Here I will collect my suggestions and observed problems for Avorion after 200 hours of play-trough in Single-Player and Cooperative Multi-Player. This list will be updated periodically when new and old ideas would come into view, until noted otherwise. Naturally some suggestions might have already been brought up before. They might also appear in random order, which will be addressed over time.
UPDATE: Review after 2 years. Current play-trough time reached above 1100 hours.
Economy
Original Suggestion:
- Overhaul of the trade commodities and stations: There are way too many commodities and stations, which creates a lot of confusion. Lots of trading goods are too generic (enveloping many items, including already existing goods), overly Terran-specific, poorly named and described, unnecessary or plainly redundant. This creates a necessity of sectors overpopulated with stations for non-intuitive, extremely long production chains, some of which are naturally avoided. Google Spreadsheet with detailed analysis and suggestions regarding these aspects is work-in-progress and will be provided soon.
This issue have not been addressed at all. There's no reduction is number of stations or commodities whatsoever. Economy still makes completely no sense.
I seriously cannot understand how is it so hard to address this obvious issue.
Weapon production
Original Suggestions:
- Turrets factories should not produce custom, generic turrets, since it diminishes the value of turrets gained otherwise. Instead, a player may bring a turret found or looted to Turret/Weapon Factory to reverse-engineer it. This action destroys the original, but gives the player a blueprint, which Turret/Weapon Factory can now use to mass-produce that exact turret. Type of a turret determines base Credits cost and components used. Rarity level applies Credit cost multiplier. Base material determines Material cost. Base parameters as well as weapon modifiers determine the required number of each component. Turret Factory should be renamed to Weapon Factory/Facility/Lab in preparation for alternative armament options, such as fixed-mount weapons.
This have not been addressed either. Fighters can be reproduced, but Turrets or any other equipment cannot be. Additionally, I've come to a conclusion, that Turrets has to be untied from the Economy. There's no developer feedback on this case, and I'm no longer expecting any.
Fighters
Original Suggestions:
Fighters are not only wasteful, but they're also unrealistically small. When you consider the scale of modern atmospheric planes, especially single-pilot fighter jets, and compare their dimensions, its easy to realize that Fighters as they're now are so tiny, that its physically impossible to fit even a person inside. That might be the source of their unforgiving fragility. Combination of realistic proportions (and corresponding increase in durability) combined with improved behavior (including falling back when substantially damaged) and maneuvering might just get them in a better place. Potentially, Fighters also should be able to fire/use their payloads while "orbiting" the target, rather than only flying directly towards it.
Additionally to the ideas I had back then, I also considered for the Fighters to be turned into Drones, which are driven by Operators on the ship, rather than piloted. This would remove the need for pilot escape pods or any superfluous survivability mechanics and will make more sense in the game's setting.
Other than that, unrealistic size in Avorion's own scale and dumb combat behavior of Fighters are still standing, but completely ignored issues. They are physically smaller than torpedoes, individually worthless and economically wasteful.
Weapon Balance
Original Suggestions:
- Missile Launchers are also have lots to be desired. They're extremely hard to use effectively without homing capability and pretty overpowered otherwise. Missiles should have their own linear acceleration - this will improve their efficiency in dumb-fire variant, especially while moving, and at the same time will decrease their reliability when they're Seeking, since the combination of increasing velocity and same turning radius will make them less maneuverable. Missiles also should not have Range, but a Lifetime counter, which would define how long they can travel before overheating and exploding. Exhaust flames are way too large in comparison to actual projectile and could use the same material-dependent color overlay.
- Lasers and other DoT weapons and tools cannot overheat unlike any other weapons, meaning they drain more and more energy perpetually. This is especially detrimental for autonomous Mining and Salvage turrets, that can drain energy out of any ship, and it might take dozens of minutes until they'd cool off, which makes them almost unusable.
While weapon layout has been expanded with new types of weapons, they still are utterly out of balance with one-another. Few weapons are overpowered and ultimately superior, while other few are utterly noncompetitive. Overheat mechanics for energy weapons are still ridiculous and dysfunctional for most applications. There's very little practical variety in combat tactics. While I've originally only cared about the outliers, over time I've realized, that the overall structure of combat and weapon balance is fundamentally skewed and unguided, and its current state is validated only by its mere existence.
Suggestions for weapon adjustments and associated mechanics has been made all throughout the past two year by many people, yet the development goes forth expanding the scale and automation of the game process, while basics of combat and local player interactions remains ignored as if they in some sort of feasible state.
Interface
Original suggestions:
- Settings for ship Autosave function: ability to change the number of Autosave files per ship name to avoid clutter. Reaching the specified value forces the game to overwrite into the oldest saves. Zero value disables the Autosave.
