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The Trouble With Guns


Zistack
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Hello everyone!  I've mostly enjoyed my time with the game so far, but I've definitely noticed where the game is made almost entirely of placeholders a little rough around the edges.  I understand the thrusters are the most broken thing right now, and they're being fixed, so I'd like to focus on another important part of the game that I think desperately needs attention: Turrets.  I have read several suggestions on improving this subsystem already, but I don't think that any of them really address all of the issues it suffers from, so I've taken the time to come up with a sketch of a solution that should cover all of the bases.

 

Now, before I go further, I'd like to note the way the turret system is currently set up is somewhat unique for a space game like this.  I have to wonder if there is a reason for this beyond `that's just what the dev came up with at the time'.  If there is, then my proposal is likely incompatible with such reasoning, as my proposal is for a system that is completely different than what is currently implemented.  I wouldn't mind an official statement on that.

 

 

What's Wrong With Turrets Now

 

More or less everything.  They do shoot, and you can destroy enemies with them, so there's that at least.

 

I don't particularly like trusting the RNG.  I wouldn't have a problem with it if I were just upgrading one weapon on one ship, but I'm not.  I, like some other players, like to have a little uniformity in my fleet.  In addition to that, some ship designs are good for some kinds of weapons and not others.  I don't really wanna go slapping a bunch of short range weapons on the quarter-scale Death Star I just built, simply because I don't have anything else.  (I haven't built this - this example is just to make a point.  Kudos if someone does this though.)  Neither do I want my support fleet of TIE fighters to have a random bag of weapons on them, like dumb little lasers on one, and a triple-chaingun on another.

 

I also don't want to have to go to turret factories to manufacture my uniform set of turrets - after all, shouldn't the turrets be part of the ship's design?  I mean, if we can build a hyperspace core, I think we can build a chaingun.  I'm still trusting an RNG to give me a decent factory, too, which isn't a safe bet. When I create a new vessel from a blueprint, it should really be armed already - that way, I don't have to go through each one and put turrets on it in all of the places.  This would become rather tedious for a fleet of any real size.

 

On top of that, it is frankly true that the disparity between turret factories and turret drops is a problem.  With that said, I don't think the answer is to somehow rebalance the stats so that they agree more.

 

In fact, I think the whole `turrets as an item that you slap on' thing is wrong to begin with.  This brings me to what I think is the most important flaw in this system.

 

I now direct your attention to exhibit A.

 

5bQAFuSh.jpg

 

This is the Eye of Zorg - my primary space vessel.  Allow me to further direct your attention to the turrets on said craft.

 

zrnPbp6h.jpg

 

The Eye of Zorg only reluctantly installs these ugly gray warts as the only means of conquering space defending itself.  These turrets do not at all match the desired aesthetic - and there's nothing I can do about it.  Ideally, I'd just have a mega-laser hiding behind that great big eyeball (for obvious reasons).

 

There is clearly only one solution to this problem.  We players need to be able to build our turrets block by block.

 

 

The Proposal

 

If you think about it, this approach stands to solve many of the problems that we see in the turret system right now.  For one thing, we no longer have to worry so much about using modules and module slots to limit how many turrets a ship can have.  I expect that the average turret will get quite a bit larger if players have to build them.  They'll also be heavy, and you won't want to load your ship down with expensive heavy guns that don't serve as very good armor.  With that said, we can really make them any size we want, since we get the same arbitrary scaling that we have for blocks.  It should also be easy to add projectile coloration, by basing the projectile color off of the color of some of the weapon blocks.

 

For another, I always thought it was odd that the guns could aim independently of your craft's orientation be default.  It seems to me that turrets that can turn would be a more advanced feature to be earned.  And then with this comes the turret lock block, so that you can add a little complexity to the system to take away that ability - because that makes sense.

 

This also gives players something they've always wanted - spinal mount weapons.  I mean, what's the point of being a giant battleship if you can't blast the thing you're facing with the energy of a moon crashing into a planet?  Sure, the recoil will shove you into the next sector (granted, still at sublight speeds), if not rip the gun assembly out of your vessel and shoot it out the new hole in the rear, but it'll have been worth it.  If you'd like a more down-to-earth example of this awesome technique, I point you to the Warthog.

 

Of course, what's an idea without a little discussion about implementation?

 

 

Shooting

 

So how would one build a turret?  Well, turrets shoot right?  So how do we build something that shoots?

 

 

Base Weapon Blocks

 

Basically, we've got projectile weapons (chainguns, railguns, missiles), energy weapons (lasers), and particle weapons (plasma), right?  Technically, there's also lightning weapons, but those actually aren't possible in space (no medium for the lightning arcs to form in, among other things).  Even if we included them anyways, the approach would be much the same.

 

How about we define some base blocks.  One for each kind of weapon.  We'd have firing chambers for the projectile weapons, energy emitters for the energy weapons, and particle emitters for the particle weapons.  The size of these blocks will determine the amount of mass/energy that can be fired per unit time.

 

 

Modifiers

 

I expect that these weapons will generate heat.  They'll also need to be fed energy/munitions.  We also probably want to put barrels on some of them, or some focusing lenses on others.

 

Long barrels help with accuracy and a bit with bullet speed in the case of projectile weapons (not just railguns).  Many barrels might just help with firing speed - or maybe just redundancy in case one gets shot off.  For lasers and particle weapons, you'd add a base emitter (or several), and the area of the emitters would determine how much energy could be discharged per unit time without melting something important on the firing end.  You could add a focusing lens on a laser to get some armor penetration, or a particle accelerator to a particle weapon to add some range/damage.

 

You could also add more interesting modifiers, like a block that arms the munitions with charges that explode on impact, or something that replaces the usual slug with a package of pellets (shotgun adapter).  Perhaps a block that installs seeker modules on the missiles?

