Read by Council Liquid Nebula

[mindlord0013]

I've been playing a few nautical games recently, and love the "exploring the deep ocean" feel that you can get from some of them. The problem with adding true, "aquatic planets" to StarMade is that it is simply not very feasable. So I thought of way we can have that experience of exploring some deep oceans: Liquid Nebula.

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A Liquid Nebula would be similar to a planet, in that it's within a single sector within a system, taking up most of the sector. Like a planet, there could be multiple types of Liquid Nebula. Nebula would provide a variation and additional content to the game, while also increasing strategic diversity.

The base concept of the Liquid Nebula is a spherical zone, with three rings of "depth". The outer ring is the "Shallow Nebula", and the tied largest ring by area. The middle ring, and the tied largest area, is the "Deep Nebula", where most of the cool stuff is. The inner ring is the "Dark Nebula".

Instead of the Liquid Nebula being composed of a true "flowing liquid" or blocks that can be passed through, the zones themselves determine the interactions with objects, and the visual effects. All ships have greatly increased dampening within an asteroid, as well as having different acceleration and max speed formulae.

One of the problems that I found while working on this concept was as such: ships with interiors passing through the nebula would probably default to having the interior "flooded". So the logical solution would be that any fully enclosed space within a ship or station is "cleared" of the nebula. Anything inside a "cleared" zone has the visual and damaging effects removed within that zone. I don't know the logistics of the coding for this, but I know it would be difficult either way.

Within the zones, immobile, small asteroid-like objects spawn. In the Shallow Nebula zone, this could include colourful plant life attached to rocky objects and "islands" that slightly protrude from the surface of the nebula. At the Deep Nebula zone, the plant life is less colourful; at the Dark Nebula zone plant life is sparse and bleached white.

There could also be features for creatures that spawn exclusively in Liquid Nebula, or they could be the spawning/anchor location(s) for Space Whales/Leviathan :p. Space Leviathan could travel from one Liquid Nebula to the next.

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There could also be variations on the types of Liquid Nebula, each with different visuals, block types, creatures, and slightly different effects. Water Nebula would be the standard. Magma Nebula would spawn close to suns, and have no Shallow Nebula Zone (the Deep and Dark nebula zones moving out one ring). Feel free to suggest your own nebula types.

Liquid Nebula, in my opinion, are fantastic ways to add strategic diversity. Planets/bases are good for hiding astronauts, but a Liquid Nebula has the potential to hide medium - lagre ships.

Spoiler: More stuff and another infograph

I thought I would explain some of the reasoning as to why I thought having Liquid Nebula as sector types instead of a system type. First things first, I took a fair amount of creative license with the term "Liquid Nebula". Real life nebula can be very big, and are defined as 'interstellar collections of dust and ionized gas'. The Liquid Nebula I imagined would be a way to have aquatic planets in a way that adds some variety to gameplay. You could find them in a veriety of different ways in the galaxy. They could be found in small clumps, or orbiting a sun like a planet.

Having them as planet sized would be beneficial for strategy, especially for small-medium sized ships (ships up to 500m in size). Small to medium sized ships could use a Liquid Nebula to shake off a pursuer. Assuming identical max speed and acceleration, a ship entering a planet-sized Liquid Nebula has a fair chance of shaking off an attacker. Like I have said before, a ships inside a Liquid Nebula have lowered max speed, different acceleration curves, and increased dampening, and ships within a Dark Nebula zone are more or less undetectable from those outside the surface of the nebula. For the sake of balancing, let's say that you can't use a Jump Drive from inside the Dark or Deep Nebula zones (but you could build a warp gate inside those zones if you want).

The chased ship is keeping a constant distance from the pursuer. Entering a Liquid Nebula, the pursued is slowed but can hide in the Deep and Dark Nebula zones. If the purseur chooses to wait outside the Liquid Nebula, the pursued can effectively put a planet's distance between them, or they can safely charge a Jump Drive in the Dark Nebula zone, and jump away once they emerge into the Shallow Zone. If the purseur chooses to follow the chased ship inside the Nebula, they risk damaging their own ship, losing the target in the poor visibility, and the pursued ship can even set an ambush.

Large ships (ships over 500m in any dimension) would benefit less from a Liquid Nebula. Ships up to 1900 metres can still effectively benefit from the Deep Nebula zone of a 3000m aquatic Liquid Nebula, assuming there aren't any asteroid-things to get in the way.

