[Poll] Radical idea: Merging Building blocks and SI for ships (but not like you think)

First: this is purely hypothetical and very radical in this state of the game.

Two suggestions:

The first one is purely about making the game much more fluid and less stressful for computers.

When finished building, the game could "merge" all building blocks into one single object. This would result in all building Blocks becoming one solid object with a number of hitpoints depending of its overall mass, instead of adding 99999 indiviual building blocks, like we have now and which had virtually no practical meaning.
Note: only building blocks, no doors or anything else.

The advantage would be that in combat, or basically in any given situation the game wouldn't have to process every single block, instead there would be just the one unit with all the things put on it.
(which the game could now handle much more btw.)
In Combat, when loosing a certain amount of hull hitpoints attacks will much easier penetrate the outer hull and damage interiors. (maybe going by percentage, starting at 25% integrity and becoming more and more devastating the lower the hull gets.)

The drawback would be (of course) that in combat the ship wouldn't visually fall apart (Less eye candy ) and there wouldn't be any holes in the hull anymore. But there could be damage decals and plasma fires instead, which could look just as awesome or even better imo.

The pros:
Much easier to process, resulting in much less lag
Repairing much easier. (You wouldn't have to replace lost blocks.)

The cons:
Changes could only be done with the unmerged version of the ship.
No destroying of individual blocks anymore. (could be a major thing for most ppl. idk)​

My second suggestion is more like a supplement to the first one.

When watching Star Trek (who would have thought that ), i had the idea of using their concept of structural intregrity in Empyrion. If we had the above suggested mechanic in game, then there could be (a limited number) generators that strengthen the ships structure with internal forcefields (that don't need to be shown), resulting in a increase of the hulls Hitpoints. The interesting thing is, it could be done in a way that it needs big amounts of power to operate. So there could be a relation between durability of a ship and its Power generation.


The idea behind all this is to eliminate the need to build ships with 10 armor layers that slow down any computer and make the game more technical instead.


Thoughts?

PS: Sorry for any typos and my bad english in general.

 

I'm wondering when the merging of blocks in to a single one , and the hull gets penatrated, that wouldn't leave you strip naked as the "1 block" dissappeares. The second suggestion sounds more like a good implementation when ship shield would become a reality.
Not casting any votes as i'm too unfamiliar with the concepts, so all i can offer is my thoughts as they are now.

 

Well, if the hull reaches 0%, i guess the ship explodes or it could be completely disabled (imagine all wires and pipes are destroyed, so the individual devices aren't connected anymore.)

 

This is an interesting idea for sure! There would have to be a mechanic for creating a breach though, maybe at certain hp% thresholds a new breach appears, at the last location hit by a weapon.

A hull with 10,000,000hp that doesn't breach even when down to 5hp,.then instantly is destroyed at 0hp would not be cool.

(I did not vote. I do think it's a nice idea, but not sure if what I mentioned above would be possible or whether it would be worth the complete rework it would require!)

 

I fully agree. There should be some visual damages of course.
(i think this could be done with textures where weapons fire hit the hull, maybe?)

To me it would bring so many advantages for the game itself, like much easier computing, which would in turn free up more resources for other cool things. Also repairing and othere game mechanics would be much easier to implement (like modifications like a crew or other things)
The only drawback i see would be that ships wouldn't be falling apart when hit by weapons fire, but since this doesn't have any other effect than looking somewhat nice. On the other hand, merged ship hulls could feature dramatic damage effects, like plasma fires or smoke effects.

 

As much as this sounds like a cool idea, it doesn't seem like something worth a complete and total rework of game mechanics.
- How would cargo boxes, constructors and tanks (fuel and o2) react to the damage
- How would the game process each individual hit? would there be a 'if X point is hit Y amount of times, Z happens'?
- How would the game's current targeting with homing weapons and turrets function when all blocks, including devices are merged into one entity?
- How would people re-fit or re-design a ship in SP or MP without having to log out and go into Creative SP? (this would be a total chore for me)
- How will the game calculate what part of the ship is what, when there are infinite ways to build a ship or base in a voxel-based game. (this would create some extreme exploits)
- If just hammering at the nose of a ship or the landing pad of the base could destroy the fuel tanks on the total opposite end of it, that would be rather silly, and easily abused. (while it was stated otherwise in a previous post, this can still be a potential issue)
- How would the blueprint system and constructor system work when all parts are pre-merged?
- What would we get back for 'salvaging' the base or ship? Would we have to sit there for 6 hours while the Multi tool chews through 10m HP? When it finally hits zero where would all the 'pieces' end up? Our inventory could not handle a monster ships blocks or ingot count, and getting nothing back, or all the parts we cannot hold going flying all over the place would just be asinine.
- Would this still be the same game we all paid for, or would a change like this evolve it into what some, a few, or most of us did not even want to begin with? (quite a few of us just like the survival and building aspects, space combat is just a big bonus)

