Sable Phoenix

An entirely different preview window sounds like the better option. Just redesign it from the ground up. The current one is just tedious to use. Here's an article that succinctly highlights the problems that typically occur with game UIs. It may be helpful. is also a really good breakdown of how to convey information and arrange menus both poorly and well.

Those are very very nice-looking, especially that bottom-most screenshot.

I don't think that weapon size should be tied directly to ship size, or rank, if the two are ultimately different things. That should be based on how you decide to arm your ship when it's built and what role you want it to fill. At the same time, large ships should be able to mount small weapons for point defence and CIWS roles. Layered defense envelopes have been an aspect of ship design since armored hulls were established as a thing, and truly became de rigeur in World War 2 when anti-air defense was necessary for any vessel. A good example of this kind of design is shown in the space battle in the episode "CQB" from the first season of The Expanse. When engaging the suspected Belter stealth ships, Donager first engages with torpedoes at long range. Their point-defense cannons are employed in a CIWS role to intercept the torpedoes fired by the stealth ships. As the enemy continued to close range, the Donager engaged with railguns, and finally when close enough for boarding action, the PDCs that were no longer being used for torpedo interception were turned on the enemy craft and their boarding pods. And yet, with all its armament and seeming self-sufficiency, the Donager carried two Tachi-class gunships, each armed with torpedoes and six PDCs, to fulfill specialized roles that required ships with a smaller profile and with more maneuverability than the Donager. Bigger isn't always better. I think the "bigger is better" trend in Avorion is actually a weakness. While bigger ships should definitely have by their nature more flexibility than smaller ones, anything that reinforces the trend in Avorion of piling system upon system into one massive, invincible dreadnought is, to my mind, taking the game in the wrong direction.

