Add permanent hulk/debris fields to greyspace/nation space WHs. On the grey space side. Filled with loads of capital ship hulks. One of the first thing pilots should see when entering grey space (other than the warning that they should not expect to survive) is a large scary debris field. It should be a oh **** moment. Sectors for this: Latos H-2, Ukari A-10, and Edras I-2, Edras B-11.

Negatives: Maybe performance issues for player devices and npcs ships. Though if the hulk locations are static, then the npc routing could be accounted for.

Positives: Nothing says turn around like a big ship grave yard. Lots of places to hide. More interesting things to see in otherwise nondescript sectors.

Let the hulk/debris fields attract npc scavengers.

Adding permanent, unrat-dent-sector style dents to these sectors would cause performance issues for people with slightly slow devices, and need a lot more work on the NPC flight AI. Additionally, it would make PvP in these sectors a very lopsided affair, with hardware playing a way bigger role than it does now. A single player who either has a laggy connection or deliberately creates lag can spoil it for everyone in the sector. Not just players attacking players, but even players attacking NPCs.

And new players get the warning not to leave greyspace in big blue letters in the middle of the HUD, and in their chat log. If they don't listen to it and still enter greyspace, let them learn from the consequences.

Additionally, it would make PvP in these sectors a very lopsided affair,

Could you expand on this?

and need a lot more work on the NPC flight AI.

This is something they are already working on.

And new players get the warning not to leave greyspace in big blue letters in the middle of the HUD, and in their chat log.
That is great. But I feel the emotions, from the cinematic feel, that a pilot would get jumping into a sector filled gigantic wrecked ships venting plasma would be a net benefit to overall galaxy. The visual asthetic would set the tone of grey space. A place that at one time may have had its own natural beauty but now has its own unnatural terrors.

Could you expand on this?

Well, someone on a slow device which can't sustain much sector load is already effectively locked out of levi and unrat dent sectors. This would make travel also much harder, locking out much of trade. Even if they don't crash immediately on entering the loaded sector, PvP might cause their game to abruptly crash. As someone who's lost multiple ships to the game crashing in levi/unrat sectors, it's not pleasant.

Also, internet connection will affect players much more in sectors with a lot of objects. So if I live on the other side of the world from the servers, in a current wormhole sector I can PvP reasonably well. Maybe there's a slight lag, but I'm not spammed with resets. Most PvP happens at wormhole sectors. Now if that sector is filled up with hulks, PvP would be almost impossible because of the incessant latency resets.

Aesthetics are all well and good but gameplay (everyone's gameplay) should always come first.

As someone who's lost multiple ships to the game crashing in levi/unrat sectors, it's not pleasant.


You should probably report this as a bug, as this will be something the devs will want to fix before a wider release.

I think people are making too much of considerations that aren't really understood.

- If Hulks are persistently and predictably located in a single sector, then they are no different from asteroids or stations. If they're fixed in a sector, and will always be there, then they would be no more negative for AI than a regular asteroid field.

- Neither hulks nor debris impact network latency. Latency is impacted mostly by the speed of light, and slightly by the switching time of routers, both of which are out of my hands. If people are reproducibly experiencing high positional-resets in debris sectors, there's a case to be made for a Bug submission. But reproduction is the key, because: Correlation is Not Causation. I frequently see people blaming "sector lag" for issues that, on my further investigation, are obviously that individual's own transient latency (routing/wifi/ISP) issue, and nothing we could control.

- While development on debris and such is on-going, we should not negate Suggestions on the basis of "Debris is too slow for some devices". Debris is going to be everywhere, and, as of the last tests I've seen, it's not that slow on devices anymore (unexpected regressions notwithstanding). We should expect that Debris is going to be a large-scale phenomena, implemented widely in the universe.

I used to, until recently, play on devices that were a bit slow (a 2GB ram mobile, and an old laptop with 4GB ram iirc). While playing on these devices, I usually experienced lag or fps loss in leviathan and unrat trident sectors, or when a huge number of NPCs jumped in near me in a wormhole sector. Reducing graphics settings helped with this, but doesn't completely eliminate the fps loss. In some cases, particularly unrat trident sectors, the fps loss was so severe my device would hang, and next movement I see is the entering station screen. This is the issue I'm referring too, which can't be strictly called a game bug since it's a hardware issue. I'm only saying this shouldn't be spread to other, more commonly used sectors.

This is the issue I'm referring too, which can't be strictly called a game bug since it's a hardware issue. I'm only saying this shouldn't be spread to other, more commonly used sectors.

Yeah, don't worry about that. But, next time you have catastrophic client stalls and rendering dropouts, please consider posting to Bugs? We do not have samples of every type of GPU. Even if it's a driver problem, it's good for us to "know". In the past I had repeatedly asked people to please post any serious framerate problems with the debris sectors, and we did fix a number of issues based on reports; but it seems like that request needs to be refreshed.

Anyway, like I said above "We should expect that Debris is going to be a large-scale phenomena, implemented widely in the universe." Therefore the OP is valid. None of the technical concerns here have merit. I appreciate that you had bad experiences, but (respectfully) that has no bearing on this discussion, nor do they bear on the capabilities of our rendering pipeline on our target hardware (even your own).

Actually digging into "why" it has no merit is a really complex topic and way beyond scope here. I think most people on here don't want to learn about GPU profiling. But, it suffices to say that we have plenty of older devices from ~2015, that came with Android 5.x, that are demonstrably capable of rendering our "Debris Sector" goals just fine. And, furthermore, we're dropping support for older Windows devices, as the system requirements continue to gradually change.

I'm pretty certain we could have made these visuals and sector conditions work just fine on your previous hardware, regardless of your beliefs to the contrary. So, let's not get bogged down in confusion around that?

Maybe just increase the hulk's lifespan instead of permanent?

Maybe just increase the hulk's lifespan instead of permanent?

Why would that be desirable?

That seems completely contrary to the goals of the OP?

I'll answer for Harpo: Because the OP states in the opening a positive impact of newbs being scared away by visuals of the remnants of large ships / battles. So, rather than take time to create entirely new, static hulks in these sectors, why not just make the hulks that exist there from ACTUAL PLAYER ACTIVITY remain longer (like...until the next war voy arrives)? At least, in A-10 and I-2, anyhow.

+1 for general more cool stuff to look at and interact with

Well, for one thing, static hulks would cause an AI flight-path map to be defined for the sector, which would AI pathfinding and navigation, and make the sector work better than randomly placed dynamic hulks.

But, again, what's the actual point? It doesn't "save us time".

If you just want the sector to be more randomized or something, okay, I guess? But there's also a good chance it'll often be empty. Or, conversely, it may get too-full-of-hulks, and then you'll actually start to have the performance problems that people were worried about.

i'd rather have hulk for any destroyed ships (well at least trade ships), and antagonist NPC factions engaging each other if they meet in unmonitored sectors.