Celestial Core

Hi Schema and Schine,

I propose a new entity core design in the form of a Celestial Core for all entities.
This Celestial Core, would be neutral until you start building things like power and thrust systems. The moment you add such components, the structure menu would start to form along with HUD and core capabilities. I'm proposing to do away with separate ship cores, asteroid/planet cores and station blocks as we know now.

It may seem a huge ask or too hard basket, but please let me explain.

You could re-purpose the existing ship core and make it the basis of all celestial entity core design. This would be for all entities within the Starmade universe, that I like to refer to as Starmade Celestial Bodies (SCB). I chose the ship core because I see it as the most versatile core in the game. Another option could be to create/build a new core from the ground up with the same or similar properties and functionality, but that allows you to expand on for universal purposes. Basically, it would be used for every entity and not be limited to ships.

In game play, initially I see the celestial core would have no function apart from creating the central core of an entity for the blueprint. Whether it be asteroid, ship, station, planet, sun or black/wormhole. As with the ship core I guess you could probably allow it movement as with a single ship core now for familiarity with the player base. With the new ability to categorize a blueprint purpose, you could possibly use or expand on this for asteroid, station, planet, etc.

Giving the celestial core the ability to assume different visual appearance based on the entity type or purpose would be useful for in-game for ease of recognition. Like have it have look like the ship core with a lava appearance for planets/asteroids or a gas appearance for stars, nebula or different ship/station core appearances for active versus inactive as in derelict or damaged.


Development Benefits

• It could allow the devs to centralize the blueprint development a lot easier. Allowing for a team who could focus on the attributes, rules and properties, etc of a single entity structure without the cross-over and separation that occurs today handling separate types of entities like asteroids, ships, stations, planets, suns or black/wormholes.
• This could then allow Schine to have a team(s) dedicated to the universe mechanics that act on these entities, without having to worry about the properties of the entities themselves.
• I believe to move in this direction of development could provide great benefits to game development. And go towards reducing work between different streams of development overlapping or at the same time creating orphaned and limited development.

Addressing Certain Functionality Issues That Will Arise

• Entity Classification and ID in HUD or Map
  • This could be handled using transponder features in a block form (T block (Transponder) like a F/P block maybe?) to ID something specifically as a ship, station or whatever. Or perhaps an expansion on how computers function in game, making it a feature of a computer instead of a separate function itself.
• Station and other fixed entity Anchoring
  • To address the anchoring feature or ability that suns, black/wormholes, stations and planets have at the moment, I suggest a galactic anchor feature embedded in the celestial core. How I propose it to work would be with an option on the radial menu. This option could be turned on/off at any time. Perhaps allow it to be logically controller for additional game play options.

New Possibilities

• Blueprint libraries for everything from asteroids, ships, stations, planets and even stars, holes, nebula, etc.
• Rotation spin control or movement for all entities orbiting a larger mass
• Fragmentation of large entities into smaller, based on collision or contact. I know break-off already exists and that this could be processing intense, but the new missile swarming lag prevention development shows there must be a way to make it work.
• Component based spawn possibilities for stations along with planets, asteroids and ships. Imagine the ability to spawn a station that is always different from any other, because it is algorithm spawned from components. Or a planet or asteroid spawned with bases, cities, underground dwellings or space ports. Ships completely algorithm spawned based on type, like a freighter with different cargo pod configurations or a carrier with different craft in it's docking bays. You would only require components instead of having to have galleries of ships and stations.

Of course, all this pretty much tips a lot of the game development and play on its head. Separate features between all the different types of entities, like the difference between Stations and Ships for example would be handled from the entity. However, I believe this will not only simplify development, but game play and in game player building itself. Not to mention allow players to have various features that have been requested in the past like, mobile stations, station only systems working on ships and vice versa, ship/station/planet systems working on asteroids.

Sorry for the text wall. :/

Here is a good example of where a single celestial core could take us.
If we went with a single celestial core for everything in this game, players could build and submit blueprints for different types of stars as described here.
New Types of Stars

The different types of blueprints would need categorizing similar to the purpose of a ship being cargo, defense, etc.
Perhaps you could breakdown the blueprints into a subfolder structure under the blueprints folder to support different categories;

• Blueprints
  • Nebula
  • Stars
  • Wormholes
  • Black Holes
  • Planets
  • Moons
  • Asteroids
  • Debris
  • Ships
  • Stations

Elsewhere, you could have a folder structure for the system spawn controls like the NPC faction folders. These folders would contain config files containing algorithmic control over what collection of blueprint categories and their relationship to be spawned in the system. Like the following examples each blueprint item would be randomized;

• System Type: Void
  • 0 Nebula
  • 0 Stars
  • 0-1 Planets
  • 0-1 Asteroids
  • 0-1 Debris (fields?)
  • 0-5 Stations
  • 0-2 Abandoned Ships
• System Type: Nebula
  • 0-1 Nebula
  • 0 Stars
  • 0-1 Planets
  • 0-1 Asteroids
  • 0-1 Debris (fields?)
  • 0-1 Stations
  • 0-1 Abandoned Ships
• System Type: Star
  • 0-1 Nebula
  • 1-3 Stars
  • 0-5 Planets
  • 10-50 Asteroids
  • 0-2 Debris (fields)
  • 5-10 Stations
  • 0-2 Abandoned Ships

No doubt there are already mechanics in the game to make a lot of this happen already, but what I suggest is making it modular and player/admin configurable down to the smallest degree like we do with NPC Factions. Naturally allowing for defaults as we do with existing default NPC factions.

Just thought of another core profile.

Torpedo Core.
This would explode every block of the entity based on the effect computer(s) onboard and the number of modules.
Tip of the missile would be a single warhead that triggers the detonation of the entire entity.