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So, we all have gripes about a game... here's a place to let them out!

I'll go first.

Jeez louise, the Empyrion Admin Helper tool's "full backup" backs up the ENTIRE INSTALLATION of the server, not just the game save and config files... that means a full backup is FOUR GIGS because the software still has all the texture files and whatnot that the dedicated server doesn't even use! ;_; SO WASTEFUL. And it makes the nightly restart take longer, because it does it between shutting down and starting the server back up!

My bat file to just copy the save folder was a much more svelte 83 megs. But I can't be sure it wasn't skipping files that were "in use."

Fortunately, the structure backups are only 40 megs or so. And really, they're the important things, I suppose. Which is why I have it doing a structure backup every hour.

But AUGH GAWD those full backups!

The symmetry and copy/paste tools for building in creative mode suck giant donkey balls. The copy and paste function is just as likely to delete what you want to reproduce and the symmetry tool has two nasty habits - first, it will allow you to put multiple cores in a building; and second, sometimes its idea of symmetry is seriously flawed. And why the hell can't it delete semi-symmetrically as well?!

This rant brought to you by massive building projects.

My client auto-updated to 8.1, and now I can't get in

I think I'm going to have to change my auto update. This has happened to a few people.

Tinwhistler said:

My client auto-updated to 8.1, and now I can't get in

Click to expand...

You can now.

GasBandit said:

You can now.

Click to expand...

No I can't. I'm at work.
I'll get my sweet vote reward later

I had to cram it before leaving for work, since I’m not going to be home tonight until 11-11:30 and didn’t want to run afoul of the too-close-to-midnight shenanigans, and it was getting down to the wire before I had to leave.

—Patrick

Two things. First, they really, really need to stop nerfing (and un-nerf some of what they've already done) HVs. Even before replacing all of the Heavy Steel blocks with HullSmallCombatSteel blocks all of the tanks that I designed either in Creative 8.0 or in 7.6.1 are now almost completely unusable. Case in point - the Bad Penny line of tanks. These things were beasts last edition - slow, stymied by tall mountains, but they could really withstand a pounding from PoI turrets, and when they were on flat ground they could get up to max speed without an issue and get some decent air off of small ridges and such. Now - and bear in mind, I have NOT upgraded to heavier armor - they're stymied by tall mountains, small mountains, small hills, cacti, surface rocks (in the 180hp range), trees, alien honey plants, tiny little rock spires, those three-bladed tree things near oases, sand dunes, small ridges, and even flat ground. Going downhill, I can almost get them up to 20m/s. They will not, under any circumstances, make it to top speed. The same can be said for the Juggler line of tanks I designed for 8.0. In creative they were fast, agile, could charge up even the highest points and barely be slowed down, and could avoid trees and small obstacles. Now, same issue. They're heavy, slow, can't accelerate, can't stop, can't turn, but are stopped instantly whenever they come near a plant or rock. Seriously, these things weigh upwards of 100t. How in the hell does one cactus stop something that weighs 100t and is traveling 25m/s?

Second, they really, really need to do something about those damn bomber drones. I'm the only person with a base on the planet I'm on right now, which is good. But that means I'm the only target for drone attacks. This still isn't a huge issue because, come on, it's me. The two bases I have down are bristling with atmo turrets, there are multiple tanks scattered around with hot turrets, and the atmospheric density is low enough that most drones are shot down 400 meters away. But, since offline protection doesn't defend against drones, and since turrets won't fire while you're logging into a playfield, what happens more often than not is, at Loading Structures 2% during log-in, I get the drone attack warning buzzer in my ears. It then takes up to a minute longer to log me in, and by the time I get there, there are holes in my base from the bomber drones that are right on top of me, not being shot down by my turrets.

Gared said:

Going downhill, I can almost get them up to 20m/s. They will not, under any circumstances, make it to top speed.

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I have an HV that can easily make it to 40m/s top speed in seconds (when I have all the engines turned on, that is). Last night, for the first time and while in a completely open field, I had it suddenly refuse to go above 10m/s even when under full thrust, no matter the direction. When going downhill, I could get it above 10m/s to 12.5m/s or so, and once I did that, my top speed was "unlocked" to be 12.5m/s, but if I slowed back down below that again for any reason, I was again stuck unable to go beyond 10m/s.

So I parked it, powered it off with Y, powered it back on again, and then suddenly my 40m/s max speed was restored again.



--Patrick

I discovered that the Bad Pennies were faster backward than they were forward, and since they were one of the models that had the backward compass I took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and put the cockpit on the other end of the tank facing the opposite direction. It still won't make it to 40m/s, but 25 is better than the 12 I was stuck with before.

Yeah, the fact that trees and such don't get knocked over by collision any more drives me up the damn wall. Even without an HV!

Gared said:

Second, they really, really need to do something about those damn bomber drones.

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Had an idea.. if you know what direction the bomber drones are coming from, can you build a 5x5 solid block of armored concrete around a core with a t1 gen and fuel tank 100m in that direction? I think the drones will go for that one first, and the damage would be trivial on these login events. I'll even grant special dispensation for it if you're already up to 5 bases there

GasBandit said:

Had an idea.. if you know what direction the bomber drones are coming from, can you build a 5x5 solid block of armored concrete around a core with a t1 gen and fuel tank 100m in that direction? I think the drones will go for that one first, and the damage would be trivial on these login events. I'll even grant special dispensation for it if you're already up to 5 bases there

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I'll let ya know.
Scratch that - I forgot there was a reason I built my base where I built it, and it precludes that option.

THE NEW REPAIR PADS ARE SO FUCKING PICKY ABOUT EVERYTHING. AAAAAAAAAGH

What? You have an HV parked somewhere on your SUPER CARRIER WITH 20 DOCKING BAYS?!? Nope. Can't fix a thing.

GasBandit said:

THE NEW REPAIR PADS ARE SO FUCKING PICKY ABOUT EVERYTHING. AAAAAAAAAGH

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Oh did you need to add 11,000 Sathium? Have fun putting it in one stack at a time. Oh, and let's make sure we wait a good 30 seconds between each entry, because even though there's already clearly a list showing that I don't have enough materials in yet, you'd better recheck after every addition. More than 2 meters from the repair pad? There's no ship there. Ship sitting right on the repair pad but some of it hangs below the pad? Ship's in the wrong spot, better move it.

Seriously, it's nice that Crazy went and stole the Malphas back from you and all, but now I have to scrap it instead of letting you do it.

Gared said:

Oh did you need to add 11,000 Sathium? Have fun putting it in one stack at a time. Oh, and let's make sure we wait a good 30 seconds between each entry, because even though there's already clearly a list showing that I don't have enough materials in yet, you'd better recheck after every addition. More than 2 meters from the repair pad? There's no ship there. Ship sitting right on the repair pad but some of it hangs below the pad? Ship's in the wrong spot, better move it.

Seriously, it's nice that Crazy went and stole the Malphas back from you and all, but now I have to scrap it instead of letting you do it.

Click to expand...

Heh, that loopy bastard spent all night repairing it. It's almost done.

Apparently, if you leave yourself logged in, and die of starvation in sight of the repair, and sit at the respawn screen, it doesn't unload the playfield. So the repair could continue all night.

That's another shortcoming of the new repair pads, too... if you leave them, the repair cancels -_-

Well, at least I don't have to scrap it myself then. It has proven, as predicted, completely useless in PvP combat.

