Enable Position-Based Spawning of Respawn Pods

Kothe shared this feedback 5 years ago
Completed

I'm experiencing an issue with the new respawn pod system. In particular, space pod spawns.

(Reference this bug report: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/1-189-039-space-pod-spawns-extremely-distant-from-centre)


My community server relies on a central asteroid field for mining and PVP consisting of manually placed asteroids located in an area immediately surrounding 0, 0, 0. New space pods are preferred to spawn approximately 25-30KM from 0, 0, 0.


Procedural asteroids are not enabled in my worlds, as my community likes to concentrate people together at focal points (like our central asteroid field) to encourage far higher levels of player interaction and PVP than can be found in a fully procedural environment. Players are encouraged to keep close together and regularly interact because they need to in order to mine and get resources, yet still have the option to explore deep space as they see fit.


Prior to the survival update this system worked perfectly. After the update, as soon as a few people are established in the world, spread across different planets and out in deep space, the spawn radius for new space pods shoots up to 1000KM average (and even up to 30,000KM from the centre in a densely populated world). This happens on old worlds as well as new. Through testing the absolute closest anyone's been able to spawn is 400KM from 0, 0, 0.

After discussing this issue with Inflex, I was advised...

You have disabled procedural asteroids and have only persistent ones. But these are considered occupied or mined out or "someone may return here for resources" (cos procedurals become persistent when someone touches them) and thus not taken into possible spawn locations. Since there are no "habitable" asteroids in entire universe and there is no place to spawn new player, system falls back absolutely random spawn location anywhere in known universe.

and...


Players expand the "know universe", but there is no "habitable" space near (or anywhere in the space) so system runs out of options and places player randomly in the known universe.


I run the most populated server in Australia. Usually 20+ players a night (this weekend over 40+ per night). My world and its "known universe" is going to be large and expansive, and the thing that makes it so popular and successful is the central asteroid field concept which keeps players close together and interacting at the centre. This new system will basically kill off my server by removing that possibility.


Prior to the survival update there used to be codeblocks available for use in the prefab .sbc files of respawn ships. For example...


<PositionAndOrientation>
        <Position x="0" y="0" z="0" />
        <Forward x="0" y="0" z="-1" />
        <Up x="0" y="1" z="0" />
</PositionAndOrientation
<UsePositionForSpawn>true</UsePositionForSpawn>
But these no longer seem to work.


I'm proposing that it be made possible to use the old <PositionAndOrientation> and <UsePosititionForSpawn> codeblocks, along with a <PositionSpawnRadius> codeblock, to allow modders to edit the .sbc prefab files for respawn ships to enable them to be spawned at a predefined position that would override any other spawn location considerations. There should be a variable radius of slight randomness available through the <PositionSpawnRadius> codeblock (which should accept an integer in metres), but otherwise the exact position should be used.


This would mean server owners would have to implement a respawn ship mod with these codeblocks present as our own fix for the issue, but it would be a fix. The survival update's new system would be left in place but server owners would have that option available.


Essentially, these codeblocks would put the power back into the hands of server admins like myself with years of experience running community servers, who know exactly how to encourage interaction and engagement of players in their communities through careful world design. Please do not restrict our creative control and capabilities.


Thanks!


Replies (18)

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10

this means we can no longer have specific spawn ships at specific planets like we did before, if this is to be a permanent change then this is a step backwards. This level of customisation must remain, sometimes you need or want specific spawn ships at specific planets or points in space.

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7

Player interaction is what drives the Survival aspect of the game. By not allowing this customisation, you are stifling player interaction.

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6

I have a space spawn I need to spawn in a specific place, this change breaks that spawn and my tertiary spawn pods.

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8

we need this to allow customised worlds that encourage pvp and interaction

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7

We run a server since 2017, we had custom respawn ships for each planets and for space. Now we can no longer use them with this system...

I hope Keen will QUICKLY reverse this change, that is just a backward change.

My hopes are high in this game, so if we are betrayed like this at each updates, many servers will close and the game will die. And that's not what everyone that loves this game want.


Regards

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3

Hi, if we can have custom respawn ships again that would be kewl thanks.

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4

World admins already chose good spawn spots based on the world that was created, u can't have a single method of spawning for every type of world. Please change it back.

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2

Please bring back the setting to customize spawn ship locations.

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7

sqr(/sign )!


I'd like to add a minor change to the proposed

"I'm proposing that it be made possible to use the old <PositionAndOrientation> and <UsePosititionForSpawn> codeblocks, along with a <PositionSpawnRadius> codeblock, to allow modders to edit the .sbc prefab files for respawn ships to enable them to be spawned at a predefined position that would override any other spawn location considerations. There should be a variable radius of slight randomness available through the <PositionSpawnRadius> codeblock (which should accept an integer in metres), but otherwise the exact position should be used." 
As this values are currently not available and seem as they need to be reimplemented, do this in the respawnships.sbc file, not in the blueprint. So it would be possible to use one blueprint for more then just one location, as it can be references several times in the .sbc.


Thx Kothe for bringing up this topic!


I hope, this will get fixed.

Scytero, administrator of space-engineers.de, community server running since 2014 (!)

