Kamo

Baah, if it works it works ::). Try it if you want, but you may have to upload your xmls if you don't have Workshop access.

Taking hold and repairing wreckages would be kinda cool, but it would make salvaging way too efficient ("repair" the ship, then redestroy it in build mode to get all resources back). Maybe one in ten wreckages could be repaired this way, as a rare event ? It would also make getting naonite and lower tier hangars a possibility with copying and pasting (by repairing one of those carriers found in faction war fleets) without having to roam yellow sectors in the search of extra elusive reclaimable carrier wreckages ::). For now, asteroids are the strongest enemies in the game (unless playing on Insane, when Boss Swoks may be the biggest threat in a titanium vers titanium fight) fear them ;D ! I even made asteroidlike ramming ships in creative, they can easily suicide-bomb ships that are ten times as big and expensive (just make a ship with a lot of inertial dampeners and no thrusters (only gyros), completely covered in rock, then put a velocity bypass module, it'll ram at high speeds while told to escort ;D). They would be actually practical if it didn't need a costly captain to order the ramming. Oh, the demo ! Try to buy the game or see an LP of it (I knew this game with ): the demo is really bad to get a first impression, it's a really old version and is limited to iron, and armor and rock are joined into simple rock, so you have to do things like solar panel 0.05-thick millefeuilles and stupidly heavy rock-armoring.

So if I understand well, you made a Trading Post, it buys War Robots for ~70% of their price (since you get 30% in tax) and you can then sell them for a fortune at military outposts. It's not an exploit, you just found the jackpot ! Being lucky enough for the Trading Post to be generated with such a rare and precious good, and especially being in a sector with a faction awesome enough to have a functional War Robot production (those are service-level tier trading goods, needing a functioning industry and therefore a powerful agro-chemical production with a lot of "basic stations", and such factions should be impossibly rare lest they'd be huge and very well balanced, with no broken economy cycles in em)... Except it may be an exploit if traders do spawn with such goods without any working production nearby (I heard some things about goods being spawned instead of produced, therefore creating "undead economies", and I once made a solar power plant in my arena in a corner of a galaxy, and cargos from a faction ~500 sectors away show up to buy the e-cells, so it may be true.) !

It depends a lot. I guess it would marry well with the cheese, but I do no eat enough pineapple per year to be certain of that, or how its taste would change when cooked :P. It's so difficult to prepare (How all those scales are manageable ?! And pineapples are big, one would be enough for two pizzas.).

Yup, it's still an issue. Need for lieutenants is based on the hypothetical need for sergeants instead of the actual number of sergeants, and so on ! It needs to be based on actual numbers once there is at least one crew member of the previous rank. It's a little complicated. For example, with a ship needing 12 sergents, if 4 Level 3 sergeants (2,5x4 = 10 workforce) are recruited, the projected need would be 6 sergeants (the actual amount of sergeants plus the actual workforce difference), which would then show a need for 1 lieutenant (for the 6 sergeants) and 0 commander (instead of 3 lieuts and 1 commander if all sergeants and lieutenants were untrained). This way, the UI would show, when empty, the amount of order-screaming idiots that the ship would theorically need, and when filling it up with said idiots, would treat professional order-screamers with the workforce amounts they actually confer while needing as much "superiors" as normal order-screamers, as for now, those 4 Level 3 sergeants actually need to be managed by as much lieutenants as 10 untrained ones (they must be really rowdy to need that much supervision :P), making professional order-screamers obsolete.