Special thanks go out this morning to my wife, who I was able to talk through logging my character off the server while I was driving to work. I left myself logged in while I was in the shower because I was making a bunch of fusion cells, but then I forgot to log off before leaving the house. Thanks, honey. You're a lifesaver.

Oh and I believe I may have figured out a workaround for when your HV bogs down in a lake. I know I talk about my improved nimble miner design a lot, but one of its failings is that if I am traveling too quickly and then turn sideways, the fact that it's short in length and its cross-section is hexagonal means the momentum would then throw me into a roll, which gets annoying real fast.

So I mounted an additional pair of the small hover engines (one on each side) out from the center and higher than the main hover engines (i.e., if the main engines are the "feet" then these are more like the "elbows"). This solved the rollover problem (since they "push back" whenever it tries to roll), but they also have the side effect that whenever I get mired in a lake, they are high enough on the structure that they're still above the waterline (or close enough that rocking the vehicle puts them above the waterline) and can repel against the water surface, which lifts the vehicle enough for the main hover engines to fully pull it back above the water.

All that said, after pulling myself back up and out of the lake I frequently have my maximum speed reduced to 10m/s as I describe above, but that's still better than trying to slog my way to shore at the usual "drowned HV" speed of 0.5m/s.

--Patrick

Uuuughh DSL making it so my 48-hour-fuel-supply defense HVs really only last 48 hours is the piiiiiiits.

GasBandit said:

Uuuughh DSL making it so my 48-hour-fuel-supply defense HVs really only last 48 hours is the piiiiiiits.

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I've noticed that DSL also seems to "forget" that I have solar storage, so I will frequently log off with 3000 each of stored solar and fuel in my base and with consumption at a bare 380kW, but when I log back in 12hrs later, my fuel tanks are down to 1700 but my solar tanks are still brimming full at 3k.

--Patrick

TIL no two bases can share the same Y coordinate.
Want to build two bases in the same orbital playfield, even if they are dozens of km apart? Nope, sorry, "There is another object in the spawn area."

--Patrick

The current leveling experience is far too easy. Even without RDR hardware following a cb:reset it took me less than 20 play hours to get to level 25, using only tier 1 pre-fab vehicles, and I probably could have done it much faster if I hadn't made an HV first (aiming their gattling cannons is such a pain in the ass, and the leveling is much easier on Mathera than it is on Celes).

Gared said:

aiming their gattling cannons is such a pain in the ass

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SING IT, BROTHER

--Patrick

Finally had everything in my fridges die. There goes about 800-900 food. Lucky I've been stockpiling the emergency rations, those were fine.

Looks like my base ran out of fuel, my best guess is that DSL is still "forgetting" about solar when you're not logged in, on top of that I had a constructor churning out fusion cells, so I guess it acted like it was drawing that much power for the entire time I was gone and so went and drained all my fuel (which it said I had 30-odd hours' worth).

I find it annoying that the reason my base ran out of power was because I was crafting power cells. Hmph.

--Patrick

Why did all the weapon stats go away?

I made a chart in 8.1 of all the weapon damage types/ranges/etc, and now when I compare it to 8.2 most of the weapon damage numbers aren't even there any more, and the ones that are are different now, sometimes by as much as a factor of 50x. The patch notes for 8.2 say: [- Config.ecf: Removed "Range", "Damage", "AmmoCapacity", "AmmoType", "ReloadDelay", "ROF" from device because it will now be read from weapon itself] and I'm wondering if that had anything to do with it.

I posted about it on the forum, we'll see if anything comes of it.

--Patrick

Yeah, I was hoping that maybe they'd just moved the damage stats to the projectiles/ammo for those weapons, but it was not to be.

Ok, can confirm that at least some of the asteroids in Ningues orbit are not regenerating.
I never seemed to find them regenerated, not even after being the only person online for a while, and got suspicious. So I marked a couple, and here it is the next day and my marks are still there.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Ok, can confirm that at least some of the asteroids in Ningues orbit are not regenerating.
I never seemed to find them regenerated, not even after being the only person online for a while, and got suspicious. So I marked a couple, and here it is the next day and my marks are still there.

--Patrick

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Kay. When I get home tonight, I'll manually regenerate them, hopefully they're do themselves after that.

I've been discussing this with @Dave, but figured I should share with everyone.

Why I can't recommend a game in which I have nearly 1200 hours of playtime:

There are a lot of serious flaws in this game. Not just alpha-related bugs, like the drones that fall through the planet or the PoIs that don't regen, but seriously massive balance and design flaws. The fact that it's not possible to, through intelligent base design, build your way around two or three people attacking five bases (for a total of 210 defensive turrets) without cheesing the system and building your generators and core behind un-assailable ground is mind boggling to me. One of the things that I liked the most about Empyrion was that it was a great platform for exploration, survival, and design - but if the design portion can be defeated so easily and completely by parking one decoy ship in range, then that takes out a third of the potential of the game. And, since we're level 25 and have been to most, if not all, of the planets, there's very little exploration aspect left (not to mention is fecking tedious on size class 4 and 5 planets); and with heavy armor and decent weapons, the biggest challenge to survival tends to be forgetting to eat and/or running out of O2. Or stoned PoI running, but that's more dangerous for my teammates than it is for me, really.

Design was all I really had left. Absolute turret/weapon maximums regardless of vessel size means that ship design theory is really limited to two schools of thought - the "giant hunk o' cheese" school, and the "tiny maneuverable mosquito" school - and Gas' two hour long stomping by XPA shows which one works and which doesn't, rather decisively (as if the three times the Malphas was slagged in combat weren't enough). Aside from miners/harvesters and small, fast scouting vessels, HVs are completely useless these days. Adding combat steel blocks to their component list but not adding to their thruster pool has created a horrible diminishing returns situation where you can never have enough thrusters to move your added armor while also keeping those thrusters safe - and they all have so few hp that if you don't jacket them in completely, you'll be immobile within seconds of the fight starting. And that's before the fact that they sink over water, they can't handle fields of rocks, they get stuck on cacti (that don't even provide wood when cut down), they can't go around or through trees, and all of the other crap they've started doing.

Combine all of this and it starts feeling like talent trees in WoW. Sure, you could choose any talents you wanted. Unless you wanted to be effective, then you had to pick these very specific talents, in this order, with this armor, and these weapons, and these supporting party members, and that's it. Any deviation from these directives and you can kiss any chance of being effective goodbye. In Empyrion's case, however, it's:

If you want to be effective, you have to keep most of your stuff in PvE playfields, because PvP playfields are just too vulnerable. No combination/amount of bases and ships can defend a base against live attackers, so having multiple bases is a detriment. This means, sadly, that being in a faction with your buddies is more of a hindrance than it is a benefit, because you either all have to use the same base in PvP territory or have all of your bases in PvE space, because if any one of you is logged on, all of your stuff is vulnerable. In fact, you can't even have alliances with your friends, outside of factions, because any time someone's allies are on, everybody's offline protection is deactivated, which means the only way you can have bases in PvP space without everything being extremely vulnerable to the point of laughability, is to have a complete free-for-all, or just have informal truces with people and manually chart their bases so you don't run into them unexpectedly. If you want to be effective in PvP combat, you have to fly a small, agile CV, with really well protected rocket launchers. Or, you can build whatever you want, but if any of your opponents are playing with a small, agile CV, you'll lose every time.

