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Incline Avorion - procedural co-op space sandbox where players can build ships out of blocks

Lazing Dirk

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What a majestic space whale. Dat turning speed. So what happens once you have enough money and resources to build a fleet of death stars? Do you just end up hitting another sort of "What now?" barrier you end up crashing into on so many of these games? Congrats, you're now powerful enough to be basically unchallenged by anything and can build whatever you like at will. Now you have nothing left to accomplish and must commit sudoku.
 

Blaine

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What a majestic space whale. Dat turning speed. So what happens once you have enough money and resources to build a fleet of death stars? Do you just end up hitting another sort of "What now?" barrier you end up crashing into on so many of these games? Congrats, you're now powerful enough to be basically unchallenged by anything and can build whatever you like at will. Now you have nothing left to accomplish and must commit sudoku.

Dunno, haven't gotten there yet. That usually is the conclusion, though, yes. What else would you imagine there'd be to do after amassing unimaginable wealth and power?

Looks interesting. Are there any blueprints to get started or you must design the ship all by yourself?

You can buy ships from NPC shipyards. They'll pop you out a ship similar to the ones their civilization uses, based on a variety of sliders and settings. You can watch the procedurally-generated ship change in real time as you move sliders and shit, which is pretty neat.

I finished the whale. I really didn't want to add nacelles, but the two alternatives were to either yank pieces out of the rhomboid profile of the hull, or maneuver slowly as fuck.

This thing looks simple because it's extremely polygonal and isn't made from seven thousand greebles, but rest assured it took a great deal of work to get everything fit just so and also end up with an in-game high-performance freighter. For its size and specs, it's very fast and maneuverable. 75% of it is cargo containers hidden in a cut-off-at-the-top double ziggurat inside the hull. I started with an almost perfect black glass rhombus/double pyramid and worked on it from there. I had a vague Tron/cyberpunk/occult theme in mind, and wanted to make a cargo ship that actually looked elegant and strange rather than like a bunch of shit-smeared boxes on a stick.

Side view's probably its most photogenic.

a6a94ed071.png

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1641559a3e.png

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f7f5f5f75a.png
 

Lazing Dirk

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What else would you imagine there'd be to do after amassing unimaginable wealth and power?

I have no idea, but one day a game will appear that lets you do something more than just what you've already been doing but just better/faster, and it will be glorious. I CAN DREAM. Although there is fun to be had in doing just that in Factorio. At least until the game slows to a crawl and you're making dozens of calculations in a spreadsheet to see what beacon/assembler ratio will work best in your new advanced circuit factory so you can launch 1 rocket every 37 seconds instead of 39.

Clearly the best solution is to let you start treating the game like Factorio: designing efficient ships to start harvesting and transporting autonomously, then optimising that, then expanding some more, managing routes and building refineries and whatnot, engaging full autism mode until you're churning out deathstars thanks to an intricately designed network of transportation and processing, each with its own custom-designed ships and factories fit for that purpose. Once you have a deathstar in every single star system in the galaxy, the game just pops up a screen saying "Okay that's enough" and you win, and it then deletes itself from the hard drive for your own good.

To Kickstarter!


...seriously though, it does looks pretty cool.
 

Blaine

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I've always enjoyed the journey far more than reaching the destination, and it continually surprises me that so many people feel differently. If a book or movie's ending is bad, for example, it ruins the whole experience for them. Personally, if I enjoyed the first 360 pages, then the last 40 aren't going to somehow cause a time warp leading to a new reality in which I didn't enjoy even a single page.
 

Lazing Dirk

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I've always enjoyed the journey far more than reaching the destination, and it continually surprises me that so many people feel differently. If a book or movie's ending is bad, for example, it ruins the whole experience for them. Personally, if I enjoyed the first 360 pages, then the last 40 aren't going to somehow cause a time warp leading to a new reality in which I didn't enjoy even a single page.

I'm not saying the game is awful if there isn't something to do at the "end", but it can really limit it, depending on how long you can keep yourself amused by the gameplay without any clear objectives. I found I hit that point in Elite: Dangerous incredibly quickly: you're basically just doing the same shit over and over to get a better ship so you can do the same thing again, but a bit more effectively. Hauling 4 tons of tea in a sidewinder isn't much different to hauling 200 tons of slaves in an anaconda. If the core gameplay is fun, then that's fine, it'd just be nice to see more games of this type that let you branch out a bit more as you progress, instead of effectively seeing the entirety of the game in the first 5 minutes, and then the rest is just a case of how far you can go repeating that until you've had enough. Something like Spore, except actually good.

If you want to be really pedantic then yes a great amount of games will not change the gameplay much beyond the start, and it's just seeing how many different toys it will give you and how much effort you have to put in to get a new one, but those toys can change the core gameplay too. In Underrail the combat will change and grow significantly more complex if you go deep into the psychic route. Factorio will start off with just some belts, and then you get trains, and robots, and finally crazy circuit networks.

