Feature Request: Tuning option for Tug Drones: Minimal speed. Suggested range [0, 20] m/s.
Rationale: When using drones we will generally want to fly slowly.
- If ore slowly drifts into a beneficial direction, e.g. after being accelerated by Haul drones, we can just wait for it to fly into our mouths. If it drifts in an unfortunate direction, we can easily catch up and use the thrust to move ore in the cargo hold into the MPU. Tug drones ruin these chances.
- Tug drones easily get stuck at ores accelerated by outside forces, e.g. ore pieces touching, ore scraping along a ringroid it collided with.
- In such cases, Tug drones often ignore other, faster travelling ore pieces and let them escape. Unlike the previous two points, this one cannot be micromanaged by turning them off: They have an excellent chance to simply continue as they were, once re-enabled.
Myself, I'd probably want to put this setting to something in the [5, 10] range.
Feature Request: Tuning option for Haul drones: Maximum speed. Suggested range [1, 30] m/s.
Rationale: As before.
- If the ship makes a sharp maneuvre, e.g. a quick rotation, Haul drones often fling the ore pieces they currently affect with very high velocity in a direction away from the ship.
- To combine Haul and Tug drones, we currently have to set a large-ish exclusion zone between their ranges to avoid different drone types "fighting over" ore pieces (Tug drones slowing them down, Haul drones speeding them up), wasting Nanodrone storage. This exclusion zone (I found ~50 m to be ideal-ish) makes it much more easier for fast ore pieces to escape either drone type, both by time unaffected and by chance for the respective drones to switch target and subsequently ignore the escaping piece.
Myself, I'd probably want to put this setting to something in the [10, 20] range.
Feature Request: Make Haul/Tug drones prioritise ores most deviant from their intended course. Fallback: Make them prioritise fast pieces over slow pieces.
Rationale:
- As drones have a maximal range, it is very likely that for one slow and one fast ore piece, affecting both is perfectly possible if starting with the fast one, yet completely impossible if starting with the slow one.
- Drones seem to spend a lot of time weakly accelerating ore pieces whose movement vector is already mostly as desired. Conversely, drones seem to have a rather large effect on pieces moving very much in an undesired direction. They could thence be much more efficient, if they were concentrating on the pieces they can affect the most.
Feature Request: Further behaviour changes of the AR-1500 Manipulator:
- Currently prefers to grab bigger ringroids over smaller ones - should be reversed. Rationale: Smaller ones can be broken up with the Excavator / Grinder, so grabbing them is more useful than grabbing bigger ones.
- Currently prefers to grab ringroids over grabbing ores - should be reversed. Rationale: Ores can have much higher speeds than even the smallest ringroids, and "eating" them is faster than eating ringroids that the Excavator still has to smash.
Feature Request: A stronger variant of the Manipulator Arm.
- Capable of more angular movement. Rationale: The current arm often "slaps things into our face", missing the cargo entrance to either side.
- Capable of slowing down the rotation of a grabbed object. Rationale: Frigate, Habitat, Space Bar docking arms can do that. It would help a lot with taking in escape pods and hauling abandoned ships - if rotating rapidly, the former we have to smash into something to slow them down, the latter... generally explode.
- More capable to hold on to something moving away from the ship. Rationale: The current arm tends to lose things very easily, especially when mounted onto a K37 variant, as that ship will blast the held item with its thrusters when trying to stop rotation.
- Slower moving. Rationale: Even the current AR-1500 can easily move the ship it is attached to. A stronger arm should move slower to avoid loss of control. Furthermore, as this arm should be better at holding on to things, it must be less capable of catching things that try to escape, such as the Racing Drone or the Singularity Core.
- If the previous FR for AR-1500 behaviour changes were accepted, this arm should retain the current AR-1500 behaviour. Rationale: The current AR-1500 is much more suited to catch small, light objects. The heavier arm should thence be focussed on catching the kind of object it is better suited for itself. ... If in the future, a setup with 2x High-Stress Hardpoints became available, this would also mean that we could readily mount both kinds of arm and have them work together instead of interfering with each other.
Feature Request: More varied Hardpoint loadouts.
We have mostly two relevant loadouts available:
- 4x light (functionally extremely similar to 2x drone, 2x light)
- 1x heavy, 2x light
This basically means that, when switching ships, there is very little reason to use a different loadout:
- We want either a Manipulator or a Haul drone or a Tug drone.
- We want a microwave - generally the Point-Defense variant because its higher mass unbalances the ship less.
- We want a high-yield gun to discourage pirates. (Personally I always use the EMD-14 tuned to maximal power - it can still double as very-large-ringroid breaker; on Steam it seems that lasers are more popular though; in any case, for one given player, it will always be the same item).
... This leaves 1 drone or light hardpoint at most for customisation.
- We want to keep the center of mass close to or on the centerline. That means e.g. opposite to a Gungnir, we put a cargo container, or we take two cargo containers or two Gungnirs; we do not combine the light microwave with a heavy directional gun like the lasers (or a Gungnir).
... This makes several (most?) interesting item combinations impractical.
What I'd like to see:
- 1x light on the center line: would incentivise us to use the normal microwave over the Point-Defense version and mount heavier weapons to the sides, e.g. in a microwave+2xlaser setup. This could be a downgrade to the basic K37 to make the KX37 more attractive as an intermediate upgrade (to me it seemed more sensible to do two more dives and directly go for an Eagle Prospector). Possible setups: 3x light; 1x drone, 3x light.
- 1x heavy, 3x other: would break the Manipulator vs. drone meta: Manipulator and Haul drone for maximal convenience, drone and Plasma weapon instead of always Manipulator. Possible setups: 1x drone, 1x heavy, 2x light; 1x heavy, 3x light.
- 5x for the Cothon 212/3: currently there seems to be zero reason to ever use these ships (unlike the 211). Possible setups: 2x drone, 3x light; 1x drone, 4x light.
- 2x heavy: e.g. for using two manipulator arms; without introducing new ship models (which you have noted are currently off-limits) these would probably have to be off-centerline and thence forbid plasma weapons. The KR37 or a variant of the Elon Interstellar might be good recipients. Possible setups: 1x drone, 2x heavy; 2x heavy; 2x heavy, 1x light.
... FWIW: Yesterday I drew a K44 from the belt and was very disappointed to find it basically an Eagle Prospector clone. This ship in particular might have gone well with a 1xdrone, 1x heavy, 2x light setup and would still be a side grade due to the Prospector's grinder and better thruster layout.
Feature Request: Quality pass on HUDs: Yesterday I flew the Cothon-212 and Cothon-211 for the first time. The HAL hud looks absolutely awesome, with all the physical monitors and correctly angled reflections. I have not yet seen the Elon and Racer HUDs (and the preview of the HAL in Equipment did not even come close to showing its real beauty), but the K37 and Eagle HUDs are just so far behind the HAL that it's hard to stomach.
It would be nice, if all the HUDs were designed at a similar level of detail:
- The nice retro-green displays of the K37 would certainly feel like the direct upgrade they are supposed to be over the retro-yellow HAL ones, if they too were on monitors brighter, less haphazardly arranged and less opaque to non-orthogonal view angles. (And the same opaqueness could actually be a downside of the more modern HUDs, just as IRL at the switch from CRT to LED.)
- The Eagle HUD looks downright ugly - out of game, it is the only one outright feeling like a placeholder, even though it does have its nice gimmicks like the reactor and thruster displays and the obnoxious (in a good way) boot screen logo. Those should definitely be retained, but that "fat bar at the bottom" look... eh...
Post edited May 22, 2022 by Zsar1