I just don't like being shown tons of choice, but then railroaded down to one specific, narrow path. So really, unfortunately, running up against XPA has completely destroyed most of the fun I had playing this game. Not because they're bullies, or server locusts, or cheese monkeys taking advantage of exploits, or anything like that. They seem like really nice people. It's just that they've exposed the meta-theorycrafting required to win at the game, and that took all of the creativity out of it. So, now the exploration is grindy hell, there's no survival aspect worth mentioning at this level (and no consequences even if you do die), and no fun creative design. Oh, and if I play with my friends, we're all at a disadvantage. Sounds like a blast.

Well, you ain't wrong.

Like I said before, it was my problem, not theirs or anyone else'. That being said, it is just my problem, so I hope everyone else continues to enjoy themselves. It just means that I won't likely be back any time soon, if ever. The game doesn't satisfy any of my gaming needs/wants.

Gared said:

Like I said before, it was my problem, not theirs or anyone else'. That being said, it is just my problem, so I hope everyone else continues to enjoy themselves. It just means that I won't likely be back any time soon, if ever. The game doesn't satisfy any of my gaming needs/wants.

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Maybe it'll be different in a few years, but some days, with the slow progress this game has made (it's been in early access for THREE YEARS already), I sometimes wonder if it will ever become an actual game.

GasBandit said:

Maybe it'll be different in a few years, but some days, with the slow progress this game has made (it's been in early access for THREE YEARS already), I sometimes wonder if it will ever become an actual game.

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I came to many of the same conclusions that Gared came to, a few weeks ago (thus my absence as of late). The game has come a long way from when I first got it. The first time I tried to play it, I think I put 30 minutes into it before I said "this is awful."

Now, it's not awful. It just doesn't really meet the promise of its premise. There's not much in the way of exploration, and pvp is horribly broken. I have a base out there in PVP space, surrounded by four other large bases, all tricked out to the max with turrets and ammo. But I don't have any illusions that a small team of 2-4 players could easily wipe it out if they ever run across it. That points to a large game imbalance--5 max turret bases ought to be a much greater challenge. And it means that you really can't build anything in pvp space, because it will only exist as long as someone doesn't find it. Once its location is known, there's not a lot you can do to keep it safe short of turning on OP and never logging in again. The only way to win is to not play the game?

Really, the way XPA is playing is the only end-game avenue, and you can't blame them for that.

I will say, though, that I don't think the "small agile" CV thing is accurate. XPA's design is deceptive - they're agile, but not really "small." It works the meta to technically be size class 1.49, but it's literally the same size/mass as most class 5s. They have the same amount of turrets, the same design philosophy, etc etc. The main reason they beat me was simple - there were 3 of them, and there was 1 of me. In a 1v1, I'm pretty sure I could have taken any of them. But 3 on 1, that's 120 turrets/mounted weapons to my 40, and any difference in the number of guns means exponentially faster losses for the guy with less. That, and the protection for the Cheese's turrets is based on fighting 1v1... being attacked from 3 different angles means it is losing turrets much too fast.

That said, the meta is the problem. You HAVE to bury your thrusters in armor, you HAVE to have multiple layers of armors with whitespace gaps between them to catch lag shots. You HAVE to do your ship designs in such a way that your turrets become de facto mounted weapons, only aiming straight forward and being protected from fire on all other sides. You HAVE to put so many thrusters and T2 RCS blocks on your CV that, no matter the size, it handles like a small, agile fighter. You HAVE to have decoy devices inside armor (and more gaps/whitespaces). At least, you have to do all that if you want to be competitive in PvP. These are all symptoms of bad/incomplete design.

Tinwhistler said:

I have a base out there in PVP space, surrounded by four other large bases, all tricked out to the max with turrets and ammo.

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I think I’ve been there.
But I’m not hunting and I don’t feel like I have something to prove, either. The server population is small enough that we don’t actually have to compete for resources, so PvP is currently really only a problem if someone decides to make it a problem.

Gared said:

ship design theory is really limited to two schools of thought - the "giant hunk o' cheese" school, and the "tiny maneuverable mosquito" school - and Gas' two hour long stomping by XPA shows which one works and which doesn't, rather decisively

Click to expand...

Gas’ stomping was not a question of ship design, it was one of tactics. Three ships bring three times the firepower, the ability to attack from three directions simultaneously, and, most importantly, since turret AI will focus exclusively on whichever target it acquired first until that target is either dead or out of range, this allowed them to take turns with one soaking damage while the other two had free rein to pick off Gas’ defenses. The video’s cuts and music hide their coordination, they hide the taunting that kept Gas engaged, and they (mostly) hide the pilot’s tactic of cutting ship’s power whenever he needed a “rest” since that would force Gas’ turrets to switch and pick a new target (because turrets apparently won’t attack a “dead” ship). XPA won because they played Gas, because they brought more ships, and because they used undocumented game mechanics to their advantage.

—Patrick

They don't core their ships, they just turn them off?

Dave said:

They don't core their ships, they just turn them off?

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Different fight. They decore the CV that they use to attack planetary bases. This fight was in orbit, CV on CV. I don't think Pat is accurate (turrets will continue to attack a powered off target), but turning off your ship DOES reduce the range at which its target marker shows up on enemy screens, so it makes it harder to keep track of in a 4-way furball, thus allowing him to drift away unnoticed when my turrets start targeting something he doesn't want shot, as I turn my attention more to the target markers that are still lit up bright red.

My point was, they were NOT "tiny maneuverable mosquito" ships, they were big hunk'o'cheeses, just slightly more compact than my cheese.

Also it is quite possible to defend a base against multiple attackers BUT the current meta requires that all static defenses be augmented by mobile defenses, i.e., if a base gets attacked...well, someone has to go defend it and go flank the attackers or something. There are just too many ways to punish a static target right now, the best a base can do is to delay the attackers until help arrives.

GasBandit said:

I don't think Pat is accurate (turrets will continue to attack a powered off target), but turning off your ship DOES reduce the range at which its target marker shows up on enemy screens, so it makes it harder to keep track of in a 4-way furball, thus allowing him to drift away unnoticed when my turrets start targeting something he doesn't want shot, as I turn my attention more to the target markers that are still lit up bright red.

Click to expand...

I admit I haven’t tested it, but there’s that part in the video at 1:16 where it says, “initiated forced stop” and I can’t think that was done by accident (though he doesn’t dive into the menu to do it sooo...Y key?). My assumption was that it was to get the guns to ignore him for a bit.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Also it is quite possible to defend a base against multiple attackers BUT the current meta requires that all static defenses be augmented by mobile defenses, i.e., if a base gets attacked...well, someone has to go defend it and go flank the attackers or something. There are just too many ways to punish a static target right now, the best a base can do is to delay the attackers until help arrives.

Click to expand...

Nope. Attackers attack, defender moves to flank, attackers move back out of base turret range so that the flanker is now unsupported. Flanker retreats to base defenses, lather, rinse repeat. I lived it. Believe me.

As long as bases are just CVs that can't move, they're basically sitting ducks because the mobile attackers get to define where the combat takes place. It might be different if bases had turrets that had much longer range than CVs, and specifically designed to counter them, but for the time being, the only true defense for a base is to be 30+km out into space in hopes of never being found.

