Stop F'ing killing ships via Asteroids

[DivineEvil]

One simple exemple, to trade between 2 ships or with a station when you have a big ship, sometime you have to almost "physically touch" the one you want to trade with leading with a collision at less than 10 m/s and you get blocks destroyed for this, or blocks on the other ship/station, leading to rep loose, destroying the dock or some funcky effects. That shouldn't happen, really. I mean ok, raming a station with a big ship, even at low speed will make damages, for sure, but here it's a bit ridiculous as you can't have much control over it. And my ship have heavy trinium armor all on the hull, if the plating can't take a railgun shot but can't ram at low speed something, there is an issue.

Angular momentum being different from linear momentum doesn't automatically means its smaller. And yes, you always has the full control over it. You're just not as careful or patient enough to avoid it.

 

It's the same with asteroides, sometime you need to go take a container, you slow down to be almost immobile, take it, then you rotate really slightly and bam you touch an asteroid, 1 block destroyed. Seriously ... So you will tell me "You shouldn't rotate close to asteroides then". Alright, but when you enter building more, or when you use the shift key to look a bit around you, the ship WILL rotate once you exit the mod, so you can't avoid it.

You shouldn't enter build mode in the asteroid field either. You also can just turn your camera to face the rear of your ship just like you view it in flying mode, so there's no rotation at all. Finally, Koonschi already informed of his awareness of tha tparticular issue, and it will likely be resolved soon, so there's no point being upset about it.

 

And lastly, and for me it's really the thing that makes lot of issues, the fact you can't see what is below your ship. The rear view is fun, but sometime you are flying in a sector, all seem clear and BAM, there was a rock in front of you, slightly at the bottom and you had never the opportunity to see it cause you don't have a better view like a cockpit one. This leading to the fact a cockpit block would be really something that could help a lot, placing it wisely to have a correct view on the ship, of maybe even a "camera" or "sensor" block that would place the camera in 1rst person view and prevent this kind of things.

That's simply a question of situational awareness. You always has the opportunity to see everything, as long as it in front of you and not below. Personally, I can point my ship trough any asteroid field, find the opening that allows me to see the background space, and fly right trough it without ever touching steering controls.

 

Even so, when you're in a big ship you should not take it lightly to pass trough a goddamn asteroid field in the first place. It's hilarious really how some people complain about lack of control in a large ship, while (hopefully) other people complain how there's no reason to specialize.

[Brigadon]

Having a camera block is actually a pretty decent idea.

[Ohm is Futile]

To me, it's just crazy to pick a block arbitrarily that, if destroyed, destroys the whole ship/kills you.

It is not arbitrary. The ships are saved as a hierarhy from a single block, that's all others are placed relative to. Besides, if the root block has the same HP as the ship itself, then its destruction is irrelevant - if your ship HP are expended, you will destroy your ship either way, whether root block is involved or not.

Hmm, I see your point, but then we have the opposite problem in the sense that you have a block on your ship that can't be destroyed before you destroy the whole ship and that's just weird. What if your root block is a huge piece of whatever on which you stick all your turrets? Then you practically can't be disarmed before your ship goes...

 

I just don't like this idea and much prefer my idea of simply making a quick check for the largest part with crew quarters in case the game has to worry about your ship breaking up and figuring out which one you're in control of and which one is a wreck.

 

Also, I don't like the idea of a bridge block. There's very little point, it'll punish people who don't fully understand the mechanic while everyone else will just stick them somewhere protected that nobody will ever find anyway.

[Salminar]

One simple exemple, to trade between 2 ships or with a station when you have a big ship, sometime you have to almost "physically touch" the one you want to trade with leading with a collision at less than 10 m/s and you get blocks destroyed for this, or blocks on the other ship/station, leading to rep loose, destroying the dock or some funcky effects. That shouldn't happen, really. I mean ok, raming a station with a big ship, even at low speed will make damages, for sure, but here it's a bit ridiculous as you can't have much control over it. And my ship have heavy trinium armor all on the hull, if the plating can't take a railgun shot but can't ram at low speed something, there is an issue.

Angular momentum being different from linear momentum doesn't automatically means its smaller. And yes, you always has the full control over it. You're just not as careful or patient enough to avoid it.

 

It's the same with asteroides, sometime you need to go take a container, you slow down to be almost immobile, take it, then you rotate really slightly and bam you touch an asteroid, 1 block destroyed. Seriously ... So you will tell me "You shouldn't rotate close to asteroides then". Alright, but when you enter building more, or when you use the shift key to look a bit around you, the ship WILL rotate once you exit the mod, so you can't avoid it.

