And exactly how would the game be doing that? Blocks are 3D objects, to merge them the game would need to generate a new 3D object of a ship.
The game would indeed have to generate a new mesh object, which might take non-trivial time for a large ship. The hope would be that this one-time (or few-time) time cost would result in many fewer computations needed during combat (and that operations like putting holes in the mesh in response to penetrating attacks wouldn't eat up the presumed computational savings).
I think it would be better that Both ideas are great. Being that I dove into coding for a little bit, I now have a huge respect for coders. To code the game so that it would work properly for pvp must be intense. Also there is the question of where is the bottle neck in lag during a pvp fight? Is it the hardware? or the transmission line(dsl,etc) ? If its the hardware, well in a few years higher end computing will be affordable and then maybe the game will iron out. If its in the transmission then well yeah then it needs to revamped via coding. Personally I would love to see it go like this. You would build your ships in creative, once it is done to bring it into pvp , blocks get merged similar to your suggestion but maybe they can code in that if a ship is say 5 layers thick in one area, then that area has more hit points. Maybe a few devices such as guns,engines,cargo, constructors,etc. retain their normal state.
This is a quite old post but has great content! @Neal "Merging" or code-wise "baking" structures is a good method to improve the performance of 3D objects. Be it for calculations, rendering or other simulations. By changing just the hull to one object, or clustered areas, but leave the rest untouched would already boost the performance dramatically because as you said, calculating the damage block by block is what ruins the performance at the moment the most. I had the same idea to implement such a system where in the end just a hitpoint bar appears above the ship, similar to Fractured Space. The blocks would just sum up the total amount of hitpoints but would be calculated as a whole mesh. Additionally ships would have static or dynamic "vital" points, you should aim for during a battle to do bonus damage (like the head on animals). That would replace the satisfaction feeling of seeing blocks vanishing one by one at the moment. If such a "baked ship" is destroyed, it could be similar to the current destroyed Drone version and 50% of the loot the ship had, could be looted. At the moment, if you destroy all blocks + container, you lost also probably your loot. Overall I see more advantages than disadvantages by going this road. "Creativity is lost" or "just fly in cubes" can be tackled by implementing some known mechanics such as flight dynamics for wings, weight control of cargo + structure and thruster exposure for example. Let's see what the future will bring regarding this
I don't like that idea. This would make the game less realistic, and would make the strategy in building ships pointless. If i build a ship designed to attack with the front and put the generator other vital parts of the ship on the back, this will make the vital aprts get hit too, even if the enemy is only hitting the front. I prefer the way it is now, it makes the combat need more strategy, per example, the player need watch for blind spots in his base or ship. But this idea would ruin it, make combat more like "Shoot, shoot and shoot more!' and less like "Look for weak spots and concentrate the shots in this spots". About the second idea of somehing like a energy shield around the ship. I like it. it would make less necessary to put layers and more layers of steel blocks around the ship to protect it. But i think the ships with heavy hull should have an advantege in relation with the energy shield ships. Because the heavy ships would cost more sathium and iron to make. So the energy shield should consume a lot of fuel while active, and should have a limit of damage that it can absorb. This would make the game more balance, because the heavy ship would cost more, but will not need shield because it has many layrs of steel already. You could also put a that the bigger the ship, the bigger is the fuel consume, bacause the shield will neeed be bigger to protect it.
@RexXxuS I like the idea as you explain it. I work in 3D so I know first hand the advantages of baking. As long as some hits are more valuable than others I'd be fine with such a system. I think that such a system would also make the Repair Bay much quicker and simpler.
As of right now, a little vote statistics: A total of of 104 votes(10+29+38+27) Vote 1: Ups: 48 (10+38) Downs: 56 (29+27) Result: -8 (48-56) Vote 2: Ups: 67 (29+38) Downs: 37 (10+27) Result: 30 (67-37) Vote 2 is the winner (of the Moment): (generators strenghtening ships hitpoints) And Topic wise…. Lets just bake the hull then… --> Where does the hull start, where does it end, where is the interior, where is the cabin? If for baking, i'd recomend a new block, which, when the CV is build and 'done'.. But then again, how to bake the hull? By submitting it to WS? Mind you, People will not be able to change a thing at the hull, YOU cannot change a Thing at the hull, any Color change would be applied to the whole ship -> as it'll be 1 block, right?! You could not replace thrusters behind bars, you could not replace engines that are 'locked in', you could not Change fuel/o2 tanks that are behind/within the baked hull/walls. (Sometimes, ppl build like that, sometimes, i'm one of them) And that is IF we'd use EXTRA blocks, just to be prepared for baking. True, with a proper distinction and a well thought through design, this Maybe could be working for a (very) few People. Thats why i voted 2, not 1.
@Sephrajin Baking will be a net positive if it requires no tech - just hotkeys. It will fail if it takes an excessive amount of time or if it stuns machines that can otherwise run EGS at lowered settings.
Left my thought incomplete. Un-baking for modifications and re-baking afterward would have to be quick and accomplished with hotkeys to be a positive. I doubt that we'll see those things in EGS because it would touch so many parts of the game and be easy to exploit.
I'm not convinced. You might get some improvements in performance, but you lost all the little details and uniqueness that comes with more detaield ship modeling. Now you don't loose atmosphere or O2 when the hull is breached, because the hull doesn't get breached. ETc..
You could still have breaches, but that would require mesh deformation at the impact site. I don't know how hard/computationally expensive that is compared to the voxel approach. Anyway, I'm also not convinced that the benefits of having the entire hull be one object are worth the drawbacks. Merging smaller sections of hull possibly might be worth it, though.
Creating a physical breach in a one-piece hull programmatically does seem like it would have a high overhead. That said, baking can save an immense number of polys while retaining good fidelity to detail. Baking smaller segments, say 4 blocks each, would still save polys and damage calculation on a large CV or BA and enable physical breaches.
Would optimizing the meshes help in conjunction with baking? I ask because optimization is something that gets discussed frequently among SL content creators. So many creators don't know they need optimize in the first place. A few didn't even know what optimization is.
I think Hummel of War is on the right path with his suggestions of a build mode, maybe just to add on to that and I think someone else also mentioned a shipyard where you bring it in for repairs and where you can go into build mode and maybe do modifications there I think Hummel of War is on the right path with his suggestions of a build mode, maybe just to add on to that and I think someone else also mentioned a shipyard where you bring it in for repairs and where you can go into build mode and maybe do modifications there.
We don't need to teach them back in the day(1.8 to 3.0) you could easily see ships out 15km or more and I miss that a lot. The way it is now is ridiculous, I can see a tree 5 km out but not some massive enemy base until I am 1100 meters away...jeez
Well it used to be you could see that far out, I remember we would have squadrons 6-8 players scouring galaxies searching for that lil skewed dot on the screen......it was fun, why they took it way completely I don't know. I think alot of stuff they took away they should have left as server options
The only reason why I disagree is because I like the repair and upgrade aspect of the game. If we merge all the blocks then how would you repair the ships by hand if you needed too? It's a cool idea but I love repairing a ship and replacing parts after a battle. To be honest after watching Keen make Space Engineers Stable for Multiplayer ship battles up to 16 ships can battle in space now . I'm not willing to let Elon of the hook that easy. If Keen can do it with that crappy Engine with blocks and moving parts then I know Elon can do it with unity. Again that is a really cool idea though.
