Notes from a noob

[gone]

I’ve played Empyrion since the survival tool used endurance for power and it’s the one game that’s captivated me like Sid Meier’s Pirates did 30 years ago. I’ve been on HWS for 10 days and what’s been done here has changed my EGS experience permanently, it’s phenomenal and I don’t think I could ever play vanilla again. I chuckled when I first learned there were patron and supporter packs available thinking “yeah, that’s not happening, I’ve already paid for this game”. I now want to support what’s being done here any way I can.

So now, the criticisms. None of these are game breaking, they’re just minor things: The learning curve is just too steep and I realize that from an insider’s POV that helps filter out the riff raff, I’m afraid it scares off too many people who would really love things here if they understood exactly what was going on. Part of the problem is the information overload at the start, there’s too much too fast and I think people filter it out not realizing how much of the information is really for players who are already familiar with vanilla Empyrion.

Epic Weapons degrade too fast for new players. I was afraid to use my origin rifle for the first couple days. I go through 2 per day, it’s merely an annoyance now, the first few days it was terrifying.

Plasma cannons do too much damage to POIs. If I target generators with them and blink they’ve swiss cheesed the entire POI in 30 seconds. Perhaps if the standard POIs could be easily changed to conform to EWS? Replace the combat steel with plastic/concrete/alien honeycomb? Surely a huge amount of work.

Since the regular POIs don’t seem to have loot tables that come anywhere near the HWS POIs I’ve stopped doing them and that’s kinda sad.

SV Garage ships that have CV warp drives don’t give CV range. That influenced my decision on which ship to buy first, some clarification on what the point of a CV warp drive is on an SV would be helpful.

There are other things but they generally fall into the learning curve category like the critical necessity of using the HWS website while ingame. Not having to type in a structure ID alone makes it worth it.

What’s being done here is amazing and if Eleon doesn’t integrate a lot of it into the standard game they’ll be making a huge mistake.

[dQgnflua]

Good feedback =) I know rexx and the gang love to get feedback like this.

Agree with the cvwarp on sv, but that is locked to the gamecode as i understand.
Much of the features in vanilla comes in many ways from hws!

And yes, the learning curve can be steep, but at the same time we often see people logg direct on the server, without even knowing the basics!
Also, there is a great community on the server that help allot of players every day

Welcome to HWS, and hope to see you here for many seasons to come <3

dQ

[Bob]

welcome! yes coming here for the first time is like the first time u visited a toy store. so many toys! so much to do! it can be quite overwhelming. just shout out if you have any questions. there are a lot of great helpers out there

[TheState]

@gone

SV Garage ships that have CV warp drives don’t give CV range.

That’s actually impossible per the game code. Even though it is a “CV” warp drive, the game only recognizes it as a warp drive and the ship as a SV, giving it SV range.

@gone

Plasma cannons do too much damage to POIs

I think it’s more that combat steel is weak currently. Far too weak imo. But plasma cannons do 10x damage against it. If it was made of something else you could just use the most effective weapon for that material and achieve the same effect.

Good feedback though, and welcome to HWS

[open6L]

SV Garage ships that have CV warp drives don’t give CV range. That influenced my decision on which ship to buy first, some clarification on what the point of a CV warp drive is on an SV would be helpful.

The CV Warp drive on an SV was more of a feature a few alphas ago before Weight/Volumes. While the SV was still limited to warp under 15AU, it could hold a full tank of pentaxid (63 slots) with the CV tank compared to the SV warp tank that could only hold 15 slots. This would essentially allow you to perform more sector jumps before needing to refuel. That was the main advantage.

[Bob]

i had mixed emotions about suggesting CV warp drives on SV’s a while back when i purchased Mordred for the first time and realized she has a CV warp tank&drive but was still limited to 15AU jumps. the coding would be a nightmare from what i have been told. they are now rendered useles with the introduction of shields, rex increasing tank volumes, and the ever popular supergates. i suggest u rip out and replace all CV warp elements on a garage SV the moment u buy it. this will help reduce the weight and add a bit of speed as well.

[gone]

It’s been a couple days and I have more observations, aren’t you all excited?

POIs: Is there “easy” way to drop a couple rep container chests deep inside the vanilla pois? I’m thinking of the “abandoned” type particularly. There’s just no reason to mess with those anymore because a few HWS admin type pois completely blow them out of the water. Who wants to spend 20 minutes dealing with an abandoned factory/mine/reactor/drone base and those damnable scorpions and horrors when you can loot yourself into a coma in 5 minutes on a couple flagships, leak bunkers or supply bunkers? AND get a few rep points in the process. Throw in a prisoner transport along the way and you’ll have enough stuff to insta build just about anything.

Speaking of building just about anything, there are some coreless pois (I’m looking at you Elder’s Tomb) [I’m currently staring at the core in it… this is weird] which really annoy me. They can be salvaged immediately and Elder’s Tomb in particular is a cement factory. I assume everyone got the shock of the water costs of concrete blocks when attempting to build a base early on. All my base blueprints, particularly those I’ve adapted, are solid armored concrete. I have one that requires over 25k cement and it’s not even an end game base. Absently waving a multiturret over Elder’s Tomb this morning while I was grousing in discord got me 3k bags of cement and a couple hundred completed blocks. Zero risk. Of course resource gathering should be easier by endgame but this area seems over the top. Are there any tweaks possible here?

