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

Yes, that's true, both of those would still be possible. Star Trek Bridge Commander does something analogous, with the ability to target and damage subsystems with a different phaser modulation (rather than just the hull).

So I was thinking about this more, and I think my main objection to a fully merged hull ends up being: no ability to blow holes in it. But! I think I might also have a (multi-part) solution:

Suppose we have a fully merged hull. We also have the ability to detect the general impact location of a hit, and could localize it to various sides of the ship (fore/aft, dorsal/ventral, port/starboard). Why not have multiple smaller HP pools for each zone, which would depend on how many blocks were in each zone before the merge? Then the location of SI field generators would matter more, maneuvering to protect damaged parts of the ship would become tactically relevant, and doomcubes wouldn't get to put all their HP into one huge pool. And as per Hummel's point above, perhaps interior devices close to damaged zones would operate at a lower efficiency to simulate the effect of being knocked around. This approach retains all the performance benefits of the fully merged hull, as well as encouraging sensible practices. Obviously, we'd have to do a bunch of testing to figure out how many zones would be required for each ship, and if larger ships could have more zones.

The next part more directly deals with my previous objection about ship weapons blowing holes in things. Starting again with a fully merged hull, but this time with zones. When a zone has lost enough HP, the mesh could start being deformed (like voxel terrain) to have pits and eventually holes that would expose the interior of the ship for additional block-based damage, or boarding operations. During the unmerging process, perhaps any blocks where procedural damage had been applied could be removed, or an input of the appropriate raw materials provided to regenerate the hull. Additionally, one could consider a drone-based repair system that would go around regenerating damaged hull zones, in exchange for large expenditures of energy (something that could be used during battles when unmerging would not be possible/appropriate)

Finally, the explosive charge and/or the handheld plasma cannon could be set up to make procedural holes in a merged hull, thus retaining the ability to board enemy structures.

If this system were implemented, I think I'd be happy enough without a detailed SI system for ships (leave that to Space Engineers, perhaps).

 

And the ideas keep coming. . . .

First, we really need the concept of variable power levels for subsystems, as right now a device is either on or off. With that in hand, we could have a proper power management console with sliders for each major subsystem (thrusters, weapons, shields, SI, life support, repair drones, etc). The SI and shield systems could require more power as the HP of a zone or shield dropped, while weapons would have a higher RoF and/or damage as more energy was devoted to them (depending on the weapon type). Subsystems could be put into an overloaded state (150% power, say) to operate more effectively, but explode catastrophically if damaged while in that state.

 

I really like OP idea. The 2nd option, only thing i would want to change, is that generators dont increase hull hp, but rather affect shield hp (if/when introduced). I also like the idea that you cant blow holes in ship. Definitely make "zones" in the ship so that you can focus fire one spot (at 75, 50, 25% hp all the non hull blocks in specific zone lose effectiveness respectively). Think about it, if you were to blow a hole in a ship, everything on the inside SHOULD be ripped out into space. I think this would give more realistic approach by just showing different damaged states. To the hull.
Also, have the merging, only apply to the basic building blocks. For example, it merges all steel, hard steel combat steel, but all thrusters, turrets are not. This would allow u to still reduce/disable a ships movement or combat effectiveness. Also while on this note, cannot "bury" thrusters behind steel. That makes no sense to me lol

 

I would go further and say that only Steel, Hardened Steel and Combat Steel blocks should be merged, since presumably no one is going to make their hull out of Truss blocks or interior blocks. Thruster damage definitely needs to be a thing whether or not merged hulls are a thing, and would certainly make doomcubes somewhat more vulnerable.

 

Interesting, any ideas how you would define these segments?

Technical question: is it not already the case that hull blocks are merged into one static mesh object anyway?
Using godmode allows anyone to see that there are no back-faces and no internal faces, those invisible (hidden inside geometry) faces and vertexes aren't added to the mesh, because they aren't needed to render.

