SageThe13th

I agree with everything you just said here. That's an interesting mechanic. Though, a lot of weapon types don't depend on ballistics.

As far as lag goes the general rule of thumb for block games is that more blocks = more lag. Yet in Avorion an absolutely huge ship could be made of only a hundred blocks and a small ship can be made of thousands. Now, turrets factor into this but it's hard to tell what actually causes lag in Avorion. Currently, ships stop getting system slots at 15. So, if I make a ship that has double the volume of a 15 slot ship I should have build two 15 slot ships and doubled my firepower. I'm getting rather bored of people talking about physics and other games and not actually talking about Avorion's game mechanics. It's caused them to overlook the advantages Avorion actually gives smaller ships. And everybody seems oblivious to an actually broken mechanic that makes larger ships not only just as fast as small ships, but actually makes them universally faster.

I keep rereading this. But, it still makes no sense to me.

Might this solve the problem? http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2350.0.html

Behold the monster!

Well, I want the old IFGs to unlock at higher tiers because competitive play will probably occur mostly at Avorion tier and the cube meta you are worried about will possibly only effect competitive servers.

You raise a good point. I'll have to run some numbers and see about that. In fact there's a good chance the devs already did the math and that's why IFGs work the way they do now. After all they saw fit to make smaller ships be more efficient firepower wise in order to counter the losses they suffer in battle reducing the fleet's DPS over time.

Okay, as these things do the discussion is starting to veer off goal a little bit. As there was a lot said before so I'm going to talk generally and not reply to any posts. First and foremost this is not discussion about eliminating the cube meta. My goal is to provide alternatives to a cube meta. Choosing to use a cube, cuboid, cubic shape, box, or whatever else you want call it is a smart choice and shouldn't be done away with by using arbitrary game mechanics. My second point is that design should matter. The thruster system is good example of this. It provides a lot options and there's really no one right answer just different ways to get different results. I don't want local area damage to go away either. But, I do have problems with the system since the best armor design is just a box. Also, again, my points are aimed largely at people who want weak shields because they think it will make the game more interesting. But, don't realize it may actually make the game less interesting by causing a dominate cube meta. Getting into some more game design theory stuff. You can break these building game communities down into three kinds of people. You have aesthetic builders, who will spend hours making ships look good. You have power gamers who want to win as hard as possible. And, you have casual players who want to have fun as easily as possible. Now, it's common to think that casual players are lazy as these tend to be the kind of people who want things to be easy. But, bare in mind that they may not have a lot of time to play games so they are interested in things that are quick and easy. Also, keep in mind that most people are a mix of all three. When I have the time I'm all about the aesthetics. When I don't have a lot time I switch into more of a casual mode. And, at all times I like winning so there's a need to min max my design as much as I can while sticking to my aesthetics which is my primary concern. As people have pointed out the cube meta is something that will largely effect only PvP. In PvE whether it be in single player or online play you can always just out build the NPCs and win that way. However, PvP shouldn't be ignored because PvP will grow as time goes on. People will get get bored of fighting the dumb AI and become more interested in fight other human beings. When that happens I want them to have a good time. If a power gamer builds an optimized cube ship they aren't doing anything wrong. They are playing smart. What I don't like is the noob cubes. Cookie cutter battle box designs that casual players are more or less forced to use on competitive servers. Edit: Yes, we don't have the cube, or box meta if you prefer, right now. But, I'm starting to see the early signs of it and it's easiest to fix future problems in the present. Edit 2: Fixed some spelling and grammar errors.

Based on the math I've been doing it looks like it would make more sense to protect sectors with small ships if you have to cover a lot of them. Having one battleship in every sector looks to be pretty needlessly expensive. This is more or less what you'd want to do in real life as well. When I say protect a sector I'm talking about pirate suppression. Obviously, if any enemy player dropped a battleship into a sector defended by three frigates the frigates will get owned. I don't have tools I need to do more exact testing in game. But, from what I've found it seems like the devs have thought about the little ship vs big ship issue and there are already some measures in place to make both useful.

It matters because the game could be better at PvP. Also I suspect faction war servers will become popular eventually. They always seem to in these kind of game. Even in games that have even worse PvP gameplay than Avorion.

Yes. Engines and thrusters can be covered and still work.

I'm too tried for a serious answer. But, I wanted to say that I've read what you are saying and this the kind of discussion I wanted to generate. Also, here's a video of Robbaz launching a giant cube into space in KSP.

You bring up some good points. I need to give this more thought. Ideally the all Hp model and the local damage model would have trade offs making both useful but not equivalent.

I got a chain gun with a firerate of over 100! I'll post a pic when I get home.

I've avoided playing too much cause I figured things were going to change in the future. Don't want to get too used to how things are now. I do miss the old IFGs though.

I've heard stuff like this can't be done because violates the grid logic ships are built on. Then again Notch thought moving blocks (pistons) would be impossible for Minecraft. So we'll have to see what the modders can come up with.

Resource scarcity and faction hostility would likely be part of the galaxy seed and can't be changed. All other parameters, including the diplomacy one you just suggested, could be changed during gameplay. I know some of these require changes to the game's AI. But, I figure that's going to change anyway since they are so feeble right now.

