The importance of ship's shapes and interior systems design

[Scypio]

I just realized that with the proposal of new power system schine and a vast majority of the community doesn't even have the slighest idea of the importance of the ship's shapes, design and choices as well as what it implies behind. That whole part of the game is something that keep me playing it, as it is always challenging and interesting for me, thoughts, ideas, concepts, i'm not just building ships because i just find them cool and i'll make a shape that will reflect this idea. No behind that there is a whole bunch of logical thoughts that follow a wide range of questions and answers at myself as well as some testing and of course my own experience with the subject. I'll just cover here a part of that process.

A lot of people refer to pvp ship's as wedge's shapes, i prefer to call them spears or arrowhead as it is more accurate in the actual shapes and to give people something that will get in their mind to understand, this shape is similar to the one of the star destroyers of the empire from star wars. Then, why this shape ? Because it's really efficient at taking and soaking damages and it also allow to use superfiring turrets to shoot forward. On a one on one situation between two ships relatively equivalent, this shape is one of the strongest. I don't say that it is the strongest as there is plenty of different shapes that could be better especially on the hands of efficient builders and pilots.


Here is our shape basically draw that i cut in three parts to understand how and why it can take and soak up damages. The third and black part is the part that will take the first incoming damages, the part where systems that are useless once your shields are down and hull, basically it's where you puts things you care the less about your ship when your shields are down, shields capacitors firsts.
The second and blue part is where you put systems that your care a little bit about but can take a few hits, usually it's defensive effects and a bit of thrusts, as your mass will go down when your ship will be crippled with damages.
Then the first and most important part in red is your important systems, where there is plenty of blocs to soak up damages before they reach this important part of your ship. It's not like all of this can be thought by anyone here with just a bit of time before building interior systems. So what does the shape gives more than simply placing well our systems inside the ship ? Well, take a loot at this then.


Here is basically the idea behind this shape. For example look at the tip of the ship, where an explosion has been draw, an explosion of missiles that takes only a really small part of it's radius into the ship ! Here is a succesfull ship's shape as the first hit will be mostly vasted into the void and then only a few blocs your don't care about are hit. Compared to a bulky ship it's a lot of improvement !
Then after, look at the arrow. When we fights, we're never staying still and as a result shot's from weapons other than lock-on will never be directed at our ship's tip but it's sides and it will mostly result in the arrow i draw here. Then again, look at it and look how much distance she has to travel through your useless bloc to start hitting something you care about. Then, think again how much more the projectile will need to travel for something your care a lot about, in the red spot ! That's enormous and your opponent will probably need several shots in the same spot to hit hard, wich is pretty hard to do in a fight between two good pilots.

My small conclusion about ship's shapes, it's that there is no god shapes as there is plenty of different things that can be built to work through all of theses considerations. I can just encourage people to try different things and find what they prefer the most between the pros and cons of the ship's shape.

Then, here is my small opinion about the new system and ship's shapes wich is my main concern, as it look like my post has been lost in the incredible number of messages, if you're not interested in it you can simply scroll back.
We're not going to fill our ships with useless blocs or filling bloc if your prefer to call them that way, we're going to simply add more systems, more weapons, more everything but not interiors and filling bloc simply to make our ships lookin better. So if we want a ship not wasting space, a ship that doesn't use useless blocs to fill holes, then what are we going to build ? A giant box around the heat box that the reactor create and then a bunch of things around to make the ship work. Where is the creativity in that ? How do we, players, choose what we want to build as it is clear that we can't even have multiple reactors in our ship without maluses to make the shape we want ? Just look at my last CC ship, this ship can't even be used anymore with that kind of heatbox without being a total waste somewhere, i don't want to be forced to build around a big box my ship in order for it to be efficient, that's just killing the creativity about designing ship's and system's shapes.

 

[Lancake]

Thanks for your feedback, your concerns are valid but only if you assume the whole system will stay this simple.
As the heat boundary box inherits the ship's boundary box (so the max dimensions), it's a good estimation of the ship's shape but not perfect.
However, doing this sorta shape also makes your ship smaller compared to filling the entire boundary box with systems, so it's OK that the reactor and systems you fit are relatively smaller compared to using a box ship shape. Therefore your heat boundary box will also be manageable.

Maybe I misread but I believe you misinterpret what the heat boundary box does.

We're not going to fill our ships with useless blocs or filling bloc if your prefer to call them that way, we're going to simply add more systems, more weapons, more everything but not interiors and filling bloc simply to make our ships lookin better.

Any systems within the heat boundary box will get a huge penalty, enough that you just won't do it. You can basically thing as if the whole heat boundary box is a filled area that cannot house systems.
Also putting down 2 or more smaller reactors will make it a lot easier to find spare room for other systems such as weapons, for any exotic shape your ship has.

A giant box around the heat box that the reactor create and then a bunch of things around to make the ship work. Where is the creativity in that ?

And that way you also draw way more attention to where your reactor is. The enemy only has to aim at the very obvious box you made around the most important part of your ship. Unless you disguise that box within an actual ship.

The creativity is in placing the reactor, making it work for your ship, adjusting the reactor and its chambers yourself to get the most out of it.
You could always make a cube, just like you can do right now, that's your choice.


Your last ship you've linked is completely fine with the new heat system. You can put 1 big reactor down which will probably occupy 80% of your block count, leaving plenty of room for weapon systems and thrusters. You could split them up in 2 smaller reactors instead, put one at the top part of the ship and one at the bottom, most likely leaving plenty of room in the middle for systems.
It's one of those ships that actually won't suffer at all from this new system.

 

[NeonSturm]

@Lancace

The boundary box around a triangle is a square.
The reactor heat box will encourage weapons at the tip or the rear left/right over the mid of the side.

You could use 2-3 smaller reactors with a smaller individual heat box to get 3 smaller squares instead of 1 big square, but they will stay squares in the top-down view.​

As the heat boundary box inherits the ship's boundary box (so the max dimensions), it's a good estimation of the ship's shape but not perfect.

Putting a single decorative light block 100m in front of your ship will change the heat box size?
Doing that after placing the reactor and systems … decorations messing up your design? ​

 

[0ldSkull]

What if the bounding box were determined only by systems (including reactor components) and not by decorative/inert components? (Or potentially including armor also if necessary.) Then there would be no penalty for adding decorative items like antennas and lights as an afterthought.