Speed

You can't unlock any more than 15 systems slots. If your ship is large enough to have 15 system slots without using a single computer core block, then there's no point to putting any computer core blocks on it at all.

This is an example of a super-battlecruiser I made, it has full carrier capability and production because once a ship gets big enough, why not? Note the large number of hangar blocks which allow much faster launch and recovery of fighters. Because I made it for direct ship-to-ship combat, it's highly maneuverable. However, its HP and shields are too low for simultaneously engaging an entire fleet of core+Insane difficulty Xsotan ships; you have to pick them off no more than two or three at a time, IIRC. Tempest (SBC-1)2.xml Tempest (SBC-1)2.xml.meta

Given a specific tech level, what is your desired number of slots, the desired HP (both shields and regular HP), and the desired production capacity? I assume it's a carrier with enough capacity to handle 120 size 8 fighters? How much maneuverability are you looking for? Are you going for aesthetics or actual functionality? Will the carrier will be a pure carrier that will not deliberately engage in direct combat, or is it going to be a mix (a battle-carrier)? I attached the only pure carrier I've ever made, it has about 2500 blocks. Maneuverability was sacrificed for more shields and HP. However, it's so ugly I just started calling it the "Pug" class. I'm also concerned it doesn't have the HP needed to survive in (the newer increased-difficulty) Insane difficulty near the core (it only has 1.4M HP and 2.1M shields). I suppose if its scale was doubled, however, it might serve. But I really need to design a new carrier with 5M+ HP and 7M+ shields (and that looks better, but I won't sacrifice utility for looks like many people do). I don't want there to be a chance of losing one of my carriers, the game is tedious enough already without having to worry about replacing lost ships. Pug carrier0.xml.meta Pug carrier0.xml

The basic idea is this- a larger more powerful ship, with more power generation, should be able to do more damage with its weapons than a smaller ship. But presently, energy weapons mostly don't tax your power very much, and there's not much point to building ships bigger than 15 slots except to benefit from the increase in HP. Suggestion- allow us some kind of setting to change energy weapon power levels. We can turn up the power consumption on our energy weapons to boost their damage, to almost no limit, as long as the ship can support the power consumption. This allows bigger ships to do more damage than smaller ships. Alternatively, this mechanic could apply only to a new type of turret, say the "particle beam turret". Particle beams would visually look a lot like a laser and would appear to propagate instantly. At lower power levels that small ships could provide, particle beam turrets wouldn't be very effective. They'd only start to be highly effective on very large vessels, and on the biggest ships they'd contribute to most of the damage output.

I don't know how you would ever get to 1 billion firepower, the weapons the default game just don't get powerful enough, and you can't get more than 15 system slots (which I think is lame and unnecessary). This makes large ships that have well in excess of the volume needed for 15 slots a little wasteful. However, on insane difficulty enemies near the core can do so much damage that they can actually whittle down a minimal 15-slotter ship relatively quickly. For that reason I've been slowly working on a ~4.3 km-long super dreadnaught that will use independently targeted turrets. I'm hoping that a ship that size can be safely AI-tasked with destroying Xsotan fleets and pirate bases without me having to worry about it getting destroyed. The AI doesn't really know how to flee... So extremely large ships shouldn't approach 1 billion firepower. But to answer your spirit of the question, I think there may still be a point to excessively large ships, at least on higher difficulty levels. After all, for excessively large ships, you don't need any processing cores at all, so all of that volume can be devoted to more shields and energy.

Some great ideas. I especially like the 4) Option, in some instances the pirate attacks get so annoyoing I'd gladly pay them to just leave me the heck alone. The same with the Xsotan attacks tbh. Another thing that would make the game feel more meaningful would be if the pirate attacks weren't entirely random- how about the pirates factions have a certain number of ships which has a slow base replenish time, but gets buffed (with diminishing returns) depending on how successful the pirates are. So if you destroy pirates in a sector, or if you don't answer distress calls, it actually has some meaningful effect.

