OmnipotentVoid
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Posts posted by OmnipotentVoid
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To avoid making more blanket statements: the thing that FTD has, that SE lacks in my opinion, is depth in design. That is not to say I don't believe that SE is a good game. The fact is that in FTD you design on multiple levels: the ship, systems on the ship and if aplicable the sub parts of those systems. SE only has a single layer of design on top of which is super imposed the design of control stuctures (sensors or code) that give the design aditional function.
Further more, the fact that FTD has regular turnements, where designs are matched against eachother, while space engineers does not, clearly shows that designing things is more fundemental to FTD than SE. In contrast, the fact that ships in FTD are basically combat ships or support ships, while ships in SE can have many and multiple functions shows that SE focuses more on what a particular ship (or stucture) can do, rather than the intricacies of the design of each component.
The real point I am trying to make is this: the way space engineers handles functionality is very difficult to deal with. It requires a lot of work and in many cases knowledge of programming in a fairly difficult (for begginers) language. While amazing things can be done, they are only done by a small portion of the community. In FTD, designing is the focus. While the only thing ships do is combat, every player can and does to some extent take a different approach. There are multiple ways to achieve any goal, and due to the modularity of the systems, that goal can be exactly achieved with little waste. Additionally, through the use of prefabs and saved subsystems, the design phase of subcomponents can be completely skipped.
On the flip side: there isn't anything to do in FTD besides pitting ships or fleets against eachother in combat. The campaign allieviates some of that monotony by restricting and localizing resources, but the main principle remains the same. In SE many things must be done: resources gather and infrastructure built. You need to explore and survive and build. While design matters much less in SE there are many more things to design a ship to do.
However, the two sides of the argument need not remain seperated. If this game could merge the depth of design from FTD with the more complex gameplay of SE, this game would be far supirior to both even without having massive servers. This is especially true, because both the exploration/survival or the designing can be avoided in game. If you don't want to explore for resource and build infrastructure, pay somebody to use theirs. If you don't want to spend your time designing, pay somebody to design stuff for you, or buy designs off the market or just plain copy them.
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I'm a big fan of Space Engineers, so I am undoubtedly biased. And I'm not entirely sure how to respond to this but I feel the need to after reading the first part of your post.
I have seen many people who play the game simply tacking things on together or making ships that are simply functional or aesthetically pleasing. And then I have seen real artists. Those who put together sensors systems, engines, and drills in a manner that defies any simple explanation to make automated drones that mine asteroids and bring back the cargo and then do it again all at the push of a button. I have seen people design jump capable satellite systems with solar arrays that unpack themselves from a stable flight mode and unfold like a lotus flower to follow the sun creating an outpost over their next planetary conquest. I have seen vessels that have rotary cannons, player made torpedo systems that will deactivate their own warheads if a friendly target is about to be hit minimizing the accidental damage. I have seen rolling automated scouts. Rovers that are so well crafted that the can traverse any terrain in front of them. The list goes on and on. The point is anyone can tack parts together and make something that works in Space Engineers. But it takes a true Engineer to actually make something that works well and beyond the simple summation of its parts.
There have been some amazing things done in space engineers, however, a lot of what has been done has to do with programming. Either directly or indirectly through sensors and timers. There is some design science behind something like missiles and armoring. However this is harshly limited by the fact that how much damage a missile can do is limited by how many warheads you stick on. Basically a weapons system in SE is either a single block structure with set capabilities (so you always fit on as many as possible) or hologram/mergeblock missile. The reality of space engineers is that a block with guns is the most effective design, because you can plaster the entire surface with active components and have a decent internal volume for reactors/storage and piping is easier.
More over, complex mechanisms do not work well in SE. Using multiple moving parts attached to each other generally cause wobble, making precise mechanisms impossible. It is also imposible to make things sit flush because the game will freak out if things move next to each other while a ship is moving. Because of these facts custom turrets are impossible in SE. Even if they were possible, the would still be a pain, because you have to man them (unless you want to spend hours developing your own AI using sensors). And even if you go through all the trouble of doing this, what your turret does is still defined by what weapon you stick on it, making it almost the same as a single block turret.
Doing any of these amazing things also takes a ridiculously long time. Setting up a sensor system can take hours to get the thing working properly. For the more complex things that require programming skills, they take even longer (and exclude a large portion of players who don't have those skills). And you have to design around what you want to make, meaning any design really only does one thing really well.
In FTD, you engineer systems to fit your design. You don't have to worry about havin to fit a minigum in, because you can design a minimum that will fit. You don't even need to use a minigun, you can build a 500mm derp gun that will fit in a 3x3x1 space, or 3x2x2 if you want. Also, the design process doesn't take as long. You can design an effective system in minutes, or optimize it for hours if you want. You don't need to worry about havin enough reactors for your thrusters, because you can design an engine to get you exactly enough power.
What's more, scaling up the design in SE basically means putting more of the same blocks on it (adding more thrusters/reactors/gattlings). In FTD you can use the extra space to put your weapon on a turret or upgrade its fire rate or damage. Or you could upgrade the engine and add shields or more thrusters.
However, I'm not trying to say SE is a bad game. I have spent hours in SE fiddling with mechanisms and sensors to build doors and probes and so on. However, space engineers lacks on the engineering side of things in. As far as an exploration/building space game SE is amazing, especially due to the programming/atomization (sensors etc.) side of things. FTD is by far the superior ship design game, because it has far more depth and ease of use as far as ship design goes.