 

Cooling is a fascinating issue in its own right.  Something that many of you may not realize is that it is actually really hard to cool things effectively in space.  This is because you can't dissipate heat into the atmosphere.  There is no atmosphere.  You basically have to rely on blackbody radiation.  The more heat you can dump into what you're ejecting at the enemy, the better.  With that said, you're probably still gonna have some heat to take care of.  One option is to eject gasses that run past the hot parts and into space, but the gasses need restocked periodically (I note that ammo seems to be infinite here, so this might not really matter).  Another option is to put radiator panels on your ship somewhere, and have a cooling system pump heat to them.  Depending on how detailed you wanna get, you could either have an entire heating/cooling subsystem to the ship, or just add some kind of cooling blocks as weapon modifiers.  I note that requiring that your ship has sufficient surface area to cool itself would discourage the cubeship designs, so this may be a desirable design constraint to add.

 

I am thinking that this is the way to get your weapon variety, without having to come up with a bunch of different weapons with different stat tradeoffs.  Let the players choose.  It should also be nice and extensible, due to the separation of functions into separate blocks.  It should be easy enough to add a block to either add a new base weapon type, or add a modifier to some of the existing weapons.

 

This will probably require some reworking in the way the game thinks about ship designs, as adjacency matters here.

 

 

Aiming

 

Of course, having all these blocks is great, but since we aren't dealing with magic turret entities that we slap on the outsides of our vessels, we now have to worry about making the turrets point at the enemies.  I suggest two primitives here - Rotors and Rails.

 

 

Rotors

 

These are what you expect.  You place it, and it allows you to build blocks off of it that can rotate.  I do wonder about the most reasonable implementation of this, as it seems that putting a little rotor block to one side of something that aims up and down isn't right, and I doubt that it would be easy to have the game detect when multiple rotors are aligned correctly.  My thinking is that you'll want to additonally have something like a rod/sleeve block, where the ends are one part, and the sleeve around the center is the other part.  Which you attach to the ship and which you attach to the moving part shouldn't matter too much.

 

Figuring out the acceptable range of motion on a rotor is probably impossible to automate.  There will need to be some way of letting players configure this.  I don't know what should happen if the players lie get it wrong and the moving piece collides with something.  Possibly explosions and death.

 

I would expect that the rotor's ability to rotate mass would be proportional to its size somehow.  This could limit the speed at which a turret may rotate into position, especially if it is large and heavy.

 

I note that rotors might not be useful for only turrets, although a way of figuring out what position they should be in and when would be necessary.  I've ideas for this, but those are suggestions for another time.

 

 

Rails

 

I know it seems like rails would be inferior to rotors, but I think for some designs, it would make a lot of sense.  Think broadside cannons.

 

The trick with rails is making them flexible enough that you can do neat things, without making them so flexible that it becomes an implementation nightmare.

 

The most obvious constraint would be to enforce that a rail can only be built such that it specifies a path within a plane.  Let's look at that another way.  Imagine a ship.  Now imagine a plane intersecting the ship.  Suppose you want turrets to move about the surface of the ship, but only so long as they're on that plane that intersects the ship.  That's what rails should let you do.

 

Now, arbitrary planes might be a little much (although, not necessarily impossible).  In all likelihood, you'll want to stick to planes aligned with the axes.  Basically, adjacent rail blocks (of possibly a variety of shapes) will form a rail, but all blocks have to intersect this common plane.  Only one thing may be on a given rail.  This rail might use slopes to wrap around the ship, totally, or maybe just partially.  The outer surface of the rail blocks must be exposed (of course).  Things may slide along the rail blocks on the outside surface.

 

 

Control Blocks

 

Even for such aimable turrets that one would want to be in direct control of, the game needs to know that there's an aimable turret.  I think the easy way is to use some kind of 'turret control block'.  This can be thought of as a block that contains targeting and firing control for the turret, but for the implementation, this really just marks which bits are turrets, and can aid in figuring out which rotors/rails are involved in aiming it.

 

It makes no sense for a turret to have more than 2 degrees of freedom.  Since the projectiles move away from the ship, that effectively allows you to target any point in space (assuming that the 2 degrees allow for arbitrary rotation).  Unfortunately, just having 2 rotors between the turret control block and the ship it is attached to does not guarantee that there are 2 degrees of freedom.  If the rotors are both aligned to the same axis, indeed, there will only be one degree of freedom.  I would expect that the control block will only take control of 2 rotors/rails if they grant independent axes of motion.  If not, then stop at one.  This should be something that can be done automatically.  I note that this scheme will prevent players from stacking many weak rotors to gain rotational speed from cheap parts (although that shouldn't be a problem anyways as long as the stats make sense - take a lesson from thrusters).

 

A note to the implementer - you would want to work from the control block in.  There may be other reasons to use rotors and rails that don't directly involve aiming guns.  If they become part of the game too, then you cannot guarantee that there will be at most 2 of these things between the ship and the control block.

 

The control block would have an orientation, which would allow the player to effectively specify which way the guns are pointing.  Alternately, one could require that the control block be touching the base blocks for the guns.  This could allow the game to automatically determine the correct orientation for the player.  It could also make it easier for the game to enumerate the weapons that a given control block is actually controlling.

 

Once a control block knows which weapons it can fire, and which motion blocks it controls, all you need is an algorithm for aiming the turret at the target.  For rotors, this is easy.  For rails, it's less easy, but still not too difficult.

 

 

What d'y'all think?

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I agree with you that the way turrets work currently is kind of absurd, and that it would be better to have them as an element of ship construction rather than these things that magically pop off ships and we get to swap out on the fly. But I worry that the system you're describing would just end up overwhelming the average player. It reminds me a little of the way weapons work in Aurora4x which sounds really cool in theory, but for most people winds up being more of a headache than anything else.

 

I do think a somewhat simplified take on this would work. You could have all of the basic turret types scalable and buildable with resources. Their base stats could be directly proportional to their scale. The drawbacks, such as mass, energy consumption, and recoil would also be proportional to scale. Each turret could have upgrade slots that work the same as the current ship upgrade slots.

 

This would also mean that instead of popping off ships, weapons would be disabled if they sustain enough damage. You could have a few basic type of turret housings, some with more armor and less arc, and others vice versa.

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I understand why you would say that, but if you've messed with From The Depths you may understand why I still disagree with this suggestion.

 

Ship design is already a fairly time-consuming process, all things considered and one of the main things I love about this game is the degree of customization vs time invested. I can start the game and sit down for an hour or two and make a ship or at least considerable progress on a ship.