90k om is high even for Xanion space, if I remember correctly, and I usually player single player on Insane difficulty. I know this doesn't help you if you're playing multiplayer, but if you're happy to play single-player then it's relatively easy to save your game, you just make copies of the save file that's in like Local->Roaming->Avorion->Galaxies or something like that. I usually play Avorion on 6 to 12 month cycles. Last time I was playing was last summer and I was able to confortably take on an Insane difficulty game. I can't remember if I died once or twice, but it didn't matter- I had saves 🙂 I don't know if it's been changed yet, but the dumbest thing I've encountered is the MAD Science Lab that has like 3 million firepower. This is just dumb, because the damage is so high that unless you literally have a stone cube ship, some little bit of lightning is going to get through some tiny gap in your stone and one or two-shot you. I know because I tried, converting all of my armor into stone on my ship, and still got two-shotted when lightning somehow leaked through the baffles protecting the thrusters. Very, very, very unforgiving to new players. I just get lazy and take it out by counting the number of energy satellites I've killed. When I get to the fourth, I take it out from long range with torpedoes (because it jumps in at the location of the fourth satellite you kill) and then just blast the MAD science lab from max range with multiple torpedo salvos. (Lightning/tesla weapons in space are just dumb anyway, electric arcs are conducted by ionized gas but there is not enough gas to do this in space.)

Found the logs and the in-game report bug option. I mostly posted here in case anyone has any ideas how to get around this bug, or do I just need to stop playing for a few months? 😞 serverlog 2020-07-07 21-53-11.txt clientlog 2020-07-07 21-44-35.txt

I tried a third variation: I cheated myself 1000 avorion and just hyperspaced across the barrier. The game freezes almost immediately, same as any other method. Looks like I'm stuck outside even if I cheat 😞

I am running on the beta branch, version 1.1.2 r23886, zero mods installed After I open the Xsotan artifact gate and cross through, the game loads the sector, runs for like 500 ms, and then it permanently hangs. After this, the save file is corrupted: if I try to load it, the game hangs up and crashes. Variations I have tried: 1) I tried two different Xsotan gates. Both caused the game to freeze immediately after I load into the first sector across the barrier. 2) I also twice had an AI-controlled ship in my fleet go through the wormhole first. The AI ship gets through just fine. I have my AI ship do a couple hyperspace jumps to different sectors on the other side of the barrier: all good. However, when I try switching into my AI ship, the game freezes. After restarting the game and trying to reload my save, the sector (across the barrier) doesn't even load in: the game just hangs up on the load screen. Thankfully, I am constantly backing up the save file in \AppData\Roaming\Avorion\galaxies, so maybe if this bug is fixed I will be able to begin enjoying the game again. I am adding a google drive link to my save file below. Just fly the ship up to the final gate (it's in front of you), then through the wormhole, and see for yourself. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_YaUASMQvcX8KAagj4LhJD3xEhMPPhyj/view?usp=sharing

You're always welcome to give specific suggestion on how that process can be made more convenient. From where I see it, its something the ship designers might consider themselves, and not something one should shove to the developers, who already made good building tools with very few apparent problems. It's quite simple, actually. We need a "hide specific block" option. When you use the hide specific block option, all blocks you presently have selected get hidden. This way, you can bore down to the center of your ship and edit exactly what you need to. Also, the problem with the hide block options right now is that when you hide a blocks, you can't place blocks on the other side of the blocks you have hidden. Hidden blocks should not block your ability to place of new blocks!!! I'm NOT talking about removing the restriction that two blocks cannot occupy the same space. I'm talking about the fact that you can't actually place a block where it would fit and there's nothing in the way, simply because there's a hidden block between where your camera is and the place you are trying to put the block. That's BS. If I delete a block in the center of my ship, I shouldn't be forced to zoom my camera all the way in to the void I created in order to place the replacement blocks!!! AND NO, converting the block to a new block is not good enough. Sometimes you need to delete a large block and replace to with multiple smaller ones. We need to be able to hide specific blocks, not just specific block types. And hidden blocks between your camera and where you want to place new blocks should not prevent you from placing the new blocks.

