General Empyrion Thread

GasBandit

Staff member
Fun fact of the day -

1533736570731.png


I also noticed this yesterday. Mining the same asteroids I mine pretty much every day (and sometimes multiple times a day), during the period of really bad ping times last night, I got 10-15% less ore total when I was done than I usually do. Confused me into looking for if there was a patch of ore on an asteroid I missed, but nope... lag means less ore for voxel mining.
 
Sooo...voxel mining must be based on ore received per "pulse" of mining, and the better your ping, the more "pulses" you can get in before the voxels completely disappear? Why is this not just based on "time spent mining," again?

--Patrick
 
Sooo...voxel mining must be based on ore received per "pulse" of mining, and the better your ping, the more "pulses" you can get in before the voxels completely disappear? Why is this not just based on "time spent mining," again?

--Patrick
Ask GB how many times I've mentioned on Discord that the Empyrion developers have made bad design/programming choices.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Well, XPA got tired of waiting for RDR to show up, and attacked my assets in Bonanza Orbit instead. I attempted to defend, but it was 3 on 1. They destroyed the Belial...

And then the Legion...
And then the Sethan...
And then all 4 of my defense sats...
And then the GBI Orbital Branch at Bonanza orbit.
Then the Cheese ran out of turrets fighting them...
And then the Double Deuce ran out of ammo.

So... basically, I'm now combat ineffective in PvP.

CrazyDeviant got on, and they immediately moved to attack Oscutune. CD logged back out, and Offline Protection immediately went up (which isn't supposed to happen, it's supposed to be a 5 min delay).

Soooo it was a busy night.

I don't think I'll be paying them any more bounty rewards going forward :p
 

GasBandit

Staff member
AAaand after the nightly reboot, CD logged back in... and XPA was waiting. DaveCo on Oscutune is now a memory.

No bounty awarded.
 
Well, so much for playing this game and getting any more enjoyment out of it.

Or rather, are there any servers out there that these guys don't control? They seem to be in charge of pretty much all of the top 7 or 8 at least.

Their recruitment forum.
 
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GasBandit

Staff member
They killed Oscatune? The fuck? How? How many were there?
Three.

They had a purpose-built CV to dive into the base first and draw all the turret fire, with its pilot then getting into a tank and pulling out the back after the CV was in position. CV continues to soak all the turret fire (turrets don't change targets until their current target is destroyed or out of range) while their tanks go straight for the generators, with an SV pulling overwatch. Took them less than 5 minutes to knock out all the generators, which of course disables all the turrets but also Offline Protection, so they can then take the rest apart at their leisure.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Seems fishy that the only people they attacked stream online.
Err, Gared doesn't stream online, and they attacked OMB first, a couple days ago.

I've been keeping an eye on them. They've been going everywhere /scanning like crazy for a week. They found my Bonanza stuff their first day. Their first targets have been those that have been in the way of them getting magnesium - the Belial guarding one in Bonanza Orbit, and before that, OMB's base guarding one in Aestus Orbit.

Truth be told if I hadn't attempted to go "rescue" the Belial (because I thought Veilith was alone) my base would probably still be there. When I realized the Legion was in a 3v1 it couldn't win, I thought I'd be clever and lure them back to GBI Bonanza Orbital to get covering fire from the bases and ships there. Well, the thing is, the ship they're using is REALLY well designed (I got a close look at it later doing admin stuff). It's every bit as meta-abusing as the Weenie Cheese, but in a size class 1.49. The turrets are extremely well protected and positioned toward the back, and the huge nose section is just layers of armor and bait devices to draw all the fire.

As Gared points out, these guys are *extremely* experienced at this sort of thing... They're not here to fuck around, do POIs, design pretty bases, etc. They came here to PVP, as much as possible, as soon as possible. For fun, they go from server to server to server picking fights with anyone and everyone, and I can say from personal experience, every single fight you get in, you learn something new and redesign your ships to do better. The weenie cheese came about after only about 5 fights. These guys have been doing this for a lot longer than me, so they know even more meta tricks about what works and what doesn't in ship designs, that makes their ships really tough but deceptively low "size class." Combine that with a lot of first-hand combat experience, and you have some very dangerous customers, especially here on a server that is, let's face it, largely populated by novices who've only really been playing since the end of 7.6.1. I include myself in that number, since most of everything I did back in alphas 2 through 4 doesn't really apply to this sort of situation.

