Thundercraft

I'm afraid that you misread what I wrote. I said that, sometimes, factions will become allied with bandits - and by that, I'm referring to "pirates". (I said that they can quote, "join forces with factions to fight Xsotan.")

Have you taken a look at the Vanilla or Modded Servers list that I maintain? I separated them by Modded, Lightly Modded, and Vanilla. Also, I try to prefix with country of origin, followed by MaxPlayerCount. And I try to mention noteworthy mods they have, particularly OOSP. However, those are only servers listed on the forums, which is useful for "Multiplayer by IP". I do not tackle the "Browse Servers" or Steam server list. Several hundred are listed there. Sadly, there aren't many servers with more than one or two "ease-of-life" scripts. A majority seem to be strictly vanilla, or they may install /Sethome as an exception. Also, heavily modded servers seem to have a much greater tendency to fill to MaxPlayerCount.

I understand. What I often do is set my browser with "Always ask" so a bar on top pops up saying it was blocked. When I go to a site I like that absolutely requires Flash, I click to enable it. Video streaming hosts are an example. (Sometimes I choose "Allow now" instead of "Allow and remember".) In a topic, someone claimed that most Avorion players stick with singleplayer and doubted that even 10% play multiplayer - without anything to support this. I doubted that opinion and decided to do a poll to find out. We also debated how important multiplayer is for Avorion. This is probably a common sentiment. Judging by the poll results so far, there's a sizable group who plan to do multiplayer some day, but who haven't tried it yet. I won't just abandon the poll I started. That would feel like a betrayal. But I may start a new one. I'll try to keep Google Forms in mind. Do you have any suggestions for "more interesting statistics" or better-phrased questions related to multiplayer? Perhaps I should ask questions about stuff like what game difficulty they prefer, what collision damage should be set at, and whether they would prefer a vanilla or modded server?

Some players spend way too much time in a sector with a friendly faction. (Perhaps we have player-own factories in the system or are doing a lot of mining.) And as a consequence, some of us are seeing friendly factions become allies with bandits. (Bandits join forces with factions to fight Xsotan and, thus, can become allies.) And, now, every bandit I kill subtracts roughly 13000 relation points with any (formerly) friendly faction in the system. (See my Enemy of my enemy... topic for details.) My point? Making it quote, "much harder to gain reputation" with friendly factions could be problematic if we experience this issue and want to balance relations as a workaround for this game oversight. Just thought that I would point out that this is a potential issue, should a faction decide to ally itself with bandits.

Update: I've been designing ships in my empty sector for a while now. And I've enjoyed the peace. However, I've noticed that the small force of Xsotan ships has grown to a mighty fleet of nearly three dozen! And it keeps growing! :o No force of bandits stand a chance. ;D But then, merchants are very quickly wiped out. Thankfully, they still ignore my ships. But the game is designed such that new waves of aliens spawn every few minutes. As my ships do not engage them and no bandits can make a dent in them, their forces keep growing with every wave. I'm a bit afraid of the day when they do turn on me, too. I guess it's only a matter of time before the lag catches up to me or so many ships spawn in the same sector that it crashes the game. (Actually, I've had several crashes recently...) :( [sigh]

Weird. It opened fine for me. Though, I noticed that several people opened the survey and/or started it without finishing. Maybe your Shockwave Flash plugin is outdated or has been disabled for most sites? Or, perhaps it might help to clear your browser's cache before reloading the page and trying again? Should I open a separate poll on the forums and add the results of the poll and survey together?

This sounds quite exciting. However, doing it that way, with a script, feels like cheating to me. We do not have to use any of our money, rare minerals, or weapons to craft them... do we? Also, I plan to spend more and more of my Avorion time in multiplayer. And I highly doubt this mod would be considered by servers in it's present state. Any chance that someone could make a version that would allow us to just interact with a station and buy one of a few different fighter styles, perhaps made with rarer and rarer ores the closer we are to the core? That would be super. I'm hoping that Koonschi will eventually allow players to customize their fighters. And I seem to recall reading that this was planned. However, I do not find this on the wiki's list of upcoming features...

Thanks for that! Very handy. I did have a third to a half of these written down, but nowhere near all of them. BTW: Here are two more: X= 9 Framework X= 13 Directional thruster (NOTE: Use look="5" for forward-facing or look="1" for left/right facing. Not sure what the look is for up/down facing...)

