General Empyrion Thread

GasBandit

Staff member
Also, I would imagine that, at least to some degree, thrust to weight ratios, center of gravity, center of mass, and all that fun stuff still factors in; so unless you like flying the equivalent of a trash barge, putting all of your thrusters in a core in the middle of your ship isn't really going to cut it.
Actually, that only really pertains to SVs, and only when they're in atmo, and even then only to a limited degree.

For CVs, the thrusters are actually pretty overpowered. You only need enough rear thrusters to get you to 90m/s in short order (because that's max velocity for CVs) and enough ventral thrusters to do slightly more than fight off gravity while on a planet so that you can lift off. Then you need a few minor thrusters pointing the other directions so that the ship won't drift while stopped.

Any more than that and you run into the problem the Legion has - SO many thrusters SO huge, looks SO cool, but 2.5 mins of continuous thrust will drain the fuel tanks dry, despite never going faster than 90 m/s.

So, CVs can literally be any shape and size, thrusters can go anywhere regardless of center of mass, and it doesn't really matter where you put your RCS either - as long as you have enough of them to move the mass.

The physics calcs in this game are WAAAAAAY behind where SE was.
 
Yeah, but it's still one step closer to what we were tacitly promised with Spore - fully expansive 4X play, from pre-civilization days to planet colonization, and this one has a much better ship design/build engine than, say, KSP (because that one's going a lot more for scientific authenticity and space exploration).
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Yeah, but it's still one step closer to what we were tacitly promised with Spore - fully expansive 4X play, from pre-civilization days to planet colonization, and this one has a much better ship design/build engine than, say, KSP (because that one's going a lot more for scientific authenticity and space exploration).
Heh, even SE didn't approach KSP's level of physics simulation.

But the practical upshot is you don't need to worry about things like center of mass or where the thrusters are. You could put them in a tight little ball all pointed at each other deep insides 3 layers of armor, and it'd work. RCS can go anywhere, and 1 T2 RCS is as good as 300 T1 (I think).

A lot of people just end up making solid combat steel cubes with all the guts on the insides and all the turrets on the outside. And that makes the admins of this server cranky :p But if they keep spawning "alien infestations" on me when I'm trying to build things, I might just start doing it to spite them.
 
Heh, even SE didn't approach KSP's level of physics simulation.

But the practical upshot is you don't need to worry about things like center of mass or where the thrusters are. You could put them in a tight little ball all pointed at each other deep insides 3 layers of armor, and it'd work. RCS can go anywhere, and 1 T2 RCS is as good as 300 T1 (I think).

A lot of people just end up making solid combat steel cubes with all the guts on the insides and all the turrets on the outside. And that makes the admins of this server cranky :p But if they keep spawning "alien infestations" on me when I'm trying to build things, I might just start doing it to spite them.
You really can't blame players for taking the most efficient route when nothing but failure waits for them if they don't. And it CAN be fun to fail, but only if you felt like you actually had a chance to begin with.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
You really can't blame players for taking the most efficient route when nothing but failure waits for them if they don't. And it CAN be fun to fail, but only if you felt like you actually had a chance to begin with.
IE, if it's enforced amongst everybody that thrusters have to be outside/clear to work, then it is fair... but if it's not, and one person cheezballs it, then everybody has to, to stay competitive.
 
My attempt to settle on the relatively fertile planet of Sienna failed, as the planet looked pretty well tapped out when I flew overhead, so I headed for Aitis instead (don't ask me why, I don't know). And then I was out of refined pentaxid, so I built my base on Aitis, and when Aislynn woke up from her nap she ferried in some more supplies - so GBI now has an outpost on the heavily radioactive swamp planet of Aitis. Be careful, there are a lot of aggressive aliens out there. Also, please don't land on my roof. The landing pad fell off the side, so until it gets rebuilt, there's just no room up there.
 
Yep, took too long to get supports built under the wing that had a mountain under it back on Akua when I blueprinted the base. The ramp up to it is still there, though. So... yay?
 
