When making ships, do you completely fill it's insides?

[papachabre]

No, it is quite the opposite in fact. Because the surface area of your ship that contains the volume used by systems has a mass cost, having unused empty space inside your ship 'increases' the mass of your ship relative to the systems blocks it is using.

Right but lets say I design a ship, and I'm happy with its cosmetics and performance, and it has empty space (this describes a ship I just finished actually). It's got empty space that exists because of cosmetic design decisions I made. Probably not great decisions, but hear me out - are you saying I should add more components (+mass) to the empty spaces? I'll have to add thrust and power to compensate for anything I add.

I guess that probably the answer to that question is: Yeah, why not? :p I could make the jump computer charge faster, or I could add more shields/rechargers, etc. I get your point I think - if there is empty space then there is room for optimization, therefore it is not as efficient as it could be.

 

[Edymnion]

Thats mostly what they're saying.

The bigger the ship, the more expensive it is in terms of time and materials to make the hull for it. The bigger the ship, the slower it turns. Things like that. The idea of having empty space can be read as saying you built the hull too large for what you wanted it to do.

To use a more real life example, its like saying you built a mansion when you only live in an apartment sized section of it, and just have lots of empty rooms you don't use. Might as well find something to fill those spaces with.

But if you have the hull the way you want it to be, and you have the systems the way you want them and don't see any need to expand on them, then thats fine. Its your ship. I mean, if you're fighting nothing but pirates, there's not a hell of a lot of difference in 500k shields and 500 million shields. Or having a 20 million energy storage when firing literally everything you've got doesn't even use 1 million before it regens back. No point in just wasting materials to fill space with capacity you'll never use.

 

[jayman38]

And by all means, we are not talking about filling the space outside the hull. If you have a great-looking hull, we aren't saying that you should turn the ship into a giant cuboid. To be clear, we are discussing the blockspace that falls neatly inside the established hull. To further clarify, I consider RP spaces, that is, the spaces inside the hull where astronauts should be able to walk around, sit down, run around a gravity ring, etc. to be outside this "internal" blockspace. In other words, we aren't talking about filling the astronaut-accessible interior.

 

[PriZm]

papachabre, how big is the ship you are referring to? cause you sayd sth about "... then i'd have to add more power". well, if you mean power regen and you havent reached the 1.0-1.2 mil power per second, then it is most likely a good idea to fill in the empty space with shields for example, and just add a bit more thrust and power regeneration. Edit: And maybe some effect modules, if you are using ship mass based passive effects.

 

[kiraen]

Save your design as is, with all the empty spaces.
Now start working on the MkII.
Make a Raider version. Make an Assault version. Make a Scout version.
Go nutz.

 

[Groovrider]

Save your design as is, with all the empty spaces.
Now start working on the MkII.
Make a Raider version. Make an Assault version. Make a Scout version.
Go nutz.

This. I'm in the process of taking old ship and updating the hull, weapons, power... It's surprising the ideas generated by experience being applied to older designs.

 

[papachabre]

papachabre, how big is the ship you are referring to? cause you sayd sth about "... then i'd have to add more power". well, if you mean power regen and you havent reached the 1.0-1.2 mil power per second, then it is most likely a good idea to fill in the empty space with shields for example, and just add a bit more thrust and power regeneration. Edit: And maybe some effect modules, if you are using ship mass based passive effects.

It's a mining vessel. It does what it needs to do, and it's well under the soft cap of power regen, so I probably won't add anything else to it unless I get spare time and extra resources to blow.

 

[Newbatron]

I usually fill ships. Causes less lag.

 

[Panpiper]

I usually fill ships. Causes less lag.

I don't understand. Why would filling in a ship cause 'less' lag?

 

[karkinosz]

I don't understand. Why would filling in a ship cause 'less' lag?

If I recall it was because of an issue where the game rendered everything even if it's covered by another object, but my memory is pretty shaky on that. And an improperly filled ship has maybe 10-20% more surface area to render.

 

[Newbatron]

I don't understand. Why would filling in a ship cause 'less' lag?

Since if you don't fill it, more block faces will be visible.
I once built a shell for a 400 meter long ship, it brought me down to 30 fps.
Filled it in and got 120 fps.

 

[Panpiper]

Since if you don't fill it, more block faces will be visible.
I once built a shell for a 400 meter long ship, it brought me down to 30 fps.
Filled it in and got 120 fps.

Well... That 'is' interesting.

 

[Edymnion]

Well... That 'is' interesting.

Yup, the engine tries to render anything that could possibly be seen, even if no one is there to see it. Its not very efficient in that regard.

 

[StormWing0]

Yup, the engine tries to render anything that could possibly be seen, even if no one is there to see it. Its not very efficient in that regard.

The thing needs to be setup to only render what can be seen from a given player's perspective so this isn't such an annoying issue.

 

[Lecic]

Leaving empty space is a bad idea, unless you're making spaced armor to weaken missiles.

 

[ilec]

Can somebody clarify for me - does having an off center COM cause issues with turning etc?

If not then I'll stop building "ballast tanks"

 

[EricBlank]

I don't think it would, necessarily. You're still going to rotate around that same center of mass, once you get used to the way the ship handles you should be golden.

For me, I save a hull variant, a hull with only a few basic components, and save that. Fill it to specifications I need later. This way I can relatively quickly take an available hull and kit it out to fill a role I don't have a dedicated vessel for, or when a game update causes issues with the old layout I can refit it without having to strip it down first. Say, Use my current long-range missile and drone frigate as a short range frigate-size gunboat (I already have a corvette), an armed mining vessel, or an exploration craft. It's not well-designed for the role, but it's better than nothing while I work on a more dedicated hull for those roles. It just takes an hour or two to fill it in, and I try to have the most annoying-to-place spaces already used for shields, capacitors, power gen, thrusters, things it'll be using anyway.

In a pinch, I'm not afraid to use the RP spaces for extra systems if I need them, either.

 

[Edymnion]

Can somebody clarify for me - does having an off center COM cause issues with turning etc?

If not then I'll stop building "ballast tanks"

No, the engine isn't that detailed. All it sees is that an entity has mass, and calculates the center of that mass for determining what axis it should turn on. Turning is determined entirely by the size of the ship, and acceleration by it's mass to thrust ratio.

How you actually build the ship, where you put things, etc has no bearing on any of that.

 

[Cornedo]

Apart from the interior (and my ships have lots of interior), no I fill everything in.

 

[KiloZulu]

I don't always fill my ships in completely. My example would be a car - lift the hood and let me know if you find any gaps inside. That's not necessarily why I do it - like others have mentioned, I prefer to leave some space for upgrades, game changes, or if I think of some new interior room I'd like to have on board. Also, I like to leave spaces so I can easily identify where each system is, and what my logic is doing. When you start trying to fill in every nook and cranny, things start getting mixed together and it's harder to repair lost blocks (except now we have shipyards.)

There are instances where I want to leave gaps for aesthetic reasons, however. I may block out my thrusters to create an engine room that can be inspected by the ship's engineers, same goes for shields and other systems. It depends on the size of the ship as to how valuable free space is.