They're attacking basically anybody who has a presence in PVP. Me. You. Ace. THB. I just hadn't reported on the latter two because I didn't think it noteworthy to anyone here. They haven't attacked Dimento because his base is underground, and anti-grief prevents them from being able to quick-kill the generators (being behind indestructible voxel dirt) like they've been doing to everybody else. Also probably because he was not guarding any resources :p

Anyway, I'm going to take the lessons I learned last night and make a new ship design.
 
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Err, Gared doesn't stream online, and they attacked OMB first, a couple days ago.

I've been keeping an eye on them. They've been going everywhere /scanning like crazy for a week. They found my Bonanza stuff their first day. Their first targets have been those that have been in the way of them getting magnesium - the Belial guarding one in Bonanza Orbit, and before that, OMB's base guarding one in Aestus Orbit.

Truth be told if I hadn't attempted to go "rescue" the Belial (because I thought Veilith was alone) my base would probably still be there. When I realized the Legion was in a 3v1 it couldn't win, I thought I'd be clever and lure them back to GBI Bonanza Orbital to get covering fire from the bases and ships there. Well, the thing is, the ship they're using is REALLY well designed (I got a close look at it later doing admin stuff). It's every bit as meta-abusing as the Weenie Cheese, but in a size class 1.49. The turrets are extremely well protected and positioned toward the back, and the huge nose section is just layers of armor and bait devices to draw all the fire.

As Gared points out, these guys are *extremely* experienced at this sort of thing... They're not here to fuck around, do POIs, design pretty bases, etc. They came here to PVP, as much as possible, as soon as possible. For fun, they go from server to server to server picking fights with anyone and everyone, and I can say from personal experience, every single fight you get in, you learn something new and redesign your ships to do better. The weenie cheese came about after only about 5 fights. These guys have been doing this for a lot longer than me, so they know even more meta tricks about what works and what doesn't in ship designs, that makes their ships really tough but deceptively low "size class." Combine that with a lot of first-hand combat experience, and you have some very dangerous customers, especially here on a server that is, let's face it, largely populated by novices who've only really been playing since the end of 7.6.1. I include myself in that number, since most of everything I did back in alphas 2 through 4 doesn't really apply to this sort of situation.

They're attacking basically anybody who has a presence in PVP. Me. You. Ace. THB. I just hadn't reported on the latter two because I didn't think it noteworthy to anyone here. They haven't attacked Dimento because his base is underground, and anti-grief prevents them from being able to quick-kill the generators (being behind indestructible voxel dirt) like they've been doing to everybody else. Also probably because he was not guarding any resources :p

Anyway, I'm going to take the lessons I learned last night and make a new ship design.
My issue with this, and it's a tough situation really, because I taunted them when they were first on server - mercilessly - and all they've done is respond. I've never had a concern about them cheating in order to win, I've always just accepted that they're better than me. The problem is that they're so much better than me that I don't even have a chance to get better and try again. It's like occasionally playing a pickup game of basketball with my buddies at the gym, and - completely unbeknownst to either side of the game - the Lakers show up and dominate everything. I like to play against my friends (and make new ones, I would be a poorer person friend-wise had we kept the server locked down to just HF members), I don't like to get setup for a group of ringers and then get pounded into the floor repeatedly, it's not my idea of fun. I'd still love to see what my new designs do, but why even bother taking a new design up against an ace pilot with two years of experience on you? That's not an accurate test of its abilities. All that can realistically tell me is that I'm still not a competent pilot. So I'm at an impasse - I love this game, I love playing it with my friends, all of the experiences I've had with XPA so far from a person-to-person standpoint have been awesome, but I don't have any desire to play against them because they're so much better at it than I am that I just feel like a loser. It doesn't motivate me to try harder to catch up to them, it motivates me to understand that I'll never be good enough at this game to compete - like I was good enough at WoW to be a leading tank for 5 mans, but never good enough to be a raid tank; or I was good enough to get my T-whatever PvP set but never good enough to actually win Arena matches; or so many other games where I've always been just shy of getting to play the really fun parts. This time I got to play the really fun part, and just found myself completely lacking in anything resembling competency, so now I feel guilty about instigating the fight that inspired the reddit thread that brought about the ruination of all of our stuff.
 
