A Solution To Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Xskyth]

op seems alright, but also seems like it would kill the ability to build snub-fighter sized craft. ie TIE Fighters or Colonial Vipers

 

[Lecic]

op seems alright, but also seems like it would kill the ability to build snub-fighter sized craft. ie TIE Fighters or Colonial Vipers

Uh, what? Why?

 

[Jojomo]

No suggestion will ever make spaghetti builds impossible.

That's not true in a simulated environment where the laws everything follows are created by humans.

Anyway, you don't need to make them impossible, they just need to be relatively poor performers. The OP in this thread would achieve that.

It's looking to me like you're hijacking this thread with your own suggestion.

 

[apelsinsaft]

The OP in this thread would achieve that.

Didn't you say yourself that trying to figure out the "thickness" of a conduit is an impossible task? In fact lets bring the discussion back on topic. How exactly would that be calculated?

Trying to have the computer look at every conduit group and "slice" its way through would require it to know which way the conduit is going, including if the conduit is turning, which is a pretty daunting task. It could maybe generalize and "find boxes" in the conduit group and just compare the dimensions of these boxes, but that's prone to some issues with diagonal/curved conduits. It could maybe do something where it looks for every conduit block how many steps you can go in any direction until you're outside the conduit and do something with that information, but obviously that would impact performance. I can't really wrap my head around how to do it.

EDIT - There's one way to do it: Check every column of conduit blocks for each of the 3 planes, and count the adjacent conduit blocks in the columns. The lowest encountered number in any plane is the thickness of the group. This would force all conduits to have perfectly square cross section and not have any odd bits anywhere, but it's the only way i can think of.

 

[Xskyth]

Uh, what? Why?

if you need to connect the system blocks with some sort of pipe, and since all the blocks use a cubic meter of space, and these type of ships have very limited space to begin with, these pipes will just be more blocks that will eat up valuable system space.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I think that, ultimately, we need a reason to protect critical systems behind our armor. And what better reason than to make things not protected by armor vulnerable?
I think damage should bleed through to systems that are near (near being relative to ship size) where weapons hit. That way, you'd want your systems protected and mostly in your ship's center, rather than on noodley appendages where a few beams could utterly wreck them.

 

[Jojomo]

Didn't you say yourself that trying to figure out the "thickness" of a conduit is an impossible task?

No, I said it was difficult to do well, and that points #1 and #3 would break spaghetti meta without #2 (if reactors are encouraged to be cubes/spheres)
[doublepost=1508639909,1508639259][/doublepost]

I think I worded it wrong. What I tried to say is, the difference between the old power efficiency between a common ship shape and a perfect cube is barely notable, comparing to the new power difference between common shapes and a japanese hentai tentacle monster.

Power 2.0 didn't cause spaghetti meta, it already existed before.

 

[Magrim]

Well, I hit the agree button because it would throughly kill spaghetti and clouds but it won't remove all dimensional exploits, which arguably isn't the goal of the op.

Depending on where the min max range is set, we will still see dumbells. If the stabilizers are relatively far from the reactor, the ship will inherent the dumbell look. If stabilizers are closer, then less so and could look more like a "normal" ship but one that would be filled to the brim with systems, which officially would be an unintended game mechanic. The devs have stated they don't want ships to be filled solid with systems.

I really believe that in order to remove all of these dimensional exploits the game must not calculate power based on dimensions. Otherwise more and more restrictions will be needed.

Oh, and I would rather not need conduits running to all my systems. If it could be routed through existing blocks but not empty space then that idea would be fine with me.

 

[Lecic]

if you need to connect the system blocks with some sort of pipe, and since all the blocks use a cubic meter of space, and these type of ships have very limited space to begin with, these pipes will just be more blocks that will eat up valuable system space.

Well, you could have the wireless effect I described be strong enough that such "micro fighters" would be fine and still have their systems at max power.

Depending on where the min max range is set, we will still see dumbells. If the stabilizers are relatively far from the reactor, the ship will inherent the dumbell look. If stabilizers are closer, then less so and could look more like a "normal" ship but one that would be filled to the brim with systems, which officially would be an unintended game mechanic. The devs have stated they don't want ships to be filled solid with systems.

