A Solution To Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Lecic]

For those not aware, the current meta, in both power 1.0 and power 2.0, is kilometer wide ships made of "spaghetti strands" of power reactors or conduits with the rest of the systems spread widely in small segments, the majority of the ship's volume being composed of vacuum.

Here's my proposal to fix this up.

Step One: Give a maximum range as well as a minimum range to stabilizers so there is a range they must actually be placed in to work. This makes it so the reactor and stabilizer must be a combined unit, making it harder to spread the ship out into spaghetti strands. Compare this to something like the internals and inert protective shell of a real world nuclear reactor.

Step Two: Conduits should follow the resistance rules of real wires. Longer and thinner conduits should have increased resistance, reducing the amount of power that gets to their system. For an average normal ship, which might be roughly 30x30x300 and weigh a few tens of thousands of mass, this isn't a problem as they can just make their conduits a little thicker for their systems on the absolute far end of the ship. For a 30k mass spaghetti ship that might cover a kilometer and a half, however, this is hellish abuse on power efficiency or on their thin profile when they need to make their conduits into 10 meter thick columns to cross such a vast distance.

Step Three: All systems (weapons, shields, thrusters, turret docks and enhancers, etc) should require a conduit connection. This is the final nail in the spaghetti monster's coffin, as it can no longer rely using gulfs of empty space between each individual thruster and shield. Each system group would need its own thick conduit leading to it or it will have to rely on "wireless power" which will have heavy debuffs or efficiency loss, and if they have to lead conduits to all their spread out groups in the first place there's no longer a reason to build spaghetti, because it's become so solid with conduit lines that it would be more efficient and "meta" to just build a normal ship.

So, what do you think? Good way to get rid of this fellow?

 

[GnomeKing]

[Simply having a rule that all blocks must touch at least one other block would also achieve something similar in regard of Spaghetti maybe]

I really like the extra dynamics of conduits suggested here, particularly because it relates to fundamental principles in energy and physics; - But would it be feasible in game with 1m size blocks ?:/.

Also i like the freedom to imagine that various kinds of power might be used - like some kind of 'stabilizers', maybe conduits can be used to buff or fully maximize power, rather than as fundamental requirement. In this concept, exotic alien spaghetti-entities are possible (ie good for diversity) but much lacking in power/danger as an actual war ship.

 

[DrTarDIS]

How can you get rid of something that only exists in extremist theory? Honestly, with my refit and naked-systems testing so far i don't really find anal-bead ships to be overtly viable let alone likely prevalent.

Don't get me wrong, I think stabilizers are reetarded**, that chambers should take over the stabilizer slot (eg be distance-based for number of modules), that all systems should have negative hp that makes a ship "more fragile" the more to the envelope's corner it gets, and that people shouldn't expect to bring a dingy to a ship fight...but I just don't see it myself. If I'm wrong and ugly heads rear more than noob-cubes I'll gladly bow out.

I could go either way on conduits. That seems like an interesting engineering challenge to add, particularly with sub-chambers since you don't want to run a 20 amp utensil of another 20 amp utensil on a 20 amp circuit.

**THE FORUMS NOW EDIT YOUR WORDS ON THE FLY FOR UNICORN-DUST SNORTING SNOWFLAKES, WITHOUT THE EXTRA 'E" this becomes "spaget"

 

[GnomeKing]

[btw, if i could make a googley eyed tentacle ship as pictured, i most assuredly would ]

 

[GDPR 302420]

I came to this thread hoping for a spagetti-code joke.

I am very dissapointed.

But in terms of the actual suggestion, it seems pretty solid.

 

[Dire Venom]

Some intersting ideas here.

Step One: Give a maximum range as well as a minimum range to stabilizers so there is a range they must actually be placed in to work. This makes it so the reactor and stabilizer must be a combined unit, making it harder to spread the ship out into spaghetti strands. Compare this to something like the internals and inert protective shell of a real world nuclear reactor.

