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Beta Branch Patchnotes 0.10.4.7565


koonschi
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Hello to all Avorionados! 8)

I want to point out that the new thrusters are a little bit better now but still feel weak!

The "realistic" physics are quite annoying from my point of view.

A big issue is also because of the new physics, AI is now making a lot more mistakes!

 

If we say in a distant future where ships can warp around it will be logical that they would have anti-inertia(/antigrav) systems in place so they dont move that sluggish like a snake.

And thrusters in that time wont be the same as today(like lame rockets)

If you want to play with todays technology you have "Kerbal Space Program" or "Space Engineer", but please dont make this game a pure gravity simulation  :-\

agreed
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  • Boxelware Team

The inertia mechanics weren't changed, they're the same as before. There's actually not really a lot that I can change on that front. It looks like drift is stronger because of 2 things:

1. Your engines are stronger (actually, no longer artificially restrained). If you built even more engines on your ship, then yes, you'll feel it even more.

2. Thrusters adjust your flight path correctly now, see below for more details.

 

What did change is the way thrusters reduce drift and push you in the direction your ship is looking when you're flying. This mechanic was a little skewed and it's the reason why the retrograde burn didn't work as expected and you slipped to the side when doing that.

 

I don't want to force you to use retrograde burn, but I do think that it's a great mechanic of stopping your ship. If you don't like it, build directional thrusters that look forward & backward, cover them up with thin slices of hull. No particle effects and the holes are covered up. You could save yourself a predefined shape of engine | thruster | hull (it's what I did, minus the cover up because I like the holes firing when I brake). This way braking will be incorporated in your engine. You can also build really long tubes of directional thrusters which will be very effective brakes. There is really no need for retrograde burn if you don't like it. And don't build your ship out of iron, but I'm sure most of you know that already.

 

Thrusters use up the same energy as engines per force applied. This means thrusters have 60% of the power of engines, but they also use up only 60% of the energy of engines.

 

What I'm gathering here is that people want to rotate their ships better, and yes rotations were nerfed HARD. My stance (on basically anything considering maneuverability) is: Big ships should feel sluggish, but if made of the right blocks they should be able to rotate quickly, so it's a question of the build and I want to restrain so as little as possible.

 

I'm working on the rotations, and my solution proposals to the rotation issue: I'm thinking of either adding gyros (which ATM is my preferred option) or readding the artificial rotation amplification (but not as strong as before). I can't really buff thrusters since they're already crazy strong compared to engines (I said that before, but look at thrusters, then look at engines, and tell me it makes sense they're only 60% as strong as engines. It doesn't work out. But honestly, screw this, the game is supposed to be fun). So I could only buff the rotational part of thrusters, which is exactly what was happening before, but I'm not very happy about that and I'd prefer it if I find another solution.

 

I'll have to read up on the exact physics of gyros but I think that's the way to go. They could also be balanced separately from thrusters which makes them even more attractive from a dev view.

 

Discuss!

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I wil say, I'm glad to be on the same page as you with the whole "just adjust your thruster configuration" thing.

 

Having gyros that can be individually balanced would be reasonable, I think. I hope there would be some diminishing returns in relation to mass or amount of gyros though. It seems we are on the same page about this, generally as well, though. Big ships need to feel big.

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What did change is the way thrusters reduce drift and push you in the direction your ship is looking when you're flying. This mechanic was a little skewed and it's the reason why the retrograde burn didn't work as expected and you slipped to the side when doing that.

 

...

 

What I'm gathering here is that people want to rotate their ships better, and yes rotations were nerfed HARD. My stance (on basically anything considering maneuverability) is: Big ships should feel sluggish, but if made of the right blocks they should be able to rotate quickly, so it's a question of the build and I want to restrain so as little as possible.

 

 

I think the way that thrusters reduce drift in the main branch is good. The only problem is that it prevents retrograde burn from being feasible. I do not like the beta branch solution to the retrograde problem (that is, no artifical drift reduction from thrusters).

