Progression system breaks one of the selling features of the game

[Voraga]

First off I feel that if the progression system (build knowledge) goes into the release version as it is now it would make the Dev's liars.
One of the main selling features is the "Build your Fleet, There are no limits to the size or complexity of your ships besides your resources." from the steam page. This to me says if I want to build a megaton iron freighter I should be able to do so, currently I cannot do so without progressing to the endish game and getting the final build knowledge.

I believe the only reason for the current beta restrictions was to limit subsystem slots early game to stretch the early/mid game.

Now then I actually like the idea of build knowledge, but I think it will require a bit of a major recode (depending on the amount of technical debt incurred by the building system) to make it actually something that makes sense.

1. Decouple ship size and subsystems
2. make build knowledge the block unlocks
3. implement another way of limited subsystems (see suggestion below)

this would allow us to freely build what we want and still provide that limitation of slowing down progression because you need to acquire the understanding of new materials.

Ship Size/Subsystem Idea:
Use something formulaic to determine subsystems based on % of Tier of Material. IE A ship 100% iron with > XYZ Hull would be up to 4 slots
55% Titanium would gain 1 slot raising to say 7 based on % of titanium
and so forth and so on to avorion.

By having these systems decoupled you grant the freedom to build anything we want, AND progression you want to implement.

[rickcarson]

Isn't it still possible to do this from certain game modes?

---------

Iron 4
Titanium 7
Naonite 8
Trinium 9
Xanion 10
Oganite 11
Avorion 12

Hmm ... no that doesn't work, that can't be what you meant. Working backwards:

Avorion 15
Oganite 13
Xanion 11
Trinium 9
Naonite 7
Titanium 5
Iron 4

Is too close to the current one - maybe you mean Oganite was supposed to hit 15?

Oganite 15
Xanion 13
Trinium 11
Naonite 9
Titanium 7
Iron 4

I dunno, if that's what you meant then it's not so much a criticism of the system per se, but rather a criticism of the values picked in that system.

FWIW - Trinium currently unlocks 8 slots, and I'm having trouble finding anything that small on the workshop that isn't just 100% Trinium because the person making it was only interested in the aesthetics and not actual practicalities (such as block value for money/volume/weight and turning (e.g. if there's no iron then there's no inertial dampeners etc. etc.))

It's one of my red-flags for 'this is pretty, but not _functional_'.

[Voraga]

Originally posted by rickcarson:

Isn't it still possible to do this from certain game modes?

I dunno, if that's what you meant then it's not so much a criticism of the system per se, but rather a criticism of the values picked in that system.

FWIW - Trinium currently unlocks 8 slots, and I'm having trouble finding anything that small on the workshop that isn't just 100% Trinium because the person making it was only interested in the aesthetics and not actual practicalities (such as block value for money/volume/weight and turning (e.g. if there's no iron then there's no inertial dampeners etc. etc.))

It's one of my red-flags for 'this is pretty, but not _functional_'.

No, currently the default is that iron building knowledge limits the size of your ship and sets the number of slots you can have. This is because size and subsystem slots are linked together. What I am talking about is the decoupling of the two so that build composition and hull+shield strength determines the number of slots. This would actually solve your problem of pretty but not functional some. Since a ship wouldn't be as limited in size scope or design but it would be limited on slots based on material.

Lets toss a set of numbers around (pulled from air) Lets say that you have two iron ships. iron is currently limited to 4 subsystem slots.

#1 Iron freigther, 10k cargo, 20 massive engines, massive numbers of directional thrusters. Hull somewhere around 20k.

#2 Iron Miner, no cargo, 4 engines, 2 directional thrusters, and hull around 3k.


Now lets use an arbitrary number (that can be used for balancing based on hull per iron block etc) of 8k.

Ship 1 is well over 8k and is made up of iron so it gets 4 slots.
Ship 2 is under the 8k so we take the % of 8k (3k/8k) of 37% and multiply that by the number of slots the tier of material gets and we end up with 1.5 rounded up to 2 subsystems.

So far it seems fair. Lets upgrade them to include titanium.
Ship #1 would upgrade all thrust components, giving it about 20% titanium. so now we have 80% iron 20% titanium. We can assume that the iron portion is well over the threshold and it will continue getting the same base 4 slots, so then lets look at the 2 slots normally given by titanium. at 20% titanium it wouldn't gain either of those slots. so it would remain 4.

Ship #2 does a full upgrade to titanium making it tier 2, so it would gain the tier 1 slots, but its hull isn't high enough to gain all the titanium slots, so it jumps to 4 subsystems.

As you can see materials would increase the tier of the ship and that would upgrade the slots. then the building knowledge becomes less about I need it so I can build larger ships and more about I can build better ships.

I see the math being something like: (%% composition X material tier) for each material it is made up of. so:

(% of ship iron X 1) +
(% titanium X 2) +
(%nanite X 3) etc

which would give us the tier of ship.

So an Oganite ship with turret mounts of Avorion would end up with a tier of like 7.2 and only gain Oganite tier sub systems no matter HOW large you make it. meaning that a pure avorion (or nearly) ship would be the only way to get maximum number of subsystems.

