Calling for the death of the RNG god

[LordMaddog]

This game relies way too much on randomly generated loot and other stuff.

Rusty's US server has been up for less than a week and already I have over 50 to 60 pages of worthless loot  99.999%  of it I cannot and will not ever use.

I know some of you are going to say 'well that's just because it's on a modded server.' but I have the same problem on the official test server.

 

As things currently are loot feels cheap and lame And the random generation of ship and stations in a sector also really sucks.

 

Maybe though I am alone and how I feel about this. So here's a poll to see if I'm the only one that feels this way.

 

 

Also I don't know exactly how to fix it but here's a few thoughts.

 

1: guns and weapons should work just like placing a prefab design. You select your design then scale it and place it.

The size and Resource it's made out of determines the Damage, how fast it turns and slot cost. 

Then you would just loot turret systems that give various effects to your already functioning weapon.

 

2: Stations and factories should have a more stylized placement that reflect the type of faction they are attached to IE: if there are church, It could be built around a giant monolithic structure or some such. An Imperial faction should have some type of militaristic  station With a couple of battle stations parked on either side of it.

Also there should not just be one type of factory per our station, that just doesn't make any sense for an example a colony would definitely have a water factory some type of food factory likely a Gambling center and a few other oddities as well as a main export factory like steel.

 

Also I should be able to buy maps of a faction from smugglers or from the faction themselves if my reputation is high enough.

 

[Ravien]

I think a level of randomness is good, especially for this game which literally started as a random ship generator.

 

However, I think the RNG aspects should be toned down a little so you get more consistency. There's a few problems that plague the RNG aspect of the game. Right now it's a total gamble whether that new legendary turret you found will actually be better than your uncommon one. Factory built turrets are far better than looted or bought ones (especially since you can make a set of them all the same). It should feel exciting to find a rarer turret and players should have the ability to somehow duplicate turrets they do find so they can have a matching set of turrets.

 

You can research all your junk loot at a research station close to the core but it's a bit too random, especially with turrets.

[Sandworm]

So here's my scenario; I kinda new about Research stations from a video I watched prior to buying the game. I figured I'd save all the loot until I found a station. Well after several days playing, I finally found a station, but by that time I had several thousand guns and systems. I was NOT going to click and drag thousands of times, so I ran to the forums to get the Auto Researcher mod - which helped a LITTLE - with systems only. Now my only option was to sell remaining weapons/systems by hand - clicking sell over 1000 times at the equipment dock. Not fun.

 

Granted, all that could have been avoided (and will be in the future) if I had just sold everything I absolutely didn't need right as I got it.

 

As to keeping the randomness or not - a better way to manage the large amount 'junk' would alleviate some of the issues. Sell all by rarity would be nice; sell all *not* favorited would also make more sense then marking hundreds of items as trash; sell filtered/unfiltered would also be useful - well you get the point.

 

As for station placement - all I can say is if people could custom create sectors and upload them to steam workshop - you'd have a pretty amazing galaxy full of unique sectors in no time :)

[Wanderer]

This game relies way too much on randomly generated loot and other stuff.

Rusty's US server has been up for less than a week and already I have over 50 to 60 pages of worthless loot  99.999%  of it I cannot and will not ever use.

I know some of you are going to say 'well that's just because it's on a modded server.' but I have the same problem on the official test server.

 

As things currently are loot feels cheap and lame And the random generation of ship and stations in a sector also really sucks.

 

Maybe though I am alone and how I feel about this. So here's a poll to see if I'm the only one that feels this way.

 

 

Also I don't know exactly how to fix it but here's a few thoughts.

 

1: guns and weapons should work just like placing a prefab design. You select your design then scale it and place it.

The size and Resource it's made out of determines the Damage, how fast it turns and slot cost. 

Then you would just loot turret systems that give various effects to your already functioning weapon.

 

2: Stations and factories should have a more stylized placement that reflect the type of faction they are attached to IE: if there are church, It could be built around a giant monolithic structure or some such. An Imperial faction should have some type of militaristic  station With a couple of battle stations parked on either side of it.

Also there should not just be one type of factory per our station, that just doesn't make any sense for an example a colony would definitely have a water factory some type of food factory likely a Gambling center and a few other oddities as well as a main export factory like steel.

 

Also I should be able to buy maps of a faction from smugglers or from the faction themselves if my reputation is high enough.

 

 

Although i do agree that there's a problem with this, i do not like your idea's, save for 2, wich is practically the complex mod. It would be nice if you could make new factorys on a station, perhaps this could follow the slot system: a station can have more weapons the bugger it gets, with additional factorys for every additional upgrade slot you get.

 

Buying maps ruins the need for exploration and 1 i just dont like, so i only agree with 2 :/

[Mattoropael]

So here's my scenario; I kinda new about Research stations from a video I watched prior to buying the game. I figured I'd save all the loot until I found a station. Well after several days playing, I finally found a station, but by that time I had several thousand guns and systems. I was NOT going to click and drag thousands of times, so I ran to the forums to get the Auto Researcher mod - which helped a LITTLE - with systems only. Now my only option was to sell remaining weapons/systems by hand - clicking sell over 1000 times at the equipment dock. Not fun.

 

TrashMan should help immensely in your quest to get rid of all those turrets.

[Sandworm]

TrashMan should help immensely in your quest to get rid of all those turrets.

 

Thank you! Not sure how I missed that one.

[LordMaddog]

 

Although i do agree that there's a problem with this, i do not like your idea's, save for 2, wich is practically the complex mod. It would be nice if you could make new factorys on a station, perhaps this could follow the slot system: a station can have more weapons the bugger it gets, with additional factorys for every additional upgrade slot you get.

