Weapons and everything related to them need a complete revamp.

[Asherogar]

I started a new run recently after a long break (last one was a bit after Rifts DLC i think) and after playing a bit I realised I'm not having fun. Start of the game is a slog, but I know for sure the game is super fun later, wouldn't play 800 hours otherwise. But why? Shooting at asteroids with some pathetic naonite laser is not very brain intensive job, so I've been thinking instead.

Essentially any activity aside from trading involves combat. Yes, even mining, asteroids are the same pirate loot pinatas, just less prone to shoot back. Not less lethal tho if you're playing with collision damage on.

Combat consists of "attack" and "defence" parts. "Defence" is pretty much nailed down: ship builder gives you a huge freedom in terms of turning this pile of resources into something with stats and appearance you want, while being intuitive and simple enought that even a toddler can figure it out (IMHO Avorion has The best ship builder) and subsystems are pretty good too, I can discuss some specific ones, but not much bad things to say about the systems itself. "Attack" part includes weapons/fighters and everything revolving around them, including the ways of aquiring them. I don't play much with fighters, so I won't talk about them, the only thing I say is that compared to turrets devs are at least making decisions in the right direction. But weapons... hoo boy they have problems.

1. Complete dissonance between gamedesign decisions related to weapons and the gameplay itself or "You need more than a single gun here"

That's the main problem, the root, thaty makes any other gamedesign decision bad and not work out the way devs intend it to.

It's obvious the game loot system is inspired by games like Borderlands, Titan Quest, PoE, Diablo etc. Such system is a cornerstone of this games, but it doesn't work in Avorion and, honestly, detrimental. "You need more than a single gun"

When you pick up a cool gun in Borderlands, that's it, you're using it's full potential, the game is designed around you being able to use one gun at a time (*cough* Salvadore *cough*).

When you find a powerful sword in Titan Quest/PoE/Diablo, that's it, you're using it's full potential and you don't need more than one. Maybe if you're dual wielding, but PoE let's you to create a literal copy of an item, so even edge cases like this are covered.

In Avorion you're using 10 or more guns at once and if we're counting by weapon slots it's easily 40+. You have found a cool bolter? Good luck finding at least 9 identical bolters. Trying to use weapons of different types is a nightmare, becuase of wildly different ranges, damage types, projectile speed, accuracy, some of them overheat, others have battery charge and list goes on and on.

You found 10 yellow bolters of the same tech level and material? Welp, they have widly different stats, fire type, heat gauges (or none), accuracy, effective ranges, damage types, turret sizes etc etc etc. There's so much pointless and eccessive RNG just for the sake of RNG.

And don't even get me started on unique guns. The exemplify weapons problems by tenfold. No one uses them. At best you give it a "there was an attempt" star and keep it as part of collection. At worst it's a vendor trash.

The most ironic thing is that subsystems work perfectly fine with the same loot system. Because they're far more standartised, for most of them you rarely need more than a few and they keep being useful even later on, even if you're no olnger using this turret control subsystem, you can use it to research a new more rare one. Subsystems function more like items in other looter games and that's why they work fine.

2. Research.

You can combine several weapons to get a single random weapon of the higher rarity. Why?

3. Too much stats RNG.

You have two lasers. Same level. Same rarity. Same turret size. Roughly the same range and battery size. One of them has x10 DPS. Why?

This massive RNG in stats creates a situation, where 98% of weapons you find are unusable trash, 1.999% are "Eh, it's decent, I guess" and 0.001% are so broken, they shoot throught space-time continuum. And obviously everyone is busy finding this magical turret factory that produces 0.001% weapon, while settling for 1.999% in the meantime just to bloat your OM and make inflation artists on Twitter blush.

And this RNG is pointless. It's not a Borderlands where you can find a single cool gun and have fun. Here a single good weapon is not going to change anything. The best you can do is turn it into a fighter.

4. Turret factories.

Turret factories. So much mixed feelings. The game actually starts being quite fun after you finally find the right factory, collect the resources and craft yourself a whole battery of cool guns.

But in the end, despite devs taking some small steps in the right direction with recent changes, it exasurbates existing issues of weapons.

It's INSANELY costly.

It's the type of costly that you never touch before settling in somewhere around The Barrier. Costly in both credits and your time. Have you ever spend 20 hours and visited 500 systems just to find Laser Modulators? I did. It sucks.

Parts and stats.

Ugh, I can't find the proper words to summarise it adequately. Here's your bolter. It has a range of 7km, but if you add a few High pressure tubes, it's range is 21km. Why? It's not a choise. Every time you find a good gun, you just max out every component, because why not? You're an actual idiot if you don't. The only stat that gives any actual choise is firerate, because it can change if weapon is burst or overheats.

At first, I thought that the problem is in having too big of a discrepancy between min components and mx components. But no, it doesn't matter. Even if you change to +10% bonus max everyone will still max out components with 0 thought. It's RNG for the sake of RNG. The choise for the sake of illusion of choise.

But at the same time I can't change damage type. I can't change the turret size. I can't change number of barrels. I can't change fire type. All thew things that actually matter are not available for change.

Turret factory should be a station where I can craft the weapon I want. Where I can freely choose all this parameters. On top of it, weapon stats must be heavily normalized, where the weapon of the same type, rarity and turret sizes should have roughly the same stats, within 10% maybe.

Blueprints.

