collision damage

[jath]

So we're advanced enough to travel to space. Now we need materials than can withstand the rigors of space flight, including tiny debris and pumpkin sized rocks. Thing is, the materials we're using are more akin to cinder blocks than advanced hull alloys. In real life there are alloys that can flex and return to thier original shape whilst absorbing massive amounts of energy. 9260 steel comes to mind, as does several titanium alloys. Secondly, if we are using ionized shields, don't 2 like charges repel?

So down to the point... collision damage shouldn't damage anything under around 20kps. The hulls are advanced enough and the inertial dampeners powerful enough to maintain integrity. Above this up to 50kph, the ion shields kick in and start to repel the ships before they even hit. If there is still a collision that takes place up to 50, the hull would flex 1 space back (though not really) for each additional 10 kps you're traveling. This means the blocks behind the hull would get smashed. You can create buffer zones (bumpers). Above 80 kph, the hull starts to take 25% damage for each additional 10kph, along withthe extrablock backwards damage. At 120 kph, the first blocks to touch contact will disintegrate instantly and slow the ship 10kps. At 150 and up, the collision will destroy the smaller ship completely and create a negative of it in the larger ship.

 

[Lancake]

Collision damage is not complete yet and contains some bugs.

There is a variable that allows you to change the sensitivity although changing it doesn't do anything.
Shields will eventually reduce or completely negate collision damage although I don't know what schema will choose.

Although I like your example, you don't take the mass of the ship in account.
If you focus a collision on a little support strut, that thing is going to snap depending on the mass behind it ^^ but this would make it complicated and hard to implement. Collision damage uses the mass of your ship though, a ship core with the default settings (that you can't change yet anyway) will damage at 20km/h. Something with a higher mass will damage at around 5km/h or lower.

 

[jath]

But why would you need to damage things at lower speeds with higher mass when the materials used get inherently thicker and the strength of an integrity field or ion shields would get proportionally stronger.

On top of that, the mass only increases damage linearly. Velocity increases damage exponentially. Going slow shouldn't do hardly any damage. It's no fun to completely smash your ship when you're going 20kph trying to dock or leave a planet. I understand the need for collision damage, but you don't need to make it so we're flying ships made of falafel. If warp is possible, so is materials and energy fields that limit collision damage by a large margin.

 

[Lancake]

More doesn't mean stronger.

Example: each block can carry a fat person. 2 fat persons on it will crumble that block to such.

Stacking 10 of those blocks on to each other and putting 2 fat persons on it will still crumble the top block (and probably the ones below it). You magically assume those 10 blocks will reinforce each other and act like 1 line that is 10 times stronger than 1 block but that's not how it works.

Example 2: your ship with a huge mass of 100 000 tons flies at 1 meter/s against a strong structure that will not give in (like a station in starmade ^^) and comes to a quick stop.

Force applied to the front of the ship: 100 000 000 kilograms with a sudden deceleration will result in 100 000 000 + newton force! That force is probably spread out over the whole structure and it shouldn't destroy or damage the integrity of it but there will be damage on the point of collision ,those blocks can't handle a concentrated force like that.

When shields will negate/absorb damage, your ships will not act like a soft pancake since the shields will spread out the force easily.

 

[jath]

You're acting like you know better than my mechanical engineering teachers. I understand physics and material strengths, also how flexible materials work. You can run a large navy vessel aground with a smaller percentage of damage than you can when you run a smaller ship aground at the same speed. Thicker materials are proportionally stronger, just like energy scales linearly with mass.[DOUBLEPOST=1413829682,1413829163][/DOUBLEPOST]Secondly, we're talking about a game. Low speed collision damage is simply not fun. High speed collision damage is, and the higher the speed the more catastrophic. Being a Sci Fi game, you can think of plenty of reasons that bumping into something at highway speeds wouldn't destroy the ship, but damage it. However, rocket speeds are still going to do serious damage. I'm only giving my ideas on how to scale this, and even maybe create a block specifically designed for impact. OK, you don't want hulls to be flexible? Why not add bumper blocks? They would absorb 10 kps per 10 mass in a collision and not be damaged. If you exceed that, the damage is transferred to the rear of the bumper. The bumpers could be extra vulnerable to certain weaponss. Hell, you could just add this property to plex doors. They already have the proper texture. They would have the advantage of being not there when you don't need them (like deployable air bags or landing gear) it would also make them useful again vs. Blast doors. Having them on a bay door would keep someone from ramming the door open, or your fighters from getting destroyed if they don't open the doors in time.[DOUBLEPOST=1413830281][/DOUBLEPOST]One more thing, we're not talking about a line of blocks, we're talking about plates. Yes no matter how long a pole is, it will not get stronger in compression, but I'm not talking about a column, I'm talking about a bridge, plank, or dome shape. Adding more thickness does add more strength. Factoring in flexibility and springiness, the more it compresses, the more it resists compression until a failure point, which would likely be far past any systems behind its buffer zone.