 

If this was implemented, which I doubt it will since it would require a substantial rework, it would mean that ships would need to be built around weapons or weapons around the ship and the time investment is going to increase exponentially as will complexity.

 

A couple of things that could be done and still keep the time investment and complexity to manageable levels is to give the choice of maybe a few different models for certain turret types. Allow scaling. Allow adjusting certain stats with sliders and include a proportional material/credit cost.

 

Also, there's a plethora of threads on weapons and while I understand you are presenting a new idea, it's getting annoying to comment on each individual thread.  :-\

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Scaling weapons is just a terrible idea -- Robocraft did that to get past the "we need weapons to scale for damage/cost per level" issue, and what resulted was people never using anything less than one or two tiers higher than the rank they currently play at. That would just drive the game to be even more grindy than it currently is (although that is part of the appeal, I'll admit).

 

ZhJhvnG.png

 

I'm in favor of OP's idea, but maybe a toggle could be introduced: Simple | Advanced. Leave the current system as "simple" for anyone who doesn't want to dig in on that level, or doesn't have the time; establish the new system as Advanced. The weapons likely already exist in this format somehow/where on the server's end -- all this system would do is let people generate new ones, with custom values.

 

If nothing else, standardization almost begs this to be a thing, at least to some capacity. It is incredibly annoying having guns (and literally nothing else) shot off during battle, and only having an option to throw something else random on from one's inventory. This would at least let you save the blueprints, and just go buy another one from the turret factory (even if it was more expensive to compensate for, rather than having to find another decent one off of an enemy or merchant).

 

@Ohm I really don't think trying to post on every thread is a good idea; by all means if you want to discuss ideas please do -- forums are awesome for this. But don't make it sound like a problem that people have ideas to make a good game better, because there's too many of them.

 

Too much work for the dev, I'd get, and agree with you on. But too many ideas? Can never have enough of those!

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I was hinting that people should probably make an effort to read other threads before posting. I did that with my own idea and still got told someone had said something about this before, which is fine, in my opinion. It is good that people are pointing out the issues with weapon/turret balance, too, it's just that it's all over the forums, so why not consider what other people suggested, first? Why not give your opinion? Why single out your idea and not consider potential issues that may have already been raised by other people about similar ideas?

 

I am here precisely to try and give my two cents on how to improve this game. That other people feel the same is not a problem either. The problem is that people go around creating a new thread every time their idea is slightly different from someone else's and I think that is a bit concerning because then we are only throwing a million different iterations of similar ideas at Koonschi without a dialog, without analysis.

 

That concerns me. I don't want the suggestions board to look like a meaningless dump for the dev/mods. I suppose I shouldn't concern myself with that, moderator domain. I'm just too passionate about this game, I treat it almost like it's my own.

 

If nothing else, standardization almost begs this to be a thing, at least to some capacity. It is incredibly annoying having guns (and literally nothing else) shot off during battle, and only having an option to throw something else random on from one's inventory. This would at least let you save the blueprints, and just go buy another one from the turret factory (even if it was more expensive to compensate for, rather than having to find another decent one off of an enemy or merchant).

Back on topic, I'll agree that I'd like some kind of system to standardize turrets or at least have a bit of control over what I can use. I still think designing custom turrets block by block is a bad idea, no matter the implementation. Blueprinting existing turrets and having them "copied" at a turret factory seems like a more elegant fix.
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Each turret could have upgrade slots that work the same as the current ship upgrade slots.

 

And there goes that manufacturability I was talking about.  You are right, there are possible simplifications to this system, although your version would actually result in less variability in weapons and tactics.  Using a modifier block system actually can make things easier on the devs, so they don't have to implement so many different weapon blocks to achieve sufficient customizability for each player.

 

I understand why you would say that, but if you've messed with From The Depths you may understand why I still disagree with this suggestion.

 

From the reviews of From the Depths on Steam:

 

Limitless potential at the cost of a super steep learning curve.

 

For those concerned about the difficulty curve, while it is extremely steep, once you get about 3/4's up it becomes seccond nature, and a very enjoyable.

 

I will also point out the weapons system in Starmade, which is not far off from what I am suggesting.  I haven't heard any complaints about that system, aside from the fact that it is poorly documented.

 

Also, there's a plethora of threads on weapons and while I understand you are presenting a new idea, it's getting annoying to comment on each individual thread.

 

Then don't.

 

I'm in favor of OP's idea, but maybe a toggle could be introduced: Simple | Advanced. Leave the current system as "simple" for anyone who doesn't want to dig in on that level, or doesn't have the time; establish the new system as Advanced.

 

I don't think it even needs to be this complicated.  The answer to 'I don't wanna spend all my time designing ships and turrets' is the Steam Workshop.  Look at all these games where players are designing things and sharing.

 

 

While this would require Steam Workshop support (which we want anyways), this is not such a big thing.  If the dev slightly changes how templates are done, it should be easy enough to share templates for individual pieces as well, rather than just whole ships.

 

I was hinting that people should probably make an effort to read other threads before posting.

 

I did, and I even said I did.

 

I have read several suggestions on improving this subsystem already, but I don't think that any of them really address all of the issues it suffers from, so I've taken the time to come up with a sketch of a solution that should cover all of the bases.

 

It looks like you might want to take your own advice, and actually read the posts you're replying to.

 

I made a new thread because I felt that this was a new suggestion.  I didn't want it to sound like it was a modification of an existing suggestion, because it isn't.  I considered what I had read, and, most importantly, I considered all of my experiences with other games that have gotten this wrong before, and proposed what I thought was the most sensible suggestion I could come up with.

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From what I gather, the "Rail" type turrets would behave kinda like the phaser banks on star trek? As in, the source of the beam can follow the contours of the rail? I really like this idea and have been trying to find a way to suggest that but you just went and did it and then some.

 

I've been bouncing ideas around on how to do pivoting turrets too, and I guess I can chime in with my thoughts on that.

Rotor turrets could be designed seperately, like in a seperately rendered window (Like the shipyard window)

These could be saved as their own file, and used on all ships you want them on, as well as present as part of their save data.

First step would be designing the base of the turret, the segment that turns side to side, and a tool would exist to let you mark the attachment and pivoting points for both the ship and the cannon segment.