 

I would love to see the main branch build with directional thrusters and a different fix for the retrograde problem. Perhaps thruster drift correction could be scaled back to zero as the ship points closer to retrograde.

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  • Boxelware Team
I think the way that thrusters reduce drift in the main branch is good. The only problem is that it prevents retrograde burn from being feasible. I do not like the beta branch solution to the retrograde problem (that is, no artifical drift reduction from thrusters).

 

I would love to see the main branch build with directional thrusters and a different fix for the retrograde problem. Perhaps thruster drift correction could be scaled back to zero as the ship points closer to retrograde.

It's simply not feasible to have both in its purest form, it's already a compromise. If your ship stops while doing the flip you already have pretty strong thrusters. I'd prefer a no-flight-support mode where your ship doesn't get braked/steered by thrusters. Pro: You can stop pressing W after you've reached your speed. You have newtonian physics in it purest form. Con: You have to be very careful while flying.

Edit: Another pro could be reduced energy consumption by thrusters.

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I think the way that thrusters reduce drift in the main branch is good. The only problem is that it prevents retrograde burn from being feasible. I do not like the beta branch solution to the retrograde problem (that is, no artifical drift reduction from thrusters).

 

I would love to see the main branch build with directional thrusters and a different fix for the retrograde problem. Perhaps thruster drift correction could be scaled back to zero as the ship points closer to retrograde.

It's simply not feasible to have both in its purest form, it's already a compromise. If your ship stops while doing the flip you already have pretty strong thrusters. I'd prefer a no-flight-support mode where your ship doesn't get braked/steered by thrusters. Pro: You can stop pressing W after you've reached your speed. You have newtonian physics in it purest form. Con: You have to be very careful while flying.

Edit: Another pro could be reduced energy consumption by thrusters.

 

Myself and the engineering games community would not mind this one bit

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Only thing I don´t like, is that thrusters now don´t scale well with their size...

 

Before I had very maneuverable ship - when scaled up 10 times, it lost about half its maneuverability, so it could still be played.

After this change, my original ship got hit quite hard, so redone whole thrusters system, added few on top of that and such...  Now it can move quite well. But when I scale this version up 10 times, resulting vessel is basically stationary, its rotations are about 10 times lower, and even when I added directional thruster about half the size of ship itself, it helps by very tiny bit.

 

Other than that, all is good, starting to really like this :)

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I guess many of the complaints in this thread stem from people who where use to their multi million m³ behemoths to (keep) flying like a small drone.

 

I for my part would wish to switch of the the automatic dampening (like space engineers) effect thrusters have while in standard control mode. I know the alternative mode gives you that but it is too akward to play with for me.

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I guess many of the complaints in this thread stem from people who where use to their multi million m³ behemoths to (keep) flying like a small drone.

 

I for my part would wish to switch of the the automatic dampening (like space engineers) effect thrusters have while in standard control mode. I know the alternative mode gives you that but it is too akward to play with for me.

 

But the thing is that most AI ships are quite big as well ;D So you have to have a big ship later on to survive.

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I'd prefer a no-flight-support mode where your ship doesn't get braked/steered by thrusters. Pro: You can stop pressing W after you've reached your speed. You have newtonian physics in it purest form. Con: You have to be very careful while flying.

Edit: Another pro could be reduced energy consumption by thrusters.

 

This approach could certainly be fun, but it seems to oppose the idea of large sci fi style ships, which I see as having the main branch style thruster drift correction. They basically always go where they are pointing unless the player wants them to slide in a particular direction (basically only for docking at low speeds).

 

This seems right, to me. We have ships that don't require fuel and can jump to new sectors using magical technologies. Newtonian physics are already pretty far gone. Also, I can't see a really sleek looking capital ship sliding sideways forever until it changes direction. That seems wrong.

 

 

Oh, but on a related note, I do think that gyro blocks are a good idea. Having more tools at our disposal to customize our ship's maneuverability will probably always be a good thing.

