Blaine

I've confirmed that pretty much everything in Aki's Avorion Commands Package still works. https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php?topic=830.0 Basically, for safe building: [*]Start a creative galaxy. [*]Create (or download/subscribe to on the Workshop) a 5- or 6-slot ship. [*]Use the commands to add some turrets, turret upgrades, generator upgrades, and shield upgrades to your inventory, then equip them on the ship. [*]Use the commands (/crew fill) to fill the ship with crew and a captain. [*]Command the ship to Attack Enemies. Now it will destroy all enemies who enter the system while you build for hours and hours. I don't condone using these commands outside of creative mode for building or testing, as it will ruin the game experience. I'm very good at "resisting cheats," as I've run many dedicated game servers over the years and this form of self-control comes easily to me. If cheats tempt you, maybe try to get a defense ship without using commands for your creative mode save.

It's not my script, it's a year old, and I'm not "promoting" it. I'm linking to it because it might help OP create ships in peace. Speaking of which, I believe there's also a script that adds turrets to your inventory directly in Aki's script compilation, but I'm not sure if it still works. I would suggest dialing down your incredibly abrasive and confrontational attitude. I noticed you managed to get yourself banned from the Avorion Steam forum, and it's no wonder.

Nope. Even in creative mode, pirates and Xsotan continually spawn at the player's location, and while there can be lulls, they never stop. It's an unfortunate fact that makes the game feel a bit less alive. You don't necessarily need an entire infrastructure, though. If you're building near the rim of the galaxy, one swift, lightly-armed attack ship can eliminate all aggressors. The problem is getting turrets and modules, even in creative... maybe there's a new mechanic in place since I last played a year ago, but I doubt it. You can use this mod (still works) to give yourself the components asked for by turret factories, provided you can find one: https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php?topic=1784.0

From what I've read (I've only recently returned to the game), as long as you make sure to destroy all pirates and Xanion before you leave the sector, all of your things will be safe from AI attackers. I've also read that you have to leave a ship (even just a tiny block, or perhaps a storage platform) in a sector in order for it to remain "alive" while you're away. If you do this, factories and mines should produce. I've further read that maximum "alive" sectors is 20 at a time, although I suspect this can be changed in some server setting or configuration file.

I don't want to fight bullet sponges either, and I'm generally not one to call for nerfs, but come on now. With two M-TCS-4 and 10x Xanion, Trinium, or even Naonite lasers from a decent turret factory, you just press LMB and ships explode like a bunch of popcorn. Currently they're the opposite of bullet sponges—they're balloons, and your lasers are the needle. I know that everyone has done the same thing at some point. In fact, I removed an M-TCS-4 and replaced it with a C-TCS-5 so I could fit salvaging lasers for convenience, because even 6 factory lasers are enough to annihilate almost anything quickly, except beefy stations of course. I tend to agree. Random pirates and aliens simply appearing at the player's position at intervals is less than ideal, and it becomes obvious after a while that they're just a timer that follows you around.

