Koriandah

Hey everyone, Recent news of Athena got me thinking: Why would the average player want to use voxels on their ships? You see, the more voxels you have - the heavier your ship. So clearly, using voxels costs more in fuel costs, lifting capacity and warp cell cost. Additionally, for PvP, more voxels means more mass which currently means slower acceleration and maneuverability. With Athena, it will also mean that voxels will lower your ships' top speed - a terrible thing for missions runners who spend hours being afk and PvPers who are trying to catch them. Lastly, more voxels also adds to the cost of ship deployment. This leaves us with two, just two reasons to use voxels as it stands: - Your ship will look cool - CCS value for PvP ships The first one is pretty self explanatory, but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of missions runners nowadays don't bother putting voxels on their 'ships' and just fly element only piles of garbage because its cheaper. Its entirely an optional bonus. The second is a little more complex. You have PvPers who use CCS in order to out-tank their opponent, however, with the current meta and ways of PvP, more voxels means more mass which means higher warp costs - terrible thing for pirates warp chasing haulers from whose packages they can't even profit. I'd say that it is also an optional trade-off because with shields, you can fly faster glass-cannon ships that don't have any voxels on them. Note that with Athena, high CCS ships may become useful for control of the Alien cores and strategic territory holding around them. They will be able to, in theory, out-tank the smaller nimbler ships, but that remains to be seen to be believed. I propose a crude solution to this problem: mandatory usage of voxels in order to be able to carry mass. The addition of a "Structural Stress" mechanic, where ships need a certain number of voxels or CCS in order to carry loads. For example, you would need 10,000,000 CCS in order to fill your containers on your ship with 10kt of cargo (just as an example, numbers can change ofc). If your ship doesn't meet the CCS requirements to carry that cargo + docked ships, it will either take damage to its elements over time or not work. This solution is crude, however, hopefully it will force people to use voxels in their builds. Sure, you will still have cubes that are optimized for that value, however, once a player uses voxels it is a much easier mental hop for them to at least try make it look like a ship. Compare this to now, where the usage of voxels is strictly suboptimal for most cases. This should remove voxel-less ships from the game, because lets face it, they are not only ugly but also against one of the main pillars of the game - player creativity. Why put all that work into a voxel system if nobody uses it? Thank will be all. Feel free to discuss below or yell at me for "Proposing to ruin my super optimal warp shuttle that is just elements floating in space!". Up to you.

We only just had all the cores transferred from our sub orgs to MTI proper, the real cleanup begins now... gotta build 1 voxel towers and ask NQ to clean the terrain from the roads since they hadn't originally... RDMS was a nightmare before Panacea - so much easier now. Been working on lots of other stuff too. Hopefully the city will become something more than a bunch of roads down the line.

Such as finding them on space wrecks, as an example?

In my opinion, a wipe would only be acceptable if: 1 - It fixes the issues that brought about its' necessity in the first place 2 - adds something new to the game 3 - ensures we will never need a new wipe That's my two cents on the issue. Wiping for the sake of wiping is pointless.

Pretty sure with default LUA you can just right click on seat -> advanced -> change control scheme or something like that to select mouse and keyboard. Otherwise, there's other player-made HUD's that use different control schemes that you want.

Now imagine that you can do this in the next update, however, to make those you need a special resource that you get only from those Alien cores... Would be nice to have some unique mechanic tied to a resource that is actually hard to get

Because personally, I can never get the same level of voxel detail lol, and yeah didn't see that yours goes 2k, I thought only 1k mb

I bought myself a Starscream Mk5 and its amazing, I highly recommend. Some stacked elements but I fixed it. Trust me, it looks way better and goes 2k easy in atmo

This sounds like a big update, can't wait to hear more

Vertex Editor has been amazing. Fixed so many voxel errors on my ships since in such a short amount of time! Perhaps something more from the list can be added in a later update such as blueprint alignment... We'll see.