Another thing that should help is making sure your ship has sufficient maneuverability (Yaw and Pitch). You may have to add more thrusters or replace them with Directional thrusters. That, and maybe zoom out a little to make your ship appear a little smaller, so you can better see how close your ship is to asteroids and how big they are in relation. I'm not the only one saying that collision damage is too high by default. And I would think that huge ships with literally kilo-tons of armor would be much better able to take asteroid hits. Sadly, shields don't help with collisions. Not even a little. Also, it sounds like there is a severe bug with how collisions are calculated - particularly if your ship has integrity fields. Related tip: For those who have really big ships and are running into stations all the time, you may be interested in the Extended trade reach mod. With that, you won't have to be so close to 'dock'. Turning it way, way down should help. Turning collision damage all the way off might be a tad excessive. Many popular multiplayer servers set collision down to half or 0.5. Some of them turn it down to 0.25 or less. But hardly any turn it off. And those that do usually claim that this is a temporary measure. IMO, the common retort "Pffft. Asteroids? Just learn to avoid them." does wear a bit thin after a while. I think it can even sound a little callous. Especially considering how that is sometimes easier said than done when piloting a freakishly huge ship.

Edit: Nevermind...

I want to build me some player-owned stations. I really do. However, I was surprised to learn that after a station-building ship is transformed into a station, we still have to pay the same 3-hour wage for crew. Since stations are often incredibly large, this can amount to some rather serious coin - to the point that large stations may not even earn enough income to pay for it's own wages. And one thing we can not skimp on is Mechanics, else the ship or station will fall into disrepair and destroy itself. :( Unfortunately, I think many of the game's procedurally-generated stations look rather crummy or at least underwhelming. Also, a shipyard only has 3 styles to choose from, based on the faction. Even without Steam Workshop, there is now a wide selection of player-designed ships available as .XML. However, I have not found very many stations. Only two, as I recall. :( One of these is Mobiyus' Outpost 57. It is absolutely stunning! Sadly, it also requires over 2200 Mechanics just to keep it running. :o Employing some 2000 professional mechanics, there's just no way a Solar Power Plant can produce enough Energy Cells to pay for that! MY REQUEST: Everyone seems to be designing (and sometimes releasing) ships. But almost nobody seems to be designing stations. If you are bored and questioning what to build next, please consider designing a station. And, in particular, please keep the number of Mechanics required in mind. From what I can tell, a station's or ship's size is what has the biggest impact on the number of required mechanics. Though, having a tiny station is probably not the best idea. (For one thing, the enormous solar panels that are automatically placed on top of a Solar Power Plant would not look right. I think other stations have similar large bits added, too.) I think the easiest way to make a station look big on the outside is to either make it mostly hollow or to make copious use of Framework blocks as filler. Just an idea... Edit: I forgot to mention that, while it is possible to enter the Build Mode of a station to modify it after it has been deployed, I could not figure out how to add more Mechanics to an existing station. This presented me with a problem when I added a small (compared to the whole station) hull block to visibly connect the auto-generated solar panels of a Solar Power Plant with Mobiyus' Outpost 57. (Before, it was hovering in the air.) This simple act increased the required Mechanics by about 46. Without knowing how to add more Mechanics, it was constantly taking damage.

I don't have an answer, sadly. But I am very interested in finding out if there is one. As I just explained in my Enemy of my enemy suggestion, my current singleplayer galaxy has the condition where normally friendly factions are now allied with bandits. It's such that for every bandit ship I destroy, I lose over 13000 rep with any faction in the system! Yet these waves of bandits keep coming for my blood, like clockwork.

I'm glad to hear that we're going to see safe zones soon. Even then, though, I wonder if players should also be able to dock with stations such that they are invulnerable? But then, what happens if the station is attacked? I had a conversation with my friend tonight about Avorion quirks. He was surprised to hear that the game did not have a safe zone and how bandit and alien attacks occur constantly - at like 10 minute intervals. In addition to safe sectors, he also thought that - since stations are the lifeblood of the galaxy's economy - they should be considered neutral ground or off limits by way of faction treaty. (Though, I don't see why aliens would honor such a treaty.)