I can't say I'm surprised. For a so-called "noob," Veilith always sounded like he has put an awful lot of points into trash talking.

And I don't blame you for this at all, @Gared . They would've found us through empyrion-servers.com sooner or later. And yes, you can still get better.

These guys are experienced PvPers, sure, but their main advantage lies in their numbers and that they don't only have a plan, they have a formula. The only way to beat a team is with a team, and all that, and so the more of us that leave, the less successful we'll ultimately be.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
now I feel guilty about instigating the fight that inspired the reddit thread that brought about the ruination of all of our stuff.
I don't think you need to feel guilty about that. Hell, if anyone should, *I* should, for making the reddit post. But the thing is, an important part of this game is coming to terms with the impermanence of said stuff. Things get blow'd up, either by other players, themselves, bugs, whatever. Yes, it sucks to lose a base, but the truth is (as you've descovered) re-bootstrapping yourself doesn't take that long, even if you have to come back from nothing.

In the meantime, Tinwhistler's got an RDR base in Akua Orbit which might serve as a good staging ground going forward, where you can keep stuff safe when you're not online. I mean, heck, I've got PvE bases too. XPA is definitely unabashedly keeping their "base" on Tallodar - safe from counterattack. So, maybe rig the PvE bases to be springboards, from which you can then launch excursions out into PvP territory, build new bases, experiment with new designs. Even if all that happens is XPA rips them apart, watching how they do it is very instructive.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So, last night, I started a Repair-to-template on the cheese and logged off, thinking "this never works."

I logged back in today to the cheese's repair successfully finished.
 
XPA is definitely unabashedly keeping their "base" on Tallodar - safe from counterattack.
If you haven't noticed, XPA is quick to vocally condemn things like "running away" and "hiding in PvE" and all that.
This should go without saying, but it's a calculated thing meant to get your pride to overcome your common sense.
Because of course, they do these same things...because they work.

--Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
Oscatune is the one base I cared about. Everything else was just gravy to me. It was my main teleporter hub and was my power/water/oxygen base. I thought with the defenses I had it was safe, but then again I didn't know about the whole "bring down completely armored CV to sponge damage while your base did fuck all to anyone else" exploit.

Also, I logged out at Oscatune so I know I'll die the minute I log in. Oh, and the teleporters there go to Masperon and (I believe) an orbital base. The Roggery one was at least faction only but I'd be willing to bet those other bases are gone or compromised.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Oh, and the teleporters there go to Masperon and (I believe) an orbital base. The Roggery one was at least faction only but I'd be willing to bet those other bases are gone or compromised.
I doubt it. They have a tendency to pillage whatever cargo they want from a base, then CBDestroy it to erase it completely. At least, that's been their pattern so far.
 

Dave

Staff member
Yeah, there's literally nothing left of my presence in Oscatune.

I will rebuild there. You bet your fucking ass I will. And the base is going to be DEEEEEEEEP underground. With power off to the sides so that they can't just shoot it from straight above.
 
I didn't know about the whole "bring down completely armored CV to sponge damage while your base did fuck all to anyone else" exploit.
For a while, it was a strategy I was considering if I ever had to go up against one of Gas' capital ships. Fly in with CV, duck out the back in an SV and try to flank him while the CV auto-fired on him. But I discarded it because of course then I would have no control over the CV once I left it, and Gas would just...y'know, fly away from it. Bases, however, would of course be another story.

That said, for some more obvious advice is obvious, as Gas' video shows, one bear can not defeat a pack of three wolves. Yes, one of the wolves may die, but the bear will always die. If you find yourself alone and attacked by multiple capable opponents in PvP, your best option is to run. Come back later with friends if you have to, but really the only reason to send in a single ship, no matter how big/armored/capable it might be, is as a gambit to draw their defenses away from some other, more valuable target which your buddies are about to ransack.

--Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
Consolidating a bunch of assets on Talodar. Raided Bonanza Orbit so that if they attacked - which I don't think they are going to - we'd not lose a whole hell of a lot. MY teleporter network is in disarray, but I learned a valuable lesson - don't make your hub a PvP place. My new hub is going to be in PvE. If they take out a branch it'll be recoverable.

C_D & Shadows will continue to evacuate assets to PvE space. I'm going to log into creative and see if I can find a base design I like that will have minimal ground presence but a shitload of stuff underground. That CV tactic will only work once for me. After this they'll have to work for it.
 