GBI Aitis Branch is closed. There are just too damn many poison spitting spiders on that swampy rock. Everything of value has been stripped out and the concrete shell can rot in the swamp for all I care. I'm headed somewhere with brighter skies (and fewer aliens, hopefully).
 
GBI Aitis Branch is closed. There are just too damn many poison spitting spiders on that swampy rock. Everything of value has been stripped out and the concrete shell can rot in the swamp for all I care. I'm headed somewhere with brighter skies (and fewer aliens, hopefully).
And thus another boom town bites the dust...
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Our fleet grows, as does our strength.



From left to right: The Legion, The Belial and the Azrael, the Yaral Orbital Branch (with Megas standing atop and the Cornucopia II slightly below that), The Basilisk, The Tantive IV (refit to be a full warship), the Phoenix, and the Lilith.

We and our allies are going to get together saturday to attack the aliens. We could use more pilots, though - we have the ships ready to go, but not as many bodies as ships.
 
And thus another boom town bites the dust...
Quite literally. I said something about it at the time, but one of the spiders on that planet was quite literally pushing my hover tank around, and took four full clips of T2 AR to kill - they take more to kill with the gatling cannons on an SV than anything else on the planet, including the Overseers and the Alien Assassins in Red.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
And in a reference that very few of us will get (cough @DarkAudit cough), Noodles the admin said in discord today that she considers herself to be similar to 002 from Darling in the Franxx.

I couldn't help myself, and chimed in "Really? You strike me more similar to Shelly from Jabberjaw."

We'll see if there's fallout >_<
 
And in a reference that very few of us will get (cough @DarkAudit cough), Noodles the admin said in discord today that she considers herself to be similar to 002 from Darling in the Franxx.

I couldn't help myself, and chimed in "Really? You strike me more similar to Shelly from Jabberjaw."

We'll see if there's fallout >_<
Is it bad that I get BOTH?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
FranXX is on Crunchyroll, and Zero Two is EVERYWHERE, so I wouldn’t say it’s Japan only.
That doesn't mean it's well known. Hell, nobody but me in this building of 30+ people knows what crunchyroll even is! I think there's ONE guy who's seen SOME dragon ball Z, but it would have been, like, on Toonami 20 years ago.
 
My first HV has been a pain in the ass. It's lunky and unweildy and drives like a pregnant yak. I figured it was just a bad design since it was a starter HV.

So I broke it down for parts and built the "Nimble Miner" from the workshop. It totally lives up to its name. I can use it to dig down to sub-surface mineral deposits, clear them out, and then (usually) back out to the surface in minutes. In the couple of instances where I've gotten stuck, I was able to point the thing nose up and dig myself right back out.

I went to Yaral for a test run, and in 23 minutes, I was able to completely clear out 4 deposits (erestrum, zascosium, mercury and pentaxid) as well as clean up a Sathium asteroid that was between deposits.

I've named it, appropriately, "Strip Miner".
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Alpha 8 Experimental 4 has hit. They've added a portable heater/cooler, and included it in your starting gear, so that people will stop freezing to death on their first couple nights :D
 

GasBandit

Staff member
My first HV has been a pain in the ass. It's lunky and unweildy and drives like a pregnant yak. I figured it was just a bad design since it was a starter HV.

So I broke it down for parts and built the "Nimble Miner" from the workshop. It totally lives up to its name. I can use it to dig down to sub-surface mineral deposits, clear them out, and then (usually) back out to the surface in minutes. In the couple of instances where I've gotten stuck, I was able to point the thing nose up and dig myself right back out.

I went to Yaral for a test run, and in 23 minutes, I was able to completely clear out 4 deposits (erestrum, zascosium, mercury and pentaxid) as well as clean up a Sathium asteroid that was between deposits.

I've named it, appropriately, "Strip Miner".
Make an extra one for Aislynn, please... I think the poor dear is still mining Yaral by drone.

Not that we need ingots at YOB any more, but still.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
And in a reference that very few of us will get (cough @DarkAudit cough), Noodles the admin said in discord today that she considers herself to be similar to 002 from Darling in the Franxx.