In working on an analysis of weaponry and turrets in Avorion, I've been thinking about the game's design and how the ship designer and system upgrades are implemented. There is a rather large imbalanced in the usefulness of various system upgrades, even outside of the raw numbers associated with them. It occurred to me that the most useful system upgrade cards are usually the ones that have a direct interaction with the function of an actual block that you can build into your ship in the designer. That then got me thinking about what upgrades are not associated with blocks, and how things might be improved if they were. Here's a list of system upgrade cards taken from the wiki: Battery Upgrade C43 Object Detector Cargo Upgrade Energy To Shield Converter Engine Upgrade Generator Upgrade Improved Trading System Mining System Quantum Hyperspace Upgrade Radar Upgrade Scanner Upgrade Shield Booster Turret Control System Velocity Security Control Bypass If we correlate each block in the design mode with its associated system upgrades, we get this: Energy Container Block > Battery Upgrade Cargo Bay Block > Cargo Upgrade Shield Generator Block > Energy To Shield Converter, Shield Booster Engine Block > Engine Upgrade, Velocity Security Control Bypass Energy Generator Block > Generator Upgrade Hyperspace Core Block > Quantum Hyperspace Upgrade This leaves us with a selection of half of the system upgrades that are not associated with a block, and conversely, a number of blocks not associated with upgrades. Upgrades C43 Object Detector Improved Trading System Mining System Radar Upgrade Scanner Upgrade Turret Control System Blocks Integrity Field Generator Thruster Computer Core Crew Quarters Gyro Block Inertial Damper Hangar Bay What I propose is an expansion of both the block and system upgrade lists to make the correlation between the two more explicit and, potentially, more useful. New Upgrades Integrity Field Upgrade Block Association: Integrity Field Generator First, I would propose that the base effectiveness of the Integrity Field Generator be reduced. Then, this upgrade could function in all other aspects just like the Shield Generator Upgrade does. Energy to Integrity Field Converter Block Association: Integrity Field Generator This functions just like the Shield version. Thruster Upgrade Block Association: Thruster This one's pretty straightforward, and would function largely like the engine upgrade does, although thrusters do not drain energy the way engines do when boosting so that aspect of the upgrade wouldn't be used. AI Upgrade Block Association: Crew Quarters This block would reduce crew requirements for the ship by implementing the installation of sophisticated AI systems and/or androids into the Crew Quarters block that automatically handle ship functions. Quantum Gimbal Upgrade Block Association: Gyro Through the magic of advanced... you know what, skip the technobabble. Functionally, this increases the rotational torque of your gyro arrays. Flight Assist Upgrade Block Association: Inertial Damper This would have the ability to increase the drag production and reduce the energy requirements of your inertial damping systems. Mass Detector Block Association: Radar Block (see below) Installing this system upgrade would allow you to detect hidden mass sectors within the full range of your radar. Split this function off from the existing Radar Upgrade, and make the Radar Upgrade function purely to extend the radar's range. New Blocks Sensor Suite Associated System Upgrades: C43 Object Detector, Scanner Upgrade The Sensor Block, as its name suggests, highlights interactable objects in the sector. The C43 Object Detector should now include the function of highlighting ore-bearing asteroids, and it should sense objects out to your max sensor range. The Scanner Upgrade now simply extends the range of the Sensor Block (synergistically increasing the range of the Object Detector, of course, if you have one installed). Friendly gates and installations should ping your ship's transponder directly once you enter a sector, so you can always see them regardless of range, but enemies and other objects will not. If you don't have a Sensor Block installed, don't expect to be able to target everything in the sector as soon as you jump in. Radar Array Associated System Upgrades: Radar Upgrade, Mass Detector (see above) Without a subspace radar installed, you'll be unable to see anything in sectors beyond your jump range (your hyperdrive ostensibly contains enough sensing power to see where you're jumping so it doesn't land you inside a star). Oh, you also won't be getting any warnings about approaching Xsotan without one, either. Ore Processor Associated System Upgrades: Mining System This block should increase the efficiency of your mining. Devote enough of your ship's volume to it and you can get your mining efficiency to 100%, at a significant energy cost. The Mining System would increase that efficiency even farther and/or decrease the energy cost. Highlighting ore-bearing asteroids is now handled by the Object Detector. The Improved Trading System is weird. It seems like that functionality should be as basic to your ship's computer systems as mining and salvaging. In most space games, the first ship you get is some kind of tramp freighter, and you're expected to spend some time running space sheep and space ramen between various outposts and stations before you get enough money to start tricking out a pirate hunter, or what have you. I'm not saying Avorion should do that, but I still think the trading capability out to be inherent to your ship, and improving your trading capability should depend upon you expanding the number of locations you've visited, making the Improved Trading System superfluous and a candidate for elimination. Nevertheless, if we must have it, let's associate it to a block: C3 (Commercial Communication Computer) System Associated System Upgrades: Improved Trading System Long-Range Comms allow you to keep in touch with trading centers and stock exchanges in your area, allowing them to update you on their stock levels at an arbitrary interval. More volume equals a longer range before you stop receiving updates from them. The Improved Trading System could increase this block's range and possibly increase the frequency of updates until you're receiving them in real time. The Computer Core is problematic, because the block currently exists solely to give you more upgrade slots, so creating a System Upgrade to enhance its function seems counterproductive. Also, it's functionally useless, requiring ridiculous amounts of volume just to get one additional upgrade slot out of it. Frankly, I think the block should be eliminated completely, or its function changed to something else entirely. EDIT: I just realized that there's no need to eliminate one block and create another, so why not just change the function of the Computer Core (and potentially its name... "Commercial Computer Core" or something) so that it handles the whole trading aspect of things. Naturally it would have to be available from Iron on up. The final block, the Hangar Bay, is actually a block that ostensibly requires a certain amount of space to hold physical objects, much like the cargo hold. We actually do have an upgrade that improves cargo storage capacity, so we should theoretically have one that improves hangar bay capacity as well. That being said, I'm mystified as to how an upgrade to the ship's electronics is supposed to increase physical cargo storage space. What I propose is not the addition of a Hangar Bay upgrade, but an elimination of the Cargo Bay upgrade. Turrets are the outlier in this list, and already have a laundry list of problems at any rate, so we'll ignore the Turret Control System and avoid the headache of trying to come up with a block for it. If I had my way the Turret Control System wouldn't exist in the first place.

Not technically about Avorion, but about the forum here... typical BBCode tags to allow wrapping of text around an image, [imgl] or [imgr], don't work here. What tags is this board using to accomplish this function?

Please allow us to toggle that display. I personally prefer to have it visible at all times, rather than needing to open the build mode or some other menu to see it. Also, the gathering display in the bottom right that updates when you gain materials or credits is now confusing; a straight "12540" if you get a credit reward, for example, is much easier to read and understand than "1295739(+12540)" as it displays now. This is a change that actually decreases the clarity and simplicity of the UI.

Aggressive and scary. This is what the Xsotan should look like.

I really love the visual complexity of your designs. The usage of specific, standout colors punctuating the large gray stretches, mixed with extensive greebling, makes them supremely interesting to look at.

It's an oddity of the escort order/AI, but currently, if you want to get multiple ships to jump through a gate, you need to "daisy chain" the escort order. For example, if you have four ships, you can't just jump into Ship 1 and tell your other three to escort you. What you have to do is: 1. Jump into Ship 3. Target Ship 4 and order it to escort you. 2. Jump into Ship 2. Target Ship 3 and order it to escort you. 3. Jump into Ship 1. Target Ship 2 and order it to escort you. 4. Jump through the gate. Daisy chaining your escort orders in this fashion will result in your fleet popping through the gate after you one after the other in sequence.

It indeed used to be based on surface area, just like solar panels, resulting in people putting stacks and stacks of minimum-width thruster sheets inside their ships. That was changed a couple patches ago, thankfully. So you're not wrong, just a little behind the curve. Thrusters, and all other components, have all always functioned normally no matter if they're covered with other blocks or not (excluding hangar bays, which require at least one face to be unobstructed). Nice looking Daedalus, by the way. Hope to see an XML of it when it's done.