Can't you simply just create long conected reactor strands with stabilizors strands alongside them:? As far as I know theres nothing which forces reactors to be in a centeral clump, nor stabilizors.

Step Two: Conduits should follow the resistance rules of real wires. Longer and thinner conduits should have increased resistance, reducing the amount of power that gets to their system. For an average normal ship, which might be roughly 30x30x300 and weigh a few tens of thousands of mass, this isn't a problem as they can just make their conduits a little thicker for their systems on the absolute far end of the ship. For a 30k mass spaghetti ship that might cover a kilometer and a half, however, this is hellish abuse on power efficiency or on their thin profile when they need to make their conduits into 10 meter thick columns to cross such a vast distance.


Step Three: All systems (weapons, shields, thrusters, turret docks and enhancers, etc) should require a conduit connection. This is the final nail in the spaghetti monster's coffin, as it can no longer rely using gulfs of empty space between each individual thruster and shield. Each system group would need its own thick conduit leading to it or it will have to rely on "wireless power" which will have heavy debuffs or efficiency loss, and if they have to lead conduits to all their spread out groups in the first place there's no longer a reason to build spaghetti, because it's become so solid with conduit lines that it would be more efficient and "meta" to just build a normal ship.

Solid idea. Still it kinda kills all designs which don't have diretly conected parts, not just cloud ships. You can't really connect between docked entities I don't think :/ It would kill off a number of my more creative designs (no Spaghetti monsters), thus a sensible but really painfull sugestion.
Also I personaly wouldnt want to have to build a conduit to every little shield block that I used to fill in space with XD Would be a bit of a nightmare trying to do the ship plumbing.

So, what do you think? Good way to get rid of this fellow?

Certiantly some good ideas to start off, but I'm a bit amprehensive of other designs as well as building being killed/large plumbing required. Once starmade is better developed (crew,weapons update, etc) more solutions might become avliable. Unfortunatly that is probably off in the far future.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Once starmade is better developed (crew,weapons update, etc) more solutions might become avliable. Unfortunatly that is probably off in the far future.

100% meaningless response.

People play this game now, today. We need solutions now, today.

 

[Jojomo]

I think this both achieves Schine's power 2.0 goals, and kills off spaghetti meta.

 

[Dire Venom]

100% meaningless response.

People play this game now, today. We need solutions now, today.

True :P Basicaly my way of saying I have no idea how to fix some of the broken crap without breaking more bits XD
Thanks for kicking some sense into me ^_^

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

Step One: Give a maximum range as well as a minimum range to stabilizers so there is a range they must actually be placed in to work. This makes it so the reactor and stabilizer must be a combined unit, making it harder to spread the ship out into spaghetti strands. Compare this to something like the internals and inert protective shell of a real world nuclear reactor.

Step Two: Conduits should follow the resistance rules of real wires. Longer and thinner conduits should have increased resistance, reducing the amount of power that gets to their system. For an average normal ship, which might be roughly 30x30x300 and weigh a few tens of thousands of mass, this isn't a problem as they can just make their conduits a little thicker for their systems on the absolute far end of the ship. For a 30k mass spaghetti ship that might cover a kilometer and a half, however, this is hellish abuse on power efficiency or on their thin profile when they need to make their conduits into 10 meter thick columns to cross such a vast distance.

These two ideas right here. I absolutely love this concept. It's definitely a good middle for this whole debate on stabilizers, and it still provides the player with no restrictions, but varying punishments.

Step Three: All systems (weapons, shields, thrusters, turret docks and enhancers, etc) should require a conduit connection. This is the final nail in the spaghetti monster's coffin, as it can no longer rely using gulfs of empty space between each individual thruster and shield. Each system group would need its own thick conduit leading to it or it will have to rely on "wireless power" which will have heavy debuffs or efficiency loss, and if they have to lead conduits to all their spread out groups in the first place there's no longer a reason to build spaghetti, because it's become so solid with conduit lines that it would be more efficient and "meta" to just build a normal ship.