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Please leave your thoughts on this below. I've probably left some things out, so ask some questions that can help clarify what I mean and imagine.

 

[CyberTao]

I think the hardest part of this would be for the game to recognize an entity that is not an entire sector having various effects on the ship. You could have the changes/debuffs be a sector-wide thing though, would probably be easier that way (and the Neb would take up most of it anyways). Squares are easier than circles in a cube-based game.

The different layers of the Nebula could be based off planet atmospheres as well, add a couple layers within each layer and you could make an interesting visual effect within the spheres.

I like the idea, might be a bit of a issue to create, but would be fun.

 

[mindlord0013]

I think the hardest part of this would be for the game to recognize an entity that is not an entire sector having various effects on the ship. You could have the changes/debuffs be a sector-wide thing though, would probably be easier that way (and the Neb would take up most of it anyways). Squares are easier than circles in a cube-based game.

The different layers of the Nebula could be based off planet atmospheres as well, add a couple layers within each layer and you could make an interesting visual effect within the spheres.

I like the idea, might be a bit of a issue to create, but would be fun.

The easiest way I could think of to work around that would be to create non-voxel objects for each zone (somewhat similar to the current planet cores). They could be non-tangible, but apply the effects to ships/astronauts/etc. within it's bounds. The fine tuning to make that work as you would expect it is not something I could come up with, with my limited technical expertise. But it's one simple way, of many I'm sure.

 

[NeonSturm]

Instead of the Liquid Nebula being composed of a true "flowing liquid" or blocks that can be passed through, the zones themselves determine the interactions with objects, and the visual effects. All ships have greatly increased dampening within an asteroid, as well as having different acceleration and max speed formulae.

+1
But I think a «Giant Gas Planet» would make more sense for just a sector.
Nebulaes would be system-sized with less effect on visuals and physics.

One of the problems that I found while working on this concept was as such: ships with interiors passing through the nebula would probably default to having the interior "flooded".

Or maybe just have zones by distance from the ship's collision-volume (from the view-port).

Within the zones, immobile, small asteroid-like objects spawn. In the Shallow Nebula zone, this could include colourful plant life attached to rocky objects and "islands" that slightly protrude from the surface of the nebula

Sounds to me like "Sky.Nation" - a game.

There could also be features for creatures that spawn exclusively in Liquid Nebula, or they could be the spawning/anchor location(s) for Space Whales/Leviathan :p.

+2 Best part of the idea!

 

[Criss]

Here's my thoughts on this. First a nebula should be much larger than a sector. It should probably be an entire system. A single nebula could house hundreds of stars. I think it would be reasonable to make it system size instead. As for the different effects, I think we should stay away from filling an entire sector with blocks. A single sector would have 125 billion of these liquid blocks. Probably not feasible to go beyond 15 million currently.

If it is system sized, then it would be easier to generate the different levels of density based on distance from the "star", just like planets and asteroids. Entering a sector could give us the effects, which is much easier for the game to figure out. A nebula should be hard to see through, though not as dense as say, the surface of jupiter. Maybe if can just be a screen filter that layers on top, and it gets more opaque as you travel to the core of the system. There should be a higher number of asteroids here, and if there is a danger in traveling through the nebula, then there should be valuable resources here like fuel or something.

To top it off, we already have generated nebula backgrounds. These would likely be planetary nebula and it shouldn't be uncommon to find a few near each other.

 

[mindlord0013]

Here's my thoughts on this. First a nebula should be much larger than a sector. It should probably be an entire system. A single nebula could house hundreds of stars. I think it would be reasonable to make it system size instead. As for the different effects, I think we should stay away from filling an entire sector with blocks. A single sector would have 125 billion of these liquid blocks. Probably not feasible to go beyond 15 million currently.

If it is system sized, then it would be easier to generate the different levels of density based on distance from the "star", just like planets and asteroids. Entering a sector could give us the effects, which is much easier for the game to figure out. A nebula should be hard to see through, though not as dense as say, the surface of jupiter. Maybe if can just be a screen filter that layers on top, and it gets more opaque as you travel to the core of the system. There should be a higher number of asteroids here, and if there is a danger in traveling through the nebula, then there should be valuable resources here like fuel or something.

To top it off, we already have generated nebula backgrounds. These would likely be planetary nebula and it shouldn't be uncommon to find a few near each other.