You shouldn't enter build mode in the asteroid field either. You also can just turn your camera to face the rear of your ship just like you view it in flying mode, so there's no rotation at all. Finally, Koonschi already informed of his awareness of tha tparticular issue, and it will likely be resolved soon, so there's no point being upset about it.

 

And lastly, and for me it's really the thing that makes lot of issues, the fact you can't see what is below your ship. The rear view is fun, but sometime you are flying in a sector, all seem clear and BAM, there was a rock in front of you, slightly at the bottom and you had never the opportunity to see it cause you don't have a better view like a cockpit one. This leading to the fact a cockpit block would be really something that could help a lot, placing it wisely to have a correct view on the ship, of maybe even a "camera" or "sensor" block that would place the camera in 1rst person view and prevent this kind of things.

That's simply a question of situational awareness. You always has the opportunity to see everything, as long as it in front of you and not below. Personally, I can point my ship trough any asteroid field, find the opening that allows me to see the background space, and fly right trough it without ever touching steering controls.

 

Even so, when you're in a big ship you should not take it lightly to pass trough a goddamn asteroid field in the first place. It's hilarious really how some people complain about lack of control in a large ship, while (hopefully) other people complain how there's no reason to specialize.

 

I'm sorry i'll be a bit rude right now with you, but what you are saying is trash. You don't want to hear other people view on the issues arguing all is perfect as it is and it's only players fault. Look my post, i did point yes you had to be carefull but no, it's just pretty annoying at somepoint.

 

I feel like being on FTD forum right now. Again i said pushing an asteroid almost stoped mean destroyed blocks and what you answer? "You are too fast" guy, if you can't read a post, don't debate. You don't have to go in building mode near asteroids? Again, that's the point of view the most narrowminded possible. Of course you don't, but when you buy a turret at an equip dock it's EXACTLY the same thing and what? You buy it, back a few meters and enter building mode to place your turrets. And that's more than once that you actually ram the station when going back to normal mod, cause you can't, i really mean you can't, always take care about things that are counter intuitive.

 

I really feel reading those kind of messages that there are a few guys, when they post for a game, it's their whole life, they only play this game, do only this, they sleep, eat and and only play a single game not working or anything. So normal people when they come back on Avorion and are faced to a few of this issues, (cause yes they are issues, it's not a big deal, they will be solved in futur, be though about, but still they are issues) yes they can rage a little bit. And saying "You are bulshit lear to play" like you just did is really the worst possible, cause that's exactly what you did in your post.

 

And i'll end with your "hillarous" comment. On a game in alpha, where having more than one ship is actuallyuseless cause they aren't managed correctly, frozen out of sectors, can't jump in gates but cost your salary, i don't see the point currently to have more than one ship, yes and a big one cause the game is only oriented combat wise, so far. So yeah people take huge ships to go take containers or to go buy from the stations, untill you can have docks with smaller ships or real escorts it will be like this. If you like bondage, good for you, but don't expect other people to do the same.

 

Again sorry if i have been a bit harsh, but to me, you are just slapping people that don't share your ideas in the face, but i can be wrong and miss understood, but when you find hillarous, something, that's basically you find people idiots.

[oreganor]

The issue with collisions (And most likely all damage) is that it "bleeds through"...

 

...I have done single collision impact tests at different speeds and sizes (I used simple shaped massive ship made of stone as my "asteroid"and a simple ship with a sacrifice block separated to be sure that only a single block collided laterally, to prevent multiple hits on the direction of moving), even If I also blamed IFGs for this, they aren't the Main culcript (I repeat, I have the feeling that all the damage is done like this... But no single weapon is able to do as much damage in a single block as a collision):

 

- Collision damage applies ALL ITS damage to the whole HP of the ship FIRST and later to the block it collided... Doesn't matter if you use IFGs or not. That means that at sufficient speeds and against sufficiently massive objects your root cube will be instantly destroyed BEFORE any further consideration happens even on a single hit in a far block.

 

- IFGs allow for MULTIPLE fast collisions on the same block... The way damage is reported as a single number on fast ocurring hits may mask the fact that block is actually colliding multiple times, that's why it looks IFGs are more damaging... If that block wouldn't be protected by IFG would have been destroyed on the 1st hit, allowing the ship to keep moving WITHOUT further collisions.

