch and I cannot. Massive annoyance.

 

I've been saying this for years over on the Steam forums: The game is too easy, is over too quickly, and hands out epic weapons too soon.

My two major gripes:
1. You should be able to toggle/disable getting Epic weapons in the starter system.
2. Player levels up way too quickly. Even with player progression set to slow, it's too fast.

There really needs to be more configurable options when you start a custom single player campaign. In my current game, I am just now getting ready to leave the starting system, and I already have 3 epic weapons and am level 17. When you get all the epic weapons and you reach maximum level, what's the motivation to keep playing? Just to blow stuff up?

I would LOVE to see an option for "Player Progression: Very Slow" as well as "No epic weapons in starting system". If you want to keep the Epic Drill as a mission reward in the starter area, that's fine I suppose. With Very Slow progression, every time you level it will really feel like you've achieved something.

If I had to list a 3rd thing I dislike, it would be NPC characters with their arms out to the side. It looks ridiculous. Give them flexible elbows, lower their arms, and have them walk like a normal being would, with their arms moving. Maybe even give them some animated poses they could randomly assume. This is way down on the list compared to the first two things I've listed though.

Hrm... actually now that I think about it, I'd rather go back to the drones that randomly patrol the planets. Back when, you always had to keep an eye on your radar for those pesky wandering drones. It really added to the sense of danger. Now, there's no sense of danger at all unless you're on a planet with the planetary patrol vehicle.

 

This:



Please don't get me wrong. Traders evolved a lot lately and I'm really thankful for that. Marketprices rule. Yay!

But I still don't see myself travelling far, wasting fuel and time
only to sell cheap something I spent a long time harvesting, crafting or wreckage-scavenging.

Even the higher priced stuff like commodities earns you 10 or 20 percent profit.
Trading in a SP game is useless unbalanced in its current state, I'm sorry to say that.
And there are no traders buying things like fridges, medical stations, ATM, clone chambers or deco stuff.

 

byo13, colonists on planets buy consoles, deco stuff and narcotics at highest, they sell cheap crew too you can sell in Mining Asteroids and Alloy Synthesis Factories.
You can sell large T2 generators for 50k/pc at a gas refinery.
You can buy stacks of autominer core, optronic bridges and matrixes at Alloy Synthesis to resell at Supply Stations.

Just buy the higher priced items in large quantities, you need a large cargohold, my CV was completely filled with optronic components worth several hundred millions credits when I was trading. The only problem was waiting for the buyer to refresh, it's around 5 minutes I believe.

 

Hmm, I think gas refineries don't sell that anymore after I reported that. It felt like cheating. Gonna check that. Thanks.

The problem for me is that I still don't understand what trading is supposed to be.
Does the game want me to earn 20% profit selling thousands or make a lot selling less?
In the past, each trader would have around a dozen pieces per item which would be the latter.
Right now, it seems their inventory has increased and it's something along 500 pieces but still far from ideal.

My suggestions would be:
a) if the player is meant to fill cargos with thousands of pieces of some stuff to earn at best 20% profit, at least make it explicit where to find someone interested in that item. By memory only or by chance only is too vague. Some games have a cheap workaround for that like a device/UI with updated information about all galaxy/sector traders and their current costs and locations.

b) if the player is meant to craft/buy a few items and sell them at a high price (like furnaces), let the profit be higher than 20%. Right now it is: "mf-1.1-1.2".

You could even make every item in every trader variable like "mf=0.5-2.5" so depending on when you meet someone his items could cost less than the marketprice like 50 percent or more like 250 percent. In my perception, that's something realistic because some item could be really rare in some places or periods of time.

 

I think it's interesting for the player to look for traders, showing prices everywhere is ok for a start but hidden traders are important if you want to focus on trading, it's good to keep secrets.
This morning I bought 800M worth of items to sell, I'll make enough profit to buy anything I need from this.
The problem with trading now is the lack of any threat, my ship is full of treasures and there is not a single NPC to attack me, making round trips between traders is boring. We need agressive NPC ships following the player, pirates or police for illegal items. I'd like to see some kind of rendez-vous event where a trader NPC would spawn somewhere for a short time, you would be provided location to an NPC ship, requiring to stop your, meet the trader onboard the other ship, it would allow an attack from pirates in space or in the ship.

 

@woowoo That's nice to know it's working for you.
And I agree with pirate threat in space subject as long as it's not too hard or too annoying ( the player can't stop the ship for a while to repair or visit a station without being constantly pursued).

Can you please tell me where to buy those ridiculous amounts of items?
In the trader config file, most traders can have between 150 to 500 units per item.

 

I just buy everything in stations, you can find plenty in Polaris territory.