No. Look at it this way. We have both hyperspace blocks and hyperspace boost systems. If I block build a tractor beam system I maybe doing it more for the collision reduction. Something that happens all the time. Versus. Using the system approach which I may be doing for more of the item collecting part. Pop in the system after battle. Collect the stuff. Then remove the system.

People have suggested being able to sort turrets and systems into folders. This could work with a system like that.

I'm also working on some modular ships. I'm just having trouble finding the time to build.

Pfft. He didn't mention Borderlands, but that loot system seems awfully familiar.

The question is, how does that comparison fare when you add shield scaling into the mix. I'm going to model a simple battle scenario. I'll have my example destroyer fight my example frigate fleet. To keep things simple all the ships have for defense is Hp and each turret has 1 DPS. First we need to know the exact turret count of each ship. Assuming all ships' TCSes are legendary +6 armed slots we get a destroyer with 32 DPS, 2 base + 30 (5 slots times 6 turrets) and each frigate has 20 DPS, 2 base + 18 (3 slots times 6 turrets). Hp and shields scale linearly with volume so if the frigates are just smaller copies of the destroyer they all have 1/6th the Hp. To keep things simple let's say the destroyer has 600 Hp. DD = 30 DPS FR = 120 DPS (6 times 20) Turn 0 DD: 600 – FR1: 100, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 1 DD: 480 – FR1: 70, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 2 DD: 360 – FR1: 40, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 3 DD: 240 – FR1: 10, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 4 DD: 120 – FR1: X, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 30 DPS FR = 100 DPS (5 times 20) Turn 5 DD: 20 – FR1: X, FR2: 70, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 6 DD: X – FR1: X, FR2: 40, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Frigates win with the loss of one frigate. Now this is unrealistic since it's quite likely the frigates are going to have worse equipment. So let's say that the destroyer's turrets each do 1.5 DPS and the frigates only have +4 armed turrets. The frigates now each have 14 DPS, 2 base + 12 (3 slots times 4 turrets). DD = 45 DPS FR = 84 DPS (6 times 14) Turn 0 DD: 600 – FR1: 100, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 1 DD: 516 – FR1: 55, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 2 DD: 432 – FR1: 10, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 3 DD: 348 – FR1: X, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 70 DPS (5 times 14) Turn 4 DD: 362 – FR1: X, FR2: 55, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 5 DD: 292 – FR1: X, FR2: 10, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 6 DD: 222 – Fr1: X, FR2: X, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 56 DPS (4 times 14) Turn 7 DD: 166 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: 55, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 8 DD: 110 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 42 DPS (3 times 14) Turn 9 DD: 68 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: 55, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 10 DD: 26 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: 10, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 11 DD: X – Fr1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Frigates win with the loss of four frigates. Now you may have noticed the destroyer so far has wasted some DPS killing frigates with 10 Hp with it's full firepower. Let give the destroyer and even 50 DPS so it can two shot firgates. DD = 45 DPS FR = 84 DPS (6 times 14) Turn 0 DD: 600 – FR1: 100, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 1 DD: 516 – FR1: 50, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 2 DD: 432 – FR1: X, FR2: 100, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 70 DPS (5 times 14) Turn 3 DD: 362 – FR1: X, FR2: 50, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 4 DD: 292 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: 100, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 56 DPS (4 times 14) Turn 5 DD: 236 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: 50, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 6 DD: 180 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: 100, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 42 DPS (3 times 14) Turn 7 DD: 138 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: 50, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 Turn 8 DD: 96 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: 100, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 28 DPS (2 times 14) Turn 9 DD: 68 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: 50, FR6: 100 Turn 10 DD: 68 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: X, FR6: 100 DD = 45 DPS FR = 14 DPS Turn 10 DD: 40 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: X, FR6: 50 Turn 11 DD: 26 – FR1: X, FR2: X, FR3: X, FR4: X, FR5: X, FR6: X Destroyer victory.

I think ship to ship docking is planned.

There was a post about this already. But, I can't seem to find it so I'm just making a new one. Sorry mods! So rather than one difficulty slider I think it would great to have few different ones so we can adjust the game to challenge us in ways we find appealing. The one's I've come up with so far are: NPC Damage This is used to change the NPC ships' weapon damage. The range is from 5% to 200%. NPC Tactics Makes the enemy fight smarter. NPCs will try and fight at effective ranges, they will dodge more, and employ fleet tactics to try and beat you. They will still be lazy about chasing you though. NPC Aggression Makes hostile AI ships more or less active. Aggressive AI will do more to try and chase you down. Hyperspace blockers will be more frequent. You won't notice a different in the rim sectors but as you get closer to the core aggression will ramp up. Faction Hostility Changing this makes the default average relation between the player and NPC factions better or worse. Resource Scarcity Used to control how abundant resources are. This could hurt NPC factions as well. Less active NPCs means less resources for the player as well. This has no effect on the Xoatan. Unknown hostility. Controls how frequently the Xoatan attack. The highest level may even make them automatically hostile attacking the player as soon as they arrive rather than waiting for the player to make the first move.

Yeah. I'll also put forward the idea of a system card that works with this block to boost item pick up range and/or collision damage reduction.