None of the items in this list address the most pressing, and frustrating, part of the problem for people who are playing this game primarily for its build mode. And that is this: You cannot equip your ship with weapons when building it. There's not a class of ship, airplane, armored vehicle or any other combat-capable craft put in operation by any fighting force today doesn't come off its assembly line fully armed and ready to fight from day one. There's not a single piece of military hardware that enters the field weaponless and relies on weaponry bought or salvaged after the fact to equip itself. In many cases, the A-10 Thunderbolt II or "Warthog" being an iconic example, a particular craft is built around its specific weapon or weapons, not the other way around. This is even more the case in science fiction, where many iconic spacecraft carry a signature weapon that's the most important thing about them (The Death Star's superlaser, anyone? The Shadow battlecrab's cutting beam? The Wave Motion Gun? The MAC cannon from the HALO universe?) I'm working on a longer post for a new thread discussing this and offering possibilities that will try to offer solutions that will both make creator-focused players happy and leave the looting system intact, but for now, please consider the following: Your entire list is important, but the most important thing about it, and the most conspicuously absent, is that all of them need to be available in the ship creator. Until we can build our ships with their weapons (in whatever forms those weapons ultimately take), the designer is always going to feel incomplete.

I think you should include the XML of the blueprint that you're having trouble with, because frankly, I don't see how there can be a problem. Even my purely iron corvette handles pretty well using a combination of thrusters and gyros, and iron is the heaviest material there is. Oh, an it doesn't have a single visible thruster, either.

I believe Koonschi has mentioned that rounded blocks are not planned as an addition, likely because they cannot be. I assume it's an engine limitation. Personally I'm fine with that... the build mode is already incredible and able to create (or fake) most things you want to create. I would much rather see moving and rotating ship parts, but Koonschi has also mentioned that the engine won't support this either.

That Tachi-class is incredible! The accuracy and detail is stunning in its accuracy, regardless of scale. Absolutely phenomenal work.

"Makes it fun" is subjective. "Makes it frustrating" is also subjective. Personally, I find that this aspect of Avorion is entirely the latter, and not the former (for anyone that has English as a second language, that means that it's only frustrating, and not fun at all). Your perspective may vary, of course, but given the frequently repeated request for customizable weaponry, I think that more players find it frustrating than find it fun. This game has more in common with Elite: Dangerous than it does with Borderlands. This is a much more legitimate and supportable concern. However, I have a rebuttal here too. The game's too easy not because of weapons, but because of shields. Getting millions of shield hitpoints is trivial at higher tier materials, and the way shields work means you're almost totally immune to weapon damage as long as you have even a single hitpoint of your shield bar active. The early game where you have to rely on armor for damage mitigation is plenty challenging and requires you to plan your engagements with enemy ships ahead of time, especially on higher difficulties. The fact that the late game is nowhere near as challenging is purely because the shield block makes you functionally invulnerable for a significant period of time during any fight. Any fight where you're not taking any damage at all is trivial and completely devoid of challenge. This balance concern is not about weapons, but about shields. Your balance focus is misplaced. You're right about it keeping more balancing control in your hands. But in my opinion, you're wrong about it being healthier for the game in the long term. I'll guarantee you that the majority of the players of this game came here because of the amazing building system. Your "bloxel" system is pure genius, and that's what drew me here. Given the repeated threads I see in the various forums, it's what drew the majority of players here. They're Minecraft players, Space Engineers players, Starmade players, From The Depths players, Robocraft players, Galactic Junk League players, Besiege players... in short, they're players of games that focus on building, but who have as yet been unable to find a game that let them build the spaceships they want to build. That is, until Avorion came along. With a game this focused on PVE or cooperative play, balancing is much less of a concern that a purely PVP game like Fractured Space or Galactic Junk League. Especially since the modding capability is so broad, by design, and mods can be run from the server, and custom servers can be created and maintained. To be honest, you have no functional control over balance already. As with something like Skyrim, the balance, or lack thereof, is in the hands of the end user. Thus, whether you intend it or not, the inability to freely choose our weapons is, in fact, annoying instead of healthy. All of these things are steps in the right direction, but they don't go far enough. I've been pondering this subject extensively and I think I've come up with a system that's a happy medium. That's something for another thread. I recognize that there's basically only one developer of this game. You're completely free to develop it as you see fit, make it conform purely to your vision, and ignore any concerns of the playerbase. But, as someone who's actually worked in the game development field in the past, I'm of the opinion that a game works best when it meets, or at least accommodates, the expectations and desires of its playerbase. The challenge then comes in determining who the playerbase is, and what they want. From what I've seen, the playerbase for Avorion is not gamers who love RNG mechanics, but gamers who love building and creating.