Hale

I'm starting the game up again after having my save corrupted a few months ago, so look forward to some new iterations of the Cyclops II, compatible with the new thrusters! ;D

Oh cool, thank you! Suggestion withdrawn. ... although, this useful functionality is not documented anywhere. It's in the tutorial.

I think this is good, but I think that there should be a base salary, that's based upon ship size/ship cost. The cost of salary for crew members can be added on.

Spotlight blocks would be neat. Useful, too, for when you're flying around in dark areas and want to see salvaging wrecks. Almost like headlights for your ship. OH. EDIT. There NEEDS to be a drop down list of every block currently on your ship, categorized by type. A menu of sorts with sub folders inside that you could navigate through to see all the blocks. You could select a block like that and maybe change it to a different materiel or type easily. Also just a list of how many blocks of different types you have. I actually don't know how many generators are in my ship anymore. x.x

I agree wholeheartedly with all of these, especially the fighter one. I actually have a fighter-esque ship I made, properly scaled and all. It's great for automated mining and can actually have a tiny amount of shielding for extra survivability. Here it is: http://filebin.ca/3AlaxU5IGOGv/Betsy2.xml

In my playthough I originally made one of my ships for storage, and I named it storage. But then I discovered that even though it didn't have any engines or any sort of tech, it needed tons of crew members! I think it would be nice if you could designate what kind of thing you want to build from the drone founding menu. So when you go to create a new ship there would be two buttons, one for "ship", and one for some other name that would mean that you're creating something that isn't going anywhere and doesn't have any engines or weapons, so it needed less upkeep, and therefore less crew members, and therefore you need less money to keep it! I'm not incredibly keen on needing to have a huge ship just to be able to tote around all the stolen things I've gotten over time, so I'd like to be able to create a storage hub of sorts, that would just sit around and do nothing except store things.

So the upgrades we have now are great and all, and are very useful, but I keep thinking about what the capacity for more -physical- versions of those upgrades would be. Or perhaps even the capacity to make the standard ship functions we take for granted not come immediately. What I mean is this: You build your first ship, like you normally would, but instead of it having scanner and radar and all this tech, all you can do is fly it around, see the HP and such. In order to detect allies or enemies or asteroids and what they have in them, you would need to build a radar antenna. You'd have specific parts you needed, such as the scanner core and then the actual antenna itself, and you could add booster pieces to up the range, as well as being able to add your standard upgrade computer chips, that would then take effect and add upon the stats your physical scanner has. I've taken a screenshot of a mockup I've made. The blue could be the scanner core, the very base block. The pink-ish block, the next one up, could be a booster core, that increases the range. The yellow section above the light blocks could be the antenna base or some sort of sector core, though you might just integrate it with the orange piece above it, which is the antenna. Without a scanner core you wouldn't be able to scan at all, without a booster core you wouldn't be able to scan for things of interest in other sectors, without the sector core you wouldn't be able to scan for anything within your own sector, and without the antenna you wouldn't be able to do anything at all. The upgrades you put in the ship gui could be made for the programming of the antenna. Just a neat idea, I think. It would greatly increase the immersion of the game.

Accidental quote.