I ran into the same joint last night. No way to join it seamlessly that I could find

Salvaging was nerfed a few patches back, it was far too effective. And, to be honest, it is still too good (or mining is too bad). Maybe salvage vs mining equalizes out when you have your AI controlled fleet doing the mining. The income from mining is slower but it is steadier, easier to obtain, and less work to set up. Around the core barrier, you will have lots of opportunities to salvage big wrecks. Sometimes, it will be the wreckage of a faction war, other times, it will be pirates or Xsotan you killed, though most pirate and xsotan ships do not have enough easily salvaged blocks to make them worthwhile. Pirate bases, however, are particularly great for salvaging, as the pirate ships defending them are very large resource rich. If you get lucky, the pirate base itself may be made of trinium or better, and killing it will be very lucrative both in the goods you get and the resources you salvage. Possibly the best salvage opportunity is the cultists. You get BIG blocks of ogonite and xanion from them and frequently they even have trinium-tech ships with lots of resources too. Just don't vaporize them too badly, you'll accidentally destroy the blocks you want to salvage! In fact, I like to turn off my main weapons and just kill them with salvage lasers. Another great salvage opportunity is the random wreckage you will find. Most of it is salvaged out already, but sometimes you find a wreck with millions of xanion or trinium. Finally, the salvage yards can be good. Most of the wrecks there have had their high-resource blocks removed (like shields, generators, engines, etc.), but in every salvage yard there will something like a half dozen wrecks that still have their full complement of generators, shields, engines, etc. attached. To find them, zoom out, and scroll the mouse around. You're looking for the glow of engines, and for the harder-to-spot glow that comes off of the resource rich blocks. Anyway, in my current playthrough, I acquired over 2 million xanion in maybe, I donno, six hours played, though I could have aquired it much faster. I got it mainly from two sets of cultists and a couple salvage yards. Still looking for a core barrier pirate base in this playthrough.

You are definitely doing something wrong. It should not take "hours" to kill an entire enemy fleet, it should take less than a minute (much less than in minute, in most cases.) How much firepower does your ship have? Unless you have some difficulty increasing mod (if you do, PLEASE SHARE because this game is way too easy, with the exception of ONE enemy), you must not be using turret factories. You get MUCH MUCH better turrets from turret factories. You have to check around at multiple turret factories for the best turrets however, because each one is randomized. I play on "insane" difficulty and I am not exaggerating in that enemy ships (normal pirates/Xsotan) don't survive for more than 1 or 2 seconds when I shoot at them, and that's being generous. On my present play-through, my ship is a 9 slotter, I am up to the hyperspace barrier, and my ship's firepower is 53600. I use several railguns with high block penetration values, so once I get through enemy shields (which doesn't take more than a second or two for most ships), my railgun strikes frequently do over 150k damage. When a ship lasts more than 5 or 6 seconds, I actually am slightly impressed. However, every once in a while, even using turret factories, you encounter an enemy group of ships with enough firepower and life that you have to respect them at least a little bit. Like, actually try do dodge rocket barrages, or take them out quickly. Cultists are frequently good for this. (Sadly however, on this play-through, both cultist groups I have encoutered I have annihilated with ease.) But, for the most part, the gameplay experience you get after utilizing turret factories and making it up past around naonite level leaves MUCH to be desired. It's way too easy on the hardest difficulty level. So, yea. Turret factories need balancing, BADLY. (Again, my suggestion is to make it so turret factories can only make a set of generic, unspectacular turrets, as well as copies of any turrets you found, bought, or researched... nudge, nudge, devs...).

1) That's precisely what I did in my video- I recast my entire ship's outer armor into stone. It still killed me before I could do anything. The only way I got past it was by putting a huge stone shield in front of my ship (not shown in video). Right now, you have even the tiniest gap in your stone "armor", YOU WILL DIE, GUARANTEED. Talk about forcing the cube meta on everyone, sheesh. 2) Sure, the MEL can be made to force the player to use stone armor, but I just don't think that the MEL should be able to kill the player instantly if they haven't taken precautions. The player should be able to escape, re-armor himself in stone, and then return. Is the average new player going to know beforehand that he has to convert his entire ship's outer skin into stone before he kills the fourth energy satellite? That's ridiculous. An additional mechanic that would help the player to escape but still allow the MEL to do so much damage that stone was required would be to make the MEL increase its damage output more and more as its life/shield was taken away.

