Hoshizora

If you don't want your journey for this particular artifact to go to waste, then you can come back once you have an avorion hyperspace core. As long as you at least one tiny bit of it, you can jump across those rifts. Of course, that involves finding a different operation exodus artifact somewhere else, as well as the rest of them, going to the core, fighting and then salvaging some xsotans, so it might take a bit....

Well, it was worth a try. I wanted to do a run-through of the game on self-imposed pacifist rules: I was never allowed to fire an offensive gun. After mining 3k iron in my mining drone, I wouldn't mine anything, either. Thus, using only trading, selling asteroids, and buying everything I needed from resource depots and equipment docks, I got all the way to the trinium range and decided to start building my fleet. I started with just a humble two gunships. Things were pretty dodgy for a while, but they could help other faction ships attack the xsotans and pirates. Things came to a head when I went after pirates way back in the titanium range and wished their AI's the best of luck. I didn't work out. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there's only a 50/50 chance that they will DO ANYTHING AT ALL when I give them an order to attack enemies. One just fucking sat there. The other started dutifully firing away at the enemies, but half of the time its rotation put the turrent on the wrong side of the ship, so it just floated along and didn't seem to know how to correct itself. I'm all about overcoming challenges, but not the kind of challenge of working with something that it broken. Best of luck to you and improving your AI, Avorion team! As frustrating as that was, I still do genuinely want this game to be a wild success, and being the commander of a fleet of ships that you designed yourself is a winning ticket, if it can be executed right.

This is level 3 of 3 in regards to suggestions. This post is for those suggestions that start with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." In other words, shameless suggestions that act as if my whims are entitled to being heard. I know my voice is just one in the ocean, and plenty of these have already been suggested, but I've been keeping track of my thoughts for the past 100 (non-consecutive) hours so by George I'm going to throw my two cents out there! I also highly recommend gating many if not most of these suggestions behind purchases/questlines, as further described in another post here: www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2801.0.html The galaxy map could be more useful if we had a small control panel at the top that would highlight places of interest. As it is, the only way I could remember research stations is by manually remembering coordinates and drawing a huge plus sign on the map. The note function just doesn't make a distinct enough marking to be useful when I"m scanning everything at once. Also, I feel like faction headquarters should get a little bit of attention - maybe show a crown or something layered beneath the map? In ship build mode > block selection menu, why not hide all the block pieces of higher tiers until you actually get those types of ores? It's a bit odd to be able to see all the way to avorion when you just started the game. In ship build mode > block selection menu, why not have a single space for 'iron edge pieces', and then while it's selected and the mouse is hovering over the ship, press a button to make it cycle through the different types of edges? I remember the block menu was really intimidating when I first saw it, and this would cut down on the number of spaces needed to show it all. New players shouldn't be worrying about glow/hologram/reflector/stone/rough stone pieces anyway until they get the basics down. Player ships can move faster than any other in the game. The logical conclusion of this is a fighting style that involves ramming into the enemies with a bow shaped like an axe! This is impossibly self-damaging with current collision physics, but it should be feasible in the lore of the game to load up on armor on the front end and have that be a viable way to enter battle! If you exceed the number of fighters your fighter bay allows for, why not store the extras in the cargo bay? To avoid exploitation, only let them transfer to the fighter bay when jumping sectors Mining upgrades are a bit underwhelming. Why not have them also increase mining yield? Better yet, they could also detect those giant 100k+ asteroids from a distance Errands on electronic bulletin boards don't reward reputation. That feels really odd... Shouldn't a delivery of cargo make the faction like me? This is also pretty much the only way to increase standing with a faction that hates you, other than parking it and twiddling your thumbs until pirates show up... I sell a lot of crap, and research a lot of crap. Once I've made that decision, I don't want to see that particular turret in my inventory anymore... why not let me right-click it and hit a button to file it away in a to-sell list or to-research list? The equipment vendor could have another option added to it to clear out the sell list, and ditto for research station. Once I made it rich, I essentially stopped mining. Why not add a button to resource depots to 'buy everything'? Docking adds to immersion, sure, but it can be a pain after a while. Why not increase the dock range, or make the act of docking and pressing F instantly freeze the ship if your velocity is under 300 m/s? You have a veritable army of artists that are making gorgeous ships for you for free. Why not feature a few in the game? They may not work with procedural generation (genius system, btw), but they could be used for single quests and the sort. Some of the civilians ships we save from pirates should also ask us to start a follow-on quest to ask us to escort them back to the nearest friendly system. Not sure just how engaging this would be considering we have hyperspace drive, but hey, it's an idea! The first distress signal a player gets shouldn't be the pirate trap, it should be legit. That will make it all the sweeter when they DO get tricked by pirates Rewards for various tasks (fending off pirates, delivery quests, resource shortage quests, saving civilians being attacked by pirates, wiping out pirates from a sector, etc) should be based on two things: 1) a reward that scales with distance to the center of the galaxy, and 2) a reward that scales with the current wealth of the player (calculated using current credits, resources, and ship value). Reason being, towards the end of the game, those rewards were completely and utterly pointless. I was so rich that they were just a drop in the bucket and not worth my time. One of the things you should unlock later in the game is a functionality in build mode: point and click at a spot, and the game will automatically fill the nearest available spaces with a random smattering of your offensive turrets. Sometimes I get caught with my pants down and I need a quick solution to respond to pirates that just warped into the system! Anything else that are added by the most popular mods in the modding community. Those are always good measuring sticks for what players want, obviously