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It's simply not feasible to have both in its purest form, it's already a compromise. If your ship stops while doing the flip you already have pretty strong thrusters. I'd prefer a no-flight-support mode where your ship doesn't get braked/steered by thrusters. Pro: You can stop pressing W after you've reached your speed. You have newtonian physics in it purest form. Con: You have to be very careful while flying.

Edit: Another pro could be reduced energy consumption by thrusters.

 

This is what I would like to see. Preferably the ability to toggle this behaviour, like in the often-mentioned space engineers. That way we get the benefit of pointing a ship at a destination, running up to max speed and then just drifting (good for long distance flying), but also the movement dampening when needed (maneuvering around stations, anyone?).

 

I like the flight model in this beta patch a lot better than it was before, the handling feels a lot better.

 

Concerning the cries of anguish about large ships not turning on a dime, I personally feel like they shouldn't, but at the same time I get that different people want different things. Fortunately, this should be relatively easy to solve: make it an option. Make as many of the flight model characteristics user-redefinable options as possible. That way, everybody can play the game as they want. In multiplayer, these would have to be server options, and people would choose a server with settings to their liking.

 

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I guess many of the complaints in this thread stem from people who where use to their multi million m³ behemoths to (keep) flying like a small drone.

 

I for my part would wish to switch of the the automatic dampening (like space engineers) effect thrusters have while in standard control mode. I know the alternative mode gives you that but it is too akward to play with for me.

 

But the thing is that most AI ships are quite big as well ;D So you have to have a big ship later on to survive.

 

Well... i know, i have been to 0,0...

But i didn't need a behemoth to do so. The ship i used had 7 upgradeslots with computer core, weighs 0,16 Mt and has a volume of 6m m³.

It was build with the ultra flat thruster stacking and i just loaded it into a creative world.

It is flyable even without updating the thrusters... the only problem i see sofar with it is its inherent lack of yaw (which is a problem of the hulldesign)

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Now, thrusters and flying style is very good. I rebuild my ship and now is very agile, and flying is very enjoyable.

I think thrusters buffing is done. But AI have a problem. some ships attacking me with 130ms speed, and others with 4ms (smaller size), some ships cant dodge asteroids, another one don't fly.  They using old thruster. I didnt see ships with new thusters.

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Nice! Lots of cool stuff this patch. My favorites:

  • Added a new directional thruster block
  • Added a retrograde marker for ships, enable in game settings
  • Flip 180° and burn in opposite direction works as intended now
  • Improved turning and drifting physics, more realistic and less glitchy
  • Added display for center of mass in building mode

    •  
    Also, engines are now more powerful, they had some restraints before, so be careful if you built tons of engines!
     
    I definitely noticed this. My ships now have about twice - sometimes almost three times the acceleration as before. I guess I'll have to install less engines to get a similar performance.
     

    Thrusters are more powerful (still not as powerful as engines, but ~65%)
    Thrusters use up more energy

    The new thruster power, along with the directional thusters are a huge boon...
     
    Almost every ship I've looked at in this beta has significantly less Yaw and Pitch. Like roughly half. Roll is less, too. Further, Brake Thrust seems identical to before. Edit: Brake thrust may be about the same on certain small-ish ships. But it is significantly less on some large ships. On AstroOwl's Alligator it went from 57.4 to 12.5.
     

    I already did some testing on my executors, and there is one thing very curious - Patch notes say, that thrusters should have been buffed to about 65% of engines power, but when I loaded my game, and got into the big ship, it basically couldn't move anymore.
    Its main thrust increased DRAMATICALLY (from 40m/s to 108m/s), brake thrust remained unchanged (weird imo) but its pitch, yaw and roll stats basically dropped to 0
     
    I'm thinking that this is because it's such a huge, HUGE ship and that size affects how severely this patch's gimp to Thrusters affects a ship. I say this because AstroOwl's Alligator is a rather large ship and it ended up with nearly zero Yaw/Pitch/Roll thanks to this update. (See below.)
     