 

One option would be to say segments are made up of, say 10 blocks for every exterior surface on x, y, z plane. An example would be a ships side that is 60 blocks in length, would have 6 segents on that surface (side). The top, bottom, opposite side, back and front would be treated the same

 

This is more or less what I had in mind as well, while trying to have approximately the same number of blocks per zone.

Good question; if that's the case, then simply removing per-block damage effects and adding a single HP pool would be all that would be needed to start implementing this idea.

 

The more i read the posts in this thread, the more i am starting to see a real concept worth the dev's attention.
Keep it up guys!

In regards to the quoted segment; you are not entirely correct with this, as standard penetration of the hull (from say a small round) would just create a scenario of depressurization in a localized area resulting anything and anyone that isn't heavy or completely bolted down to be 'sucked' into space from the vacuum. That being said, if something like an artillery shell, flak shell, or railgun slug were to penetrate the hull of a ship, it would not just stop there. it would keep going until it was stopped by something stronger (other side of the ship's hull, etc) and/or would tear through anything less dense than it until its velocity was dulled, like constructors, generators or cargo boxes. Railgun slugs would be my go to for an example, because they are simply composite rods being fired at ridiculously high velocity via electrically charged magnets, resulting in an excessively high penetration capability.
In theory certain metal composites being fired at high velocity 'could' slip right through kinetic or cyclonic style barriers if fired at the right speed, and with the right amount of vibration during the priming process (think tuning forks)

Having specialized SVs using this method could potentially break the current PVP 'meta' (meta in an alpha game, shoot me please for the fact it exists..) and bring carriers back into the fold.

excuse the rushed typing, had a cat fighting for my attention while typing this (kept pushing my hands off the keyboard with his head >.>)

 

That would definitely be a nice addition!
Having pre defined segements, like straight sheets (maybe 20x20), courved sheets and various sized hollow geometrical shapes would be nice.
But while i think it would help building things, it would only be a simplification to a "standard" SI system (the one we have for bases). Merged hulls on the other hand would make such a system pretty much unnecessary for CVs.

A "standard" SI system would make things hair-raising complicated in space, since forces could come from vitrually every direction (unlike on planets where you only have gravity).
Just imagine the various forces that take effect when entering an atmosphere, landing on a planet (and whithstanding its gravity), taking off again and all the forces that affect the ships structure while in combat (weapon hits, hard maneuvering, accelleration, decceleration), for each single ship involved!
Wouldn't it be better to simplyfy (you don't know how reluctant i am to write this) ships internal physics by turning them into one unit (in "active" gaming. You still could disassemble it exactly like it is possible now.), and freeing lots of computing power for other things that could make the game even more awesome?

 

This my good sir, these are some incredible good ideas!
It would be even better if we could in turn aim each of those system seperately. Maybe different kinds of sensors (depending on how advanced they are) could "unlock" system targeting. For example having level 2 sensors could enable the option to target the ships engines. Level 3 unlocks life suppport additionally. But it could also be dependend on the type of sensor, instead of it's level (player had to decide which type to install.) In any case system targeting shouldn't be possible at low level IMO.
It shouldn't go too far either, targeting a system should only have a small chance of actually destroying the targeted device (in order to prevent "one shot kills").
For a start, damaging the ships hull to a certain percentage should be enough to disable it altogether (but take more time, of course).

I'm not so sure about having SI generators giving boosts to certain areas of the ship. I think this could be similar stressful like a "standard" SI system (you know, the one bases have).
BUT i think Energy shields could give a ship the desired amount of additional protection.
But i think both systems should have huge energy requirements or other downsides to make a builder decide which philospohy to prefer (which doesn't mean they should exclude each other imo).
Maybe SI generators would decrease the ships maneuverability by increasing the ships mass, while Shields on the other hand would cost big amounts of energy (but don't have to be activated all the time).

Cheers!

 

Alternatively (or additionally), use the power level of the sensor subsystem to determine what it can see at what range. The opposing system would be some kind of ECM/sensor jammer that would effectively increase the range at which other ships see it for targeting purposes.