I couldn't help myself, and chimed in "Really? You strike me more similar to Shelly from Jabberjaw."

We'll see if there's fallout >_<
Well the reply came back:
Noodle2k1: Yes i'm 002. If i become aggitate i will devour your humanity.The recent episodes she became all dandere and bubbly.
Why's errbody on this server gotta be so fuckin chuunibyou.

She's a total Shelly.
 
I have resettled - this time on one of the high plains of Dunara. The base is set up, solar panels are enough to power pretty much everything at this point, and ship production has begun. Occasionally, I'll need to fly back to the dead hulk of the Aitis branch and pick up more water. I think there may be, at most, one more player base on this planet, and the rest is all dead/neutral PoIs. Having reworked the Anti-personnel tank so that it no longer requires all of your enemies to stand still on level ground, I'm working on spawning in the artillery version to clean up before I crank out a carrier. Oh, and as such, I've stolen a stack of Combat Steel blocks from YOB.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Ok, the attack on the aliens is coordinated for 8pm eastern tonight. Gared and Aislynn will be there, and Tinwhistler will be as well (if his wife lets him)... If any others (cough @Dei @Terrik @Snuffleupagus ) want a taste of endgame pvp combat, I've got enough ships to go around, all ammo'd up and everything.

(I'd have pinged Ashburner, too, but I know his comp can't handle it :/ )
 
Ok, the attack on the aliens is coordinated for 8pm eastern tonight. Gared and Aislynn will be there, and Tinwhistler will be as well (if his wife lets him)... If any others (cough @Dei @Terrik @Snuffleupagus ) want a taste of endgame pvp combat, I've got enough ships to go around, all ammo'd up and everything.

(I'd have pinged Ashburner, too, but I know his comp can't handle it :/ )
Nope, I have no interest in pvp'ing in a game I still don't really understand. :/
 

Dave

Staff member
What time would I ACTUALLY have to be on to start a character in multiplayer and get to where I needed to go to participate?
 
Ok, the attack on the aliens is coordinated for 8pm eastern tonight. Gared and Aislynn will be there, and Tinwhistler will be as well (if his wife lets him)... If any others (cough @Dei @Terrik @Snuffleupagus ) want a taste of endgame pvp combat, I've got enough ships to go around, all ammo'd up and everything.

(I'd have pinged Ashburner, too, but I know his comp can't handle it :/ )
I'm there in spirit.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Soooo the battle vs the enemy base was a complete mess with seconds-per-frame measurements instead of vice versa. Masperon-type planets (green fog) are shit. That aside, we actually managed to do alright. Tinwhistler especially was particularly effective in his heavy fighter at hammering out the alien battleship's armaments. Most of what we lost in the attack is already recovered and repaired.

Shortly after Aislynn logged off last night, the whole server went down. Apparently its hosting company is trying to deal with the windows 10 problem and didn't give anybody any notice. Some poor bastards got caught landed on defiant, and they're worried their ships might be gone when the server comes back up.

I spent the remainder of the night working with Iceman and Evasong, testing damage output on a hosted game on iceman's pc for some customized config files they're working on to try to rebalance the weapons and blocks such that they make more sense - for example, make hangar doors and thrusters harder to kill (they're tissue paper now, which is the problem), but also make artillery actually a threat to a stationary CV by being a near-guarantee of at least one combat steel block being destroyed on hit, to make up for the fact that artillery shells are slow moving. We ran into an amusing/infuriating bug that somehow made it so that if a hangar door was painted it took massively more damage. Oigh.

This coming week I plan to start patrolling PvP territory most every night looking for bozos to trash. If 2 or 3 of us can run in a pack, we stand an excellent chance of beating whoever we come across. I don't plan to go into any atmospheres, though :p
 
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Dave

Staff member
The battle was a laggy clusterfuck of epic proportions. I've cut down my video settings so it won't happen again. Ain't no reason Dave should be getting those kinds of framedrops.
 
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