I guess the balance is worse while approaching the core. At the Titanium belt, it is actually more or less balanced (ok, I'm able to change a equal-against-equal faction war into a reckless ***kicking with only a light cruiser and a retrofitted-into-flak-corvette cargo hauler, and the hauler is almost superfluous). I have to fire at a station for a good 15 minutes before destroying it so at least it's reasonably grindy, although destroying stations should be more complicated... with more complicated station designs. (Whoops, captured a second too late) The faction I'm raiding has resource depots which have load-bearing generators (as in, generators that are part of the innermost structure and bear 90% of the station). Those blocks are easily uncovered but are almost unkillable, as they are maintained by more-or-less the rest of the station's blocks, so I cannot destroy them to alleviate the grind by causing total power failure on the station. If the entire station was armored, a crafty player could use more tactical ways or destroying a station after uncovering the blocks behind while NPC stations would not need an HP multiplier anymore. Another pet peeve would be that, like units in Starcraft 2 or Warcraft III, NPC war parties attack everything that isn't a station before stations, they lose almost all their time being distracted by cargo-less salesmen, pirates, xsotan, etc., instead of focusing their efforts on wrecking infrastructure, interrupting themselves only to defend against approaching defenders. So I lose a lot of time killing distractions to allow my ally to wreck house with two lances's worth of corvettes and a bunch of fighters. (And a lot of resources running into the distractions - recently even lost my cruiser ::).) I've been commando-raiding that faction for more or less thirty hours and gained ~12 millions worth of cargo, and ~250000 Iron and Titanium (cause I mostly use salvaging lasers on my main ship, and eating stations' hearts is awesomely nutritious :P). I guess raiding will balance itself over time as procedural ship design, AI tactics and aggressiveness ("the enemy is at our gates, boost to intercept! ram if it's necessary to save the stations!") and game mechanics (coaxial weapons and torpedoes may add a lot to damage and may usher an age of specialized "siege cruisers") will improve.

It would be so awesome, being able to repair all those broken blocks and let the mechanics sort the rest, that's what they're paid for :). At the moment broken blocks aren't even shown if the show blocks thing is in use, so I lost a lot of minutes searching for broken blocks that wouldn't appear. I reckon it may be difficult for the devs to implement it, with the (now fixed) bug that once happened in the beta, with invalid block types appearing in the list and causing a crash :-\.

My best customer-faction is being attacked by another faction and I've being helping them since a whole lot of time ::)... I've destroyed all stations in more than half their sectors I've destroyed all their Shipyards, Repair Docks and now Resource Depots I've also destroyed their Headquarters and all stations in their home sector ...and they're still at war, sending headhunters after me and warfleets to the territory two of my stations are. They only have ~5 sectors and ~20 stations, most of them mines :(. The worse is, on the previous iteration of that galaxy (I resetted it after 0.17.3), those two factions were the best of allies. They were happily together (and at a 20-sector distance) then the jerkiest of them's gone "There's nothing happening, THIS MEANS WAR !", and doesn't seem to stop... :'( When does faction wars end ? Will they still stay at war to the last station ? And will the war even end with the utter extermination of their faction ? I may soon (maybe in a week or so) post to give you the results :-\.