 

Buying maps ruins the need for exploration and 1 i just dont like, so i only agree with 2 :/

 

I understand you not liking my ideas I could try to defended them  but they are not ideal for me either truth be told I would like all weapons to use energy,  the slot systme removed and the cost of generators  increased by ten times (resource and credit cost).

 

The complex mod, is to complicated IMO it would be so much simpler and easier  to just make one new block "The factory block"  you click on it a UI comes up and you select the factory/utility type then you place it.

The cost and min size of block is determined by the type of factory/utility.

you could even incorporate  how the assembly block works into it. IE: the material type and  block size  determines  the productivity of "The factory block"

[DivineEvil]

Rusty's US server has been up for less than a week and already I have over 50 to 60 pages of worthless loot  99.999%  of it I cannot and will not ever use.

I know some of you are going to say 'well that's just because it's on a modded server.' but I have the same problem on the official test server.

Regardless, it should be noted that the vast majority of modded servers do in fact make it easier for their players to do most things, in particular increase the drop rate, which vastly inflate the number of available turrets and modules, while the game itself is already fairly easy even on the Insane difficulty and should be modded to offer more challenges, promote player cooperation, expand the progression path and make it much harder to sustain the hold in the core region.

 

Other than that, you bring no analysis of the situation nor feasible solutions. A first suggestion is just solving the headache problem by chopping it off, and the second one has little to do with the original problem. There's certainly an great excess of available stations and factories due to the overblown economy and rather superfluous attachment of the commodities to the production of turrets, and the entity generation algorithm is severely outdated, but these are three completely different issues, that do not relate to the RNG as much as to the unrefined game design decisions.

 

1.) The first technical issue stems from the fact, that Turrets in particular have thee independent evaluation metrics - a Rarity tier, a Tech level and the Material. While all of them seem to have an effect, nobody really knows how to associate either of them with the turret's power, and as result of current random draws we end up with shitty Legendary and great Iron weapons at the same time . Developer team should get rid of either Tech Level, so that the Material and Rarity could provide an intuitive power ladder, or the Material distinction, which is an arbitrary limitation that produces nothing apart from the confusion.

 

Some changes are also needed for the player/ship inventory to help manage it - instead of tiny buttons on the turret icons, we should have an ability to hold Shift and Ctrl for continuous and individual selection trough the sorted list and to use separate buttons on the sidebar to Favorite, Brand, Mail or Remove all the selected items.  I personally would also favor an option to toggle into a standard vertical list, instead of a tile layout, with the item icon and the outline of the primary stats (Size, Slots, Tech Level, DPS, Range and Accuracy/Efficiency), which would allow convenient selection and comparison and also being able to use these stats for sorting, rather than just few factors we have now.

 

2.) The fact about superiority of Factory-made turrets over looted ones was a sore thumb for a quite a while now. I'm continuously arguing for the attention to this problem, and my point still stands: Turret Factories should only be able to produce Common-grade turrets, and players can improve that by providing the given faction with Technological commodities, which are consumed by Research Labs and improve the capability up to the Exotic (Or even up to Rare) tier and improve the quality of weapons that are equipped on that faction's ships. Turret Factories mainly should be used to create turret Blueprints, that can be placed into stations to reproduce them. This will put the value of looted and researched turrets where it belongs.

 

Research Lab should output the turrets based on their own average tech level, regardless of its position in the galaxy.

 

3.) Algorithm for generation of entities has to be expanded upon eventually, before Avorion gets officially released. It has to strictly avoid generating blocks below a certain margin in size, which only inflate the block count without producing any significant stats and are extremely hard to salvage, resulting in the excess of dropped loot items. All types of edge blocks should be used to shape the entity segments, and there are great number of possible variations for the generator to pick. Generator seed must not produce enormous 3-4 kilometer long metal sticks, but instead follow golden mean rule to avoid absurd ship proportions. As players get closer to the core, ships should feature thicker armor coverage, lower hull/functional block ratio and Integrity fields to keep enemies reasonably difficult across the progression path.

 

4.) I would like for the Turret Control System modules to have perks for the turret to, but I much more concerned with the current state of balance and mechanics of the particular weapons. Variety of weapons is severely limited by the existence of obvious favorites and ambiguous systems, that render about a half of the weapons and tools useless. Other than that, I'm not in gripes with the RNG as such, as long as it allows the player to manifest upon the lucky find and make practical use of it, instead of choosing between using dozens of completely different turrets and mass-producing superior variants with an abundance of Credits alone...

 

It feels like the topic drives my thoughts into a kaleidoscope of all the little problems I see within the game, and I've already said plenty, so I rather leave it with that.

[Ravien]

1.) The first technical issue stems from the fact, that Turrets in particular have thee independent evaluation metrics - a Rarity tier, a Tech level and the Material. While all of them seem to have an effect, nobody really knows how to associate either of them with the turret's power, and as result of current random draws we end up with shitty Legendary and great Iron weapons at the same time . Developer team should get rid of either Tech Level, so that the Material and Rarity could provide an intuitive power ladder, or the Material distinction, which is an arbitrary limitation that produces nothing apart from the confusion.

 

Some changes are also needed for the player/ship inventory to help manage it - instead of tiny buttons on the turret icons, we should have an ability to hold Shift and Ctrl for continuous and individual selection trough the sorted list and to use separate buttons on the sidebar to Favorite, Brand, Mail or Remove all the selected items.  I personally would also favor an option to toggle into a standard vertical list, instead of a tile layout, with the item icon and the outline of the primary stats (Size, Slots, Tech Level, DPS, Range and Accuracy/Efficiency), which would allow convenient selection and comparison and also being able to use these stats for sorting, rather than just few factors we have now.

