Remember back in October, I said my GF and I ran into a rather amusing glitch, involving a Crawler? Here you go.
Finished compiling and editing yesterday's footage. The Nephilim now has a sweet promo video to go with it. I think I'll steer clear of Masperon for a while, until my GF feels like playing again. Not keen on going there solo.
Sadly I got nothing done last Weekend cause the Weekend sucked too damn much. I can only hope the Alien POI Contest Hosts can be patient with me longer... though if not, I don't think I could really blame'em.
A little survival story to show how BAD I am. This was last night, at waaaay past my bedtime, but I couldn't stop So last night I assaulted the abandoned mine, parked the ghost just down the ramp, it was on the slant of the ramp, got out, and instantly fell through the structure to pretty much the lowest level.... it must have popped me out inside a block, and I noclipped through O_O so anyway, I'm stuck at the bottom, just got to kill the core and dig my way out, no problem, let's just have a bite to eat and think about it. Crap. No food. Ok, so I'm on a time limit, no problem, let's just take a couple of litte risks.... Crap. I just got bitten and infected with an alien parasite, and I have no antidote. Crap Crap Crap Crap where's the core? I can't remember. I run around like a loon, moving things down with the minigun, find the core on about 20% health, 0% stamina, 10% food I nuke the core, find my way out, grabbing a nice epic rocket launcher on the way, get in the ghost and hooooooon it back home. Then I die outside the front door Sooooo Epic. Grats Devs. Grats.
In my shamelessly biased opinion, Antidote Injections should be standard compliment for all Adventurers, not only cause Alien Parasite is a death sentence if not cured, but cause it's the one negative status that does not answer to Large Medkits. (& this is before we gained the ability to use stuff like Antidote Injections directly from a Inventory Slot... let alone after. )
I've been working on my Falcon CV some more. Trying to decide if I want to make the interior a 1:1 recreation in which case it's going to feel like ants walking through the halls of giants or if I want to do something a little different to account for all the extra space. Working on this has also pointed out some deficiencies in some of my older designs that I need to rectify at some point. Getting excited about being able to fit a working hyperdrive and proper computer consoles in it though. And gravity! Sweet gravity. Edit: And I had to move operations to Omicron because the ship would not stop bouncing around on Akua ground. I've got it resting on a flat, concrete platform now and it seems stable.
I set up a few auto miners in my survival game, and while I wait for those to build up my stock of resources with the eventual aim of building a CV of course, I'm attempting to design a more agile SV. My scrap heap served well enough I suppose, but I'm aiming to be able to dodge a little better. At this point I have solidly confirmed I have no idea how to build a cool looking SV hull.
In my shamelessly biased opinion, don't. Build brawny, sturdy, & practical. For the Topic: Got a big chunk more done on the Alien POI Contest Entry. I'm gonna try like hell to finish it off next go & FINALLY get it Submitted...
I took over the Abandoned Mine on Akua and proceeded to assault a nearby Epsilon base. Something curious happened, I placed a turret to start taking out the alien weapons and even though I am deep inside the mine and controlling the turret remotely, I died from the enemy weapons??? Huh?!?!?
Remember that there is not a "best" way of building a cool looking hull for any of the vessels or the BA. I can go into it at length if you are interested, because very very few people realize this, but, America(Europe... kinda, sorta, not really, maybe) is a meritocracy, and meritocracies have a tendency to get people to think that there is a "best" way of being(i.e. the assigning of merit to ideas, people, and actions,) and not to invite political discussion; but pair it with capitalism's tendency to encourage the isolating and cornering markets, and well... This interacts with all walks of life, but as it pertains to this game; you can see people in the CV blueprint thread, you can see it with the new civilian buildings thread, DEFINITELY with the SV thread, etc. Everyone is trying to find that sweet spot. The trick, is that spot does not exist. It is just an illusion. If you want a harbor to try interesting looking designs that will inspire, try this thread: http://empyriononline.com/threads/share-your-a-symmetrical-vessel-designs.7587/ If you want an impossibly cool design that is not at all based on popular conception, try: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=777588046&searchtext=Seraphim It might help propel creative designs. Also, every once in a while, just go craaaaaazy with a few ships. See what happens, and then post them here. And you know what I think I might do, later this evening I might create a general forums thread about effective critiquing and merit. Edit: My ctrl-copy function appeared to have malfunctioned for this post; just fixed it so now it makes more sense.
@Fractalite, I completely agree there is no one way to do it. And historically the things that broke conventions of the day became highly iconic (a la original Enterprise, the TIE fighter, etc). I've been playing Empyrion long enough I know how to make things that work like I want them to. My problem is often lack of concepts. If I break out the graph paper, I can usually turn concept into design without too much hassle. BA I usually don't have a problem with: they're largely just a series of 2D layouts and that's easy to make look good because a series of boxes looks fine for BA. I've never really been happy with a SV before and I've only designed one CV I like. That, I designed on graph paper from top, side, and front; framed it out with truss blocks, stuck some critical stuff like warp drive where I wanted it inside, and then worked first on the areas I thought most likely to present problems. Interior was spacious enough I could make each area work well and nothing felt crammed in. But I stepped back, and it was a couple boxes suck together in a very genetic way. So yeah. I need better concepts.