Kamo, A thirty-fold DPS nerf would still be 100K om, not 10K!!! I'm of the opinion that it's perfectly fine to make the ship so powerful that a normal player flagship vessel cannot destroy it before it killing the player. But the player needs the opportunity to realize that, not just be instantly killed. That player needs the opportunity to realize he needs to run away, and re-armor his ship in stone, and re-attempt the fight again. When the MEL killed me the first time, I first just thought it was a bug!!!

Yea, I just killed it by putting a huge solid stone shield in front of my ship and having the turrets on the edges. Still, I don't think this is a good gameplay decision (an understatement). Pretty much every player is just going to steamroll up to the Mobile Energy Lab and then just get 1-shotted. Maybe if the rest of the content was almost equally difficult, then this wouldn't be quite as obscene. At least "Insane" would actually be "insane" then.

Umm... so I started a new game to try out the Combat Update Pt II. I was making my way merrily along until I encountered the Mobile Energy Laboratory. It has 3.00011e6 firepower and one-shots you. I'm playing in Insane difficulty. The entire game is super easy up to this point. I guess 3.00011e6 firepower does in fact match the description "insane", but compared to everything else you encounter, it's ridiculously overpowered. It literally has about 3000 to 6000 times more firepower than the average pirate ship. I get that the dev wanted to make the fight harder but that is just so stupidly more powerful that it HAS to be a bug... right? I tried covering my entire ship with stone, but apparently not even stone can repel firepower of that magnitude. Observe. Here is the fight against the Mobile Energy Lab first with armor, and second with stone. I instantly die with armor, I survive a little bit longer with stone. Maybe the lightning bolts are finding a way through a gap in the stone, like in the thruster grills? I'll try building a giant thin shield of stone on the front of my ship and have the turrets peeking around the edge, maybe that will work? Thankfully I know how to save my game.

Same.

Asteroid mines can produce things coal, oil and noble metals without any other required goods to be produced, and these are entry-level materials to several different industries; this is a bit too in-depth for me to explain, especially since I don't know each production chain individually. I have 3 production stations and even though I'm not near them and they are just small, I seem to be getting cash from them now and then, though I can't confirm that yet. (There's no notification :s ) But bases you own, be it on asteroids or otherwise, can have massive cargo bays (if you build them), so you can stockpile any random goods you like at any station. Having any station is also useful for hiring whatever random variety of crewmen it has; the prices will be slightly better than elsewhere, but of course the station's investment is already kind of high. Now, why would you care about goods at all? Well, personally, a good reason for me is that with enough production chains I'll be able to make certain components that are required for building turrets at turret factories (and you can also own these ;D ) How does one make a station?! The only time I’ve ever seen the option is after claiming an asteroid. There is no option to found a turret factory, for example.

Yes, not only should you be able to rebuild their fleet and help them settle down, but they should be a special faction. So, when you salvage their ships you lose rep with them. Ultimately, if you help them rebuild, they should assist you in the final battle agaisnt the Wormhole Guardian- getting revenge upon the aliens that exiled them.

We should also be able to produce ship systems. That would maybe help some. Especially if the types and quantities of ship systems keeps diversifying.

Anyone find it absolutely ludicrous that the space cops will pull you over for carrying a couple canisters of elemental chlorine?! In real life, anyone can make chlorine in their kitchen at home (NOT ADVISABLE THOUGH). So, we're flying huge frickin spaceships with frickin laser beams attached to their heads, giant railguns and cannons that could probably devastate a planet's surface, etc. So, when the space cops scan me, are they worried about my torpedo hold filled with torpedoes armed with the most explosive substance in the UNIVERSE (antimatter)? NOPE! It's the CHLORINE that makes them worried! Containment failure on chlorine- let the ships environmental scrubbers clean it up. Containment failure on antimatter? Good-bye ship!!!!! (And anything you also happened to be near, but hey, at least death will come instantly). Also, doesn't it seem odd that in the distant future there are so many cow and sheep and wool farms, etc? Seems a little... primitive. I mean, I can see there maybe being a small demand in a space-based culture for traditional pastoral products, but they will get replaced with things that can be grown more easily and efficiently in space.

