i believe the terrain in TT is using a system that does not allow terrain to overlap
Heightmap i think it's called?
Heightmap i think it's called?
Quality of Life Improvements
- Thread starter Matt
- Start date
I originally was gonna stay quite but it's gone far enough now for me to join in. Technically caves can be a quality of life thing since it makes resources that don't have seams easier to amass, abundant rocks with Plumbite and Titanite for example, but is easily something that would require significant rework to implement. I believe the TT terrain is indeed height locked, if you clip into the terrain successfully, it is proven that only the surface of the terrain has collision, there is literally no physical interactions below, just the thin surface. So you can imagen shaping the current terrain into a cave only to have the ability to go through the roof since there's no bottom collision. Also the camera really does not like interacting with special terrain such as the monoliths, camera controls get funky around vertical terrain too.
Can we just forget I said cave? Apparently, they're just not possible to implement, so let's move on. What about savanna? From an aesthetic point of view it would be interesting to some transitional biomes. But that's just aesthectic.
Ability to rotate all blocks when building factories, refineries so they can be placed horizontal or vertical
Excess block limit on conveyor belts
Mine resources even if your out of their visual range
Ability to place multiple miners on one seam (could place 4 and save the snapshot of it but it's hard to place from a snapshot) Being able to place them easier would be helpful on a seam with more snap to points.
A seam is quickly mined out, it should contain more resources.
Fix the turrets so their weaponry does more damage to AI vehicles, currently it takes forever for them to damage an AI vehicle with no interaction from the player even with Curise missiles for weapons.
More conveyors for each faction and better ability to place them.
More storage silo's for each faction.
The crafting bug could be fixed by crafting an item which is then sent to a silo until it's called for by the next phase of the crafting process.
Overhaul the entire crafting system, plugin system so you don't need extra levels to craft higher spec material. If a part needs two lower spec components crafting put them in the silo until both or made then call them for the next step of crafting.
Full size world map showing your tech with placeholders you can enter text into for notes.
Waypoints on the map would be useful so you can select them to instantly teleport to them if you've got tech there.
Endgame for compaign mode. Something like build a tech that will launch you 100,00 feet vertical to escape the planets atmosphere. You could then crash land on another planet to start again with a pile of cash to help with building a new vehicle. It'd give the game somewhere to go rather than it just continuing on with nothing to do. You could start with a bigger start vehicle on the second planet, third planet etc with tougher enemies until you reach a "home" planet and if you have enough resources saved/mined and cash you get to stay if not your sent off to another planet until you do and so on but the amount you need to mine increases by a set amount. It would add a challenge to the campaign mode instead of it being never ending. Each planet in this setup would need to be of one biome type so completely green with trees or desert only. IT would make the game more challenging to find rarer crafting materials which could also improve the shop system to buy rarer parts at a higher cost.
Excess block limit on conveyor belts
Mine resources even if your out of their visual range
Ability to place multiple miners on one seam (could place 4 and save the snapshot of it but it's hard to place from a snapshot) Being able to place them easier would be helpful on a seam with more snap to points.
A seam is quickly mined out, it should contain more resources.
Fix the turrets so their weaponry does more damage to AI vehicles, currently it takes forever for them to damage an AI vehicle with no interaction from the player even with Curise missiles for weapons.
More conveyors for each faction and better ability to place them.
More storage silo's for each faction.
The crafting bug could be fixed by crafting an item which is then sent to a silo until it's called for by the next phase of the crafting process.
Overhaul the entire crafting system, plugin system so you don't need extra levels to craft higher spec material. If a part needs two lower spec components crafting put them in the silo until both or made then call them for the next step of crafting.
Full size world map showing your tech with placeholders you can enter text into for notes.
Waypoints on the map would be useful so you can select them to instantly teleport to them if you've got tech there.
Endgame for compaign mode. Something like build a tech that will launch you 100,00 feet vertical to escape the planets atmosphere. You could then crash land on another planet to start again with a pile of cash to help with building a new vehicle. It'd give the game somewhere to go rather than it just continuing on with nothing to do. You could start with a bigger start vehicle on the second planet, third planet etc with tougher enemies until you reach a "home" planet and if you have enough resources saved/mined and cash you get to stay if not your sent off to another planet until you do and so on but the amount you need to mine increases by a set amount. It would add a challenge to the campaign mode instead of it being never ending. Each planet in this setup would need to be of one biome type so completely green with trees or desert only. IT would make the game more challenging to find rarer crafting materials which could also improve the shop system to buy rarer parts at a higher cost.
More biomes, including some hostile ones.
Something like a volcano would be good, with lava flows which damage techs, and possibly an eruption every now and then which makes more lava flows and rains fireballs down, as well as making a cloud which blocks solar panels around the volcano
Something like a volcano would be good, with lava flows which damage techs, and possibly an eruption every now and then which makes more lava flows and rains fireballs down, as well as making a cloud which blocks solar panels around the volcano
Oh I totally forgot about the rotors!
Despite the popularity seen after their release, the helicopter rotors are pretty much unused by users besides placing them horizontally for forward thrust. In fact, you rarely see anyone building legit helicopters at all because, in order to make one, one needs to
1. Put on adjusters in awkward places to provide pitch and roll, while they will alter the lift balance of the tech since they will try to help with lift. (Real life rotors provide pitch and roll. Not in Terratech)
2. Deal with fiddling with the throttle constantly to keep the vehicle at a desired altitude.
So the designing process and the control of the tech are both far more complicated than they should be. Pretty much all the helis people made are doused with gyros so they can focus on wrestling with the throttle. Most even go forward with thrusters instead of using the rotor's lift while pitched forward, which also brings up the issue of the rotors not having enough thrust.