That's a step in right direction, but it's not fixing any core problems. Craft is still turbo expensive, components are still a pain to find and stats are still wild, so crafted weapon with maxed out components will always be miles above anything you can find.

And hoo boi. All this time I was talking only about your own ship. Now imagine doing all of this for 10 of your fleet ships too.

That's it for now I think. I know that later on I will be able to craft 10 jacked up laser turrets and have a lot of fun, but until then I'm stuck in 20-30-40 hours of mindless soulcrushing grind at best and pure suffering at best.

[SNS]

Originally posted by Asherogar:

When you find a powerful sword in Titan Quest/PoE/Diablo, that's it, you're using it's full potential and you don't need more than one. Maybe if you're dual wielding, but PoE let's you to create a literal copy of an item, so even edge cases like this are covered.

Your argument about using a found weapon to its fullest potential doesn't make sense. If you equip a weapon on your craft the only thing stopping you from using it to its maximum is either range or your aim. Both you can solve by just moving your ship, using weapon groupings and practice.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

You have found a cool bolter? Good luck finding at least 9 identical bolters.

Make a blueprint dude. The only turrets you cant dupe are tech level 51/52 turrets but if you use a turret factory then you can just roll what you want then move it away again and have infinite copies of what ever your factory rolled.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Trying to use weapons of different types is a nightmare, becuase of wildly different ranges, damage types, projectile speed, accuracy, some of them overheat, others have battery charge and list goes on and on.

This makes no sense once again. You are complaining about variety? Obviously you may want to specialise in certain areas which depends on your ship design (ie long range sniper ship with cannons, rockets, railguns or a brawler ship with plasma and bolters) but the only weapon that you dont actually want to mix and match with are turrets that ignore shields. It is actually beneficial to have multiple damage types on a ship. On my brawlers i use plasma laser fighters to drop shields before my main ships get in close with anti matter bolters and cannons. The DPS increase by using plasma and anti matter together can be enormous.

Also you can hotkey weapons for your personal ship, so if i have a weapon with a long cooldown say a anti matter cannon then i can wait until their shields are down and then turn on the cannons to let rip.

The only thing i would agree with is projectile speed at long ranges (generally you want to use cannons with similar velocities unless you use control groups to stagger the firing of different batteries).

I will say the ai do better with hitscan and seeker weapons in general though. Wish we could customise the ai of our ships giving them a minimum and maximum engagement range, keep distance to enemy commands e.c.t.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

And don't even get me started on unique guns. The exemplify weapons problems by tenfold. No one uses them. At best you give it a "there was an attempt" star and keep it as part of collection. At worst it's a vendor trash.

Some are kinda ♥♥♥♥ i agree with that but things like the railgun that pierces shields, the firefly romanticizer, jackhammers, the ones with seeking are all decent and I used the jackhammers and fireflys until barrier and have a shield piercing railgun thats great for PvE.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

2. Research.

You can combine several weapons to get a single random weapon of the higher rarity. Why?

I agree with this.

I get the intention of it but i have never had research give me a good turret, its better to just sell the ones you dont want, blueprint the ones you want to keep and use turret factories. Researching 5 of the exact same turret should be a guaranteed upgrade, instead i have lost hundreds of DPS going from exotic to legendaries before.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

You have two lasers. Same level. Same rarity. Same turret size. Roughly the same range and battery size. One of them has x10 DPS. Why?

This massive RNG in stats creates a situation, where 98% of weapons you find are unusable trash, 1.999% are "Eh, it's decent, I guess" and 0.001% are so broken, they shoot throught space-time continuum. And obviously everyone is busy finding this magical turret factory that produces 0.001% weapon, while settling for 1.999% in the meantime just to bloat your OM and make inflation artists on Twitter blush.

I do agree with this, turret factories can make some OP as hell turrets, but really if everything was just the same then why would anyone even bother engaging with half the game. You made a comparison to borderlands before and I have found HEAPS of guns not worth using in borderlands as well OP ones. There would be not much point to farming bosses to get better turrets or to getting some industry going to support turret and fighter production. If anything i wish they had some harder content that would rival some of the stuff you can build yourself instead of reining in some of the outliers.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

It's INSANELY costly.

It's the type of costly that you never touch before settling in somewhere around The Barrier. Costly in both credits and your time. Have you ever spend 20 hours and visited 500 systems just to find Laser Modulators? I did. It sucks.

If you have 10 ships the why dont you just use the procure command? Surely you would have a merchant captain by then. I don't even bother manually going to factories anymore or mine resources, i just use captains to do that for me while i do things that i personally find more interesting like setting up production chains, fighting bosses or rifts.

I half agree on the cost, partly because weapons that you get from drops can carry you all the way into the center not a problem (I used a iron cannon that dropped from a pirate mothership all the way to trinium without issues on expert) and there are ways to make hundreds of millions before you reach the barrier easily. The only thing that really eats your money are OP turrets. My endgame turrets are $200 million a turret but are over 7k dps a slot and im easily earning over a billion per play session from my industry alone that i set up before the barrier.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Ugh, I can't find the proper words to summarise it adequately. Here's your bolter. It has a range of 7km, but if you add a few High pressure tubes, it's range is 21km. Why? It's not a choise. Every time you find a good gun, you just max out every component, because why not? You're an actual idiot if you don't. The only stat that gives any actual choise is firerate, because it can change if weapon is burst or overheats.