This is level 2 of 3 in regards to suggestions. This post is for small suggestions that don't appear to be too complex to put into the game. Take that with a grain a salt, considering I only have cursory knowledge of programming. I also highly recommend gating many if not most of these suggestions behind purchases/questlines, as further described in another post here: www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2801.0.html I know that many of these have already been suggested here and there, but I've been keeping track of everything on a notepad for the past 100 hours, so by George I'm going to throw in my two cents! Without a doubt, hands-down, the most tedious part of the game is inventory management. Tedium distracts from space battles, which makes it inherently bad! Luckily, there are a few simple things and a few not-so-simply things that can be done to drastically cut down on the tedium: Display DPS in the tooltips If you're really generous, display DPS accounting for heat/cooldown cycles in the tooltips Give every single window where turrets show up it's own sorting preference. This includes inventory, ship building, vendor - buying, vendor - selling, and researching Give more options in each drop-down box for how to sort (in every window), such as DPS, independent targetters, heat/cooldown, energy buildup, range, functionality category (damagers, miners, etc), and so on. Make a drop-down menu when a player right-clicks a turret in the inventory/ship build screens, giving them the ability to add an icon for future reference (such as a star for a favorite, a flame for a problematic heat/cooldown ratio, a cold coin for 'sell this', etc) Give turrets their own window in ship build mode Separate the turret windows into separate tabs for damaging/mining/salvaging/utility/healing/force. When I'm mousing over my collection looking for good damage turrets, it's a waste of time to have mining turrets in the same window. Add a button to throw all [whites/greens/blues] into the slot research machine. Reduce the volatility of turret stat ranges a bit. While I was fighting the end boss, I still had an iron weapon on, because it was just that good. This means I can't just disregard all iron weapons after a point... which feels like it breaks game lore. Add a checkbox in the save ship menu to also save the turret loadout, and another checkbox for non-specific turret loadout (as in, the game will fill in each spot with any turret of the same functionality category) Add a functionality to rapidly deploy turrets on your ship. It shouldn't be efficient, but it can be the quick and dirty solution when you're caught with your pants down when pirates attack Anything else that someone might have modded into the game After that, there's also the following miscellaneous things: Please add a 'salvage' order for player-owned ships being controlled by captains The best quality of trading system upgrade should include the current stock/capacity of each buyer/seller. There's no difference between red and purple item detector upgrades. Why not have the purple upgrade also detect the huge 100k+ asteroids that occasionally show up? Please add a checkbox in build mode to show the middle lines of each block, to make it easier to place things in the exact middle of large blocks Please add a button to show all the recent notifications on the right and left sides of the screen, in case you were afk. Please add a 'buy all' button to vendors, for when you don't want to bother with the details. This is particularly useful at resource depots, when the player has more credits than they know what to do with and essentially never need to mine again. Please add commas or periods to credit numbers. It's just more satisfying to instantly know that you just gained 81 million credits without having to squint and count the digits to know what you made. In build mode: please only make my ship do the shield wobble thing when I first place a shield block, or when it's taking enemy fire. It's cool the first time, but after that it just gets irritating and blocks my view. Please add a button to freeze time while in ship build mode. It's irritating to have pirates and Xsotans show up and for my crew get closer to their pay periods when I'm trying to build a masterpiece! To avoid abuse, only let it toggle when no enemies are in the sector Please add a graphical way to represent the current crew. Something to look nice and give the sense of a growing warship as you progress through the game. Please add a speedometer on the lower-right section of the screen, with an estimate stop distance. Please add a button in build mode to scrap the ship. Include a warning window if scrapping the ship will eject upgrades/turrets or lose crewmembers. Please stop this spinning craziness that stick-ships do. It completely breaks immersion and it's not engaging gameplay to try to fight that nonsense Anything else that someone might have modded into the game

