Dev Blog : March 30th 2015

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    VERY interesting....

    I guess I will need to start disassembling some ships in preparation.... This will truly change everything we've gotten use to when it comes to building.
     
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    Now that there is no space between the docked blocks, how will this affect
    I want to build off that and ask a similar question.

    With everything being flush now, how will that effect docked things that are flush moving out at an angle? For instance if you wanted to make an escape pod that is 3x3x3 fit into a 3x3x3 space. Will the game spazz out like it already does with collision? Will there be any limitations to avoid this?
     

    Lecic

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    I want to build off that and ask a similar question.

    With everything being flush now, how will that effect docked things that are flush moving out at an angle? For instance if you wanted to make an escape pod that is 3x3x3 fit into a 3x3x3 space. Will the game spazz out like it already does with collision? Will there be any limitations to avoid this?
    I believe ships have a grace period when they undock now where they will phase through the main ship instead of colliding with it, don't they?
     
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    I believe ships have a grace period when they undock now where they will phase through the main ship instead of colliding with it, don't they?
    I haven't even tried to make super tight docks recently so I wouldn't know. Still sounds kind of sloppy, but I wouldn't have a better solution honestly.
     

    kiddan

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    So, if the docks are planned to work like magnets now, does this mean in theory boarding an enemy ship can be a thing now if both ships had compatible docking points? I'm starting to feel the hype.
    Mmm, police could actually say "Please slow down and let us board!", and using the new chat channels too! :cool:
     
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    Always good to get in and comment first, means your questions are more likely to get answered, haha. Ok here we go.

    GET THIS MAN AN INTERNET! HES EARNED IT!

    I just have some concerns of the way we'll be docking. Will we be able to align to an entity with "C"? the only good thing about the old system was that we didn't have to deal with properly positioning our ships with the mothership if the mothership was facing some odd direction. We could just hit the docking port with the docking beam and boom, were docked and in alignment with the mothership.

    If we can't quickly align ourselves to our target then then i can definitely see the "experience" of docking becoming more frustrating than awesome. especially if the magnet aspect isn't particularly good.
    You will still be able to use a docking beam of sorts, but it won't be from the core and more likely associated with the block itself. The idea being that if you're in a complicated maneuver then you could beam from your docking block to the block you wish to dock to. Then, like a tractor beam, a docking sequence takes over which will bring you in for those two blocks to dock together. You will still be be able to dock through the alignment and pilot method but we recognise there are these situations so providing this alternative where it isn't an instant snap to dock, but a more sure-fire way of aligning and docking, is needed.

    Wow! I'm so exited about this whole thing! :D Will we be able to use the finalized docking system to make traps for enemy ships in fake warp gates? :p
    The area in which you align and are "pulled in" by the "magnets" isn't large enough for that sort of movement. And if the beam tractor animation was in play, it would ignore warp gate areas.

    Looks and sounds very awesome but makes me curious how it will apply to turrets as others have mentioned.

    Will the turrets be changed from 2-angle motions to a single angle to compensate for being flush against the hull or will the turret body clip inside the main ship body when elevating to target an entity?
    As I mentioned in the OP turrets is the least fleshed out part of all of this. From memory you will be able to split the different movement on the axis up but the exact way this will occur hasn't been set yet.

    So, if the docks are planned to work like magnets now, does this mean in theory boarding an enemy ship can be a thing now if both ships had compatible docking points? I'm starting to feel the hype.
    I'm unsure about this as if it is still factioned it would have restricted access to those points.

    This is all really cool, wireless logic, the gods have finally answered my prayers! <3 I do have a few questions though on the new docking system.

    Now that there is no space between the docked blocks, how will this affect the orientation ability of an AI turret in combat, for example if I place a turret on a horizontal hull surface, will it only be able to fire on the horizontal plane, or can it shoot upwards and at other angles?

    If I put a docked turret on an external rail system on the hull of my ship, will the AI automatically move the turret along the rail to reposition itself for a better view of it's target?