while it sounds like a great idea on the forums, when you put the major details to paper, its a headache.
Sure, removing items and other variables from shot calculations would free up the client and server's processes significantly, it still could lead to more issues down the road with design restrictions.

I honestly cannot vote on this because, much like the core targeting by turrets debate, it really isn't as simple as it sounds.

 

Of course it's just a half baked idea of mine, lol. But it think it could be worth discussing.

To me it would make most sense if certain weapons types had a slight chance to damage or (better) disrupt their work for a short amount of time, until they get online again. But in general, weapons would primarily damage the ships hull.

Just substract an certain amount of hitpoints from the hull, until it reaches 50, 40, 30, percent (and so on) which would in turn increase the chance of a system, like a weapon or life support go offline for a certain amount of time.

You still could target devices (like weapons) that are attached on the outside of the hull, like turrets or engines for example.
But devices that are inside the ship would be protected by the hull (as it should be IMHO).

I guess you had to publish two versions of it, one merged and one unmerged. Perhaps there could be some device (similar like the repair bay block) that lets you de-merge a ship. I think it would be best if the game would save the ship as a conventional blueprint, but in order to actually use it, it need to be merged.
I see no reason why you should do this only in Creative mode, but if you get attacked while your ship is being reassembled... it would be unfortunate.

How do other games handle things like this?
Star Trek online is the one that comes to my mind right now. Well, there isn't a difference between getting hit in the front or back. The ship looses hitpoints, period.
(i know this sounds pretty simple, but hey why make things unnecessary complicated? )

As i said, there could be a slight chance for a device getting offline, imagine there would be a short time overload. But to answer your question, no it wouldn't be possible, because those devices are protected by the hull.

You could de-merge it with a dedicated block.
This (of course) presumes that a blueprint (one as we have now) is supplied with the download of a workshop ship.
You basically have blueprints as they are now, but in order to actually use the ship outside a repair bay (or a dedicated "structure like a spacedock) it would need to be merged. The same structure or could be used to de merge it again, in order to make changes.
Pleas enote this only affects building blocks, not the devices put on the outside or inside.

I guesss that would be a huge pile of ignots or raw material. Depening if you only disabled the ship (and then successfully board it and destroy the core) or if you blew it up. If it is the latter, then there would be somewhat less materials to recover.

Please don't missunderstand this thread as a full fledged out concept. I was merely hoping for an exchange of ideas of how this basic idea could be done, or better said how to make the game feel a bit less like playing with wooden building bricks and more like a awesome sci fi spaceship simulation (sorry i couldn't find a better word for it.)

Cheers!

 

I am well aware of what you intended with this post and poll, and my intention with that post was to simply flesh out your idea, and solidify the point i was getting at; it's really not that simple. Players (especially certain ones that abuse MP PVP) would exploit this to such a degree that the game would, for lack of better terms, destroy itself.
Giant doom-cubes would overrun PVP servers because ship HP would take precedence over everything else, and even with concentrated fire it would be null, because all they would have to do is scatter-brain all the components throughout the ship so it would stay online even during a localized power failure.
By the design idea a core would be a redundant component, as when the ship hits 0 HP it just explodes.

Restricting ship augmentation would be a game breaker as well, and forcing people to publish, or blueprint, two different copies of a ship and keep them up to date, that would just drive some of the more known builders completely bonkers.

I do, however, agree that ship damage could have triggers for localized trauma to onboard systems, as that is a great element found in just about all of the Sci-fi universe.