 

- It's quite frequent that a single block collision, triggers the adequate dynamic behavior (Sudden rotation, deceleration, etc) WITHOUT any damage been applied. This helps at increasing the "randomness" of collisions. I hate been "vague" about "frequent" but so far I haven't noticed any pattern on when this "fake collisions" happen.

 

EDIT: Notice that in my tests I was using the same massive object (That was barely damaged)... So this "fake collisions" may be an intended mechanism to protect massive objects from multiple collisions from the same smaller object, or may be a genuine bug.

[Salminar]

Yeah when you collide with stations, trying to dock, you have this kind of things too.

 

Not long agao i approached on really slowly, cause i know how it can behave and you are required sometime to be rediculously close to be able to trade (and it depends greatly how you designed your ship) I was at maybe 1 or 2 m/s and then i hear the sound of collision, but not a single "bam" no it was a lot of closely repeated sounds and before you can even react, a block was destroyed from the station (since i have trinium heavy armor + IFG that was no surprised the station would have troubles before me).

 

But to me this is fake collision, cause you should only have one, then your ship stop, but here i can't explain this, i wasn't pushing anymore on the engine but it was colliding again and again. It more like as long as you have 2 blocks touching each other no matter if you are moving or not, you take damages and they are not small ones (and at somepoint the station will be puched away from you, so it will stop), you can see you lofe going down pretty fast while in this kind of cases.

[Brigadon]

To be fair, I think that the reason impact damage goes right through shields is to give smaller ships a really decent reason to exist...

 

If a battle occurred in an asteroid field, the smaller ships, even with vastly less tonnage, might still have a decent chance. The monster would need autoturrets, and could not easily run to recharge without giving up a serious combat advantage or risking crippling damage. The smaller ships, able to easily avoid asteroids, could use them as cover effectively as well as being able to turn to bring effective weapons to bear rather than relying on much weaker autoturrets.

 

The old rule of RPG's is that defenses should be much cheaper than offense, especially when players are running offense and Defense is run by NPC's. I understand that the OP is discouraged by this mechanic, but without severe impact damage PVP becomes vastly less balanced.

 

ESPECIALLY if 'station' crews are reduced and slot expansion is introduced for stations... having 'defensive' stations nestled among real (or even artificially-created) asteroids would become a real possibility.

 

Which brings up an interesting question.... will npc 'ships' built without thrusters/engines behave much like a station? because I could see building a rock 'minefield' englobing an important structure, with perhaps a couple of rail guns each, as a viable tactic... or does all that rock mass add to the number of engineers you need? Even so, building them as 'ships' could still make them viable defensive structures as long as they don't move around on their own initiative....

 

 

[DivineEvil]

To Salminar:

I'm sorry i'll be a bit rude right now with you, but what you are saying is trash. You don't want to hear other people view on the issues arguing all is perfect as it is and it's only players fault. Look my post, i did point yes you had to be carefull but no, it's just pretty annoying at somepoint.

I simply do not agree to see every unfavorable occurrence as the result of some technical issues. If I disagree, it doesn't mean I don't care what anyone else thinks. But in a first paragraph I replied to, your points were - "this should not happen", and "can't have much control over it". I disagree with these points, and instead of addressing my arguments, you've formed a personal attack. This usually happens when you can't defend your arguments and unwilling to concede to it. If something is annoying, there's usually a reason for that, but it doesn't automatically means, that someone is screwing with you.

 

I feel like being on FTD forum right now. Again i said pushing an asteroid almost stoped mean destroyed blocks and what you answer? "You are too fast" guy, if you can't read a post, don't debate.

If I would consider "debating" with someone, I would at least ask them to compose coherent sentences. FYI, 10 m/s is a speed of 36 km/hour. It's not "almost stopped".

 

You don't have to go in building mode near asteroids? Again, that's the point of view the most narrowminded possible. Of course you don't, but when you buy a turret at an equip dock it's EXACTLY the same thing and what? You buy it, back a few meters and enter building mode to place your turrets. And that's more than once that you actually ram the station when going back to normal mod, cause you can't, i really mean you can't, always take care about things that are counter intuitive.

Anyone with any resemblance of intuition can learn on their own experience, that due to the problem of ship's turning to face the cursor when leaving the build mode, it should not be used near any physical objects - its a common sense to avoid that until the issue is resolved by future patches. The problem here, is that people report that issue in a way like its unavoidable, when it is. Just like you've said, one buys some turrets and backs a few meters - the what the point of backing off few meters if one does not clears the station? What prevents you to back off a kilometer and do the same? I'm not even talking about using build mode in the asteroid field...