[Voraga]

Some Numbers to help determine hull strength or effective health of ships: (1x1x1 size blocks)

Iron Armor 4 hp
Oganite armor 30 hp
Avorion armor 46 hp
Avorion shields 570 shield hp + 6 hull hp

So the first part of the calculation above would be to determine the tier, now we need an ehp to get the number of slots.

so if we did a simple 10k times we would end up with a chart that looks like this for a ship to get the full # of subsystems (assuming it is made from the right tier of material)

40k iron ehp
300k oganite ehp
460k avorion ehp

Once you are building in those materials it should be very easy to get to those numbers.
So taking my above posts and this one you would end up with something like:

Determined tier of material > min ehp for slots = max slots
tier < min ehp for all slots = clamp(max slots x (ehp/required ehp), min slots for tier, max slots for tier)

TLDR: Size unlocked but max number of subsystems dependent on ehp and tier of materials. That is what I was going for. Note that the numbers used are from in game or arbitrary balancing numbers that would need to be adjusted by the devs to give a smooth progression feel, without limiting our creativity for ship/station design.

[PhelanWolf]

The progression system is only ONE of the game modes, there are others and I believe the classic avorion start is available and contributes to achievements

[KellyR]

Originally posted by PhelanWolf:

The progression system is only ONE of the game modes, there are others and I believe the classic avorion start is available and contributes to achievements

This isn't what he's talking about. The classic and freeplay modes allow you disable progression entirely but the OP appears to want what I personally would also like: To have material knowledge limit what material you can build in, and your subsystem slots, but NOT limit the size of ships you can build.

So basically when you hit the ship size cap for the knowledge you have currently, you could just keep adding "functional blocks", but would gain no more subsystem slots after that. Thus you can build you 10km long dreanought in iron, it just will only have 4 system slots.

This is what I ideally want them to do, because I want the progression system. I just don't want it to limit my ship sizes.

[Voraga]

Originally posted by PhelanWolf:

The progression system is only ONE of the game modes, there are others and I believe the classic avorion start is available and contributes to achievements

Normal, Default, however you label it is the "cannon" experience that a new buyer will enter. Now if you just bought the game and you were excited about building up your resources and building dreadnoughts but didn't know about the way different materials spawned (ie new to the game) and you started building your ship in iron/titanium then suddenly hit a wall that said you need more knowledge to build bigger. How would you feel? Like the devs lied to you, big time. Depending on how good of a start you had you might not even be within Steam's 2 hour return policy. So what happens? Negative reviews for a good game because the default/normal experience ISN'T what the devs said it was. This btw is called False Advertising. It is the same thing as going to buy a car, seeing hybrid on the sticker and finding out later that the sticker lied to you.
That is my issue with the reworked build knowledge, it makes the game page a lie. Decoupling Build Knowledge and Subsystem slots from build size needs to happen to fix this issue. Personally I like the build knowledge system it is a good way to encourage exploration, it just also breaks one of the selling points as it is now.

[PhelanWolf]

"There are no limits to the size or complexity of your ship besides your resources."

Quoting from the store page, yeah I see what you mean now. It should either be rephrased or have a relook at the progression system

[XelNigma]

Things change. Fortnite was a PvE building/towerdefense/trap defense zombie wave killing game. and advertised as such.
Now its a battle royal PvP game.

Overwatch advertised it self saying you could switch to any hero any time to counter what the other team was doing.
Now rolls are locked in.

Games grow and change. Some times what they tried for doesnt work and they need to adapt.

Running around in an open parking lot might be fun for a bit, but eventually people are going to come together and race each other at set distances and locations. and eventually thats going to evolve into a race track.
Yah, you cant run where ever you want to any more, but having set rules and guidelines makes the running competition more fun.
Bad analogy I know but you get the idea.

[Petresko]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

Games grow and change. Some times what they tried for doesnt work and they need to adapt.

Your loose analogies can't hide the fact change is not inherently a good thing and being complacent about change isn't either.

The progression system, with its nonsensical processing power caps is nothing but an artificial barrier to progress and goes against the principle of the game, which is to build a ship in any way you like and the balance would come from component placement and ship mass.

To use one of your analogies - it's the equivalent of building a cement wall on the track and asking the racers to find a rope each lap.

Slowing down early-game progression could have been done in many better ways like making cargo from stations a part of what's needed to build complex components like generators and inertia dampeners.
Or making refined resources a type of cargo with a quarter of the mass of their respective ores, so that the player would have to found smaller stations early-game to hold it and make AI ships to guard it.
If either of these mechanics were implemented then the command loop exploit wouldn't have been such an issue.

There's a reason the response to the progression system is overwhelmingly negative.
You shouldn't justify bad decisions for game design, because it's what's alienating dedicated supporters.

[Ahnassi]

Also the number of ships you can build is limited by the founding fee material.

Total built ships
3: iron
6: Titanium
8: Naonite
10: Trinium
15: Xanion
20: Ogonite
21+: Avorion

This is still the case in 2.0 and limits the game even more as we now have to deal with bounty hunters attacking our stations and chances of our ships getting attacked, thus require dedicated escort ships

[XelNigma]

I would say it's more like a hurdle you must jump.