On an aside, you neglected one of the heaviest questions in my post; "- Would this still be the same game we all paid for, or would a change like this evolve it into what some, a few, or most of us did not even want to begin with? (quite a few of us just like the survival and building aspects, space combat is just a big bonus)"- this isn't a question either one of us can answer alone, but it is a major one never the less.

It is worth noting that I am an excessively analytical person, and this is not a personal vendetta, I want the same thing everyone else wants with this game, to be completely and totally awesome at release. That being said, i also want to help paint a clear picture with what people are suggesting, so i apologize if i sound aggressive, as it is not my intention at this point.

 

No offense but i encounter this argument everywhere lately. PvP players could exploit it...
If you have such ppl on your server then kick them...

No, seriously i think a good game mechanic should balance itself. Maybe we could elaborate a way that 1000 layers of armor wouldn't affect a ships hitpoints at all?
What about only have the most outer layer be the one that afffects the ships hull hitpoints?
(TBH i have no idea how laborious this would be for a computer to do.)
I agree, that inner walls like corridors shouldn't be added to the ships defensive hitpoints, that would be nonsense, lol.

It wouldn't be restricted in any way.
You just had to put a ship/Base into somekind of building mode (no matter if it's Creative or survival game mode) in order to take it apart. But to Start the engines, or better said activate the Base/ship it needs to be merged.
Maybe this could be combined with some sort of docking system, where you could seperate a part of the ship for rebuilding, while the rest stays merged. (but i think that would be a more advanced issue, right now we're still discussing the basics )

Regarding to blueprints, i don't see a difference to what we have now.
Think of it like this, you subscribe a blueprint in Workshop, spawn it in game (exactly like you do now). But before you can actually use it, hit the "merge" button before you can activate it.
The game then merges all building blocks into one structure, which hopefull wouldn't thae that long. But on the other hand it could be turned into a in-universe thing like having to wati until all wires and pipesa re ready or something like that. (just some excuse to wait until the game has finished calculating stuff)
Note, the original blueprint would be the same.

In turn if you want to tinker around, hit the same button again (which should then be named "de-merge" ) and you are free to change the blueprint to your liking.

Oh, i'm sorry i must have overlooked it.
I think it would be the same game we bought, just better.
The game would actually profit from it imo. It could handle battles and other stressful situations much MUCH more fluid and game performance overall would be way better.
We could build ships way beyond of what we can build now, because once merged, it wouldn't be a pile of individual blocks (for the game engine) anymore.

Of course i could be totally wrong. I'm not an expert. Maybe someone with more experience regarding the games engine would like to correct me (which i would appreciate).
Maybe it's total nonsense, but to me (as naive as i am regarding to programming) it makes some sense.

I fully understand and i welcome it!
Having a theory (or in this case an idea) being tested, get your most strict critic and have it taken apart. (something i have heard lately )
Seriously, please continue to do so.
The more i think about it, the more i like the idea myself.

 

Interesting idea. I dont like the fact that you cant destroy a ship block by block - but then again it would make repairing more easy. And I guess you would need an automatic salvage yard to get rid of your ships - multi tooling wouldnt really work with a giant blob of blocks.

Ship HP would then need to have direct energy & movement draining effect - that would multiply and would got much much more severe the bigger the vessels gets. You could alleviate this by adding thrusters, generators and RCS but only to a certain degree. So that you could have huge death cubes, but they would be resource draining lumbering behemoths as they should be.

As long as I can take out specific components (engines etc.), as long as not everything can be hidden inside hull (again, engines) and as long as I can I can still modify my ships easily enough - I can see this as a good thing. Especially if it would help the game run smoother.

 

​

I understand the performance problem you're trying to solve with merged meshes, but I'm not sure that merging the entirety of the structural blocks in a ship would be the best approach. Maybe better would be the ability to merge contiguous groups of structural blocks into one larger superblock (with perhaps a slight boost to HP as an incentive), so that layers of armor become more like large plates of armor. Perhaps cap the number of blocks in a single superblock at 100, or something, and require either a special tool to repair (T3 multitool, perhaps) or the superblock to be removed and replaced. This would still give a substantial performance boost, and also retain the block-based construction that makes Empyrion so appealing.

As a side note, the ability to merge blocks into one entity would make a lot of customization possible for other parts of the game (custom-built weapons and suit modifications, for example).

