Hi HWS Community,
thanks for your patience and let me present you the first HWS 10 Teaser!
Because I’m moving 700km to a new home and still have a lot to do, I have to hurry and compress information a bit in less Teaser I guess. So let’s get started with our ritual first 
Prepare for a full wipe in 2-3 weeks
Information what will wipe in general can be found here:
Special Wipe procedure for HWS 10
Because the gameplay will change there are additional wipe preparations you have to take care of:
- Every Carbon Blocks (Small + Full) will be wiped from your OCD and you get 50 credits per item
This will only happen once to align everyone to the same level. You can store Carbon Blocks in HWS 10 and further seasons as always again. Why wiping then? Read down below
Mass & Volume
As announced in the Survey result and together with your feedback we will activate Mass & Volume on HWS for the first time.
The issue is that Mass & Volume is for one not 100% ready feature wise and the values in Singleplayer or other MP servers are just not properly balanced for HWS at all!
Forget any Mass & Volume concerns you have and please dive fresh into this feature in HWS 10!
Based on your feedback, I will work on it and polish until it feels like a natural, logical and fun mechanic to balance PvE raids, PvP fights, mining, Hauler missions and more.
Stack Size & Armor
Couple of facts shortly described:
-
Every item will have a stack size of 50 000 in HWS 10.
Why should you carry 1000 Gold Ingots but only 20 Apples in your inventory? Your Backpack / Container Mass & Volume will handle the cargo now. -
Your Armor will have different Volume values. Light = 7m, Medium = 8m, Heavy = 9m, Epic = 10m
-
With a Multi or Mobility Boost you can upgrade your Armor with +2m Volume space on top
Gold Example in HWS 10 - regular gym training makes it possible
T2 Large Generator Example in HWS 10
Mass & Ships
You don’t have a nice “progress bar” for Mass (yet). So you have to check carefully, how good your ship can handle the Cargo inside. Always check the Statistic window and your Thrust level.
Prefab T6 SV with Gold - won’t fly
- Even though your Volume can handle so much Gold, it does not mean your ship will fly! In fact the ship won’t fly anywhere. It is too heavy!
Prefab T6 SV with Gold - will fly
- Without any modifications that is the cargo limit your ship will fly
This ship is probably the worst example. So you can imagine how much better your own ships will be.
SV & HV Thruster Rework
Another affect Mass & Volume has are Thrusters. Especially the SV Thrusters were on my “Rebalancement List” for a long time. Or have you ever wondered why the heck we have 3x13x3 Jet Thrusters in the game if they are 1500 times worse than stacking SV M-Thrusters?
No more!
- As a first version every Thruster is linear scaled towards the Thruster S - Size: 1x1x1
- The Thruster S has the base values of 100 Hitpoints, 100kN Force, 100kg Mass and 50 PU Energy in
- So the biggest SV Jet Thruster with the size 3x13x3 has the values of 11700 hitpoints, 11,7MN, 11,7 t Mass and 5,85 kPU Energy in
- The intention for builders is now to make a decision of redundancy thrusters but high Class Size or few tanky Thrusters but low Class Size
- Combined with Shields you can actually have nice ships now taking this into effect
Prefab T6 SV with full Gold - will fly
OCD Rebalancement
And another Mass & Volume change was required in my opinion - the OCD.
With a big surprise: almost only boosting it this time 
I can’t show the comparison here in detail so please go to the OCD page here and check the Revision:
To describe it short:
- With 50 000 Stack Sizes the OCD levels 1-5 felt not properly in line anymore
- Example: OCD level 1 had previous this condition:
Common|Rare|Epic|Ultra Epic|
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
1000|100|10|1|
And now it has:
Common|Rare|Epic|Ultra Epic|
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
20 000|10 000|5 000|10|
- Check all levels and you see the consistency throughout all levels
- I adjusted just very slightly the upgrade costs of level 2-4
- However all levels have now a doubled Common Slot Size. With this change I moved a lot of items up to Rare though. Ingots for example.
Shields
A very new, challenging and exciting feature come into Empyrion: Shields!
But a quick test with the HWS Config + EWS showed: the default values are only meant for Singleplayer - like Mass & Volume.
So a very rough and first version can be seen in a video I made as fast as I could.
Please check always the HUD Shield percentage and my own Shield value on the bottom right corner!
Quick notes:
-
Every Block got 40-50% less Hitpoints due Shields now
-
Pulse and Plasma are the Shield breaker. Especially hitting successfully with Plasma will make a lot of fun I can tell!
-
Projectiles have no effect really on shields. ! I count Railgun to Projectiles.
-
Explosive damage weapons like Rockets do the base damage to Shields.
-
high shield capacity
-
SV = 1M / HV = 2M / CV T1 = 2,5M T2 = 5M / BA T1 = 5M T2 = 10M
-
with shields on, there are no lag shots
-
hitting the shield with the deadly plasma gun requires skill
-
without shield, fights will end quick to prevent escapes e.g.
- Please make sure to check the new EWS values here:
Era of Diamonds
With HWS 10 a “new Block” is coming for you. It’s of course not completely new but who seriously used the “plastic” blocks before? Nobody.
After some thoughts and studies I thought, why not bring “Carbon” into life as it deserves?
Some Carbon materials are 3 times stronger than steel even though 5 times lighter!
Why ignoring science? 
But because Empyrion does not have the Chemical aspect and you can make plastic material (Carbon) out of wood (no comment), I came to an additional idea:
Why not use the pure form of Carbon in the nature? The Diamond!
So to ultimately boost your gameplay these are the quick facts:
- SV/HV Carbon Blocks are made out of 500 Plastic Material and 1 Raw Diamond. Output: 500 Blocks
- HV/BA Carbon Blocks are made out of 1000 Plastic Material and 1 Raw Diamond. Output:
1000 Blocks - SV/HV Carbon Blocks have 250 Hitpoints but only 5kg Mass
- CV/BA Carbon Blocks have 1500 Hitpoints but only 400kg Mass
- The perfect Blocks for Mass & Volume
- Can be stored in your OCD as Epic Category
- PvE guys: create monster constructor farms for plastic and go meanwhile for Diamond Missions. Start your Dream Trader Career!
- PvP guys: Recycling ships have never become so valuable and finding new POIs with Diamond loot never become so lucrative
- Check the EWS Google Doc for the new Plastic / Carbon values:
- Projectiles will do Bonus Damage to Carbon
- Pulse + Plasma will do technically no damage
- Explosive Weapons will do base damage
I try to push the HWS Config to the Official EXP Server on Tuesday, so you can test the gameplay yourself and provide feedback!
That’s it guys for part 1. I hope I didn’t forget anything but I really have to pack up everything now and prepare for a 700km drive session tomorrow + Tuesday + Wednesday.
I’ll be back on 1st June or so.
I’m very excited to see how it turns out and hope for your feedback to make the best season possible with so much new stuff!
Thanks for reading!
Your HWS Team
You can have 49.000 gold ingots on you… That sounds a little heavy no? 