Astrotech and Heal gun usage

[SafetyBrick]

As my best friend Admiral Ackbar would say: ITS A TRAP; well... kinda i know shipyards have been talked up and theirs tons of suggestions and ideas out there for it but i didn't quite see this one(closest would be how to make astrotech useful). so to begin I'm gratefully sorry if your groaning right now.


Everyone has talked up shipyards…..module connects to storage and some time passes and a ship is made some how some way(yep, not going to talk about that). but what about a less advance function that has you use the heal gun or astrotech beam(as a turret) on a silhouette or ghost form of the ship being produced or even repaired(i would really like to see something for repairs). this would mean you would move the beam over the the ship and resources from your inventory would be pulled and applied so no worries about positioning or linking. the trade off is more time but less cost to build the automatic process. thoughts? opinions?

 

[toasts]

I'm confused, are you talking about replacing the blueprint spawing system?

~Toast

 

[thehappybub]

He's talking about effectively creating a completely new ship from a ship with an astrotech module which will use items from a storage container or your inventory. I guess that would allow for some cool "fighter swarm" carriers which could mass-produce small fighters. Though, that would require serious ai and fleet tweaking so that the fighters know how t get out of your hangar and stuff like that.

 

[SafetyBrick]

no not replacing the blueprint system. ill give an example for building. you get your blueprint and select it then you get a shadow or ghost preview of what it would be sorta like what you see when you use pasting currently in the game. you would then fly around it with the heal beam gun or target it with the astrotech turret. As the beam hits the block in that area of the preview it would pull the material from your inventory. another example would be if i'm missing a block or two from damage during combat i could go to it with my healing gun or astrotech and it would replace it for me as long as i had the materials on hand.

 

[CyberTao]

This is more or less the projector from Space Engineers if I had to guess (with the ghost image and such).
I imagine you'd be able to fix blocks and such with astro-tech and the repair beam (either with the Shipyard or the HP update).

As for creating a ship from the ghost image and building it block by block? I don't think we need that, because that is more or less the point of shipyards, to build ships. I imagine the spawn stations would also have a small shipyard to help with starting ships (Starting ships will actually be a thing I believe, could be remembering wrong).

I dunno, I don't see the point of it. Feels very SE-y to me, and that in particular was not something I enjoyed much.

 

[Trekkerjoe]

Honestly, while I do think astrotech beams should replace blocks, I can only see it trying to replace the outer shell of the ship since that is the first part of the blueprint it will hit. It would be difficult to code them to go from the center out, so even with the blueprint repair system you suggest, you would still only be able to repair hull fractures.

 

[SafetyBrick]

This is more or less the projector from Space Engineers if I had to guess (with the ghost image and such).
I imagine you'd be able to fix blocks and such with astro-tech and the repair beam (either with the Shipyard or the HP update).

As for creating a ship from the ghost image and building it block by block? I don't think we need that, because that is more or less the point of shipyards, to build ships. I imagine the spawn stations would also have a small shipyard to help with starting ships (Starting ships will actually be a thing I believe, could be remembering wrong).

I dunno, I don't see the point of it. Feels very SE-y to me, and that in particular was not something I enjoyed much.

I never got around to playing Space Engineers. was just trying to think of a lower tech way of making repairs besides a the shipyards while adding additional uses for the heal beam and Astrotech. i could see how it might seem tedious.

Honestly, while I do think astrotech beams should replace blocks, I can only see it trying to replace the outer shell of the ship since that is the first part of the blueprint it will hit. It would be difficult to code them to go from the center out, so even with the blueprint repair system you suggest, you would still only be able to repair hull fractures.

This, i didn't think of and your right the Astrotech would really only be useful on external blocks, the only other thing i could see is you'd have to go inside with the heal gun and as cyber noted might become annoying with larger ships?

 

[CyberTao]

This, i didn't think of and your right the Astrotech would really only be useful on external blocks, the only other thing i could see is you'd have to go inside with the heal gun and as cyber noted might become annoying with larger ships?

Well, the idea is that people will use shipyards to make ships, and shipyards would be placable on ships via the 'Capital Ship System' I would think.
That could leave using astro tech and repair beams to do field repairs, mainly just patching up the armour and maybe some internal systems. Being able to slave effects to a repair beam would work well (punch and pierce to fix internals - not currently a feature), and there is also the HP system to take into account with repairs.

This system worked well in SE, which needed blocks to be connected together, but I don't think it would work well in SM, where you could have free-floating blocks and sections.

I'm leaning away from being able to fully repair ships in the field without a shipyard, just because I feel like shipyards would be a major step towards proper infrastructure in SM. It would be annoying for those just starting out, but a public small shipyard at spawn fixes most of that. Building ships by hand should always be possible (not sure about Advanced build mode features).

I dunno, I'm probably just rambling.

 

[SafetyBrick]

I'm leaning away from being able to fully repair ships in the field without a shipyard, just because I feel like shipyards would be a major step towards proper infrastructure in SM. It would be annoying for those just starting out, but a public small shipyard at spawn fixes most of that. Building ships by hand should always be possible (not sure about Advanced build mode features).

I dunno, I'm probably just rambling.

sometimes the ramblings of one are enlightenment for others lol. if there was a small shipyard say at the trade guild shops i could see field repairs being less important.