Please change faction dynamics such that players always have an enemy to fight besides the Xsotan aliens! Please make bandits a perpetual enemy of all factions. (Or, if that sounds too drastic, please at least give us the option to make this happen.) I'm not sure about other players' game experience. But I've been seeing regular factions - particularly my (formerly) green ally faction - ally themselves with pirates. ??? And I'm not talking about a faction with "Pirates of" in their name. I'm talking about bandit-type pirates. As a consequence, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. :( Bandit-type pirates respawn at roughly 10 minute intervals. And they all hate my guts (abhorrent). Aside from the Xsotan, they're the only faction that hates me. (Regular factions were all neutral or allies.) I have the choice to either fight bandits, flee, or let them pound my ship mercilessly. If I fight them, though, I suffer a whopping 13,000+ relationship penalty - per ship destroyed - to any faction in the system. :o This very quickly turns all my allies in enemies. I no longer have a green ally. At this rate, I'll have the entire galaxy hating my guts! >:( This behavior is particularly noticeable in the Creative Mode galaxy I created just to design ships. As my starting sector did not have any faction ships of a military nature, I relocated to one that did, on the assumption that they would engage the Xsotan and bandits, leaving me to design ships in peace... That was not the case, though. They only engage the Xsotan. :( This must be due to how the 'enemy of my enemy' game mechanic works. My (formerly) green ally used to attack bandits. But bandits also attack Xsotan on sight. This must have gradually raised the relationship between bandits and other factions such that they all consider bandits as allies now! ::) Some patches ago, koonschi drastically reduced the occurrence of wars and infighting between factions - to the point that faction infighting seems pretty rare now. This behavior makes me very concerned, now that we often only have Xsotan and bandits to fight. (That is, without picking fights with a faction or loosing too much rep due to this silly 'enemy of my enemy' thing.) The only way I was able to design ships in peace was by finding a quiet sector with nothing in it. I then purchased a station-founding ship from a shipyard and created my own station in the sector. (This was not easy as a large patrol of bandits now seem to be in every sector with a shipyard. I had to run in at full speed, quickly dock and purchase a station-founding ship, and try to flee before they crippled my new ship.) I had to create a station in an empty sector because the /Sethome mod requires a friendly station in the sector before it allows us to set it as our home sector. ::) Since then, I've built a huge ship of my own with lots of guns to protect me while I build. Soon, a wave of Xsotan appeared. But I did not attack them. After telling my ship to stand down, I'm going to let the Xsotan fight anything that enters the sector - including bandits. I just feel that it is pretty ridiculous that I had to go to this extreme to build ships in peace. That, and it feels funny to rely on Xsotan ships to protect me from bandits. Edit: I would have posted this in the Bugs section, but I have a nagging suspicion that I would be told that this is not a bug, but rather intended or a feature. (Incidentally, when I told my friend about this and other Avorion game quirks tonight, he laughed and laughed. ;D He was never keen on trying Steam games, particularly something in a beta phase. And this conversation only reinforced his opinion.)

So far, this topic has 100 views. But, so far, the poll has had only 23 submissions... There are less than 12 days left. Just saying. I hope the sample size is going to be large enough for this poll to be meaningful. :( Not enough and people will claim that it is not representative of the playerbase.