Some vanilla feedback here :). I'm using a Solar Power Plant, a Water Collector and a Wheat Farm in a sector with demand on all three in the wrecked, poor economy of the Bixxutqo (my starting faction, where they are situated, has something like 10 sectors, a prime sector (and probably a bunch of sectors) destroyed by rift, a one-way gate to one of their main trading partners (yes, no gate generated on the other side, may be a bug), and is hostile to another neighboring faction). My stations have a comfortable 220+ production value and ~8000 cargo, and would struggle with a pirate attack if they werent't clumped together (and protected by the absence of pirates in out-of-sector simulation) because I didn't get much good turrets yet. They are barely making enough money to pay the crew salaries for my 10-odd ships :( (mine, the stations, three less-than-10-crewed salvagers/miners, and a trash container). A few updates before, such a setup would have made me eleven times as much money: a profit of 1,5 million per hour. I definitely would like an economy de-nerf. I am currently using no trade mods, nor cargo shuttles as I am beginning my empire right away in early Titanium-grade sectors (if I had Trinium, I would looove to put them on the solar plant and water collector to supply the farm). I am however using MoveUI (so good to see my creding rising and falling to verify if the stations work), and custom pirate/xsotan ship generator (which something makes "rarer" enemies) and other assorted minor changes. The lack of turrets was due to the fact that I recently resetted my galaxy and gave me back the money to remake the three stations (which would have been destroyed by the crew changes of 0.15.x, I was grinding 50+ sectors away in "richer" places when it happened). I'll have to grind pirates and trade routes for hours to make a wine complex to assist a luxury food factory (I've yet to make a detailed market analysis and quotation)... Good thing a neighboring faction, the United Emirate of Aorua, is in war against another, the Tamuatq': time to salvage active faction ships with delicious big generators and lots of modules ;D ! Until those idiots remember they were allies before, fighting the evil Sacaeq Syndicate, their hate of grammar and their gonarch-ships (which had way more titanium in their frigates ::)). A bug I found: I found a couple of zinc mines with 0 cargo hold space. BTW, my galaxy seed is KaedeIizuka, my starting point somewhere north-west, 450 away from the core like 300 : -250 and I'm playing on Easy (Beginner is actually harder as allied NPC ships do not do enough damage and get killed by enemies NPC ships which seem better at proximity fighting, and I'm trying the difficulties in order) For the questions: What is a reasonable production facility to start with? No idea: the best thing to go for is for "holes" in existing production chains, but factions tend to spawn with way not enough basic/lowlevel stations (The Bixxutqo, for exemple, have one solar power plant for 10+ energy-using stations, and 4-5 farms... withno water collectors. They had some until one of the updates swapped their only Ice Mine and their only Water Collector with two Coal Mines :(.). Making system-based market studies before, during and after grinding, seem to be the best way to go as the economy is sometimes unstable, some stations beginning with large amounts of rare resources which then power chains that would actually be broken. With the absence of out of sector calculations (which one of LazerZwei's mods would alleviate), such broken chains would only be revealed after a few hours of acclimatation in the faction's territory, revealing the true and often sorry state of the faction's economy. I don't know how the game calculates inter-faction economy: sometimes peaceful factions do not trade when they should really do, sometimes hostile factions send suicidal traders and freighters to be shot down by the local frigates. Some good production chains at this point? I have no idea. Chemicals seem way cool: the products of a Chemical Factory are used in a lot of cool stuff like Acid for nearly all Mines, and they need one or two Gas Collectors (and water and e-cells). However I think that Biotopes, Habitats, Casinos, Military Outposts and Research Stations are a really bad idea, as they need to buy a lot of stuff... and I'm not sure for what purpose. They seem like sinks. I would try to make a mil' outpost to get more lieutnants, commanders and generals to make bigger ships near aggressive faction borders, but it would be when I would be able to make 5 millions per hour by idling. How to make best use of AI stations nearby or in the same sector? Currently, I use the Attack Enemies command. Seems okay. I recommand the turretfactory mod to modify turret seeds to get long range (12km+) independent targeting Cannons to do some real station-based defense. In really bad sectors I'd make a lance of guardian ships (two line and two flak corvettes, typically), also in Attack Enemies mode as the Patrol Sector IA sometimes drives into gates and asteroid fields. In my creative mode galaxy I witnessed my light cruiser crashing in an asteroid field at its max speed of ~1200 m/s :(, so I removed an engine in anger "so it'd go slower next time". What mods are you using? MoveUI Homemade Rare Pirate and Xsotan spawns (FOEs, Rare Elites and Semiuniques), maybe I'll post it one day but it's really easy to make. Modified pirateattackedbytraders event, with bigger freighters to defend so they do not almost instantly die to the band of pirates (had to remodify the shipgenerators). Homemade Useless Asteroid reducer (asteroid generation has a 50% resource asteroid rate instead of 5%, but makes ten times as less asteroids, so there's ten times less asteroids for the same amount of resources, so nine times less lag and loading time from roids as my computer is right at the minimal requirements.) Homemade startbuilding.lua with Station Founder checkbox Modified shiputility.lua with custom classes (going up to class 12 for all ship types) Modified xsotanbehaviour (or is it another script) to replace "Unknown Ship" classes to normal classes (with volume input increased, so a Xsotan Sentinel is the Xsotan-equivalent of a Sentinel which would be more of a scout, for exemple) Modified starting script (to give me the money from previous grinds) Maybe one or two other things Addendum - Sectors (02/01/2018): It seems that there's more or less three "sectors": agro-healthcare (all "basic stations", farms and chemical station), industry (all mining-related stations, from mines to Processors, Antigrav units and other, and medical supplies), and military-research-services (the other stations, which use excess from the industry and cannot function without). I spotted an angular stone between agro-healthcare and industry: the medical supplies and zinc mines. Zinc mines need medical supplies which need chemicals and