 

I really feel reading those kind of messages that there are a few guys, when they post for a game, it's their whole life, they only play this game, do only this, they sleep, eat and and only play a single game not working or anything. So normal people when they come back on Avorion and are faced to a few of this issues, (cause yes they are issues, it's not a big deal, they will be solved in futur, be though about, but still they are issues) yes they can rage a little bit.

What you think or imagine about myself or somebody else doesn't bother me. I'm not concerned about people raging either. All I care about is claims and arguments. If I see a problem, I will argue against them.

 

And saying "You are bulshit lear to play" like you just did is really the worst possible, cause that's exactly what you did in your post.

Quotation, please.

 

And i'll end with your "hillarous" comment. On a game in alpha, where having more than one ship is actuallyuseless cause they aren't managed correctly, frozen out of sectors, can't jump in gates but cost your salary, i don't see the point currently to have more than one ship, yes and a big one cause the game is only oriented combat wise, so far.

None of that prevents you from having a small ship and using a big ship as a proxy for combat, or changing between several ships parked in one area depending on the given objectives, using the same crew. Either way, nobody is forcing you to use the same ship for all purposes. It's a deliberate choice with predictable consequences.

 

So yeah people take huge ships to go take containers or to go buy from the stations, untill you can have docks with smaller ships or real escorts it will be like this. If you like bondage, good for you, but don't expect other people to do the same.

What I expect people to understand, is that sledgehammer is not a suitable tool for knitting, and no degree of developer's patches is going to change that. What I also hope for people to do is to distinguish between things, that they should bother themselves to adapt to as present, and things, that actually present a consistent problem. If I assume, that they might've mixed up between the two, I will try to point it out, because otherwise these same people can still encounter similar problems when some of the issues are resolved.

 

Again sorry if i have been a bit harsh, but to me, you are just slapping people that don't share your ideas in the face, but i can be wrong and miss understood, but when you find hillarous, something, that's basically you find people idiots.

Then it simply means, that you're involving too much of your subjective perception to the discussion. What is hilarious here, is that I find myself actively arguing against the point of "bigger means better", while also doing so against a point of "big ships are hard to control" at the same time. There's no "who" in either case. Take a note - I've never called you anything. I told what you can do, what you should do and what you should not do. Everything on top of that is the result of your own cognition. Try to keep it in check in the future - it will get you a long way, and far beyond playing video-games.

 

To Ohm is Futile:

Hmm, I see your point, but then we have the opposite problem in the sense that you have a block on your ship that can't be destroyed before you destroy the whole ship and that's just weird. What if your root block is a huge piece of whatever on which you stick all your turrets? Then you practically can't be disarmed before your ship goes...

Yes, but that is a question of how a block hierarchy is constructed. When you have some other block destroyed, its not hard to find another attached block to work as a substitute parent object, or to detach the section as a wreck if no such blocks could be found.

However, if you have a single block, that everything is ultimately attached to, there's no way to resolve the same problem, unless you're fine with even more weird shit happening with your ships. As for what block to choose as the root block, its a question of priorities. In your example, for the sake of argument, sure you can't be disarmed, but if all blocks attached to that block are destroyed, then the ship is done for, long before its HP are exhausted. Usually you'd want to keep it hidden deep inside for reliability and use something fragile like primary IFG, shield unit or power reactor as such.

 

I just don't like this idea and much prefer my idea of simply making a quick check for the largest part with crew quarters in case the game has to worry about your ship breaking up and figuring out which one you're in control of and which one is a wreck.

 

Also, I don't like the idea of a bridge block. There's very little point, it'll punish people who don't fully understand the mechanic while everyone else will just stick them somewhere protected that nobody will ever find anyway.

I agree with the notion of bridge block - it will also paints a huge target circle on itself no matter where you place it. Sure, players can use the 1st-Person perspective, but there's no point to make another block specifically for that purpose - it can just as well assigned in the build menu to any block you'd want to use. Bridges are nothing but a novelty, and in more realistic scenario, commanding a ship will be performed from the depth of the structure with broad arrays of variable sensor arrays spread throughout the ship's exterior.

