Acid Model for Salvage Beams

[EricBlank]

Something i thought would be a huge improvement to designing salvage/mining vessels is applying the acid damage model to salvage beams, so they harvest not just the block theyre pointed at but the blocks around it. Then we dont need to use a waffleboard pattern to make sure we're mining effectively, we can use just one beam and expect it to scoop up everything in radius of it. Could even limit it to one output per computer then, and not have to worry.

You could come up with any number of ways to do it mechanically speaking, but thats the gist of what i feel would really help the matter. This would also mean the mining ai wouldnt have a panic attack from using too many outputs anymore, while still being able to mine at the faster rate having multiple outputs provides. They just have to aim, fire, and wait for the cycle to complete, then choose a new target.

 

[madman Captain]

I dosent even understand why this isnt even in the game already?

 

[MacThule]

I've seen this come up a few times now since acid was implemented; it seems a logical step.

There may be some hesitance to abandon the current mining system because it's complex and rewards engineering. There may be a compromise somewhere. I think that with a slow rate of acid spread, waffle-arrays could still speed mining while not being completely necessary for relatively effective mining.

 

[StormWing0]

Why not have several different salvager types using the combos? No secondary = works as normal, Cannon Secondary = acid damage, Beam = lockon arcs the beams have, Missile = Swarm of tiny drones slamming into blocks mining them and coming back to the ship???

 

[OfficialCoding]

Why not have several different salvager types using the combos? No secondary = works as normal, Cannon Secondary = acid damage, Beam = lockon arcs the beams have, Missile = Swarm of tiny drones slamming into blocks mining them and coming back to the ship???

Yeah I've wanted Latch-on salvage for a while. This is a good idea.

 

[Ratchet Hundreda]

Didn't see such a good suggestion in a while! This is a really good idea.

 

[Captain Fortius]

Imagine the performance gains if instead of several thousand salvage beams, the game only had to draw one thick beam scaled to the dimensions of your salvager array.

Pretty sure the populace of a whole server combined would use less beams than a single super-salvager does now.

 

[EricBlank]

Thats actually one of the things i thought would be an important benefit, but we also have to consider how much cpu usage calculating acid damage of an array of any size and correctly awarding minerals and blocks from the target compares to calculating 200+ current salvage beams and tracking their resource transfer. So there might only be one beam but there are five hundred blocks per tick being affected by your single ginormous array. Will that be better or worse, im not sure because i havent seen any raw data on server hardware/bandwidth usage or anything, you know? So if one acid beam is more resource intensive than a hundred smaller beams maybe we'll have to limit salvage computers to one output total by default, or leave it as-is, which kinda sucks in shipbuilding terms, where it can be difficult to fit the desired number of groups of the correct size in there without error. Some people would like multiple outputs for aesthetic reasons im sure, maybe theres a way secondary outputs can be cosmetic only or something. And some people of course like the challenge engineering multiple coherent parallel beams provides.

Does anybody know how much resources the new (acid) damage beams take up versus an array of equal size salvage beams split into optimal-sized groups?

 

[Captain Fortius]

All I know is, I have a ship in progress with two automatic sweeper salvage arrays of 1534 outputs each, and when I turn it on, the game drops from the 60 fps limit to 15 without touching anything.

It doesn't make a difference if it actually hits something salvageable, so as long as any new area of effect salvage model doesn't eat up more blocks per tick than a comparably sized waffle array does today, it should be a clean gain.

 

[Cluwne]

IIRC the acid damage model was originally made to lighten the load from dozens of blocks getting turned into space dust in less than a second.
Common sense tells me that this would also help with 381e92 outputs melting the server every time you use that array.
With single-output humongous salvage blob, even if the amount of blocks disappearing every second stays the same, it's that much less raycasting shenanigans to eat up server's bandwidth and CPU cycles.

 

[aceface]

i think its a good idea but should maybe be a part of a more advanced salvaging overhaul, i dont like the idea of removing how they currently work in that salvage beams are very specific, sometimes maybe you want to salvage very specifically, cant really do that with acid.

 

[Cluwne]

In that case you just use a smaller salvager that only removes single block per tick.
I wouldn't mind a thorough overhaul of the salvage system though. Like replacing "salvage" with "mining" for starters. Whenever do we actually salvage anything? It's not like we have derelicts (yet) to gobble up.


On a related note, do we even need to physically mine blocks? Wouldn't it be easier to have asteroids contain ore within their entity, like a container that you suck the ore out of with salvage system? Just wondering.

 

[Captain Fortius]

sometimes maybe you want to salvage very specifically, cant really do that with acid.

I'm told gold miners only really want to mine the gold, yet 99.9 % of the stuff they dig up is something other than gold.
Same with any other minerals, percentages may vary.

True, right now in Starmade you can build a single line salvager to aim at a specific block. Sort of. You'll always hit at least a little bit of stuff around or behind it, but yes, your idea is mostly okay; collect only the shinies.

This complaint falls short though, because you may just as well build a huge checkerboard salvager that snuffs up an entire planet; it too will fail to collect specific blocks just like a thick beam with an area of effect.
So too would you be able to build a thin beam with no AOE and keep collecting stuff selectively.