Vis

Crtl+E should be the hotkeys for Merge. :)

I think I have spent about over 40 hours in total on my destroyer, and it's still not done. And there is no cosmetic plating for the design. XD

Not a bad looking ship and nice video. I could never make a video of my warships being built because they just take too long to make with all the weird shapes and angles they have. XD About how long in total did that ship take you to make?

Yeah, the design of the Imperial ships is better. My warship designs are more smooth and rounded like the Imperial ships than the very box like shapes of the Free Planets Alliance Ships. My work ships are more box like but many of them still have some rounded parts. I still have a lot of work needed on my Destroyer, but I think I might start posting some of my designs once I get that ship finished.

Armor angling wouldn't have a big impact on performance at all. If From the Depths can do it, than Avorion should be able too as well. Of course they would work a little different because in From the Depths blocks have both an HP value and an Armor value. And the sloped armor in From the Depths I think gives shots a chance to skip off the armor and do no damage based on the Armor value and the angle it hits at rather than do less damage. But I think my suggestion to have it just reduce the damage would work better for Avorion because of the lack of an Armor value for blocks.

No, I never played that game, but resupplying in Space Empires wasn't hard, because you could build a resupply center on one of your colonies and if I remember right it would auto-resupply your ships in that sector with ammo and supplies up to a set amount each turn. But it would take a massive fleet or many fleets in need of supplies to out pace the amount of supplies the resupply center could do. So it only took 1 turn to resupply your fleet most of the time.

Yeah, I see Avorion as much more of an RTS kind of game. How much of a pain would it be if you had to reload all your units in StarCraft? If Avorion was a turn based strategy game, like Space Empires V, then I would be okay with needing to reload/resupply ships. But in that game you only have 'ammo' and 'supplies'. You didn't need to make different kinds of ammo for each type of weapon. That would be too much of a pain.

Interesting, but does the added block HP also add the same amount to the ship's overall HP pool? I like IFGs so I don't want to just blame them, but I do think the damage should be done differently because it doesn't make much sense for a ship to take a lot of damage on one side until some blocks of the outer hull actually start to break, then turn the ship to the other side and take just a few hits on the undamaged side only to blow up because the ships HP pool hit 0. XD It makes no sense because the hull on that side is just fine. ::)

No no no, I meant when you compare the 2. The projectiles would be very different and do their damage in a very different way. One being a small metal dart fired at high velocity and the other being a large shell with an explosive charge. But getting back on topic now... While I agree fighter cost should be reduced and HP buffed a little, I think we need way more ways to use fighters. Instead of just launching them and attacking. Players should have to use them more tactically to be effective with them. Something else I think could be done with fighters to change things up a bit and give them more flexibility... Is when you are making fighters after you add a set number of points into 1 stat, a bonus ability could become available to buy for more points. Like after you add X number of points to speed, the 'Afterburner' bonus ability becomes available. Afterburner would give fighters a speed boost for a short time that could help them get in to 'point blank range' faster or run away if the battle is not going so well. :P This would also have a short cooldown so fighters couldn't just spam it, but it would help in a pinch. Maybe for the maneuverability stat you would have the 'dodge' ability but maybe it should be called something else, like 'Evasive Maneuver' or maybe just 'Evade'. And I think the pilot's skills could just reduce the cooldown timer or maybe even give a small increase to the ability. Need to come up with bonus abilities for the other stats, but I think this would make fighters a lot more interesting as well as the different tactics you could use with these bonus abilities.

Yeah, the thing I hate most about this game is how hard it is to standardize a ship's weaponry. We need a way to make copies of turrets instead of only being able to build what is available at a turret factory, because if you find a turret at a turret factory that you like and want it to be a standardized weapon for all your ships... Before you can get enough materials to build all the turrets you could ever need, an update resets all the turret factories and that design is lost forever. :( But I don't think ammo should be a thing. It makes sense for other games, but I think it would just be a pain to have to do that for a whole fleet of ships or many fleets if you build a lot of ships. If this was a game where you only fly one ship I could see that being a thing.

