- Joined
- Jul 28, 2014
- Messages
- 53
- Reaction score
- 8
Apart from the ongoing discussion about encouraging the building of smaller ships alongside large ships, I would very much like to see possibilities to discourage the building of overly large ships altogether. I find that ships comprising millions of blocks shouldn't exist at all, or at least have certain drawbacks that would make them only marginally useful.
For starters, I would welcome an option in the server.cfg that would enable administrators to set a maximum allowed size for ships.
Then there's also a peculiar problem of realism: In Real Life, a huge ship would have difficulties getting rid of all the heat that it generates. Space may be cold, but vacuum is a perfect insulator, so heat cannot be dissipated by convection, and it remains trapped inside the ship. Smaller ships have a larger surface-to-volume ratio, so they can get rid of heat by radiating it into space. But huge ships - even with all systems turned off - would keep accumulating heat until all its crew are cooked alive. Passive radiators wouldn't work in space, because in the absence of air, they would just radiate enough heat right back to the ship to cancel out whatever good they do.
The only solution would be active cooling, similar to how a refrigerator works, or maybe by some exotic future technology that hasn't been invented yet. As such a system would doubtlessly require energy to function, the whole thing could be simulated in a simple way by imposing a power generation penalty, proportional to the ship's mass.
That, together with the already existing soft cap for power generators, could perhaps put a limit to gigantism.
Are there any others who would like to see gigantism stopped, or am I just crazy? And does anyone have any other ideas?
For starters, I would welcome an option in the server.cfg that would enable administrators to set a maximum allowed size for ships.
Then there's also a peculiar problem of realism: In Real Life, a huge ship would have difficulties getting rid of all the heat that it generates. Space may be cold, but vacuum is a perfect insulator, so heat cannot be dissipated by convection, and it remains trapped inside the ship. Smaller ships have a larger surface-to-volume ratio, so they can get rid of heat by radiating it into space. But huge ships - even with all systems turned off - would keep accumulating heat until all its crew are cooked alive. Passive radiators wouldn't work in space, because in the absence of air, they would just radiate enough heat right back to the ship to cancel out whatever good they do.
The only solution would be active cooling, similar to how a refrigerator works, or maybe by some exotic future technology that hasn't been invented yet. As such a system would doubtlessly require energy to function, the whole thing could be simulated in a simple way by imposing a power generation penalty, proportional to the ship's mass.
That, together with the already existing soft cap for power generators, could perhaps put a limit to gigantism.
Are there any others who would like to see gigantism stopped, or am I just crazy? And does anyone have any other ideas?
not rekt ☐