At first, I thought that the problem is in having too big of a discrepancy between min components and mx components. But no, it doesn't matter. Even if you change to +10% bonus max everyone will still max out components with 0 thought. It's RNG for the sake of RNG. The choise for the sake of illusion of choise.

But at the same time I can't change damage type. I can't change the turret size. I can't change number of barrels. I can't change fire type. All thew things that actually matter are not available for change.

Turret factory should be a station where I can craft the weapon I want. Where I can freely choose all this parameters. On top of it, weapon stats must be heavily normalized, where the weapon of the same type, rarity and turret sizes should have roughly the same stats, within 10% maybe.

Now this i 100% agree on, if you are going to the trouble to roll turrets there is no reason not to bump the stats as high as they will go. I wish turret production was more like fighter production where you can trade off one stat for an increase in another. Being able to select a damage type would be a nice QOL change as well.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

That's it for now I think. I know that later on I will be able to craft 10 jacked up laser turrets and have a lot of fun, but until then I'm stuck in 20-30-40 hours of mindless soulcrushing grind at best and pure suffering at best.

I mean, this just feels self inflicted. You can used mixed turrets that you get from drops only all the way to the center without issue unless you are playing on insane where you need to be a little more carefull. Once you build a factory you can bring it with you as well so you can constantly up its tech level. Use captains to procure the items you need and make a industry network to fund everything passively and you are set.

[Asherogar]

Originally posted by SNS:

Your argument about using a found weapon to its fullest potential doesn't make sense. If you equip a weapon on your craft the only thing stopping you from using it to its maximum is either range or your aim. Both you can solve by just moving your ship, using weapon groupings and practice.

Yea, my example is confusing and you misunderstood the point. In games like Borderlands of PoE you need to find only a single weapon. You equip it and it's an equvivalent of full loadout of crafted guns. In Avorion if you find some good gun, it's just one gun. The game is not really designed around you having a single gun. So you either craft, which is expencive and very time conuming + relies on you having a fleet and infrastructure to supply you, or you use a mish-mash of weapons that clash together and a nightmare to use.

Originally posted by SNS:

Some are kinda ♥♥♥♥ i agree with that but things like the railgun that pierces shields, the firefly romanticizer, jackhammers, the ones with seeking are all decent and I used the jackhammers and fireflys until barrier and have a shield piercing railgun thats great for PvE.

Again, the problem of a single gun. I'm not going to add some gun that radically clashes with my loadout even if it's decent. And as far as i'm aware you can't even make it into blueprint.

Originally posted by SNS:

I agree with this.

I get the intention of it but i have never had research give me a good turret, its better to just sell the ones you dont want, blueprint the ones you want to keep and use turret factories. Researching 5 of the exact same turret should be a guaranteed upgrade, instead i have lost hundreds of DPS going from exotic to legendaries before.

It's stats RNG I've been talking about later. By itself I get the idea too and okay with it, but because min/max stats are so wild and multiplying turret is rather bothersome I find it hardly useful. Indeed you're better off selling all the turrets or even dismantlying in hopes of getting rare parts.

Originally posted by SNS:

I do agree with this, turret factories can make some OP as hell turrets, but really if everything was just the same then why would anyone even bother engaging with half the game. You made a comparison to borderlands before and I have found HEAPS of guns not worth using in borderlands as well OP ones. There would be not much point to farming bosses to get better turrets or to getting some industry going to support turret and fighter production. If anything i wish they had some harder content that would rival some of the stuff you can build yourself instead of reining in some of the outliers.

Mmm, I think you misunderstood my intention with this. I don't like the fact that stats are completely RNG. You have Tech Level, Material and Rarity. But they don't matter. Iron weapon easily can be better than Trinium one. Rare gun twice as strong as Exotic. Probably only Tech Level matters, but i'm not sure even about this one.

I don't want guns with +-300% stats RNG, i want +-30% stats RNG. This way rarity starts to matter something.

Honestly speaking I don't see why more standardised guns would be bad. In PoE if the game says Sundering Axe has 60-70 base damage, all Sundering Axes, no matter how many thousands of them you find, will have 60-70 base damage. But additional stats would be different and that's what matters. You can do the same thing here, where rarity and material will give additional stats, intead of current clown fiesta.

The problem with current system is that loot is not exciting. When you see yellow blimp, but realise it's a gun and not a subsystem, you're not excited anymore, it goes into vendor trash instantly.

You find something half decent and make by until you can craft actual good guns in a factory. That's not how loot supposed to be threated in looter game.

Originally posted by SNS:

I mean, this just feels self inflicted. You can used mixed turrets that you get from drops only all the way to the center without issue unless you are playing on insane where you need to be a little more carefull. Once you build a factory you can bring it with you as well so you can constantly up its tech level. Use captains to procure the items you need and make a industry network to fund everything passively and you are set.

You're completely confusing different parts of the game. I said pretty clearly that I have fun when I'm around the barrier and can start actually playing the game, i.e. get some proper guns, set up an industry, start building fleet, shoot some bad guys etc.

The problem is getting to this point. I have neither a fleet or industry and your "advice" is "Send your fleet bro. Use you industry to print billions bro." Sorry for rude reply, but you're looking at lategame and wondering why i'm having trouble at the very start of early game. And I'm pretty sure your "you can print billions easily" is something with trade. I'm not interested in trade whatsoever. Especially when i don't even have a semi-adequate ship yet.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Asherogar:

I have neither a fleet or industry and your "advice" is "Send your fleet bro. Use you industry to print billions bro." Sorry for rude reply, but you're looking at lategame and wondering why i'm having trouble at the very start of early game. And I'm pretty sure your "you can print billions easily" is something with trade. I'm not interested in trade whatsoever. Especially when i don't even have a semi-adequate ship yet.