Imagine how cool that would make the UNSC ships people are making. MAC cannons. Yessssss. I think that those weapons could turn out really unique. Instead of it being one single piece that you just plunk down, you would have to build them. For instance: The first block you put down is a loading/firing mechanism. But that just sends the round down the barrel, which you need to build yourself. So you put down the base mechanism and try it out. You fire it, it uses up a small amount of whichever material you set it to use, or perhaps special crafted rounds, and... The shell kinda just goes floating off at 5 m/s. There's no power for it. So you build a barrel. Super long, just fits around the 3/3/5 shell that emerges from the mechanism. Fire. Nothing. See, a gun that big would be practically impossible to fire using gunpowder. Really the only practical way to fire one would be magnets, or electricity, or something like that. If you're using a simple material, likely magnets. So you take the barrel down and build it back up, but with a series of four round accelerator plates built in. Not very big ones. Fire! Well this time it goes 100 m/s. That's better. You test it out on something and it doesn't do much damage, maybe 50 or so, and it goes flying off somewhere else. So you take the barrel down again and this time you build it back up with a -lot- of accelerator plates. This time it goes 800 m/s, and destroys the little bandit ship you fired it at. The only problem is that you don't have enough power to effectively use it. The instant you click it starts to charge up, with the charge time taking longer the more accelerator plates you use. After it fires the massive amount of power it charged up to has to cool down, and for that entire time your little dinky ship was running on fumes. It also takes more power total the more plates you use. This means that you aren't just going to be running out and making yourself a massive cannon the instant you start the game, it will take time. You'll need a big generator to take the power load you put through it if you want a big gun. Essentially if you want to have a big spinal cannon you need to plan your ship accordingly. Make sure you have the space for a big generator, make sure you have a spot to put the barrel, however long and however big you want for it to be. The longer it is in terms of the width/length ratio, the more accurate it will be. So if you want a round that's only 1x1x3 flying out, it wouldn't have to be as long because the opening is smaller. There would be other requirements, too. You'd need to make sure you had enough materials to fire it, which wouldn't really be all too much. 10-1000 of one type, depending on the shell size, and the density you want. The higher the density, the higher the damage, at the expense of shell speed. If you want to be firing an incredibly dense round, you'd need a lot more power accordingly, because you'd need a lot more plates for it to be effective. This means that typically the bigger the ship, the better the cannon. You could be firing a shell 6x6x10 and literally just smash little ships to pieces with it. As you might be able to tell I like the idea. There are a lot of cool facets about it and it might only be useful in pve combat, where the player-to-target lag isn't a big deal, and the shell will be more guaranteed to hit. Just imagine the capacity the game would have for ambush combat if shields were reworked to include the need to turn them on, the need for them to charge up after you turn them on, actually having to scan your surroundings in areas closer to the core due to there being higher densities of ships that had spinal mount cannons... Coming into sectors that didn't like you would be really scary! You'd have to have your shield on at all times which would drain your power, or leave as soon as possible, or try and kill everything before they kill you.

1. It's not only legendary variants that highlight items, I believe, and when object detectors say they'll highlight objects they always do, for me. The statement on whether they will or not is located in the item description. There aren't always things to find in every hidden mass sector or every energy signature sector. Sometimes the hidden mass sectors are just asteroid fields with no hidden objects or claimable asteroids. 2. Also yes, that would be nice. There would need to be a size filter, though, so that little tiny pieces don't get highlighted, just the big stuff. 3. You can sorta do that now by making notes on sectors and when you need to come back to sectors you look for the note icon in the bottom right hand corner of the sector square. What you're suggesting would be nice, and if you refer to this thread you'll see that map features are a much-wanted thing, and koonschi likes those sorts of ideas. Devs will probably do something about it soon. :)

After reading all of this I do agree with morbo somewhat. Shields are very easy to use to the point that all you really -need- to do is -build- one and you've got a lot better chance of surviving. Having more facets to shields would make the game more exciting, but my only question is how they would be implemented into NPC play while still being dynamic and exciting.

Well, since you asked, here it is. Cyclops IIH (H is for Hale!) Images As you can see, it's pretty prickly with all the guns it has on it! My next few changes are going to be cosmetic ones, likely smoothing out edges around the engines and such. The main improvements with this one are two new gun emplacement for .5 cannons. One low on the front and the one on the far right. I've also changed the engines back to titanium because I like the thrust effect color more. It's only a sacrifice of .7 m/s/s for all engines combined, I believe. Download: http://filebin.ca/3C7jjtX77GeH/CyclopsII33.xml

Very nice, Ertil! I like the lengthening of the 1/4's, it looks nice. I might do that myself, in a later update. However, for now my personal ship (which is the ship I've done every extensive modification to up until this point, from the prototype stage to current) has gotten many more weapons emplacements, and in total I can effectively and neatly hold about 16-ish weapons, including about five .5 sized weapons. If it's sitting still and you fire them all at once, the ship sloooowly accelerates backwards. cx

That would make everything perfect in the world. @-@