RELEASED FrackinUniverse 6.4.3

I was actually talking specifically about the vanilla hunting spear and was more annoyed at how you nerfed, specifically, the tier 1 with no regards to it's purpose at that point in the game. I am sorry but I strongly, strongly disagree with you on this matter. Here is the problem: Ever hear of the equation "skill in power out?". Here, I'll post a video.



Secondly, lets look at crafting difficulties of the weapons:

You need resources to make them and they are expendable, one shot one use weapons. At the very least, the stone hunting spear requires 3 stone and 3 logs. Thats quite expensive, firstly, and it takes time to craft the weapon. Secondly lets look at how tier 1-2 machine pistols scale, lets say, a 1.0 damage/6 shots/second weapon, thats only 6 dps, but lets also look at how such a weapon scales with armor, it's non-existant.

A tier 3 weapon however has roughly 50-80% more damage, and when you account for armor the weapons at tier 3 tend to hit hard enough that hunting spears become useless. The thing is, it's OK for a weapon to far out-shine something that early and become useless later, they let the player feel powerful.

Good players don't use the "foo" strategy because they aren't actually optimal.

I mean later throwing weapons? Yeah, I agree they were "OP" I even posted about it a long time ago. But hunting spears were placed and balanced with the mindset of both newer players getting into the game and also people looking to get off the starting planet earlier. The hunting spear become useless later in the game, and it's higher tier equivilents were in limited supply, they were expendable one-shot weapons. While I do not disagree entirely with the power level of thrown weapons at later tiers, earlier tiers they served a purpose.

Hunting spears are now useless, heck I'd even say even the energy javelin is useless if rocket launchers/duel grenade launchers can do as much damage/more damage than they can without an ammunition limit, only an energy bar.

Heck secondary expendable weapons SHOULD be more powerful dps wise, not hugely, in fact not by all that much, but balanced by ammunition issues. The thing is, weapon with a limit on ammunition is "balanced" to do the same dps and same damage/shot ect as another with infinite ammo, the weapon with infinite ammo is undeniably superior. Likewise the rarer the ammunition or more difficult to craft it, the more powerful it should be. Heck there is also the other factors of practicality and asymmetrical balancing.

I just picked up a tier 1 machine pistol with exactly the stats I brought up earlier in this post in a weapons chest. The craftable hunting spear became completely ignorable and pointless within an instant no matter the other benefit of extra food especially with the presence of bows if I was that desperate for extra food.

I never, ever used energy javelins except for "laughs" because of there limited supply in the face of my usual tier 5-6 rocket launchers I default to once I reach those tiers. Because why should I? I can run out of them if I go to crazy. I don't need the food. The only thing I ever think of using such weapons in FU is on ghost enemies who drop rare and expensive to craft phase matter. Even then low-tier ghost enemies can be easily one shot with a mid-tier bow. Bows are balanced by inferior dps for an increased drop rate for rare monster drops, which is ok, as long as they are powerful enough for the tier you have to craft them at. The only exception of that rule from what I've seen was the hellfire bow which I felt was ok given the danger to self+block destructive nature+difficulty of use of the weapon.

But throwing weapons? Again, ammunition supply + some of them have tricky curves, especially javelins. They didn't need to be as powerful as they were, but they had to be more powerful than rockets because of supply issues. If they were craftable it'd be one thing. It'd be another if they had no ammo issues. But alas they have ammo issues. And thats to balance the increased drop and the damage. But again, they are outclassed due to impracticality.

I hate to say it but, I think you gimped the weapon class on the whole, and even more I also feel you really hurt tier 1 playability. Tier 1 and even 2 feels like a slog imo now.

 

Some more on hunting spears and skill:

As I said the reason the early hunting spear was, to me ok was it provided a nice strong early game weapon, it was the "foo" strategy of the game with regards to combat. To balance throwing weapons in GENERAL, what you really want to do is slow down the improvement of higher tier thrown weapons so they slowly fall in line with other weapons, dps wise they COULD be sliiightly higher at tier 3 and onwards, but by assuring they aren't as OP compared to other weapons as there earlier tiers, you force the "FOO" strategy to lose it's effectiveness early enough that players stop using it and switch to other guns like sniper rifles/rocket launchers/machine pistols ect. Heck, even make the next tier throwing weapons only marginally better than tier 2 or even baaarely more powerful than the tier 1 would suffice in achieving that. Players would see how difficult they are to actually use at higher tiers and discover other weapons .