And even taking about columns, making it longer doesn't work, but making a column thicker, or making more columns together does.

 

[SilentRider_14]

basic standard advanced hull are hollow boxes that is all

 

[CyberTao]

Thing is, "thicker" isn't a thing in starmade there mate. 5 block thick armour is the same as a 5 block line of armour repeated several times. Lancake is accurate in describing how it would work ingame, unless a new feature would be added, which would be a mess I feel.

The only way what you're saying would work, is if the game grouped hull into platings, which would probably still result in a "total block count", since I cant see how a box-based game could handle and calculate angular collisions (would it would need to, to figure out the depth of armour at the point of contact).

Which then runs the question "what would define these groups?" Since people could very well make a shell covering the entire ship, resulting in either no damage, or widespread hull cracking (if it could even get up to the needed speed).

And in most cases, I don't think you'd run into a flat surface with a flat surface anyways. No one (or most of us anyways) builds the front of their ships as a flat face, Nor do we collide with things at a perpendicular angle into another flat face. There will be a point or jagged surface or something that would force the energy onto a smaller area (hence the concept of armour piercing rounds, yes?). It's different with Navy ships, simply because when you run aground, there is still a larger surface coming into contact (unless it's solid rock you're running into).

But yeah, collision damage could be improved yes. But it is more or less a pet project of Schema, and will be worked on when he gets time. It's like planets, just have to wait until they are really viable~

 

[Lancake]

You're acting like you know better than my mechanical engineering teachers. I understand physics and material strengths, also how flexible materials work. You can run a large navy vessel aground with a smaller percentage of damage than you can when you run a smaller ship aground at the same speed. Thicker materials are proportionally stronger, just like energy scales linearly with mass.[DOUBLEPOST=1413829682,1413829163][/DOUBLEPOST]Secondly, we're talking about a game. Low speed collision damage is simply not fun. High speed collision damage is, and the higher the speed the more catastrophic. Being a Sci Fi game, you can think of plenty of reasons that bumping into something at highway speeds wouldn't destroy the ship, but damage it. However, rocket speeds are still going to do serious damage. I'm only giving my ideas on how to scale this, and even maybe create a block specifically designed for impact. OK, you don't want hulls to be flexible? Why not add bumper blocks? They would absorb 10 kps per 10 mass in a collision and not be damaged. If you exceed that, the damage is transferred to the rear of the bumper. The bumpers could be extra vulnerable to certain weaponss. Hell, you could just add this property to plex doors. They already have the proper texture. They would have the advantage of being not there when you don't need them (like deployable air bags or landing gear) it would also make them useful again vs. Blast doors. Having them on a bay door would keep someone from ramming the door open, or your fighters from getting destroyed if they don't open the doors in time.[DOUBLEPOST=1413830281][/DOUBLEPOST]One more thing, we're not talking about a line of blocks, we're talking about plates. Yes no matter how long a pole is, it will not get stronger in compression, but I'm not talking about a column, I'm talking about a bridge, plank, or dome shape. Adding more thickness does add more strength. Factoring in flexibility and springiness, the more it compresses, the more it resists compression until a failure point, which would likely be far past any systems behind its buffer zone.

And even taking about columns, making it longer doesn't work, but making a column thicker, or making more columns together does.

Well, I'm not a genius like your mechanical teachers, and obviously not like you since your knowledge is so much more advanced than mine so I'm going to apologize about my bad bad behavior, I didn't mean to act like I'm a genius on the aspect of engineering since I'm not... but I do know how collision damage works in the game atm...

Facts:

• The treshold variable does nothing.
• The amount of collision damage is calculated only by looking at the mass of the 2 collision objects and their velocity.
• Collision damage often reverts to a undamaged state after a unloading/loading the sector again, only fully damaged ones remain damaged.
• Stations, shops and planets do not receive damage.
• Shield do not negate or absorb the collision force.
• Protected sectors do not protect you from collision damage.
• God mode is the only thing that protects you from collision damage.
• Docked entities do not receive collision damage.
• Rod lights and other non physical blocks don't collide and can't cause or received collision damage.
• Ramming 2 big plates flat on each other causes the server to stop running.
• Big ships near planets can instantly cause a huge hole in a nearby segment and break the server, although this is rare it's still hard to track down why exactly it happens.
• Changing sector or TPing into a structure will often not cause any damage because the server doesn't calculate it, it's too busy warping your ship out of it.

We found these so far and all of them are going to be changed or fixed in the near future. There isn't more to talk about.

 

[jath]

Thing is, "thicker" isn't a thing in starmade there mate. 5 block thick armour is the same as a 5 block line of armour repeated several times. Lancake is accurate in describing how it would work ingame, unless a new feature would be added, which would be a mess I feel.