yeah the tool is amazing, fixed so many voxel errors in so little time. Definitely gonna mess around with microvoxels now

The fact that those players' beautiful ships at the markets can be taken by others is in a way giving them a new life. Perhaps, if a ship is truly beautiful and left there by its owner as you said, not only does it keep DRM (allowing only the original creator to make BP, copy/paste etc.) but also the person salvaging it might not even want to destroy it. As an example, there's a while SDS Lilith parked at M6 right now which I wouldn't mind owning because I like how it looks, not to salvage it for parts. But this does not excuse all the other piles of garbage under the market pad and the L core element only ships that litter the area and consume MY fps, MY data cap and NQ's data cap. This was a long time coming and honestly, several dev blogs and emails from NQ are more than enough for anyone who actually looks at this game to notice.

This update has been great so far. Thanks NQ.

More Engine Shapes/Skins? Sure. Smaller engines in general? Not really because then everyone will pack their engines into the same space resulting in denser engine walls and higher element counts.

What is punishing is the boring repair mechanic that NQ needs to change before the game releases. I think I speak for all of us when I say that standing still holding down LMB is boring asf. For missions, if they were warpable, it would mean pirates have literally nobody to shoot at since everyone already warps as is... I think missions packadges are staying non-warpable and I support that. You can use an autopilot to help with the calculation of speed etc. and as a tip - never aim directly at a planet. Alternatively, fly a half built ship so while you're in space you can work on it to pass the time. In general, missions are a "alt+tab and watch youtube" kind of activity.

They are literally adding that next update though?

With the new changes it should be easier for you to calibrate if you don't login daily but do so weekly. Also with the next update Industry running will be free, you won't need to pay taxes for industry. Personally all I do is build and then sometimes pvp and buy everything from the market with the money I get from selling my builds. This removes the hassle of having MU's and Industry but I still have MU's to help my org. My advice would be to think why you're using MU's. Do you convert the ore into Honeycomb at your factory? Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the materials from the market with the current ore prices? Besides, Asteroids exist and are empty of players now (and use the old mining mechanic) because the vast majority of players have too much ore. If you don't like MU's - don't use them.

Would be a nice use for all those damaged elements from pvp that I have an XL container of hehe

They also said that you will be able to run Industry on offline tiles where you don't pay tax, so now the only reason to pay tax is when you use MU and if you don't want to - there's always asteroids. Besides, they added lots of charges that you can save up and only calibrate like once a week. With the new tax its profitable to not even collect the surface ore of play the minigame (which will be sped up). tbh the next really fixed the tediousness of the system. Now we just need an ore sink for all that ore

With the news that NQ is actually listening to players with the new update, I made this post a little easier to read.

The fact that Industry can run on offline hexes is a saving grace for many people and new players. You no longer have to mine in order to produce stuff - Good. Less Calibrating - Also Good. Higher Numbers of Charges to allow for more casual miners - also a good change. Animation speed up - good. Less Tax - Sure. Trying to remedy boring harvesting of rocks? - I'll wait for news on this one. Talents for harvesting - actually more important now that Demeter is a thing. I'm happy. I'm sure many people are also pleased with this. Well done NQ.

a) With shields, wouldn't that lead to voxel-less ships again? (I'd say shield bleed would be necessary for this suggestion to be implemented) I don't really have an opinion on the other things. While I do agree that cross-section is a detriment to creativity, perhaps it should still be a factor except much less important than now (instead of being removed outright). Good post, keen to read the other comments.

Yeah I was referring to the ability to run a PB or go into build mode

Great Devblog! One Question: How will the game check if the construct on the Aphelia tile has been interacted with? Is the requirement for the owner to get into their seat and move it or is the requirement to remove it from the tile and then put it back in? The only issue I see with the first method I mentioned is that people can just VR in and build mode or simply get into the seat of the construct to "update" the abandonment timer, which in my opinion bypasses the system that will be introduced.

Those are bot orders mate, nobody shops at moon markets