    As stated in the patch notes, you'll have to rebuild your ship.
     
    This change means that we are forced to add a lot more thrusters than before. That probably means hiring more Engineers and Mechanics. And that probably means many ships will need to be (re)designed with larger Crew Quarters.
     
    Thrusters were already slightly nerfed in Patch 0.10.3.7509. You claimed in those patch notes that you increased thrusters by about 10%, but all I saw was a reduction in thrusters. Now we see an even bigger reduction in thrusters with a supposed increase of ~65%.
     
    With correct placement of thrusters you should be able to get a normal ship flight feeling...
     
    Not in my case. Since Beta 0.10.3.7509 dropped, I carefully designed and redesigned my ships to place all thrusters as far from the center of mass as possible. To do this, I either place them all in the nose, the tail, or (often) way out on the tips of long 'wings' or arms. I've already optimized my designs for best thruster placement, just to compensate for how they were nerfed in the last patch. All my current designs already revolved around maximizing Thruster placement. I can't optimize thruster placement further.
     
    Also: Previously rotational speed was artificially increased to be 6 times as strong as it should be. I simply removed/fixed this.
    ...yes rotations were nerfed HARD
     
    Why claim "thrusters are more powerful" when, in fact, the end result is all thrusters are heavily nerfed. Saying that they are more powerful got our hopes up. But then we find out that the reality is quite different.
     
    This story still isn't adding up, though. If you did increase Thrusters by about 65%, then we should see Brake Thrust increased from before. But Brake Thrust is either the same or even nerfed.
     
    To show how major this reduction in rotation speed is, I opted out of Beta and rolled back to test different ship designs. Here's the Yaw/Pitch/Roll:
     
    AR Miner S (From Dead8Eye's Shipyard)
    • Before: 0.29 / 0.28 / 0.79
    • After: 0.56 / 0.55 / 1.35

    Mythis (frigate) (From Arkhangelsk Engineering & Co's Shipyard)

    • Before: 0.55 / 0.25 / 0.39
    • After: 0.23 / 0.3 / 0.25

    Viel (shuttle) (From Arkhangelsk Engineering & Co's Shipyard)

    • Before: 0.53 / 0.25 / 0.32
    • After: 0.18 / 0.17 / 0.17

    Alligator (From AstroOwl's shipyard)

    • Before: 0.11 / 0.18 / 0.31
    • After: 0.01 / 0.01 / 0.04

    CB-13 (From Capnbubs' Hanger)

    • Before: 1.39 / 2 / 2
    • After: 0.76 / 0.98 / 1.48

    CB-30 (From Capnbubs' Hanger)

    • Before: 1.17 / 1.83 / 2
    • After: 0.82 / 1.34 / 1.56

    RebelBlockadeRunner (From MrMaggys SW/Bab5/ST/EvE Shipyard)

    • Before: 0.39 / 0.45 / 2
    • After: 0.26 / 0.29 / 1.77

    Abaxial_Ti (From Zed's Titanium Abaxial topic)

    • Before: 2 / 1.03 / 0.71
    • After: 0.34 / 0.23 / 0.16

    Abaxial_7509 (From Zed's Titanium Abaxial topic)

    • Before: 0.83 / 0.19 / 0.12
    • After: 0.47 / 0.15 / 0.08

    My own, unreleased Needletail freighter

    • Before: 1.71 / 2 / 1.02
    • After: 0.4 / 0.49 / 0.39

    My own, unreleased Superfluity

    • Before: 1.78 / 1.21 / 2
    • After: 1.37 / 0.83 / 1.96

     

    Oddly enough, I did see an increase in the Yaw/Pitch/Roll for the AR Miner S. Perhaps this was because it's such a small ship? As I said, size seems to make a big difference with how much ships' rotational speed is gimped.