Dave

Staff member
And another note, I don't think these guys are bad people, just really damned good at the game. In fact, I actually kind of like them. They've been really kind in their victory. And I'm learning from them, which is what really counts.

So let them enjoy it for now, because RDR is NOT dead, just retreating tactically.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
More fun facts - apparently taking damage temporarily disrupts turret targeting if you're manually controlling it. So, if someone is spraying your turret with 15mm, you won't be able to shoot back with it. I don't think this has any effect on turrets not being directly controlled by a player, but I could be wrong.
 
More fun facts - apparently taking damage temporarily disrupts turret targeting if you're manually controlling it. So, if someone is spraying your turret with 15mm, you won't be able to shoot back with it. I don't think this has any effect on turrets not being directly controlled by a player, but I could be wrong.
Suddenly miniguns have more strategic importance.

--Patrick
 

Dave

Staff member
RDR Update - Two new bases have been spawned in PvE space. One is a space station in Tallodar Orbit called Tallodar Orbital. This will be our CV forward operational base. The second is a ground base at Ningues called the Ningues Hub. This is going to be the central spoke in the teleporter network. In essence, all teleporters will eventually point to this location. If we lose a PvP base it will not jeopardize the rest. I learned my lesson on Oscatune about having your hub in PvP space. My whole network is currently in disarray.

Bonanza Orbital and Masperon have been emptied of everything except ammo. I will be placing another teleporter in Masperon from Ningues (hopefully) tonight so we can still get magnesium as long as possible.

In the future, we need to think about underground bases. The tactic (that still feels like an exploit!) of lowering an armored damage-sponging CV over a base and then blowing it away from the sides with SVs means that even our defense towers are useless. Underground is the only real way to combat this. If they want the base, make them come in personally or at least with HV/SV blowing holes in the ground. So small opening with minimal firepower on the top to discourage casual players, but OMFG defense on the inside if they do manage to bring in a ship.

What I REALLY want to do is build a base that I think will defeat their attempts, and then challenge them to attack it. I want to see what they do in that case.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

I'm not the best pilot. I can't design ships for shit. But I can and do learn when pressed. And I have been pressed.
 
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Tell me about it.

"Well I should finally set something up in PvP space."
<build awsum base design>
"This is efficient (size class 1) and pretty capable, it should do well in PvP."
<XBA arrives, decimates server>
"Eek! This is now completely inadequate!"
<Redesign parts of base, improve defenses, shuffle devices>
"This is better. Let's see how it works."
<Discover placement/alignment issues, fix them, size class creeps upwards toward 2>
"Ok, let's drop it in a game and see how it performs."
<Performance is as expected BUT discover several vulnerabilities>
"Grr...ok let's just change a few things here, and a couple there..."
<Better survivability but notice FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN FLAW which of course I should've noticed long ago>
"Oh, for pity awful's sake..."

I'm spending more time in creative with this thing than I am in game! I mean, it's fulfilling and all, but it's not actually playing. Almost wish I could keep two instances of the game running, one to get work done on the server, and one to noodle around in Creative to pass the time while my constructors are constructing, my food processors are processing, etc.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
As I surmised we would, we've fallen to 9th place in the rankings. People just aren't voting as much as they used to.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
HV Turret bug I thought you guys might want to know about -

Alatun said:
Mode: ALL
Location: ALL (noticed in MP, and single player, made a test in creative)


SERVER NAME: Eleon Official EU (not relevant)
SEED-ID: - (not relevant)


MODIFIED PLAYFIELDS: no

Reproducibility: Always
Severity: Major


Type: HV rocket turret

Summary: HV rocket turret cannot shoot targets below its own height

Description:
When standing on an elevated position and you want to shoot downward, this works with a HV minigun turret, but it does not work with a HV rocket turret. I noticed this in MP, reproduced in SP and creative and made a test scenario here.


The HV to the right has a minigun turret and a rocket turret. The task is to destroy the wooden blocks on the left side. Blocks below the T with the minigun turret, blocks below the M with the missile turret.



Above the view from the HV.



This is the result. You cannot hit the blocks below the level of the missile turret. The missile gets launched, but vanishes into nowhere and does not hit any target.

With minigun turret everything is fine.
 
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