Thoughts about PCU Limit
As a software engineer, I understand what the PCU limit is and why it's part of this game--basically to solve a performance issue.
So, I understand that there really isn't a choice--the PCU limit must exist.
I started a new Survival playthrough with the release of v. 2.3. I love how the new contract system works--it is basically forced exploration, sending you to all the interesting locations, starting the Verdure, then to Vallis Reach, then to Palatine, etc.
However, this lead to a problem I was unprepared for. On SE1, I never ran into the PCU limit, because I basically didn't go far from my starting location. I built two bases on the starting planet, neither very significant in size, and one small and one large base in space, with only one capital ship, with a number of small ships. I have no idea if I ever even got close to the PCU limit. However, I did occasional self-maintenance on scrapped projects.
In SE2, however, at each location, starting with The Barn which was given to me, I set up a base close to the contract station--a place I could build ships and experiment with concepts. At Vallis Reach in particular, I attempted an over-sized roving base with under-sized wheels (I hadn't unlocked the large wheels, yet) and lots of rotors. One of my atmospheric ships ended up stuck upside-down, and I just abandoned it close to my base, intending to eventually try to save it. I eventually completed all the contracts at Vallis Reach and moved on, now setting up on Kemik at Dustpire. When I was at Palatine, I made an attempt to build my first capital ship, having the projection complete but running into the problem of not being able to get certain resources in that area to complete the construction. I temporarily abandoned it with the intention of returning once I got what I needed to complete it.
When at Kemik Station, I tried to drop in one of my blueprint ships (which was relatively small), only to discover I had reached my PCU limit. I understood this meant that I needed to go back and find grids to remove, but this was a rather large annoyance. My grids were scattered about quite a bit, and I really didn't know what all counted toward my limit, and some grids were in locations I'd probably never find again.
So, I resorted to using the Debug Menu to shortcut the clean up.
Okay, so now that the backstory is done, here are my thoughts I hope the developers will take into consideration.
1. Emphasize the PCU limit early on. I'm not even halfway through the eventual list of contracts (I'm only on Kemik--how many more contracts and planets will eventually be added?) but I've spent a lot of time building and abandoning grids that now are causing a problem. Yes, I knew the PCU limit from the beginning, but since it was never an issue for me on SE1, I really didn't think much of it here. If the limit can be reasonably increased, that would be great, but on the developers know how that limit increase will impact the game. But if I knew from the beginning that I need to carefully manage my PCU, then I'd make sure to clean up abandoned grids before moving on to the next area.
2. Make the PCU limit part of the lore. As it currently stands, we look at the PCU limit as, "it's there for performance", which is kind of emersion-breaking. But if you can establish something along the lines that PCU has some kind of impact to the Almagest system, it makes it more interesting and helps to keep the emersion.
3. While I found the Debug menu a bit confusing at first, I don't expect any real tutorial or improvement to this--it isn't supposed to be part of normal gameplay, after all. However, on the Entity tab, showing who owns a particular grid, and how much PCU that particular grid is would be very useful. Knowing that a particular grid counted 50,000 PCU to my limit would make it clear that is one I might want to prioritize for deletion. I was also surprised to learn that even blocks that were nothing but projections were counting against my PCU.
4. I might have missed it, but I don't recall seeing what the PCU count is on any of the blocks. For example, the interior lights count 50 PCU, but I don't think that shows up anywhere. It wasn't until I ground down a bunch of rotors on my base at Vallis Reach that I discovered that rotors cost a huge amount of PCU. But back to the early emphasis on PCU management, I probably wouldn't have cared anyhow, unless I was aware I needed to carefully manage my PCU.
