Station Blocks For a Real Sense of Scale

[Mr.Steam]

You can always emulate a large block by creating it out of regular blocks then using copy/paste. This allows you to place lots of LARGE blocks quickly without losing the ability to add small details. I have built many complicated but repeating structures easily with copy/paste.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

EDIT: People dont seem to understand the idea. Not going to comment further til I see otherwise.

The game has a system of coordinates so it knows what block is what in relation to the core/center of a station. Larger blocks would just take up more room (memory) or everything would be scaled up.

This would either make it difficult to have large and small blocks or every block would just have to be bigger, which would be dumb because computers, logic, doors, all would just be giant cubes instead of the large cubes we have now. There is nothing stopping you from building a station as large as you want except maybe building past sector borders are funny I think. This suggestion adds nothing but limitations to what we can already do.

 

[Criss]

One large block should have less impact than a few small blocks of the same dimensions.

But as I stated before, this is nothing I need because I can achieve the same looks with current blocks. The only reason you would want it added is because of performance enhancement. While that is great, I won't be using it. I'll create walls with finer detail because I have smaller blocks and never get to use this performance enhanced wall.

Don't kid yourself, Minecraft and 99% of the copy-cats use the same block size. I never liked space engineers because they dodged the 1 meter completely and went for bigger and smaller. Smaller would have been okay and in some cases it works with the environment. Cubeworld or whatever it was called looked great with smaller blocks. Detailing with them would be fun. The only alternative to larger cubes that I can think of is having 1m thick walls instead of larger blocks. But that brings up other points.

Are these new blocks going to take damage the same way as the other blocks do? How do you render that? Does it really work with the rest of the games visuals?
Are we going to add 10 or so new blocks for each color just so we can have it?
Is it really necessary to introduce a new block with a potential recipe for the sake of making building faster, and enhancing performance?
Will players use it?
How would this work on ships? If it doesn't then there goes a third of its potential.

I would be really disappointed if schema straight up added a space engineers idea after trying to make this game his own.

 

[Viridis00]

Are these new blocks going to take damage the same way as the other blocks do? How do you render that? Does it really work with the rest of the games visuals?
Are we going to add 10 or so new blocks for each color just so we can have it?
Is it really necessary to introduce a new block with a potential recipe for the sake of making building faster, and enhancing performance?
Will players use it?
How would this work on ships? If it doesn't then there goes a third of its potential.

Not going to bother with the rest of your last post since everything about it has already been said by someone else or my past posts or is just pissing on SE for being SE (mind you, I don't give a damn about the game or what they've done since I don't play it. An idea is an idea though.). However the last part is a bit more interesting because it's technical.

-Blocks could retain the same armor percentage as their 1m counterparts, but with the sum HP of their dimensional equivalent.
-They're one object, so they could break the same as a regular block, just into larger fragments at once same as their 1m counterparts.
-I don't quite get what you mean by "work with the games visuals". Station geometry and proportions won't necessarily change from station to station with builders, just the overall scale of completion. My only concern (which is what I think you mean) is that you'll have big ass computer blocks instead of personal sized computers for example. I can agree with you there. If entities could make use of both types of blocks in one entity, that would be fairly interesting, but we don't have enough information about the way SM works to really speculate that far.
-Building faster isn't the point at all because advanced build mode already does that just fine. Performance? Absolutely. Additional recipes and block IDs are a very valid concern since at the moment they are limited, but this is an overarching problem for the entire game that will need to be addressed at some point regardless. I'd like for the game to mature to a point where we have even more shape options and missing shapes for the current blocks and more.
-Will players use it? I personally would just as you say you wouldn't. I like more options and it doesn't mean you can't continue to use 1m blocks for your own projects.
-On ships, either a) yes why not? They'd just be scaled up blocks with additional HP (in regards to the first point) or b) no, but you can say the same for certain station exclusive blocks as well. Stations get cool exclusive stuff to make them uniquely useful or for balance/mechanics reasons.

 

[Marduk_Zoekoff]

I would suggest that if you need to build bigger go into the server.cfg and alter the max build area. I have mine set to 150, I seldom use more than 10 at a time but I have the option.

There are a few problems with scaling blocks.

one is that it would be like a giant paper station. each block of basic has 50hp. so one 10x1x10 50hp block does not equal a 10x1x10 set with 5000hp. One missile and poof no more station. Unless you want to scale the hp with the blocks, which would not lower the servers work at all, but potentially increase it at least at initial building, and loading, and saving. Why? current system is something like this: block type,bock location,block orientation,block hp this would add on top :block x scale block y scale block z scale, and you would still have to track each and every block space that would potentially be there, which leads to my second.

Second trying to match scaled blocks with unscaled ones would be a nightmare of calculations when an area is loading, and you would have to match them because if a ship is going to dock there, you have no choice, a single docking block only allows for 7x7x7 blocks to be docked without extenders or disabling docking checks, so you could easily end up having a docking block that is bigger than the ship that can land on it.

third even if the first two parts works out it makes blowing access ways without having to destroy huge sections impossible.

 

[jayman38]

-Blocks could retain the same armor percentage as their 1m counterparts, but with the sum HP of their dimensional equivalent.

