DOCKED HULL MUST BE FIXED.

[Lecic]

I have made this thread before in the past. I have messaged developers about this multiple times. I wish I did not need to keep bringing this up.

Docked hull needs to be fixed.

THE PROBLEMS

1) Ignores momentum effects.
2) Allows simultaneous armor + shield tanking.

THE SOLUTIONS

1) Ignores momentum effects.

How do we fix this? It seems pretty easy to me. We already have momentum transfer from collisions from ships on docked entities. Why does this not work with momentum effect weapons? This needs to be fixed, because this makes it extremely easy to block push, pull, and stop.

2) Allows simultaneous armor + shield tanking.

With the current shield sharing of docked entities maxing out at 75%, this leads to docked armor allowing for simultaneous armor and shield tanking that hovers around 25% shields. When a ship with docked hull drops down to 25% shields, the hull will now absorb damage instead of the shields, making ion weapons completely worthless. Versus non-ion weapons, the hull will act as an ablative, absorbing the incoming damage while shields stay at 25% until the armor is too damaged to effectively block most incoming damage. This is inherently better than a traditional hull, as you cannot have shields regenerate while tanking damage with a traditional hull, and you lose SHP from damage bleeding through the armor.

The fix to this is very simple. Raise shield sharing from the mothership up to 100%. Boom, fixed. That easy.

A lot of problems with docked hulls have been fixed already. But these are the two biggest ones. Can we get these fixed?

 

[taisong]

Oh, and when it detaches for some reason, the collision mayhem kicks in and kill any computer in range.
It is a live lag bomb...

I agree!

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Dear Lancake , if you could confirm this yourself.

Docked hulls are a menace. A ship with a docked hull will almost always win against a ship of the same mass without one.
I did a little experiment myself, making a version of one of my older ships that I basicly hollowed out, used the BlueprintCoreManipulator to move the core, then docked the armored shell with the turrets to the same type of vessel that was stripped of armor - effectively turning it into a docked hull ship with the exact same mass, thrust/mass, shield capacity, guns and other stats.
Then I moved the passive ion and punch defense from the main ship to the hull, ofc I needed a lot less blocks for the lot smaller mass, so I added a piercing system too and some extra thrusters to the main ship, effectively making it tougher and faster in raw stats than the same ship with the built-on hull.
Drawback? I have to enter the docked hull's core to activate the defensive effects before going to battle, and if I crash, they turn off. If the docker gets hit, and the hull undocks, I also probably crash.
Advantage? Tremendous. I "suddenly" gained more durability, immunity to momentum effects so I couldn't be slowed down by stop guns, a partial immunity to EMP weaponry, and a huge damage mitigation for any multi-block destruction weapon damage. My jump drives also didn't start resetting when the hull takes damage in combat, because it is no longer part of the main ship. Suddenly, the very same ship I used as a basis for the docked hull version, stands absolutely no freaking chance, despite being practically the same thing, against its docked hull twin in battle.

I rest my case.

 

[Lancake]

Not sure who you contacted but it wasn't me

The momentum effect not applying on docked entities is a bug yeah, one of the older ones. This is the bug task if you want to subscribe to it: T161
Recently it was set to "Not Feasible to fix" but that may have been a misunderstanding of the ticket talking about yourself hitting your own docked entities. Will have to inform myself about that to see what will happen to it.


Shield sharing is a little bit trickier, putting it on 100% also makes turrets that more powerful. Turrets have the advantage of having a nice firing arc compared to fixed main/docked weapons so with 100% shield sharing there's even more reason to use bigger and more turrets. There are quite a bit more inconsistencies with inheriting, something to resolve perhaps with the upcoming power changes.

Most of those inconsistencies were mentioned in a dev blog, some more specific cases were mentioned by Matt_Bradock. Fortunately, a big portion of these are easy enough to fix, we just need to make a nice list first of what to tackle.

EDIT: Why is the thread title in full caps? I automatically avoid those kinds of threads, guess I got lucky Matt_Bradock mentioned my username.

 

[apelsinsaft]

I automatically avoid those kinds of threads

You're probably breaking some unspoken rule of community interaction here.

As for the topic in the OP, i wish more of these "bugs turned crucial ship building techniques" were addressed and sooner. Borderline exploits like chain drives are things that really should have a more intuitive, "legal" solution.