     

    Thought: Perhaps when you tested your Thruster changes in Beta Branch 0.10.4.7565, you tested with a small or tiny ship? Perhaps if you had tested with a large or huge ship, you wouldn't be so hesitant to revert this drop in rotational speed. As I said, ship size seems to make a huge amount of difference to this patch's changes to thrusters.

     

    ...my solution proposals to the rotation issue: I'm thinking of either adding gyros (which ATM is my preferred option) or readding the artificial rotation amplification (but not as strong as before).

     

    I'd say that, to make the game fun again, we really do need both. Please readd the artificial rotation boost. And if we can add a Gyro to our ships to boost rotation even futher, that might be enough to make players happy.

     

    I can't really buff thrusters since they're already crazy strong compared to engines (I said that before, but look at thrusters, then look at engines, and tell me it makes sense they're only 60% as strong as engines. It doesn't work out. But honestly, screw this, the game is supposed to be fun).

     

    As a game, it is supposed to be all about fun. And there is such a thing as trying to add too much realism. Besides, personally, I think it is not unrealistic to have thrusters even 80% as strong as engines.

     

    "60%" is hard for me to believe. Thanks to the last patch, I had to install significantly more volume in Thrusters than Engines. So far, with this patch, I seem to need about four times the volume in Thrusters as my Engines to get rotation speeds I can live with.

     

    Does that "60%" estimate take into consideration how much you buffed engine acceleration? Engines are about two to two and a half times stronger than before. But instead of buffing thrusters, you heavily nerfed them by nerfing rotation speed.

     

    P.S.: When I opted out of Beta, I tried to load my galaxy and... it wouldn't load. I tried again and again, but with the same result. My galaxy must have become corrupted. Judging by my experience: If we opt in to this beta branch, this may be a one-way trip.

     

    P.S.: The "Previous Version" in Steam's Beta opt-in drop down list does not seem to be for the previous beta (0.10.3.7509). I think it's the previous version of the current release. If so, I think that should be labeled better. Perhaps rename it to "Previous Release"?

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I wanted to give my feedback on the new thrusters, they are great for breaking however, they are not applying their force in the direction they are supposed to. It does not matter which direction they are facing they are still applying break thrust. The recent change to volume has also truly messed up turning, breaking seems easy enough to achieve, but pitch and yaw are neigh impossible now. Many of my previous builds i had to scrap because they lost over half of their turning capabilities. One such ship had a roll of 2 rads but the new changes it went down to .6. This ship was not very big maybe a quarter of the size of a shipyards yard area.

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I yesterday found out great way for utilizing thrusters for pitch /yaw. You should try that aswell :

I created simple cube of hull, quite big one. Then I made 10x3x3 big block of directional thruster And tried to get as big result as possible with this one (mirrored) thruster.

1. Tried to make it fire sideways and placed it in very front of  cube - 0.03 yaw for me

2. Made it as breaking thruster - and placed it on side of the cube - 0.05 yaw!

3. Same ad before but placed on corners of the cube - 0.05 yaw AND pitch. All with the same sized BREAKING aligned thruster.

 

It makes sense, because this way, thruster can fire one forward one backward on the other side, so ship turns bit like real life tank. This dramatically reduces how much thrusters you need for breaking AND rotating.

 

Careful though, you will still need some side firing for strafing...

 

Also koonschi, could you please give us strafing speeds in stat window?

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The inertia mechanics weren't changed, they're the same as before. There's actually not really a lot that I can change on that front. It looks like drift is stronger because of 2 things:

1. Your engines are stronger (actually, no longer artificially restrained). If you built even more engines on your ship, then yes, you'll feel it even more.

2. Thrusters adjust your flight path correctly now, see below for more details.

 

What did change is the way thrusters reduce drift and push you in the direction your ship is looking when you're flying. This mechanic was a little skewed and it's the reason why the retrograde burn didn't work as expected and you slipped to the side when doing that.

