Chairs n' Viewscreens... And stuff?

[Blodge]

I am 100% in favour of the idea of chairs. At the moment, there is little reason to construct a convincing interior for your ship. Just the simple addition of a block you can sit on which attaches you to a ship and immobilises you (except for being able to look around still) immediately allows functioning crew-quarters, mess-halls, meeting-rooms, observation decks, passenger cabins and troop transportation. Being able to link a chair to the Core or a Weapons Computer also allows functioning command centres/bridges which are essential for proper ship crews and for giving the AI something other than the Core to shoot at.

However, I don't agree that a chair should be *necessary* to enter a ship Core, otherwise we lose the ability to construct ships/turrets as small as we want them. Linking a chair to a Core should give you the option of entering the Core directly, or remotely via the Chair. You also don't need 2 types of Chair. If you place a Chair but don't link it to anything, then clicking on it causes you to simply sit-down in it. Implementing Chairs in this way allows all of the suggested benefits of this thread (apart of preventing Astronauts "disappearing" into Cores) without having to change the existing game mechanics in any way.

I also think it'd be fantastic if a Chair could be linked to a Turret Docking block. Clicking on the chair lets you remotely control the Core of any Turret that is docked at the linked Docking block. This would allow you to have some or all of your Turrets controlled by individual Players/AI crew instead of having to attach (and then spend time tediously activating) a Bobby on each Turret.

 

[Ithirahad]

I am 100% in favour of the idea of chairs. At the moment, there is little reason to construct a convincing interior for your ship. Just the simple addition of a block you can sit on which attaches you to a ship and immobilises you (except for being able to look around still) immediately allows functioning crew-quarters, mess-halls, meeting-rooms, observation decks, passenger cabins and troop transportation. Being able to link a chair to the Core or a Weapons Computer also allows functioning command centres/bridges which are essential for proper ship crews and for giving the AI something other than the Core to shoot at.

However, I don't agree that a chair should be *necessary* to enter a ship Core, otherwise we lose the ability to construct ships/turrets as small as we want them. Linking a chair to a Core should give you the option of entering the Core directly, or remotely via the Chair. You also don't need 2 types of Chair. If you place a Chair but don't link it to anything, then clicking on it causes you to simply sit-down in it. Implementing Chairs in this way allows all of the suggested benefits of this thread (apart of preventing Astronauts "disappearing" into Cores) without having to change the existing game mechanics in any way.

I also think it'd be fantastic if a Chair could be linked to a Turret Docking block. Clicking on the chair lets you remotely control the Core of any Turret that is docked at the linked Docking block. This would allow you to have some or all of your Turrets controlled by individual Players/AI crew instead of having to attach (and then spend time tediously activating) a Bobby on each Turret.

This is what I suspect would be implemented, rather than completely disabling cores as an entry point... I don't really like being able to enter cores, but yeah, I guess a bunch of people still want them, so that's fine, I suppose. And the turret idea sounds pretty good.

 

[Yaodin]

So no one seems to have suggested this yet but why can't we have more than one core? The first core you lay down to start your ship would be fixed, like it is now, as the center of the ship (maybe later this can be moved but still only one root core). However, you can then add additional cores to the ship. Core health would evenly split between the cores you have, to counter having to drill to multiple cores. You would be able to control the ship from any core, somewhat like how build blocks work but for ship control. All of the cores would share a single pilots seat and if the core you entered is destroyed you are ejected to the closest open spot to a core. Special pilot/captain seats could be made that are basically reskins of a core block that also seats your avatar. If the seat is destroyed you are not killed but transferred to an auxiliary core.

This system would also accommodate ship sizes fairly well as there is not much benefit for a fighter to have two cores and the extra core weight and space. Even if a fighter did have two it would also have relatively weak hull plating and have to carry extra armor to protect the other core. Here, seats would allow construction of actual cockpits.

On a side note it would be cool if there were emp weapons (with limited range) that could temporarily disable a core.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

So no one seems to have suggested this yet but why can't we have more than one core? The first core you lay down to start your ship would be fixed, like it is now, as the center of the ship (maybe later this can be moved but still only one root core). However, you can then add additional cores to the ship. Core health would evenly split between the cores you have, to counter having to drill to multiple cores. You would be able to control the ship from any core, somewhat like how build blocks work but for ship control. All of the cores would share a single pilots seat and if the core you entered is destroyed you are ejected to the closest open spot to a core. Special pilot/captain seats could be made that are basically reskins of a core block that also seats your avatar. If the seat is destroyed you are not killed but transferred to an auxiliary core.

This system would also accommodate ship sizes fairly well as there is not much benefit for a fighter to have two cores and the extra core weight and space. Even if a fighter did have two it would also have relatively weak hull plating and have to carry extra armor to protect the other core. Here, seats would allow construction of actual cockpits.

