4 replies to this topic

[RGoulder]

Been eying Avorion an early access game on steam for a while now. Incase you are unaware of what the game is, from their steam page; "A procedural co-op [and single-player] space sandbox where players can build their own space ships out of dynamically scalable blocks. Fight epic space battles, explore, mine, trade, wage wars and build your own empire to save your galaxy from being torn apart by an unknown enemy."  

They just posted some good news for Mac users today.

"We're currently preparing the Mac Version of Avorion for Release. While we won't list it for Mac immediately in the store, we'll be releasing the Mac Builds for download soon, so everybody who has a Mac will be able to download the game. We're asking everyone of you to please download and try out the game on Mac, and please report any issues you're having!"

So hopefully not too long now until we will have a cool space sim game to play.

[RGoulder]

Today is the day. Avorion Mac Beta has been released! If you already own Avorion it will show up in your MAC steam library. Downloading now...

Steam announcement:

Quote

Hey guys,

Good news! We've rolled out the beta of our Avorion Mac Version. This beta will be available for all upcoming versions and will also be available for BOTH the beta and the default branch of the game!

Please Report Bugs
Please remember that this is a fresh version of Avorion for MacOS, so there may still be some bugs or other problems around. If you encounter any issues, please report them to us:

https://avorion.net/...cker/report.php

We need your hardware specs and OS version, as well as a detailed description of what happened and what you expected to happen.

Have Fun Playing!
Other than that, please try out the Mac Version and if everything goes well, we'll set it live officially in the store soon!

Happy playing!

[nick68k]

Hm...I didn't know about this. What's your opinion of it?

[RGoulder]

You want me to take time away from playing Avorion to talk about Avorion? You monster!




I've had a chance to play roughly 16 hours so far, but much of that has been spent building my first space ship, a replica of the "Eureka Maru." It flies but its still not completely finished yet.

So I can't give you my opinion on much else. But I have throughly enjoyed it so far.

Do you like to build things? You have blocks, and slops, corner pieces, etc., along with engine, thruster, shield, power, hanger blocks, and others that you cobble together to create your ship. You get the resources through mining, with a mining lasers, or you can salvage it from recked ships. You can fly a giant cube if thats your fancy, or lose yourself for hours making a fairly detailed ship, its up to you. As you progress you will find better material to build or upgrade your ship with. You'll find new gear, turrets, and other weapons that drop from enemies that you can slap on your ship.

And if building ships, fighters, turrets, and stations, isn't your forte, there are tons of prebuilt things others have created and posted on the steam workshop ready to be used. You want to fly the Millennium Falcon, or the USS Enterprise, there are versions of them on the steam workshop for you to enjoy.

As for how well the game runs so far I haven't had any crashes, in two 8 hour playing sessions so seems fairly stable for a Mac beta of an early access. I've had one weird display bug in which the text for the settings menu disappeared. I haven't been able to replicate it since, if I do I'll send a bug report, after all thats kind of the point of this Mac beta. Thats been the only issues I've had so far. But there is a lot more of the game to explore so there might be more bugs.

If you want to get a feeling for the game there are a number of playthroughs on youtube that can give you more of an idea than my ramblings can.

Hope this helps.

[RGoulder]

Additional musing about the game.

I’m now at the 40 hour mark and I really, really like this game. No crashes. No horrible game ending bugs. Just spaceship bliss.

There is nothing better than blasting pirates for loot and profit. Or making your way a tiny bit closer to the galaxy core to hunting through asteroid fields for Naonite, the next tear of material that will unlock the ability to build shields. Finding one oddly green, normal asteroid. Is it a trick of the light? Maybe thats it, but I’ll poke it with my mining laser just to see. Nothing, then one green crystal gets picked up. Its not much. Its an impure source. But when you’ve fully broken down the asteroid its enough to build your first shield block. Giving you that little bit of an edge against your enemies.


A Few Tips:

Read Guides. There is a tutorial, it covers some things but not everything. There is some complexity and while somethings are obvious other things in Avorion are not. The Avorion Wiki is your friend as well as the occasional steam forum post. A few examples:

Mining and salvaging, can only pick up the material they are made of and below, plus one tier higher. In other words the starter Iron mining laser you get can grab Iron and Titanium, but not anything higher, like Naonite the tier above Titanium. You will need to buy a better one from an equipment dock or get lucky and have one happen to fall off another ship after a battle.

Also there are 2 versions of those lasers:

Raw: Harvests a raw ore with better efficiency, the downside being you need a good sized cargo bay to collect it and it needs to be refined at a resource depot.

Refining: They are less efficient but give refined resources that are ready to be used and don’t need cargo space for.

One more thing...

Pay your crew there will come a time when your crew expects to be paid. This is not done automatically by default. Your crew morale starts to go down and a flashing symbol appears on the screen. Not a great thing to have happen in the middle of a battle. Go to the Player Menu, or press the ( i ) Key. Fleet tab, the first tab, and at the top of that page is pay crew and a check mark to pay your crew automatically. This will might save you a bit of a panic moment the first time. Apparently the crew want to be paid, who would have though. You should probably check the auto pay.

Alright back to Avorion I go to build me a bigger better ship.

Edited by RGoulder, 01 July 2019 - 08:04 PM.