0.11 r7767 vs 0.10.5 r7633 movement

[Ohm is Futile]

So, I know that Koonschi hasn't posted the details here, although some notes are available on steam here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/240220455166387074

Not sure if we'll get more information than that, especially compared to beta branch builds, but I'm going to try to analyze it.

 

First thing I noticed is that thrust has gone down a fair amount. I'm not too sure how it works, but it still doesn't scale with material tier, so I'm guessing engines were simply nerfed.

 

Maneuverability has also changed, and weirdly enough, some ships I designed have different results whether it's yaw, roll, or pitch. Some ships gained pitch but lost yaw, so it's not a definite boost or nerf. My guess is that either gyros have a different behaviour regarding their position on the ship or maybe the lever effect from thrusters was changed. I'm really not sure since I have ships that don't have gyros and their maneuverability has changed in different ways for all of them.

 

Those changes are fairly huge, too. For example, LeonserGT's Megalodon, which I modified, has gone from 0.35 rad/s pitch to 0.57... that's 163% higher. At the same time it lost 0.04 yaw out of 0.35 and 0.15 roll from 0.8. I'm... confused by these changes, honestly.

 

Anyways, bottom line it doesn't look to me as though it's going to be harder or easier to make ships maneuverable, just different. Thrust was significantly nerfed, although I tend to agree that the earlier values were kinda over the top.

[koonschi]

The changes I'm telling you here are in comparison to the last beta branch patch (I didn't want to do 2 patch notes, one vs. beta and one vs. default).

 

- Gyros are directional now (for better control over your stats) and are a lot stronger than in the beta branch. Overall we might be looking at ~twice or triple the strength (their material scaling has been changed as well). Select a gyro to see its direction, you can also see its direction when placing them.

- Inertia dampeners are weaker.

- Engines are also weaker (~66% of strength before), but they still scale linearly with total volume, so for bigger ships it's actually a buff (compared to default branch).

- Thruster rotation strength has been increased (while strafing/braking strength remains the same). Doesn't make sense, I know, but it simply feels better.

 

I'm always tweaking the values, I tweaked them over 6 times or so since the last beta patch. I've tried quite some ships from the forums here, how they feel, how the stats changes feel with the new blocks feel, etc. and I think they're now in a place where I like them.

[Wilponderoci]

I too notice a lot of differences in the new beta similar to what Ohm is Futile said.

 

The first thing I noticed is that on the current playthrough my main ship

now requires somewhere about 1/3 of its mass dedicated to energy production to even break even.

So something VERY significant has change as far as power drain.

 

To me it feels a bit much to be honest.

 

I will have to take the ship into creative and break it all down again and figure out what the hell is going on.

 

it kills the immersion a little but what the hell ;)

 

Im looking forward to seeing more notes on current branch

[koonschi]

A third sounds like a lot yes. What ship? What generators? What materials are you using? Do you have the .xml file? Where is the power going? Check the power tab for more infos.

[Wilponderoci]

I just shut the computer down for the night.

 

I will say that my ogonite gyros are what's draining it.

 

80% of the ship is trinium.

 

Xanion thrusters and directionals and trinium engines.

 

A lot of the ship is computer core as well.

 

I will post the xml in the morning when I get my coffee. :)

 

It's bed time for pepe as my gf says. ;)

 

Oh did you add salvaging to the list of orders or is that just the mod?

[Ohm is Futile]

@Wilponderoci: what? what version were you playing before? I don't think I have a single ship that requires more power, if anything, they require less. (much less, actually!)

 

I will say that my ogonite gyros are what's draining it.

To me, that looks like the only potential offender and possibly a bug, since Koonschi mentioned that gyros now scale with material, so perhaps the power drain does as well.

 

- Inertia dampeners are weaker.

That explains the huge losses in brake thrust and I totally agree that they were too good. Not necessarily a must-have like some people seemed to let on, but still far too effective. Time will tell how balanced they are now.

 

- Engines are also weaker (~66% of strength before), but they still scale linearly with total volume, so for bigger ships it's actually a buff (compared to default branch).

I secretly (not a secret anymore) wish they didn't scale perfectly linearly. That would screw over a lot of large designs somewhat, but just a little bit so large ships feel a little more, well, large and lumbering. The part I'm not too sure about is the loss of acceleration. Top speeds of close to 1km/s are actually fairly easy to reach and that happens even more with large ships since acceleration seems more sensitive to mass than top speed. Like, pretty much all my designs have higher top speeds the bigger they are. Seems backwards.

 

Not sure how I feel about acceleration vs top speed and how scaling could fit in right now. Again, need more time to play with that.

 

- Thruster rotation strength has been increased (while strafing/braking strength remains the same). Doesn't make sense, I know, but it simply feels better.

Aah well, I was just getting used to the lower rotation speeds.

