Thasrion

I can't login to the game, says my account is not authorized to login into a private server.

Hello again Noveans!
We have heard your initial feedback on the screens and we want to elaborate on some of your major concerns.
 
Will this affect both screens and content written to the players screen (HUDs)?
No, this technological change will affect only screen units at this time.

Will all player created work on screens suddenly become non-functional?
No, this technology will be available side-by-side with the current technology, both first on the PTS in a prototype state, and eventually also on the Live server.
We strongly recommend everyone does test and experiment the new tech on the PTS, as your feedback and testing will help shape this feature.

How will this make a difference on performance?
The main reason being that the current implementation does not allow for much control over the performance impact of screen renderings. Complex 3D transformations using a combination of HTML, SVG and CSS has a significant impact on render times in the client. Adding to the fact that screens are often condensed with multiples of them in close proximity to each other, there is an increasing drop in performance on the client with more screens using the current technology. The new system allows for more precise control over rendering time allowed across screens and allows us to safeguard the level of performance impact the screens have on the client.

So you will be removing HTML support entirely?
Not necessarily, the two techs will run side by side for an as of yet undefined period of time. Eventually we may introduce a phase where we make the rendering of HTML on screens an option for players along with a warning that it can significantly degrade client performance. Players with that option disabled will simply not see any HTML content and not suffer performance degradation because of it.

Why not improve the current HTML implementation instead of the new technology?
This is a complex topic, HTML/CSS/Javascript is a group that forms a UI technology. For reasons beyond the scope of this topic we do not allow the use of Javascript inside the screen units. When you remove Javascript, the group effectively becomes a not so efficient vector image drawing technology which we have very little control over in terms of rendering. We have previously implemented a lot of small limitations here and there to reduce the impact of the screens, but there are (and likely always will be) edge cases which will eventually crop up using that technology. As such, the new technology has built-in limitations on how taxing a screen unit can be, and if a screen unit goes over the limit it will simply stop drawing. This is why we ask you all to go and test this, and help us find caveats and where you run into things you can and can’t do.

What about bandwidth? Are you doing this to reduce data transfer for screens?
The current implementation does not address this, the current implementation is a way for us to collect your feedback on this concept. Eventually we may change the way data transfer for screens is handled, where we may increase the size of the defined “template” inside a screen unit itself. Followed by a lower limit on the amount of data transferred to the screen from external sources. Allowing the screen element to do the rendering and drawing work, using parameters fed to it by a control unit.
For example: You would draw the design of a fancy instrument panel using the screen element, and a programming board or control unit just sends the values for all the instruments to the screen. This is currently not in the current implementation however, but may give you a better idea of why this technology has a lot of potential for more intricate and powerful designs.

What about artists who draw using external programs and import their SVG’s into the game?
One of our hopes is to provide a good enough set of commands in the screens API so that our system can express most SVG graphics converted to these commands through for example a small conversion tool. It is unlikely that we will develop and maintain a conversion tool for this, but this is also why we want your feedback on this new API for you to let us know what commands you really want to see included to make this process easier.

We sincerely hope that this answers many of your initial questions and concerns.
I personally can’t wait to see what you will all come up with in your designs!
 

Absolutely pointless patch... adding tedium for the sake of tedium. This won't change anything in the long-run, but it will make life harder (and even more boring) for those who work for a living, the solo player,  those that don't sell finished ships, and those who don't exploit the various bugs in the short run. You already had to spend most the game underground mining to do anything in this game and increasing the cost of one of the very few alternatives (which STILL requires mining a lot to get started) only serves to make this game worse. Those already rich and those that exploit various bugs won't even bat an eye at this unless you make the prices so ludicrous that it exempts solo players and small orgs from taking part in industry at all... and if that's the case you just made the largest portions of a games population in any MMO alienated.

As for the "You would be better off going to the market to buy at minimal cost from specialized producers competing against each other. " bit you have in the blog? You obviously don't realize people are going to add the cost of those schematics and other start-up costs to the product. The economy in this game is shit, yes, with nearly everything being at, or near, production cost on the market right now. The increase in market cost will be a welcome change for those like me who sell product on the market so I don't have to mine... but you're fooling yourself if you think it will be more cost-effective to buy off the market in the near future.