You don't have any industry, you don't have a fleet, and you don't have super-awesome guns or an "adequate" ship? What are you doing at the barrier, then?

If you're not printing billions and you're hanging out around the barrier, then you haven't actually learned how to play... you've just lucked into reaching the barrier before you were ready. You know the saying "it takes money to make money"? That means you have to spend to get bigger... and if you're broke at the barrier, it's because what you're doing isn't working.

As for your complaint about the weapons... all I can tell you is this: Turret Factories make blueprints. Parts are (relatively speaking) cheap; there's no excuse not to have eleventy-two of your favorite gun.

Fighters are even easier; bring your awesome gun to a fighter factory, turn it into a fighter, then turn that fighter into a blueprint on the squadron screen of the ship it's on... and print fighters. You'll need assembly blocks on your carrier(s), but that's a simple fix.

If the issue is that you don't have a fleet, then all I can think is that you haven't figured out how to trade 500 iron for another ship, or you don't understand how captains work.

Build a ship, add a captain with whichever class works best for you, and send them off to do their thing. Better yet, do that 5 or 6 times... and better even than that, send 5 or 6 ships off to do the same thing together, so their ambush chance goes away and their yields get ridiculous.

Mining ships should be carriers with R-mining turrets, R-mining fighters, and tons of cargo space. Send a half-dozen of those out to troll around the Xanion region (with Xanion mining turrets, in case that wasn't obvious), and watch them bring back millions of metals for you to vendor-dump at your leisure.

Note: I said "millions of metals", not "millions worth of metals". If your mining fleet isn't bringing back half a billion credits' worth of resources per 6-hour run, then it's not big enough yet. Add two more ships, and try again.

As for getting top-shelf weapons... you're researching everything that isn't already strapped to a ship, right? Mark everything lower than yellow as trash, and feed it all to the research station. Then mark everything lower than red as trash, and feed it all through again. If you don't feel like you have enough modules and turrets to do that, then you're not running a salvage fleet... which brings us back to "you don't actually know what you're doing". You should be running red turrets and modules, at the very least, and you should have more than one purple on every ship in your 20-30 ship fleet.

Build or board a half-dozen ships, put scavenger captains and salvaging lasers/fighters on them, and send them all off together for a few hours... they'll bring back hundreds of modules and turrets, and that's not an exaggeration. Within a few max-length runs, you'll start bouncing off the item limit every few hours.

TL;DR: If you aren't so ridiculously wealthy by the time you hit Trinium that the problems you've described aren't trivial to "fix" by throwing a few million credits at them, then you're simply doing it absolutely wrong.

[SNS]

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Yea, my example is confusing and you misunderstood the point. In games like Borderlands of PoE you need to find only a single weapon. You equip it and it's an equvivalent of full loadout of crafted guns. In Avorion if you find some good gun, it's just one gun. The game is not really designed around you having a single gun. So you either craft, which is expencive and very time conuming + relies on you having a fleet and infrastructure to supply you, or you use a mish-mash of weapons that clash together and a nightmare to use.

But you are misunderstanding me lol. Blue prints literally solve that problem and its not worth making them early game unless you find a goldilocks weapon because weapons from drops or turret factories are viable even in the end game. There are not that many different weapons that you cant start specialising ships for them even in iron regions, slap all your long range weapons on ship, short range on another e.c.t. You have the ability to hire captains and make fleets out of multiple ships even at the start of the game, use it.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Again, the problem of a single gun. I'm not going to add some gun that radically clashes with my loadout even if it's decent. And as far as i'm aware you can't even make it into blueprint.

So dont then? Whats the complaint about really? Literally no one is forcing you to use them.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

It's stats RNG I've been talking about later. By itself I get the idea too and okay with it, but because min/max stats are so wild and multiplying turret is rather bothersome I find it hardly useful. Indeed you're better off selling all the turrets or even dismantlying in hopes of getting rare parts.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Mmm, I think you misunderstood my intention with this. I don't like the fact that stats are completely RNG. You have Tech Level, Material and Rarity. But they don't matter. Iron weapon easily can be better than Trinium one. Rare gun twice as strong as Exotic. Probably only Tech Level matters, but i'm not sure even about this one.

Tech level, material and rarity absolutely do matter, while you may find a iron weapon that has better stats then a titanium weapon thats because the titanium weapon is ♥♥♥♥. Basically the absolute best iron weapon will be beaten by the absolute best titanium weapon e.c.t. I do agree that the range of stats could be brought down a little though so there is not as much overlap, having that iron cannon be useful all the way to trinium did feel a little off.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

The problem with current system is that loot is not exciting. When you see yellow blimp, but realise it's a gun and not a subsystem, you're not excited anymore, it goes into vendor trash instantly.

This is true in the end game, i just end up turning off turret collection except from bosses because drops from standard enemies just cant come anywhere close to a good turret factory roll.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

You find something half decent and make by until you can craft actual good guns in a factory. That's not how loot supposed to be threated in looter game.