 

- Gyros are directional now (for better control over your stats) and are a lot stronger than in the beta branch. Overall we might be looking at ~twice or triple the strength (their material scaling has been changed as well). Select a gyro to see its direction, you can also see its direction when placing them.

This has to be the bit I have the most doubts about. Not sure I like that change. In a way, this makes gyros even more powerful. Perhaps we simply don't share the thought that gyros should be a subpar solution to helping rotation speeds while getting around the need for strategic placement of thrusters. Maybe you didn't consider that now we could change the direction of gyros and gain massive bonuses to whichever rotation we want without "wasting" power on other directions. I don't know, either way, I perceive this as an excessive buff for gyros.

 

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to answer and looking forward to future updates! (I'm especially eager for weapon stuff, more AI combat tactics, big vs small balance and that kinda thing *wink wink* (being a spoiled little grown-up here, lol)  ;) )

[koonschi]

Yes, the gyros are what uses up the energy, I just checked the stats. They use up way too much energy, I'll fix that before it goes live on the default branch.

 

As for gyro strength: Material scaling went down (a lot) and base strength went up, that should make them more viable early on and not as insane later on. They are actually meant as an alternative to thrusters for medium and small ships. Thrusters are still a lot more powerful, simply due to the lever mechanics, but a lot of people don't like the way they have to be placed, design wise.

 

Thrusters will still be an absolute must for large ships and you will have to make room for them since they simply outscale gyros, but for medium sized ships and small ships gyros can provide a good and reliable (e.g. easier) alternative.

[Ohm is Futile]

Thrusters will still be an absolute must for large ships and you will have to make room for them since they simply outscale gyros, but for medium sized ships and small ships gyros can provide a good and reliable (e.g. easier) alternative.

...but I fail to see the need for even more rotation for smaller ships..? Plus the increased power drain compared to thrusters means you need more generators, which then kinda pushes you into a larger ship. Makes no sense to me.

 

I mean, the lever effect isn't even that limiting, you can hide the darn things if you don't like seeing them. I guess it forces you to put your important stuff closer to the CoM and thrusters further away. It doesn't even limit what you can put on the ship, just where you put it... I dunno, I just don't get it. I felt gyros were the lazy designer's thing to let them make something decently mobile, but still less mobile than skillfully placing down thrusters.

 

Making mobility stuff not scale perfectly linearly would give smaller ships extra maneuverability across the board, if that was the objective.

 

 

[Wilponderoci]

Ok here are the two files

 

The Old design is a Spritely agile version of my ship that generates about .21 TW of energy

 

The Redesign is the version where I through an "assload" of generators on to make up for the gyros. 

 

As for the handling aspect of the ship I had prior to the patch about

 

1.03

.90

3.49

 

Respectively

 

I am Really excited to experiment with the gyro placement!

 

I pride my self on sort of breaking the game so I have a 20.~ m³ ship that although a bit sluggish still handles with a certain ferocity! ;)

Feck_Redesign.zip

FeckoldDesign.zip

[Pob]

I've not gone into gyro's yet on the 0.11.7767 yet, however I'd like to put forward these suggestions.

a gyro's force should be relative to two factors, distance from centre of mass (CoM) and it's mass relative to the mass of the ship.

This makes an iron gyro the best on a volume basis because of it's mass, you can balance this out by reducing power demand based on material.

So if we compare gyro's of equal weight, and there for force, the Iron version would be the smallest but high energy draw while a Naonite one would be larger but have less power draw and an Avorion one would be the largest but with the lowest power draw.

 

On a side note I'd like to this principle carried over to other blocks/materials, create more variation in the materials, not just the next tier is flat out better in every way, less mass, more power, more hp (ok it's not quite like that but feels like it)

You can still have some blocks be better with material, but more variation and specialisation, we have some of this already with trinium having the lowest mass per volume, however I'd like to see more trade off on materials.

eg currently if we have 3 generators 1m³ made of Titanium, Naonite and Trinium, the hp and power generation goes up with each tier, the only thing that doesn't is mass as titanium is slightly lighter than Naonite.

Granted npc ship generation would need to be looked at as they tend to be only one material.

 

@Wilponderoci I just spotted the name of your ship  ;D

[Enzo Matrix]

oh man gyros becoming directional while great! hurt my latest design so much lol. It is not easy to get into the core of the ship where all my gyros are but I had over 2 Rad pitch and like 0.05 of the others lol. Almost got it back to normal stats!

[Wilponderoci]

I just went into creative mode. Designed a whole new ship based on my look and feel and then applied it in the build menu. Funny as he'll actually came out to something like 50-60 blocks. And this is a .7+ -1.2 mt ship. Super streamlined and cut combat lag to almost non-existent. I'm pretty stoked on new flight mechanics and parts.