Unless I'm misunderstood, I think this contradicts your purpose. While I do like this a lot as well, there will still be some sort of "spaghetti" concept if all of the connected systems were spread apart rather than closer together or all in one spot.

 

[Non]

I like this idea under a few conditions. First, the minimum and maximum range should be relatively short, and of course always be realistic numbers, meaning that the min and max will include enough space to actually allow full stabilization. Second, I tend to make all of my damage turrets free floating with full rotation in all directions, which from my understanding is not cheating or unfair, so requiring a conduit for decent performance would hurt me a lot, so maybe consider letting turret docks off a little easier on that efficiency loss.

Those are my only real complaints, this idea is decently solid besides those. It would definitely stop spaghetti ships and such.

 

[Jarraff]

I like this idea. It seems like a maximum reactor stabilizer distance could be implemented with little trouble if it were based off of block count or mass. Kind of like a Goldilocks zone for stabilizer distance.

Lecic I am not even sure if you were thinking of a sliding scale for reactor distances. Or a fixed min/max distance.

The conduit system you describe would also be great. But would be harder to implement. With the connection system in place for chambers it might not be.

Seems like a solid idas and solution.

 

[Ithirahad]

Well, I hit 'agree,' but there's basically no way in hell this is going to get implemented. I don't know if the conduit thickness calculations are even possible, and if they are, then regardless, some people (incl. in Schine) seem pretty squeamish about the addition of conduits for some reason I can't possibly fathom.

 

[AssIn9]

I like. But can we just fix breakoff? Then a spaghetti ship gets hit once and looses lots of parts.

 

[Lecic]

How can you get rid of something that only exists in extremist theory? Honestly, with my refit and naked-systems testing so far i don't really find anal-bead ships to be overtly viable let alone likely prevalent.

Only in extremist theory? Really?

I highly suggest checking out Zyrr and @Kubulon's works. Spaghetti ships exist and are extremely effective. It's a relatively new meta arising in a very low activity period and no one actually deploys these on servers at the moment, but it could easily become a problem in the future if less respectful people decided to use these outside of build server combat tests. I would prefer to nip it in the bud before it actually becomes a problem.

Unless I'm misunderstood, I think this contradicts your purpose. While I do like this a lot as well, there will still be some sort of "spaghetti" concept if all of the connected systems were spread apart rather than closer together or all in one spot.

Spaghetti isn't an effective building tactic when you need a huge number of strands. Spaghetti works by being comprised of widely spaced narrow strands for grouping systems and hundreds of floating dots for systems that require no grouping. By requiring all systems to have connections and requiring thicker connections the further a system is, you make spaghetti unviable because it can no longer BE spaghetti.

 

[therimmer96]

All systems (weapons, shields, thrusters, turret docks and enhancers, etc) should require a conduit connection.

I don't even care if this is for balance reasons, I suddenly love you.

 

[Lancake]

Well, I hit 'agree,' but there's basically no way in hell this is going to get implemented. I don't know if the conduit thickness calculations are even possible, and if they are, then regardless, some people (incl. in Schine) seem pretty squeamish about the addition of conduits for some reason I can't possibly fathom.

Physically connecting every system group with a touching block-line to your reactor is quite a task.
Protecting them (shields/armor/good location) requires much more effort.

It's hard to see whether you like that or not till you try it out. Also depends on what the consequences are if a conduit is severed, complete system loss or just a "penalty" applied which is much softer in punishment.

I like the extra depth that it adds, but I dislike the method being used to get that as there's plenty of frustration if you have to do it all manual. There's most likely a middle ground where the frustration part is eliminated and it's not a lengthy process to just get it all to work (not efficient till you start knowing how to better build ships).

----

Got some remarks and questions about OP's suggestion:

1. Step one, can you not build the reactor in a line/plane and same for the stabilizer and have those 2 groups parallel to each other? That will stay within the sweet spot area, not sure what this would do.
   