PatrThom said:

I admit I haven’t tested it, but there’s that part in the video at 1:16 where it says, “initiated forced stop” and I can’t think that was done by accident (though he doesn’t dive into the menu to do it sooo...Y key?). My assumption was that it was to get the guns to ignore him for a bit.

Click to expand...

That just means he hit Y by accident. He was trying to type "TALLY HO" in chat.

GasBandit said:

It might be different if bases had turrets that had much longer range than CVs, and specifically designed to counter them

Click to expand...

But...they do.
...though in Eleon's mind(s), they must think +100-200m range is sufficient advantage.
For one base.
Against an unknown number of enemies.

--Patrick

Gared said:

[HVs] get stuck on cacti (that don't even provide wood when cut down

Click to expand...

A while back, I screencapped this, just because I wanted to post it, for similar reasons:



Yes, that's a multi-kiloton CV being held in midair as a 2nd class lever by a single cactus. Archimedes would be proud.

--Patrick

I didn't get a screenshot of it, but my class 5 CV was once perfectly held in the air by two small, spindly trees. I couldn't get the HVs back in it so I had to dock them to the ramps of the hangar bays instead.

It takes two iron ingots to make one steel plate, but the blueprint factory requires me to put in 5 steel plates before it gives me credit for one iron ingot.
And yes, this applies when carried to scale. A stack of 999 steel plates credits me 200 ingots, so it's not just some kind of rounding error.

--Patrick

Scratch-built my PvE base out in space (cuz I like trying new things).
Got pretty much everything I wanted to fit in it and placed in a pleasing manner (aesthetically and practically).
Took a couple of days getting everything right, so didn't oxygenate it or plant anything because I kept having to knock out a wall to get things in and out and didn't want to waste air/kill plants.
Finally get everything in order tonight. Even the lighting.
Go to plant my first plant.
Can't.
Turns out my entire base is 90deg off vertical so can't place a repair bay and can't plant any of my 81 grow plots FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU....!!!

Well at least now I know how to fix it after I did the same thing to my CV. Blueprint/paste/rotate/reblueprint and now my blueprint is oriented properly, just have to multitool all the components out of the old base and feed them to the factory to cook up a new one SUCH A HASSLE RRrrrrrrrrrgghhh...

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Scratch-built my PvE base out in space (cuz I like trying new things).
Got pretty much everything I wanted to fit in it and placed in a pleasing manner (aesthetically and practically).
Took a couple of days getting everything right, so didn't oxygenate it or plant anything because I kept having to knock out a wall to get things in and out and didn't want to waste air/kill plants.
Finally get everything in order tonight. Even the lighting.
Go to plant my first plant.
Can't.
Turns out my entire base is 90deg off vertical so can't place a repair bay and can't plant any of my 81 grow plots FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU....!!!

Well at least now I know how to fix it after I did the same thing to my CV. Blueprint/paste/rotate/reblueprint and now my blueprint is oriented properly, just have to multitool all the components out of the old base and feed them to the factory to cook up a new one SUCH A HASSLE RRrrrrrrrrrgghhh...

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Always hold O before you build in space. ALWAYS.

GasBandit said:

Always hold O before you build in space. ALWAYS.

Click to expand...

I did! That’s why this is so frustrating!
While trying to line up the starter block for maximum sunlight (because free power, duh), the game probably rotated me while I was turning, because in this game you can pitch all you want without a problem, but the moment you use the mouse to try to yaw, for some reason it will simultaneously roll you no matter HOW careful you are to move the mouse in a perfectly straight line.

Whatever, I’m getting good enough now at replacing cores in creative that it’s almost easy now. Plus after disassembling the one base and feeding it to the factory, my spawn time was only one second. Still gotta set up the light colors and signals and stuff, but if Eleon doesn’t want to enforce “right-side-upness” when placing the starter block, then they need to at least make it easier for the structure’s owner to fix. Something that doesn’t require Creative mode/GM powers, that is.

—Patrick

I love the idea of base thrusters, which can only be used in space, and can only propel you at .5m/s, but can be used specifically to fix shit like this.

Gared said:

I love the idea of base thrusters, which can only be used in space, and can only propel you at .5m/s, but can be used specifically to fix shit like this.

Click to expand...

Or y’know, just being able to replace the core but in the correct orientation, which would be even easier to code.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Or y’know, just being able to replace the core but in the correct orientation, which would be even easier to code.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

But not nearly as fun for players.

Thing is, the thrusters thing would not fix the issue with grow plots/repair pads, because every structure has its own internal “up” reference, and rotating the structure does not affect this. My reblueprinted base is now facing the exact same (non-upright) direction/orientation as it was before, the only difference now is that the core started out in a different orientation.

—Patrick

So, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that offline protection devices and land claim devices are useless now - because I had three bases in PvP territory with both devices installed, and now I have one disco and two completely destroyed bases.

I had to get online and check. I'm safe.

Offline Protection definitely is working, but I can't figure out if land claim devices are working properly or not.

GasBandit said:

Offline Protection definitely is working, but I can't figure out if land claim devices are working properly or not.

Click to expand...

They may be, I was just used to the OP being good for 5 days, not two. We were offline long enough for our bases on Hoth to be without protection again.

Gared said:

They may be, I was just used to the OP being good for 5 days, not two. We were offline long enough for our bases on Hoth to be without protection again.

Click to expand...

THAT is odd. It's always been 48 hours.

Also, I think I remember something about the land claim devices only working if they are placed above ground. Maybe like turrets.

But hasn't Shadows been on during that time? I thought that members flagged everyone.

Dave said:

But hasn't Shadows been on during that time? I thought that members flagged everyone.

Click to expand...

Shadows was offline for 7 days during Hurricane Florence. Apparently I've been misremembering things though, because I could've sworn it was good for 5 days at one point. Ah well... guess I'll just eat this one.

I just had it confirmed by Taelyn and Rexxxus (the official server admins and EAH authors) that Land Claim devices, like turrets, will not function if you put them below ground.

GasBandit said:

I just had it confirmed by Taelyn and Rexxxus (the official server admins and EAH authors) that Land Claim devices, like turrets, will not function if you put them below ground.

Click to expand...

They could've put that in the frickin' description. There's absolutely zero information on how those damn things are supposed to work.

Edit: Do they have to be outside for everyone to shoot at too? Fuck's sake.

I completely forgot about Shadows being gone from the hurricane. I wonder when the bases got trashed.

Gared said:

They could've put that in the frickin' description. There's absolutely zero information on how those damn things are supposed to work.

Edit: Do they have to be outside for everyone to shoot at too? Fuck's sake.

Click to expand...

I agree, the implementation of Land Claim devices has been very poorly handled.

Dave said:

I completely forgot about Shadows being gone from the hurricane. I wonder when the bases got trashed.

Click to expand...

The first was several days ago, the most recent (the disco) was yesterday.

GasBandit said:

The first was several days ago, the most recent (the disco) was yesterday.

Click to expand...

Yes, and I'm still confused about how the disco worked out, since we both logged off before they started taking my turrets off. Did the OP shield not go up because the land claim device was buried? They either put the devices back or didn't disturb them during their assault, so it wasn't that they were missing, by any stretch of the imagination. Even if they flew in from below, so they missed all of the anti-aircraft turrets, the shield should have prevented them from getting in.