I never said a block couldn't be blown off, it just only really happens if a ship shoots nothing but that block. I have seen many ships blow up without first losing a single block. Way more often than not a ship's HP will hit 0 and blow up without losing any blocks. ::)

You would never be firing an identical sized round from an identical sized weapon. The cannon rounds of the same sized weapon will always need to be bigger and heavier. A railgun is meant to be more of a piercing weapon to knock out critical components on a ship. The railgun doesn't need to do wide spread damage like an HE cannon shell. If you can just put a hole through the enemy ships main reactor that ship is pretty much dead. But I think we have horribly derailed this thread more than enough and gone way off topic. ;D

No the real problem with the current block building approach is ships have an HP pool and all blocks just add to the HP pool instead of have each block take damage and break off when the block's HP hits 0. So you have to just make shitty looking and more unrealistic ship designs just to make that HP pool bigger. A smaller profile only really works at the right angles and it won't make your ship small enough to really make up for the lack of HP.

Well, you just have to design your ships with sloped armor all around and try to minimize all the large flat surfaces that you can. But that is part of the fun when it comes to designing ships. :)

Yeah, Avorion was not meant to be a super realistic game. The devs made the projectile reach it's target instantly when it really shouldn't. ;D The railgun effects look more like lasers. Maybe in the weird Avorion future they have much better technology to make faster railguns with less recoil. I was using real life stuff to compare because that is all we have to go by at the moment. What makes way less sense is, how do lightning guns work? ::)

The recoil force wouldn't have the same kick as a cannon. It would be less, just spread over a longer period of time. If you are comparing the initial force the cannon would be more like a punch while the railgun more like a shove. Also the 2 weapons would not at all be firing the same size/weight projectile. The cannon's projectile would be way heavier because it would need to be filled with high-explosive materials to do damage to it's target, while the railgun fires just a small metal projectile. The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun, fires a shell that weighs 3,320 pounds. The US Navy's railgun needs a lot smaller and lighter of a projectile to kill things with. :D

Huh, no... The recoil from a railgun wouldn't have anywhere near enough force to "push those fighters back". The recoil force would be pushing against the fighter's weight/mass plus the force of the fighter's engines pushing it forward. If we used the weight and engine power of an F-22 for example. The recoil from the railgun would be pushing against about 43,340 pounds (19,700 kilograms) or 83,500 pounds (38,000 kilograms) if the F-22 is at it's 'Max takeoff weight'. And the F-22's 2 Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines put out about 35,000 lbf (156 kN) of thrust per engine. That makes for a very heavy projectile the railgun's recoil would have to push against to send it flying backwards. The US Navy has a railgun they have been working on to put on ships. It fires a projectile that weighs about 23 lbs (10.4326245 kg) at a velocity of mach 7 (2382.03 m/s)... So how much force would you need to fire a 23lb projectile at mach 7? It would be about 24850.82 Newtons of force, which would only be about 5586.69 pounds of force... That is way less than the force of a single of the F-22's engines. :D The only way the fighter would be push back is, if it was sitting in space not moving forward at all with it's engines turned off. Then it fired the railgun. But even then it wouldn't go backwards very fast. It would be going back at a speed of about 1.26 m/s (2.81 mph) just from pushing the fighters weight. That's about walking speed. LOL. ;D Also the railgun on a fighter would be much smaller than the example I used and would need even less force to fire an even smaller projectile. The pilot might not even notice the recoil. So railgun fighters would be just fine. ;)

Something I have always hated about this game is that, 'players are punished for designing cool ships.' The most effective ships are basically flying bricks because sloped and corner blocks have less HP than a full cube shaped block piece. What I would like to see is the damage for at least all the physical type weapons be reduced based on the angle they impact a block at. So if they hit the flat side of a ship dead on they do 100% of their damage, but if they impact a ship's block at a 45 degree angle the shot only does 50% of it's damage. In short. sloped armor should be a thing in this game. ;D

Not very far at all if the fighters had free-floating barrel designed cannons because that would reduce the recoil. And railguns would have very little recoil because they use electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles instead of a powder charge like cannons do. The problem with missiles is they would take a very long time to reach the target. And if each fighter had a limited number you would have to keep recalling your fighters after they fired to reload them. I'm pretty sure Avorion takes place in the future where we have the technology to fit a lot more power into much smaller batteries/smaller generators. ;D So you just don't want any ships to have any weapons at all? Or only be able to shoot each other from 1km away? Because that would be a very lame game if all ship battles were like that instead of having different ship designs that would be more effective against different targets, at different ranges. Having fighters that could only have PDC/PDL would be a terrible idea because then you would have fighters that are only effective against other fighters. Giving fighters 2 weapons would make them too effective against too many things. Because then you could give a fighter a PDC for other fighters and a railgun for ships. I would be okay with different types of turrets forcing a size requirement for fighters. So weapons like PDC/PDL you could build size 1 fighters, but things like a railgun or cannon would need size 4 or higher.