This is level 1 of 3 in regards to suggestions. This post is for the little things here and there. At the risk of sounded arrogant, it feels like these things should have been obvious, so I frame them as little things that were overlooked while programming the game. I might stray a bit into small bugs or level 2 suggestions... sorry if I do that. If I'm wrong and there's a good reason one of these isn't in the game, then my apologies. In Esc menu > controls > key bindings: there's no button to clear an individual key binding. There isn't any way to decrease the volume of fighting explosions without decreasing the interface sounds. Decreasing SFX also decreases interface sounds There isn't a slider for reducing hyperspace jump particles, despite those being prone to spiking FPS There's isn't any way to zoom out to RTS view aside from manually grinding the mousewheel every single time There's no button(s) to transfer all cargo of a type/all cargo period between ships. As it is, if you want to transfer thousands of anything, you have to dump it into space, get out of the way, and then vacuum it up with the new ship after the arbitrary wait period, which is bending over backwards to compensate for the lack of a simple button. In build mode: when manually typing in a block dimension in the block size mini-window, hitting tab does not move the cursor to the next field and highlights it. I can't do '3-tab-3-tab-3', as would be expected of such a window There isn't any way to sell fighters Object detectors will still point you to empty loot stashes Weapon groups set to auto-target reset to manually-operated when warping to a new sector, and between game logons. Inventory sorting order resets between game logons. Xsotan aggression resets between game logons. The hyperspace jammer indicator (turning that particular bar red) is useless when you've stacked enough hyperspace upgrades so that you don't have a cooldown anymore. When warping to a new sector with the object detector equipped, the message for 'valuable objects detected' show up when you hit space bar to activate the jump, as opposed to when the screen changes to show the new sector. There doesn't appear to be a mechanism that prevents quests from sending you across the inner galaxy border, despite the lore of the game making the very idea silly. In build mode: when you place turrets, the messages that show up on the right saying they were removed from your inventory are layered on top of the ship stat list. Not only does that block my view, it is also, without a doubt, completely pointless to inform me that the turret was removed from my inventory. If you place too many turrets on your ship (about 44 at my resolution), the turrets not only leave the window, but leave the screen entirely and you can no longer see them all. There's no warning while ship building if the ship exceeds the size allowable through gates. Losing a ship because you clipped the side of a gate as you passed through it for the first time is not a fair game challenge. The player has no way of knowing the consequences of carrying dangerous cargo until it hits them... which is not a fair game challenge. If a player is near a station's docking point, another ship running it's usual 'pull up to the station' script might ram them, cause damage and rep loss. This is just silly! A Mobile merchant randomly showing up is cool and all, but it breaks lore a bit when they show up in the galaxy center... in the middle of the boss fight... and still hang around for 15 minutes