    Is a rail limited to a single plane, in essence, can I make the rail run along the ground and then up a wall on the same track?
    Turrets again I'm not sure I can answer much of this until the design of the new turret system is finalised. We also haven't considered the way the Bobby AI will treat rails, this obviously will be part of the development.

    Rails won't be restricted to single planes.

    I want to build off that and ask a similar question.

    With everything being flush now, how will that effect docked things that are flush moving out at an angle? For instance if you wanted to make an escape pod that is 3x3x3 fit into a 3x3x3 space. Will the game spazz out like it already does with collision? Will there be any limitations to avoid this?
    As mentioned above there's a tractor beam sort of pulling in the ship as part of the animation sequence when completing docking. We would be looking at the reverse for scenarios where we detected that collisions were being felt. So in your example, it would detect it's snug in that space and push the escape pod out until it was no long in collision with those walls, after which you take control and are able to pilot it away or whatever you want to do.
     
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    Wow just had some time to play around with it and I am quite impressed.

    You can now create actual docking arms for large ships and stations. The fact that you can just move the docking link means you can make adjustments on the fly as well, instead of having to carefully plan out docking areas for your ships.

    I think I just fell in love with this docking system...

    Question however....

    It long been requested that we should be able to "pick up" or grapple things and dock them to our ship without having to manually get out and do so... because the docking "magnets" will snap together, does this mean we will be able latch onto stuff with a pull beam or something and literally pick it up and fly away with it?
     
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    This is all very, very cool. I'm going to find it hard to wait patiently for all this cool new stuff.
     

    Auriga_Nexus

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    I like the idea of the magnet-snap docking, because it means you'll actually have to have a decent amount of piloting skill to dock a ship inside a closed bay as opposed to just flying in and right-clicking.

    Furthermore, the need to be properly aligned means that docking areas will need to have an approach vector set up... possibly one that is marked by lights? Furthermore, we can combine the wireless logic blocks with lights and area triggers to create a guidance system like the ones used in actual aviation, either based on the docking area (a la runway lights) or the approaching ship (a la ILS indicators). There will also be a need to ensure that ship docking configurations are able to be broadcast to incoming ships for public-use hangars... with the way this system works it favors custom docking configurations in which the docking bay and ship docking points are installed simultaneously to match.

    And of course, once the rail movement system is finalized, we can get to work on building catapult decks for our carriers. To be honest catapult decks work much better in a true Newtonian physics environment where the server's automatic drag coefficient is set to 0. As far as I know only one multiplayer server does that... but at any rate, having the catapult deck means your ship will already have velocity imparted onto it at the time it is released from docking as at that point it is traveling on the rails, making it easier to get up to top speed and bring the pain on those snubfighters running down the trench of your Death Star.

    But while everyone else is focused on docking and rails lets not forget the work the devs have done on pulse and toggle switches. I have three airlocks on my ship, by replacing the multi-block setups I have for pulse switches and RS-flipflop memory cells with the pulse and toggle switches (respectively), I can cut at least 15 blocks per airlock. So kudos there. I know it will be a while before we can consider LUA scripting blocks, but continued improvement on our already existing logic systems couldn't hurt. Hey, how about a delay block with a configurable timer? You press R to set the delay (in seconds) and when it receives a changed signal it updates and passes the signal on after that specified limit. That would make timers a thing more so than they are now. Given the configurable delay blocks may need more server memory to hold the extra info but since they can replace X number of regular .5 second delay blocks that problem solves itself in the end.
     
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    Wow just had some time to play around with it and I am quite impressed.

    You can now create actual docking arms for large ships and stations. The fact that you can just move the docking link means you can make adjustments on the fly as well, instead of having to carefully plan out docking areas for your ships.

    I think I just fell in love with this docking system...

    Question however....

    It long been requested that we should be able to "pick up" or grapple things and dock them to our ship without having to manually get out and do so... because the docking "magnets" will snap together, does this mean we will be able latch onto stuff with a pull beam or something and literally pick it up and fly away with it?
    in an ideal world you could ideally land and align your docking magnet with the other one and when they get within range then that container would snap onto your ship and you would be able to fly away with it. It does depend however on how we setup those initial blocks though to make sure you don't snap your ship to the container instead. So this one I will still need to confirm.
     