Offhand, I don't think there would be a huge number of additional calculations required for this kind of functionality. There are a couple of ways to implement it. The basic, less configurable way would be to have each SI generator only provide extra HP to zones within its sphere of influence, rather than the whole ship; the only intensive calculations required would be to determine what zones are within each SI generator's sphere (for simplicity, one could just check their centers). One could then add on top of that some kind of high level control that targeted the SI effect at (say) quadrants of the ship, in effect moving SI generator bubbles to new centers (at the cost of additional power consumption, of course). The same (small) number of calculations would be done, just at different origins.

Indeed. The idea of SI generators effectively increasing ship mass is interesting, and, along with a smaller power requirement than shields, would serve to differentiate them as an alternative protection system. Then players would have distinct approaches to protection: blocks (high mass, high volume, no energy), SI generators (medium mass, low volume, medium energy), and energy shields (low mass, low volume, high energy).

 

Or treat the entire hull as voxel terrain, with all its deformable properties. To begin with, though, I'd be ok with zone/sector-based damage states, so long as holes to the interior could be made with sustained bombardment.

 

I see many players enjoy a constant tinkering with their ship's layout and design over time, and I have done a little of that myself. I guess if they retain the ability to slap blocks down and pick them up it's good - I'm always up for things that help the game engine run better.

 

Well, perhaps voxel terrain wouldn't be appropriate for performance reasons. But then maybe damage states that included player/projectile traverseable holes?

 

So you mean, to use a Base SI mechanic and let ppl. merge areas into big single chunks of blocks?
Wouldn't this just shift the same problem (a BA -like SI mechnic, no one wants and uses big amounts of CPU power) to another level?
Certain ppl. could abuse this, by adding more and more layers of big plates over another, creating (again) big deathcubes, that rule everyting. On the other mand a merged hull (which base Hitpoints are only calculated by the most outer layer) would eliminate at least this kind of abuse completely IMO.
On th other hand, i can fully understand that some ppl. may have trouble with the idea of ship hulls that are basically one sinlge block.
But as long as you can change it anytime you want, i don't see any real problem with it.

In my opinion there are so many advantages compared to a destructable (i mean block by block vaporizing) ships hull.
Instead of focussing on disassembling an enemy ship, combat would be more tactical, like trying to disable engines, weapons (or any other system) or simply try brute force to wear down the ship hull? (similar like you do now). But instead of actually vaporizing single building blocks (and having to tediously repair them later, btw) there could be all kinds of damage effects beginning with "simple" burn marks to different kinds or plasma fires that flare on weapons impact (and maybe continue to burn).
There could even be some kind of repair mechanics that wouldn't stop the flow of the game (sry, bad english ).
You coud even introduce some kind of repair droids (think of Farscapes DRDs) that could repair the ships hull, instead of having the player having to rebuild the ship block by block. Far later (in a couple of years) there could even be some NPC crew that help in certain tasks, or at least enhance a ships capabilities.

To me the game would be elevated to a whole new level in regards of how ships work.

 

I like this idea! Energy weapons would be weaker if you're using all your power for thrusters, like when you're flying about in high G. Or else your shields need to get a bit weaker to fully bring your weapons to bear.

(then maybe energy weapons also wouldn't need metal pieces and electronics to make their ammo...since I think that was just added for balance purposes?)

Bases wouldn't have this issue, since they don't have thrusters.

 

one could draw power from the ship's grid for energy based weapons, sure, but the ammo currently used allows the player to have a secondary 'power supply' for those weapons, which in theory need to have some sort of relay point when 'loaded' into a weapon, so metal pieces fashioned into clamps, and electronics for energy flow and control from the power cells. Direct power draw from the ship itself in the current state of the game would completely over tax the power and fuel systems, granted its not a bad idea. As it stands even having a gravity gen and active drill turrets (yes you can turn them off, but its still 1MW per when active) create a massive (albeit excessive and unbalanced imho) power drain and can empty several T3 tanks in under an hour if you try to move with them active, even in space.
This would also work for bases, granted the power draw would still be an issue, and would have to be heavily compensated for.