While I completely disagree with your usage of "forced" given that the game allows you to completely control the difficulty... Key word being "if"... Again, I was playing Devil's advocate or speaking of a hypothetical. As I said, I do not believe Avorion has much of a Cube Meta (aside from how Cargo Bays work). I was mostly thinking in terms of multiplayer and PvP. You do have a point about being able to control game difficulty. Yes, even if there was a Cube Meta (in terms of combat), in singleplayer, a player could just turn the diffulty down until it is no longer relevant. A game's tendency toward a Cube Meta can be far more complicated than how dimensions influence turn rate. It is an important factor. But it's not the only one. Further, I do believe that Avorion shares some of the same issues as games like Starmade in regard to efficiency of armor coverage and the effeciency of internal components. (That is, similar issues, but not nearly to the same degree.) First, consider how Cargo Bays scale in Avorion. As mentioned here and elsewhere, it scales weirdly. Despite being the same in volume, building a single 10x10x10 Cargo Bay is 685% more efficient than building 1000 1x1x1 Cargo Bays. (I'm not exaggerating. :() As such, cargo bay game mechanics very strongly supports the Cube Meta. It's strong enough that I design all my freighters around this mechanic. And they all end up with only one or two large cargo bays (usually just one). My latest freighter is a single, huge, cube-shaped Cargo Bay with a cubic ship literally built around it: If I'm not mistaken, 8100 cargo space is pretty good for a 7 module ship with excellent speed, maneuverability, lots of excess power and energy storage, yet made mostly of Iron. To a far less severe degree, better efficiency of large, single blocks can be extended to most types of blocks. This includes Thrusters, Directional Thrusters, Engines, Generators, Energy Containers, Crew Quarters, IFGs, and more. One large Generator produces slightly more energy than several smaller generators of equal total volume. Likewise, one large Crew Quarters is a bit more energy efficient than several smaller ones. Etc, etc. Fortunately, in most cases, the difference is almost insignificant. But it does exist. Next to Cargo Bays, I'd say the most significant efficiency gains from large blocks can be had through thrusters, engines, and armor. Thrusters and Engines, because koonschi added restrictions so thin slices are no longer very effective. Armor, because of the 10 times HP boost of IFGs. Multiplying the HP of a tiny piece of armor by 10 times may not be enough to make it effective. A single shot (or two) may still vaporize such. But, multiplying a large piece of armor by 10 times will make it virtually invulnerable. IFGs are a special case. A single large IFG is more energy efficient. And it can protect a much larger range of blocks. But, I usually opt to place some smaller IFGs, instead. By placing several small IFGs spread around the ship, I usually end up saving a lot of energy. It's also an effective way to add redundancy to a design. Even if an enemy manages to take out an IFG or two, my ship has several others to keep it intact. Some good arguments here. However, I believe that you are overstating the value of a low profile and not seeing the whole picture. As I explained here, recent changes to thrusters encourages stereotypical ship shapes, particularly winged. But, if it wasn't for that, (combat related) Cube Meta would be encouraged to a small degree. Long and sleek ships can present a small profile when dogfighting. Yes, if said ships are agile enough, they can keep that profile small by continuously facing the enemy. And they can orbit the enemy, or roll (or rotate) to avoid exposing a damaged side. However, this only holds true if said ship is agile enough to do so. Recent thruster changes have changed the equation. Now, long and sleek ships are often not as agile as similarly-built short, chubby ships with 'wings' (thruster arms). Also, the player must be skilled enough to do this. I find it harder to pull those orbits off with a mouse than with a joystick. Also, unlike other space sims, Avorion lacks an aiming reticle to show where to lead our guns to actually hit. This makes it rather difficult to hit when trying to orbit an enemy at high speed. And this only holds true if the enemy has traditional weapons. Missile use denies that strategy. Rockets can hit things from 50 km away. Also, rockets have the same speed as your ship when you fire them. How much is a small profile and lots of agility going to help against homing missiles, particularly at a distance that you can't return fire and at a speed that is impossible to outrun? Err... nope. ::) The way you state this suggests that installing IFGs will make a ship weaker. The mere act of adding IFGs does not subtract HP from a ship's hull. Rather, IFGs help to protect individual blocks by distributing the damage to the entire ship. And only up to 10 times the block's actual HP. That's not a bad thing. At all. Actually, how IFGs protect a ship only reinforces the Cube Meta. Typically, small blocks only have a few HP. Even boosted by an integrity field, they are very vulnerable as compared to huge, single blocks with a lot of HP to begin with. Speaking purely in terms of potential loss of armor (and the consequences of such), complex ship designs will always be inferior to simple designs. And (in Avorion) one can't get more simple than a cube. A cube has only 6 sides. If each side is a single slab of armor that is reinforced with an integrity field - if it is thick enough - the armor (on each side) would be impregnable without doing enough damage to blow the whole ship. As such, armor thickness can be much less for a cube than for other shapes. Further: Short, simple shapes like the cube have less surface area. That means less ship volume has to be spent on armor to protect the inside. Less armor for the same protection means a savings in terms of total mass. And, potentially, less mass for the same volume translates to less Engines and less Thrusters. The same can not be said of complex, aesthetically-pleasing