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    Well, I can only say that was an exciting read. If I understood correctly docking will become much more of a flying experience then an instant move in place when firing a beam from the core, very nice.

    On a whole there's a lot discussed to take in at once and some things probably take some time to get my head around, but it all sounds much more then just promising indeed. Keep up the good work guys. :cool:

    Greets,

    Jan
     
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    Wow, now I can finally dock my 5x5x5 lifeboat without having to make a 7x7x7 docking area! :D

    I have a concern though: When building a dock at the moment, all you need is the right number of docking enhancers and if the docking Ship is small enough, it's guaranteed to fit. With this update, you'll also have to worry about the shape of the Ship trying to dock, as well as where it has it's docking blocks positioned. This shouldn't be much of an issue for Docking Arms, but will likely lead to Hangars becoming much more tricky to make compatable with all Ship designs.
     

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    Wow, now I can finally dock my 5x5x5 lifeboat without having to make a 7x7x7 docking area! :D

    I have a concern though: When building a dock at the moment, all you need is the right number of docking enhancers and if the docking Ship is small enough, it's guaranteed to fit. With this update, you'll also have to worry about the shape of the Ship trying to dock, as well as where it has it's docking blocks positioned. This shouldn't be much of an issue for Docking Arms, but will likely lead to Hangars becoming much more tricky to make compatable with all Ship designs.
    It just comes down to design. There's no reason why you have to differ from how you are designing hangars at the moment, essentially any ship that would have fit in the space in the old docking area can fit in the new one, but it may just mean some more thinking about where the docking points are placed. With the rail system we might find that more people build landing gears that extend out because they're guaranteed to fit the designs of hangars if that's how people start laying out their docking areas.
     
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    I reckon we need a "universal docking collar" design. I suggest a 5x5 square (can be stylised), with a door 1-3 blocks behind it.
     

    therimmer96

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    I reckon we need a "universal docking collar" design. I suggest a 5x5 square (can be stylised), with a door 1-3 blocks behind it.
    The Elwyn staff refer to these as USD's (get it, USB?) for universal Staion docks because our current form are simply parking well
     
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    It just comes down to design. There's no reason why you have to differ from how you are designing hangars at the moment, essentially any ship that would have fit in the space in the old docking area can fit in the new one, but it may just mean some more thinking about where the docking points are placed. With the rail system we might find that more people build landing gears that extend out because they're guaranteed to fit the designs of hangars if that's how people start laying out their docking areas.
    True, I guess it really does come down to good design and planning, which is what this game is largely about. I just hope compatibility doesn't turn out to be as tricky as making the International Space Station was ;)
     
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    As I mentioned in the OP turrets is the least fleshed out part of all of this. From memory you will be able to split the different movement on the axis up but the exact way this will occur hasn't been set yet.
    Thank you for the response! I was just curious as to what direction things were headed. Thank you. :)
     
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    I reckon we need a "universal docking collar" design. I suggest a 5x5 square (can be stylised), with a door 1-3 blocks behind it.
    The Elwyn staff refer to these as USD's (get it, USB?) for universal Staion docks because our current form are simply parking well
    Great ideas, which give me another great idea: Docking adapters!

    Airlock not compatible with the Docking Arm on your best mate's Space Station? Build a small bridge with one of both types of docking area at each end and connect-up all 3 using chain docking! Just like adapting USB A to USB B :D
     
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    Great ideas, which give me another great idea: Docking adapters!

    Airlock not compatible with the Docking Arm on your best mate's Space Station? Build a small bridge with one of both types of docking area at each end and connect-up all 3 using chain docking! Just like adapting USB A to USB B :D
    That sounds very cool. Stations or very large ships could store docking adapter-ships and bring them out when needed.

    Of course, it would help if only a few different USD (adapting the term already) types were decided upon.
     
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    That sounds very cool. Stations or very large ships could store docking adapter-ships and bring them out when needed.

    Of course, it would help if only a few different USD (adapting the term already) types were decided upon.
    Probably different door sizes/shapes, and rounded edges or unrounded edges.