zinc. Mines also need Acid (made by the chemical factory) and Mining Robots need Coolant (same). So if the zinc cycle is broken, all industry stops functioning. Also, it seems that, in general, industry is bogged down by its own complexity. To make Mining Robots which seem capital to all mines (emphasis on seem, I've seen mines work with none), most metals are needed, especially gold, silver, platinum and steel, but also copper, zinc, silicium, ore, crystal in addition to diamonds for drills, which are also a minable component of mining robots but also needed for mines, and raw oil for plastic, which is also mined. If a mine doesn't make at least 12-20 times (depending on how redundant some production lines are) the amount of mining robots it uses to produce materials, the mine won't make enough material to support the mining industry needed to support itself ! Addendum - The Wojou' Rigs and Transformators (21/01/2018): I've gone a few dozen sectors away, to a faction that needed plastic, the grumpy Wojou'. I built two big ore rigs, a refinery and a little solar power plant in a "yellow" offgrid sector two sectors away from two sectors from that faction. It worked and, apparently, uses the plastic in tow working and well-supplied transformator factories. So I built: A (big) water collector A (big, again) solar power plant A corn farm (for a sheep ranch that needed corn while being supplied by wheat - that faction's kinda dumb ::)) A steel factory (supplied by a 300-unit scrap metal trader which produces 3x60 units every dozen seconds, the thing's probably got a lot more production capacity than cargo units :() A gas collector, for neon and helium precisely (but I made the one that also gets more other things to help chemical industries in general) A plasma cell factory (using the sheep ranch bio gas, gases from the collector and energy from the solar power plant) A power unit factory (using the plasma cells, energy form the solar power plant and transformators from aforementioned petrochemical complexes) ...to make Power Units out of those transformators, to help advanced industry, which uses a lot of the stuff. (And in the case it fails, it's also consumed by other things like shipyards, equipment docks and repair docks.) (I did spend 70 of my 81 million credits that I made by selling the loot from (link) raiding and exterminating the Tamuatq' in a war that spanned several (maybe even real-life) days of grinding stations to dust with a lot of salvaging beams. By the way: if you are destroying a station, salvage and loot it all, its wreckage will disappear along with the rest of the loot ! I got the bad surprise of not seeing any wreckage when coming back to a place that had 5 trading posts, so I may have lost ~30 stations' worth of loot.) Big production chains like those are difficult to judge, as they are slow to "initialize". For exemple, one of my stations recently bought 5 million of something, and the others are working fine, but slowly (probably because of the steel production which depend on a very irregular station), so I think I made money by idling (2.5 million at the last hour, so probably 1.5 million from those complexes), but when is the next 5-million buying of materials from whatever bought the first batch ? For every time trader come and go, my solar power plant has a chance of supplying the sheep ranch, which has a chance of supplyling bio gas to the plasma cell factory, which has a chance of supplying my power unit factory (instead of the one twenty sectors away, or a random trading post, etc.). So for my production chain to work I need to wait for several of those cycles to get goods hauled and supplied to the right stations, while some is... or may be lost to other production facilities or chains, or "early consumer" factories, especially since my fragile steel chain may output to the nearby Shipyard instead of the plasma cell factory one gate away. So even making valid production chains can result in loss of benefits (selling steel is good, but selling steel to make and sell power units makes more money... theoretically). And the only alternative would be automated cargo runs (I know (link) there's a mod for that, but I try staying as vanilla as possible to observe the economy's natural state). The UI desperately needs a panel with amounts and values of bought and sold things in the last hour or two : I currently need to let the game play itself for several hours and check how credits come and go to notice the difference, and I don't see which station makes which credits. Addendum - After some idling (23/01/2018): (Link) I'm blocked off high industry and services because of the 500k cap on buyable goods, at least until my benefits attain 30+ millions per hour to allow myself to make all of the necessary stations, the NPC stations frozen because of the cap. My benefits have stabilized at 3 to 5 millions par hour, a nice amount by all means (starting investment was 50 to 60 millions). My next venture is fertilizer: a lonely Spices Farm with a Solar Power Plant as her only company sleeps at the other side of the Wojou' territory, with the first fertilizer factory more than 10 gates away and the next water collector 7 gates away (and it's used by the farm I supplied win my previous venture. Waiting for 60 millions to pile up before making a fertilizer factory, with plankton, mineral and water collectors nearby. Addendum - Kickstarting blunder ! (25/01/2018): Something weird happened ! After making the fertilizer chain, I decided going for a Medical Supplies Factory, as the Wojou' and their Jaleyji friends had both an excellent agro-chemical complex going, but no Medical Supplies Factories (as you know, those are the cornerstone between agro-chemical and industrial economical sectors). So I plopped an Onodera right in a place with a fabric supply 3 gates away, two chemical suppliers 2 gates away, a water collector and a zinc mine 1 gate away, and chlorine 4-5 gates away (from my Power Unit chain). Then I got out of the sector and wondered what to do, so I've gone to the fabric factory, taking 2000 or so to kickstart the station. When I returned to my factory, it was like completely supplied and full of all five good types, like some sort of superfreighter went here in the five-minute span of me getting the fabric. Had to put the fabric in a trash can near the station, waiting for the Combat Update and ability to go in sectors (to, bit by bit, supply the station with the excess fabric until I can get rid of the can). So, 0.15.8 changed trading to a whole another level, which is seriously worrisome. One would embark in a trade route to find that it was invalid the minute after, and market analysis has become almost impossible as supply seems now utterly unpredictable. Jumping by a sector a farm would be at 0/25000 water (a serious sign of water deficiency), on the return jump it might be at 24950/25000 (a serious sign of water saturation) !