But that's literally the whole point of loot? Ala borderlands, you use guns you find until you get to the end game and then farm out the gun with the rolls you want just like turret factories. I had to make by with lots of meh weapons in borderlands until i found the one i wanted and just like in avorion i would sell all the ones i didnt want.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

You're completely confusing different parts of the game. I said pretty clearly that I have fun when I'm around the barrier and can start actually playing the game, i.e. get some proper guns, set up an industry, start building fleet, shoot some bad guys etc.

The problem is getting to this point. I have neither a fleet or industry and your "advice" is "Send your fleet bro. Use you industry to print billions bro." Sorry for rude reply, but you're looking at lategame and wondering why i'm having trouble at the very start of early game. And I'm pretty sure your "you can print billions easily" is something with trade. I'm not interested in trade whatsoever. Especially when i don't even have a semi-adequate ship yet.

So you dont want to play the game? Of course you are not going to OP with millions of money and systems in the early game. That's what makes it the early game. What would be the point if you just got everything at the start? It sounds like you might be better off playing in creative mode if you dont want to actually earn things in game.

You should be looking at the late game from the start of the game, if you dont want to re-invest your money into something that will help you later on i dont know what to tell you at that point.

I started at the same point as you, my industry network didnt just appear out of thin air, i used money from missions and mines to exponentially grow it until it got to the point i could just leave it alone and generate entirely passive income that now pays for everything later on. I didnt bother doing manual mining except for building my first couple of ships, once you get a captain you can automate it or just buy the resources. Like i said before i didnt bother with turret factories either until the end game because the loot drops are more then enough to carry you to the end. This was on expert and overall the game still felt to easy, if i wasnt playing on a server with other people i would have bumped it up to insane.

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Build or board a half-dozen ships

Boarding is absolutely OP when it comes to stations, half price on some of the end game stations will save you hundreds of millions along with all the loot from the station itself.

[Bobucles]

OP hits some points. Other games call this issue the "clown suit". In avorion, it's clown guns. You get a huge pile of weapons, none of them match, and your ships end up shooting a circus explosion of random bullets into the enemy.

The random scaling on some weapons is also pretty bonkers. There's some kind of gaussian curve in weapon stats. Most of them are junk, a few are good, and the rare gems are full armories in a trench coat. Then you need 10 of them to outfit a ship, which isn't going to happen.

Shredding mountains of trash weapons is just part of the weapon economy, I guess.

[SNS]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

OP hits some points. Other games call this issue the "clown suit". In avorion, it's clown guns. You get a huge pile of weapons, none of them match, and your ships end up shooting a circus explosion of random bullets into the enemy.

The random scaling on some weapons is also pretty bonkers. There's some kind of gaussian curve in weapon stats. Most of them are junk, a few are good, and the rare gems are full armories in a trench coat. Then you need 10 of them to outfit a ship, which isn't going to happen.

Shredding mountains of trash weapons is just part of the weapon economy, I guess.

The variety is a good thing though because it allows room for different playstyles and uniqueness. Want a sniper ship? Use cannons/rockets or long range rail guns, build a brawler out of tesla guns, build a carrier with pulse gun fighters and kill ships without worrying about their shields. In fact fighters are a easy way to 'dupe' turrets because as soon as you have one you can just keep producing as many as you want, you only have to visit a factory once.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Then you need 10 of them to outfit a ship, which isn't going to happen.

Blueprints exits? Turn them into blueprints and make more of them at any turret factory in the game that supports that tech level. The only ones you cant do that with are end game tech level 51/52 turrets from drops but at that point your turret factories should have way better turrets anyway which you can make infinite copies from.

The ability to do this isnt hidden and isnt that hard to do. My mining robot chain took a order of magnitude more resources to build than my turret factory (which INCLUDES all the re-rolls i paid for). All that was built before i even crossed the barrier.

[Asherogar]

Originally posted by SNS:

But you are misunderstanding me lol. Blue prints literally solve that problem and its not worth making them early game unless you find a goldilocks weapon because weapons from drops or turret factories are viable even in the end game. There are not that many different weapons that you cant start specialising ships for them even in iron regions, slap all your long range weapons on ship, short range on another e.c.t. You have the ability to hire captains and make fleets out of multiple ships even at the start of the game, use it.

Oh oh oh, I think I can formulate the problem I have better now.

I don't like the clown fiesta of having 20 guns with wildly different stats and sizes. But at the same time Turret factories and Blueprints, that are supposed to solve this problem are not worth using until lategame, you said it yourself. They require too much effort and established infrastructure to use.

But why it should be this way?

IMO the main problem with Turret Factories is components. You need a very solid summ on your bank account and either a lot of time and effort put into collecting the needed components or a fleet to magically procure them out of someone's ass apparently.

What I would want is to replace components with some ambiguous "Weapon(or Turret) Parts", that you get by dismantling turrets. Well, significantly lowering the price of crafting turrets too, I suppose.

Originally posted by SNS:

The variety is a good thing though because it allows room for different playstyles and uniqueness. Want a sniper ship? Use cannons/rockets or long range rail guns, build a brawler out of tesla guns, build a carrier with pulse gun fighters and kill ships without worrying about their shields. In fact fighters are a easy way to 'dupe' turrets because as soon as you have one you can just keep producing as many as you want, you only have to visit a factory once.

I don't understand how you always link stats RNG and variety. By reducing RNG you're not going to magically turn every gun into a chaingun, it will do nothing to variety at all. It will only remove the situation where you find a two bolters of the same Tech Level, Material and Rarity only to see one of them has 5km range and the other is 21,5km with all the other stats pretty much identical.

