Spacecraft Update

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Historical Event
Spacecraft Update
C_Spacecraft.png
Start Date
2016-11-07
End Date
Ongoing

The spacecraft update was a complete overhaul of spacecraft and their designers.

It had been in a planning stage for a very long time before the development started on 2016-11-07.[1] Mentions of a "spacecraft facelift" can be found in archives as far back as 2013 and earlier.[2]

One of the reasons given for the overhaul was due to the old spacecraft and designer code becoming unmaintainable.

The new designer is a simplified 3D modelling environment. The new designs can have almost any shape and look desired. Anything from exterior to interior to furniture is defined purely by the player.

As of 2023, Haxus has stated the new designers are "barely functional" and intends to resume work on them at some point.[3]

This was later expanded to buildings in the Building Update.

Old Spacecraft Designs

In 2018, the old designer was completely removed from the game[4]. This caused player backlash as some felt the new designer was in an unfinished state and was not ready to replace the old one at that point. See controversy for more information.

Old OpenCASCADE Designer Attempt

There was an earlier attempt at a new designer using OpenCASCADE back in 2014.[5] However, this was scrapped as it was too complicated to use.[6]

Controversy

Many players have voiced criticism of the new system. Some feel the time and knowledge requirement to design ships had become prohibitive - such as creating a door requiring creating a jig object, intersecting it between two walls, cutting, texturing the faces, setting up collision, walk paths, and more - compared to the two clicks of the old designer. A new-style spacecraft could easily take hundreds of hours to design. In addition, the functionality of the ship was separated from the physical design, instead having all subsystems be tuned using abstract volume sliders based on total hull volume. Thus, some feel it is disconnected from the game world. Many of the old designer's restrictions and limits were removed, causing players to find it less "gamey" and more CAD-like, further worsened by the complexity of the new designer.

As a side effect of the lack of prefab parts and designer constraints, there is severe style inconsistency with cities easily becoming visually messy unless the player takes steps to ensure they only use consistent blueprints. Some have even argued that this has resulted in the game looking worse than it did previously with the old system.

As another result of the designer's complexity and the lack of limitations, it is common to see spacecraft interiors that consist entirely of a single cubic room with all control stations and service panels, with the rest of the ship being empty space. During the MMO, design exploits in PvP were greatly intensified due to the lack of designer constraints. Interiors in building designs are also rare, due to the difficulty of adding them. Further, it is also common to see many different player empires use the same set of building and spacecraft designs available on the Steam Workshop - as using existing blueprints is a way to avoid using the designers and many wish to do so. Ironically, it could be argued that the new system has killed player creativity more than the limited system.

Some have argued that a core part of the Hazeron experience is being able to make your own unique spacecraft designs without difficulty. This has resulted in the developer recommendation to use others' designs being described as a "band-aid solution".[7][8]

In addition, the new designer was initially released at a point where it was barely functional. This led players to feel as if it was not fit for purpose, and this was intensified when the old designers were removed in 2018. The new designer had received minimal functionality and usability improvements in that time, and this is ongoing to this day. Haxus has recently stated that he still considers it "barely functional" and intends to continue work on it at some point in the future.[9]

Many players have since suggested that the old designer should have been improved upon, instead of a new one entirely. Suggestions of reverting to the old system are also frequent. Many players, such as members of Stellar Syndicate, have even claimed that the designer caused a massive drop in game interest, with some even quitting the game entirely as a result.[10][11]

The new system has been the source of many community arguments. It is common to see returning players check in to ask if the old system has been restored, and new players also frequently voice complaints about the new system.[12][13]

Changes

Links

Note: Links are dead due to the old forum disappearing.

Development start
Designer release
Manufacture-able in-game release
Tutorial Videos
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