It doesn't make sense and certainly isn't intended as it removes all hardpoint vulnerability (especially at the naonite level when one has to place turrets on hull blocks as armor doesn't exist) and all weapon facing problems (300° broadside? yes please), and allows for unbeatable albeit probably expensive ships (just put a 10km holo block facing forwards, it'll increase your range by that much and no ship would be able to hit you while your permakite them with awesome precision - an ~1.2km version would also make an awesome anti-fighter flak frigate). Also: I wonder what happens if the holo pokes in the enemy ship, allowing the turret inside (#inb4boarding). It would be kinda nice to have holograms that could have both blocks and turrets attached: force field blocks ! They would require energy of course, and allow for the "long range kite/flak turret" and "turret on the inside of the enemy ship" tactics. [glow=#FFFF4D,2,300]Emergent gameplay ![/glow] Docks could also be used for tethers, to enable trailers.

Yup. It's not really that much but it's kinda satisfying being on the latest build, reporting bugs. (Although the bugs and some updates may be frustrating, like the 0.15.x ones which wrecked ships with more than 30 crew.) (Sorry for necroing, but there was no reply~. Maybe he's not near the core enough, hence the iron post :D)

Ah, cargo runs. I guess they will probably begin once the devs start tackling fleet movement and orders beyond the current sector, which is probably a priority in the coming Combat Update, even if remote cargo stocking could be less probable (it would be a good suggestion, but at the moment warehouses are incredibly expensive unless they aren't really stations). Creating a new, inexpensive "warehouse" station type would help (where production would be added as cargo hold space, to avoid having to make new station blueprints). The warehouse would ask for specific goods and cargos would deliver to the warehouse while others would take the cargo. Warehouses would be useful at resource/weapon ring frontiers (like titanium-grade and naonite-grade cargos taking turns delivering from a station from the titanium ring to another in the naonite ring). It would also be some sort of delivery central mission-wise ! For now there is only cargo shuttles (giving Trinium-grade stations and above an incredible edge over other hangarless stations, and the ability to form awesomely productive complexes).

I had two basic ideas - making specific types of weapons should be unlocked and evolve in rarity by researching them, not by distance to core. It recently used to be the list of weapon known by the player. Right now bringing new weapon types to "underdeveloped" edgeward sectors to fit in ships is a chore >:(. Also, research could be used to « tech up » (improve Tech Level and a particular trait) or downsize weapons (to reduce the increased size due to teching up) instead of increasing rarity which would still be an option. Right now research directly applies a weakly-randomized tech value based on core distance, which means if a bunch of Tech 100 weapons are being researched at the galaxy fringe, the resulting weapon would be downgraded to Tech 1 :-\ ! A more complicated idea would be that researching weapons with extraordinary stats (the ones on descriptions like +x% damage) would give the player a both weapon-based, material-based and stat-based "research experience" that would make players better weaponcrafters as they and their industry crafts weapons, very very slowly increasing either the caps on component amounts, or the stats themselves. It would be faction-based: NPC factions would already begin with varying bonuses to their weapons (which would even increase during faction wars as a lot of weapons are made), to have one or two "specialty weapons", to which players would maybe have to adapt. It almost feels like a bad idea that would end in gaming the system, however. As another suggestion, research should or may be a little more genetic (research big range weapons should yield big range weapons), but it may be another bad idea.