Edit: I think this video also deserves some merit.



Perfect imbalance, imbalance from subtleties ensure a more balanced and engaging game.

 

ok
the new mining gun lasers are rad AF
the electrification is a cool tool in combat too

but they sound goddamn loud now

 

that is far too much to read over a simple "you should look at your nerfs to throwing weapons. i feel they are a bit too much"

just say *that* next time lol. In any case, I thought you were talking about the bone spear, so you can ignore that bit entirely.

In-game I have honestly never even used throwing weapons, because I think they are shit when there are infinitely cooler weapon choices out there. I can see the allure, just not to my style of play.

I'll take a look, since it was Tamamo and not myself that made those edits. You won't be seeing them be super-powerful regardless, however. I would rather encourage making the FU throwables, or using more interesting weapon as a whole. But, I don't want to gimp anyones experience. So, I'll investigate.

I'd still say that your point regarding the machinepistol/bow being instantly better is sort of strange to me: Why *wouldn't* you want to use a bow or pistol instead? Both are far more reliable and need no ammo. I see no issue with a superior option being superior.

 

Realistically yes, guns and bows outmatch a thrown spear with a stone or even metal tip. It's more just balance and variety . I personally love using broadswords most of the time later in the game myself, with machine pistols as my anti-air/sniper weapon most of the time(although I do sometimes use sniper rifles). Realistically the machine pistols and sniper rifle would far out-damage the broadsword(..heck realistically there is no such thing as a "broadsword", swords all have very different names but thats another story) . Broadswords are destructive for balance reasons, no one would use them otherwise.

I admit myself I rarely ever use throwing weapons, except very early in the game before the nerf. Because options are both limited and strong weapons are near non-existant that early and I wanted to get to tier 2 quicker. And its overall preference at this point.

 

there is most certainly a "broadsword", they just dont have as varied appearance as they do in-game. What they do incorrectly, however, is making a broadsword a strictly 2h , overhead attack weapon. But yea

As for t1... the Bone Spear exists specifically to fill that t1 "need a decent weapon" gap. I found it lacklustre in a recent playthrough and the spear was my solution. Now its the only *true* choice early on. But of course, everyone knows spears are the best anyhow

 

Hrllo guys, mind if I ask three questions?(including this one of course )

1- I heard that solar panels/arrays get energy even from artificial light from lamp but when I try to do that I don't get enough energy from these with the solar arrays to power up machines that need 4u to work, only working at full with sunlight, is this intended or I am doing something wrong?
2- For some reason batteries aren't working at all, I can charge them just fine but when I try to use them to power up any station it doesn't work at all. Am I the only one with this problem or it is a known bug?

 

1. 100% intended. You need a potent lightsource to make the cheaty method reliable. They are meant to function in sunlight more than direct light. No change will be made to this.

2. The stations you are powering with them either require more than the battery produces, or you are splitting the battery output to too many things. Each connected device will effectively remove its power cost from the generated total of the battery. IE: if a station uses 4u, and the battery outputs 8u, your battery is essentially now a 4u output. If you output to *two* devices, that is again split. Daisy chaining batteries will not help matters, by the way. Their outputs do not add together when connected to one another.

 

Strange, I swear that before not matter how much I tried neither battery was working for me, I guess all is good now, thanks for the help.

 

Just to let you know, this seems to work with the solar arrays {haven't tried the towers}, but solar panels will cheerfully output 3U under plain ship lights.

 

Something I've noticed - sometimes when you pick up a battery and place it back down, it won't output anything until it's connected to something that produces power, and then it kicks in. Whether or not it actually is producing power seems to be irrelevant to the kickstart.

 

I see, that is exactly what happened in my case, I guess I won't be able to power up the atmospheric condencer with batteries when going to other planets :/

 

For 1: Generally, you cannot expect 100% max efficiency but you can get close with super bright lights, and the higher your elevation you will get better power boost. Overall, I don't tend to rely on ship lights with solar as much as I rely more on hybridizing solar with generators, a single fission can easily keep a lab working.

