Jump to content

Jeronimo's Angry review + angry feedback


Recommended Posts

Three years and half after pre alpha launch, the best period ever for DU, everything got overcomplicated, heavy and excruciatingly laggy, especially at the introduction of industry 2.O which has changed till now fps, lag and loading times for everyone, but since the developers aren't testing nor playing their own game, very little have been done concerning the content and game mechanics.


Since the beginning JC pretends that he wants to control the visual aspect of the game, but look at the thousands of player made atrocities and piles of elements scattered everywhere

 

For those who never heard about, but there is a french simplistic and satiric cartoon called "Shadoks", where a group of engineers and workers, work hard together to make simple things more complicated, from where we are getting the expression: "why do simple when you can do complicated?"

And this is exactly what is happening here

 

But in real life, and i quote, professionals, engineers, designers, and architects will all agree: "Less is more"

 

So here are my thoughts, after 3 years of hope and life time, on the bad and good decisions taken, and what could be improved at the moment:

 

 

  •  Building mechanics:

Vertices editor should have been a priority long ago, long before that not so useful update on the line tool

The actual given building tools are half of the reason why we see so much trash everywhere, and why most players are giving up, because voxelmancy is a considerable waste of time since ship selling will never be a major part of the market (everyone want to build his own), PVP will destroy it in a matter of seconds, and detailed or undetailed static or dynamic constructs' spaces are dead as hell.

 

  1. Vertices Editor: self explanatory
     
  2. Line tool: add triangular and circular shapes, and make one of the corners of the selection the center of rotation (not the center of selection, this doesn't make any sense)
     
  3. Paint tool: (omg seriously this one is the biggest joke and laziest decision taken) need to absolutely remove from the game this ridiculous number of different honeycombs, performance wise, and gameplay wise. Every material should have one and only one raw honeycomb, on which we could, using build mode, apply a color we want, a shininess type and or a pattern
    That would optimize the game code, our inventories/containers, and our factories (and will fix that uggly .24 update changes)

     
  4. Remove the deploy and selection sizes limitations
     
  5. Be more consistent in the deploy shapes size increment (1 by 1, not 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 12 16 24 32)

 

* by the way change "galvanized" honeycomb name and check the definition of galvanized on wiki: which is a zinc coating process to protect different metals from rusting

 

  •  Elements:

Here is the second half of the reason why we are surrounded by trashes

First, element design is very badly fusing with the voxel building system, specially all the dynamic constructs elements, elements are detailed meshes that don't match with a voxel hull and the voxel default sizes

Even after the best achievable voxelmancy, engines, brakes, hovers, wings, look like stains on our creations, element colors dont match available honeycomb colors, some elements are offsets, some are badly symmetrical

I m not saying that its bad to have detailed mesh elements, but half of them, must be redesigned to be used and integrated "into" a basic voxel shapes, not to be put like a flower pot "on" the voxels, and this concerning all the elements used for designing ships

 

  1. Dynamic elements (engines, brakes, airfoils): those elements can be a single detailed face element, the face that will pop out from our voxels, and other faces must be designed with an easier global shape to work with the voxel grid (tubular, square, rectangle, just as Empyrion or Space engineers do...)
     
  2. Decorative elements: make sure they are scaled for the voxel grid and size (the reinforced sliding door is the perfect example of bad design and bad consideration)
     
  3. Ability to change elements main color
     
  4. Engines: no no no and no to all this different types of engines (safe/maneuver/military/etc...) with different recipes. again its a mess in inventories and markets, same problem as honeycombs, why doing simple when can do complicated?. while the quality (normal/advanced/rare etc...) should remain, all engines should be crafted as a standard factory type, and have an option by right clicking on them to change their mode type, and why not beeing able to change it using lua

 

 

  • Flight mechanics:

Overall the flight mechanics are very good, stable and well developed

But, the main issue is bringing back to the dynamic elements issue and the overall aesthetic of the game and players creations

 

  1. Elements power/thrust should be multiplied by a minimum of 5!!!! this would greatly reduce the number of elements needed on each ship, reducing the lag and loading time, but most importantly we would not compromise anymore on the design in order to have "acceptable" flight performances (which will increase the visual quality of players creations)
     
  2. Vertical and horizontal cross sections must produce anti drift and high altitude lift, which will reduce the number of wings and stabilizers elements needed, and again will increase everyone performances due to less elements, and allow better ship design
     
  3. Fuel consumption to divide by 2 or more, we are tired to mine 2 hours, refine for an other hour, for 20min of flight (nowadays long distances planes can fly at cruise speed 900kmph for about 12 to 14 hours)

 

 

  • LUA

Lua is one of the greatest part of the game, allows the best customization possible, but is still way too limited, for no reasons

 

  1. Unlock to unlimited  number of links/slots to a pb/remote/ECU/command chair etc... will reduce the number of scripts running at same time, so will increase performances (what is better? to have 10 scripts, on 10 PB, each one linked to 10 elements? or 1 script on 1 PB linked to 100 elements? do the math!)
     
  2. Increase again the recently nerfed CPU usage for custom scripts (they were not producing any client side performances issues, so why decreasing it again?)
     
  3. Increase the conf file allowed size, 150k isnt enough
     
  4. Make possible to install conf files on programming boards
     
  5. Increase Databank sizes
     
  6. Fix the rocket engine please for custom scripts, they are broken and deadly, they activate themselves when construct controls are taken
     
  7. Add function for camera relative rotation and position
     
  8. Ability to save scripts in our nanopack and exchange/sell scripts with DRM protection or not

 

 

  • PVP

I think pvp is a very delicate topic, but globally so few people have any interest in pvp at all due it its extrem unbalance

In my opinion there is no goal and no reward in pvp, which makes it boring

So much time and effort put in mining/producing/building a pvp-able ship that it pushes everyone away

 

  1. there should be no safe zone, nowhere!
    - heard and read too many stories of players ravaging orgs from the inside, secretly stealing work of dozens, and then venting themselves on streams. there should be no safe                        place in the universe for those people to hide their shameful loot
    - cargo ships should be accompanied and escorted by armed fleets, even while mining

     
  2. quantas could be physical/stockable/stealable
     
  3. claimed territories shouldnt be visible on the map, unless personally discovered
    1. surface ore stones, should be mine-able by anyone anytime anywhere (claimed or not. we should be able to get some fast scrap and fuel if we emergency land in middle of a huge claimed territory)
       
  4. static and dynamic construct need energy shields element
     
  5. containers content should not be destroyed unless the container lost all its lives (otherwise there will be no loot in pvp), they should just be inaccessible
     
  6. there should be a way to restore all lives on salvaged elements (repair unit maybe?)

 

 

 

 

 

There is so much more to add, but please NQ consider and fix a big part of this first before adding new buggy "content"

At some point there should be a planetary wipe, to leave space for the new planets design (allowing what ever is standing in space to be excluded from the wipe, for players beeing able to save enough to restart quickly)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...