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The reason the entity count matters is because of the calculations for each one. And an entity that is heavily reliant on neighboring blocks tends to check more and use more CPU. I always have this problem in MC FTB. My base is densely packed with equipment and begins to cause lag.
You have to remember the size of the game, it's not a 20 player server, it's an every player server. While I like the idea and would love to see it implemented, I understand why the devs are shying away from it.
What I mean by entities is literally bullet spam to the point of ludicrousness in FTD. I have made a capital ship with 8 CWIS systems firing 3000rpm. Plus 20 secondary batteries and 12 main battery guns, this results in roughly 25000 entities. Plus the 200000 blocks of the ship. This tanks my frame rate from (capped) 60fps to 15fps. The 12 engines (spread across multiple sections for redundancy and space efficiency) plus 45 multi block weapons systems and the multi block laser anti missile system totalling roughly 75000 blocks don't cause a notable performance loss.
This is because each system is built around a central (programming wise, not positioning wise) control block, witch calculates what the system does based on the attached blocks. The blocks themselves just check wether they are functioning (not destroyed, attached to the right thing, etc.) and if they are connected to a control block. This way, of the 75000 blocks in the MBSs, only 58 are doing any significantly taxing calculations. The rest are just doing health checks and attachment checks like all blocks on the craft. In FTB all of the blocks are doing taxing calculations. So you may only have 200 blocks of machines, but all of them are doing calculations, rather than the 58 on my 200000 block ship.
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I agree this would be nice to see, it could be an upgrade to the mesh components the devs are creating. I think one reason they seem to be shying away from it is it becomes resource intensive. It isn't just one component producing x power, it has to check all the interactions constantly and adjust its value based on what it sees. And if a block of it is destroyed or damaged it begins recalculating.
Would be nice to have an alternate method of power over 'just put 20 more on'. I always liked MC FTB that had multiblovk system you could do that with. Maybe in 5 years when the tech is more developed.
Interestingly enough, the fact that everything constantly updates the multi block structure doesn't take that much power in FTD. This is because each MBS (multi block structure) has a central controller that basically checks how many functioning blocks are attached to it and calculates everything based on that.
In FTD ship size and entity count (all projectiles are entities) are the main cause of performance decrease. Also, calculations would be done server side, which means there would probably be plenty of processer power available, considering voxel based games usually have more problems with RAM rather than processor power.
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The biggest disappointment in space engineers was the fact that there was no actual engineering. Building in the game (to me) feels more like an exercise in esthetics, slapping on functional parts as necessary. The fact that the capabilities of a ship in space engineers is defined more by what and how many functional parts were on a ship, than the actual design is extremely disappointing.
In From the Depths, on the other hand, design has a meaning. In FTD most functional parts of a ship are multi block structures. The way these are built effect the performance of the ship drastically. This means compromises must be made. Summarized into a triangle, a design of any component must balance between size, power and efficiency.
For example: there is a very efficient 7x7x2n engine design (2n means it is tile able, but one tile must be 2 blocks thick) however, of the 98 blocks per tile, only 4 are the power generating cylinders. The rest increase power output per cylinder and efficiency, or are pipes and dead space. Thus I cannot use the design on small ships or ships that need a lot of power in a small space.
This gets a lot more complex for some systems, like the advanced projectile system.
So I would really like to see a multi block systems mechanic added to this game. It would significantly increase depth and variety, while being avoidable by those who do not want to go so in depth. It adds on to player interaction as well (pro/con list below).
Of course, some people are not interested in designing stuff. In FTD, you get around this by either copying someone's design or using prefabs, which are like blueprints that place parts of or even entire multi block assemblies. This way, if you don't want to spend a long time designing a system, you don't have to.
Also of note: the capabilities of a system don't have to depend solely on the design, just as you could have multiple/upgraded parts, components of a system could have upgraded or specialized version, that require certain resources, research or infrastructure to produce. This also adds cost/ effectiveness to the design considerations.
Single block components would also still be relevant. They should be cheaper (as the are prefabricated) and smaller, but less specialized and not a scalable. They would be used to quickly produce small, inexpensive objects (drone, turrets, mines, etc.).
Pros:
-more depth
-better customization
-more individual designs
-no optimal design/better specialization
-more balancing factores/more subtle balancing allows for better over all balance ( if done properly)
-adds an appealing side to design other than esthetics
-expands perfectly on the build your own universe idea
-avoidable if you're not interested
-adds another specialization possibility for players (engine designer, weapon designer, etc.)
-adds another trade good (blueprints, possibly the prefaced system)
-adds more weapon/system variety for all players, not only those who would use the system design mechanic
Cons:
-longer (but not steeper) learning curve (that can be avoided)
-takes longer/may be harde to balance
-may take more processing power (server side)
Note: I mainly imagine thes multi block structures for larger ships, not for something as smal as a fighter.
Multi block system/weaponry
in Idea Box
Posted
I actually played fairly little creative in SE. However the piping system is pretty simple and I find it to be more of an annoyance than anything. You can do some neat things with it, but that takes a lot of effort and time, so most of the time it's connect points A and B. And uranium always gives the same amount of power per unit. In FTD, engines have a lot of depth in design as far as fuel consumption goes, balancing between power per fuel, power per volume and total size and the ability to keep the engine cool.
I don't play much of creative in SE, because all the advantages that SE has for me (I'm no programmer, or someone with the time to make the really amazing things) come from the exploration and difficulty of building things in SE.