Extending to NPCs and grids that are not player owned, I realize the game does need to manage these grids to keep the overall PCU number down. However, because of this, I've "strategically transferred equipment to an alternate location" and had said grids suddenly pop out of existence. It was rather jarring to be flying along in space, 20 km from anything, only to suddenly find myself floating alone with no spaceship, because I was using a craft I didn't own, and the game decided it was time to delete that grid. For this issue, I suggest the following:
1. Don't remove unowned grids within the player's view.
2. For any grids within the player's view that need removed, use some kind of lore as to why the grid is being reclaimed by the original NPC owner, and give disincentive for the player to use it. Perhaps have the owning faction send an overwhelming attack on the player until the grid is destroyed. Something like that, perhaps? Or have the grid switch to auto-pilot and go somewhere out of view, and the player never able to regain control. Or have the grid self-destruct spectacularly.
Of course, if the grid is out of view, popping out of existence is fine. It's just when the player is where he can interact with the grid, it feels like Klang is just messing with us. And yes, I've encountered Klang a few times in SE2, though I'm uncertain if his presence is as ubiquitous as in SE1. My oversized mobile base with undersized wheels did some rather terrifying things when I tried getting it to work.
I suppose my suggestions for using lore to solve some of these issues arises from the changes in the Fast Travel between v 2.2 and v 2.3. I like that change--I think it added a lot to the game, even though it amounts to little more that a simple cut-scene. Little details go a long way.
I like this feedback
I am new to SE2, I see the PCU number going up. I see the number on my vehicles, but I had no clue what it was.
Now I know and now I am thinking I need to stop building detailed. Not a good feeling.
It definitely needs to be more in the players face, but it has to be done in a way where it does not feel punishing. Having limits in a building game makes a ton of sense in order to ensure the performance is always at acceptable limits, but it does feel "punishing".
I like your idea of somehow incorporating it into lore, how that is achieved without it feeling "magical" is beyond me, but I do think it needs to be easier for a player to stomach.
I know in No Mans Sky the base limit is like 3000 parts or it will not be seen to the community, that always feels punishing, especially for creatives or builders because it basically means the build limit is the end of the game.
I am new to SE2, I see the PCU number going up. I see the number on my vehicles, but I had no clue what it was.
Now I know and now I am thinking I need to stop building detailed. Not a good feeling.
It definitely needs to be more in the players face, but it has to be done in a way where it does not feel punishing. Having limits in a building game makes a ton of sense in order to ensure the performance is always at acceptable limits, but it does feel "punishing".
I like your idea of somehow incorporating it into lore, how that is achieved without it feeling "magical" is beyond me, but I do think it needs to be easier for a player to stomach.
I know in No Mans Sky the base limit is like 3000 parts or it will not be seen to the community, that always feels punishing, especially for creatives or builders because it basically means the build limit is the end of the game.
SE1's pcu limit in single player (if you didn't change/disable it) was 50k, on Keen official servers its 20k, anywhere else is up to the hosts. SE2's unified grid system is just asking for complex-greebling on near about everything... Dual Universe ran in to a similar issue (ship-hulls were made of 25cm voxels), crowded areas full of high-detail stuff would lag so hard you'd risk crashing out of the game. We'll probably need a lot of blocks in different shapes if we want to minimize pcu-usage, along with a way to incentivize their usage a bit over the super-small stuff to encourage players to use larger blocks when reasonable (perhaps better stats?).
The best way to make PCU not an immersion-breaking thing I can think up off the top of my head would be a "license system" that draws attention to it. Players running tutorials/story would start out with a license of a size smaller than the limit and gradually obtain better licenses until they earn the cap...
As for stuff disappearing, it shouldn't vanish while in visual-load range, stuff you can steal should just stop showing up if too much npc stuff is persisting for too long.
And the option to review and remotely delete grids you own as you can with SE1's info-tab would be a welcome addition to the game.