The distance should be somewhat close to the reactor. Come on. Tough luck for the devs. Why is this a bad thing again? Should people NOT be taking advantage of the volume they have given themselves to work with?
Their way of trying to make ships not "filled solid with systems" is just pants on head retarded. No one wants to be forced to put empty, useless space in their ships. If they want forced interior space, they should add crew, something I'd be perfectly fine with. Trying to force it with a shitty power mechanic is not the way to do it.
Stabilizers don't actually do anything to force interior space, by the way. Not sure where you're getting the idea that they do. Do you think they implemented their original heatbox power proposal 1.0 or something? Please keep up to date.

Didn't you say yourself that trying to figure out the "thickness" of a conduit is an impossible task? In fact lets bring the discussion back on topic. How exactly would that be calculated?

Well, I think we can pretty much all agree that Dire Venom's addition here was a good solution to the direct connection thing, and from there we can easily figure out the AOE of each conduit.

Just another take on conduits:
Instead of being required to connect to systems, they power systems in an AOE around the conduit. The thicker the conduit, the larger the area. The conduits must be attached to a reactor, and act sort of like blood vessels. E.g they do not need to touch the blocks, merly be near them.

You don't need to actually find the girth of a conduit line with this system. Every conduit block has a set AOE it covers, and it combines that AOE (logarithmically) with every additional conduit blovk within a 2D plane along each dimension that touches it. Here's an example I threw together quick.

(teal glass is AOE, yellow glass is stabilizer stand in so you can see the reactor)
So the game would run a check along each layer of each plane of the ship to form a composite of AOEs that it would then combine into single units where applicable.

 

[Dire Venom]

Well, I think we can pretty much all agree that Dire Venom's addition here was a good solution to the direct connection thing, and from there we can easily figure out the AOE of each conduit.


You don't need to actually find the girth of a conduit line with this system. Every conduit block has a set AOE it covers, and it combines that AOE (logarithmically) with every additional conduit blovk within a 2D plane along each dimension that touches it. Here's an example I threw together quick.

(teal glass is AOE, yellow glass is stabilizer stand in so you can see the reactor)
So the game would run a check along each layer of each plane of the ship to form a composite of AOEs that it would then combine into single units where applicable.

Genius! Thank you for creating a visual example, it helps a lot. May I add it and refernce it in the orgional post:?
My thinking was that stablizors can already do a similar thing with effciencey and distance based on reactor size that a similar code could be applied to conduits.
If it works for stabilizors without performance impacts, there is no reason why it can't work for conuits too to solve potiantial performance fears.
Unless I've missed something, I don't see any immediate issues with the design that would prevent it from being implimented.

Tbh I would rather just change stabilizors into this form of condit entirely, but even if that's too far fetched just implimenting conduits would be a huge step forward :3 Building with conduits excites me, and encourages creative ideas. Building with stabilizors feels discouraging and does not feel creative.

 

[apelsinsaft]

You don't need to actually find the girth of a conduit line with this system. Every conduit block has a set AOE it covers, and it combines that AOE (logarithmically) with every additional conduit blovk within a 2D plane along each dimension that touches it. Here's an example I threw together quick.

Couldn't i then make a 1-thick conduit that leads from my reactor to the system, and at the system just surround it with conduits or make a blob that only just covers it? What's stopping me from making spaghett monsters here if the conduit is no longer "controlled" for thickness?

By the way, does anything address the issue of having multiple reactors in a spaghetti monster?

 

[Dire Venom]

Couldn't i then make a 1-thick conduit that leads from my reactor to the system, and at the system just surround it with conduits or make a blob that only just covers it? What's stopping me from making spaghett monsters here if the conduit is no longer "controlled" for thickness?

By the way, does anything address the issue of having multiple reactors in a spaghetti monster?

If you understand how they are built, you will thus see that requiring conduicts at all would double their mass and hitbox.
As far as I'm awear the new power systems can only have 1 reactor active at a time.
Switching disables the ship and creates extra mass which they cannot have.