My thoughts on the new update phase :). The main reason why fighters are so overpowered is not because of point defense (that's what chainguns and worse, lasers are), but because of the availability of point defense, as in, turret slots. On the "new weapon type" solutions that come to my mind: Mini-turrets could be an improvement: turrets that would take 1 slot every 5 placed (so, 4 free), with ultra-reduced DPS (10% of normal, for exemple) and range (25% of normal ?), and spray fighters (and eventually every enemy that could come close to the ship) to no end :). For "full-slot" anti-air weapons, one could imagine the flak cannons a la Freespace 2 (inspired by way older, non-sci-fi designs ::)), doing splash damage but exploding somewhat randomly, so enemy non-fighters could be still damaged but much more rarely unless firing at point-blank so the shells would explode on impact. Of course another thing to do could also be balancing the turret slot economy, with arbitrary free turrets depending on size, volume and some other factors (to avoid bigger-is-better quandaries and allow small flak ships). Especially as, right now, stations should be defensive powerhouses, defending themselves and the space they're in, but are limited to 2 weapons (not even enough to "cover all fronts") by total lack of system module installability :(. Mini-turrets and more turret slots would increase the amount of turrets however, so damage reduction or hp increases would be on order too :P. Torpedoes need to be special as, they wouldn't need to do massive damage but break blocks to cripple ships. A basic torpedo would override integrity fields and penetrate blocks in a probably-conic explosion, although payload may vary (a la From The Depths ?). It seems that NPCs get a staggering amount of collision damage reduction (probably ~80%), to account for blundering at times. I've seen ultra heavy (mass-wise) corvettes of mine crashing at very high speeds and exploding around barely thicker stations that would display damage amounts barely over my ships' health point amounts :-[. So ramming is a very non-viable tactic at this point. Density calculations would be easy, deriving from volume and mass, and maximum health loss from ramming should be reduced to something like 2 or so times the concerned blocks' health, with varying factors such as acceleration and angle (ships boosting to get out of the way of a collision should have much more "bounce" and survivability than ships boosting towards collision).

Wormholes unlike gates are non-selectable. The Galaxy Map can show you where they go, by zooming and dezooming (the wormhole lines disappear at a certain zoom level, which is kinda weird design since wormholes are reasonably rare and it would be helpful to have a big view of the galaxy with those precious shortcuts ::)). The MoveUI mod can display the distance to core, so one could better ascertain it's a descending, ascending or roughly equivalent wormhole :).

That, and there also needs to be "Pick up dumped cargo" and "Pick up dumped and stolen cargo" options, to manually alleviate the delay. Alternatively, the delay could be based on something like 10-odd seconds plus a value depending on thrust and velocity, so a huge and slow cargo ship could dump cargo and have the time to go away in 40 secs, while a faster ship would have less delay and could get it back only 15 secs later. Another alternative, the dumped flag being dropped after the dumper going away one kilometer from the cargo. But this very simple idea has probably already been considered and refused, probably for performance/server reasons (each cargo unit counting as an object, it may be too much to calculate distance to dumper coordinates for each of them). Another big problem is that the cargo despawn time is way too small (must be 80 or 90 seconds), giving too much of a limited window to get back dumped cargo before it disappears :( ! It needs to be at least 300 (5 mn) plus the dumping delay.

It will cause the reverse effect, the station drifting more and more :-\. For exemple, if the station drifted towards one of the force ships, the three other force ships would push it more in that direction and overcome the pushing of the poor fourth (which'd cause the station to ram it). But force pushing/pulling would be a much less self-destructive way to relocate stations than the bulldozers I imagined ;D. It may work if the station was just shy of the range of engine-less force turret ships (so they wouldn't move towards the station and only hit it when it's coming towards them), but I fear two other issues coming up: the amount of time it would need to stabilize, as the turret ships would ping-pong the station which wouldn't stay at the center, drifting in the opposite direction :(. It would be costly too (nine captains and at least a dozen mechanics !). May still work though.