 

2.) The fact about superiority of Factory-made turrets over looted ones was a sore thumb for a quite a while now. I'm continuously arguing for the attention to this problem, and my point still stands: Turret Factories should only be able to produce Common-grade turrets, and players can improve that by providing the given faction with Technological commodities, which are consumed by Research Labs and improve the capability up to the Exotic (Or even up to Rare) tier and improve the quality of weapons that are equipped on that faction's ships. Turret Factories mainly should be used to create turret Blueprints, that can be placed into stations to reproduce them. This will put the value of looted and researched turrets where it belongs.

 

Research Lab should output the turrets based on their own average tech level, regardless of its position in the galaxy.

 

3.) Algorithm for generation of entities has to be expanded upon eventually, before Avorion gets officially released. It has to strictly avoid generating blocks below a certain margin in size, which only inflate the block count without producing any significant stats and are extremely hard to salvage, resulting in the excess of dropped loot items. All types of edge blocks should be used to shape the entity segments, and there are great number of possible variations for the generator to pick. Generator seed must not produce enormous 3-4 kilometer long metal sticks, but instead follow golden mean rule to avoid absurd ship proportions. As players get closer to the core, ships should feature thicker armor coverage, lower hull/functional block ratio and Integrity fields to keep enemies reasonably difficult across the progression path.

 

4.) I would like for the Turret Control System modules to have perks for the turret to, but I much more concerned with the current state of balance and mechanics of the particular weapons. Variety of weapons is severely limited by the existence of obvious favorites and ambiguous systems, that render about a half of the weapons and tools useless. Other than that, I'm not in gripes with the RNG as such, as long as it allows the player to manifest upon the lucky find and make practical use of it, instead of choosing between using dozens of completely different turrets and mass-producing superior variants with an abundance of Credits alone...

 

It feels like the topic drives my thoughts into a kaleidoscope of all the little problems I see within the game, and I've already said plenty, so I rather leave it with that.

 

Such great points and I agree with much of it. Fix the system, no need to scrap it completely. RNG is an important part of the game.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

There's a few issues.

 

Much like action RPGs, the game throws a lot of loot at you, most of which becomes increasingly trash as your equipment improves.  In those action RPGs you pick and choose what loot you pick up and eventually you simply stop picking up loot that's undesirable.  This is not the case in Avorion; your inventory gets littered with trash as you kill & salvage.  The trash is not mechanically useless; You use it to make rolls at the research lab to get even more  loot, most of which is still likely to be trash. Unfortunately, this is an enormously attention and click-heavy process for uncertain results; lately i started dreading visiting the research station and now i have mostly stopped.  I have 3000 items and most of them are completely worthless - but there's no fast way to get rid of them, you don't have the option of not picking up them up, and they all have their own individual entry in the items list.    Fixing even one of those issues could make it bearable, but it would be best if the loot mechanics were rethought imo.  There's no need for RNG for most systems, especially the whites, greens, and blues; to the extent that RNG is helpful with them you can make it a different system, or as a loot item with a special verb implied to make it explicitly special.  Pettys should probably be deprecated.

 

 

 

[LordMaddog]

There's a few issues.

 

Much like action RPGs, the game throws a lot of loot at you, most of which becomes increasingly trash as your equipment improves.  In those action RPGs you pick and choose what loot you pick up and eventually you simply stop picking up loot that's undesirable.  This is not the case in Avorion; your inventory gets littered with trash as you kill & salvage.  The trash is not mechanically useless; You use it to make rolls at the research lab to get even more  loot, most of which is still likely to be trash. Unfortunately, this is an enormously attention and click-heavy process for uncertain results; lately i started dreading visiting the research station and now i have mostly stopped.  I have 3000 items and most of them are completely worthless - but there's no fast way to get rid of them, you don't have the option of not picking up them up, and they all have their own individual entry in the items list.    Fixing even one of those issues could make it bearable, but it would be best if the loot mechanics were rethought imo.  There's no need for RNG for most systems, especially the whites, greens, and blues; to the extent that RNG is helpful with them you can make it a different system, or as a loot item with a special verb implied to make it explicitly special.  Pettys should probably be deprecated.

 

While what you said is true and it definitely would make the game better if it was possible to deal with these loots in a timely matter. It still wouldn't exactly solve the problem.

I have heard many people express that they want to be able to make fleets with all the same stats and same equipment.

This desire among others comes because this is a Building Game not a full on RPG.

Almost 100% of all the other building games I have ever played allow you full control over your weaponry and other systems, this has become the staple of building style games.

This game does not and it has become a stigma against it. And it will always be one until it is fixed.

Now don't get me wrong I do love the RPG parts of this game in fact I would like to increase them because I love RPG's but because this is also a building game as well it has to cohere with building game rules.

If it doesn't  the players will constantly call for it to do so as they have been for over a year on this form and on the steam forms.

 

[DivineEvil]

While what you said is true and it definitely would make the game better if it was possible to deal with these loots in a timely matter. It still wouldn't exactly solve the problem.

I have heard many people express that they want to be able to make fleets with all the same stats and same equipment.

This desire among others comes because this is a Building Game not a full on RPG.

