Prepare for swiss cheese (Exposed Thursters?)

HWS General Discussion
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So now that we’ve been told that exposed thrusters are the majority opinion yet none of the PVP players I’ve talked to voted for it, I’d like to genuinely hear from people who want exposed thrusters. I honestly thought there was no way this would be voted for and think its really disappointing that we’re going to have to do such major overhauls and have such ugly ships on top of the other modifications we have to do now so I’d like to hear why, in your opinion, I should be excited for it.

  1. Why did you vote for it?
  2. Why is this better?
  3. How many thrusters do your ships have in each direction?
  4. Have you ever won a serious PVP fight?
  5. Why do you hate PVP players/ship designers?
  6. Have you ever built a good PVP ship or do you just do prefab/steam workshop?
  7. Should we all paint our ships yellow/white and call our fleets the swiss cheese fleets with how many holes we’ll have to have in our hulls?
  8. Who hurt you?
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  1. I didn’t. The PVErs did. And some disgruntled PvP players that wanted to dog their competition.
  2. It’s not mate.
  3. Each direction is classified but total is >160
  4. Yes many times
  5. Because i’m a masochist and desire the pain eleon gives.
  6. I built a good ship once… then the game updated.
  7. No. That would assume I can differentiate color.
  8. Eleon.
4 Likes
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  1. I’d go 50/50 on trying it, the way it’s presented isn’t ‘exposed’ thrusters, i.e. thrusters out in the open, that would pretty much suck. Like it or not it’s something Eleon will be trying and HWS tends to be the biggest testbed that they have for the new alpha features.
  2. It wouldn’t be better for PvP, not ever.
  3. 15 in each direction minimum, and that’s for a rather slow SV. :slight_smile:
  4. A few.
  5. I am into that kind of stuff.
  6. Debatable, but I have built PvP ships.
  7. A decent PvP ship should come with a unique way to identify it. My third one looked like a duck, a swiss cheese taxi cab would be cool as well.
  8. Freakin’ Eleon.

I filled out your 8 points, lol. I’m happy to try ‘exposed’ thrusters, though it doesn’t look like it’ll be ‘exposed’ but rather ‘not airtight’, which makes perfect sense and if it’s the case the majority of current PvP builds will be perfectly adaptable to it, assuming class size restrictions are increased to allow it, not a big deal there. I would never see 100% exposed thrusters being good for anything but show, in PvP or PvE, and I think RexXxuS has more sense to implement it at that face value.

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This is my biggest concern. A “slow” SV with 15 holes per side. Its going to look… Bad?

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It depends really. That’s only because the most efficent thrusters for SV require 15 in each direction minimim for a class 1 (that’s a tanky, slow, class 1). Thrusters can always be adjusted in the config so we don’t need all that mess (which TBH is a bit dumb anyway) to fit within the class specifications while keeping a decent amount of thrust.

I’m sort’ve going on the assumption that HWS will eventually try the feature, so I’d rather say “sure, let’s do it, but let’s adjust XYZ so it’s not terribad”, than just “hell no”. With the former, we get more of a say in it, ya know?

I’d LOVE to discuss changing efficiencies/hardiness of thrusters and trying this out on those terms rather than some of the crap we’ve gotten with cockpits and logistics the last few seasons.

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One of the things we talked about in our faction comms was how it would be better to implement things like this on one, really valuable playfield for a season or something like that. This way people could experiment and build the ships and have something to fight for without having to redo every ship/garage ship/etc before we can really do anything. Then a season later it could be implemented widely once we’ve all been able to play with it a bit for a couple of months and discuss the balance, etc issues.

I’m also wondering about graphics performance. This could be an issue that pops up as well.

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To be clear, I wasn’t asking about Rex, he can 100% do whatever he wants. I’m asking about people who actually voted for this and why they did.

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Yeah, I understand. If Eleon implemented nukes tommorrow, we’d assume that on HWS (or at least I would), balance would be taken into account beyond Vanilla, because, like it or not Eleon doesn’t think about multiplayer very much, PVE or PVP. You, me, and everyone wishes that Eleon would focus on how the game performs in PvP. Slideshow fights freaking suck.

I’d go 50/50 on this one still. That makes it a yes I’d try it vote.

I’m glad that we have the opportunity to say “yes, with conditions”, rather than just sucking it up and taking it. The logistics stuff, multiple cockpit changes, sudden class size limitation changes, etc, I’ll point out to that effect. Not much discussion and chance to influence the direction of it all was a part of it. We have a chance now, and should jump on it.

Eleon is going certain directions and HWS has the biggest playerbase. I figure we’ll be stuck testing (it is alpha after all), so may as well make it the best we can while we can and help to make it polished, rather than get stuck with something unpolished.

1 Like
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1.) It will make for more interesting/realistic/immersive ships.

2.) Because the opposites of interesting, realism, and immersion make for boring games imo.

3.) Depends on the ship, it’s mass, intended use, desired performance, etc.

4.) No. I haven’t bothered with PVP in Empyrion much. The currently limited set of game mechanics, combined with the relative ease in making ships that perform at the maximum possible levels makes for PVP that (IMO) is repetitive and uninteresting.

5.) I don’t. Why do you assume that my preference for a given game mechanic necessarily means I hate you? IMO, PVP is most interesting when conditions on the battle field are non-static and require a player to think, adapt, and overcome obstacles. I believe requiring thrusters to have adequate exposure to the environment adds to this.

6.) I build custom ships, use workshop blueprints, and even maintain custom versions of abandoned favorite blueprints from the workshop. Not all are 100% compatible with the exposed thrusters feature, but very few of them would require more than minor modifications to be.

7.) If it amuses you, do it.