If you put 20 laser turrets that you picked as random loot on your ship, they will be much more close in stats and far easier to use together, instead of current disco ball clown fiesta.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Oh oh oh, I think I can formulate the problem I have better now.

I don't like the clown fiesta of having 20 guns with wildly different stats and sizes. But at the same time Turret factories and Blueprints, that are supposed to solve this problem are not worth using until lategame, you said it yourself. They require too much effort and established infrastructure to use.

But why it should be this way?

IMO the main problem with Turret Factories is components. You need a very solid summ on your bank account and either a lot of time and effort put into collecting the needed components or a fleet to magically procure them out of someone's ass apparently.

What I would want is to replace components with some ambiguous "Weapon(or Turret) Parts", that you get by dismantling turrets. Well, significantly lowering the price of crafting turrets too, I suppose.

...

If you put 20 laser turrets that you picked as random loot on your ship, they will be much more close in stats and far easier to use together, instead of current disco ball clown fiesta.

Allow me to restate your core issue: You don't have any money (or other resources), and you don't have a fleet. I reiterate (again). If you've managed to get to the barrier without some basic infrastructure and a solid bankroll, you haven't actually learned how to play the game. I bet you did the whole thing backward, and you're playing "One Big Ship Meta" (ie, OBSM). That doesn't work, for a number of reasons... starting with "when you get blown up, you have to start over".

Here, let me give you what I call the "locust swarm" method:

Start a new save.

First thing you do is get some resources; 5,000 iron and 1,000 titanium should do it. Get the Titanium Building Knowledge out of the mail, and use it in your inventory to get the next tier of building knowledge.
Next, build a 1-block ship.
Go into build mode, and replace the initial hull block with an inertial dampener. Add a titanium crew quarters on the front, then add 3 gyros made from whatever behind the inertial dampener (all facing different directions; look for the circles and make sure you have 1 red, 1 green, and 1 blue). Place a titanium generator behind the gyros, and an iron engine behind that. Add a tiny strip of Integrity Field Generator to buff your hit points. Don't bother with thrusters or armor at this point, we're just trying to get up and flying.

Add 2 mining turrets and a chaingun to your new brick ship.

Now, go claim and sell the asteroid in the starting sector to get ~ 200,000 credits. I used to keep hold of it until I could afford to make a mine or station out of it, but that comes much later; it's much more useful as starting capital.

Go find and hire a captain (miner or scavenger is best, but literally any captain will do). Now go back to the starting sector if you left it, and tell the captain to mine the sector.

Assuming you understand how captains work, just ignore the adventurer telling you to meet him somewhere; he just wants to teach you how to use captains. If this is your first playthrough, by all means go talk to him... but scrap the ship he gives you; it's worthless.

You'll be selling your metal to the Resource Depot to make your money. You'll have to learn to balance between "I need money" and "I need metal", or you're going to be spending a lot of time waiting for things to happen so you can keep doing stuff, but you'll figure that part out pretty quickly... and it won't be a problem for very long, regardless.

Gather more resources. Again, you're just looking for basic functionality. When you can afford it, build a second ship. Make it just like the first one. Add 2 mining lasers, a chaingun, and a captain to it, and tell this one to mine the sector, too.

Now, do that again, and again, until you have to spend naonite to make a new ship. If I recall correctly, that's at a fleet size of 5.

Start moving toward the center of the galaxy, upgrading your mining turrets along the way so they're all titanium (either fight pirates, buy turrets at equipment vendors, or both). Get to a new sector, and set your fleet to mining all the asteroids out of it while you poke the vendors for useful tidbits. Notice the timer ticking down; that's the "restock" timer. When it hits zero, they change out their stock, replenishing anything you purchased and randomizing the whole thing. Try to make sure to visit them every 20 minutes so you don't miss out on any goodies. Sell any guns made of iron, and prioritize getting titanium mining modules and titanium mining lasers for your fleet. Pick up a few titanium salvaging lasers while you're at it.

When you see your first Naonite (it's green), don't get super-excited. Just keep mining out the sectors, and building more mining ships as you can afford it.

Hail a passing ship and ask where their home sector is; that will have a wide variety of buildings in it that you can use to get well set up. When they tell you the coordinates, head there at your earliest convenience.

Once there, swap out the mining lasers for chain guns on 2-3 ships, and tell them to "patrol sector" instead of "mine sector". Now park your drone next to the shipyard, and go make a sandwich; we're gonna be here for an hour or two.

Once a pirate attack has occurred, swap the mining lasers out for salvaging turrets on a ship or two, and tell them to "salvage sector".

Now you have 6-7 ships in your fleet, some of which are "battle group", some of which are "miners", and some of which are "scavengers". Every time you enter a new sector, you tell your miners to mine, your scavengers to salvage, and your combat squadron to patrol... and the money and resources roll in while you go shopping in your drone.

Killing pirates gives rep, and doing it in a civilization's home sector keeps you from getting in too much trouble while you do it; all you have to do is hit the bad guy once before the "home team" shreds them, and you get credit. It's also a source of modules and turrets, both from faction rewards and from salvaging the bad guys' ships.

Once your rep and money situation allows you to do so, purchase the Naonite Building knowledge, and spend a couple hours building a nice ship class for each of your squadrons. Miners and Scavengers can use the same set up, and I often give them a couple mining lasers and a couple salvaging lasers each, so they can be interchangeable. Combat ships need decent shields and maneuverability, and nothing but damage-dealing turrets.