It's pretty silly that Stations does not benefit from thruster brake thrust and even worse, inertial dampeners that definitely should act as anchors. When someone bonks a station he generally has to wait for minutes before its dock stops going away from his ship, even on designs that should stop from 30 to 0 m/s in a sec >:(. For station relocation however, I wonder if it would be much easier when umbilical docking will be a thing. (Or, for the time being, it could simply need bulldozer-like ships ramming it at very low speed ;D.)

The "Spawn in workshop ships to fight players" idea is pretty cool. It needs to be a [glow=#4D9AFF,2,300]suggestion[/glow] - since some players make "factions", there may be player-designed factions, found as randomly as normal factions, with each player may have the possibility of designing factions in a menu. A faction would need at least one ship for each "essential" role: defender, freighter, station. And then the player would be able to use a probability-mass system, eventually combined with min-max core distance, to balance ship spawns by role. The menu would calculate in which resource ring the faction would spawn (by looking at the best material used in station... for each station type so there could be factions which could be spawnable spanning several resource rings). And it would also calculate the "viability" of the faction by looking at the cost of the smallest ships available on the essential roles (if the ships are way too big, the faction would need too much materials to make them spawn at all), for each resource ring if the faction is viable for several.

+1. Another thing that is lacking is a "Hide all blocks but" option to show turrets. Sometimes while evolving ships to other ships, turrets stay where they were and now inside of blocks, instead of being uninstalled, and finding and deleting them is impossible :(. (It's possible that this behavior has been fixed as now I have the opposite problem: when doing full repairs, I sometimes lose turrets on hardpoints placed near edge blocks and have to reinstall them after almost every fight >:(.)

Awesome idea, especially as there is no prediction on the targeting reticle at the moment, so dodging and firing accurately are nigh-on impossible with low fire-rate weapons (again discouraging fast and nimble ships upon ponderous ones), even in singleplayer.

Such a wonderful idea ! I once made a station with a giant external yard with four antennae to try to make a cubic shield to protect ships inside the yard, but it didn't work :(. Even putting holograms didn't change the shape of the shield, so d'oh, I'll have to wait for shield configurability changes.

The miniship with the salvager inside at 8:42 is so d'awww ;D ! What masterpiece that city is ! It's really weird that it doesn't brake, as those were delicious inertial dampeners at the 7:05 mark :P.

I just understood why the AI flies some ships efficiently while making other ships crash, almost regardless of their agility. I'm using inertial dampeners so much, I am almost not putting direction thrusters on the forward-back axis, and in an emergency collision avoidance scenario, it tries to stop the ship using the reverse thrusters, which shut down the dampeners. It just caused a extremely agile cruiser which could go from 1000 m/s to 0 in 7 km to crash on a poor corvette it was following with far smaller brakes and velocity (800 m/s to 0 in 12 km) ::). (And a station, at 650 m/s. And it survived, litterally almost clipping through. Yay for boring but robust design ??? ?! Cue summary captain ejection by an angry corvette pilot and faction leader, covered in splints and bandages >:(.) The AI should be updated to be able to tell the main purveyor of brake thrust.

Kamo here ! I am kind of a X2 fan (though I lost the CDs). Kinda hated Eve Online for the whole "low-sec/high-sec" ball where carebears had no chance in hell of putting a foot in low sec. I've seen Lathrix's videos of Avorion and they made me completely fall for this game despite the demo being really out of date and throwing me off (my best ship was a "cargo" shaped like a giant cow ;D) I really like the idea of making a giant economic and military empire with personal ship designs to retake the galaxy from aliens and pirates, so I'll try to test both trading (though the latest crew-messing patches killed my three stations :( so I'll try again later while regiving me credits when it stabilizes) and fighting. The customizable music and lua scripting are awesome and allows even almost-programming-illiterate people like me to mod, and play with epic tracks. My computer is right at the minimal requirements (dual-core, opengl 3 card, win7, iron, etc.) so I lag in asteroid fields of more than 1000 when I turn towards them (maybe I'll reduce useless-roid count or make a "mine empty roids" order one day). It'll allow the devs to have feedback from issues on a really low-end machine. For the time being I only play solo, playing on a computer with unstable internet connection.