Second step would be designing the cannon, which would be the part that aims up and down, and an attachment and pivot point can be marked on this as well.

 

You presented the suggestion very nicely, it's what I've been trying to suggest to multiple games for several years now but can't seem to find the right words to describe my thought processes, or really go into as much detail.

 

In my minds eye, it makes a lot more sense, bases and cannons snapping together nicely, angle constraints easily set and preemptive collision checking throwing an error on angles that cause intersections...

 

Anyhow, I hope we can have a nice back and forth discussion with the developer about this, because I truly think it will make the game rise above all the others who insist on only having predefined weapons on otherwise creatively free games...

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My problem with the core concept here in this thread is that the game is supposed to be (as I understand it) an RPG in space. Every other RPG game that I have seen, provides you with combat materials easily and plentifully throughout the game, so you can focus on your adventure. Change out gear as you find upgrades. Eventually as you get a better feel for how you play, design and craft your own weapons.

 

The one thing that I dislike the most about the game is stopping my adventure to tweak my ship... This (to me) is the equivalent of pausing in an adventure to spend 2-3 hours of running your character to a Gym and do workouts, or go to a practice yard, again for a few hours in game, to learn how to use that sword you just picked up...

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but as I see the core of your concept... lets put this in a medieval setting: Hello adventurer! I see you want to go fight that Orc! To do that you need to first design your weapon, have you considered which type of grip you want? Ahh lovely choice, now that kind only works with these two types of scabbard, but only works with this blade, and the cross guard you want prevents that from having a scabbard, so you can only use it.... GAHHH!

 

I'm in favor of OP's idea, but maybe a toggle could be introduced: Simple | Advanced. Leave the current system as "simple" for anyone who doesn't want to dig in on that level, or doesn't have the time; establish the new system as Advanced.

 

I don't think it even needs to be this complicated.  The answer to 'I don't wanna spend all my time designing ships and turrets' is the Steam Workshop.  Look at all these games where players are designing things and sharing.

 

 

While this would require Steam Workshop support (which we want anyways), this is not such a big thing.  If the dev slightly changes how templates are done, it should be easy enough to share templates for individual pieces as well, rather than just whole ships.

 

 

Ok, I start playing a game... don't have a feel for how it works yet, no clue how to design my own weapons, and I should leave the game to browse through other peoples designs, in order to find something I don't know if I will like...

 

.... you lost me.  Even EVE didn't go this route. Arguably the steepest learning curve in gaming.

 

 

Ok... playing devils advocate here... if all of that is implemented, what point is half of the loot that drops? What becomes the reward system?

 

 

BEING VERY CLEAR...

 

I actually love the thought and detail of the OP. I think it would be a great foundation of a combat system... But the problem here is that in order to implement that HERE, it would require major surgery to the core of this game and change the fundamental dynamic.

 

Having a system you describe might greatly benefit a solid PVP based Space arena combat sim, but here in an adventure/exploration game it's a bit of overkill.

 

 

-- My key point: This game appeals to me as an RPG in Space. Yes, it has building facets. But I want the explore, collect, improve, paradigm. I, personally, don't want to need to take engineering and design classes just to get to the good stuff...  The key to a strong design is focus. Know what you want as a final product and remove what does not strengthen that. Because so much is generated on the fly, your system does not lend itself well to being implemented on the AI ships... these designs require planning and careful combat awareness to benefit from them. Thus, the PVE game would be crippled without a significant re-write to the AI combat routines as well as changing the core structure of the game.

 

 

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Each turret could have upgrade slots that work the same as the current ship upgrade slots.

 

And there goes that manufacturability I was talking about.  You are right, there are possible simplifications to this system, although your version would actually result in less variability in weapons and tactics.  Using a modifier block system actually can make things easier on the devs, so they don't have to implement so many different weapon blocks to achieve sufficient customizability for each player.

 

I understand why you would say that, but if you've messed with From The Depths you may understand why I still disagree with this suggestion.

 

From the reviews of From the Depths on Steam:

 

Limitless potential at the cost of a super steep learning curve.

 

For those concerned about the difficulty curve, while it is extremely steep, once you get about 3/4's up it becomes seccond nature, and a very enjoyable.

 

I will also point out the weapons system in Starmade, which is not far off from what I am suggesting.  I haven't heard any complaints about that system, aside from the fact that it is poorly documented.

Except this is Avorion, and not Starmade nor From the Depths. I don't think Koonschi wants to make a clone of any of those two games, though I'll agree that having an official statement on what the vision is for weapons would be useful.

 

Anyways, that said, the current appeal of the game, to me (and Koonschi has stated that he wants this), is the relative simplicity of the creative process. In other words, being able to place blocks anywhere, being able to hide blocks, etc.

 

Turrets built from adjacency bonuses, tiny bit by tiny bit goes against that grain. Also, it's not because a steep learning curve becomes second nature according to some reviews you quote that the process becomes faster. Going the FtD route will turn off a large number of players and cater only to a much narrower audience, I would think.

 

Finally, I'll have to agree with GrimJahk, stopping my gameplay to upgrade my stuff is boring. I love to design stuff, but I also love that it doesn't take me days of work to create something nice and functional. I also enjoy actually playing. Your suggestion goes against that grain, too.

 

Also, there's a plethora of threads on weapons and while I understand you are presenting a new idea, it's getting annoying to comment on each individual thread.

 

Then don't.

Well, isn't that helpful in a conversation.

 

I'm in favor of OP's idea, but maybe a toggle could be introduced: Simple | Advanced. Leave the current system as "simple" for anyone who doesn't want to dig in on that level, or doesn't have the time; establish the new system as Advanced.

 

I don't think it even needs to be this complicated.  The answer to 'I don't wanna spend all my time designing ships and turrets' is the Steam Workshop.  Look at all these games where players are designing things and sharing.

 

 

While this would require Steam Workshop support (which we want anyways), this is not such a big thing.  If the dev slightly changes how templates are done, it should be easy enough to share templates for individual pieces as well, rather than just whole ships.

Except then you're back to square one, since you're basically using turrets that are not made for your ship. Finding something specific on the workshops can be a problem in and of itself, not to mention the disappointment of not making your own stuff/not really understanding the mechanics... and it also seems to stray from Koonschi's vision of simplicity, in my opinion.