SE1's pcu limit in single player (if you didn't change/disable it) was 50k, on Keen official servers its 20k, anywhere else is up to the hosts. SE2's unified grid system is just asking for complex-greebling on near about everything... Dual Universe ran in to a similar issue (ship-hulls were made of 25cm voxels), crowded areas full of high-detail stuff would lag so hard you'd risk crashing out of the game. We'll probably need a lot of blocks in different shapes if we want to minimize pcu-usage, along with a way to incentivize their usage a bit over the super-small stuff to encourage players to use larger blocks when reasonable (perhaps better stats?).
The best way to make PCU not an immersion-breaking thing I can think up off the top of my head would be a "license system" that draws attention to it. Players running tutorials/story would start out with a license of a size smaller than the limit and gradually obtain better licenses until they earn the cap...
As for stuff disappearing, it shouldn't vanish while in visual-load range, stuff you can steal should just stop showing up if too much npc stuff is persisting for too long.
And the option to review and remotely delete grids you own as you can with SE1's info-tab would be a welcome addition to the game.
at this point i am using each of the stations as storage and just building what i need carting my materials with my "transport" pod. which is basically just mobile survival kit. ALSO... its worth noting, we can fast travel to and from stations in just our suit. no ship required... so you can just transport loads of gear to the sataions container and build nearby.
i think the REAL bottleneck is grinding. grinding down all the individual blocks even with a block grinder is tedious at best. the eventual ability to abandon grid ownership could aleviate some pcu issues, but the resulting resource cost... eh.. im not so sure thats the way to go.
i think with the sheer number of stations we are just expected to take advantage of them more... pehaps later on some of them will come with production facilites for components.
at this point i am using each of the stations as storage and just building what i need carting my materials with my "transport" pod. which is basically just mobile survival kit. ALSO... its worth noting, we can fast travel to and from stations in just our suit. no ship required... so you can just transport loads of gear to the sataions container and build nearby.
i think the REAL bottleneck is grinding. grinding down all the individual blocks even with a block grinder is tedious at best. the eventual ability to abandon grid ownership could aleviate some pcu issues, but the resulting resource cost... eh.. im not so sure thats the way to go.
i think with the sheer number of stations we are just expected to take advantage of them more... pehaps later on some of them will come with production facilites for components.
I think some reconsideration needs to be taken into account on the way the game does garbage-collection. I assure you this is relevant.
So back on the first quest in space, I "kept" the first mining ship, cause it never ran out of energy and I was able to keep this until I got to the last mission in Palatine station. Then when I was heading to the waypoint, it vanished. I thought maybe it vanished because one of the cargo ships spawned in, but no, I reloaded the save three different times and it disappeared every time. So I was like "okay fair enough" and just let it disappear. When I got to Kemik, I had to build/repair one for a quest, and have been using that for hunting for asteroids with materials.
So you might ask "Why don't you just build a ship if you want it", because it was free materials in my mind. I kept it around until the game made it disappear without warning. That tells me that the game DOES in fact garbage collect the NPC ships, destroyed or not. I went back to the first station, and sure enough the grinding ship had also disappeared. Pity. My first clue that something was going on was that the base I had just built while I was building a replacement for the "renegade dropship" that got chewed up and then landed hard after building a turret for a mission, the entire base that I built disappeared when I left the system and came back with iron. Huh, that's interesting.
Here's what I think the game needs to do, it breaks immersion but I feel it's required or the game will have saves that become exponetially large. Please mark ALL bases, ships, anything you built on the map. Don't need to update the map every second, just update it when the player gets within 10km of the last known location. Put an "violation date" on each object. Basically if this ship, base, vehicle, object, etc isn't visited within X many wall clock hours, the game will "archive it" if it's something you built, basically it will create a blueprint that you can delete if you want, and it will treat the ship as "impounded". If you want it back, go to the shipyard, and the ship will be restored, and if it was a stationary base it will return the base to the location it was abandoned at.
Any ship, vehicle, base or materials left abandoned, that is not owned by the player, gets garbage collected if the player has not seen or driven it by the violation time.