Gared said:

Yes, and I'm still confused about how the disco worked out, since we both logged off before they started taking my turrets off. Did the OP shield not go up because the land claim device was buried? They either put the devices back or didn't disturb them during their assault, so it wasn't that they were missing, by any stretch of the imagination. Even if they flew in from below, so they missed all of the anti-aircraft turrets, the shield should have prevented them from getting in.

Click to expand...

They said they waited around a while for you to show up, purposely tripping your alarm to see if they'd come defend. Remember, there's also a 5 min delay when you log off before OP kicks in... and it looks like Aislynn had a conversation with them during it all, and then I guess when you logged off, they charged in and got it in under 5 mins. Not impossible, I suppose, granted how ridiculously fragile hangar doors are.

VAC?

GasBandit said:

They said they waited around a while for you to show up, purposely tripping your alarm to see if they'd come defend. Remember, there's also a 5 min delay when you log off before OP kicks in... and it looks like Aislynn had a conversation with them during it all, and then I guess when you logged off, they charged in and got it in under 5 mins. Not impossible, I suppose, granted how ridiculously fragile hangar doors are.

Click to expand...

Honestly, the biggest issue I have in all of this was that we specifically told them we couldn't defend it, and they kept trying to taunt us into coming out anyway. I was prepared to just hand the whole thing off to them - after all, a found base is a dead base - I was just pissed because I'd literally just paid the 2 million credits to establish the teleporters. But, with Aislynn's laptop pulling at most 20 fps right now (and usually something closer to 3), and me by myself without a decent PvP ship on planet because my tank spent 10 minutes stuck to an invisible rock that didn't exist anymore, there was no way we could fend them off. We hadn't even had time to get the other four base cores up (otherwise the top of the mountain they perched on wouldn't've been available).

I couldn't care less about the physical contents of the base - they're all pixels in the wind at the end of the day - it was the "come out and fight and we'll let you keep your base, but if you don't we'll call you pussies and take everything you have." Then they painted everything pink, renamed the base, and left. I put up with that sort of bullshit behavior long enough, and I'm not overly keen in continuing to subject myself to it in my attempt to garner entertainment.

Dave said:

VAC?

Click to expand...

Captain Durall, et al.

—Patrick

IE, VAC.

GasBandit said:

IE, VAC.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I wasn’t sure (since I’m not in game atm).
I do plan to set up in PvP, but not until I can drop an entire setup all at once. These guys keep showing up all, “It looks looks ypu are trying to get established. Be a real shame if something happened before you were firmly entrenched,” and I want to make sure that if they try, they’re going to get all the challenge they seem to want to handle.

—Patrick

Accidentally threw away a flashlight.

--Patrick

I hate hate HATE the scan function. It makes it WAY too easy to find stuff. You can't hide at all. Anywhere. Not in space and damn sure not on a planet. And if something like, say, your 96k sathium PvP ship that you haven't used yet runs out of power and the OLP goes down, well, it'll just be gone.

Pretty close to being done with the game. I can't find any fun in it any more. Even PvP combat is just sitting back and letting your turrets fire for a half hour or more. There's no stealth. You either have to go PvP overwhelming power or stay in PvE space because you're fucked.

Dave said:

I hate hate HATE the scan function. It makes it WAY too easy to find stuff. You can't hide at all. Anywhere. Not in space and damn sure not on a planet. And if something like, say, your 96k sathium PvP ship that you haven't used yet runs out of power and the OLP goes down, well, it'll just be gone.

Pretty close to being done with the game. I can't find any fun in it any more. Even PvP combat is just sitting back and letting your turrets fire for a half hour or more. There's no stealth. You either have to go PvP overwhelming power or stay in PvE space because you're fucked.

Click to expand...

I understand and I feel for you, I'm frustrated with the meta as well. If I could just make one tiny suggestion though... you built in the busiest PvP sector, and did not build far enough out. 30+km at minimum, more if you're on the ecliptic plane, is my recommendation... and that's if you're in a backwater.

Also, the logs showed me you parked it 1km from your base, so the base couldn't defend it because it was out of weapons range.

If it's any consolation, the person who took it took it intact, and given that it isn't who you feared it might be, they might be convinced to give it back.

Dave said:

I hate hate HATE the scan function. It makes it WAY too easy to find stuff. You can't hide at all. Anywhere. Not in space and damn sure not on a planet. And if something like, say, your 96k sathium PvP ship that you haven't used yet runs out of power and the OLP goes down, well, it'll just be gone.

Pretty close to being done with the game. I can't find any fun in it any more. Even PvP combat is just sitting back and letting your turrets fire for a half hour or more. There's no stealth. You either have to go PvP overwhelming power or stay in PvE space because you're fucked.

Click to expand...

Yeah... outside of finding a good PvE server, I'm starting to be pretty much done as well. I'd love to run some of the new PoIs, but I'm not going into PvP space again, just to be ridiculed. Fuck that.

GasBandit said:

I understand and I feel for you, I'm frustrated with the meta as well. If I could just make one tiny suggestion though... you built in the busiest PvP sector, and did not build far enough out. 30+km at minimum, more if you're on the ecliptic plane, is my recommendation... and that's if you're in a backwater.

Also, the logs showed me you parked it 1km from your base, so the base couldn't defend it because it was out of weapons range.

If it's any consolation, the person who took it took it intact, and given that it isn't who you feared it might be, they might be convinced to give it back.

Click to expand...

I was also under the impression that once you got more than 20k out it got glitchy.

And it was NOT 1 k out. It was parked right next to the base.

Dave said:

I was also under the impression that once you got more than 20k out it got glitchy.

Click to expand...

Glitchy, yes, but it's all visual stuff for the most part. Most of our PvP bases on renntech were 30k out.

Dave said:

And it was NOT 1 k out. It was parked right next to the base.

Click to expand...

The coordinate logs told me a different story. I don't want to post coordinates in an open forum, but the distance between them was just over 1000 meters. Now, maybe the ship was a couple hundred meters wide, and maybe the base was, and that might bring the distance down to the ship being in weapons range, but you also have to remember that the approaching aggressor has the same weapons range as the base... so if the ship is even 2 or 300m from the base, he can angle his attack in such a way that he's only in range of the ship and not the base... and then once the ship has no weapons, he can use it as a shield to conceal his approach from the base turrets, get close, cut the core out and put in his own.

Another tip for anyone else - you can extend the range of your base's OPD field just by building a line of blocks out as far as you want the shield to go in that direction. You can make it cover an area the size of gargantua if you want, with just a single line of blocks in each direction.

But if you guys want to experience the content without the PvP danger, I can give you guys a copy of last night's save backup, you can throw it in the saves/games/ subfolder of your empyrion install, and play it single player. It won't have my config mods (flashlights, solars, custom merchants, etc) but you could run POIs and stuff solo.

Alternatively, you could throw a couple of PvE systems into the galaxy so we could play together but without having to deal with the trolls. If I wanted to run new content solo I could do that all day long. I just want to play with my friends without being harassed.

Gared said:

Alternatively, you could throw a couple of PvE systems into the galaxy so we could play together but without having to deal with the trolls. If I wanted to run new content solo I could do that all day long. I just want to play with my friends without being harassed.

Click to expand...

