Bait people into putting space in their ships

[Valiant70]

You want space in ships? Then make that the optimal design choice.

• Take out stabilizers completely
• Give all systems a performance bonus for being a few blocks away from other systems. Maybe it lets them stay cooler and run harder? You could explain that a lot of ways.
• Reactors provide power wirelessly to all other systems, but only out to a certain (generous) radius depending on their size. This is a sanity check that prevents building chunks of stuff kilometers from the main ship.

So, people will fill the space with sponge armor. In that case, weapon penetration mechanics need to be changed so that ARMOR matters and sponge doesn't.

• Give all weapons full inherent punchthrough effect.
• Blocks with armor HP cause these shots to be ablated into a radius-based explosion instead of going through.
• (This point isn't exactly right, but something like this Armor-piercing effects allow a certain percentage of a shot to phase through all armor it encounters and go through systems behind it with normal punchthrough behavior.

EDIT for clarification:

If it's done right, the extra blocks needed to get the same performance while "squashed" should roughly equal the mass of the extra armor needed to cover the thing when optimally spaced.

 

[Ithirahad]

You want space in ships? Then make that the optimal design choice.

• Take out stabilizers completely
• Give all systems a performance bonus for being a few blocks away from other systems. Maybe it lets them stay cooler and run harder? You could explain that a lot of ways.

Seems largely unnecessary. Leaving a bit of space between systems already seems like good practice, for maintenance purposes if nothing else, and the losses are minimal. If my ships weren't such weird shapes I'd likely be doing something like that already.

Reactors provide power wirelessly to all other systems, but only out to a certain (generous) radius depending on their size. This is a sanity check that prevents building chunks of stuff kilometers from the main ship.

Acceptable.

• Blocks with armor HP cause these shots to be ablated into a radius-based explosion instead of going through.

Sounds like a potential lagbomb, which is the usual issue with these suggestions. Current structural integrity-splosions already can cause micro-freezes on my (lower mid-range) system.

Honestly, I'd be willing to put up with the micro-freezes, though, if it means this armour problem is solved once and for all.

 

[Valiant70]

Sounds like a potential lagbomb, which is the usual issue with these suggestions. Current structural integrity-splosions already can cause micro-freezes on my (lower mid-range) system.

Honestly, I'd be willing to put up with the micro-freezes, though, if it means this armour problem is solved once and for all.

Come to think of it, we might not need structural integrity as badly either since this would kill kilometers-wide spaghetti wads.

 

[Ithirahad]

I kind of like the integrity mechanic, actually, though the last config change seems to have overcompensated and broken normal gun designs. :P

Also, spaghetti wads are not 'kilometers wide' by necessity, so no, the power sanity radius would not 'fix' them.

 

[HerrColonel]

• Give all weapons full inherent punchthrough effect.

• Blocks with armor HP cause these shots to be ablated into a radius-based explosion instead of going through.

IMO it would be better to have different kind of weapons spread. Some punching through in a straight line like we're used to (drawback from these is wasting dmg once the target has been fully pierced), and some having different kind of dmg pattern, the same way missiles do. But I guess the weapons update won't be worked on and achieved before several years

 

[Valiant70]

IMO it would be better to have different kind of weapons spread. Some punching through in a straight line like we're used to (drawback from these is wasting dmg once the target has been fully pierced), and some having different kind of dmg pattern, the same way missiles do. But I guess the weapons update won't be worked on and achieved before several years

Sure! Anything that makes packing worthless blocks around systems less worthwhile would work.

 

[Sachys]

You may want to take a look at this: Brainstorm This: Crew Chambers (no crew)

 

[Valiant70]

You may want to take a look at this: Brainstorm This: Crew Chambers (no crew)

I've seen it. You wouldn't want to turn your thrusters, shields, guns, or reactor into a room like that though. That fixes chambers. This fixes the rest. You don't HAVE to have the extra space. You can add a few more blocks and squash it all together to get the same performance. It'll just be a little heavier.
[doublepost=1513981490,1513981049][/doublepost]If it's done right, the extra blocks needed to get the same performance while "squashed" should roughly equal the mass of the extra armor needed to cover the thing when optimally spaced.