Non-Docked Docking

[Edymnion]

I am personally a big fan of modular design. The idea that you can make certain things prefab and then add them to a ship as needed. StarMade is pretty good about this already with the blueprints and the docking system. I can prefab docked power generators, turrets, etc, and spawn them in and click them on as needed. That really helps speed up builds.

However, one thing I'd like to see is some method of building sections that I can store as blueprints and then merge into builds at a later point in time that don't count as being docked entities.

For example, lets say I'm building a Star Trek themed ship, and I put a whole lot of time and effort into building the most perfect nacelle in the history of Star Made. Great, but there's nothing I can do with it outside of that one ship that doesn't involve deleting the ship and rebuilding around it, and hoping the new ship has the exact same nacelle placement.

What I propose is a new type of rail docker block that you can link to any other type of block in the game. Build your component as something you'd dock (which with the new rail system already allows for flush docking), and then you can manually activate the docker to have it turn into whatever block its linked to, which then merges the docked entity into the main ship as a kind of copy/paste.

So that I could build things like engine blocks, hull features, bridge modules, etc a single time, save them off into blueprints, and then merge them into a new ship like prefab lego blocks as desired.

 

[therimmer96]

Templates?

Copy something and press save, then use it else where.

 

[Edymnion]

Templates?

Copy something and press save, then use it else where.

Sure thung, just as soon as they make us a copy/paste that actually works.

 

[therimmer96]

What I mean is its already in the game... Look in adv. build mode.

 

[zigyzigy]

Sure thung, just as soon as they make us a copy/paste that actually works.

the copy paste system does work but I do think it needs major improvement.

That said I think that simply improving the copy paste system would be more useful and easier to use than your suggestion here but I feel your frustration, modular building is the way to go And starmade is nearly set up to make it work, just not yet.

I think a 'transfer from blueprint to template' function could work where it just saves every block but the ship core into a template that can be pasted...

 

[Edymnion]

What I mean is its already in the game... Look in adv. build mode.

No, something that is supposed to do that is there, but it's so crippled by restrictions as to be worthless in my experience.

You can't specify what you want to copy, you have to take everything in the box. I can never get the box to be in the precise place I want it to be. Server limits stop you from copying anything even half way big enough to be of use (the nacelles I'd want to copy is at least 400 blocks long). And you have little to no control over exactly how it pastes.

It's a nice idea, but the current system is far too crippled to be of any real use.

 

[Cryptex]

So compromise then? If they redesign the current copy/paste system to be more efficient, that's a good start. From there, increasing the size and customization abilities of what you can specifically copy and paste would be great. After that, perhaps a simpler solution would be to add templates their own place in the catalog. Blueprints listed under one location in the catalog next to templates that can also be saved. The difference being that these templates can be saved/loaded while in the build mode of a ship, and placed/pasted using the new copy/paste system. This eliminates the need for new blocks and improves upon current game functions, rather than adding more complex new ones.