Getting em wedged into the existing sector map might prove difficult. And even if I can do that, it'll take me several more nights of work to generate the yamls for the new planets. But I'll think about it.

Just get rid of the scan.

Dave said:

Just get rid of the scan.

Click to expand...

No. It's far too popular with everyone else, and finding asteroids without it is damn near impossible. Unless Eleon puts in a better system, I'm keeping /scan.

You might be interested to know that I actually toned it down from the start - the default settings for /scan was 10km... I reduced it to 7.

You can still scan an entire planet. Do /scan and then go to the map and look at the icons. It's way, WAY too easy to find stuff using scan. It's hard to say how much I hate it.

But I do understand that mine is a minority opinion. My choices are put up with it or don't.

Dave said:

You can still scan an entire planet. Do /scan and then go to the map and look at the icons. It's way, WAY too easy to find stuff using scan. It's hard to say how much I hate it.

Click to expand...

That part is pending an update from the mod author. It's SUPPOSED to be 7km in SPACE, and 1km on planet... but after the changes in 8.5 to how the sectors yaml handles naming conventions, the mod can no longer tell the difference between a space playfield and a planetary playfield, so it assumes everything is a planet. To fix it in space, I had to increase the planetary scan range. Xango says he's working on a fix but that it might take a while.

And yes, I realize that, at current, doing a /scan from an equator on a size class 3 planet will reveal the entire hemisphere to you, from pole to pole (because class 3 planets are 8x16 km)

That's how VAC has been able to find people on bonanza immediately upon arrival thus far.

I’m actually ok with the /SCAN range being reduced to 5, or even 3km. Enough to be useful, but not too cheat code-y.
Alternatively, as Gas says, the best base is 5 bases, and all that, and it could be that they should be designed so that your good ships can nestle in them like a moray eel in coral, or a clownfish in an anemone. Make those attackers work for their conquest.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Alternatively, as Gas says, the best base is 5 bases, and all that

Click to expand...

True, I do say that (and it is correct), but even with 5 bases, a found base, undefended by players, is a dead base. It's only a matter of time, because a ship can always find a way to attack so that all its turrets are shooting only a small fraction of the total turrets of a base. The base will be whittled down turret by turret, and then taken. Eleon needs to increase the range of base turrets by, like, 50% at least.

Range isn’t the problem. Base turrets already trump CV turrets by a noticeable margin in both distance and damage dealt. The problem is that (in space, at least) the attacker can always bring more turrets to bear on the base than the base can retaliate with. In fact, it would take six bases to equal just one attacking CV, since each base would have to be placed so as to have its full complement of weaponry facing one of the 6 directions (up/down/right/left/front/back) in order to just equal the number of turrets a single CV can bring to bear...except that bases can’t carry fixed weapons, and the attacker can (gasp!) bring more than one ship, sooo...

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Range isn’t the problem. Base turrets already trump CV turrets by a noticeable margin in both distance and damage dealt. The problem is that (in space, at least) the attacker can always bring more turrets to bear on the base than the base can retaliate with. In fact, it would take six bases to equal just one attacking CV, since each base would have to be placed so as to have its full complement of weaponry facing one of the 6 directions (up/down/right/left/front/back) in order to just equal the number of turrets a single CV can bring to bear...except that bases can’t carry fixed weapons, and the attacker can (gasp!) bring more than one ship, sooo...

—Patrick

Click to expand...

The range difference between CV and Base turrets is negligible, currently. The range increase I specify is to combat the exact facing problem you're talking about.

It won't stop 3 people in CVs from taking out one undefended base, but it will make it much more dangerous for a single CV to take out a cluster of 5 bases... whereas currently it's entirely trivial.

GasBandit said:

It won't stop 3 people in CVs from taking out one undefended base, but it will make it much more dangerous for a single CV to take out a cluster of 5 bases... whereas currently it's entirely trivial.

Click to expand...

Which reminds me, next time you’re on, let’s talk about your blades.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Which reminds me, next time you’re on, let’s talk about your blades.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

You and me being on at the same time isn't a very common occurrence. Is it a sensitive discussion, or one we could just have here?

Nothing sensitive, it just reminds me a lot of a Spock quote from ST2:WoK.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Nothing sensitive, it just reminds me a lot of a Spock quote from ST2:WoK.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd really like there to have been six blades instead of four, but, welp, MY OWN LIMITS say no to that. So what I'd been doing is putting a CV to do the up and down parts. I've temporarily redeployed those CVs to stop Dimento from swiping my gold asteroids, though.

I'm also working on a CV version of the Orbital Defenseblade, but I've not had the time to actually get it done, what with Stardew and all.

You don’t even really have to go with 6. Even alternating horiz/vert/horiz/vert would’ve given vastly better vertical coverage without sacrificing too much of your horizontal coverage (not positive, but even 4xVert would’ve probably been better).
It’s true that a cube is probably the best shape to cover all directions if you want to address all 6 planes (because duh cube=6 planes), but if you’re going to limit yourself to only 4 after building your main base, then your best bet in 3D space is going to be a tetrahedron, not a rhombus.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

You don’t even really have to go with 6. Even alternating horiz/vert/horiz/vert would’ve given vastly better vertical coverage without sacrificing too much of your horizontal coverage (not positive, but even 4xVert would’ve probably been better).
It’s true that a cube is probably the best shape to cover all directions if you want to address all 6 planes (because duh cube=6 planes), but if you’re going to limit yourself to only 4 after building your main base, then your best bet in 3D space is going to be a tetrahedron, not a rhombus.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

Well, like I said, I'm filling the gaps with CVs, so I'll have a cube soon enough anyway.

If only the turrets in this game were like space engineers' turrets, which were designed in such a way that they had absolutely no problem pointing straight up.

I've been running a co-op dedi-server for Aislynn and I for the past few days. It's fun... it sure would be nice if, every time I get out of the cockpit of my SV, the game didn't empty the weapons of all of their ammo. It would also be nice if leaving the dediserver running all night would actually progress time forward - I can't tell if it didn't age overnight, or if it did, and everything is just broken. Grrr.

I got in a CV duel last night. That was over within 3 minutes of it starting, because we both got lagshot immediately. I lost all my ammo, but was otherwise fine, and he lost his warp drive. Both ships otherwise completely intact. And we both had designs that were supposed to protect against such nonsense, and were both class 2. In a playfield that had literally nothing else to cause lag (Mustafar Orbit).

I gotta say, the shitty netcode has me this close to throwing in the towel.

GasBandit said:

I got in a CV duel last night. That was over within 3 minutes of it starting, because we both got lagshot immediately. I lost all my ammo, but was otherwise fine, and he lost his warp drive. Both ships otherwise completely intact. And we both had designs that were supposed to protect against such nonsense, and were both class 2. In a playfield that had literally nothing else to cause lag (Mustafar Orbit).

I gotta say, the shitty netcode has me this close to throwing in the towel.

Click to expand...