[glow=red,2,300]Well done, Avorion team, well done![/glow] It's been a long time since I was really sucked into a game like this, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. 100 hours in just a little over two weeks! YouTube's Aavak and his let's play series of this game is what got me into this, so don't discount let's players! Shortly after I started, I opened up a notepad and started keeping track of my thoughts on this game. Now that's I've passed 100 hours and have killed the final boss three times, I feel like it's time to put my two cents in. May I present to you.... The Horn: http://imgur.com/B9UBVxT Built for utility, not aesthetics. Those stats have only gun turret and hyperspace drive upgrades in, the rest is raw, beefy blocks and manpower; all 30 million cubic meters of it. And yes, I did enjoy the idea of soaring through space and destroying enemies in a shamelessly giant phallus. The biggest appeal of this game was the idea soaring through space dominating enemies in a ship that I designed myself. Sadly, I couldn't enjoy that on this playthough because of the dodgy AI making managing these ships too much of a hassle to be worth it. I'm sure that's not news to you, Avorion team, so I'll spare you the details and the log reports. Just let me say this: player fleet AI is a pillar that holds up a huge element of the most appealing part of gameplay that will draw in and hook players. It will be worth every hour and every line of code to polish that to a mirror shine. The biggest drawback right now, if I had to pin one down, is inventory management. This is what took the most time away from space battles as I tediously moused over turret to turret to turret to compare damage and decide what's worth equipping and what should be thrown into the research slot machine. I would have gone crazy if it weren't for Kuro11's mod that changes the tooltips to display actual dps (http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1626.0.html). I don't even remember what the original tooltips looked like in detail, but I remember it didn't have dps - and that's a big problem. Doing the math to compare different damages and fire rates is not engaging gameplay! It gets worse as your ship gets bigger and you need to place more and more turrets. This can be remedied by, obviously, showing dps in the tooltip, giving each window it's own sorting setting, giving more options for sorting, and some mechanism of quick-deploy turrets on the ship. I get into more nitty-gritty details in the other posts: For now, just know that you have my respect, Avorion team. I don't crack out hundreds-of-words posts unless I really want to see a game shine - and I'm glad that I got the chance to play this game in its early access, and possibly have an influence in how it's made. [shadow=red,left][shadow=red,left][glow=red,2,300]Bravo![/glow][/shadow][/shadow]

A great deal of suggestions on this forums regard convenience and quality-of life improvements. The problem with some of these proposed changes is that they would pull away from a vaguely-defined feeling of authenticity to gameplay. For instance, carefully crawling up to a station to dock makes the game feel like more of a space game, but after doing it hundreds of times, it's just a tedious chore. Might I humbly suggest the following to the Avorion team: Consider adding in convenience and quality-of-life improvements at staggered intervals throughout the game, gated behind purchases or questlines. Thus, new players still feel the tedium that adds to the aesthetics of the game, but also enjoy that sweet, sweet power gain as they progress in their journey and old chores become a thing of the past. For instance, every faction headquarters gets a new option for 'systems logistics upgrades'. As the player gets closer to the core, more and more options become available, at an increasing cost of credits and/or ores. Upgrades could include: Increasing docking distance/docking makes the ship instantly freeze if under 300 km/h Odometer of player ship, including estimate stopping distance saving system upgrade loadouts, to enable quickly switching between fight mode/travel mode automated turret placing in build mode increased fighter return speed increased item pickup range retroactively restricting ship size such that you can't build above X cubic meters until you buy this upgrade ditto, crew size ditto, critical block types such as the power generator or shield generator anything anyone has made a mod for etc. Again, the critical advantage here is having your cake and eating it too: little tasks add authenticity to the game, and automating them away gives the player a sweet, sweet feeling of power gain as they progress through the game.

Seconded!