Today so far, and the last few days, I've mostly been being impressed (and afraid) of NPC's - now with actual AI! I'm currently trying to take out a Xenu Fortress on Masperon and it's proving quite challenging. I did the usual neutering of the bases turret defences using my HV with Artillery, which went fairly well apart from when I got stuck in the turret, unable to exit it, and the POI's turrets decided they could hit me at this range after all. Thankfully I'd already taken most of the out, and they don't do that much damage, just a little scary when you're being torn up and cannot move! I managed to exit the turret eventually, but that was 30 seconds (seeming longer) of panic lol. With the Fortress turrets taken care of, I've tried to move in for a ground assault on foot. However, the AI is really doing a good job of stopping me. As many are doubtless aware, the Zirax soldiers now do a LOT more damage, plus they can shoot up and down just fine. This makes them dangerous by its self, even more so considering there's no "aim up/down" animation for the Zirax model yet, so they can appear to shoot you while not facing you lol. However, the biggest improvement in my view is the new path-finding and attack response. No sooner do I manage to kill a lone Zirax or one of the other Aliens inhabiting this POI, than all the others in the area make a bee line directly for me. They're successfully following corridors, using doorways (sans door, they still can't open their own doors oddly) and finding me. Blowing a hole in a wall to try to bypass them, can often lead to a rush of Zirax emerging from the breach! Fun stuff. My plan is now not to take out all NPC's as I usually would, but rather to locate and destroy the Core before starting to take over the base in sections, popping down my own Sentry Turrets to take out the NPC's heading for me - after placing a Core and, if needed, a Fuel Tank and Generator of course. However, despite taking out huge chunks of the base, I'm yet to find this elusive Core! Scoob.
As I tried to illustrate in the other thread it's not uncommon for me to end up with something that looks kind of plain once the initial build is done. I usually do a design pass(or multiple passes) at that point to add visually interesting elements and sometimes even wholesale modifications to the design to accommodate those changes. It doesn't always work out but I learn something each time. Think of the two boxes as a starting point. You have a base structure that houses all the essentials. You just need to dress it up. Maybe change the engine pod. Maybe change how those structures are connected. Add little bits and bobs to break up large, flat areas. Look to see what other people have done and what inspires you and see how that could be adapted to your build. A lot of my designs don't always work out. My work space on Akua would be littered with experimental designs if I didn't clean up periodically.
Well that was interesting! I've been on Masperon for a while now and have had frequent Drone attacks as you'd expect. These attacks have taken the form of Six Plasma Drones for many many game days thus far. I take the odd bit of damage, but my Sentry Turrets take care of things. I have a Minigun Turret too, but it's turned off - I have to walk to far to loot the Drone wreckage when that shoots them down lol. Anyway, I just had six Drones approaching on my Radar - no warning until they're already firing, due to me being very close to the Drone Base (Xenu Fortress P1) in this game. I noticed my Sentries seemed to firing a lot, but no drones down yet...it's then I realised, I'm being attacked by one Plasma Drone (the usual, small model) and FIVE of the heavy Plasma Drones - the one using the ultra tough Drop Ship model. So, I took them all down, but had to whip out my Epic Minigun to help out. Base took a bit of damage but, thanks to Concretes recent Buff, nothing destroyed. Interestingly, other than the first few waves often having less drones, before ramping up to 6-7 per wave, I've NEVER had the Drone type change like this before. Indeed, I've tried to tweak the .yaml files for this to happen, but it never took effect. I think I need to examine my current .yaml for Masperon, it's totally vanilla, not tweaked by me at all! All good fun, hoping subsequent attacks will use these tougher drones - might have to turn mu Minigun Turret on at this rate lol. Scoob.
I promised myself I had to start a CV. Long story short: instead I made an 150m airstrip! I recycled the Akua drone base as a starting point. Basically I got rid of the towers and kept the lower levels. The strip is 7 blocks wide and about 150m long. It starts on land, goes over my base and stops above a lake. In the middle I've constructed the base itself. It has a hanger with horizontal doors for my SV, a big HV hangar with doors. The airstrip has a repair block and at the front I placed a ramp. So my HV can reach the repair area. The whole idea was to make a CV landing pad but my winged SV got me thinking..
Spent most of my time digging... and digging... and digging, to dig out the hanger for my underground base (which I only just started on.) Got the side of a hill (on a waterfront) dug out to the largest hanger door size, and worked on clearing out the actual hanger area behind it. Still more to do - switched over to decorating the interior of my monster-SV.
Funny ya mention that. This is how quite a few of my Creations, including but not limited to my Tyrax Giant Killer & Tyrax Dragonfly got born. Note: At the time of the Tyrax Dragonfly's Creation the current Game Era was during the Initial Implementation of the first 3 Wings to Debut. Good ol' Inspiration. ^_^