designs with lots of tiny pieces and tiny slabs (or edges) of armor. Even boosted to 10 times by IFGs, focused fire on small bits of armor will destroy them long before the whole ship blows. And once the armor is peeled back, important ship innards like IFGs and Generators are next. However, I will admit that this is more of a concern for PvP. Fighters and NPC enemies are not going to be targeting key areas of your ship like thrusters, engines, turrets, and where armor looks weak. They are not going to concentrate their fire on one side, either. PvP can be a different story (if the player is skilled enough). And good shields negate most of this. Good point. Though, to be fair, this is a mid to short range thing. At long range, a small profile will help even versus a group of enemies. At close range, fighting multiple enemies will not only eliminate the benefits of a reduced profile shape - it will likely turn into a real handicap. As long as you can keep the nose of your low profile ship aimed at a single enemy, said enemy is less likely to hit you (versus a short, blocky design). But, against multiple enemies or a swarm of fighters, that is impossible. This argument boils down to geometry and math. Only simple symmetrical shapes like the sphere or cube have an efficient volume to surface area ratio. And only such shapes have a small profile from all angles. Long, sleek shapes like a pencil or elongated arrowhead do have a much smaller profile than a cube of the same volume - but only when viewed from roughly the front or back. Believe it or not: When viewed from the side - any side - a cube of the same volume actually has a smaller profile. This goes double for the arrowhead, elongated wedge, or flat plane shapes when viewed from the top. At that angle, such ships are just huge targets. As for the maneuverability of a cube-shaped ship: Yeah, the Yaw and Pitch would be less than a long, sleek ship. But only if the thrusters are placed in the back and/or front. Long ships allow thrusters to be further from the center of mass and so have more leverage with the same force. However, the more mass a long, sleek ship has in the front and/or back, the less effective the thrusters are going to be. Placing lots of decorative wedges and edges on the front and/or back is going to make them less maneuverable. Also, you should keep in mind that short shapes like the cube require less force to apply Yaw and Pitch than a long shape. This balances out such that long ships still have the thruster advantage. But, if a player were to build a cube ship and if they distributed Regular thrusters evenly in each of the cube's eight corners, the maneuverability shouldn't be too bad. (Directional thrusters are more efficient. But they should not be placed at the corners of a cube. Rather, they must be nearly perpendicular to the center of mass for the sake of efficiency.) Further, unless a long, sleek ship has wings or other protrusions with thrusters. A cube should be more efficient in terms of Roll. (Again, distance from the center of mass is key. And, at least with Directional thrusters, they must be nearly perpendicular to the Z axis to gain Roll.) Beyond that, as I pointed out, Directional thrusters on leverage arms will give far more maneuverability than even using a long shape like a pencil. If you put (Directional) thruster arms on a cube or short ship, you'll easily get far more brake thrust and maneuverability than a long, sleek ship and for a fraction of the Engineer requirement. Some of you may point out that putting thrusters on leverage arms adds a weak point that can be exploited. It depends on how you design it. For combat ships, my leverage arms consist of no more than four blocks - two if I can manage. Because they consist of only a few blocks, each block has considerable HP. With IFGs, an enemy would have to do more than half of the whole ship's HP to sheer one off. And that's just to get one of them. It's simply not worth the effort, especially as maneuverable as I design my ships. This is true - sort of. Long-range engagments would tend to favor ship designs with a narrow cross section, such as long and sleek ships. There are some conditions and flaws, though: If both you and the enemy accelerate toward each other, the time between first entering their firing range and reaching close range is likely very short. We're talking seconds. This depends on weapon range and engine speed. Players usually have faster ships and they use afterburners, so this is less effective in PvP. Common weapons have a short or medium range. Again, having a small profile would make little difference if the time between entering their firing range and reaching close range is short. Missiles is one weapon type that can reach as far as 50 km. Having a low profile as you approach a missile-equipped enemy should help, considering that it will take you a long time to approach. Though, if those missiles are homing, all bets are off. And if this is PvP, if they have missiles, you'd better believe they're going to be homing. Very true! Combined with the thruster stuff I talked about, having adequate shields negates the Cube Meta for Avorion. (That is, with the exception of Cargo Bay mechanics.) And it negates much of the points I just made. Even so, I've heard that ships outfitted with high level railguns can rip heavily shielded ships rather effectively. But that is going to change. In this interview, koonschi said the final release is due "~Q3 2017". And he has been devoting a lot of recent development to multiplayer. So far, my poll is showing that multiplayer is, more often than not, an important factor in the decision to get Avorion. Oh, and my list of servers has grown to about 39 active servers. And the list of servers on Steam is so large that I got bored scrolling through them all. I've been spending far too much time on the forums and building ships, so I won't rise to this challenge right now. But, I expect that someone will eventually build and compare cube ships - out of curiosity, if nothing else. And then we'll see. Let us hope we never see the... If not, I'll probably get around to min-maxing some cube ships, eventually.

