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[ScriptWolf]

I have 25% off coupon if anyone wants send me a PM

[Sensei]

Still haven't played a ton, but some more initial thoughts:

-Game runs shockingly well. I haven't experienced any problems with multiple large ships moving and colliding, all while there's tiny bits of debris everywhere.
-Rocket ship behavior isn't really realistic: All pitch/roll/yaw is controlled by magic gyroscopes, and thrusters only translate the ship, not rotate it even if they're off of the center of mass.
-Because of the above, you can accurately recreate any sci-fi space ship you can possibly think of, to scale, and it will work. Then, you can really see whether a star destroyer would win in a fight against the USS Enterprise... well, a demolition derby anyway, because guns are only placeholders right now.
-The only thing that bugs me is the gravity generators*- since they're spheres, when two ships get close to one another, your gravity fields combine and you end up walking on the floor at an angle.
-They say they really want to support modding, which for me mostly alleviates the worry that there won't be anything to do with your awesome creations later on. If they don't think of something, the community will, and there's already a large fanbase.


*They had a whole blog post about different ways they considered implementing gravity and settled on generators influencing force on all people and small ships in one direction while they're withing this sphere. Multiple spheres are additive.

[n9103]

Got a 25% off coupon as well. PM for it to anyone.

[Sirian]

Bought it, kinda disappointed that there's only creative mode, I don't want to spoil my game experience by having everything from the start :/

Still, it might be good later on...

[BurnedToast]

*They had a whole blog post about different ways they considered implementing gravity and settled on generators influencing force on all people and small ships in one direction while they're withing this sphere. Multiple spheres are additive.

Build a pole coming off the front of your ship with 500 gravity generators on the end.

Fly close to enemy ship and turn it on.

Watch enemy ship impale it's self on your spike while the enemy crew is helpless to do anything about it because they are pressed against the hull with the force of 500 gravity generators.

Bonus points if you can break physics and use it as a reactionless drive system.

Anyway, after miner wars (which I did not buy, hooray no pre-order ever for any reason rule saving me again) there's no way I'm touching this till it gets rave reviews, but it looks like it could be interesting.

[Shadowlord]

All pitch/roll/yaw is controlled by magic gyroscopes

Those actually exist in real life, but they apparently don't operate at the kind of turning speeds that popular sci-fi spaceships have on television. Who knows, maybe they could work more effectively with new materials and such in 60 years. Kepler used them (too many have stopped working well enough for it to be able to continue its primary mission).

On the other hand, they say realistic stuff only and then add gravity generators? Is this because it's hard to do hard sci-fi and have it be fun?

[Sensei]

*They had a whole blog post about different ways they considered implementing gravity and settled on generators influencing force on all people and small ships in one direction while they're withing this sphere. Multiple spheres are additive.

Build a pole coming off the front of your ship with 500 gravity generators on the end.

Fly close to enemy ship and turn it on.

Watch enemy ship impale it's self on your spike while the enemy crew is helpless to do anything about it because they are pressed against the hull with the force of 500 gravity generators.

Bonus points if you can break physics and use it as a reactionless drive system.

Anyway, after miner wars (which I did not buy, hooray no pre-order ever for any reason rule saving me again) there's no way I'm touching this till it gets rave reviews, but it looks like it could be interesting.

Correction: Currently, gravity drives affect characters only, and at that, only when your jetpack is off. That said, when you fly two ships close to eachother, you're pretty much guaranteed to end up walking at a funny angle.

On the other hand, they say realistic stuff only and then add gravity generators? Is this because it's hard to do hard sci-fi and have it be fun?

I don't think they ever said realistic stuff only. They were complaining about the difficulty of creating a system which gets you soft sci-fi gravity aboard ships in a space without an objective 'down' direction that doesn't cause weird side effects and physics implications when simulated, though.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Spoiler: I made a little cargo barge (click to show/hide)

The front is not terribly thick. Let's see if I can park it in that little hangar window!

Spoiler: Nailed it. (click to show/hide)

[Sensei]

Heh, you're going to have the experience I had with carriers: The ships inside your carrier still act just like they're in space, and will try their damnedest to stay in one place with their gyroscopes and rockets, thus smashing into your ship. If you break their engines, or turn them off, they just bounce around in zero gravity, probably flying out of the carrier.

Another complaint, I've noticed that ramming a large ship into an asteroid results in it getting stuck in some invisible mesh. I'm sure that's the sort of thing that they're trying to fix right now of course.

I also found it's hard to build stations into asteroids: it seems like you can't place a block whose center is inside the asteroid, which usually means you can't quite make it look like pylons are fully built into the rock. Not that it matters, since you don't NEED to mount your station to an asteroid to make it stationary.

In other news, I HAVE had some fun ramming ships into asteroids to make craters. You can even find gold inside the asteroids, which will be cool in survival mode.

[Brotato]

Bought this game on a whim.  Absolutely love it.  Definitely my top purchase of 2013 so far. 

IF you guys haven't seen this video yet, you need to check it out: http://youtu.be/BN6F1F9CqLU
That's right! Magnetic docking clamps!

[Sensei]

Bought this game on a whim.  Absolutely love it.  Definitely my top purchase of 2013 so far. 

IF you guys haven't seen this video yet, you need to check it out: http://youtu.be/BN6F1F9CqLU
That's right! Magnetic docking clamps!

Now to see how this applies to missile technology- how can I make thrusters stay on then nobody's in control of them?

[Graknorke]

May get this but I'm still unsure. I see a lot of scepticism on the first page but not here. Has it got better over time?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Well in the short lifespan of its playable alpha, the devs have been updating it pretty consistently. You may wish to wait till they actually implement some more things or multiplayer!

[Sensei]

May get this but I'm still unsure. I see a lot of scepticism on the first page but not here. Has it got better over time?

It's still mostly a non-game, much alike to a pre-survival-mode minecraft with physics. Unless it massively appeals to you, you probably don't lose anything by waiting for more features to manifest. That said, new features are manifesting. A lot of peoples' concern centered on the fear that the game wouldn't be updated much, but right now it's going at a fast pace.

[Brotato]

Bought this game on a whim.  Absolutely love it.  Definitely my top purchase of 2013 so far. 

IF you guys haven't seen this video yet, you need to check it out: http://youtu.be/BN6F1F9CqLU
That's right! Magnetic docking clamps!

Now to see how this applies to missile technology- how can I make thrusters stay on then nobody's in control of them?

Simple, build a cockpit on your "missile", turn off the inertia dampener on both the ship and the missile, bring them both up to speed, then release.