I'd like to note first and foremost that I adore this game. It's fantastic in many ways, and as a veteran of EGOSOFT's X series with over 1,500 hours put into them all since 2002, I never expected another developer to attempt basically the same thing and manage to pull it off. In many areas, most notably ship customization, Avorion is the clear winner. Now, I've only recently returned to Avorion after being away for a year, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten everything. In my view, there are three major issues to be resolved before Avorion can be the most excellent, definitive space trading, combat, fleet commanding, empire building game that's been developed to date. The Economy Clearly, this needs tweaking. For starters, goods shouldn't be artificially capped to restrict players to 500k profit per single trade. Not far into the game, you can start selling claimed asteroids in for 400-500k each at a fairly rapid pace; an Exotic C43 Object Detector makes this faster still, and effortless. You can probably claim 20-30 in an hour that way. In the meantime, once you've got some decent salvage lasers, you can salvage derelict stations for many millions of credits worth of minerals when you find them. With the cap, trading requires far more effort for a much smaller return. There's also the issue of empty stations, extreme resource and component shortages, and stalled factories producing nothing. EGOSOFT's X series was similar in this way, but in Avorion it's worse (or certainly it seems worse to me), since the economy in Avorion isn't fully organic, as evidenced by the trading cap. Also, even after out-of-sector activity was implemented, most sectors will remain dormant unless a player's ship is there. There are fewer tools to stimulate the economy. Not every good has a proper consumer, and the game's entire economy basically revolves around the construction of turrets. Combat Balance Randomly dropped/purchased turrets are very mediocre (with a few exceptions, like Exotic or Legendary salvaging/mining lasers with much higher Efficiency than can ever be crafted). Factory-built turrets are awesome and deal 5-10x as much damage as random drop turrets, with 50-100% more range, and better stats all around. Eventually the player will obtain lots of strong shield boosters, turret upgrades, and so on. So, the game starts out pretty tough and challenging, but the moment the player gets 6-10+ factory turrets, 2 Exceptional shield mods (or even 1), and the resources for a 6-slot ship, the challenge vanishes from the game on any but perhaps the highest difficulty. Dreadnoughts at the edge of the core barrier can be DPSed down in seconds. The only remaining threats are enemy turrets that bypass shields. In my opinion, factory-built turrets need a significant nerf, random turrets need a significant buff (and should be available regularly and in quantities of 4-6 at a time at Equipment Docks, so the player doesn't feel forced to rush to factory turrets), and shield mods should perhaps be toned down a little... but not too much, maybe by 25% across the board. I realize Koonschi wants people to use random turrets from salvage, stashes, Equipment Docks, and so on, but let's be real: No one does that right now anyway. They're all vendor trash compared to factory turrets, and even research generally just yields a higher-rarity piece of vendor trash. General Quality of Life and Miscellaneous Issues Streamlined and reliable fleet jumping; better fleet management; more commands and more powerful scripts for AI captains; cargo shuttle tweaks; fixes for "AFK" civilian ships; overhauling of certain practically useless system upgrades (like ore detectors that highlight ore from 5km away, when you can easily see the colored glow from 50km away; they should highlight all ore of a type in the sector); faction wars that happen realistically, rather than continuing to spawn in fleets regardless of how much of a faction's infrastructure has been destroyed; your captained combat ships not shooting enemy civilians; and many other small and miscellaneous issues that, if addressed, would immensely increase people's enjoyment of an already excellent game. Also, in my personal opinion, there should be more random things to find when exploring off-the-lanes energy and mass signatures. There are already quite a few, but they mostly boil down to various combinations of claimable asteroids, wrecks, pirates, stashes, smuggling stations, and a few plot- and quest-related things. Just a few more fairly unique encounter types would go a long way.

The other hurdle to jump (get it? jump? I'll be here all week) after implementing synchronized fleet jumps would be to do something about the terrible pathfinding in-system. This affects NPCs just as much as your captained AI ships, but the AI isn't a living being and doesn't care about enjoying the game, whereas we are alive and our ships behaving stupidly is very annoying. There were major pathfinding issues in EGOSOFT's X series. It's mostly unavoidable. Partly, it's because most game AIs "cheat": The developers lay out paths, by hand or by algorithm, that the AI can then follow. You can't lay out preset paths in a 6doF game in which the contents of the 3D spaces that are system playfields can change due to asteroids being removed, stations being built or destroyed, etc. In addition, because it's 3D rather than 2D, pathfinding is that much more difficult due to a third dimension to consider; and because ships have inertial qualities and can't turn or stop on a dime (as can characters in a fantasy RPG, for example), it's more difficult still. In light of pathfinding issues, covering most systems in asteroid fields seems like a poor decision. They should probably be moved to the fringes of every populated system, or even all to their own exclusive systems (with extra rich roids and claimable roids to compensate). We may never have satisfactory in-system pathfinding, but we can have satisfactory fleet jumps, and we can clear out sectors so that the pathfinding isn't made that much worse by asteroids.

It's a mod, man. It's optional. There could be several different variants of the mod: A slight nerf that reduces the mods' power by 25%; a middling variant that reduces it by 50%; and the hardcore variant that reduces it by about 75% (the author's preferred version). I'm just thinking of maximizing the number of people who'll download and enjoy the mod.

One major problem I see is that your low end is way too low. 5-10% bonus shields with steep downsides is basically an extremely marginal system module that no one will use, i.e. a useless mod. Players could slot a turret mod and more gunners instead, pack more weapons, and kill enemies much more quickly. In other words, you nerfed them too hard. It's important to think not only of Exceptional and Legendary mods, but also of whites and greens. I'd say start them at 20-25%, and finish up around 50-60%; this applies to energy mods as well (the main stat, not the bonus[es]). That would still slash their power roughly in half, without rendering them a near-waste of a slot.