You're saucer ships are quite the accomplishment. I particularly like the Cavia Porcellus. (It doesn't even bother me that the nacelles aren't very faithful. Indeed, I think I prefer them this way.)

This looks pretty good for a starter ship. Only about 600 iron? Only 1 Mechanic? Nice. :)

I must be grossly misunderstanding the severity of this issue, but I honestly don't see how "cubes are a great design" interferes with your ability to create aesthetically pleasing designs. How, exactly, is it going to "turn away" potential players? Simply put, it is unlikely that any of the popular media sources that'll give people their first-impression about Avorion are going to have only, or even a majority, or cubic ships. Youtubers are going to make ships that look awesome because that is what the majority of their fans will want, the Steam page is certainly going to have awesome looking ships... May I assume, then, that neither of you have read the Does Avorion have an advertisement problem? topic? To quote: To be fair, I was overstating the severity of the issue. In fact, I do not believe Avorion has much of a 'Cube Meta' problem. At least, if this was an issue, it should be mostly solved as of the latest beta. I thought that I made my opinion about this clear in my post here, where I talked about how wing/nacelle shaped ships are encouraged now thanks to Directional thrusters and changes to Thrusters. I suppose I was playing "Devil's advocate". However, I was put off by the question, "If a person wants to min-max a design without any consideration for the appearance, is that actually a problem?" If that sort of behavior is very strongly encouraged in a sandbox game like Avorion, then, yes, I believe that is a problem, for the reasons I stated and for reasons others had already stated. The key word there is "very strongly". I'll concede that an optimal shape or design (or, perhaps two or three optimal shapes) will exist for most such sandbox/engineering type games. That is unavoidable. But to encourage one or two designs to the exclusion of all else - to such an extreme that few players will even consider any other design - that -would- be a major issue, it -would- be a major game design flaw, and it -should- be avoided at all costs. Again, I want to emphasize Xira's post here where it is explained that a severe case of Cube Meta was the reason for leaving Starmade. If you like to build cubic ships, fine! You should have a right to build cubic ships and that should not be imposed. :P I'm not saying that a cube shape should arbitrarily be discouraged, just because. But you have to admit that if a majority of players are more-or-less forced to build cube ships because it is overwhelmingly and clearly the most effective shape, that would kill creativity. And that would be a problem. I'm not advocating the death of creativity. Quite the opposite. I'm trying to say that, if a Cube Meta issue exists (and I do not believe Avorion has that problem - at least, not anymore), that qualifies as an unintended design constraint that, by it's very existence, hurts creativity and freedom of expression. That - in severe cases - should be discouraged by some new game mechanics. Such would have to either discourage a cubic shape or give more incentive to using other shapes. But it should not stop players from building cubic ships, if that is their thing. You may have noticed that I just started a two question online poll: [Poll] Multiplayer or Singleplayer? I'll post the results in two weeks. There hasn't been much participation, yet. But, already, I can see the results are likely to be surprising.

I've created a two question, multiple-choice survey to ask players about how much time they spend in multiplayer or if they're even interested in this aspect of the game. Why? Because I'm curious. Take the survey (Note: A question can't be skipped. Both questions must be answered.) (Note: Requires Shockwave Flash... Sorry about that.) Your participation is appreciated. Thank you. I'll post the results here after two weeks from today. That is, I'll post it on or after March 11'th.