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4

Oh god. KeeN! Add more possibilities to control this

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3

you mean add them back! they were present until the survival revamp landed

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3

Alright this is completely broke. As it is now, spawning near other players, I can find your base. It doesn't matter the spawn distance.


The fact that it allows you to spawn on the same player multiple times and create multiple points of reference is enough. If you know the spawn distance from players it's super easy but even that is not required. Hell if I can make 20 reference points all I have to do is go to the damn center and don't even have to math.

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2

This needs to be fixed asap

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2

demo, thats not what this topic is about, but i can see how it can be confused. This is a reqeuest to bring back the old position based RespawnShip system, where we could specifiy the rough position for a RespawnShip to 'catch a planet in range of the respawn coordinates, which then places you somewhere around that planet at a certain height from the ground.

Yes the current system of spawning players close to other is very bad and just a completely idiotic decision, there are threads for that somewhere :)

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2

+1 for this, new system is killing our server as well.

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2

Thanks Bobo, ~Shadowbane

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1

Since this update, Hydro Survival has new players that start off in space with ion powered ships... I call this 'free-thrust' because you get thrust for power and doesn't take fuel so, essentially... free thrust. Anyway, new space spawn starts you with a ship having ion thrusters only. which ruins my server entirely, I can block the ions, remove them even... but the fact is that i can't change my spawn ships to not have them.

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1

i mean. every one starting variaton has thrust. Why whould you remove that ability?

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1

Ions are removed, hydrogen thrust Is added with a tank for replacement.

The natural progression is to go from earth planet to space to explore the other planets... You can no longer do this, the spawn pods are forced to spawn on all atmospheric planets.

Space pods ignore gps location using the positron for spawn mechanic.


It breaks any natural progression.

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1

they still have to progrees through lall blocks and not able to build ion speedders right away, i still dont see a problem. it is not free thrust as energy should be replenished in some way and ships are getting deleted when player leaves server\spwawns a new one. Whats the problem, they will find asteroid asap and settle ther, dismantling ship completely as soon as they have asteroid

maybe im getting something wrong

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2

Hi Kothe,

We added more control over spawning to RespawnShips.sbc file with the latest minor (1.190.1).

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1

I'm still having trouble with this. It isn't very well documented, I can't have more than one ship per spawntype (e.g. having two UseForPlanetsWithAtmosphere ships breaks the mod) and I'm not sure how to spawn ships in set coordinates using the method you described here and in other posts by editing a save file or the SBC file.


(This is what happens if I have 2 ships for atmoshpere-planets defined in the SBC:)

giphy

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1

Same problem here, even having a modded Atmosphere spawning ship, and the vanilla ones breaks the modded ship so it doesn't even appear on the list.


Adding this:

<UseForSpace>true</UseForSpace>

Will allow the ship to spawn uselessly in space, so it's not anything specific to the ship.

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1

i put up a functional example mod of the new definition tags not long ago, it should help :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1727507047

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5

The space respawn system is still a problem by default. If you spawn in a space pod, it takes only slightly longer to find someone (vs the space respawn triangulation method of 1.189), because you always spawn next to someone, you simply have to travel in a straight line and look for the "streaming" icon. Then change direction until it shows up again as you travel around the your spawn point and search around, it is quite easy to locate unsuspecting players and their grids. I have found at least three people in 10-15 minutes using a single space pod...and it only gets better from there.

...when crashed the ship and died, the new space pod spawned within 5 kilometers of the first. I was able to spawn at least four ships only a short 2-6km jaunt from the "enemy" grid that I located. The fundamental issues of spawning "next to" ENEMY players is totally asinine, so why is it the default setting for vanilla servers?

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2

Everyday someone can destroy your ship.

I don't understand why this "feature" has been added on vanilla servers ? Devs want more people interaction ? But as we can know humans, the main interaction will be to destroy your medic, kill you if you're here, then grind your ship and resources, nothing else.

The guy who has his ship/base 200000km from planets will be spotted less than 15minutes...

This sandbox game has become a pain as everyday you have to start from 0... (may be a good way to improve sim speed ? :D )

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1

this has now been re-added back to the game, obviously requires mods like before, the spawn radius can be disabled in this new system, (ive not tested it) i have an example mod up, which i cant link right now as steam is having a hissy fit :Dhttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1727507047

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2

Hello!


When I start a survivor mode game how can I spawn to the same location? I must always start from scratch all the time with the drop pod all the time.... When I ask other players they say I must build a survivor kit on the base and it didn't go well so I think I did something wrong lol

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1

You're in the wrong thread on the wrong forum.

But you can wait a few seconds on the respawn screen and there should be a visible "Survival kit" option available for respawning. When you select it before respawning there, it should give you a view of the surroundings, so you know it's the right place.

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1

I know I'm at wrong thread but I didn't know where I should write but do you mean that I need to build a survivor kit on my base and wait until it pop up on spawn screen?

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1

You should start with one in the drop pod, but it can't hurt to move it over. Just make sure it's powered.

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1

I Will try tomorrow if it works. Thanks for the help!!

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Man how do I know if it's powered up? How can I see it?

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