You've basically described the simplest kind of shield generator, that would add extra HP to a ship. I'd personally rather see the HP added as a separate shield HP pool, though. SI field generators would still be separately useful if/when SI for ships is implemented. In any case, both kinds of generators should require huge amounts of energy when operating (10s of GW at least).

 

Yeah, that's true.
A more refined idea was to have ONLY count the most outer layer of the merged hull count to the ships hitpoints. This would make huge deathballs with 30 layers of combat steel completely pointless.
Maybe size class could have some minor influence in the ships Hull hitpoints?
(just playing with ideas here)

The Structural Intrgrity/Hitpoints generator was thought as a last option for builder to strengthen the hull of a ship. (not necessary, but nice to have )
Adding more should definitely have diminishing returns. (lets say not more than +20% of the base Hull hitpoints added at max.)

Structural integrity for ships (SI like ground bases)....
i'm not a fan of it and TBH i think it is actually a terrible idea that would actually harm the game (and ppls. creativity) than add any positive effect. (I would definitely be totally Peed off, if all my ships would suddenly be totally worthless).

BUT merging ships hulls on the other hand, would even encourage creativity and allow more interesting and diverse ship builds, even if a ship is made purely for combat.

 

I'm still of the opinion that the issue of deathcubes should be solved with physics rather than mechanics that remove the modularity that characterizes building in Empyrion. I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a deathcube if it actually moved like one and consumed energy like one. In general, I have absolutely no problem with people building large highly-armored ships, so long as they're willing to accept the physics consequences of those designs. And I think one of the issues standing in the way of making these kinds of changes is the fact that the fueling system was not designed with massive builds in mind. Anyway, the point is that I disagree that merging hulls is a good way to prevent or mitigate deathcubes.

Why have a hard limit for SI/shields? I'd rather tie it non-linearly to energy consumption; say the shield HP from X energy input is proportional to log(X).

Superblocks could help mitigate the effect of SI on ship designs. Say your ship has a thin "neck" connecting two parts of it. If you fuse structural blocks into superblocks that span that "neck", then it becomes effectively unbreakable (until the superblocks are completely destroyed, of course). As a bonus, it's analogous to what you'd do if you were engineering this in the real world (and, I hope, intuitive for many players).

Merging entire hulls removes too many of the incentives for making the hull of the ship functional.

 

The limit was only about the Hitpoint addition to the ships hull, not the shields (which should be completely seperated from it).
The reasoning behind a diminishing mechanic is that you can't add just 9999 SI generators on a ship and making it practically invincible.
Someone who is more versed in maths could maybe come up with a formula that makes sense (i'm not that kind of person, lol)
You see, i'm against min/maxing mechanics in games. Playing games that encourage metagaming tend to make players think more about "hidden" game mechanics than the game world itself.

Thats a good idea too!
But it would only be half the way to completely merging a ships hull. Why stop there?

Again, i must ask why?
You could un-merge the ships hull and completely rebuild it (just like you can do now) if you want to. There's no need to fuse big chunks of block into one structure, if you could do that with the whole outer hull of a ship (and un-merge it if you want to change it).

I think we are talking past each other.
With "Structural Integrity" i'm not talking about the same thing we have at bases in game. (maybe i should have choosen a different word for it, but to me it made most sense.)
What i'm talking about is pure hull Hitpoints, not that weird form of stability that base builders are punished with in EGS.

 

I wanted to respond to this more than anything else in this thread, I could start with the counter argument; "Why make things unnecessarily simple?"

Given the nature of the game (Block building + Survival) is it not a fundamental failure in the proof of concept to achieve per block damage and destruction? I would call it so.

I get where you're coming from, the performance boost from disabling per block damage might be quite measurable so I can see per block damage as a configurable option being useful in extreme circumstances(Multiple ship PvP), but this idea of "merging" all the blocks in a structure into a form of homogenous armour is the antithesis of building with blocks.

Bits falling off your ship really should have an effect, what if you lose an engine nacelle?
Star Trek ships are tactically weak from an engineering and structural perspective; they rely entirely on shielding and technological sorcery to be effective combat ships. If EGS had those systems there is no rationale not to emulate Star Trek design philosophy, but since we already have per block damage I think it's a fair assumption to make that SI for ships is coming.