 

[alterintel]

Why is the thread title in full caps? I automatically avoid those kinds of threads, guess I got lucky Matt_Bradock mentioned my username.

Completely agree
It actually reminded me of Spocklin's last post.
The only reason I read it was because Lecic wrote it.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

While I do not agree with the tone that the title and some of the content generates, I do agree with all of the points raised.

THE PROBLEMS

1) Ignores momentum effects.
2) Allows simultaneous armor + shield tanking.

1) This is utterly stupid, both for 'realism' and gameplay reasons, and has been since the cancer that is docked hull was first introduced. Momentum effects NEED to be shared across the docking chain; even if a mere turret is hit it should still affect the mothership's movement.
2) This isn't necessarily bad in itself, but it is bad due to a combination of factors which includes the cancer that is docked hull, which amplifies each method of tanking to an extreme degree and even allows simultaneous speed tanking to be thrown into the mix. Generally though, I do think that a ship that tries to both armour and shield tank should only be moderately good at them both. Players should specialize to gain the full benefit of either method of tanking.

tl;dr FIX DOCKED HULL.

 

[alterintel]

I understand that there is a worry about making turrets too OP by allowing 100% shield sharing.
Can't this be mitigated with Mass Enhancers? Either require more of them, or increase their power usage?

 

[TrainDodger]

I think the idea of using rail dockers to attach "up-armor kits" to the exterior of ships is cool, but docked hull is absolutely broken for numerous reasons, as Lecic and others have said:

1. Makes underlying ship immune to push, pull and stop effects. It hits the docked entity and the parent doesn't inherit the effect.
2. Completely messes with the damage model. After parent entity's shields drop, it starts soaking damage, allowing the parent entity's shields to go untouched until they recharge up to the point where shield sharing kicks in again.
3. If it undocks, the collisions create enormous lag, because you have two massive entities clipped into each other.

My proposed fixes are as follows:

1. Make rail-docked entities behave as if they are an intrinsic part of the parent, with the parent inheriting all the stats (and damage/damage effects) of the child entities and vice versa, but scaled appropriately to any existing blocks on the parent (like with thrust inheritance). Not just 100% shield sharing, but 100% sharing of everything. This would work especially well with the new reactor-based damage model. If only one reactor is allowed to be active at any given time, then only the parent entity's reactors will affect damage calculations.
2. Any entity that lacks a reactor should be immune to overheating, and therefore cannot be undocked by weapons fire or destroyed without destroying each and every block manually (but also cannot attack or defend itself without being mated to a parent entity with a reactor to power its weapons and shields, obviously).
3. Make in-use rails, rail/turret axis dockers and ship cores completely immune to destruction and transparent to projectiles (weapons fire passes right through them and hits whatever's on the other side, as if they're not even there, so they cannot be used as armor). This would prevent massive child entities from being undocked during combat and causing collision issues.

This would allow for fully-modular ships without breaking the game. One might object that it makes turrets too powerful (because they can only be damaged after the parent ship's shields are downed completely), but I think this approach makes perfect sense. In most sci-fi settings, you can't hit the turrets on a capital ship without dropping its shields completely; the turrets are a part of the hull and the shields overlap them. One possibility is to allow docked entities to take direct hull/block damage after the parent's shields drop past a certain point, as if the child entities don't have any shields of their own separate from the parent.

 

[Lancake]

I understand that there is a worry about making turrets too OP by allowing 100% shield sharing.
Can't this be mitigated with Mass Enhancers? Either require more of them, or increase their power usage?

Oh definitely, back in the dev blog I linked, it was said that we can tweak/balance turrets differently without affecting the mechanic about inheriting stuff.

As for some of the advantages of turrets versus fixed weaponry, we can always balance those through AI accuracy, swivel speed or some other system that does not add special rules to the inheriting of systems.

Basically saying, we can allow 100% shield sharing...assuming we balance the turrets to counter that buff at the same time.
Otherwise, just quickly changing it to 100% without doing anything else, will just shift the balance from one end to the other end.

 

[Lecic]

Any entity that lacks a reactor should be immune to overheating, and therefore cannot be undocked by weapons fire or destroyed without destroying each and every block manually (but also cannot attack or defend itself without being mated to a parent entity with a reactor to power its weapons and shields, obviously).

