FuryoftheStars

I think this is in the beta

I just wanted to share my reasons for disliking the new system (B). I don't expect it to make any difference at this point, especially with everything written above, but I wanted to put it out there anyway. I'd say 90% of my issues are immersion related. It's a lot less immersive to me having the ship "disappeared" off some where for most of its time. I know you all added the feature where it pops in here and there to put on a little show, but for me, it doesn't help (almost makes it worse, actually. Almost). I noticed you mentioned (a couple of times) getting the player to put more thought into their ship design as a benefit to B. I'm actually finding the opposite? I mean, unless you put in an obscene amount of checks (which I absolutely do not expect you all to do), these ships that we send out on these missions only need to check a few boxes in stats, not actual design. Ships that would be horrible for actual "real space" operations could actually excel in these new missions. There's nothing really stopping someone from just slapping a bunch of huge blocks together for the stats and not caring about actually protecting any of it (go so far as to purposely design a ship "inside out"). Turrets can be placed in really bad positions (even internally), yet will work just as well as one where everything is placed optimally. It doesn't even need to be able to maneuver or accelerate well. Sure, if the ship gets ambushed that might be a problem, but if you stack the stats well enough (with escorts), and use good enough captains, the chances will be low enough to make it worthwhile. More so if you're not playing with perma-destruction. (Again, I do not expect you all to find solutions for these with this system. It would over complicate things sooo bad.) Now, yes, I know. In the old system, provided you stayed out of the sector(s), your ship was 100% safe (provided it didn't trigger the "too weak" conditions). I, personally, feel like this could've been solved with allowing events to happen (less frequently) in systems that contained player/alliance ships/stations, regardless if a player was physically present. Stats of the present ships/stations in these sectors could've been taken into account just as now to determine the chances of these attacks. We no longer really have to scout and clear sectors to prep them for our mining ships, or visually check out a sector to see if it's even worth it. Sure, scouting the sectors can boost the output of the new missions, but it's not necessary. I know it isn't, but this does give off the feeling of being similar to the way a "mobile game" does things. You know how many mobile games I own? 1 - Baldur's Gate. While I don't PvP, I do know that if I did, not being able to find another player's ships because they're off in simulation would be frustrating and immersion breaking. I know this game isn't balanced for PvP, but this just seems like one more thing on the pile. I know looping/afk was brought up as a reason for ditching the old system. I feel like there were a few ways available to combat this (while obviously sticking with the old system). I seem to recall at least twice you all decreased the sector respawn timer. Increasing this again, maybe even having the timer increase with each subsequent respawn within X time (then allowing this to decay back down after Y time) would force a player to spread out more. Putting limits to the number of times a loop will execute. Including other factors that would decrease the ship's mining yield (delays in targeting a new asteroid to mine, limiting if a ship will boost or by how much to move from one to the next, etc) which could've all been boosted back up with decent captains. Introducing other mechanics that actually make it prohibitive to keep looping the same tasks endlessly (one suggestion I remember seeing was reworking morale to have an actual use beyond "do you have enough crew space". If morale could decay over time while performing commands that would decrease ship performance, then provide a couple of mechanics for bringing it back up (either through inactivity (cancel the commands and let it naturally regen), or by having it "visit" certain station types (habitat, casinos)(while this one could still be looped, it'd still force the ship to take a break from its actual task)). Yes, that last one would've been complex. Would it have been as complex as designing a whole new system? Don't know. And really, at this point, considering the new system already exists, I don't expect you all to do that. I know the complexity of the old code was brought up. Would a rewrite have helped? Would it have been as or more complex than designing a whole new system? Don't know. Again, the new system already exists, so.... Final thing was performance. I get this. I really do. Other than leaving the old system in the game, as was, with an optional toggle during game creation or in the server.ini file (allowing server admins to say "nope, this server can't handle that"), I don't have an answer for you. I am glad that you left it able to be modded back in, but forcing this onto the modding community also makes me a little sad. I mean, this now depends on the interest, skill, and "longevity" of the modders to keep this viable. As an example, some of the best modders that I'm aware of for this game actually seem to have no interest in modding these back in. Hopefully modding these back in works well enough and stays supported for a long time, cause I feel like I'd lose interest in the game super quick if they didn't. Ultimately, obviously it's your all's decision and I get that you're a small team and you had to do what you thought was best. I'm not in your all's position, so I obviously can't say that what I'm thinking would've necessarily have been better or even worked. And I certainly don't expect anything now that you've already got a new system in place. But it still makes me really sad losing the old system. I do thank you, though, both in creating the game in the first place and for supporting it as you have.