On a side note it would be cool if there were emp weapons (with limited range) that could temporarily disable a core.

Pretty much my control chair suggestion except that the control chairs would die instead of player health depletion.

 

[JoeTheAntiPro]

as cool as the screen things idea was, i can see that being quite heavy on the rendering. maybe have it he screen only turns on when a player looks at it with a direct line of sight, and it would be calculated client side so that for each player there would only be one screen at a time for the game to try and render at once.

 

[Blodge]

Pretty much my control chair suggestion except that the control chairs would die instead of player health depletion.

I like the idea of being able to add an additional Core to your ship and use it as another point to access the main Core. It's probably the simplest way to implement the idea of Command Chairs. You could potentially also use this idea in conjunction with the up-coming "Dry-dock" feature to allow you to change the position of the main Core on your ship without having to completely dismantle and rebuild it.

However, I do not like the idea that if the Core/Chair you are occupying is destroyed then you automatically get placed into the nearest auxiliary Core/Chair. I think this could be horribly abused by simply filling all the empty space inside a large ship with hundreds of additional Cores. This would effectively give the Player (and therefore the ship) a huge number of hit-points and mean an attacker could end-up having to "chase" the Player through hundreds of redundant Cores all the way back to the main one before doing any effective damage.

I think a better solution is to allow only 2 Cores per ship and have the player location fixed to whichever Core you entered, but be able to switch your viewpoint between Cores in the same way you can currently switch between different Cockpits. However, the main Core still remains the central point of the ship and the only one which counts towards the overheating of the ship if struck. If an attacker looks at the ship, they could see the location of both the Player and the main ship Core marked out with diamonds in their HUD (assuming Radar Jamming isn't in play). That way they can choose to target either the main Core in order to overheat the whole ship and destroy it, or the Core the Player is sat in if they prefer to disable the ship by killing the Crew (think of it as doing the real-world equivalent of targeting either the ships Engines or Bridge). If the main Core overheats while you are sat in the secondary Core, *then* would be a nice time to be automatically ejected

Another option would be to use Ithirihad's suggestion of linking an additional Core/Chair to the main Core (or Weapons computer), but only allow one Core to be linked to anything else at a time. That way you can still place multiple Cores, but each one can only control one aspect of the ship at any time.

Although personally I'm still in favour of having a new Chair block created so we can actually be seen commanding our ships in all our seated-glory

 

[Ithirahad]

I like the idea of being able to add an additional Core to your ship and use it as another point to access the main Core. It's probably the simplest way to implement the idea of Command Chairs. You could potentially also use this idea in conjunction with the up-coming "Dry-dock" feature to allow you to change the position of the main Core on your ship without having to completely dismantle and rebuild it.

However, I do not like the idea that if the Core/Chair you are occupying is destroyed then you automatically get placed into the nearest auxiliary Core/Chair. I think this could be horribly abused by simply filling all the empty space inside a large ship with hundreds of additional Cores. This would effectively give the Player (and therefore the ship) a huge number of hit-points and mean an attacker could end-up having to "chase" the Player through hundreds of redundant Cores all the way back to the main one before doing any effective damage.

I think a better solution is to allow only 2 Cores per ship

If a system you suggest for Starmade isn't scalable, the solution to the balance isn't to impose an artificial limit.

In this case, just give Auxiliary Cores either a ton of mass, or a certain amount of constant energy drain per block.

 

[Blodge]

Good point. Artificial limits are not good for creativity or immersion (unless they seem logical). However, my main issue was not so much with the option of having multiple Chairs/Cores linked to the Main Core, more the idea that if the Chair you are sat in is destroyed then you are automatically teleported to the safety of the next chair. It doesn't seem fair that you should be able to carry on the fight as if nothing happened. I think it's more realistic for you to die at your station in the same way you presently do when your Core overheats.

Although there is already a limit to how many Weapons Computers you can have linked to a weapons array, despite how handy I have just realised having backups would be...

 

[Ithirahad]

Good point. Artificial limits are not good for creativity or immersion (unless they seem logical). However, my main issue was not so much with the option of having multiple Chairs/Cores linked to the Main Core, more the idea that if the Chair you are sat in is destroyed then you are automatically teleported to the safety of the next chair. It doesn't seem fair that you should be able to carry on the fight as if nothing happened. I think it's more realistic for you to die at your station in the same way you presently do when your Core overheats.

How about going with the compromise between the two extremes and just kick you out of the chair if it blows up, and making you lose some personal HP? At least, if it's just a passing phaser sweep that kills the chair, you have a chance to get your helmet on and run to Main Engineering to attempt to get to warp and escape...

 

[Blodge]

How about going with the compromise between the two extremes and just kick you out of the chair if it blows up, and making you lose some personal HP? At least, if it's just a passing phaser sweep that kills the chair, you have a chance to get your helmet on and run to Main Engineering to attempt to get to warp and escape...