 

For me, current block hierarchy provide a pretty decent balance between block being invulnerable (like some people argued IFGs should function like) and game-freezing algorithms desperately trying to find another root block without causing the ship to fall apart for no conceivable reason.

[LoSboccacc]

these are all a valid bunch of suggestion, but have you tried no to ram the thing?

 

it's not like they move around, neither asteroids nor stations.

[oreganor]

ESPECIALLY if 'station' crews are reduced and slot expansion is introduced for stations... having 'defensive' stations nestled among real (or even artificially-created) asteroids would become a real possibility.

 

On a PvP environment, sadly, there are 2 factors that will cripple all stationary defenses/structures and will require specific meassures to prevent exploiting if it's expected to have players trying to build/keep stations:

 

- Speed Control Removal system. Small ships at high speeds can inflict massive ammounts of collision damage with a fraction of the cost. With the artificial speed limits in, even as anti-newtonian as they are, they restrict high speeds to big ships due to how the engine block behaves.

 

- "Hastened" Seeker Launchers. Launcher proyectile inherits the speed of the platform used to launch them... Attempting any kind of "speed assisted" long range launch aimed at anything would require perfect aligment, which is a lengthy process to do, specially under fire... Seeker launchers do not have that problem, making them the weapon with potential farther range ATM... Stationary defenses will not stand a chance against ships out of weapon range launching their seekers at high speeds towards them.

 

This 2 specific issues have easy solutions... But in BOTH cases require modification of the current mechanics, specifially aimed at static structures (Entities WITHOUT engines, nor thrusters). An example:

 

- Inertial Increase Fields. The opposite of the Inertial Blocks we have... A defense block able to project a field that damages objects in the vicinity moving at high speeds. For simplicity (And less lethality), instead they can nullify the SCR system effect, puting all nearby ships directly at their max speed and draining their capacitors if their previous speed was higher than the normal "restricted" limit.

 

- ECM fields. Able to disrupt homing capabilities of seekers in the vicinity making them change direction... Or for simplicity, that makes seekers to explode at a certain range from the structure... Or even simpler, deny the lock on any structure protected by this.

[Martin Levac]

Layered/spaced/ablative armor works nicely against collisions with asteroids and wreckage. I had started with layered, then I went with spaced, it looks cool and works very well. Only the first piece gets blowed up, cheap to replace, the ship is otherwise intact. So, you're in a situation where you're boosting towards baddies, and in between you and them is a tiny bit of wreckage that pops a block as you hit it, but of course you couldn't see it and would only know about it with a hit sound and the damage icon. With spaced armor, it's just a tiny piece.

 

The trick with that kind of armor config is to build templates, c&p, stack it, etc. The simplest form is a T shape template that you stack to make a series of H blocks. Orient to cover the underside from attack/collision angles. More fancy configs are grill- or grid-like spaced armor, a bit like when building a boat with wooden slats in crisscross fashion, with squares and then angles for a smoother outer shape. For even more fancy, build up the underside with spaced armor, then stick shaped blocks for finish esthetics.

 

Another idea is bumpers. Exactly like it sounds. Personally I haven't experimented with that but I did make some thruster pods and the framework on which it's stuck often gets blowed up with collisions. I guess a bumper is a sort of spaced armor, only more massive.

 

Based on my experience with spaced armor, I find unlikely that the whole ship's HP pool gets hit by collision damage before the piece that makes contact. Instead, I think it's the wreckage chance thing, where if a piece is to explode, a random generator determines the chance for wreckage based on the number of blocks attached to the piece that is about to blow up, then breaks off all those pieces as the case may be. If there's just too few pieces in a whole ship, this matters much more than the HP of the piece (or indeed of the whole ship) that initially takes the hit.

 

Furthermore, I also believe that there's a per-block damage model rather than a total HP model, a bit like railgun pen mechanics, so that damage can only pen so far into a series of blocks, making spaced armor configs more protective against collisions. So for example, between a ship with fewer large blocks and one with lots of smaller blocks, but of equal HP, the one with more blocks is more likely to survive and keep its internals intact.

 

So, it's a test between fewer and more blocks, but with equal total HP. Spaced armor just works.

[Warrax]

I too play my games with 100% Collision Damage.

 

But ...

I spent an hour or so in "Creative" to learn "how to collide" and methods to avoid death in a pinch.

 

Actually, that time in Creative, of driving into stuff was kinda fun - and has since save my ship in a real game.

 

Apart from that, my ship designs now incorporate my lessons learned from all those collisions.  Lol