- Ship Saving Dialog need more convenience fixes, such as collapsing list items into a "folder" based on identical name, removing several saves at once, disabling Autosave for a particular ship or station, refreshing the list when item(s) are removed, sorting by name, date and volume, switching the list to text-only rows, etc.
- Ship building action buttons should be reorganized. Varied selection options first (including selecting by color or by block type), then utility actions (symmetry, focus, etc.), then manipulation of blocks. There should an ability to set hotkeys for quick switching between No/X/Y/Z symmetry, and if possible, symmetry axis setup should be based on flags, not a drop-downs, which would allow to use two or all three of them simultaneously.
- Many of the menus and windows do not have layer filtering, i.e. a window covered by another window is still active, which introduces a lot of unintentional errors in ship building and management. Same is true for mouse cursor - while it becomes invisible during flight, it is still active and can inadvertently interact with UI elements, such as weapon groups.
Some of the things listed here has been in fact addressed. However, that cannot justify the lack for attention to important game features listed above. Unfortunately, quality-of-life features and functions are valuable only if the game itself is fun to play. For me personally, it doesn't get there - I cannot ignore or endure the game as it is now. None of the recent changes intrigue me because I cannot brush-off the unrefined state of the very basics and thus I cannot reach the point, where these new amazing features and mechanics come into play.
Thus, I discontinue my interest in Avorion for a year starting today. I will not post anything or reply to anything until then. I do not see any connection between basic issues pointed out by players and the game updates, and all priorities seem completely backwards. There's no underlying vision of the game, and as such it looks like a patchwork made by a dozen of independent people at a very slow pace. All there is, is a great game engine, that is overgrown with extremely complicated and amazing mechanics, all but in a service for the mindlessly overblown and makeshift basic elements.
If in a year time nothing reasonable will be done about the issues mentioned prior and discussed in other threads over all that time, I will abandon the game permanently. See you then.
Suggestion
DivineEvil
Here I will collect my suggestions and observed problems for Avorion after 200 hours of play-trough in Single-Player and Cooperative Multi-Player. This list will be updated periodically when new and old ideas would come into view, until noted otherwise. Naturally some suggestions might have already been brought up before. They might also appear in random order, which will be addressed over time.
UPDATE: Review after 2 years. Current play-trough time reached above 1100 hours.
Economy
Original Suggestion:
This issue have not been addressed at all. There's no reduction is number of stations or commodities whatsoever. Economy still makes completely no sense.
I seriously cannot understand how is it so hard to address this obvious issue.
Weapon production
Original Suggestions:
This have not been addressed either. Fighters can be reproduced, but Turrets or any other equipment cannot be. Additionally, I've come to a conclusion, that Turrets has to be untied from the Economy. There's no developer feedback on this case, and I'm no longer expecting any.Fighters
Original Suggestions:
Additionally to the ideas I had back then, I also considered for the Fighters to be turned into Drones, which are driven by Operators on the ship, rather than piloted. This would remove the need for pilot escape pods or any superfluous survivability mechanics and will make more sense in the game's setting.
Other than that, unrealistic size in Avorion's own scale and dumb combat behavior of Fighters are still standing, but completely ignored issues. They are physically smaller than torpedoes, individually worthless and economically wasteful.
Weapon Balance
Original Suggestions:
While weapon layout has been expanded with new types of weapons, they still are utterly out of balance with one-another. Few weapons are overpowered and ultimately superior, while other few are utterly noncompetitive. Overheat mechanics for energy weapons are still ridiculous and dysfunctional for most applications. There's very little practical variety in combat tactics. While I've originally only cared about the outliers, over time I've realized, that the overall structure of combat and weapon balance is fundamentally skewed and unguided, and its current state is validated only by its mere existence.
Suggestions for weapon adjustments and associated mechanics has been made all throughout the past two year by many people, yet the development goes forth expanding the scale and automation of the game process, while basics of combat and local player interactions remains ignored as if they in some sort of feasible state.
Interface
Original suggestions:
Some of the things listed here has been in fact addressed. However, that cannot justify the lack for attention to important game features listed above. Unfortunately, quality-of-life features and functions are valuable only if the game itself is fun to play. For me personally, it doesn't get there - I cannot ignore or endure the game as it is now. None of the recent changes intrigue me because I cannot brush-off the unrefined state of the very basics and thus I cannot reach the point, where these new amazing features and mechanics come into play.
Thus, I discontinue my interest in Avorion for a year starting today. I will not post anything or reply to anything until then. I do not see any connection between basic issues pointed out by players and the game updates, and all priorities seem completely backwards. There's no underlying vision of the game, and as such it looks like a patchwork made by a dozen of independent people at a very slow pace. All there is, is a great game engine, that is overgrown with extremely complicated and amazing mechanics, all but in a service for the mindlessly overblown and makeshift basic elements.
If in a year time nothing reasonable will be done about the issues mentioned prior and discussed in other threads over all that time, I will abandon the game permanently. See you then.
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