 

I have read several suggestions on improving this subsystem already, but I don't think that any of them really address all of the issues it suffers from, so I've taken the time to come up with a sketch of a solution that should cover all of the bases.

 

It looks like you might want to take your own advice, and actually read the posts you're replying to.

 

I made a new thread because I felt that this was a new suggestion.  I didn't want it to sound like it was a modification of an existing suggestion, because it isn't.  I considered what I had read, and, most importantly, I considered all of my experiences with other games that have gotten this wrong before, and proposed what I thought was the most sensible suggestion I could come up with.

Guilty as charged, I missed that bit and skimmed, because I felt I understood the gist of your suggestion from that and because words. Bad habit of mine, I'll concede, still feel the same way after reading more thoroughly, though.

 

Despite having read those other topics, you still created a new thread when there's an active one that's quite similar:

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1292.0.html

 

That thread has references to a system using blocks/sub-blocks to create turrets piece by piece. The truth is that I reacted the way I did precisely because I feel this ties in to that thread. Perhaps I need to read more in-depth, but I don't share your feelings that your suggestion is all that different from stuff mentioned in there.

 

Anyways, I guess I'll try moderating myself since I'm not a moderator myself to be handing out that kind of comment.

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This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes:

One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game.

 

Adventurers

The Adventure has to deal with lots of RNG in terms of weapons, loot, and upgrade cards, and submitted player designed ships could be browsed through at the shipyard, categorized and sorted by desired qualities to find the ship just right for their style of play and price range.

 

Engineers

In the Engineering route, everything can be implicitly designed by you, from weapons, to modules. You still have the progression of money earned through trade, and resources gathered through combat and mining, but you take pride in every one of your creations. The tools would exist to let you build your dream ship, but wouldn't be a requirement to play.

 

 

I hope this would be a fair compromise to alleviate this whole 'learning curve' concern, and the back and forth between hardcore ship making nuts, and filthy casuals :P

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This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes:

One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game.

Except that's a fairly large project, development-wise afaik. You're creating two very different game modes.

 

I hope this would be a fair compromise to alleviate this whole 'learning curve' concern, and the back and forth between hardcore ship making nuts, and filthy casuals :P

Haha, yeah, I see where you're coming from. I still think offering different models and creating an interface to balance what goes into the weapon in the form of sliders and increasing/decreasing cost proportionally to scale and performance would be the best of both worlds. Then you could hit the workshop for different models, but you still get to customize the functionality of the turret without the time investment that placing individual blocks requires.

 

Perhaps even building upon the current system, one could reverse engineer a dropped turret, be given a certain degree of freedom to tweak the stats and make a blueprint out of it to be reproduced in a turret factory. That doesn't rule out the current system, allows players to just build a funky mess of RNG-dropped turrets for quick and dirty upgrades, but gives an option to OCD designers with limited time, like me, and also caters at least partially to the more radical ones with more time on their hands.

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This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes:

One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game.

 

Adventurers

The Adventure has to deal with lots of RNG in terms of weapons, loot, and upgrade cards, and submitted player designed ships could be browsed through at the shipyard, categorized and sorted by desired qualities to find the ship just right for their style of play and price range.

 

Engineers

In the Engineering route, everything can be implicitly designed by you, from weapons, to modules. You still have the progression of money earned through trade, and resources gathered through combat and mining, but you take pride in every one of your creations. The tools would exist to let you build your dream ship, but wouldn't be a requirement to play.

 

 

I hope this would be a fair compromise to alleviate this whole 'learning curve' concern, and the back and forth between hardcore ship making nuts, and filthy casuals :P

 

Interesting idea, only question is how to accomplish that... You are suggesting that they make a branch in the project, since there is finite DEV resources, and they have a timeline to publish... do they finish up Avorion as it is now in the Adventurers first? or stop production to begin the re-write of the Engineer branch? (Keeping in mind that the Engineering branch still needs the Adventurers branch completed to handle all AI functions)

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I'm not sure if a branch in development would be necessary since these would be somewhat intertwined.

I mean, we have randomly generated ships, AND the ability to make our own, so both of these are already available.

All I ask is for that "making your own" to spread to more of the game, because weapons can be as much a feature of your vision as the ship hull itself!

 

Also, while a slider interface would certainly be a huge step up from the current system for me as far as tweaking weapon behavior, I do really like the idea of designing turrets at the block level, especially when they need to comprise 20% or more of the ships silhouette.

 

Maybe turret designs could be purely visual, while the sliders determine actual stats? So you could just generate a turret look for your parameters if you don't want to bother with making your own.

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I'm not sure if a branch in development would be necessary since these would be somewhat intertwined.

I mean, we have randomly generated ships, AND the ability to make our own, so both of these are already available.

All I ask is for that "making your own" to spread to more of the game, because weapons can be as much a feature of your vision as the ship hull itself!

 

Also, while a slider interface would certainly be a huge step up from the current system for me as far as tweaking weapon behavior, I do really like the idea of designing turrets at the block level, especially when they need to comprise 20% or more of the ships silhouette.

 

Maybe turret designs could be purely visual, while the sliders determine actual stats? So you could just generate a turret look for your parameters if you don't want to bother with making your own.

 

A branch is anything that is different from, and still exists alongside, the existing path. If the desired ability does not currently exist, and it is by definition a different way of accomplishing something that DOES exist, then it is a branch. As you said, intertwined. Yes the ability to make ships from blocks exists, players and AI both utilize this function.

 

That "making your own" functionality was planned for, and exists in place. As far as spreading that ability, that means new code, new function, and a new set of analysis on balance and function. (That is the Branch)

 

Currently the ship design has about (from memory) 25 different blocks that are self-contained and self-sufficient. They perform a function, (some are active) input = output. Provide power, get shields(etc).

 

What you describe (or what was described above) is a collection (maybe 15) different blocks that are all interdependent, scaling is a new issue, adding in 5-6 blocks to represent a turret on a small ship means smaller blocks and alignment, (durability is a new issue) damage to any of those blocks now takes out the turret. so yet another thing to take into account... if you put 13 turrets on a ship at 5 blocks thats another 65 blocks to render and calculate...