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Maybe even have these missions not spawn until a certain distance from core? Course, that idea I think goes more into a whole rebalance of all captains (Tier 0 in iron titanium, tier 1 in naonite trinium, etc).

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It would be nice to be able to do it in one step, though, similar to downscaling.

Similar has been suggested. Should maybe vote on that one and reply, too, in order to bump it.

Er, nevermind. You were looking for affecting targeted ship, not the ship issuing the command. Technically, I think the /teleport command takes an optional parameter for target, defaulting to player, but I haven't been able to find a good way to get a targeted entity's id for this purpose, yet.

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It actually does have a specific order, but I haven’t taken the time to actually figure it out. I think it has some relation to the order they appear in the blocks window, but there are exceptions. Rather than alphabetical (or pure alphabetical), I would like to see grouping by type. So all armors, including corners, next to each other, same with hull and blank hull, etc.

This is why I made this suggestion:

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This will be great to see. 🙂

Add to this Deceleration, too (unless I'm missing it somewhere). Also, the yaw/pitch/roll should be of the entire ship (thrusters + gyros), not just thrusters (like the Thrusters() object apparently does).

They created "Faction modding" a while back specifically for this purpose. I get the feeling that because of this, it's not going to be a core game mechanic.

Hmm, maybe the added requirement to the mission to have X cargo space free like delivery missions? That would be easy to implement and would avoid negative results in either direction (and also assuming it'd be easier to implement than a new crew type of FreedSlaves that's only for these missions, and has no stats or positions).

It would be nice to have something for manipulating ship maneuverability other than Thrusters(). Thrusters() only seems to work in certain situations (unless I'm doing something wrong, but there's no real documentation on how to use it "right"), and it only seems to act as an absolute override. Perhaps new StatsBonuses of Yaw, Pitch, and Roll that can then be used in Entity methods like addAbsoluteBias, addBaseMultiplier, addKeyedMultiplier, etc? In my use case, I'm trying to apply a multiplier to yaw/pitch/roll based on ship mass, but need to be able to modify this modifier every time someone alters their ship, while still allowing for bonuses through crew overstaffing and system upgrades.

I don't see an issue with them being in the cargo hold. Hate to say it, but many ships probably don't have the crew space for them (both game mechanics and in a "real world" sense), and as such they would be given "temporary lodging" in the cargo hold.

Thank you. Some of us do read them and appreciate it. 🙂 You mean this? Second to last entry?

local oldCaptainGenerator_calculateSalary = CaptainGenerator.calculateSalary function CaptainGenerator.calculateSalary() oldCaptainGenerator_calculateSalary() — new code here end In a nut shell. If this function returns anything, then you also need to make sure to capture what it returns, like this: local oldCaptainGenerator_calculateSalary = CaptainGenerator.calculateSalary function CaptainGenerator.calculateSalary() local returnvalue = oldCaptainGenerator_calculateSalary() — new code here return returnvalue end And of course, if the function has parameters, make sure you’re passing those along, too. You should probably hop on the discord, though. Seems like most people hang out there rather than the forums now a days. 😕

I think one of the first dialog options should be "Yup, I know the ropes. Thanks, but if I need anything I'll let you know." Then, allow us to pick and choose if we want to run through any of the missions through one of the UIs somewhere like the encyclopedia. I'm actually almost partial for replacing him with a semi-decent, free captain. 😉

That's actually the exact question that resulted in that answer, afaik.

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I believe the devs have answered before: no. The rendering engine won't support it.