Well, so far its kinda like a strategy game from the third perspective, and the building aspect is just a great facet that allows you to create your faction however you want. Pretty much nothing associates Avorion with RPG genre - you do not even have a character. You have an immortal avatar, that can control your faction anywhere in the galaxy, one sector at a time. However, when the game allows you to create your own content, it is called a sandbox. A "building game", is a game that's primarily designed around making things, and what you do with them comes second, something around a Scrap Mechanics or whatever it was called. That's not what the Avorion is.

 

Almost 100% of all the other building games I have ever played allow you full control over your weaponry and other systems, this has become the staple of building style games.

I only can think of two games, that satisfy your definitions - Starmade and From the Depths. Both games are functionally unplayable due to the obscene amount of time it requires to "fully control your weapons" and making everything work with overly complicated mechanics. Avorion does not suffer from that, and that's why I play it, and have not even checked on the two mentioned games for years. Other than that, I believe alternatives usually have fixed selection of weapons provided.

 

This game does not and it has become a stigma against it. And it will always be one until it is fixed.

Uh, stigma? It's the feature, that makes Avorion the current best candidate in terms of balance between building stuff and actually having fun operating it. The RNG mechanism for producing weapons and tools is what allows for the sweet middle-ground between having fixed choices and making everything by hand all the time.  All the problems lie, as I've previously stated, with the management of obtained items and in effectively applying them to the production of the custom-pattern unit designs. Current setup only allows for the marginally effective outfit of one ship, that diminishes as the player ship becomes larger, and the discrepancy between individual species of weapons becomes unbearable. Then you come down to the mass manufacture of set turret designs, which are superior and preferable to looted ones, even though they lack the variability and distinct style of the random loot. What we need is a random loot, that doesn't occur as often, but can be reproduced at will if you like what you've found.

 

Avorion still has a long way to go to live up to its potential, but only a complete idiot would stigmatize the best part of the game, that makes it more fun than any other sandboxes, where you might spend so much time making shit there isn't any left for actually riding it around and fighting.

 

Now don't get me wrong I do love the RPG parts of this game in fact I would like to increase them because I love RPG's but because this is also a building game as well it has to cohere with building game rules.

There's no rules. A game is just a virtual framework, that allows players to do stuff. Developers decide on the rules and on what players should be able to do. Then the market defines what is the genre of the game depending on those developers decisions. Oh and another thing - Avorion is not an RPG in any way. There's features it shares with RPG and other genres, but there's no features that define it as an RPG by any degree. Again, you do not have a character and you do not play a role. You're an ethereal proxy controlling a faction's activity, and you do whatever you want. You may lose resources and parts of your faction, but you never die. This is why a team of players is called an 'alliance', which is a collection of factions working together.

 

If it doesn't  the players will constantly call for it to do so as they have been for over a year on this form and on the steam forms.

Players can define what the game is all they want, but they do not define what the game is supposed to be. Developers do. I do not see anyone really arguing here about how game's building aspects are somewhat wrong at all. I also hold a strong position, that what's people are talking on the Steam forums is completely irrelevant - its a cesspool for people who have opinions, but don't have enough personal dedication even to register here.

 

I've personally witnessed these... characters deliberately ruining the success of very decent games. On the other hand, I've never seen any Steam forum discussion doing any good for those games. Thus, I do not really care how many people are going to call something out for how long - arguments stand on their own merit. If a person is only good enough to whine about what they don't like, but cannot provide a good argument for what would make a game better, they have no ground to stand on. And no, calling for downgrading a game to turn it into another game for no f***** reason is not an argument at all.

[riess]

I have heard many people express that they want to be able to make fleets with all the same stats and same equipment.

This desire among others comes because this is a Building Game not a full on RPG.

 

/signed

 

For me The Avorion is a sandbox for playing out my space battles/wars fantasies.  Before the Avo I was avid Minecraft player and X2/3 player (likely clocked around 1500 hours in X-universe games total).  I've tried to build ships in Space Engineers, but model of gathering minerals, keeping my dude alive and cobbling together a ship just didn't click for me. What Avorion does really good is that lowest common denominator is the spaceship, not an astronaut. The ships are characters. Drone is just your default/fallback microship.

 

Randomization is okay, but I wouldn't mind some bounds being placed on it for sake of better playing exeperience. For example I would love to see turret factories guarantee certain stats scaled from the galaxy core, for example:

 

- The iron cannon will never do less than 10km of range, but no more than 15

- The Avorion cannon will never do less than 30km of range

 

As well as some "makes sense" ones such as:

 

- The laser will never increase energy consumption more than 800/s

 

Likewise, if we want to take inspiration from other RPG, why not have item variants?

 

- The Avenger Railgun - 1 shot every 5 seconds, high damage, high range

- The Sentinel Railgun - 1 shot every 1.5 second, less damage and range

 

Turret generator could then grab the mineral we are in -> pick turret type -> pick turret subtype -> randomize its stats within template

 

Turret factories would randomize between types and subtypes, so Factory A has Avenger Railgun, Sentinel Cannon, Hedgehog Launcher and Factory B would have Sentinel Cannon, Pulverizer Laser and Something Mining Laser.

 

As player you would get general idea what stats to expect from turrets bought at turret factories and equipment docks, but you would still have to search for turret factory that has that turret and subtype that you want for your build, because each turret factory would offer just random selection of turrets to build. Or perhaps turret factories themselves should specialize? Eg. "Launchers factory", "Cannons factory"?