Anyway, that's how I'd solve this. If we want a less immersion breaking solution, it would require fixing how power is generated and drained in the game, because the game has a lot of phantom use even when a base or vehicle isn't moving. Basically if there is an antenna on it, you should be able to find it again, but the game often doesn't let you find things again because the distance isn't very far. So the 5th ship I made in the game, I will never be able to find because it's somewhere on Verdure, because I built it during a wind storm and have no idea where I left it.
I think some reconsideration needs to be taken into account on the way the game does garbage-collection. I assure you this is relevant.
So back on the first quest in space, I "kept" the first mining ship, cause it never ran out of energy and I was able to keep this until I got to the last mission in Palatine station. Then when I was heading to the waypoint, it vanished. I thought maybe it vanished because one of the cargo ships spawned in, but no, I reloaded the save three different times and it disappeared every time. So I was like "okay fair enough" and just let it disappear. When I got to Kemik, I had to build/repair one for a quest, and have been using that for hunting for asteroids with materials.
So you might ask "Why don't you just build a ship if you want it", because it was free materials in my mind. I kept it around until the game made it disappear without warning. That tells me that the game DOES in fact garbage collect the NPC ships, destroyed or not. I went back to the first station, and sure enough the grinding ship had also disappeared. Pity. My first clue that something was going on was that the base I had just built while I was building a replacement for the "renegade dropship" that got chewed up and then landed hard after building a turret for a mission, the entire base that I built disappeared when I left the system and came back with iron. Huh, that's interesting.
Here's what I think the game needs to do, it breaks immersion but I feel it's required or the game will have saves that become exponetially large. Please mark ALL bases, ships, anything you built on the map. Don't need to update the map every second, just update it when the player gets within 10km of the last known location. Put an "violation date" on each object. Basically if this ship, base, vehicle, object, etc isn't visited within X many wall clock hours, the game will "archive it" if it's something you built, basically it will create a blueprint that you can delete if you want, and it will treat the ship as "impounded". If you want it back, go to the shipyard, and the ship will be restored, and if it was a stationary base it will return the base to the location it was abandoned at.
Any ship, vehicle, base or materials left abandoned, that is not owned by the player, gets garbage collected if the player has not seen or driven it by the violation time.
Anyway, that's how I'd solve this. If we want a less immersion breaking solution, it would require fixing how power is generated and drained in the game, because the game has a lot of phantom use even when a base or vehicle isn't moving. Basically if there is an antenna on it, you should be able to find it again, but the game often doesn't let you find things again because the distance isn't very far. So the 5th ship I made in the game, I will never be able to find because it's somewhere on Verdure, because I built it during a wind storm and have no idea where I left it.
I like the idea of a "System License" that allows the player to have so much "hardware" (ships/builds), that if exceeded would bring down the law or something.
Secondly, I highly doubt Keen would look into this, but they either need to make Stretchy blocks like Starship Evo, or go to a 1/4 small block size, not 1/5. The amount of decorative blocks that have to be used to close gaps where where .5m blocks do not work with half blocks is insane and pushes PCU up where its not necessary.
IMO, they either create a stretchy block (the issue here is textures) or they move to a 1:4 ratio small block size. Leave the decorative blocks for legit decorating, not gap fillers. This alone would reduce PCU. Couple that with a PCU License and this would help make PCU more palatable.
I am really loving SE2 (I am new to the franchise), but this imo is a massive oversight. It makes no sense mathematically.
I like the idea of a "System License" that allows the player to have so much "hardware" (ships/builds), that if exceeded would bring down the law or something.
Secondly, I highly doubt Keen would look into this, but they either need to make Stretchy blocks like Starship Evo, or go to a 1/4 small block size, not 1/5. The amount of decorative blocks that have to be used to close gaps where where .5m blocks do not work with half blocks is insane and pushes PCU up where its not necessary.