 

I don't want to force you to use retrograde burn, but I do think that it's a great mechanic of stopping your ship. If you don't like it, build directional thrusters that look forward & backward, cover them up with thin slices of hull. No particle effects and the holes are covered up. You could save yourself a predefined shape of engine | thruster | hull (it's what I did, minus the cover up because I like the holes firing when I brake). This way braking will be incorporated in your engine. You can also build really long tubes of directional thrusters which will be very effective brakes. There is really no need for retrograde burn if you don't like it. And don't build your ship out of iron, but I'm sure most of you know that already.

 

Thrusters use up the same energy as engines per force applied. This means thrusters have 60% of the power of engines, but they also use up only 60% of the energy of engines.

 

What I'm gathering here is that people want to rotate their ships better, and yes rotations were nerfed HARD. My stance (on basically anything considering maneuverability) is: Big ships should feel sluggish, but if made of the right blocks they should be able to rotate quickly, so it's a question of the build and I want to restrain so as little as possible.

 

I'm working on the rotations, and my solution proposals to the rotation issue: I'm thinking of either adding gyros (which ATM is my preferred option) or readding the artificial rotation amplification (but not as strong as before). I can't really buff thrusters since they're already crazy strong compared to engines (I said that before, but look at thrusters, then look at engines, and tell me it makes sense they're only 60% as strong as engines. It doesn't work out. But honestly, screw this, the game is supposed to be fun). So I could only buff the rotational part of thrusters, which is exactly what was happening before, but I'm not very happy about that and I'd prefer it if I find another solution.

 

I'll have to read up on the exact physics of gyros but I think that's the way to go. They could also be balanced separately from thrusters which makes them even more attractive from a dev view.

 

Discuss!

 

GYROS! Because, Honestly, I find 6m/s brake speed for a 12million m^3 is adequate for me, with the recent alterations retrograde burns are easier to pull off, and there seems to be limited to no drift, All I need now is gryos that specifically buff my rotational speed, as currently it sits a 0.01 for Pitch and Yaw, Roll sits at 0.09 which is ample.

 

(this is serious stats, I genuinely find these stats minus pitch and yaw just fine)

 

In the meantime all I'm doing is rotating my ship to Yaw to my destination as that seems to be more responsive than my Pitch.

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  • Boxelware Team

As I said, you have to rebuild your ships. Don't compare your old ship build in old vs new versions, that's not going to work. Mechanics were changed. I gave you new blocks, use them, then come back and give feedback.

 

Overall thruster power went up. They apply stronger forces. The thing that got nerfed was the rotational behaviour, as I already said. I removed artificial strength in different locations leading to a reduction of rotational speed to 1/6 of its earlier value. It got nerfed hard and I'm working on a better solution other than to artificially crank values up.

 

If you don't believe me on the numbers, build an engine, build a directional brake thruster of the same size, and compare the brake thrust to the engine thrust. Use the new directional thrusters to adjust your stats.

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As stated in the patch notes, you'll have to rebuild your ship. With correct placement of thrusters you should be able to get a normal ship flight feeling. And please stop thinking that I don't update anything any more once a patch is live. I'm doing the exact opposite in fact: I put it live in beta so you can give feedback.

 

Also: Previously rotational speed was artificially increased to be 6 times as strong as it should be. I simply removed/fixed this.

 

http://imgur.com/a/nCfif

UsvEHd5.png

(I dunno how to add pictures on here, it says 2k blocks on a small-size ship)

 

Dude, c'mon.. can't you give us at least a tool that allows us to select every same block on the ship (eg: middle click twice said thruster to select every thruster there is) so we can easily remove it? I have a small army of radiator thrusters!

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You could use the tool to select blocks by drawing a frame around them.

Alternatively, if you click on the merge block button, it should try to merge everything as good as possible. If the thrusters are connected, you would end up with a lot less blocks.

 

Edit: I have fixed your image to show up in the post :)

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