Rail Mass Enhancers

you can see the rail mass system as this:

There is a default Load than a Rail system can carry
Rail mass enhancer is to increase the max limit of load

So it works like shield, no need logic, no need connection
It place on a ship and it will work, increase the max load while using some power

EndoSkull said:

Right.
But as I read the use - the enhancement is based on the Mass of the MAIN Ship - not the Mass of the docked ship - and applies to all rail systems on the MAIN ship - not a specific Rail System.

This is my understanding.

If that is correct - my massive ship rail system will take many enhancers to speed up the rail system - if that's so - it doesn't make sense to me.

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i have no idea where you saw this
but you should read this: http://star-made.org/news/starmade-v0-19226-rail-system-and-more

EndoSkull said:

"To combat this speed decrease, rail mass enhancer blocks have to be placed to increase the load every rail on the ship can take. These blocks do cost a little power."

Right this makes sense - I must have misunderstood one of the videos I watched...
I'm guessing the issue of speed maybe be limited in the configuration file - and I was expecting the enhancer to dictate speed boosts.

Thanks for the responses.

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you are welcome :D

Do these work on space stations? Ie my station rails are very slow...will these help with bigger ships?

EndoSkull said:

Right this makes sense - I must have misunderstood one of the videos I watched...

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There was at least one earlier video where they said that the mass enhancers went on the docked vessel to lower it's mass, that might be what you were thinking of.

They have to be placed on the turret or docked ship.

NuclearHolocaust said:

They have to be placed on the turret or docked ship.

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This is not the case. They must be placed on the mother ship. Placing them on the turret does nothing.

There's currently a bug that prevents enhancers from working with chain docked entities. I learned that the hard way.

I just now got the latest version to load for me and tried the rail mass limits, and found that a 6-block ship can act as a parent for a 580k+ block ship. It moves extremely slowly on the rail, yeah, but isn't there supposed to be a point where something just can't be docked anymore?

edit; and turret axis rotation doesn't seem to care about the mass of the child at all in determining rotation speed. Damn, I was looking forward to that one.

So I have some very large turrets on my station mounted with the new turret docking units... so do I now have to add mass enhancers to the turrets to allow them to move quicker or are the turrets okay without them? Also, does anyone know the ratio of mass enhancers to ship mass? These rail mass enhancers are confusing and we need more info or videos about the details of how they work? Thanks

Darkduck said:

Do these work on space stations? Ie my station rails are very slow...will these help with bigger ships?

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Assuming you are talking about rail basics, as opposed to rotator rails this is because the current max speed of any entity on these rails is just slow. Hopefully it will get fixed. At the moment the way to achieve top speed is to place a speed controller on your station, link it to the rail(s) and one activation module that is turned on. This sets the speed to 100% instead of the default 80.

If the docked entity is too heavy (you should get a warning sign pop up when you get into the core) then you need to add mass enhancers to your station.

I guess the best way to explain it is by example:
I built a large shipyard with a docking gantry system that allows larger ships to dock with it then it moves into parking. It has extending catwalks and so on.
I placed the Rail Enhancers on the gantry so it would increase the load size of ships it could handle. The first time I docked with it without them the gantry moved extremely slow. I then added about 500 enhancers and it moves full speed.
You can't see the enhancers in the image but they are under the left and right center catwalks.
In short which ever side is using the rail not the docker is the side that needs enhancers on it.

EricBlank said:

but isn't there supposed to be a point where something just can't be docked anymore?

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No, thats how it was under the old system, and most servers I saw disabled it right out of the gate.

Your home base is invincible. Anything docked to your home base is invincible. Your base and all of your ships are left floating in open space when you log out. The *ONLY* protection for your stuff when you log out is to dock them to your base.

Without that, I honestly would not be playing StarMade, because I've had far too much experience with griefers to ever play a game where "Just leave all your stuff sitting out in the open and trust nobody to mess with it while you're gone" was the norm.

As long as docking to your home base is the only safe option in the game, then *EVERYTHING* needs to be capable of being docked to your base when you log out, regardless of it's size.

What I have experienced is Rail Turrets needs the base to have Mass Enhancers on them as well as the primary entity. Without them the very large turrets I was working on wouldn't move and would give the 0.01 percent movement warning on the battery.

(I think of turrets like tanks/turrets IRL, you have a Base (AKA, Swivel, ring, housing, frame, pivot) with the mounted weapon being the Battery) Battery needs no mass enhancers, but it seems the Base does, as well as the ship/station. If someone sees something different it would be great to compare notes.

zigyzigy said:

If the docked entity is too heavy (you should get a warning sign pop up when you get into the core) then you need to add mass enhancers to your station.

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So this is my situation, but sto far I have added 70,000 mass enahncers to the station and well, no joy, the ship is still 1% speed, now my other ship,
Mass 4754 - needed 2500 mass enhancers (tested prior to latest hotfix)
My Bigship is 27,000 mass, but so far needs over 70k mass enahncers with no joy. based on hte previous ship, I should need 50k mass enhancers but thats not the case grrr

might need to go with external side docking!

I'm having similar issues. I built some pretty large shield draining turrets to protect my base from large ships with huge amount of shield power, and when I dock the turrets to a two docking arm system, to achieve 3d axis rotation, they won't move to attack or target anything. I've added large amounts of mass enhancers to all sections, to compensate for the mass, and supplied plenty of power to account for the extra mass enhancers. I tested all this and it just seems that anything larger than an average sized turret will not move when docked to a two 2 axis rotational setup. I've recently been attacked and killed multiple times by big ships... and my large turrets just sit there doing nothing. ??? I hope this issue gets fixed soon.

In theory this is how its suppose to work
There is a max speed on the rails if your rail docked entities are heavier than a certain limit it moves slower. By placing more mass enhancers on the main body you increase the load capacity of each rail on the main body. (I assumes including chained entities but I'm not sure) Main body is a Station or ship. This will increase the speed of the docked entities up to the maximum limit once enough mass enhancers are placed. If you don't have enough mass enhancers your suppose to get a warning message. However see the bug in the last paragraph.

I can confirm that the default speed of the rails is slow. If you connect a rail speed controllers to one activation block that is on and the set of rails the speed increase. In my case a 50x50 door took around 35 seconds to open and with the speed controller set to 100% it took 17seconds so it looks like the default rail speed is around 50%. I wasn't getting any mass warnings. Either way this is a quick speed upgrade using 2 extra blocks. I had assumed default speed was maximum until I read one of the posts above and decided to test it.

However at the moment there is an existing bug
http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/2063
Basically either due to multiple rails or chained rails the docked mass is being calculated by multiplying the mass rather than adding. Making the docked mass far larger than almost any amount of mass enhancers can compensate for. In the example shown in the bug report the 5th docked entity's mass is multiplied by 16. Not sure if you get the warning message if its overloaded like this or not.