Whine about Empyrion thread

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
 

Dave

Staff member
I think I'm going to have to change my auto update. This has happened to a few people.
 
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.
 
Going downhill, I can almost get them up to 20m/s. They will not, under any circumstances, make it to top speed.
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.

2cwvin.jpg


--Patrick
 
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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.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
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!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Second, they really, really need to do something about those damn bomber drones.
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 :p
 
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 :p
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.
 
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Dave

Staff member
What? You have an HV parked somewhere on your SUPER CARRIER WITH 20 DOCKING BAYS?!? Nope. Can't fix a thing.
 
THE NEW REPAIR PADS ARE SO FUCKING PICKY ABOUT EVERYTHING. AAAAAAAAAGH
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.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
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.
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).
 
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
 

GasBandit

Staff member
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
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.
 
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.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
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.
 
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.
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? :D

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

GasBandit

Staff member
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.
 
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