 

Sadly, this would take boatload of hours to get implemented. :C

[DivineEvil]

For me The Avorion is a sandbox for playing out my space battles/wars fantasies.  Before the Avo I was avid Minecraft player and X2/3 player (likely clocked around 1500 hours in X-universe games total).  I've tried to build ships in Space Engineers, but model of gathering minerals, keeping my dude alive and cobbling together a ship just didn't click for me. What Avorion does really good is that lowest common denominator is the spaceship, not an astronaut. The ships are characters. Drone is just your default/fallback microship.

I'd rather say, ships are RTS units. You design them as you wish and equip them according to the type of the unit you want them to be. Their crew gain experience and progress and thus become easier and cheaper to maintain, but all the specialization and stats depend solely on your initial design.

 

Drone is your cursor, which you move around freely to assume direct control over these units anywhere in the galaxy. Just as in any other strategy game, you can only control something directly one place at a time.

 

Randomization is okay, but I wouldn't mind some bounds being placed on it for sake of better playing exeperience. For example I would love to see turret factories guarantee certain stats scaled from the galaxy core, for example:

 

- The iron cannon will never do less than 10km of range, but no more than 15

- The Avorion cannon will never do less than 30km of range...

As well as some "makes sense" ones such as:

- The laser will never increase energy consumption more than 800/s

What is exact problem case for you to address with these limitations? As far as I can tell weapons has their corresponding brackets already. I've never encountered any issues with stats of weapons myself, which is why I'm asking.

 

If you ask me, I have much more issues with the balance and functions of weapons between one another, i.e:

 

1.) Railguns should have the greater range than Cannons, as Cannons are just about as imperfectly accurate as them, but more prone to misses against moving targets due to low projectile velocity. Cannons, however should grant much greater DPS due to splash damage. Railguns should have very fast projectiles, not instagib beams and MUST NOT deal multiplied damage against Hull in any circumstances.

 

Additionally, I think that we should expand on the categories of weapons a little bit. In order to do that, we add another Heavy weapon type, an Ion Cannon, that does work as an instagib beam instead of a Railgun, and does multiplied damage against Shields. Lightning Cannons and Tesla Turrets should do damage against Energy of the target - Lightning consumes chunks of enemy stored Energy, while Tesla drains target's generation rate. Plasma Turrets already satisfy the medium-to-short range specialty against shields.

 

2.) I think that the idea of increased power drain is entirely superfluous. Lasers, Plasma, overcharged salvage and mining beams etc, all should overheat just like any other weapon that already does. Different weapons should just have different heat capacity and thus fire longer before overheat, but also have longer cooldown. Weapons with lower power demand fire perpetually, but weapons with massive power demand deliver massive amount of damage over short periods of time over longer range, then cooldown. Long range weapons like Lightning and Railguns should have massive power demand, that will necessitates using them on larger ships with sufficient Energy Batteries, instead of even larger Generators.

 

Increasing power drain system just make corresponding weapons unreliable and discourage their use in favor of overheating weapons. In fact, it can prove to be a critical mistake in using them on AI controlled ships, as they have no course of action when their energy batteries are exhausted with such weapons.

 

3.) Missile Launchers should be a very powerful bombardment tool with massive splash damage, but much lower range. As they're designed now, they're little more than worse versions of Cannons, that has very little uses. Their projectiles also should accelerate over time towards a set limit. When they're using Heat-Seeker missiles, these can be used as a heavy variety of Anti-Fighter Cannons, and without them they're powerful tools against capital ships in close-quarter combat.

 

And yes, massive engine flares on them are also unnecessary - they look more like you firing heavy plasma balls, not small missiles.

 

Likewise, if we want to take inspiration from other RPG, why not have item variants?

 

- The Avenger Railgun - 1 shot every 5 seconds, high damage, high range

- The Sentinel Railgun - 1 shot every 1.5 second, less damage and range

 

Turret generator could then grab the mineral we are in -> pick turret type -> pick turret subtype -> randomize its stats within template

 

Turret factories would randomize between types and subtypes, so Factory A has Avenger Railgun, Sentinel Cannon, Hedgehog Launcher and Factory B would have Sentinel Cannon, Pulverizer Laser and Something Mining Laser.

 

As player you would get general idea what stats to expect from turrets bought at turret factories and equipment docks, but you would still have to search for turret factory that has that turret and subtype that you want for your build, because each turret factory would offer just random selection of turrets to build. Or perhaps turret factories themselves should specialize? Eg. "Launchers factory", "Cannons factory"?

 

Sadly, this would take boatload of hours to get implemented. :C

The problem with that, is that its essentially an arbitrary limitation. There's no reason to draw inspiration from other RPGs, because Avorion is not an RPG.

 

Like I've said, it will work just as well if you can find or research a Turret, then bring it to the Turret Factory and convert it into a Turret Blueprint. Then, just like with Fighters, you can reproduce that Turret and name it however you want. You'd be able to feed that blueprint into your own Turret Factory, and it will be capable of reproducing it just like NPC factories produce their own models.

[riess]

What is exact problem case for you to address with these limitations? As far as I can tell weapons has their corresponding brackets already. I've never encountered any issues with stats of weapons myself, which is why I'm asking.

 

Depending on your luck, the turret factories can be total garbage. I've explored 1/4 of my current galaxy outside the barrier and entire barrier and I am yet to find turret factory beating that one Naonite laser I've found 3 hours into the game. I can't find any Ogo mining laser with effectiveness greater than 15% or salvaging laser better than 20%.

 

By placing some bounds you will get more predictable RNG on turret factories.

 

 

There's no reason to draw inspiration from other RPGs, because Avorion is not an RPG.

 

This is false dichotomy.