 

And I certainly agree that there should be diminishing returns for heavy use of a subsystem like SI field generators, motivated by physics where possible. Metagaming is always going to exist in one form or another, and I'd rather it be physically based than arbitrary rules, because we know that we'll get consistent results from physics limitations (assuming the physics engine is coded correctly, of course).

I'm looking for a balance between better performance (though merged collections of blocks, that sort of act like simple devices now that I think of it) and the extremely modular destruction possibilities that Empyrion currently affords. If ship hulls are a single mesh, there's no possibility of punching holes in them to target interior systems or to serve as entry points for boarding action (why go in someone's heavily booby-trapped front door when you can blow a hole in their bedroom wall instead? ). And while fully merged hulls would obviate the need for multiple layers of armor, it would also mean that you couldn't add extra armor in places where it might be warranted (around generators, fuel tanks, ammo containers, etc).

From a metagaming standpoint, supposing an algorithm could be found to effectively extract only the outermost layer of armor blocks from a design to serve as the HP pool, all future PvP ship designs would feature extreme crenelations and folds to pack the most number of blocks into the outer layer (the limit of this would be a fractal surface, of course). And while players with such designs could of course be simply banned, the same is presumably true of current doomcube pilots. Even assuming everything works out and there aren't any exploits in the system, the result would be that ships with the same number of blocks in their hull would have exactly the same HP, regardless of their hull design, which is one of the things that bothered me the most about No Man's Sky. HP is supposed to be an abstract representation of the durability of an object, but I think this would be too abstract.

Yes, you're right, I think I was taking a more literal interpretation of SI. Your HP boosting method would certainly be less computationally intensive and easier to code than implementing a physics-based SI, which would be a definite plus. Combine that with a similar setup for a simple shield system, and that could spark changes in ship design philosophy, particularly if the SI generators had relatively small mass, but required a large amount of power; then players could decide if they wanted to take a bulky block-intensive or compact energy-intensive approach to increasing their ships' HP.

Yes, this is more or less exactly what I had in mind for why SI would be useful, and the role that limited merges of blocks could have in design. Engine nacelle pylons are the sort of thing where having a smaller number of large HP pools would make quite a bit of sense to increase their durability if/when per-block SI is implemented.

 

Because having more computing power left for other things is a plus to me. That's why i think having a merged ship hull in normal game action is a good thing. As i reviously said, you coudl always demerge it and change the ship whenever you want.
The aspect of building things wouldn't be touched, only the way the game handles them in action. Sure there wouldn't be any blocks vanishing when they are destroyed, but to me this would be a small price if we could have other things like a huge galaxy, more planets, more ships involved in actions (including combat), instead.
You could see it like this. In real space one single hull breach (caused by weapons fire) could lead to the destruction of a ship.

On the other side it is not like we had any terriffic effect of away floating blocks and big chunks of ship section exploding because someone hit a structural weak point.
You may like the idea of a 1:1 implementation of Base Structural integrity system we have for CVs, but i know a LOT of ppl. alone here on the forum who don't.
Merging a ships hull into one unit could be an alternative for it IMHO.

I'd call that a matter of taste.
To me building ships with blocks is fun, but getting them ripped apart and even worse repair them agian is certainly not.

Again, i don't think so. At least as long as you can de merge it and change it as you like, i don't see a reason the very premise of the game be in danger.
I would fully agree with you if merging would be irreversible.

In Star Trek, if a ship looses a big part like a whole nacelle, it is almost 100% sure to be completely destroyed.
That's actually my point.
If a ship has already got so much damage (sry, bad english today), it's as good as dead in the water or completely lost. This is why a Hitpoint system that cover all hull at once makes sense (at least in space).
Pressure differences (between vacuum of space and the interiors), highly explosive materials that propel a ship, ammunitions and many other things would make a ship blow up if if had so heavy damaged. (sry, bad english again)

 

+1

If SI (in sense like Bases have them now) would be implemented to CV, it would make combat between big ships* almost impossible, especially if there are more than just two involved. It would, be even worse than it is now, because not only each building block has to be computed, but also their effect to each next to it and the overall structural coherence of the according ship.

*i don't mean huge ones like some star destroyers or 1:1 replicas of Star Trek ships, "moderate" sized CVs (< 125 blocks length, for ex.) would be enough to make it almost unplayable with more than a handful of them at once.