2: Batteries split output to devices linearly but not intelligently. Three 4u devices tied to an 8u will only get 2.8ishu and not receive power, even if two of them are off. Generally, I find this setup works:

For 2u and 3u, a 6u/4000 battery can power 2-3 devices easily. Attaching an advanced centrifuge and powder sifter to a 6u is effective.
For anything 4u+, give it it's own dedicated battery.
"Always on" devices should receive either wind, solar or a dedicated fission reactor. (This excludes extreme demand items like the atmosphere regulator).
Super demand items only use 16u batteries. And either a quantum, or a couple fission reactors with at LEAST plutonium.

Other tricks with batteries(that I found to be efficient):

While daisy chaining batteries will not increase the output, they will charge each other, so if a battery, such as say an 8u, is only powering a single device for half power, you can tie it to a battery which is outputting to another device. OR you can chain two batteries (give each of them a power source to) and have the second battery actually power the intended device(works great for hydroponics and solar).

High demand "Always on" devices can be given a larger battery supply in this way, enabling power sources such as say, wind to "stockpile" power for "dry spells" such as low wind or a bad weather type. This is especially useful for wind.

 

Even a power source that is insufficient can enable batteries to output power though, even a puny solar panel or a wind turbine without any wind. Just as long as the battery has something which "can" provide power.

 

sayter updated FrackinUniverse with a new update entry:

4.30.6

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

The Penumbral Scorpion deal an unkown 'ShadowDamage' towards enemies resulting in turning the foes it fights invincible and/or crashing the game. http://pastebin.com/iUwRiXkk

I've only noticed this with a captured penumbral Scorpion so far.

 

yep. only that file has the wrong call. should be fushadowdamage

 

RE:Throwing Spears:

The problem with early-game bows is that

1). They are too friggin slow (the spears shared this problem)
2). They are way too weak (something that couldn't be said of the pre-nerf spears)

It takes, sometimes, 3, 4 arrows to kill something (which is pretty much your entire energy bar, and running around for 30+ seconds trying to keep it away from you). If you kill it with a normal weapon that does real damage, you will very rarely get drops. Therefore, before the spear nerf, people used spears to get stuff to make early-game armors (things like hardened carapaces, leather, etc).

Maybe the throwing spears were a little powerful, but nerfing them heavily to be in line with the bow is kinda silly IMO. Bows have infinite ammo, spears do not. Spears are also slightly slower than the bows, so there's more danger if you miss. Therefore, I think higher damage than bows is justified for the throwing spears.

I think the spear nerf and early bow weakness conundrum highlights a problem with monster loot: the "Hunting Weapon" idea is novel, but bad game design. Forcing people to use wimpy and/or impractical weapons to increase rare drops to be reasonable only speaks volumes about how much RNG drop systems suck.

More and more MMOs are moving away from RNG-based methods towards other methods that feature less RNG for a reason. People are vocal about RNG drops. Many people hate such systems, and when you gate early-game armors behind RNG drops where you can kill 20, 30 mobs and not see a single square of leather unless you use hilariously weak weapons, you get a situation where people are going to say "Screw this" and go do something else.... or simply cheat.

The Spear Nerf just exacerbates the problem, because the spears were a work-around and now they aren't.

Ways to rectify the situation:

1). Modify CF's "hunting weapon" code to make drops more reasonable without hunting weapons,
2). Remove/Reduce the aforementioned spear nerf,
3). Make Early Bows more attractive,
4). Add early-tier FU bows that are more attractive (bone?).

EDIT: IMO, Early-game bows should be faster and use less energy but keep the weak damage. IRL, weak bows are pulled back faster and take a lot less effort, but you get less power behind your arrow. Stronger bows punch through much better, but take a lot more out of you to pull back.

My suggestion would be to add a t1 bow, perhaps bone or some-such, that is much faster and more light on energy than the vanilla bow... or just mod the vanilla bow, the first two, to make them more viable.

 

mostly reverted the spears.

early bows have been made more attractive. crits, firstly. second, hunting. third, increased "special" shot time. i love them. A bit more power couldn't hurt though.

 

I will admit I've yet to see the post-crit bows, so I'm speaking of experience with the vanilla ones.

I'm glad to hear that you looked into it, though! Should solve some of the woes about the spears anyways lol. Especially if you somewhat reverted the nerf. I will admit the spears were a teensy too powerful in vanilla (like, one-shot everything on the first planet too powerful haha), so I can see why a nerf was made, it just seems the nerf was a little Too much.

So glad to see good steps taken!