Worse yet is the introduction of the skills... as if industry didn't take to long already! I've got 700+ days qued right now and thats only for the - cost and + product skills for tiers 1-3 to finish off the last two levels to get to level 5!

This is truly frustrating for me... I love this game and it's the only one with the building system currently in existence, but you seemed damned determined to kill off your game with the trajectory that this and previous patches have followed... much less the rumors of future patches. Stop nerfing everything into the ground and fix your bugs! THEN focus on adding content. Nerfing and making things harder like this should be LAST on the agenda, not first.

Since there are many MANY changes is coming and if some of the rumors are true and game is taking a more Eve like approach with indy and elements ,etc would you please just reset all the talents we have ( by reset refund them as free points ) so we can customize choose a specialization like you want us to be 
All our character talents developed so far based on how game is working and since there are HUGE changes coming, I am hoping you provide a talent reset / respec like "ALL" other MMOs offering to their players under similar situations.  

Important edit in front of this posting: I just learned more about the topic and need to relativize. When I looked at that "voxel library", I took it as some kind of "ingame construct" that lets you copy individual voxels to use somewhere else. But now I've found the "Voxel Element Library" on trello, which actually sounds very useful and is currently listed as "should make it to beta" - so all of my following concerns already are largely accounted for. Still I'd like to see an option to manipulate vertices (not me of course, please) individually, but that library would be a huge improvement already.
 
I hope for a voxel editor too, since that "voxel library", while surely being a great achievement, really looks awful for what it implies and makes building a virtual world almost harder than building the same thing in the real world. It basically is the opposite of what I am looking for when using a computer to get creative. When I have an idea, the computer shall aid me achieve it - not add artificial barriers, solely based on technology limitations and lack of development. For this developers should be the ones creating comfortable interfaces for humans to make the software do as desired/intended. If the human needs to run the code in their brain over and over again, because the developer failed to provide a proper tool, it invalidates the whole concept of computing, where you find software algorithms for repeated tasks like these.
 
I agree that, in my past too, there was a time when I was still "discovering computers" and considered myself soo witty while hacking one workaround for the lack of tools after another into my machine - but today I know this should not even be necessary, because the pleasure in creativity and construction neither least nor last scales with the use of proper, professional tools and should never become a dull chore. If it's the tool that makes it hard to create what you desire and the game designer can't find another way to "challenge the player", then (in my personal opinion!) the concept is just seriously flawed.
 
Another side to this is that yes, as already said, it makes the people capable of going through such a hassle, somewhat rare and special. But that is not what you want for "emergent gameplay" and a "player-built world", because everyone wants to get creative at some point and if the most basic shapes are this hard to achieve, then yes, you may have one very beautiful construct in a thousand, but it also means 999 others, that look like mashed potatoes, clutter the whole scenery  On the other hand, a beautiful work of art does not just come for free with professional tools - the artists still need a sense for aesthetics - but then they could focus on this, instead of becoming some kind of hybrid between borderline OCD and what they originally wanted to do 
 
@Tordan
I can see why you've got mixed feelings about this, but I really think that proper tools just make the whole world more beautiful and enable many more artistic people to get creative. In my opinion this outweighs the glorified elitism for a small handful of so-called "voxelmancers" by far 

I do have one concern about the resets or re-specs of the skill trees. Because this is a timed base skill progression, does that mean we'll have to wait that time all over again to re-spec those skill? If a skill takes a week to complete I really wouldn't want to have to wait that week again just to get the skill back.

Ship builder and possibly gate builder. Meaning, sending out probes to investigate unknown reigns of space for new gates. I haven't joined any origination yet, going to wait to see who actually makes it or not. Going to start out with small ship builds and work my way up to frigate and destroyer sizes and so on. I've designed a lot of ships in Space Engineers and Empyrion: Galactic Survival, the components of this game seem to favor EGS. I think i was fairly proficient at building ships in EGS so I'm hoping it translates well to this game. I'm hoping there is a design mode where you can do ship designing with out building anything and create blueprints of that design. That would be pretty cool.  

Hi.
I have a quick question about the building process. I play a lot of Space Engineers and in the creative mode where you can free build there is symmetry mode where you can create plains on the grid to mimic what you're doing on one side of the grid on the other side. Is there going to be something like that in game or at least in the, what did you call it, Simulation Mode of the game?
 
Thanks

For the Republic!!

Hi! o/