   
2. Step two, this seems needlessly complex as each system would require different thickness of conduits. Don't think the game can easily figure out the thickness either although you could estimate/average it out but still, not exactly a predictable result.
   
   Would it not be better to just require a touching line but every conduit in use drains a little power? And severed conduits (by damage) would put penalties of the previously connected system.
   
   The result would be that you could still connect far away systems but have to sacrifice quite a bit of power to get it there, something larger ships would be more OK with considering you have more power to work with. You would want your conduits to be as short as possible to reduce the power loss. You would also want some conduits to be thicker perhaps to reduce the chance of having a total severed conduit by a lucky shot. You could even do a conduit interlaced with armor.
   
   That's something we would have used before when we considered linking chambers/reactors/stabilizers and even systems.
   
   
3. Step tree, I believe this would be too much for most to handle. Some stuff may need to be linked with others, but you can always use group block count vs group dimensions buff system to encourage people to build it denser and not spread out all over the place.
   
   That would most likely get rid of predictability though...perhaps if the most optimal shape has some buffer area where its pretty much linear scaling, and when you go into the "long lines in huge dimension" or "long lines intertwined within a relatively small dimension box", then it would quickly lose efficiency and become "unpredictable" but that's OK, as it would be a situation you normally wouldn't want to be in.

EDIT: There's some "exploit" here too. You can technically use your group stretched out to reduce the amount of conduits needed, at least for systems and not for the stabilizers as they have an efficiency loss over distance and you can simply consider the whole group as the "least efficient block of the group" in that case.

For example, a long shield line could lead towards the reactor and pretty much touch. Then you only need a single conduit to connect them when your shield line is still huge and all over the place.

 

[Edymnion]

I don't care for conduit thickness, but I do greatly approve of requiring actual wiring of systems to the reactor via physical blocks. I've wanted that since I first started playing. I like the idea of being able to sever important power supply lines in combat, and to specifically be able to target "power distribution network" as a way to disable a ship instead of brute force destruction of said systems.

I touched on some of this stuff here: Stabilizer Alternative: Containment

 

[Lecic]

I like. But can we just fix breakoff? Then a spaghetti ship gets hit once and looses lots of parts.

Breakoff induces a lot of problems with decorative design. I'd prefer if we could solve spaghetti without it, but it would definitely help. Making small broken off parts just turn into debris rather than having them be physical entities would help with that.

Would it not be better to just require a touching line but every conduit in use drains a little power? And severed conduits (by damage) would put penalties of the previously connected system

My problem with this is that it also debuffs perfectly normal large ships. Mine is mostly harmful just to spaghetti.

Step one, can you not build the reactor in a line/plane and same for the stabilizer and have those 2 groups parallel to each other? That will stay within the sweet spot area, not sure what this would do.

A plate or stick reactor would have a lot more surface area to cover with stabilizers, especially since stabilizer distance would be the same regardless of block arrangement.
Let's say a 125 block reactor has a stabilizer distance of 5. A 5x5x5 cube reactor with a cube shell (not optimal but easier for my calculations) would be a 15x15x15 cube with a surface area of 1350. Compare this to a 125m long stick reactor, which would need an 11x11x135 shell with a surface area of 6182.

I'm realizing now my OP isn't entirely clear on this, I am suggesting that reactors need a full stabilizer shield to reach maximum stability and effectiveness. This makes spaghetti very ineffective as it will quickly grow huge, compared to normal ships which can keep their reactor shells relatively compact.

For example, a long shield line could lead towards the reactor and pretty much touch. Then you only need a single conduit to connect them when your shield line is still huge and all over the place.

Hmm, this is a very good point. I'll have to think on how to fix this. Anyone have any suggestions for how to fix using systems as conduits to avoid distance debuffs?

Perhaps you could apply the resistance debuffs to within system clumps as well.

 

[AssIn9]

In the current dev build, for example. break-off doesn't seem to affect the ship until shot. but i also haven't test shot anything this week. I will shoot a flying spaghetti monster ship when i get around to it tonight with break off on.