I've been playing the game for maybe 20ish hours since returning, and I can pull 5-15m+ credits worth of minerals from deep scan station wrecks in a matter of minutes, or (now that I have factory lasers) I can clear out a pirate sector, lase down the shipyard's shields, and salvage it while it's still "alive," getting 20k+ minerals per glowing block destroyed (and toggling a few lasers back on whenever the shields regenerate a little bit). That's ~150-300k credits per block, depending on the material (this is pre-Ogonite/Avorion), and they take moments to destroy. Before that, you can start claiming and selling asteroids for first ~100k, then up to around ~500k each at the barrier to the core. This takes far less effort and preparation and logistical planning than trading. So basically, trading—the staple of space trading and combat games—isn't viable at all anymore. In my view, it should be completely uncapped and the economy balanced and tweaked properly. As it is, the economy is literally just a scavenger hunt for some starting turret parts until you've saved up enough credits to build your own factories and produce your own turrets.

Well, I think it's important not to lose sight of the many ways in which this game is amazing. Look at the Steam Workshop and compare some of the ships people create in Avorion to those created in Space Engineers, Starmade, Empyrion, or Interstellar Rift. I own all five of these games, I've created ships in every single one of them (here is the only one I've ever published), browsed many pages of other people's creations in the workshop, and the game that allows the most freedom in modeling ships is Avorion. This is largely because you can distort, rotate, layer, and finely position Avorion's blocks and greebles to get oblique and acute angles of all kinds and near-curves, but also, we have a powerful and easy-to-use ship building interface. The game plays extremely smoothly on max settings; at least, it does for me, even in busy sectors full of asteroids. I'm running a G-Sync monitor with a 120 FPS cap in the settings, and the game looks great. The broad strokes of the features Avorion offers are fantastic. It's like a combination of EGOSOFT's X series and EVE Online, and more besides. You can build your own factories, mines, and stations, completely custom-made in some cases, hold sovereignty over your very own star systems, run fleets of ships including AI-controlled ships, etc. There are some hiccups and issues, of course, but overall this is very impressive. As far as combat goes, I think random turrets need to be scaled up in stats by about 30%, while factory-built turrets should be scaled down by 30% at the high end. Right now I've got lasers on my ship, built completely legitimately, that deal over 1400 DPS each at 5.5km, with perfect accuracy, and that use so little energy I never have to worry about it. Higher difficulty settings can certainly help, and actually I think the balance is a little better than it was a year ago... but only a little. I can still defeat a pirate fleet solo in a six-slotter.

They're weak because randomly-generated turrets (which is what the AI uses) are terrible, while factory-constructed turrets are insanely powerful. AI ships also tend not to utilize very good mods, and of course their randomized designs aren't very optimized. On top of that, they can't use boost. It's a quadruple threat. So when you've got 10+ factory-constructed weapons and 2-3 +100%/+20% shield capacity/recharge mods on your carefully-designed ship that can use boost, you have far better weapons, defenses, and mobility than entire fleets worth of AI ships. Avorion was like this a year ago when I first played, and it hasn't changed at all. It's a huge problem and I don't know if Koonschi sees it that way, but I absolutely do.

There's more to it than just "getting credits." The game mechanics should work properly and satisfactorily, holistically (that is, altogether, taken as entire system), without Band-Aids like getting free stuff from wonky player-owned trading stations. This is tangential, but I've noticed that very little has changed about turrets. Random turrets are horrible, weak, and wildly varied in range, material, and type. They're almost impossible to find for sale at equipment docks in any quantity, even whites which are close to useless; but if you embark on a many-hours-long scavenger hunt for the materials needed to build turrets in factories, when you finally succeed the game becomes a joke and you can vaporize any and all enemies with your super-overpowered "crafted" turrets. That needs to change immediately. It should have been changed a year ago. Not only do players have boost, which allows them to always choose their battles, always have the initiative, and always have an escape route, but entire fleets of NPC ships can't match a handful of turret factory turrets, either.

Devs should remove the rep hit for shooting at enemy civilian ships, at least temporarily. It's really only there for flavor after all, and if it's screwing up actual faction/patrol mechanics, then that flavor isn't worth it.

Seems to me the game needs actual wing/fleet mechanics. Fleets would be automatically limited to the lowest jump distance of all ships in the fleet, would be unable to jump until all hyperdrives are off cooldown, and would jump in unison when the lead ship jumps. After all, mechanically speaking, you're just being "teleported" by the game engine from one playfield to another, and can probably do it instantly with some dev console command. Shouldn't be too hard to implement... probably. People say that a lot, but often it's more complicated for the developers than we'd think.