I'm done until they get some of this stuff cleaned up. Having all of my ammo constantly disappear when I get out of my seat was the deal breaker for me. We were trying to run a co-op survival game where we conquer each sector before moving on, and we can't even conquer the friggin starter world because every time we get out of the pilot's seat, we lose 6x300 rounds of 15mm, 4x15 rounds of homing missiles, etc. It makes me think they're trying to do something about the fact that when you put a weapon on a ship, it starts with ammo in it - or at least it used to - so people were getting free rounds of ammo. Add this to the fact that on "custom" difficulty settings we were getting absolutely shredded by PoIs - Easy difficulty with the number of drones left at normal, no autominer depletion, normal constructor rates, normal character advancement rate, no requirement to spawn ships at bases - and I mean, just flying somewhat near one non-clustered Advanced Spaceport meant walking home. All of their laser shots went straight for the cockpit - none of those "plinking shots off the armor constantly", no damage to any of my systems (except for splash damage from drone rockets), no weapons damage, just constant barrage directly at the cockpit, good luck mapping the world on foot.

Add that to the fact that ever since 8.5 hit, @Aislynn's average FPS sits around 6 (while I have no problems whatsoever and rarely even break 2GB of RAM usage for the game anymore), and we have a recipe for unplayability. Oh, and if we're both in an SV, and I'm flying, she gets about 10-15 FPS (as opposed to the 3 she usually gets) to my 60, and can almost see what's going on. If she's flying, my framerate drops to 3 and neither of us can see what's going on or do anything about it. We spent 5 minutes upside down in a small pond yesterday, because the ship was sinking then floating then sinking then floating repeatedly and we couldn't "stop the ship" to get out and swap drivers. Once it finally settled enough for us to get out, and I could get in, it took three seconds for "O" to flip the ship upright and take off out of the water.

Maybe the toxic members of the community will get bored and wander off in the meantime.

GasBandit said:

I got in a CV duel last night.

Click to expand...

I was like, you're really arguing over whose work history is more impressive? Then I realized what thread I'm in.

drifter said:

I was like, you're really arguing over whose work history is more impressive? Then I realized what thread I'm in.

Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I just bought an SV.
Though the idea of building a curriculum vitae that's max turrets but under size class 2.0 and resistant to lag shots would certainly be an exercise.

--Patrick

Gave it a shot in SP mode - I can't help it, I like the game and I want it to play well - some things were fixed completely. The ammo thing? Not an issue in SP. That framerate issue Aislynn runs into? Nope - she was playing an SP game right next to me, pulling 30 to 40 FPS in all but the most hectic and drone-infested areas, and a simple relaunch fixed that for hours again. So the memory leak is still there in SP mode, but it takes a lot longer to become a game breaking issue. PoIs are still aiming straight for my cockpit, but were suddenly much, much more survivable - I suspect I was taking lag shots from PoIs before, since the ship would be in perfect shape and I'd be dead. This is some seriously shitty coding.

My biggest problem with POIs isn’t that they lagshot through my armor, it is that their targeting automatically and instantly adjusts for my vector (“leading” me as I fly around, which it is supposed to do) BUT the lag means my ability to adjust my flight path is always slushy and slow, so unless I’m actually pressing the keys in anticipation of where my ship is supposed to be at that moment, the POI gets in all of its shots with a sort of built-in +2 Dex bonus.

—Patrick

God help you if you are on a planet with high gravity.

PatrThom said:

My biggest problem with POIs isn’t that they lagshot through my armor, it is that their targeting automatically and instantly adjusts for my vector (“leading” me as I fly around, which it is supposed to do) BUT the lag means my ability to adjust my flight path is always slushy and slow, so unless I’m actually pressing the keys in anticipation of where my ship is supposed to be at that moment, the POI gets in all of its shots with a sort of built-in +2 Dex bonus.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

I don't know what the specs are on your ship, but let me just remind you, if your ship can't exert at least 30m/s² in every direction, you aren't going to be dodging the red lasers, and you better have a couple layers of armor to soak the hits. The green ion cannons should be easy to dodge no matter what, though.

GasBandit said:

I don't know what the specs are on your ship

Click to expand...

On my exploration vessel? Heh, not worth mentioning. It only gets about 20-30min flight time while in atmo, but I did give it enough oomph to escape a high-G world, @Dave . It’s not meant for POI assault or anything like that, it’s supposed to be juuust tough/fast enough to survive a close call with a POI if it has to while I schlep mats/miner/myself around the galaxy.

—Patrick

Oy vey... I played a single player game to its natural conclusion today. I call it the natural conclusion because I can't honestly think of any other way the campaign would be supposed to end when the only planet that has Zascosium in the entire galaxy is completely covered - and I mean covered - in clusters of heavily defended PoIs... all of them completely covering the 6 small to very small Zascosium deposits. If I had some Zascosium, I could have built a tank to blow some of those PoIs off of the deposits, but I didn't... because it was the only planet in the galaxy that had any. I also had two sectors that were empty aside from trading stations - and since neither of those stations was Gargantua City, they were pretty friggin' lame. But the best part of it? Getting to my destination - base or CV - and needing to pause long enough to take the landing feet off and put them back on so I could dock and get the heck out of dodge.

"Ok, got a couple hours to kill."
0:00
Warp to system
Warp to system
Refill warp tank
Warp to system
Enter atmo
0:05
Park ship
Set up miner
Jump to new spot
Set up miner
0:10
Jump to new spot
Set up miner
Start flyover survey of remainder of planet
0:20
"...honey? Can you run to the store and get a dozen eggs? I need them like, 5 minutes ago, meant to tell you earlier."
NNNGGGHHH

--Patrick

That seems more of a "whine about Kati in the context of Empyrion" post

More about how "getting started" involves unpacking/unfolding so much stuff, and that there's no way to basically pause it while I run an unexpected errand, an issue I admit is not unique to EGS.

But if you want a real rant, I'm going to rant about repair pads again. So dang finicky and hard to figure out.
Also my drop ship flipped onto its side after I exited it while trying to figure out exactly where the ground was, and then I couldn't jetpack up high enough to get back into the cockpit to straighten it out.
Also I hate mining promethium. The blue dust kicked up while mining promethium happens to be the same color as the ore scanner outlines, and so I have trouble keeping the drill(s) trained on the nodes.

--Patrick

Also that periodic mouse jump gets REALLY annoying, especially in creative.

--Patrick

Personally, I'm just really, really sick of constantly having to remove and re-add the docking feet on my HVs to get them to dock back in the CV when I'm done mining each node. It gets repetitive real fast. Oh, and the fact that I have to have either separate hardware or a separate windows server environment in order to run the really real EGS server software and have any hope of actually controlling things, instead of just running a big "co-op" game that, even though it's based on a single player scenario, sets at least half the planetary and moon playfields to PvP zones.

I'm not saying that Eleon rolling the version of Unity back to 2017 has caused complete and utter chaos in the difficulty settings, but I am saying that since they rolled the versioning back yesterday, each time I start a new Co-Op game (on any difficulty, custom or preset), the first drone to show up is a Base Attack Drone which one-shots me with a rocket and then destroys my base before I can get within pistol range of it. Oh, and the drones that had previously had their sentry gun targeting disabled are definitely targeting them again. If things are going to be this unbalanced, they really need a peaceful mode other than Creative, which is just featureless planets and free building mode.

Gared said:

each time I start a new Co-Op game (on any difficulty, custom or preset), the first drone to show up is a Base Attack Drone which one-shots me with a rocket and then destroys my base before I can get within pistol range of it.

Click to expand...

The only "fix" I've found for this is to have a HV with miniguns spawned and ready to go before I place my first BA starter block, though that means you can't have the game set to where you have to have a base platform to spawn stuff (unless you get lucky finding a POI you can steal).