Yeah, I'd go with that. Sounds much more balanced and realistic. If it's a strafing run then I suppose there's a chance you might only get an injury, or even survive unscathed. However, your chances decrease considerably if the enemy is concentrating a lot of fire on your Bridge

 

[Ithirahad]

Exactly, Blodge. Lucky hit, and you have a chance to get the hell outta there. Full assault targeting your bridge, and you're screwed, as it should be.

 

[Fwyrl]

I like the idea of chairs being another way to access the core, though I don't think that ability should be removed from the core. As for the screens, you can do exactly what cockpits do right now, no problem (maybe overlay another GUI indicating ship health and shields, and leave your HP bar as character HP). And as for cores being pointless, ships are being de-cored anyways - the core IS pretty much pointless after that, except as the starting point, as it should be. It's a core computer, not an "everything that we don't have a block for" block. This would mean that loosing the core would damage the ship, but not destroy it, the same as if you shoot the central computer on a real spaceship. It won't blow up (there's got to be backups), but if you shoot down the captain, then the ship will cease functioning, except for the automatic functions (turrets would still work, but things like acceleration would stop, unless you had a navigator separate from the captain, or maybe an auto-pilot, in which case it would keep going until the other system was taken out.

As for the chair re-core-ing, it doesn't. The captain is only venerable if you have no backup systems, whether AI, or player. And after de-coreing, if you take out the core, then the exact problem exists, the player is kicked out of the ship.

 

[Ithirahad]

I like the idea of chairs being another way to access the core, though I don't think that ability should be removed from the core.

Alright, I officially give up on disabling cores as an entry point. :P

The core IS pretty much pointless after that, except as the starting point, as it should be. It's a core computer, not an "everything that we don't have a block for" block. This would mean that loosing the core would damage the ship, but not destroy it, the same as if you shoot the central computer on a real spaceship. It won't blow up (there's got to be backups), but if you shoot down the captain, then the ship will cease functioning, except for the automatic functions (turrets would still work, but things like acceleration would stop, unless you had a navigator separate from the captain, or maybe an auto-pilot, in which case it would keep going until the other system was taken out.

Yeah, that's the idea.

 

[Fwyrl]

Alright, I officially give up on disabling cores as an entry point. :p

Well, we have to make fighters viable SOMEHOW. XD

 

[Ithirahad]

Well, we have to make fighters viable SOMEHOW. XD

At any given moment, I can probably come up with at least three fighter designs that have space for an enterable cockpit... But I suppose.

 

[Archailect]

This would be pretty cool, especially being able to link chairs to weapon computers so that gunners can fire to the sides or back of the ship. It kind of works now, but breaks a lot.

 

[Visitor]

While I wouldn't want to go too far into all side-ideas, I'd am all for the basic one this thread is built upon. I very much dislike magical boxes as they are right now. I'd rather have actual crew sit in front of consoles as characters (though, obviously, when using cockpits/cameras etc I wouldn't mind if the view would change as it does now).

Not only would it would encourage slightly more sensible designs (actual, you know, cockpits rather than little opening with a cube at the end) but help with further incorporation of things like boarding parties, damaging/killing crew members without exploding the whole ship and so on.

Plus, in general, I'd like some non-improvised-with-clunky-blocks furniture. For aesthetics and designs of normal, 'realistic' ships with living quarters.

 

[NeonSturm]

Plus, in general, I'd like some non-improvised-with-clunky-blocks furniture. For aesthetics and designs of normal, 'realistic' ships with living quarters.

Yes, that is the one of the biggest downsides in SM. The blocks are just too big compared to your character.

I am still searching for a game with reasonable performance, but more Blender-like (the model program!) where you can edit surfaces just like a high-map (flatten, sharpen, raise, lower) just like with a map-editor program.
While I don't mind statistically correct, physically cheating mechanisms where the user does not spend close attention.

Would be very unique, or not?

 

[Ithirahad]

Yes, that is the one of the biggest downsides in SM. The blocks are just too big compared to your character.

I am still searching for a game with reasonable performance, but more Blender-like (the model program!) where you can edit surfaces just like a high-map (flatten, sharpen, raise, lower) just like with a map-editor program.
While I don't mind statistically correct, physically cheating mechanisms where the user does not spend close attention.

Would be very unique, or not?

That kind of system could be abused to hell... Someone could spam Polygon Subdivide, or just load in tons of uber-detailed models until everyone's graphics cards crash. :p

 

[RoyalWolfe]

That kind of system could be abused to hell... Someone could spam Polygon Subdivide, or just load in tons of uber-detailed models until everyone's graphics cards crash. :p

if a malicious person want to spend that much energy it would be better spent just hacking in to script crash a server.