IMO, they either create a stretchy block (the issue here is textures) or they move to a 1:4 ratio small block size. Leave the decorative blocks for legit decorating, not gap fillers. This alone would reduce PCU. Couple that with a PCU License and this would help make PCU more palatable.
I am really loving SE2 (I am new to the franchise), but this imo is a massive oversight. It makes no sense mathematically.
I was under the impression that the whole point of Sectors, was so that the PCU limit could be a Per Sector thing. If you are in one sector, then PCU in other sectors shouldn't count against you.
I think that all blocks outside of a certain range shouldn't count against you. (say 10km) or something. It could be unloaded or simplified to save processing power.
This way, if you clutter up Verdure and run out of PCU, you can either clean it all up, or simply move to Kemik. You can come back later.
I Like to think about PCU as how much Processing power your SUIT has to control blocks nearby. If you are out of a reasonable range, those blocks don't function.
I was under the impression that the whole point of Sectors, was so that the PCU limit could be a Per Sector thing. If you are in one sector, then PCU in other sectors shouldn't count against you.
I think that all blocks outside of a certain range shouldn't count against you. (say 10km) or something. It could be unloaded or simplified to save processing power.
This way, if you clutter up Verdure and run out of PCU, you can either clean it all up, or simply move to Kemik. You can come back later.
I Like to think about PCU as how much Processing power your SUIT has to control blocks nearby. If you are out of a reasonable range, those blocks don't function.
To add to this (a different similar idea) I noticed in SE1 that the mass of blocks for small grid was WAY higher density than large grid. This means that small grid large ships, would have MUCH higher mass than a large grid of the same overall size. Since small grid mechanicals (gyros, thrusters) were around the same power/weight ratio as the large grid, it meant that the small grids PERFORMED worse at handling, acceleration, etc.... (Not to mention combat potential). It meant that a more detailed ship was discouraged by mass (and PCU I assume, but I always had it jacked up in single player and never ran into it) and if you wanted it to perform well, you Had to go large grid.
I feel like even with the new Unified Grid system, making a 5x5x5 block out of detail cubes uses WAY more PCU than a large block. I understand why, for performance, but it means as the OP stated, you have to avoid detail cubes if you want to be able to complete the build at all.
To add to this (a different similar idea) I noticed in SE1 that the mass of blocks for small grid was WAY higher density than large grid. This means that small grid large ships, would have MUCH higher mass than a large grid of the same overall size. Since small grid mechanicals (gyros, thrusters) were around the same power/weight ratio as the large grid, it meant that the small grids PERFORMED worse at handling, acceleration, etc.... (Not to mention combat potential). It meant that a more detailed ship was discouraged by mass (and PCU I assume, but I always had it jacked up in single player and never ran into it) and if you wanted it to perform well, you Had to go large grid.
I feel like even with the new Unified Grid system, making a 5x5x5 block out of detail cubes uses WAY more PCU than a large block. I understand why, for performance, but it means as the OP stated, you have to avoid detail cubes if you want to be able to complete the build at all.
My 2 cents on the issue..
The game already incorporates MS DirectStorage in its core, ie streaming assets in from (fast) disc on the fly. So is this just an alpha limitation - at least in single player anything the player can't see should be streamed out until player gets near enough to see.
That alone should solve most of the PCU issues. At least me personally could not care less if saves are 20 gigs on main campaign..
My 2 cents on the issue..
The game already incorporates MS DirectStorage in its core, ie streaming assets in from (fast) disc on the fly. So is this just an alpha limitation - at least in single player anything the player can't see should be streamed out until player gets near enough to see.
That alone should solve most of the PCU issues. At least me personally could not care less if saves are 20 gigs on main campaign..
I think the major issue that is in the way of this, is not just file size, but what do you do about machines that are Operating, outside your range. You still need them to be loaded so your assemblers keep producing.
I think the major issue that is in the way of this, is not just file size, but what do you do about machines that are Operating, outside your range. You still need them to be loaded so your assemblers keep producing.
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