April 2019 Suggestions

[Travis9x]

Regarding Beta Branch, v0.21.3

 

Excellent update, for once I actually have no complaints whatsoever with any of the changes in this patch!

With that said, I still have a few suggestions (I've posted some of these on previous updates):

1.  Taking no damage from collisions when flying above a certain velocity is dumb.  If we don't want collision damage, we can already reduce it or turn it off entirely.  If collision damage is on, then someone flying at 2000+ m/s through a dense asteroid field should die.  End of story.

2.  Harvesting AI is getting better (thank you!), but still needs improvement.  Regarding loot collection, it completely ignores drops from fighters.  For example, I've watched a salvaging carrier completely ignore exotic and legendary loot, because they were dropped from the salvage fighters, rather than from salvage turrets.

3.  Harvesting AI still gets stuck when it runs out of wreckages while salvaging.  For example, trying to tell a salvage ship to salvage wreckages in a sector, and then warp to another sector and refine the raw scraps.  It just stops when there are no more wrecks to be found, and does not continue with any further queued commands.

4.  An addition to #2, would be to add an option to harvesting commands, such as "Salvage and Loot", which will collect ALL loot lying about, in addition to salvaging wreckages.

5.  I still think R-Salvagers should get a bonus to loot drops, if not an increase to overall efficiency.  Or both.

6.  Targeting AI is still dumb.  As recommended previously, please have targeting AI for turrets and fighters take obstructions into consideration.  If the firing arc is blocked by a friendly, DON'T SHOOT.  This of course only applies to turrets with "independent targeting" trait (set to some kind of autofire option), and fighters.

7.  Penalty for firing on friendlies still needs to be reworked, especially if #6 has still not been fixed.  If an AI empire determines that you've been shooting at them too much, the relations to that empire - if it was positive prior to this incident - should be reset to 0 (rather than immediately going to abhorrent), and all military vessels in the sector turn hostile - and that sector ONLY.  Any further shots fired on the empire property (or if the relations were already negative) can affect relations as normal (negative impact per shot).  This allows the player to flee the sector, and attempt to repair the relations (such as if this incident was unintentional).  If relations are subsequently improved, the player should be able to return to that same sector, and all empire ships returned to friendly (non-hostile) status.

8.  An improvement to rockets/missiles...currently, they are basically useless without the "Seeker" trait, and even then, still a poor weapon choice compared to most others.  The Seeker trait can be made more useful, with some simple logic improvements.  If the rocket's target becomes invalid (such as if the target gets destroyed), then re-target to the closest enemy, and continue seeking for the remainder of the flight time.  If there is no enemy within the remaining flight time/distance, or no remaining enemies at all, then self-destruct.  Also, similar to #6, if the flight path becomes obstructed, then it should try to perform some simple maneuvers around the obstacle...and if that obstacle is a friendly, and a path around it cannot be found, then the rocket should self-destruct rather than impact that friendly.  These improvements would greatly increase the desirability of seeker missiles, making them a much more viable weapon choice.

8b. Probably a small oversight, but if a fighter is made from a launcher with the Seeker trait, that trait does not show up in the properties of the resulting fighter, although rockets fired from that fighter do pursue targets (the Seeker trait is obviously applied correctly, despite not showing on the fighter).

9.  I have occasionally seen an issue where a cargo item appears in the cargoholds of my harvesting ships, with no name or description, but does have a volume (so it is taking up space).  The quantity of these unidentified items are often in the THOUSANDS, taking up a LOT of valuable space.  These unknown items do not get consumed when refining, and do not have a trade value, so they are worthless and I end up having to dump them.  Here's where a big problem starts, because the objects DO appear in space when dumped, and when I'm dumping THOUSANDS of them, this creates a MASSIVE lag spike, even when only playing single-player!  PLEASE fix this bug.

10. The size of a turret is very misleading, when trying to create a new fighter.  Currently, it appears as though all the stats of a turret with a larger size (such as 1 or 1.5) get reduced to as though the turret were 0.5 size, when the fighter is created from it.  This can result in mis-judging which turret to use as the base for a fighter, and very unexpected and undesired results (since larger turrets usually have higher DPS, longer range, etc, but if scaled down to as though the turret were 0.5 size, might actually be a worse choice for fighter conversion than another, smaller, turret).  A better system would be to do the stat conversion the same as converting any other 0.5-size turret, and just have the larger turret size also result in a larger fighter (maybe more fighter HP as well).  Thus, the increased stats are offset by having a larger fighter that takes up more hanger space/capacity, or having to spend more points to reduce that size.  Especially large turrets can also result in really big fighters that require more pilots to fly.

11. Finally, there currently does not appear to be any way of creating a new fighter (such as from a turret) with shields.  The only way I've seen to be able to get a fighter with shields, is to purchase a randomly-generated one from a merchant.  99% of the time, random fighters (and turrets) are not as good as a custom-built one.  Please allow us to build fighters with shields.  This can be one of the spec options, to spend points on when designing the new fighter (dependent on the material of the fighter being Naonite or higher, of course).  Higher materials (such as Trinium, Xanion, and Avorion) can have a higher base shield stat too, since those materials produce better shields in ships.

[koonschi]

Thanks for the feedback! A lot of those things are planned, we just haven't gotten around to implement them yet.

 

Some comments on some of your points:

1. This is not true. The collision damage reduction happens only when an AI-Owned ship smashes into you, i.e. collisions that explicitly aren't the player's fault.

2 - 4: Please provide examples and file bug reports in our in-game reporter

5: R-Harvesting lasers DO have a massively increased efficiency

9: Please file a bug report and send us the savegame when this happens, you can send it to koonschi@avorion.net

11: Please file a bug report for this, it's mostly an oversight

[Travis9x]

Thanks for the feedback! A lot of those things are planned, we just haven't gotten around to implement them yet.

 

Some comments on some of your points:

1. This is not true. The collision damage reduction happens only when an AI-Owned ship smashes into you, i.e. collisions that explicitly aren't the player's fault.

2 - 4: Please provide examples and file bug reports in our in-game reporter

5: R-Harvesting lasers DO have a massively increased efficiency

9: Please file a bug report and send us the savegame when this happens, you can send it to koonschi@avorion.net

11: Please file a bug report for this, it's mostly an oversight

 

1.  Okay, I didn't know it only applied to other AI ships running into you.  I do not remember this being mentioned in the patch notes for this change.  Additionally, I have actually tested this by flying very fast into an asteroid (admittedly, it was an accidental test, lol), and saw that I did not take any damage at all.  I assumed this change was the reason for that.

2.  Is easily reproducible and observable.  Just have a salvaging carrier use salvage fighters to salvage a wreck.  Watch the harvesting AI just ignore the loot drops.  Note that this only occurs from salvage fighters, and not from any salvage turrets the ship may have equipped (for the test, should probably have only fighters and no turrets).  It does appear to properly collect loot if the drops are from salvage turrets.  I will use the in-game system to submit a bug report for this.

3.  I'll use the in-game system to submit a bug report for this.

4.  Is actually a suggestion, not a bug (as far as I'm aware).  A new harvesting mode that will also collect ALL loot in the sector, in addition to salvaging wrecks.

5.  Is referring specifically to salvaging turrets, not mining turrets.  R-mining turrets are fine for the most part, but I feel r-salvagers are lacking.  They should either have a bigger efficiency boost, or a bonus to loot drops…or both.

9.  Will do.  Thanks!

11?  Were you talking about 11, or 10?  11 is mostly a suggestion, and 10 was more of a bug report.