--Patrick

Themida.
That is all.

--Patrick

That face when you explore a system and find a bunch of conveniently-placed deposits, make the jumps back to your base, build a bunch of autominers, make the jumps back to the system, land your vehicle, and then discover you forgot to bring all your brand new autominers and they're still in the constructor back at your base. I mean, I'm not made of pentaxid you know.

--Patrick

Where was this song when I was on the HF Empyrion Discord?

"Stop playing so bad or I will feed you to your parents!". -Dunkey

(Sobbing) "I don't have parents!!" - unidentified teammate

Another song we have Bo Burnham to thank for.

I am going to be sending this to so many people over the remainder of my lifetime.

--Patrick

Gas, you know there's an asteroid in Akua orbit named "Magnesium Asteroid" that's actually made of pentaxid, right? And another one in TS sector that's actually made of silicon, and a "Pentaxid Asteroid" in TS that's actually Promethium?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Gas, you know there's an asteroid in Akua orbit named "Magnesium Asteroid" that's actually made of pentaxid, right? And another one in TS sector that's actually made of silicon, and a "Pentaxid Asteroid" in TS that's actually Promethium?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

I did not. I will fix that when I get my internet back.

Might want to go over all the other sectors, too. Just in case. I haven't been everywhere yet, but that's 3 out of 3 sectors with mislabeled asteroids.

And no rush, it's not like I can't tell by mining it, and I carry my own waypoint labeler.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Might want to go over all the other sectors, too. Just in case. I haven't been everywhere yet, but that's 3 out of 3 sectors with mislabeled asteroids.

And no rush, it's not like I can't tell by mining it, and I carry my own waypoint labeler.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Coincidentally I only edited the asteroids of those three sectors to remove magnesium. apparently the guts got changed but the name didn't for some reason even though I specifically remember fixing both. It'll take some looking into.

I figured that's what must've happened.

--Patrick

Didn't get online in time to gas up my CV this morning.
My food all spoiled.
Why didn't I remember my /VB in time? Whyyyyyy?

--Patrick

Ugh. Stupid waypoints.
Did you know you can use the "F6" key to cycle through how much HUD data you want to see (which btw is great for screenshots)? Because with my 2010...2012-era system, the "normal" (everything) view is 14-28FPS, which makes anything requiring fine input control a jerky mess of overcompensation. BUT as soon as I press F6 once to remove waypoints, it's a buttery-smooth 63-74FPS. Hmph.

--Patrick

Wait what? We have the /vb again?!?

Dave said:

Wait what? We have the /vb again?!?

Click to expand...

Check the date on that post. There's a bit of a lag between it and my rant on waypoints.

--Patrick

yeah, first thing I did was go in and try it this morning. Try to imagine my disappointment.

PatrThom said:

Check the date on that post. There's a bit of a lag between it and my rant on waypoints.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Fuck I thought we were still in the other thread that wasn't being necro'd from hell.

time to re-necro this thread

Four whines:

1. On SV fully enclosed cockpits, sometimes when you step out of them, the game treats as if you're in space with no armor on. I get temperature and radiation warnings all the time entering and leaving cockpits
2. On SVs with fully enclosed cockpits, sometimes when you enter them the speedometer on the right gets stuck on full max. You gotta exit and re-enter to fix.
3. Guess who has two thumbs and forgot that you can't drive an HV on a launchpad in space, even though you have artificial gravity? Ah well, it was a cheap HV. I suppose I'll cb:destroy it tomorrow. It's not even really worth taking the time to break it down with the multi-tool.
4. Why is that every CV plan in the workshop decides you have to have a shit ton of grow plots and every amenity as if it were a flying base? I don't wanna power this thing 24 hours a day. I don't wanna log in twice a day to remember to feed it fusion packs. I have solar powered bases for my farms, and they make food faster than I can eat it. I don't need to drag a farm around in a combat CV. I'm gonna start spawning this shit in creative and rip out the grow plots there and save my own personal copy before building in the server game from now on.

Three good things for balance:

1. I have a combat CV built, and am making the ammo for it as we speak. Goodbye Zirax defense station.
2. I have a combat HV built in the factory, but currently have no plans for it.
3. I have sweet space base that's building now, and I've already added teleporters to my important stuff, so I'm gonna start my teleporter transport web probably tomorrow.

Tinwhistler said:

Guess who has two thumbs and forgot that you can't drive an HV on a launchpad in space, even though you have artificial gravity? Ah well, it was a cheap HV. I suppose I'll cb:destroy it tomorrow. It's not even really worth taking the time to break it down with the multi-tool.

Click to expand...

If you have this kind of problem, just shoot me a PM. It's easy AF for me to move it, say, back to your base on a planet or something.

Well, I haven't destroyed it yet I'll pm you the id and the id of the base I wouldn't mind you putting it on. then I'll just schlep the HV hauler back and pick it up again

Oh, and I don't know if you know or I said this before, but you can now dock HVs to SVs, which may make it a little easier to do recovery.

Tinwhistler said:

I don't wanna log in twice a day to remember to feed it fusion packs.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I forgot to do that yesterday and now all my food is spoiled. Oh well. I have 15 rations, that should be enough until I find a good spot to build my farming complex.

GasBandit said:

you can now dock HVs to SVs

Click to expand...

I knew SVs can mine now, but didn’t know about the docking. Does it work in reverse? Can you dock an SV onto the back of an HV?

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Yeah, I forgot to do that yesterday and now all my food is spoiled. Oh well. I have 15 rations, that should be enough until I find a good spot to build my farming complex.

I knew SVs can mine now, but didn’t know about the docking. Does it work in reverse? Can you dock an SV onto the back of an HV?

—Patrick

Click to expand...

Dunno, didn't try. Probably. You can also dock sv to sv I think.

PatrThom said:

Yeah, I forgot to do that yesterday and now all my food is spoiled. Oh well. I have 15 rations, that should be enough until I find a good spot to build my farming complex.

I knew SVs can mine now, but didn’t know about the docking. Does it work in reverse? Can you dock an SV onto the back of an HV?

—Patrick

Click to expand...

If you need some food or sprouts, let me know. I can repay the favor for you helping me out a while back

Tinwhistler said:

If you need some food or sprouts, let me know. I can repay the favor for you helping me out a while back

Click to expand...

Nah, my sprout library is still intact, so once I start farming I’m gonna be drowning in rations. Just wanna shrink my PvE cube base by about a third (for efficiency’s sake) before I set up my teleport web. The only painful loss is the handful of eggs.

Now once I shift my design focus to combat, that’ll change, and if you want to declare war on the Zirax, I will be right there.

—Patrick

PatrThom said:

Nah, my sprout library is still intact, so once I start farming I’m gonna be drowning in rations. Just wanna shrink my PvE cube base by about a third (for efficiency’s sake) before I set up my teleport web. The only painful loss is the handful of eggs.

Now once I shift my design focus to combat, that’ll change, and if you want to declare war on the Zirax, I will be right there.

—Patrick

Click to expand...

I plan on kicking the shit out of the defense base right near my PVE base. I've got everything I need..if you wanna do that tonight, that'd be swell. I wouldn't be against factioning up together for the long term.

I don’t have any warships built yet, was instead obsessing over the design of my small PvP base (which still needs work but at this point is at least serviceable). I may hit you up in the future, though.

—Patrick