Do you honestly envision Earth's space agencies launching spacecraft that closely resemble Borg cubes? Granted, space does not have the restrictions we have on a planet like air friction or gravity. But, IRL, there's more to the practicality of spacecraft designs than surface area. Even if it was, we should be seeing spheres as that has far less surface area. I think appearance is a potential problem because it has the potential to turn away a lot of potential players. That is, not just existing players like Xira who quote, "left Starmade because of the 'cube meta'", but also discourage or repulse potential customers who would otherwise buy Avorion. Less customers means less profits, which means less incentive to continue development or, later, release some DLC like landable planets. Less players might even mean the death knoll of the multiplayer community, if too few players are interested in the game. Also, while you may not agree with me, it's a symptom of flawed game design. Forcing everyone to use the same basic shape (and you can't get much more basic than a cube) strongly suggests that the devs were unable to balance things better. It also kills creativity fast, which is one of the main draws of a game having a sandbox feature. I'd like to see some statistics about the Avorion playerbase before anyone jumps to conclusions about whether more players are in a single-player vs. multiplayer environment. Regardless, koonschi has been concentrating on making multiplayer more reliable and easier to use and manage. And now we can initiate multiplayer through Steam. Multiplayer use seems to be growing and I predict that it will grow even faster. Multiplayer has to be one of the big features that attracts new players.

I forget what it's called, but I remember stumbling across a software program that can take a 'snapshot' of sorts of the 3D environment of almost any program, including games. I've seen it used to rip the 3D models right out of a game. Persistent Google searches should turn up something, unless it's been long discontinued.

I get what is being said about the efficiency of the cube, less surface area, less armor required to protect the ship, etc. I really do. And I agree with the sentiment that the importance of shields should help mitigate this. But, there is one aspect the "And this ship" design has that gives it preference over a cube or any other shape. Depending on how they're constructed and placed, those wing/nacelle combinations can be quite effective locations to put thrusters. I say "depending" because the effectiveness boils down to three things: [*]Distance from the center of mass [*]Directional thrusters vs. regular Thrusters [*]If Directional thrusters are used, how perpendicular they are to the center of mass The benefit of the distance from the center of mass is obvious and I think most players are aware of this and at least try to keep this in mind when designing. What is not obvious is how the directional approach of Directional thrusters works differently from regular Thrusters. Directional thrusters achieve maximal efficiency when pointed forward (to increase both Brake Thrust and either Yaw or Pitch) on long leverage arms that are perpendicular to the center of mass. But if the same Directional thrusters on the same leverage arms are located at the back or front of the ship, then a lot of that force is directed the wrong way and, thus, wasted. Brake Thrust remains the same, regardless of whether leverage arms are located in the back, the middle, or the front. Roll also remains the same. But Yaw and Pitch only achieve max efficiency when they're located in the middle. Don't believe me? Try relocating (copy-pasting) Directional thruster (forward-aimed) arms around the front, then remove and try the middle, and then the back. You will definitely see a difference. Since thrusters are described as being more effective the further away from the center of mass, one may assume that thruster arms located at the front or back would be more effective. But that's not the case with Directional thruster arms. This difference is due to how Directional thrusters can only be aimed along one of the three axis at a perfect 90 degrees. To achieve the same (or better, even) efficiency with thruster arms at the front or back, we'd have to be able to aim Directional thrusters at odd angles, like 30 or 45 degrees or some such. Doing so would be at the expense of less Brake Thrust, since they would no longer be facing forward. However, Directional thrusters produce so much excess Brake Thrust that losing 50% (or even more) of that would hardly be missed by such designs. Regular Thrusters apply thrust in all directions. In my testing, their effectiveness is not impacted nearly as much by the location (front/middle/back) of thruster arms. Unfortunately, regular Thrusters do not lend themselves to thruster arms because they are far, far less efficient than Directional Thrusters for such designs. (Actually, they're far inferior in every respect.) My point? Rather than encourage cube shapes or any creative shapes players can come up with, I believe that the beta changes to thrusters will encourage winged shapes. We'll probably be seeing more ships along the lines of the Babylon 5 Starfury and X-Wing or Y-Wing fighters. Maybe not at first. But as players design more maneuverable ships with far less cost of credits and materials and less crew, they'll probably start to replace other designs. Survival of the fittest, I guess.

I'd also really like to see this. :D

I was thinking the same thing. Also, if the intention is to make it easier to tell at a glance which ships are designed for the Beta changes, wouldn't it make more sense to put "[DTU]" as a prefix rather than add "(DTU)" at the end of the topic title (where it is easy to miss)?