From what I understand of the way blocks store hp damage in their bit-stream, summing up HP won't work as a single block. My understanding is that the current-HP value per block has an absolute maximum limit of 255. To put this in perspective, if you have a large cube that is 4 times bigger on each side, the original small block's maximum HP could be, at most, 3 (!!!) for summing to work.

 

[Blakpik]

I gotta agree with Megacrafter. We arent looking at a massive change in the amount of information that needs to be loaded. I think what slows everyone down is the actual rendering of an object. An object which has physics and lighting applied to it no less.

"Physics", "Lighting". :P

 

[AtraUnam]

It'd kill the remaining IDs but we could have a use for larger blocks to improve performance. Let the players only use standard 1m^3 blocks but automatically convert them to larger blocks as needed.
e.g. I place a 4m^3 area (64 blocks) and the game converts it into a single 4m^3 block. When that block is damaged it converts into 7 2m^2 blocks and 1 2m^3 of normal blocks (the area that was hit). This would save memory without effecting gameplay in any way.

TLDR: blocks automatically grouping into larger blocks to save memory and subdividing when destroyed.

 

[Calbiri]

"TLDR: blocks automatically grouping into larger blocks to save memory and subdividing when destroyed." - Pretty much how things work now

The "lag" that this whole post is aimed at addressing is caused by high detail (lots of block faces) being simulated visually and physically in the game. Schema already takes similar groupings (a 9x9 wall) and treats them as a singular larger object, so the OP's intent is functionally already being accomplished by how the engine works instead of by reworking the engine with a new block size. Essentially, if you want these "superblocks" just use the advanced build mode to place clusters of 3^3 / 5^3 / 10^3 or whatever cubic size you want, the visual rendering and physics simulation already treats those combined surface types as a single surface.

The real issue that isn't, and cannot be addressed, in making larger stations comes from the details. If you make a station using these larger blocks, then place smaller blocks onto it to achieve the desired (current) detail levels, you would get pretty much the same performance levels you have now.

 

[HerrColonel]

I'm more in favor of smaller blocks, I think we could design nice small ships and interiors with 0.5m^3 blocks

I don't like the idea of blocks taking multiple block's space. Even if it would save perfs most of the time (and I've seen no proof it would, the only to be aware of this is schema because he's the one who writted this game), the calculations for dividing the "block-entity" when hitted by weapons would be a pain for the server and it already is with the current most sized weapon (destroying multiple blocks)

Edit: Calibri posted just 7m before me and answered this so much better ^^ but what for smaller blocks calibri?

 

[Calbiri]

The arguement can be pushed in the other direction, if you consider our current blocks on a smaller scale, to get those micro blocks. Why bother making the 1m^3 blocks then, when they can just be made from micro blocks. This might allow for more detail on a ship, but it would also force the ship sizes to decrease by the same amount.

Or, if its easier to comprehend, just make your astronauts model 2x larger. That's pretty much the same effect. I *have* mentioned this to schema in the past, and he wasn't keen to do this.

 

[HerrColonel]

The arguement can be pushed in the other direction, if you consider our current blocks on a smaller scale, to get those micro blocks. Why bother making the 1m^3 blocks then, when they can just be made from micro blocks. This might allow for more detail on a ship, but it would also force the ship sizes to decrease by the same amount.

Or, if its easier to comprehend, just make your astronauts model 2x larger. That's pretty much the same effect. I *have* mentioned this to schema in the past, and he wasn't keen to do this.

Yes when i was saying about the 0.5m^3 blocks I just meant blocks twice more small from the player point of view, but increasing the player's size would be much easier. I'm not the one building insanely big ships I have no time for that so I can't defend the big ship builder interest. But me, I like to design quite small ships like the one on my avatar: http://s22.postimg.org/vdsknk9qp/starmade_screenshot_0021.jpg
from front: http://s3.postimg.org/rq038y0cy/starmade_screenshot_0024.jpg
(with me as pilot: http://s1.postimg.org/pvlo6gr4u/starmade_screenshot_0026.jpg)
cockpit: http://s23.postimg.org/ihq6773mi/starmade_screenshot_0025.jpg

I build big stations, too. Here my espace pod launch bay: http://s30.postimg.org/yr63t6j6o/starmade_screenshot_0027.jpg

Why I'm showing you this is: We can not build things that fit better with the player's size (I mean, IRL we do nuit build chairs this tall). But it's not the topic of this forum so I'll stop here.

Edit: doors have kinda the same problem
Edit 2: I feel that's why starmade is so much "build mode"

 

[NeonSturm]

I see ONE issue with big blocks is the quality relative to the player as-well.
You can build 20m ships and 2000m ships, but you can not add twice the detail right now.

I see ANOTHER issue by having a decent detailed ship not fitting into a crater which spans over a whole planet-plate.
But using 4x blocks on planets would generate lag.

The problem with copy+paste big templates is, that you can't choose between templates like you can do for small wedges or different block types.


And now imagine a 4x4x4m computer with the same texture as a 1x1x1m computer and rate my post funny cause of this sentence :D