If you had more carefully read my post, you would see that the propsed Liquid Nebula would not bo composed of blocks.

Secondly, galaxies outside of the Milky Way were once considered nebula, but that has been reconsidered. A nebula is an "interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases". Like you have said, these are often very large. With that considered, the Liquid Nebula is something different. I've taken quite a bit of creative licensing with it in order to both make it feasable and a fun gameplay element that adds something to the game. "Liquid Nebula" is itself somewhat of an oxymoron. In this case, I'm using the term "nebula" in "Liquid Nebula" to mean 'an astronomical collection of similar particles', instead of a 'interstellar collection of ionized gases'. Thus, in this case, a "liquid nebula" is an "astronomical collection of liquid".

Like you say, "planetary nebula" is probably a good way to describe this idea. I could easily imagine 'clouds' of Liquid Nebula gathered.

 

[Megacrafter127]

I think the hardest part of this would be for the game to recognize an entity that is not an entire sector having various effects on the ship. You could have the changes/debuffs be a sector-wide thing though, would probably be easier that way (and the Neb would take up most of it anyways). Squares are easier than circles in a cube-based game.

Here is what I recommend:
1: have the liquid nebula be a sector-type
2: the calculations for a circle wouldn't be that hard in this case, since r²=(dx)²+(dy)²+(dz)². sums and multiplications aren't really performance heavy.

The only problem I have is with this:

Exposed systems periodically take damage

How to determine whether or not a system is exposed or in the interior?

 

[mindlord0013]

How to determine whether or not a system is exposed or in the interior?

Good question. Not one I have fleshed out myself. Having an algorithm to figure out which blocks are exposed and which aren't is one way, but I don't know how well that would work in practice. An alternative is that all blocks from ships take collision damage based off their armour rating. The reasoning behind all this is to have a tradeoff or risk for entering the Dark Nebula zone. you basically become cloaked and jammed, and exempt from scanners to those outside the Liquid Nebula. With other collision damage turned off, and making sure it's only ships that take collision damage, you could feasibly tear a big hole in your ship on an unseen rock while trying to hide/escape.

What do you think is best? Exposed systems take damage at that level, or just a blanket "things take damage based off how durable they are"?

 

[Criss]

basically become cloaked and jammed, and exempt from scanners to those outside the Liquid Nebula

Now that I like. I'd love to build a secret base inside a nebula.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Good question. Not one I have fleshed out myself. Having an algorithm to figure out which blocks are exposed and which aren't is one way, but I don't know how well that would work in practice. An alternative is that all blocks from ships take collision damage based off their armour rating. The reasoning behind all this is to have a tradeoff or risk for entering the Dark Nebula zone. you basically become cloaked and jammed, and exempt from scanners to those outside the Liquid Nebula. With other collision damage turned off, and making sure it's only ships that take collision damage, you could feasibly tear a big hole in your ship on an unseen rock while trying to hide/escape.

What do you think is best? Exposed systems take damage at that level, or just a blanket "things take damage based off how durable they are"?

Why not simply apply the damage from the outside to the inside using the bounding-box? (Oh god this is hard to explain in words)
Each of the entity's BB's sides is a split into a grid, each cell in the grid is the size of the side of a block. Each cell then "fires" it's damage towards the opposite side of the BB.
I know, perfect cubes are the best to resist that, BUT, the edges of the cube still take double damage(and the corners 3fold the damage), so the cube will quickly be "uncubed". (as a bonus, wedges, tetras, pentas and corners could probably reflect a part of their damage into the other (2) directions, to counter the fact, that they are usually exposed from 2 or 3 sides all the time)
That is pretty much the best I can come up with for implementing a general damage from the outside.

 

[mindlord0013]

Why not simply apply the damage from the outside to the inside using the bounding-box? (Oh god this is hard to explain in words)
Each of the entity's BB's sides is a split into a grid, each cell in the grid is the size of the side of a block. Each cell then "fires" it's damage towards the opposite side of the BB.
I know, perfect cubes are the best to resist that, BUT, the edges of the cube still take double damage(and the corners 3fold the damage), so the cube will quickly be "uncubed". (as a bonus, wedges, tetras, pentas and corners could probably reflect a part of their damage into the other (2) directions, to counter the fact, that they are usually exposed from 2 or 3 sides all the time)
That is pretty much the best I can come up with for implementing a general damage from the outside.