Now that you have your Naonite building knowledge, do the same thing as before; move toward the center of the galaxy, but now you're looking for Trinium instead of Naonite, and prioritizing Naonite guns and mining modules... and picking up every "hydra" module you can get your paws on.

Once you get Trinium building knowledge, it's time for a ship design session. Add hangars to each of your designs, and make sure you have enough hangar space to hold your fighters. A good rule of thumb is 96 per squadron, because 12 ships of up to size 8. There's a maximum of 10 squadrons per ship, so more than 960 is just wasted space.

Add production blocks to your ships with fighters, and go buy one combat fighter. Turn it into a blueprint, and start making them. Pass them around to the rest of your battle group, and have them start printing them, too.

Once you have all your combat fighters, pick up a mining fighter and a salvage fighter, both with turrets made of the highest material you can get your hands on. Mass produce those, too, and hand them out to your mining and scavenger groups (yes, you should have added hangars to those, too).

Now you're finally ready to build your flagship. Go nuts; add all the bells and whistles you can afford, and make it look however you like. The rest of the fleet exists solely to support the flagship, so it doesn't matter if they look cool... but this one is yours, so express yourself. This is your "one big ship", and it's heading a small armada.

Moving on from there, once you cap out your fleet size because you don't have any Ogonite or Avorion to pay the ship-building fees, make a boarding ship. It consists of heavy armor/shields, a bunch of plasma guns, and a bunch of hangars full of boarding shuttles. You burn off the shields, turn off your guns, and send the boarders... and they bring you a new ship.

[Bobucles]

Blueprints exits?

Blueprints are less reliable at preserving stats than hoped, obscenely expensive to only work at endgame, and are useless on uniques. But yes, blueprints are pretty much mandatory to get any kind of ship loadout because the default weapon drops will never be half as good.

[sonix2003]

Just 2 cents of mine about some issues of the OP:

Finding components for crafting turrets:

I noticed this problem with other players when I was playing MP for some time. People seem to ignore (or don't understand) the role of explorer captains. Explorers remove the "fog on the galaxy map" for the area they are operating. This is usually one of the first captains, I'm trying to get. Some players are buying the faction maps - I don't.

As soon as I can afford two ships, I let on ship with the explorer scout the map. This is helpful in several aspects:
- knowing the locations where to trade (sell and buy)
- explored regions will give better yields for mining and scavenging
- you will find smuggler outposts and the get hints for other interesting locations (wormholes, pirate nests, ...)

In the late phase of the game, I'm usually building components to craft weapons by factories owned by me.


Getting the money to build up an industrial economy:

To build an industial economy requires some money to start with. My way of doing this is to hire a merchant captain and let them do trading missions on the map. You can start with a very basic ship only made from iron and titanium and some basic weapons. As a long time Gallente EVE player, I've made some "Iteron like ships" for this job, which are available in the workshop. With a good captain and a fairly good region, this can provide up to 5 million net gain per run. Not on average - but 1 mio per run is easily done each time.


Using the reseach facility:

With the two guidelines written above, it should be no problem to build several hundreds of low level items (T20, blue quality). E.g. create a blueprint for a blue T20 laser. It only needs a subset of components than items with a higher tech level.
Now research these items. About 120 items are need for a guaranteed purple T50.
This way you can easily get T50 purple items and get turrets suitable for blueprints.

[SNS]

Originally posted by Asherogar:

Oh oh oh, I think I can formulate the problem I have better now.

I don't like the clown fiesta of having 20 guns with wildly different stats and sizes. But at the same time Turret factories and Blueprints, that are supposed to solve this problem are not worth using until lategame, you said it yourself. They require too much effort and established infrastructure to use.

But why it should be this way?

IMO the main problem with Turret Factories is components. You need a very solid summ on your bank account and either a lot of time and effort put into collecting the needed components or a fleet to magically procure them out of someone's ass apparently.

Sorry i should have been more clear myself: Turret factories are not worth re-rolling to get OP turrets until the end game or barrier because they tend to be really expensive (generally only offensive turrets though, mining and utility turrets are generally very cheap). Turning turrets you find into blueprints before then is viable but obviously better to do that only with good drops (hunt pirate motherships/bases, the special loot ships and bosses for early game turrets).

Components are kind of inconsequential compared to the cost of the blueprint itself. Just get a merchant captain or two and they can acquire all the components you need with the procure command even if there are no factories nearby.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

What I would want is to replace components with some ambiguous "Weapon(or Turret) Parts", that you get by dismantling turrets. Well, significantly lowering the price of crafting turrets too, I suppose.

Eh, i could go either way, that would simplify things especially for newer players but would also remove the point of building a production chain for people who like that kind of stuff. A lot of turrets use very similar components to other ones anyway, like laser based turrets will use similar components. Turrets really dont take that many components to make, i still use my mid game trinium ship as my hauler because i simply dont need to upgrade it for the captain to do his job well. The main cost from good turrets is the blue prints themselves, my mid game rocket turret i was using cost nearly $30 million to make from the blueprint cost itself, the component costs even at double price are nothing compared to that. But that was a VERY OP turret for the xanion regions.

Actually i would like it if they reduced the type of components down to the same amount that a captain can procure or let the captain procure more types of items per mission.

If they lower the costs of the turret blueprints then yeah they would need to nerf them a bit because i do agree it is too easy to get OP turrets from factories.