Garage ships… Everyone has their own aesthetic sense, mine just happens to be the correct one. There are several workshop blueprints that I use because they perform excellently in pve, exactly according to my playstyle and look phenomenal (in my totally accurate opinion). JRandall’s Mercs, BDC’s bases, Xcaliber’s HVs and the Trilobite CV. I could put an alien core in these and be content, I’d be thrilled beyond belief if I could get the Hercules weapon layout on the Trilobite, the Venture’s mining/processing abilities on a Merc and the med facilities and various other amenities on a K-Bar Tac Tool MKII HV.

I know I’m probably opening an enormous can of worms but I’m gonna do it anyhow. We have guidelines already for the various functions and roles of the garage ships. If there was a simple, standard package that the admins could drop into a submitted blueprint where we would have to do most of the work and HWS could just drop stuff in with the tools they’re already using I’d be more than willing to pay real money, excessive gold and lots of RP. I see it working like this:

Buy a CV Explorer package, submit blueprint with a labeled and marked area to drop the package and well marked areas for weapons, even with lcds so there’s no confusion (put HV arty here). I can’t see the process taking more than a couple minutes for the HWS staff if the guidelines are perfect. It might take us hours to get it set up but then we’re the ones who want it. We obviously would have to abide by the same rules of official garage ships. But charge us $5, 3X the prices of garage ships and 500 RP. I’d have 3 ready to submit immediately. I know you’re overworked as it is, but I have faith in you.

If I haven’t made it clear, I’m really enjoying this place, even when I get ambushed doing something stupid in BH and lose millions I’m having fun… well the first time anyhow and only after the fact. You’re doing excellent work.

[Chaser]

I’ll be brief, you’re very lazy. Build the that you likes and field, to common garage) Then arrive at, that wanted. Personal experience)

[gone]

It seems to me that no matter how many people play on this server the community isn’t large enough for people to gratuitously insult each other. The only part of that comment I’m able to decipher is you think I’m very lazy. I can’t address the insult because what appears to be the substance of your complaint doesn’t make any sense.

[Chaser]

Your problem is that you need to build and not to ask) Sorry to have offended you)

[gone]

The community may not be huge, but the game is. We don’t all have to enjoy the same thing to enjoy EGS. I’m not a designer, my talents don’t lie there. Professionally I’ve always been a tweaker, that applies in my personal life and entertainments as well. It’s a waste of time and effort on my part to clumsily attempt to do something that someone else does well.

Perhaps I’m still not understanding your point, are you suggesting that I should strip a garage ship down to the bones, praying I don’t slip with the multitool and destroy some critical component and then rebuild the whole thing exactly the way I want it even though I’ll have to work around design decisions made by the creator? I can’t imagine that being enjoyable for me under any circumstances. You might find that thrilling but I’d rather eat my own toenail clippings. I don’t have a problem with how you enjoy playing as long as it doesn’t interfere with everyone else., nor do I see any reason to pressure you into playing the way I like to play.

[Chaser]

Why remake garage ships, and bite your toenails, not necessarily. Talk about a new ship, build it yourself, put it in the garage, get it, enjoy it!

[Hayawen]

what @Chaseris saying, is that you can submit your own custom garage ships and if it gets approved, it would be garage…

but what @gone wants is steam workshop ships custom modified with garage items without being a garage ship… as steam workshop ships are not allowed in garage…

as far as I know though, even with ur proposed solution, I’m afraid it would still take too much time from admins… inspecting a ship and making sure it fits all criteria is no easy task, let alone go adding turrets and stuff and then spwan it… dono…

[Bob]

i myself have submitted several garage ships and refitted quite a few others. i have even refit my own. it is always best to constantly save a repair template in the event of an oops or server sputter. takes a lot of practice and patience. it takes a bit longer but the multitool will tell you what block type it is pointing at. also use the texture tool to strip color and textures to plain defaults makes it easier to determine which blocks to pull. all in all it takes lots of time and effort to build or refit a garage ship. the admins honestly have way to much to do and not enough time to handle custom ship orders as you are suggesting. I suggested a mod shop of some kind that is pretty much what you are looking for but that idea was shot down by naysayers. so for now we are at the mercy of catering to marketeers more than builders in a building game. i still hold hopes for seeing a chop shop one day.

[gone]

Thanks for clarifying all this. I did some reading on making garage ships and now I’m convinced this is easily doable if there’s only a will to do it. I made a palette of base devices, spawned the HV I wanted to modify, pasted the palette in, saved the bp, respawned it. Poof. Three minutes and I had no idea what I was doing. But I had a functioning HV with full base facilities. Thirty seconds with a paint gun and it even looked good. Maybe disallow weapons changes at first, just have a common 3x5 block package for however much gold/RP, have a daily BP limit and say a 24 hour turn around. Even limit it to SV/HV and 3 BPs per season (or whatever number). In practice you’d submit a BP you’d already cut the space for the package in, color coded with directional arrows/labels for the admin to follow. Admin selects from palette, copy/paste, save, upload to what would probably have to be a new panel on the website. Bang you spawn your ship. Make it a special supporter package or part of the existing package. I don’t know, the options are vast.