 

I really get your passion... trust me I do... but you have to ask yourself what percentage of the user base will actually use this? Does it warrant changing the focus of the DEV team? Is it such a game changer that not meeting current deadlines is an acceptable risk? These changes to the paradigm of the game are NOT trivial. People that do not write code, generally, do not know what is involved... 

 

Just the "slider to tweak weapon behavior" is a project all on it's own... which negates a large portion of the RNG factor that rewards grinding through the Pirates/Aliens.

 

Again, "Maybe turret designs could be purely visual" is yet another spin from the above branch, who will code it, test it, how would it be different than the existing scaling manipulation of blocks, If you want something that is animated: another project...

 

Which brings me to another point that no one (AFAIK) had brought up... these little self-contained turrets are finished, tested, and animated, units. The only thing on your ship that is actually animated... new "Turret Subsystems" blocks will have to allow for similar animation, this is possibly significantly different than what we have now.

 

Additionally, if you now want players to have the ability to place animation blocks on ships at will, you run the risk of performance hits on servers

 

 

Again, I'm not saying it's never gonna happen... Hell, they added walking around on stations to EVE after they said "Never". But at this stage of development, the DEV resources are already pushed to the limit, so doing a Large side project, for even 50% of the user base, is probably a low likelihood thing.

 

A re-write of the core paradigm is not going to happen unless something is so completely broken that it threatens to ruin the game. (which this is not)

 

There is so much possible with this game. As long as the launch goes smoothly, and the user base grows, I expect to see MANY awesome additions to the game. But first, the masses must be enticed. ;)

 

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Now at least two of you have suggested using menus or separate GUIs to configure the turrets one way or another.  I am vehemently against this idea - not because it wouldn't work in theory, or because it sounds bad in text, but because I've seen what happens when people go this route.  You end up with giant awkward interfaces that are difficult to get to inside of you building screen.  Kerbal Space Program suffers a little bit from this, and starts to suffer a lot more if you add too many mods.  There are mods in Minecraft that also introduce such a system (or at least, there were).  It isn't pretty.  It is by far a more awkward interface than just placing blocks.  One of the reasons that people build computers in Minecraft is because of the simplicity of the interface.  Redstone is just blocks, and you don't need to go into any menus to configure stuff.  It's actually easier, in some ways, to build computers in Minecraft than it is with professional CAD tools for this reason.  Trust me on this; I've tried it both ways.

 

[...] it would require major surgery to the core of this game and change the fundamental dynamic.

 

Indeed.  For one, this really isn't a problem unless the dev says it's a problem, so on some level, that's not a useful comment.

 

For another, I'm not so sure that the dev is unwilling to perform such surgery.

 

Yes, "real" docking to any object is planned.

 

This would already require some fairly major surgery to how the game thinks about ships and how they interact, assuming the dev didn't write the code initially knowing it was coming - even then, foresight isn't perfect.  There's still probably lots of work to do.

 

I can't find a quote, but I know koonschi has confirmed that he's working on some kind of out-of-sector simulation, so as to make the galaxy feel more alive.  This also is a lot of work, since he has to create a secondary model of the galaxy that is consistent with the one that we see, but isn't nearly as expensive to simulate.  Arguably, this feature requires a similar level of work to my proposal.

 

From what I gather, the "Rail" type turrets would behave kinda like the phaser banks on star trek? As in, the source of the beam can follow the contours of the rail?

 

Yes.  This is exactly what I'm thinking.

 

Anyhow, I hope we can have a nice back and forth discussion with the developer about this, because I truly think it will make the game rise above all the others who insist on only having predefined weapons on otherwise creatively free games...

 

Yes exactly.  However, one cannot ignore...

 

My problem with the core concept here in this thread is that the game is supposed to be (as I understand it) an RPG in space.

 

Clearly, on some level, it is.  Indeed, this game is crying out to be one, and I would like to see this as well.

 

It would appear that the issue here isn't that my suggestion is bad, so much as some people don't like the creative parts intruding on their RPG game.

 

lets put this in a medieval setting

 

Actually, let's not.  See, in a medieval setting, you don't have shipyards, and rarely can you claim territory.  Also, depending on the game, you aren't necessarily even the one crafting your own weapons.

 

As this is a space game, and we've already accepted that players can engineer their own ships, excluding turrets from this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Also, we're not merely dealing with different races that grew up on the same planet, with access to the same basic materials and the same environment.  We're dealing with aliens from different worlds, and if you consider the Xsotan, different dimensions even.  Their stuff is gonna look a lot different than an encultured adventurer's sword from the established style.

 

Ok, I start playing a game... don't have a feel for how it works yet, no clue how to design my own weapons, and I should leave the game to browse through other peoples designs, in order to find something I don't know if I will like...

 

I point out that you don't even have that much freedom now.  You can't even choose.  You will have to learn the stats one way or another, even if you don't totally design every detail of your ship, else the pirates will eat you.  If you really want, the dev could include some basic turret designs in the default templates, so that you don't even have to go shopping, but there's still absolutely no guarantee that the designs will match your aesthetic.

 

This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes:

One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game.

 

Allowing players to involve themselves in either the adventuring or the engineering to the degree that they want is clearly the right idea.  Indeed, this is an instance of one of the principles that you'll find in all of the good 4X games - make the complexity optional.  Some players will dig in, and some won't.  That's OK.  Even for the ones that dig in, the learning curve is made shallower by not forcing them to learn everything all at once.

 

Interesting idea, only question is how to accomplish that... You are suggesting that they make a branch in the project, since there is finite DEV resources, and they have a timeline to publish... do they finish up Avorion as it is now in the Adventurers first? or stop production to begin the re-write of the Engineer branch?

 

Bad idea.  We also don't really want the game modes to be truly distinct either.

 

We can already eliminate the adventuring part with creative mode, so those people are satisfied.  The trick is allowing adventuring with minimal interaction with ship design.  Perhaps auto-generated designs?  You've already got shipyards that'll do it.  The algorithm will just need tweaked to include turrets now.

 

If that's not good enough, and you want some customization without having to go all the way, then I don't really know what to tell you.  You can't really have it both ways.  Templates and prefabbed designs are about the only compromise you can get here.

 

People that do not write code, generally, do not know what is involved...