Oh, I understand your point now. However, your point is wrong because you misunderstand my intent. The gridded thrusters are NOT MEANT to provide roll (not really) they are for pitch and yaw and side-slip (strafing). My point is, because I make them gridded instead of a single block, they provide me with roll authority as a free benefit. So now, a thruster that is meant to provide pitch, yaw, and stafing ALSO provides roll as well, for free. Because my roll authority is provided for free by gridding my centerline pitch/yaw/strafing thrusters, I don't need to add a gyro to provide roll. I can use the volume that would have gone towards a gyro block for something else, like shields. So gridded thrusters are superior to ungridded thrusters (when they are on the ship's centerline) because they are a more efficient use of blocks. I agree that real space combat would take place VASTLY beyond visual range, but this is Avorion, where space combat unrealistically takes place within a few km. By painting yourself black, you don't increase your heat emission. You simply decrease your equilibrium temperature. All objects in space at thermal equilibrium will be emitting as much heat as they are absorbing (and generating). A reflective vessel simply needs to be at a higher temperature to emit the same amount of IR radiation as a dark vessel. The amount of IR emission will be the same because energy in will equal energy out. Additionally, the black body equilibrium temperature in space is very low; right now, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, it's dropped to about 3 degrees K in intergalactic space. In interstellar space, it's a bit higher (not sure exactly, I forgot the number) but it's probably like 5 K or something like that, depending on the stellar neighborhood you are in. VERY close to a star, it's a lot higher, obviously, but that's only a really tiny portion of the space in a galaxy. That said, it could be argued that space combat might happen close to stars sometimes... Actually, wouldn't a reflective body have a higher equilibrium temperature in all environments? It just takes longer to reach its equilibrium? So maybe you'd paint your spacecraft white if you wanted to minimize the amount of damage it took from nuclear or antimatter explosions (which would create brief flashes of VERY bright light in the visible spectrum).

Its more efficient to use Gyros if you care about turning in one direction and keep all thruster to their respective dimensional limits. You can test how the efficiency of a thruster rises as it goes further and further away from the center of mass. So even for Roll, you can dedicate thrusters on either "wings" of your ship, and they will also provide up/down vectors. And if you have no much wings to talk about, then use Gyros instead, and get up/down vectors from your pitch thrusters on the front of back of the chassis. I'm currently building a Cruiser version (11 slots) of the similar design pattern. I use Google Spreadsheets to pre-plan the usage of volume. This is why the ship I shown has precisely 8mil m^3 of volume. I'm not sure I'm following you on the first sentence. Anyway, I'd love to see your 11 slot design when it's done. It will probably be a lot prettier than mine. This is my 11-slot design at trinium/xanion tech level. Kind of ugly, but it's got a very small frontal cross-section; enemies have a tough time hitting me when I'm facing them. You see the 0.18 rad/sec roll? That's ENTIRELY from gridded thrusters. If I un-gridded my thrusters, the ship would have zero roll. I'm tellin' ya- gridded thrusters for the win! Ultimately though, roll is not a very important maneuverability stat, since this is space. :) (Well, I may be giving the game too much credit- this is nothing like space at all. Real space is incredibly, extremely, mindbogglingly empty.) Also, you may notice that I paint all my ships black; this helps to radiate waste heat (yea, I know...) and it also makes them harder to see (black = space camouflage ;D ) I may have to upgrade the ship's maneuverability a bit; it's about as maneuverable as my 15 slot design. BTW, why does roll, pitch, yaw, etc. show up as rad/s and not rad/s^2?