That is brilliant. I've been trying to think of something that would work like that. However, that wouldn't necessarily work for irregular shapes and ships that have areas covered by armour (if we're talking about system blocks being damaged only, e.g. power, shields, logic). This would almost certainly work for the calculation of which areas of the ships are exempt from "flooding", which may solve one problem at least.

 

[Megacrafter127]

that wouldn't necessarily work for irregular shapes and ships that have areas covered by armour

One cannot have it all when there are limited resources.

 

[mindlord0013]

I did a bit of image editing to what it might be like to come across a base hidden in Deep Nebula and Dark Nebula of an aquatic Liquid Nebula.

Deep Nebula

Dark Nebula

Station is the Trident Deep-space Outpost, by Jamster0000 http://starmadedock.net/content/trident-deep-space-outpost.2294/

 

[Criss]

That is much darker than I expected. The density of those clouds could almost give way to precipitation near strong sources of gravity.

 

[NeonSturm]

Deep Zone Nine :D

Why not simply apply the damage from the outside to the inside using the bounding-box? (Oh god this is hard to explain in words)
Each of the entity's BB's sides is a split into a grid, each cell in the grid is the size of the side of a block. Each cell then "fires" it's damage towards the opposite side of the BB.

Perhaps just calculate the total amount of hit blocks once.
Then look at the mass and use a fair multiplier in (blockDamage = hitBlocks / mass * mult) to make it always the same or scale with mass.

EDIT: shifted my above formula in a way that mult is solo at one side of the equation mark as some people refuse to use their brain.

• mult = blockDamage * mass / hitBlocks

 

[Megacrafter127]

Deep Zone Nine :D

Perhaps just calculate the total amount of hit blocks once.
Then look at the mass and use a fair multiplier in (hit-blocks / mass * mult) to make it always the same or scale with mass.

Until a block is destroyed, and everything has to be done over and over again.
Also, why exactly divide by mass? the maximum amount of hit blocks per entity is 2*(length*height+length*width+width*height), so dividing by mass, as it scales with volume, makes bigger entities immune per-se. Using the square of the 3rd root of the mass would work, but it'd be unnecessarily expensive. Besides, the pressure is force/area, the bigger the area, the greater the force, the greater the damage-potential[only force distribution within the pressurized entity can counteract that]. (From a realistic perspective)

 

[Jake_Lancia]

I did a bit of image editing to what it might be like to come across a base hidden in Deep Nebula and Dark Nebula of an aquatic Liquid Nebula.

Deep Nebula

Dark Nebula

Station is the Trident Deep-space Outpost, by Jamster0000 http://starmadedock.net/content/trident-deep-space-outpost.2294/

Yay my station was used
As for the idea itself, I do like it, but I see some problems with it being only one sector. For example, if the sectors are small then there would be a very small sphere of nebula which even medium ships might stretch all the way across.
Also, I have to agree that it would be a really good new type of system that could spawn, like wormhole-systems do currently, but could also spawn in the void (maybe??). It should not spawn stations in and any stations built inside should be completely hidden regardless if they're discovered or not, necessitating actual scouting missions inside and faction communication to assault a base inside. However maybe increased asteroid spawning inside the Shallow and Deep zones? It would make these zones highly desirable faction bases and nesessitate the defense of said zones.

 

[NeonSturm]

Also, why exactly divide by mass?

You have *mult to compensate for it.
You need the same total damage for all ships with the same mass, else peoples would start building doom-cubes again. ((You would have more shield-blocks below the hull area))

Besides, the pressure is force/area, the bigger the area, the greater the force

The more RP, the less accessible this area is? No good idea.

Perhaps just give a shield%nerf and absolute amount of damage to a ship (to limit by size) might be better balance-wise.

 

[Megacrafter127]

You have *mult to compensate for it.
You need the same total damage for all ships with the same mass, else peoples would start building doom-cubes again. ((You would have more shield-blocks below the hull area))

A fixed multiplier cannot compensate for that

 

[NeonSturm]

A fixed multiplier cannot compensate for that

You need different damage per block values for differently shielded ships. The totalDamage per mass-unit should stay roughly the same.
Perhaps some effect could increase shield resistance to give specialised ships an advantage (regenerating more than losing).

And although the hexahedron has half the amount of blocks of a cube, it also only recieves half the damage,

Why? If you count surface area, cubes are far superior. which post's math did you take to say that?