 

[apelsinsaft]

If you understand how they are built

Can we have a proper picture example of a spaghetti monster ship then, so we're all on the same page about what type of shape of ship we're talking about? Because for the shape of ship that i was sure we were talking about,

double their mass and hitbox.

doesn't seem to be a very large penalty; at least not large enough to discourage their use.

 

[Magrim]

Do you think they implemented their original heatbox power proposal 1.0 or something?

Not sure how you inferred that from my post but ok.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with a min/max range for stabilizers and agree they need something to do, otherwise remove them. I was only pointing out that the devs have a problem with ships being filled, not me, been doing it for a long time now.

 

[Zoolimar]

Can we have a proper picture example of a spaghetti monster ship then, so we're all on the same page about what type of shape of ship we're talking about? Because for the shape of ship that i was sure we were talking about,

Here is a video

 

[apelsinsaft]

Here is a video

Yeah that's almost like the shape i had in mind. The ship shape in the video could still be done, it's just instead of there being 1-thick lines of shields and thrusters and whatnot, it'd be 2+ thick conduit+system lines and a reactor "heart" somewhere. A lot more vulnerable and probably not as overpowering as the one in the video, but by no means unviable.

For conduits to be a thing and spaghetti monsters not, i think the sane thing to do would be to implement your idea with "blobbiness" of systems. Forcing rules with the thickness of conduits, if you can make the computer actually calculate it, i think just means that you have to do more trial-and-error than is fun (how thick does this conduit im making need to be to reach X system), and the "AOE" conduits won't prevent anything. The blobbiness rule works better for this purpose since its also more intuitive and easy to predict. But of course that gets us into the discussion of whether conduits are even necessary or if they are just "forced design" limitations.

As for how to determine the maximum reactor output of the ship, apparently not that easy of a problem to solve. We've heard arguments for having an "optimal range" for stabilizers, needing to have the stabilizers surround the reactor or be adjacent, eliminating stabilizers for various other methods of determining ship size, etc. It'd be great to get some more developer input on that discussion.

 

[Magrim]

I vote no on blobified systems. Many of my designs would perform subpar because of their shape. I lay my systems around corners and long stretches that may or my not have bulges, so in order for my ships to perform relatively well mass for mass, I would need to "bloat" them out to a more traditional ship shape.

 

[Zoolimar]

Well the other solution is guns shooting projectiles with non-zero cross section. So instead of a simple ray they shoot say a 3x3 plane (or more depending on how big the player wants it and builds). Or use some kind of proximity detonation that transforms projectile into shrapnel cone. But these solutions seem more calculation intensive.

 

[apelsinsaft]

Well the other solution is guns shooting projectiles with non-zero cross section. So instead of a simple ray they shoot say a 3x3 plane (or more depending on how big the player wants it and builds). Or use some kind of proximity detonation that transforms projectile into shrapnel cone. But these solutions seem more calculation intensive.

This could definitely help with a few issues:

• Spaghetti monsters are easier to hit, making them less viable
• Microdrone spam is easier to combat, while doing no real difference to crafts that have a proper silhouette
• Missiles easier to hit, meaning anti-missile systems could be tweaked (introduce missile health that scales with damage/speed, potentially alleviating anti-missile turret spam and spoof-missile spam)
• Cannons in general more viable against moving targets

You could probably put up a new thread for the discussion of bigger projectile hitboxes.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I think forcing shapes for efficiency in builds is just the wrong way to go, it's too removed from the end goal.
Favoring blobs will just make people build doom cubes instead of anything interesting. Conduit thickness will probably just make RP builds nigh impossible and everything will have extra-bulky sections.

Think about why, in Star Trek, it would be a bad idea to hang out your warp core off the end of the ship. One phaser shot and you'd be facing a core breach, regardless of shields.
The whole end goal here is to require space and armor around systems. Having localized bleedthrough to systems would devastate spaghetti monsters and make you actually want to put big empty decks around systems (or at least a large hollow area and an outer hull), and scaling the locality by ship size would punish having long tendrils sticking into nowhere.