Read by Council Bearing Block and Ball Joint needed

[GRHayes]

Currently we have two axis both are powered one is the turret axis the other is the rotators.
What we could use is a bearing block. A free axis that could used for things like linking train cars or other stuff.

A second good block to add would be a ball joint this wouldn't just rotate on one axis but could turn several degrees on all axis.

 

[nightrune]

Both of these would be neat.

 

[GRHayes]

Both of these would be neat.

Yep countless things could be made using it besides towing other stuff. Used for countless stuff in real life.
I sure with people's creativity on hear the uses will be insane.

 

[Awdred]

This is a really cool idea, but I don't know if ball-joints would be efficient in a voxel based game.

 

[jayman38]

Would the ball-joint include rotation, or would we need a separate free-rotation block? If it will free-rotate in all axes, you would not need a separate free-rotate block. On the other hand, it would be interesting to somehow limit the axes that could rotate. For example, maybe you don't want it to be able to twist, but you want it to be able to rotate up and down and side-to-side.

Maybe to provide sufficient flexibility, it needs to be a free-rotate block that rotates along a single (2D) axis, and then you can implement multiple of them, rotated to different axes, in the order you choose.

 

[NorseEngineer]

How about a serpent ship, I'd name mine jormungandr, equipped with swarm missiles in each part of it, connected with wireless. Should be effective for clearing out fleets of small ships.

And an addition to the suggestion: tethering beam, placed on each entity it would tie them together, targeted from the parent ship to the "wagon", it should be a bit stretchy, to avoid collision when turning etc.

 

[Lukwan]

Or...keep it simple. How about a hinge instead. This would be much simpler to implement and still allow for for some cool contraptions. While we are at it...a slider block. The slider would allow for basic rail-like motion but with no logic control at all; just an anchor block that slides along it freely. (Maybe with a little dampening too.) Think of the machines you could make with those two plus standard rails. Roller coasters would be one step closer to being viable.

 

[godmars]

Was trying to make something for SCIENCE and pretty much hit a wall since you can't link rails with rail turrets for more complex movement. Bumping this since I think it'd massively help in more creative turret design, among other things.

 

[ToasterBorst]

Like the idea, though not sure I see it as viable.. but then again, the team is always surprising us.

That said, there are people out there building fully articulated mechs and stuff.. you might be surprised what you can do with the existing blocks if you really put your mind to it.

 

[Lukwan]

Recently saw the trailer for 'Scrap-Mechanics'
They have a very clever bearing unit for logic-hinges. The super-cool bit is the way the logic can be easily programmed in a series
of ten logic-steps. example: 'Do this...then do that...then do that again...go back to beginning.'

This one programmable logic-block and a controller unit can do almost everything needed for transforming mechs that walk etc.
roller-coasters, assembly lines, wheeled vehicles and articulated doors.

 

[kiddan]

Maybe to provide sufficient flexibility, it needs to be a free-rotate block that rotates along a single (2D) axis, and then you can implement multiple of them, rotated to different axes, in the order you choose.

This is probably the easiest to implement, working like a turret axis but setting the center of mass for the docked ship to just in-front of the dock and allowing it to move around freely with the dock as a parent.

 

[godmars]

Like the idea, though not sure I see it as viable.. but then again, the team is always surprising us.

That said, there are people out there building fully articulated mechs and stuff.. you might be surprised what you can do with the existing blocks if you really put your mind to it.

Not that im disagreeing with you, but have you seen how humongous those things need to be to get that kind of articulation?

Even then, you are sacrificing a lot of functionality to get to that level, not to mention all the clutter you have to account for with all the additional cores at smaller scales. Since we're talking about mechs, ill use this as an example:

Spoiler

You could replicate something that transforms like that easily enough until you get to the arms. Since rails are limited in turning on a single axis, if you wanted them to be a turret(upper arm vertical axis, lower horizontal) they wouldnt be flush with the fuselage and would jut out awkwardly since we don't have anything currently that emulates the a wider range of movement such as the joints of the shoulders, elbows, wrists,etc