No, not really... Because as I said in my first post, ship weapons would have more range than fighter weapons of the same type, but also different fighters would also have advantages and disadvantages against other fighters. So even if you had railguns on all your fighters they wouldn't be able to out range the railguns on a ship. If the enemy ship launched chaingun fighters against your railgun fighters, they would tear your railgun fighters apart once they got in close range because their rate of fire is so much higher than that of a railgun. The railgun fighters could one shot other fighters, but that is only if they hit. There is still a chance many will miss and some fighters might also target the same enemy fighter. With the very slow reload time the railgun fighters would have they would only get off one shot before the chaingun fighters could close the distance to 'point blank range'. Then the chaingun fighters could kill the railgun fighters before they can get off a 2nd shot. Now if the enemy doesn't have any fighters and only has very short range weapons, then it's their fault for designing their ships in a way that gives you and easy and flawless victory. ;D So having artillery-weapons (long range) on fighters is NOT stupid or an annoying idea because there are ways to counter them. If you designed all your ships and fighters with only one weapon type, then THAT would be a stupid idea.

Yeah, if they added in some of the suggestions I made you would lose little to no fighters if you use the right type against the right target. You could just launch long range fighters and give them the order to attack at 'max range' and flak wouldn't be able to reach them. Also you should be able to order your fighters to 'form up' and 'break formation' as well as 'orbit', (where they just circle around the target in a swarm) or set a single 'attack vector' (where fighters attack a ship only from a single angle). This would be used against ships that have all their weapons only on the front, top, or sides. If an enemy ship doesn't have good weapon coverage all around it, that is a weakness your fighters could exploit. They could fly around to the side or back of an enemy ship an attack where none of it's weapons can even see the fighters. So if the enemy ship does have very good weapon coverage all around it then 'orbit' and 'break formation' would be the better option to split up the enemy's fire. If they have a large blind spot in their weapon coverage then an 'attack vector' plus having them 'form up' in a tight formation would be the better option. And these options will also be on the 'Operations Protocol List' so you can set these to be the default behaviors of your fighters if you most of the time use a them in one way or another. That way you only need to give commands to have them use a different tactic when it is needed. Yeah, I would have added that part in earlier but my post was getting too long so I decided to add it in now. :)

you didn't read the latest announcement on Steam yet? They are going to rebalance stuff before the final release, it would be wrong to give you the ability to clone OP-Turrets and other gear... Why the hell do they not have that information here?

I don't like the changes to the Hyperspace cooldown because they make no sense. Why does being in an empty sector make your Hyperspace engine cooldown faster? Where is the science or logic behind that? Maybe instead of 10s for empty sector, and 30s for not empty sector, just make it 20s for all sectors. Also still very disappointed we still have no way to blueprint/copy/clone turrets. :'(

Well like I said before, some changes will need to be made. Giving fighters a bit more speed would be one of those changes. You can also just out range lasers if you have the right type of fighters. Because lasers don't have a super long range. Carriers would need to have a mix of different fighter types and use the right ones against the right targets. If you only have 1 type of fighter than you will be effective against some targets, and very ineffective against others.

No, "AI driven (influenced in part by pilot skill)" fighters would just get them all killed. XD I think what we should have for all ships/fighters/other units is some kind of let's call it 'Operations Protocol List'. This tab is where you can set all the default behaviors for each type of your ships/fighters/other units. So if you build a railgun fighter design, you give it a name, then you decide that it works best in most cases at 'max range' you can open up the 'Operations Protocol List' tab, find that fighter and change it's default attack range from 'optimal range' to 'max range'. Then any time you give a squadron of those fighters an order to attack, they will always fight at their 'max range'. But you should still be able to give it a command to attack at 'point blank range' if you come across an enemy ship that is at a disadvantage against fighters in close range combat. This would both cut down on micro managing because you wouldn't need to always give the order to attack at 'max range' for units you know 9 times out of 10 work best at that range, but is still flexible enough that you can change your tactics when needed. You could also use the 'Operations Protocol List' to set ships from 'return fire' (the default option) if attacked, to 'run away' if it is a non-combat ship like a mining ship. That way you don't need to give your non-combat ships the order to move away from the battle, that will become their default reaction. Right now all ships just sit there idle while getting shot unless you make them move or give an order. Like what the hell am I paying captains 15,000 credits for when they can't even take control of their ship and fight if they are in a combat ship, or run and get to a safe place if they are in a non-combat ship. ::)