Gravity plating would be similar to a player spawn plate, as in it goes on a block, but doesn't show anything. The gravity effect would be 2 blocks high. I think this would be a nice alternative to the gravity gens, which have a spherical area of effect. This would also give the option to put grav plating in sv's
Either that, or we can assume we are always wearing mag boots. Having gravity plating would open up a whole new avenue of ship building. Imagine a ship that allows you to walk on the ceiling because of the gravity plating up there. Space stations could optimise the space inside and could also be a huge cylinder, allowing a player to walk all around it. We can have massive O'Neil cylinders in space. It can easily be done using the texture tool with a gravity plate setting, adds no texture but creates a gravity on the specified face of the block. That spherical gravity effect is a real problem, especially near a space station with another gravity gen running. I also have issues with falling in space when I step off the side of my ship.
While the texturing method seems easy enough, the structure would have to keep track of how many gravity textures were being placed in order to compute the total power consumption. Also, and possibly a bigger problem, using a special texture for this would preclude using a decorative texture in its place (floors would be uniformly textured in that case). I don't think the texture system is really the right way to handle this. This is probably the way to do things, and also avoids storing a bunch of extra information with every block. My one refinement would be that wood and regular concrete wouldn't be eligible for magboot attachment. Personally, I like that gravity fields can overlap. What we could use would be the ability to set the precise extent of the field (in a manner similar to how we can set the extent of the motion sensor field), which would let overlaps be avoided. Ideally, then, the power consumption of each gravity generator would then depend on the extent of the field (which would be great for smaller ships).
If we don't get mag boots I want short range(5 blocks?) inexpensive (in power and parts) gravity generators that only affect things above and to the sides of them. Make them able to be turned on/off via sensors so we ain't powering them for no damn reason.
I'd love magnetic boots. Grav plating would be interesting. I'd probably use that too. I tend to build smaller CVs and often I don't even put a Gravity Generator in them. They're too bulky, draw too much power, and don't really give you anything. When you dock at a station that has gravity, the fields interact in confusing ways.
Exactly the reason for short range grav gens. They will never interact with anything other then what you want it to... unless your ship is tiny. I was thinking of the space station in "shadows" scenario where your literally changing walking orientation to walk UP. You would be able to come up with all kinds of interesting things. You could make a space - washing machine!!!( grav gens cycling quickly in a circular pattern. add in some thrusters for a dryer) WAIT.... we could use this... to make elevators. Use sequential sets of grav gens to move a platform.
Or, again, all we need is the ability to adjust the extent of the current gravity generator field (as SE lets you do with its version).
True.. but the current grav gen is huge. A one block mini gen would be better for many things. Also I don't see why we can't combine the ideas and get a new mini block that also has field strength bars. Although I don't know if we would be able to auto manipulate them(field strength) like we could with turning things on and off with sensors.
I also like the "plates" idea because you might be able to use them to simulate one of those ships/bases that provides artificial gravity via a big spinning section. Centripetal force, right?
It's a 2x2x2 device, which is pretty small compared to pretty much all CVs and BAs. Where would you want to use a gravity generator right now that you couldn't because of its current size? Which you could also do with gravity generators that had an adjustable area of effect (and with a lot fewer devices).
Well, I suppose that is true, depending on how adjustable that area of effect is, and it is a worthy goal to use fewer devices.
Its 2x2x2 by itself, but you don't usually want to stare at it from your living quarters, so add some hull to hide it. I tend to build small CVs and space gets tight. But yeh, honestly, to me, its not a very important device so I just don't tend to add them. I might put one in place if I find one in loot, but then I rarely turn it on. In space, I'd rather just float and planets come with their own gravity. Mag boots would be handy though.
As stated above... any small CV. I play SP and I tend to use a small CV to get around in with an awesome SV docked onto it for planet excursions and asteroid mining. Wasting 2x2x2 blocks on a grav gen is a bit much.
Yers, I would love to see a ship with an actual spinning ring but it would also require a bit more content to create it. A motorised rotor hatchway that allows you to connect the ring spokes to the rest of the ship and drives the ring with a user defined speed.
Is it really a waste if it gives you gravity? One could make a similar argument about the size of CV/BA constructors or thrusters. To me, one of the interesting parts of ship design is how to fit everything that you want to fit into a compact ship that still looks good.
I can agree with that. My time in space engineers was fraught with trying to make a brick ship look better.
That would be kind of ridiculous, however, if you could apply the plating to any surface, then building a sphere would be different.
That That would be a good idea, but what if the field would not extend past the exterior of the ship/station. But that would also reflect back to the Grav plating issue with the structure check issue and power consumption.