I don't think this is necessary if you're going to be making rail dockers invulnerable to weapons anyway.

Basically saying, we can allow 100% shield sharing...assuming we balance the turrets to counter that buff at the same time.
Otherwise, just quickly changing it to 100% without doing anything else, will just shift the balance from one end to the other end.

Turrets are already substantially more powerful than regular guns anyway, and fixing docked hull is much more important than possibly giving turrets a minor buff. Shield sharing should be 100%, and then we can properly balance turrets from there through things like swivel speed and mass enhancer requirements.

 

[jayman38]

You would think it would be easy for the game to check a docked entity and change the shield percentage coverage if (A.) the docked item has an AI block and (B.) the AI block is set to type "turret".

Edit:
Oh, right, then everyone would simply add a turret AI block to their docked armor to overcome this tiny rule. I did not think ahead.

 

[ohartenstein23]

You would think it would be easy for the game to check a docked entity and change the shield percentage coverage if (A.) the docked item has an AI block and (B.) the AI block is set to type "turret".

It would still be as exploitable as docked hull using the current shield threshold, it would just become a fixed "turret" that happens to be covering a large portion of the ship's hull, effectively just making docked hull require a turret dock instead of a regular rail and a Bobby AI unit.

 

[apelsinsaft]

and then we can properly balance turrets from there through things like swivel speed and mass enhancer requirements.

This is super key to the whole discussion of the balance of turrets, but also spinal weapons. Turrets should be balanced by how fast you're able to aim at a target and how much mass you're willing to sacrifice to get a big turret to aim really fast. In my opinion, you should require a disproportionate much larger amount of mass enhancers the bigger your largest turret is to get it to turn at "max speed".

 

[wanzer]

its even possible to fold several layers of stuff on the same space
pressing the C button re aligns the docked entity without checking if it collides with anything
so you can build entire ships outside the main ship and then hit the C to hinge them all to a single multilayered ship

the advantage of that is that you need less armor to cover all the important organs of a ship
it becomes ultra dense
you can move the thrusters on a different layer since you can include them to the whole ship

I once tested this floating injector in capsulated inside a room of a station
and when the docking block gets hit , its by by server

 

[TrainDodger]

Why not just make turret rotational speed dependent on their mass, regardless of how many enhancers there are? This would keep giant turrets from tracking small fighters effectively, and would be an appropriate debuff to match the buff of full shield sharing.

 

[alterintel]

It's always seemed to me to be counter intuitive, that the turning speed of turrets (with sufficient Mass Enhancers) is so much faster than a ship of the same size.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Which same size though?

Same size as the turret + the enhancers ( + the power source for those enhancers), + the power source for the turret, if it isn't self-powered.
or, just the turret?

Obviously the turret + enhancers is the one you really need to be measuring.

Here's a test, record the number of enhancers needed to get that turret to turn that fast. (and the number of power to get the enhancers to work)

Then, attach that many thusters to the turret (use a self-powered one), un-dock the turret, and see how fast it turns.

Then, max-out it's turning thrust. (and zeroing any non-turning). record how fast it turns.


I do believe the now be-thrustered turret will turn fairly swiftly, but not quite to the ridiculous extreme it did when actually a turret.
I further believe that the max-turning turret will equal or exceed it's proper-turret cousin in swivel speed.


I think I'll need to fire up the game and test it. Maybe borrow one of NuclearFun's elegant monstrosities.

 

[lupoCani]

Shield sharing is a little bit trickier, putting it on 100% also makes turrets that more powerful. Turrets have the advantage of having a nice firing arc compared to fixed main/docked weapons so with 100% shield sharing there's even more reason to use bigger and more turrets. There are quite a bit more inconsistencies with inheriting, something to resolve perhaps with the upcoming power changes.

This is an easy fix, no? 100% sharing for docked entities, 75% for turrets. That encourages modular building, removed the penalties for, say, moving hangar doors over plexdoors, keeps turrets as weak spots, and fixes docked hull.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm maybe just merge the total shield capacity and regen of all docked entities? That'd solve docked entities being used as spare shields when it comes to shielding at least as for bullet sponges I've got no clue.