8.) People who are unable or unwilling to adapt to change and instead complain about how its going to “ruin everything”.

Further, with the changes made on HWS in A10 WRT block/device HP and shields, it probably matters relatively little unless your idea of a good ship is to simply slap as many layers of armor as possible around a solid block of devices that cause said layers of armor to fly.

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I’m sorry what are you talking about with “realistic ships?” Can you explain how a warp drive, shield generator, fusion cells, etc work? What is a gravity generator? How does the mass/thruster/energy consumption of the thrusters make sense in reality? Should everyone have to go through hundreds of hours of flight certification before they’re allowed to pilot? How does a basic survival suit turn grass into energy bars? …see the point?

This is a video game based on entirely made up stuff. There’s nothing “realistic” going on here.

The PvP aspect of ship design when it comes to actual DESIGN REQUIREMENTS should be heavily considered. Since you admit you haven’t really done it I’ll give you a break on knowing why that is, but just trust me… its not “as many layers of armor as possible around a solid block of devices”, in fact that would be a terrible design. Anyone can make their PvE ship however they want to, it doesn’t matter how it looks or is laid out so if you want to make a “realistic” design that’s up to you. When it comes to surviving a PvP fight, the actual layout and internals of a ship are extremely important. If you noticed, there are sometimes over 100 thrusters on a ship and requiring all of them to be on the outside would be ridiculous.

3 Likes
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If you think exposed thrusters are more realistic, there’s actually nothing stopping you from just building them now? Everyone can do exactly what they want. PvE’ers can choose either to have or not to have exposed thrusters, and most PvP’ers prefer NOT to have exposed thrusters.

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I have combat SV’s already created with this in mind and all it need is a single half-block removed to have every thruster exposed. Gonna be good times if this happens for me.

13

What exactly is the standard of a ship being realistic in this game of the future which has technology like warp drives that allows us to travel the galaxy? Maybe in this actual future the game is trying to show we won’t actually be using exposed thrusters that everyone can see similar to the advanced ships UFO’s use? UFO = Unidentified Flying Abject.

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:popcorn:

1 Like
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My last pvp cv had 96 red thrusters (yes xxl, viva la alien core) more than half of which were shot out of the hull in 1 major 1 on 1 with an equivalent size and design CV. So 500 should be about right if they have to be exposed :smiley:

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In this context, by realistic I mean that the red thrusers in the following image should provide 0 net thrust to the structure they are attached to

Direct IMGUR Link

These guys can explain the ideas behind a warp drive better than I can:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936.pdf

And BAE Systems has some thoughts on “shields”:
https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/article/directed-energy-atmospheric-lens-could-revolutionise-future-battlefields
(Admittedly this isn’t exactly the system portrayed in Empyrion, but I imagine Empyrion’s method is probably much less performance intensive.)

As for “Fusion Cells” since what they actually do is fill a fuel tank, I would argue they should actually be named “Fusion Fuel Cell” or perhaps, with reference to how they actually apply to game mechanics, “Tier 3 Fuel Cell”.

As for the gravity generator. that is likely to be pure fiction. However, would you prefer to not have the option when moving around in a CV or space station in game? There are, however, some interesting initial rumblings: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mathematician-has-proposed-a-way-to-create-and-manipulate-gravitational-fields

IMO, a cargo box/module should have a volume defined by it’s supposed in-game size (2 cubic meters for large blocks, .5 cubic meters for small). Second, each material already has a mass per volume, so it is simple math from there. Admittedly; cargo containers, the players backpack, etc are all TARDISey. But then they have to be not to be annoying.

As for power generation and consumption, since I know of no reference to turn an Empyrion “Power Unit” in to something more familiar like Watts or Joules, I can’t really comment. I imagine that’s why they chose to use a fictional unit.

we did, long before we entered the escape pod, or, in HWS’s case, long before we were cloned. It was long, tedious and boring. We should be glad we can be cloned with our memories intact. otherwise the survival start would be much slower and more boring than it already is.

Nanites.

This is a video game based on some made up stuff, which is largely in the game to remove annoyance and/or add game play, and also based on some fairly realistic stuff. It seems we have a difference of opinion on which parts of the game should be governed by which concern.

To make an argument in favor of “exposed” thrusters (note that personally, I think only that their intake and exhaust points should need to not be blocked, there is no logical reason to require the entire thruster to be outside the hull): I think it would add greatly to the games PVP to be able to disable a ship by destroying/damaging it’s thrusters and turrets, then when it is disabled, to be able to dock with and board the ship in an attempt to seize control of it. Do you disagree?

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Dude… Current rocketry doesn’t have intakes. But its hard to take your arguments of reality seriously when you use words like “tardisey”. The point is there’s nothing in this game that requires “realism” be applied to thrusters which I stand behind.

I’m going to just pretend this conversation didn’t happen. lol.

1 Like
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Clearly the reference to intakes applies only to the “jet” thrusters (which IMO, really shouldn’t work in space, but then Eleon only has so much dev time to go around. (Here’s to hoping for a more interesting array of thrust options in the future)

If the biggest problem you have with my post really is my use of the term “TARDISey”, instead of spelling out that the cargo boxes and players backpack have a larger internal volume than external, I would argue you are focusing on entirely the wrong issues.

You are right that there is no absolute requirement for more realism in thruster function. I argue that there is also no absolute requirement not to have more realism in thruster function. Again, it is a difference of opinion on what makes the game more interesting.

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No my biggest issue is that you’re taking it all too seriously and HEAVILY GLOSSING over concepts to defend your point which in your own admission you have no experience in.

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My point is that for various reasons, I believe the “exposed thrusters” feature makes for much more interesting game play. What related concepts am I “HEAVILY GLOSSING over”?