 

I have a B.S in Computer Science.  I know about a dozen programming languages.  My favorite programming language is C (not C++).  I'm currently working on a PhD in Computer Engineering.

 

I know exactly what is involved.  I could build this system.

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Now at least two of you have suggested using menus or separate GUIs to configure the turrets one way or another.  I am vehemently against this idea - not because it wouldn't work in theory, or because it sounds bad in text, but because I've seen what happens when people go this route.  You end up with giant awkward interfaces that are difficult to get to inside of you building screen.  Kerbal Space Program suffers a little bit from this, and starts to suffer a lot more if you add too many mods.  There are mods in Minecraft that also introduce such a system (or at least, there were).  It isn't pretty.  It is by far a more awkward interface than just placing blocks.  One of the reasons that people build computers in Minecraft is because of the simplicity of the interface.  Redstone is just blocks, and you don't need to go into any menus to configure stuff.  It's actually easier, in some ways, to build computers in Minecraft than it is with professional CAD tools for this reason.  Trust me on this; I've tried it both ways.

There are only so many variables you want/need people to have access to. Also, KSP suffering from this? With some mods maybe, otherwise I disagree.

 

Ok, I start playing a game... don't have a feel for how it works yet, no clue how to design my own weapons, and I should leave the game to browse through other peoples designs, in order to find something I don't know if I will like...

 

I point out that you don't even have that much freedom now.  You can't even choose.  You will have to learn the stats one way or another, even if you don't totally design every detail of your ship, else the pirates will eat you.  If you really want, the dev could include some basic turret designs in the default templates, so that you don't even have to go shopping, but there's still absolutely no guarantee that the designs will match your aesthetic.

Yeah, but for most part we have two to three lines of cosmetic blocks whose sole function is to armor/shape things the way you'd like. Then we are left with very few functional blocks, most of which are only affected by volume and impact a single, easily-understood variable. Turret design would add a significant number of functional blocks, not to mention force players to go through that process. This is something you point out later yourself, is remedied by shipyards, a solution which isn't available for turrets (but could be I suppose).

 

This whole argument could be avoided if we make two progressive game modes:

One for Adventurers, and the other for Engineers. Or just have them seamlessly intertwined by how YOU wish to interact with the game.

 

Allowing players to involve themselves in either the adventuring or the engineering to the degree that they want is clearly the right idea.  Indeed, this is an instance of one of the principles that you'll find in all of the good 4X games - make the complexity optional.  Some players will dig in, and some won't.  That's OK.  Even for the ones that dig in, the learning curve is made shallower by not forcing them to learn everything all at once.

Agreed on that.

 

Interesting idea, only question is how to accomplish that... You are suggesting that they make a branch in the project, since there is finite DEV resources, and they have a timeline to publish... do they finish up Avorion as it is now in the Adventurers first? or stop production to begin the re-write of the Engineer branch?

 

Bad idea.  We also don't really want the game modes to be truly distinct either.

 

We can already eliminate the adventuring part with creative mode, so those people are satisfied.  The trick is allowing adventuring with minimal interaction with ship design.  Perhaps auto-generated designs?  You've already got shipyards that'll do it.  The algorithm will just need tweaked to include turrets now.

 

If that's not good enough, and you want some customization without having to go all the way, then I don't really know what to tell you.  You can't really have it both ways.  Templates and prefabbed designs are about the only compromise you can get here.

I am also of the opinion that templates and prefabbed would be better than implementing a complete, block-by-block crafting system.
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I am also of the opinion that templates and prefabbed would be better than implementing a complete, block-by-block crafting system.

 

Alright, so what if the templates and prefabbed designs are created by other players?  Just because you don't want to do it doesn't mean that nobody does.

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What if the turret creation system worked similar to Planet Explorers(horrible game) weapon creation system? Here's a video it allows you to do it "block-by-block" but requires you to place prefabs  like barrels, grips, etc. to be functional.

 

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Are turrets right now based on pre-made models, or are they also randomly generated from building blocks?

They're rather simplistic, just some blocks in a vaguely gun-like shape with a square base that has a peg in the middle.

 

From the image below, using plasma for an example, they have small variations in barrel length and width, number of coils, and of course the color, but beyond that they remain very much alike within a certain grade.

 

I couldn't see any correlation between appearance and function

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I would be very happy if this system happened.

 

@Ohm, seriously, if you think there are problems with the system, please ask questions about them and offer your preferred experience for more effective constraint-solving.  Trumpeting your own idea (I've seen some of the other turret threads) in this thread is not constructive.  Contributing to the idea such that it suits your desires as well is.  This, ideally, is why there is more than one thread.

 

Here's what I see when I consider the two possibilities:

 

yGb5aval.jpg

 

If you read the fine print, I don't think you'd have too many problems if this were implemented.  I haven't yet made a graphic for rotary turrets, but the subassembly concept totally applies there, too.  Turrets can still drop, you don't have to think about your ship any more than you want, but those so inclined could make some incredible stuff with this system that otherwise is completely infeasible (see: Death Star superlaser above).

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What if the turret creation system worked similar to Planet Explorers(horrible game) weapon creation system? Here's a video it allows you to do it "block-by-block" but requires you to place prefabs  like barrels, grips, etc. to be functional.

 

That's sort of the idea, except that the prefab bits (like barrels) are scalable, and scaling them does something to the weapon's stats.

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[...] it would require major surgery to the core of this game and change the fundamental dynamic.

 

Indeed.  For one, this really isn't a problem unless the dev says it's a problem, so on some level, that's not a useful comment.

 

For another, I'm not so sure that the dev is unwilling to perform such surgery.

 

 

The only quote I've seen so far is in the "Read this first" at the top of the forum page. Where it seems Koonshi is implying that they are hard at work working on their vision, and, while they love feedback not all ideas may fit that vision.

 

Scrapping the existing system that includes the reward system (well half of the drops), and the base of their crafting economics model (if you are no longer building turrets at Turret factories) may fall outside their current vision.

 

My problem with the core concept here in this thread is that the game is supposed to be (as I understand it) an RPG in space.

 

Clearly, on some level, it is.  Indeed, this game is crying out to be one, and I would like to see this as well.