 

Also Avorion already implements mechanics from RPG games:

 

- procedurally generated game world like in roguelikes

- randomized loot with different classes of uniqueness

- research stations are de-facto Horadric Cube/Gnome Chaos Machine

- accessories enhancing certain stats of characters

 

 

Like I've said, it will work just as well if you can find or research a Turret, then bring it to the Turret Factory and convert it into a Turret Blueprint.

 

I don't really mind this either. Player could then mass produce looted turrets, researched turrets, or turrets from equipment docs.

[DivineEvil]

Depending on your luck, the turret factories can be total garbage. I've explored 1/4 of my current galaxy outside the barrier and entire barrier and I am yet to find turret factory beating that one Naonite laser I've found 3 hours into the game. I can't find any Ogo mining laser with effectiveness greater than 15% or salvaging laser better than 20%.

 

By placing some bounds you will get more predictable RNG on turret factories.

Mmm, not really. Its just changes the consideration of what is to call garbage. The RNG will work all the same. Again, the problem is not that you can't beat the Naonite laser that you've found. The problem that you can't just bring that laser to the factory and reproduce it. Not sure about the Ogonite turrets you were searching - I can hardly find a factory, that grant Xanion turrets that bad.

 

This is false dichotomy.

There's no dichotomy here in the first place.

 

Also Avorion already implements mechanics from RPG games:

 

- procedurally generated game world like in roguelikes

- randomized loot with different classes of uniqueness

- research stations are de-facto Horadric Cube/Gnome Chaos Machine

- accessories enhancing certain stats of characters

Neither of these features are RPG-specific. Roguelike is a roguelike, not RPG - most RPGs has a setup world.

Randomized loot does not make the game an RPG - many RPG games has set items with different rarity ratings, that are simply not displayed.

Research stations doesn't make the game an RPG - vast majority of RPGs do not have anything like that.

Stats enhancements do not make the game an RPG - some racing games, simulators and action games also has those.

 

RPG is a game, where player controls a single or a group of characters with certain defined specializations and associated progression paths, that are moving across the game world following objectives and making decisions with variable outcomes and solving problems in a variety of ways depending on the character feats. So the RPG features applicable to other genres may include but are not limited to: Created and pre-designed characters, specialized character classes,  extensive prescribed level-based progression, quests with variable outcomes based on player's choices, dynamic inter-party relations, moral and immoral actions, etc.

 

You only learn to understand the distinction if you've played RPGs of the old days. Today, we have all of those cool new bells and whistles, that make such games more appealing and replayable, but they never were what made the game an RPG nor made a MMO into a MMORPG.

[riess]

Again, the problem is not that you can't beat the Naonite laser that you've found.

 

I've didn't find a laser. I've found factory. All my ships so far are mounting 10-20 lasers because nothing else tops that DMG per slot.

 

There's no dichotomy here in the first place.

 

Oh, but you acting to the contrary, taking 180 degree stance to everything that doesn't align with your points.

 

Unless somebody agrees with you, you will make it your point to contest all parts of message you are replying to. You'll go as low as to argue semantics, and then argue for red herring just to make sure you've got last word or "right" . I've observed it there, and I've observed it other feedback threads you are participating in.

 

The way you are arguing Avorion having RPG mechanics is meaningless to larger debate - a red herring. Bulk of people are describing this game the Space Diablo/Eve Offline. Even if you prove that characteristics of RPG are also present in other genres, that doesn't make logically sound counterpoint to Avorion mechanics overlapping with RPG genre.

[DivineEvil]

I've didn't find a laser. I've found factory. All my ships so far are mounting 10-20 lasers because nothing else tops that DMG per slot.

Tesla probably can do that, since it deals like 5x the damage against shields.

 

Oh, but you acting to the contrary, taking 180 degree stance to everything that doesn't align with your points.

It's called arguing for my points. I'm sorry you do not realize you can actually do that. If I don't have a stance, then I don't participate.

 

Unless somebody agrees with you, you will make it your point to contest all parts of message you are replying to. You'll go as low as to argue semantics, and then argue for red herring just to make sure you've got last word or "right" . I've observed it there, and I've observed it other feedback threads you are participating in.

Not all parts, only the ones I somewhat disagree with. The point is mostly to make people defend and reinforce the necessity and importance of suggestions they're making. There's no red herrings here.

 

If you finding something misleading, then you have a freedom to not drive it further and respond to the relevant cases, for example why do you consider it important to have arbitrary distinctions between weapon variants. You were the one who ignored that argument and went for this path instead. Don't blame me for your decisions.

 

The way you are arguing Avorion having RPG mechanics is meaningless to larger debate - a red herring. Bulk of people are describing this game the Space Diablo/Eve Offline. Even if you prove that characteristics of RPG are also present in other genres, that doesn't make logically sound counterpoint to Avorion mechanics overlapping with RPG genre.

I'm not proving RPG features in other games - I'm proving that Avorion has none of those. Actually, evaluating Avorion as an RPG is the greatest red herring there is to find. It's just objectively not, which is why making suggestions that rely on that definition is counter-productive. Whatever someone describes it is irrelevant - if there's no defined player character present, then it cannot be an RPG by definition.

 

When you see a greater picture and understand what Avorion was designed to be and where it's being led across time, then you realize which suggestions drive it further along the concept.

[riess]

All right...

 

Tesla probably can do that, since it deals like 5x the damage against shields.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Or perhaps I'll kill my inner min-maxer and willfully go for something weaker just for variety's sake ;)

 

 

It's called arguing for my points. ... If I don't have a stance, then I don't participate.