I'm fine with enjoying the journey even if the destination is crap (I'm looking at you, Shadow of Mordor :argh:), but I'd prefer it if the scenery changes along the way. From what I've seen of Avorion though, it does at least sound like there is a decent selection of activities available. Plus it's still in EA, so anything could happen.
 

Blaine

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agris

I neglected to mention that there are plenty of non-sci-fi elements on hand too, like copper, silver, gold, platinum, and steel, silicon, various gases, miscellaneous minerals and crystals, various chemicals, etc. They're used in manufacturing though, many ending up in one weapon type or another, but not shipbuilding directly. The factory listing (there are quite a lot of types) covers all resources. http://avorion.gamepedia.com/Factory
 

agris

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Goddamnit Blaine, I've got a DOE proposal to finish and here you are showing me this amazing game... ffs man
 

Blaine

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Yeah, the developers of this game shat out more factories than the number of children the average housewife powersquatted out onto the kitchen floor back during the Depression.

Body Armor is probably the be-all end product for selling off, because it's expensive as shit and the regularly-occurring military outposts buy it in droves, but the Body Armor factory itself costs 112m credits and it requires all sorts of other end products and intermediate products. You get a complex of those set up and supply base resources on the regular, you're really set up to manufacture that death fleet.
 

Blaine

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I figured I'd compile a shortlist of advanced mechanics currently conspicuously missing compared to X3:

  • OOS command/sector-to-sector remote or automated travel of ships in your fleet
  • real-time monitoring of sector activity while you're OOS via satellites/owned ships within sector (however, a tooltip gives the player a snapshot listing of what stations and ships are currently in an explored sector)
  • as far as I know, interconnectivity of factory complexes (Station A, B, C output > Station D's input, either via conveyance superstructure or automated fleet cargo couriers)
  • physically dock small but full-fledged (i.e. non-fighter drone) ships with larger ships
  • OOS production (without the mod)
  • deployment of persistent pre-made materiel (explosive mines, satellites, etc.) from the ship, however you can deploy anything you've made in the ship builder very swiftly, such as a ship without engines or thrusters that acts as a weapons platform

Note however that's it's very, very clear these developers have played the X series, so they are fully aware of what's missing, and I imagine most will be implemented in some form. Docking of small ships to large ones should be extremely easy for seasoned programmers to implement, since they'll merely need to store the ship in memory and spawn/despawn it near the mother ship.
 

Blaine

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Having started with only a small loan of 165 million credits, I've now become a billionaire. My biggest single trade was for half a billion net profit.

bdbe4cffbe.png


Next step: Become multi-billionaire, because some of the high-tech super factories cost over half a bill each, not counting the many other intermediate factories and basic resource factories needed to feed them.
 

Galdred

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So, how is the combat in the game? Is it mostly tactical? or Action, or is most of it decided before a battle begins? What about "empire building"?
How does it compare to X4 or Void Destroyer 2 in that regard?
 

Blaine

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allowing ludicrous speeds if thrust is continually applied
:whatho::killit:
Is this the reason why it's not in the space games?
:obviously:

I meant that your ship's velocity will continue to increase as you apply thrust, until the point where you're moving at ludicrous speeds. This is basically how acceleration functions in outer space in real life, too.

If you stop thrusting, you'll continue to move at ludicrous speed.

I thought that was implicit in the statement, but I can see now that I didn't mention letting off the gas pedal.

Anyway, this game is nowhere near even slightly close to being realistic, so those in it for close simulation of reality should stay away.
 

Perkel

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Blaine you fucking bastard why did you not ping me about this game. I will fucking eat it alive.
On other hand it is good because i skipped early access and now i can play 1.0

Thanks mate.

Sounds like everything i wanted from X series + according to you runs well instead of choking to death with big simulation. Will play it now. Will get back here after few hours with impressions.

Limit Theory died for this.
 

DraQ

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Anyway, this game is nowhere near even slightly close to being realistic, so those in it for close simulation of reality should stay away.
Yeah, but I consider at least flatspace newtonian to be matter of common decency in a space game.

Few exceptions I accept (like Homeworld) have been "grandfathered" due to being awesome.
 

polo

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Any tips for building ships?
Ive seen amazin creatiions online, mine look like something you could do in minecraft the first time you install it.
 

Blaine

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Any tips for building ships?
Ive seen amazin creatiions online, mine look like something you could do in minecraft the first time you install it.

You need to have artistic/creative talent of some sort and (most importantly) a lot of patience.

It took me a great deal of tinkering around and practice in the ancient old days of GalCiv II to start producing decent-looking greeble hulls. Same goes for the autism games I was playing a few years back.

Example:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208483603
 

Perkel

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My current issue with builder is that textures are shit. What i mean by that is that a lot of blocks have exact same textures and what is more weird is that important ones like crew etc are completely random. So creating ship with any kind of normal ship look is really hard.

Otherwise i love builder. It reminds me a lot of Space Engineers i played lately but with something to do on top of building.

The other issue is that aside from turrets and torpedos there doesn't seem to be any other type of mounted weapons. So if you want to make forward mounted laser as part of your ship structure you can't really. Same with creating normal looking weapons.
 

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