 

It would appear that the issue here isn't that my suggestion is bad, so much as some people don't like the creative parts intruding on their RPG game.

 

I never said your idea was bad, I said it was difficult to implement without losing progress on the game in it's current form... additionally I stated that forcing people into a more difficult learning curve is not in the best interests of a new product.

 

Ok, I start playing a game... don't have a feel for how it works yet, no clue how to design my own weapons, and I should leave the game to browse through other peoples designs, in order to find something I don't know if I will like...

 

I point out that you don't even have that much freedom now.  You can't even choose.  You will have to learn the stats one way or another, even if you don't totally design every detail of your ship, else the pirates will eat you.  If you really want, the dev could include some basic turret designs in the default templates, so that you don't even have to go shopping, but there's still absolutely no guarantee that the designs will match your aesthetic.

 

 

You did get the point I made about the fact that I SUCK at design... I don't care about aesthetic. I care about game play. If I have to spend another extra hour trying to fiddle-fuck the components of a turret system to get better performance out of them, it's not worth my time to play.

 

Interesting idea, only question is how to accomplish that... You are suggesting that they make a branch in the project, since there is finite DEV resources, and they have a timeline to publish... do they finish up Avorion as it is now in the Adventurers first? or stop production to begin the re-write of the Engineer branch?

 

Bad idea.  We also don't really want the game modes to be truly distinct either.

 

We can already eliminate the adventuring part with creative mode, so those people are satisfied.  The trick is allowing adventuring with minimal interaction with ship design.  Perhaps auto-generated designs?  You've already got shipyards that'll do it.  The algorithm will just need tweaked to include turrets now.

 

If that's not good enough, and you want some customization without having to go all the way, then I don't really know what to tell you.  You can't really have it both ways.  Templates and prefabbed designs are about the only compromise you can get here.

 

 

That's exactly what we have now, the ability to customize a ship and plug in modules (and turrets)... you are the one saying that that's not good enough...

 

 

 

 

People that do not write code, generally, do not know what is involved...

 

I have a B.S in Computer Science.  I know about a dozen programming languages.  My favorite programming language is C (not C++).  I'm currently working on a PhD in Computer Engineering.

 

I know exactly what is involved.  I could build this system.

 

Cool, then why are you writing mods to accomplish this?

 

 

Now, question for you... How do you plan for the evolution of weapons? Right now you can have thousands of options in the same footprint...

 

I'm guessing that the material of the turret components will play a factor, but what about the bonuses that are currently added +xdamage to shields, Chance to pass shields, Overheating, Multifire... what complexity do you propose to not turn this into a Cut/paste of "Best" design..

 

What do you propose to replace the vid in the loot system that occurs if this system is used to overwrite the current Meta?

 

What plan do you have for the economic sub system that was created (in part) to allow players to create their own turrets?

 

 

 

 

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@Ohm, seriously, if you think there are problems with the system, please ask questions about them and offer your preferred experience for more effective constraint-solving.  Trumpeting your own idea (I've seen some of the other turret threads) in this thread is not constructive.  Contributing to the idea such that it suits your desires as well is.  This, ideally, is why there is more than one thread.

I'm not even going to get into that anymore. Here are my comments on the actual suggestions:

 

The initial idea was practically From the Depths, Avorion Edition. If you have played FtD, you know it's not exactly a game where building gets done quickly, not to mention that tweaking things, especially weapons, is not an insignificant task since things work off the number of blocks attached to specific components along with adjacency requirements/bonuses. It is quite complicated.

 

Then we have the "planet explorers" suggestion, which is basically just picking and scaling a defined and limited set of components. Ok. That works, but it's essentially the same idea as having models and tweaking what goes into the turret using sliders and checkboxes, except it's done visually. Then you slap the turret on your ship. I'm all for that. Relatively simple and gives people control over what their ships are using.

 

Then we have the chimera of both, at least from what I understand, which is represented by Zippy's graphic. This is worse, in my opinion, than the planet explorers' idea, because you still need to account for your weapons in your ship design, which compounds complexity when designing. In turn, that means you need to plan more and, more than likely, need to spend a fair bit more time building your ship/weapon(s). Given it sounds like you're mostly scaling a predetermined set of components, like the previous suggestion, it's still better than going full FtD, but still fairly complicated compared to the current system.

 

The reason I'm criticizing those ideas so much is that, from what I Koonschi posted, I think he means for this game to be relatively simple and to allow for creativity. I don't think increasing complexity is within his vision and part of the reason I love this game, personally, is also because it's both simple and creative.

 

Then we have my idea(s), one of which being very similar to the "planet explorers" option, except I went for a more UI-oriented approach. I do, however, recognize the merit of a more visual approach that choosing between a set of blocks and choosing their size may be more intuitive, so yeah, good idea there in my opinion.

 

My other idea is to stick closer to the current system: instead of building your own turrets, you reverse engineer turrets you find through drops (or from upgrades using research stations). Doing that basically destroys the turret and puts a basic blueprint in a menu similar to ship designs (so you can erase turret blueprints you don't want anymore to avoid cluttering the UI). Then, you could visit a turret factory and spend materials/credits to build turrets based on the blueprints you have. Optionally, you may be able to alter the basic stats of the turret to a degree depending on the initial stats of the reverse-engineered turret.

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Turrets just stick out like a sore thumb on otherwise glorious ship designs.

 

I mean, gray square platforms with a square peg with lightly beveled containments, and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

Wanted to make a Homeworld 2 Pulsar corvette with those big sweet looking turrets?

Too bad, have this randomly generated railgun with hot pink glowy bits because reasons! adventure! and RNG! and progression!

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Turrets just stick out like a sore thumb on otherwise glorious ship designs.

 

I mean, gray square platforms with a square peg with lightly beveled containments, and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

Wanted to make a Homeworld 2 Pulsar corvette with those big sweet looking turrets?

Too bad, have this randomly generated railgun with hot pink glowy bits because reasons! adventure! and RNG! and progression!

 

This is my reasoning for wanting this system; yeah its more complicated, will take longer than the other suggestions to implement, and old players will have to learn a new system, but it would let us truly build proper, unique ships. For example, I want a Destiny (SGU) main cannon on my corvette. Might need to make it bigger first though...

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