 

If every forum exchange is an argument for you, then this indeed explains the attitude you are bringing here.

 

 

I'm sorry you do not realize you can actually do that.

 

It's jabs like this that make discussion's participant come out as confrontational to others. Keep doing it and you become toxic to the community overall.

 

 

The point is mostly to make people defend and reinforce the necessity and importance of suggestions they're making.

 

The intention is noble one, but the package is a turn off. ;)

 

People come to gaming communities to drop observations, ideas and experiences. Its extension of the fun they've had at game. If you make things dead serious, you will end everybody who's not alike quit. Basically, you will end with Infinity Battlescape's forums where same 5 people are hounding everybody else off for years because they will beat every point going against their vision of the game to the ground.

 

People will sometimes propose things simply because they find them cool. Like me, because I loke cool weapon names in space games. Or like that guy next thread who proposed Stellaris galaxy map, because he found it cool looking.

 

 

I'm not proving RPG features in other games - I'm proving that Avorion has none of those. Actually, evaluating Avorion as an RPG is the greatest red herring there is to find.

 

People claim that Avorion has RPG features, not that it is. This is also why I've called it your original stance on the matter a false dichotomy. According to your argument so far a game can be either 100% RPG, or 0% RPG, with nothing inbetween. You are completely blind to concept of mixing genres and games having influences form other genres.

 

And I've called your previous points red herring, because thats what they were. I've said "this looks similiar to elephant, it has long thunk, big ears and seems very large!" and you said "it's not elephant! Tapir also has large thunk, fennec also has large ears and whales are also large!". This way of deconstructing opponents argument into individual points, then arguing those points in isolation is not logically sound - and may be intepreted as sign of dishonest intent between other side's participation in discussion.

 

The "objectively not" and "by definition" are just a rhetorical manouvers to give your opinion more credibility in the eyes of bystanders - they don't hold up to popular scrutiny.

 

Whatever someone describes it is irrelevant - if there's no defined player character present, then it cannot be an RPG by definition.

 

In Avorion your ship is a player defined character. In fact, I would argue that Avorion is also a game featuring player created character classes, and (in if player chooses so), a party RPG! Ships/characters manifest player's presence within the game world, they are heavily player-defined, they fight, loot, obtain magic trinkets improving their stats.

 

I would also like to add that for many players sandbox games focused on player generated content are intrusively RPG'ish in their nature. Because so little is defined in world-burding sense, the players themselves start making up stories and playing out the roles within those.

 

 

When you see a greater picture and understand what Avorion was designed to be and where it's being led across time, then you realize which suggestions drive it further along the concept.

 

Let me answer to this with single quote from makers of one of failed software products of recent times:

 

Unfortunately you’re not in the market you think you’re in – you’re in the market your users think you’re in.

 

Its same for all computer software. It's why some games stay niche forever while other grow. Creators assuming "A" is sell-point, while players come for "B". Creators adapt and the core fanbase cries "treason!", or they stay faithful to the vision and core goes "you just don't understand what the game is about".

 

I'll leave it up to you to think where you are on that spectrum.

[DivineEvil]

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Or perhaps I'll kill my inner min-maxer and willfully go for something weaker just for variety's sake ;)

I sell all Lasers and PDLs, just because they lack their own charisma. Wish they would fire in pulses and overheat.

 

If every forum exchange is an argument for you, then this indeed explains the attitude you are bringing here.

Every one that is about suggestions and issues. People make claims and I evaluate them. I make claims and people are free to evaluate them. Same with this thread. There's arguments given, and I respond to them when I care. And here, we don't even have a suggestion - its a discussion on the topic. If there's a place to expect the arguing in, its here.

 

 

It's jabs like this that make discussion's participant come out as confrontational to others. Keep doing it and you become toxic to the community overall.

I usually don't do these. You can check on your own if you want. I'm just highlighting the point, that forums can in fact involve arguing for and against the points in question. A forum, where nobody is arguing, and agrees with everything and never points out the problems, is as good as dead to me.  If that makes others consider me as toxic, fine.

Frankly, I'm old enough to not give a damn. My arguments stand on their own merits.

 

 

 

People come to gaming communities to drop observations, ideas and experiences. Its extension of the fun they've had at game. If you make things dead serious, you will end everybody who's not alike quit. Basically, you will end with Infinity Battlescape's forums where same 5 people are hounding everybody else off for years because they will beat every point going against their vision of the game to the ground.

I don't think your description applies to the thread we're in. I think its a pretty broad criticism of the game, that should be discussed seriously, trying to find the best potential solutions possible.

My points aren't special. You can prove me wrong. You also can ignore me, that's fine. Anyone is welcome to introduce their input. I hope you are not criticizing me for being active on a forum, which otherwise sees very little action.

 

 

People will sometimes propose things simply because they find them cool. Like me, because I loke cool weapon names in space games. Or like that guy next thread who proposed Stellaris galaxy map, because he found it cool looking.

Yes, and that is the type of an proposition that I hate the most. Any change or the addition to the game or software has to be justified, especially when talking about very small indie developer teams like Avorion have. It has to be possible, functional and beneficial for the players and thus for the game as a whole, proportional to the efforts required. If it also happens to be cool, there's nothing better than that. However, just being "cool" doesn't  cut it, especially if its one of a "seen it in other game, it was cool, lets copy it" kind.

 

Sure, you can look at it in a "yeah it looks cool, thumbs-up, good idea" manner - what are the developers supposed to do with it? Like, seriously, what kind of changes are expected by the author of the idea? And then people start to wonder why majority of suggestions are ignored - most likely because those suggestions aren't provided in a form, that describes the actual objectives and explains why reaching them would make the game better.