Originally posted by Asherogar:

I don't understand how you always link stats RNG and variety. By reducing RNG you're not going to magically turn every gun into a chaingun, it will do nothing to variety at all. It will only remove the situation where you find a two bolters of the same Tech Level, Material and Rarity only to see one of them has 5km range and the other is 21,5km with all the other stats pretty much identical.

I was talking about weapon types themselves and modifiers like anti matter more then things like range which can be a little too variable. I have had some cannons with nearly 60km range and some with 15km within the same tech level. So they could reduce swingyness of some of the stats but if anything i would actually like more weapon types (like electronic warfare systems would be cool. similar to eve online).

Originally posted by sonix2003:

Using the reseach facility:

With the two guidelines written above, it should be no problem to build several hundreds of low level items (T20, blue quality). E.g. create a blueprint for a blue T20 laser. It only needs a subset of components than items with a higher tech level.
Now research these items. About 120 items are need for a guaranteed purple T50.
This way you can easily get T50 purple items and get turrets suitable for blueprints.

I have actually had not much luck researching turrets, i have found selling the ones you dont want and using the cash to buy parts and re-roll turret factories to be a better investment TBH. It would be more viable if the turret from research had similar or better stats then the turrets you put in but i have put in multiple high rolled exotic turrets and lost hundreds of DPS on the resulting legendaries. Did that enough times that its just not worth it in my opinion, for really good turrets, factories are the way to go.

[rickcarson]

OBSM is fine. My best unlock for Avorion is 10:12 with three ships (two economy/support), and I think the first time I tried it with just one it was less than 13 hours.

(NB: both times had favourable setups post-barrier, so that shouldn't be considered 'the average' as it's _entirely_ possible for RNG to _screw_ you in ways that take a significant amount of time to work around, but that's _the point_ of a sandbox game.)

So I _strongly_ disagree with umop on that, and I feel their statements along the lines of "you're playing it wrong" come very close to gatekeeping, which is bad for the game, and the hobby in general.

---------

That said, I think it's perfectly _fine_ for the late-game solution to 'the turret problem' being to throw enormous amounts of money at it.

Why?

Because it's fairly easy to 'beat' the economy. Even in my speedruns I come close to beating the economy, at least to the extent that that serves the purpose of pushing through the storyline and/or unlocking new tiers. Sometimes that means I might blow 20 mil buying garbage yellows from an empire that I want some quick and dirty rep from (rep gains from this method hit a ceiling at 75k)

And in the speedrun I typically do have that kind of 'chump change' lying around.

And here's the thing. Let's say you're playing slowly, smelling the roses _enjoying_ the game (including the challenges - i.e. the frustrating bits / puzzles) and you 'beat' the economy in approx 20 hours of play. Well, beating the economy is an exponential thing so if you keep doing that for another 20 hours you've now beat the economy 2x. After another 20 hours it's 4x. After another 20 hours it's 8x. After another 20 hours it's 16x.

E.g. (if my math is right) after approx 100 hours of play your hourly passive income is 16x what you need to 'win' the game.

Heck, _increase_ the cost of end-game turrets. A world ending death laser _should_ come with a world ending price tag attached to it.

If nothing else that would give people more things to aspire to in the late game.

---------

Supporting addendum: you (as a player) get more value out of the game by finding big timesinks which _you_ enjoy, and wallowing in them. You _do not_ maximise your enjoyment by rushing to the end or having everything handed to you on a platter.

[umop-apisdn]

Heh...
"One Big Ship Meta is fine."
"I used 3 ships."

Ahem. Anyway...

Originally posted by rickcarson:

you (as a player) get more value out of the game by finding big timesinks which _you_ enjoy, and wallowing in them. You _do not_ maximise your enjoyment by rushing to the end or having everything handed to you on a platter.

This is the key bit, here.

A game is, by definition, a waste of time. It's supposed to be fun.

You're not having fun, so I offered a method of shoring up your playstyle to increase the amount of time you can devote to doing whatever you find fun in the game.

I find that having a solid mining/industry base makes the rest of the game much easier, which translates as "I don't have to scrounge for enough money to pay my crews' salaries, and can spend my time designing ships or smashing pirates or whatever I enjoy doing".

rickcarson and I are on the same page as to the goal (having fun), we just differ in our style and focus... and it should be noted that I only shared one way to get from A to B; my "locust swarm" method is dead simple, which makes it easy to implement, and both "sector mining" and "map missions" are mostly "hands-off" ways to accomplish "breaking the economy so you can do the stuff you actually want to".

Once the economy is broken, you can focus on your actual goal(s)... whatever they may be. It's kinda like playing Minecraft; it's a struggle until you get some farm running and can stop needing to scrounge up something to eat every few minutes... at which point the sky's the limit.

For that matter, "real life" works much the same.

[rickcarson]

DISCRETE COUGH:

> "and I think the first time I tried it with JUST ONE it was less than 13 hours."

(emphasis added)

------

For the context-challenged: my fastest unlock of Avorion tier involves only three ships (and no stations), but I've also unlocked Avorion with only one ship (and no stations), and the time for that is in the ballpark for my fastest unlock (i.e. it's _slightly_ slower, but not enormously so).

Hence I've flipped on OBSM (now that I've tried it), and I think it _is_ viable, a lot more so than people give it credit for.

[Khaziir Everflight]

get the mod that allows fully custom turrets. it is cheaty,a s it does not respect tier limtis, but it allows you to set up a initial acceptable turret set...