I am aware of that. The mechanic I'm suggesting would approximate the "thicker" aspect of my suggested mechanic. It would pass "collision" damage to the block behind it within a threshhold. If the block behind that happens to be empty space, that block absorbs less as the hull supposedly (but not really) flexes.

The only way what you're saying would work, is if the game grouped hull into platings, which would probably still result in a "total block count", since I cant see how a box-based game could handle and calculate angular collisions (would it would need to, to figure out the depth of armour at the point of contact).

Which then runs the question "what would define these groups?" Since people could very well make a shell covering the entire ship, resulting in either no damage, or widespread hull cracking (if it could even get up to the needed speed).

Bringing into account that each of these blocks would also be Heavy, ugly, and specifically vulnerable to weapons, placing them all over your ship is possible, but not necessarily desirable. There's nothing to stop people from doing it now either. And even if people did do that, why do you want to stop them? How does it affect you? It's like saying that you're cheating for covering your space ship IRL in a whole bunch of rubber. Whats wrong with that? Why do you want to discourage it? I don't think it would be unreasonable to have entire hull sections covered in bumpers to protect my ship from ramming. It's like saying, I don't want crystal hull because some players will build their entire ship out of it. I don't want warp drives because some players will use it in combat. I don't want salvage beams because some players will eat entire planets. Why are you so concerned with what other players might do?

The way I explained the mechanic, each block would be calculated separately at the point of impact, passing a percentage to each block adjacent to that block, and pass the extra damage backward depending on speed. It would be like an explosion that doesn't damage hull blocks under a certain speed threshold. If you increase the mass damage linearly, than you could increase "momentum" damage that wouldn't effect the sideways blocks any more, but would penetrate deeper behind the block, requiring either more thickness to absorb the impact damage, or more space for the hull to flex. It would work on a chain reaction basis depending on the impact velocity first and foremost, and the mass as a penetration modifier.

And in most cases, I don't think you'd run into a flat surface with a flat surface anyways. No one (or most of us anyways) builds the front of their ships as a flat face, Nor do we collide with things at a perpendicular angle into another flat face. There will be a point or jagged surface or something that would force the energy onto a smaller area (hence the concept of armour piercing rounds, yes?). It's different with Navy ships, simply because when you run aground, there is still a larger surface coming into contact (unless it's solid rock you're running into).

But yeah, collision damage could be improved yes. But it is more or less a pet project of Schema, and will be worked on when he gets time. It's like planets, just have to wait until they are really viable~

As for flat and curved surfaces... I am sure you know that a dome is stronger than a plane. Even so, a flexible springy material would still flex back, creating a larger surface to absorb the damage, so the initial impact point would recieve more damage, but only marginally so.

I know it's schema's thing, but last time I checked, this is a suggestion forum.

Well, I'm not a genius like your mechanical teachers, and obviously not like you since your knowledge is so much more advanced than mine so I'm going to apologize about my bad bad behavior, I didn't mean to act like I'm a genius on the aspect of engineering since I'm not... but I do know how collision damage works in the game atm...

Facts:

• The treshold variable does nothing.
• The amount of collision damage is calculated only by looking at the mass of the 2 collision objects and their velocity.
• Collision damage often reverts to a undamaged state after a unloading/loading the sector again, only fully damaged ones remain damaged.
• Stations, shops and planets do not receive damage.
• Shield do not negate or absorb the collision force.
• Protected sectors do not protect you from collision damage.
• God mode is the only thing that protects you from collision damage.
• Docked entities do not receive collision damage.
• Rod lights and other non physical blocks don't collide and can't cause or received collision damage.
• Ramming 2 big plates flat on each other causes the server to stop running.
• Big ships near planets can instantly cause a huge hole in a nearby segment and break the server, although this is rare it's still hard to track down why exactly it happens.
• Changing sector or TPing into a structure will often not cause any damage because the server doesn't calculate it, it's too busy warping your ship out of it.

We found these so far and all of them are going to be changed or fixed in the near future. There isn't more to talk about.

First off, I want to apologize for coming off brash, I didn't mean to berate or belittle you in any way. I just happened to think you were wrong is all. Not about the way you explained a particular mechanic, but which mechanic you explained.

Secondly, I am well aware of what IS. I'm suggesting what could be. There is a lot to talk about when it comes to making the game playable, fun, and having semi-realistic mechanics.

A lot of times, the technology in this game tries to mimic a non-engineer/physicists 's idea of what the world is capable of today when both A. there is current technology that is better today, so nerfing something to make it more "realistic" is actually doing the opposite, and B. This is a Sci Fi game. The technology in game should approximate what might be possible in the distant future. If warp, defabriacation, molecular storage of shapes, artificial gravity, even holding thousands of blocks directly in one's inventory is all possible, why wouldn't collision resistant materials and collision damage negating fields be possible too?