 

So yeah, we have got different named variants for Torpedoes. Why did we got them? Because torpedoes are variable types of ammunition for a single weapon, and their stats are not random. This is hard to apply to the weapon turrets with RNG stats, unless you sacrifice RNG for the sake of cool, but ultimately meaningless distinctions.

 

 

People claim that Avorion has RPG features, not that it is. This is also why I've called it your original stance on the matter a false dichotomy. According to your argument so far a game can be either 100% RPG, or 0% RPG, with nothing inbetween. You are completely blind to concept of mixing genres and games having influences form other genres.

 

And I've called your previous points red herring, because thats what they were. I've said "this looks similiar to elephant, it has long thunk, big ears and seems very large!" and you said "it's not elephant! Tapir also has large thunk, fennec also has large ears and whales are also large!". This way of deconstructing opponents argument into individual points, then arguing those points in isolation is not logically sound - and may be intepreted as sign of dishonest intent between other side's participation in discussion.

OP called it a hybrid between an RPG and a Building Game. My point just about that there's nothing RPG about Avorion, period. There's many features and mechanics, some of them come from many different genres, but none of them originate from RPG. This is why Avorion is not tagged as RPG, even though people are capable of defining those tags themselves.

 

I've never deconstructed your arguments - I addressed them using the same counter-argument. Talking analogies, you're basically arguing that the plane is a car, and when I say its not, you reply with "oh, but it has wheels and doors and a windshield and combustion engines and stuff". Well that true, but that's not the primary features that define a car - all of these features exist in completely different objects. Its a good starting point to know the difference between the plane and a car, because otherwise you might suggest additions, that a plane doesn't need at best, or even can make it worse at what it supposed to do.

 

 

The "objectively not" and "by definition" are just a rhetorical manouvers to give your opinion more credibility in the eyes of bystanders - they don't hold up to popular scrutiny.

Definitions, that do not hold to public scrutiny are useless. You either agree to definitions, or you don't. If you don't then you can just as well throw them all out of the window and just call it all "features". If you do, then you have to understand what the RPG genre implies and what features defines it as such.

 

 

In Avorion your ship is a player defined character. In fact, I would argue that Avorion is also a game featuring player created character classes, and (in if player chooses so), a party RPG! Ships/characters manifest player's presence within the game world, they are heavily player-defined, they fight, loot, obtain magic trinkets improving their stats.

Using this methodology, I can define the vast majority of games as RPGs, which makes the underlying principle useless. I can hardly understand, how can you not see a difference between a character and a unit. I don't think there's an RPG that makes you spend harvested resources to construct character, nor the one, that allows you to just build as many of them as you want.

 

 

I would also like to add that for many players sandbox games focused on player generated content are intrusively RPG'ish in their nature. Because so little is defined in world-burding sense, the players themselves start making up stories and playing out the roles within those.

They're RPG'ish because a player has a character they control. Once they have units and building and harvest resources to build more units and upgrading them and replacing the lost ones, this is not an RPG.

 

In Avorion, I have made up a whole race with background and lore and "enforced" approach to difference NPC factions, etc. and I actively working to design a catalog of ship/turret designs and station templates with shared stylistic decisions and all that jazz, but that still doesn't magically change the genre of the game I'm playing.

 

 

Let me answer to this with single quote from makers of one of failed software products of recent times:

"Unfortunately you’re not in the market you think you’re in – you’re in the market your users think you’re in."

 

Its same for all computer software. It's why some games stay niche forever while other grow. Creators assuming "A" is sell-point, while players come for "B". Creators adapt and the core fanbase cries "treason!", or they stay faithful to the vision and core goes "you just don't understand what the game is about".

 

I'll leave it up to you to think where you are on that spectrum.

It's a little simpler than that. Creators make a product, that offers something to players. Players who want this product play the game, and player who want something else will play something else.

 

This is how any market works. First, you have pioneers, that kick-start the market by offering something completely new, mostly placing an emphasis on the ideas over execution. Then the entrepreneurs flood the market and exploit it based on what most people want for profits - these are the games, which are most popular, largely the most conceptually primitive and the clones of the same idea with focus on the execution. And then you have indie's, which still offer something new, even though it will never be as popular, holding to the principles of pioneers - ideas over profits.

 

Avorion is not a game made for profits - games like PUBG are. Avorion is a niche game, because like few others of such sort, it is based on the idea, that your creative skills is what make you succeed in it. Nobody is taking Shipyard-generated ships seriously. Nobody is relying on their twitch-shooter or deep-strategy abilities here. People who are unwilling to spend time harvesting variable resources and building ships will not be able to receive what Avorion has to offer, so it has nothing to do with selling points. Same is true for Starmade. Same is true for Empyrion. Same is true for From The Depths. Same is true for Space Engineers. Same is true for Kerbal Space Program. Niche games usually grow by becoming better, not by becoming different. If you really want for Avorion to grow, then you'd need to get rid of building principles and instead add surface-level bells and whistles, but that will not longer be Avorion.

 

There's a similar difference between Artists and Designers. An Artist mostly does what he wants, and some people like it. A Designer does what people will like, and what he wants is irrelevant.

[Wanderer]

What does it change when it carries the name RPG or not? If its the character, i agree on the ship being it or the drone being it and controlling the ship from the drone or so. But what does it matter if there's a caracter or not?

 

To be on topic: i think they should just make found guns reproducible and made guns less good, but too change the research factory bcs thats one of the big points wich need improvement.