will the ai ever have better designs..?

[daan_son]

why not employ the community to build/design ai ships ... so the ai can finally have ships worth looking at instead of those failed borg cubes... otherwise love this game... this is litterally my only complaint aout this game....

[Fichom]

Originally posted by Fichom:

Well in all honesty, even though the idea for player created factions and designs is great, there are quite a few problems to it:

The first and foremost is the "legal side of things". That is, if let's say 200 players to create super cool looking factions, there is always a problem of them potentialy asking for some kind of payment for hard work, and it will generaly be a mess if they advertised "all the cool NPC ships we got in our game", while not confirming with each and every creator it is ok. Not to mention scrying through endless amounts of ships that are simply a replica of an existing model, in which case we are looking at lawsuits from other companies -> just a quick example: if they introduced "Star Wars" themed faction, there would be big trouble. But ofcourse everyone recognises "Star Wars", it's a well known brand. Problem will be when someone "copies"(in good or bad intent) some other franchise that isn't all too well known, and if devs include it as "original work from our community", they might get in big trouble(even if it wasn't their or the "original" creators intent to copy someone else's work).

But let's imagine that is somehow all handled, and we don't have to worry about the legal side. If you really want for player-made factions to be good looking, we are talking about 100-150 different designs for all sorts of things. There are over 50 different stations. You need at least 20-30 combat ships of all sizes and tech levels(because you want to make every faction scalable with the distance from the galaxy center), and another 20-30 that are "civil". You maybe want 10-20 different fighters designs. We are talking huge amounts of work(I'm thinking over 300 hours of work per faction - that's a month and a half of full-time job). And while I'm sure there are great guys in this community, who wouldn't mind cooperating and giving all of their designs over do devs, it's still a lot of work, because if you want a good looking faction, all of the ships, stations and fighters have to follow the same theme, color scheme, and such.

Now I know my arguments here are all con, but I do believe we might see player-made factions one day. One thing that would most likely make it suuuuuper easy, and is not all that inconcievable: maybe make a "standalone" ship designer. Sure, it might be a bit of a pain to make, but would work great. Think how for example, HOMM3 came along with a map-designer. This thing could really speed up work(not having to start up the server, enter a game, and so on).

Really we should make a thread on this topic.

This is what I wrote down in another thread.
The biggest problem is really all the work hours it would take to make just 1 faction. I mean player-made designs are great, but in the workshop, I've seen only a handful of "faction designs", and they never contained over 20 ships. Check out the workshop, a guy named "TESLA" has quite a lot of "faction designs". I mean I plan on making something myself, but yesterday I spent like 4 hours on one station design. And it's not complete yet. So yeah. And if devs just make an event to create a faction... idk, I think it will look bad, since there will be so many different styles, it won't feel like a faction at all, but a mishmash of stolen ships. That could also be cool(like a faction of pirates that just has all kinds of ships they "stole" from other factions - but not every faction).

Of course, if someone can come up with a way to have multiple people work on ships that look similar.. that would be cool. I mean I have one idea, but I'd have to test it first to see if it works(some modular stuff).

[hellatze]

Originally posted by daan_son:

why not employ the community to build/design ai ships ... so the ai can finally have ships worth looking at instead of those failed borg cubes... otherwise love this game... this is litterally my only complaint aout this game....

Depend on dev. He rarely talk, i think he doesnt care about that for now.

Probably wait next 2 year. If he want to.

[daan_son]

From the depths made it work ....

[Puppet #7]

Originally posted by hellatze:

Originally posted by daan_son:

why not employ the community to build/design ai ships ... so the ai can finally have ships worth looking at instead of those failed borg cubes... otherwise love this game... this is litterally my only complaint aout this game....

Depend on dev. He rarely talk, i think he doesnt care about that for now.

Probably wait next 2 year. If he want to.

... While you're abject negativity toward all things is commendable, it at least helps to be educated on the things you try and bash.

Both the basic AI ship generation, and the ability to have them use workshop designs are specifically listed on the roadmap. And the road map is roughly a year's time frame.

Also the main dev reads practically every post on the forums, he's mentioned ad naseum several time to other posters and has even given examples.

Early access is generally a garbage heap on steam, so I'm fine with ppl pointing out flaws in weak titles or lazy dev teams: but Avorion is neither.

[Teralitha]

Now you know why they are procedurally generated. Because its easier and takes less time.

[hellatze]

Originally posted by Puppet #7:

Originally posted by hellatze:

Depend on dev. He rarely talk, i think he doesnt care about that for now.

Probably wait next 2 year. If he want to.

... While you're abject negativity toward all things is commendable, it at least helps to be educated on the things you try and bash.

Both the basic AI ship generation, and the ability to have them use workshop designs are specifically listed on the roadmap. And the road map is roughly a year's time frame.

Also the main dev reads practically every post on the forums, he's mentioned ad naseum several time to other posters and has even given examples.

Early access is generally a garbage heap on steam, so I'm fine with ppl pointing out flaws in weak titles or lazy dev teams: but Avorion is neither.

Lesson of life. Never trust a guy 100%

Have at least a suspiction.