Other than making the rotors do pitch and roll, a critical function needs to be added: when they are placed horizontally on a tech, they should adjust their own throttle to keep the tech at a constant altitude. To make fine control possible, the throttle control could be as they are now, while 0% is where the vehicle maintains altitude. This should let players control how fast they ascend/descend.
One more thing that could vastly improve the flying experience for all aircraft types is adding an altitude indicator.
The thing we currently have... I'll just say that it's not good. I bet nobody even looks at it anymore, just as I have defaulted to relying on visual cues. If none of the above mentioned suggestions gets considered, please at least give us this indicator.
Despite the popularity seen after their release, the helicopter rotors are pretty much unused by users besides placing them horizontally for forward thrust. In fact, you rarely see anyone building legit helicopters at all because, in order to make one, one needs to
1. Put on adjusters in awkward places to provide pitch and roll, while they will alter the lift balance of the tech since they will try to help with lift. (Real life rotors provide pitch and roll. Not in Terratech)
2. Deal with fiddling with the throttle constantly to keep the vehicle at a desired altitude.
So the designing process and the control of the tech are both far more complicated than they should be. Pretty much all the helis people made are doused with gyros so they can focus on wrestling with the throttle. Most even go forward with thrusters instead of using the rotor's lift while pitched forward, which also brings up the issue of the rotors not having enough thrust.
Other than making the rotors do pitch and roll, a critical function needs to be added: when they are placed horizontally on a tech, they should adjust their own throttle to keep the tech at a constant altitude. To make fine control possible, the throttle control could be as they are now, while 0% is where the vehicle maintains altitude. This should let players control how fast they ascend/descend.
One more thing that could vastly improve the flying experience for all aircraft types is adding an altitude indicator.
The thing we currently have... I'll just say that it's not good. I bet nobody even looks at it anymore, just as I have defaulted to relying on visual cues. If none of the above mentioned suggestions gets considered, please at least give us this indicator.
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I SHALL SUMMON THE WALL OF TEXT ONCE AGAIN!
Now this is next level quality of life improvement. Seriously, rotors are mostly unusable due to their forced vector motion, so placing horizontally is almost always a bad idea unless you plan to play around continuous motion. So that makes them even less popular in practice. Honestly a lot of the flying experience can be fixed by creating motion gyro's similar to real gyro systems. You tilt the source of your gyro stabilization so you forcefully pitch to a certain vector, so you can build perfectly stable so you can hover stably parallel to the ground while also being capable of changing that vector of direction, (changing where the "parallel to the ground" is, so 45* above ground will cause a 45* vector of motion), right now we have no choice but have to either customize the gyro resistance so it will not pitch past a certain point or constantly adjust manually, both involve indirect forced manipulation that a self operating rotor would easily have implemented in its control capabilities in conjunction to implemented gyros.
Look at hovers for example, before they where not gimble mounted so they always pointed down...THAT SUCKED! Until gyros came. But when the hovers became gimble mounted, all the original problems just magically disappeared. I feel like the same can apply to rotors. A bit more versatility such as the altitude indicator but more for rotor interaction between the player and the game. "I want to go forward." *Game calculates how you should pitch to go forward based on how much you set your altitude indicator to pitch, player sets 45 degrees "forward" [pointing to the ground] on the indicator, the game uses that information to pitch the tech to that desired angle, using the gyro(s) and rotor(s) together.* We look at the hovers in this scenario and see, "I want to go forward." *Game tilts hover vertex's opposite to the desired motion and successfully creates forward force.* "I want to turn left." *Game uses available sources of motion such as propellers, hovers, and Ion drives all together to achieve this request based on the current control scheme.* Rotors right now? "I want to go up to 50m above the ground." *No function available.* "I want to go up." *No defined parameters to use, do it all yourself.* "I want to go down from being up quickly." *Have to reverse vertex thrust to 0, then press "down" again to go negative.* There is no direct communication between the player and game, no defined desired speed or parameters. Hovers too, but when you want to turn left, you probably want to turn left as fast as possible, so it's not as much of a problem as rotors.
I can't believe I forgot this one.
A better method of building inside techs when the camera is inside the tech.
I am sick of doing special maneuvers to place blocks inside the hull only to have a SINGLE BLOCK suddenly not place where I want it to as the attachment points loaded, and have to hunt down for hours where that block is!! Unless you create an armor plated shell around your entire tech to remove all attachment points, building inside a tech SUUUUCCCKKKKSSSS.
In fact, its the one thing I really hate about this game. I never look forward to retrofitting/updating techs because of how annoying and tedious it is to do so.
A better method of building inside techs when the camera is inside the tech.
I am sick of doing special maneuvers to place blocks inside the hull only to have a SINGLE BLOCK suddenly not place where I want it to as the attachment points loaded, and have to hunt down for hours where that block is!! Unless you create an armor plated shell around your entire tech to remove all attachment points, building inside a tech SUUUUCCCKKKKSSSS.
In fact, its the one thing I really hate about this game. I never look forward to retrofitting/updating techs because of how annoying and tedious it is to do so.
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I had a dream... of Terratech 2, with larger tech, weather, water, large structures that we can build cities around, lot of small robots that are wandering from one place to another, collecting crystals from cristal farms and mining deep in ground for stone and metals, while protected by huge battle techs patroling on predesigned areas and protecting from enemies above ground, on the ground and below ground...
Yas. We want Star Citizen + Terratech. I guess the issue is how in Terratech, each techs are a combination of 100+ items of their own to render and compute, while in most other games, it's much less than that. Would be nice to see some clever features like what Wolfire Games did with their games, too.