Bigger Blocks for Bigger Ships

[rotrules1234]

Last year, I wonder about the possibility of the option of increasing the size of blocks. Here are the potential benefits and drawbacks of re-sizable blocks:

+Reduced potential lag from exploring any planet.

+Accelerates the designing of large projects

+Reduces the amount of RAM needed to render blocks and increase the Frames Per Second

+Damaged Weapon Systems could continue firing a single stream of projectiles instead of multiple streams of projectiles.

+Increases the potential size and blast radius of Warheads, making Titans less practical on the battlefield.

+Far more stable Multiplayer Servers.

-Unless the cutting torch is buffed, attempting to destroy an over-sized block of armor could take hours.

-Could increase the number of Titans on the battlefield, as large blocks allow quick designing of the titans.

-Could result in Ships with little to no shields in favor of super thick armor.

-If a ship is too big, it could constantly clip into any structures from different sectors.

What do you think about the idea of re-sizable blocks?

 

[Winterhome]

Just a simple "No." on the vote would be appreciated.

Besides, Starmade cannot support blocks that take multiple spaces. The engine is not built that way. We have actual voxels/boxels, rather than just 3d objects glued together on a grid like From The Depths and Space Enginers.

 

[rotrules1234]

If it's impossible for the game engine to include oversized blocks, there has to be a handful of partial workarounds such as modified planet cores and blocks projecting more blocks.

There are already voxel structures that are attached to a non-voxel entities such as the planet cores. Why not make it possible for players to collect the planet cores, modify them for the purpose of power generation, and attach the modified planet core to a star ship? The primary issues of modified planet cores involve figuring out if non-voxel objects could move or not, and making sure that the modified planet core does not detach from the ship upon travelling to another sector.

The other alternative for bigger blocks is to have one block project a surface area of blocks. Based on game play experience, I remember that having an excess amount of blocks within rendering distance of the player takes up significant amount of RAM. But with the theoretical projecting block, a single block could have the stats of any quantity of blocks of the same type as long the projected blocks take the shape of a six-sided polyhedron while taking damage for all projected blocks that make up the surface area of the polyhedron.

Even if we can't resize the blocks, we could at least try to mimic larger blocks by making use of any existing mechanics in the Starmade engine.

 

[Lecic]

The game engine does not work this way.

 

[Comradecolonel]

What would you even make the stats. Now you would need to balance volume with amount of blocls taking damaged. Not looking forward to any more balancing issues. We have enough to worry about.

 

[kiddan]

Just build a small ship and pretend you're an oversize human looking at it!

 

[rotrules1234]

Even the voters made a good point about scaling blocks. Not only Larger blocks could turn into a re-balancing nightmare, it's also potentially impossible to implement directly.

I'm having second thoughts of the above statement involving the balancing issues. There has got to be a way to counter titans made of large blocks.

Few Questons:

1. Should it be possible to collect planet cores and utilize them as a reliable source of power with the drawback of having only 10-100 million hp?

2. Is it possible in the game engine to attach non block entities to ships just like the astronauts?

 

[MeRobo]

I'm pretty sure this or something very similar has been suggested several times befor (different sizes of blocks etc.) and rejected evry time.

Another point against this is, that block size would probably take up a bit per block ID and therefor at least one bit would have to be taken away from something else (like the bit taken away from block HP in the latest update to acquire additional rotations and therefor toggleable light bars) which I don't think would be a good thing.
An alternative would be to have seperate block IDs for the large variants of blocks, but that would be even worse than the other way to get this I could think of (ignoring the limitations to 1 block sized objects).

The better performance argument for these blocks seems flawed to me. If a player can place a ridiculous ammount of small blocks, what stops them from placing the same ammount of large blocks?

 

[Lecic]

1. Should it be possible to collect planet cores and utilize them as a reliable source of power with the drawback of having only 10-100 million hp?

ONLY 10-100 million HP, huh?

Absolutely not. Planet cores are absolutely massive (the smallest possible size is still 100 meters across and most are larger than that) and would be extremely difficult to make look good on a ship due to their shape.

 

[Nickizzy]

Now besides ships, focusing on planets, this could be great for planet loading. Plates would be made of chunks(10,10,10) under the surface, and chunks turn to blocks once there is an empty space <11 blocks away; the top 20 blocks or so would be loaded, but under that they would only be generated by random seed once the surface is mined.

 

[Lecic]

Now besides ships, focusing on planets, this could be great for planet loading. Plates would be made of chunks(10,10,10) under the surface, and chunks turn to blocks once there is an empty space <11 blocks away; the top 20 blocks or so would be loaded, but under that they would only be generated by random seed once the surface is mined.

Blocks that aren't visible have almost no strain on the system... It's mainly visible surfaces that cause lag on large entities. This would have almost zero tangible benefits, if any.

 

[rotrules1234]

I'm pretty sure this or something very similar has been suggested several times befor (different sizes of blocks etc.) and rejected evry time.

Another point against this is, that block size would probably take up a bit per block ID and therefor at least one bit would have to be taken away from something else (like the bit taken away from block HP in the latest update to acquire additional rotations and therefor toggleable light bars) which I don't think would be a good thing.
An alternative would be to have seperate block IDs for the large variants of blocks, but that would be even worse than the other way to get this I could think of (ignoring the limitations to 1 block sized objects).

The better performance argument for these blocks seems flawed to me. If a player can place a ridiculous amount of small blocks, what stops them from placing the same ammount of large blocks?

What could reduce the severity of ship designers placing too many large blocks on their own ship designs is their own economy, combat re-balancing, and whatever limits the server placed on how many small and large blocks the ship designer is allowed to place.

The issue of too many large blocks would be smaller if only specific blocks are allowed for resizing such as power blocks, thrusters, shields and warheads.

The cutting torch could use a buff to counter resized blocks by inflicting more damage based on the square root of the block's volume. For example, if a large thruster block has the volume of 15625 (X: 25 Y:25 Z:25) cubic meters, the cutting torch will inflict 125 times the damage. Ship designers will then have to consider the risk vs rewards of how many large blocks do they want on or in their ship. If it's difficult to implement such mechanic, at least the developers should buff the cutting torch's damage proportionate to the mass of the star ship.

Warheads are trivially easy to manufacture since they only require alloyed metal mesh and crystal composite. A resized warhead could inflict crippling damage to even the largest of titans as warheads bypass shield defenses.

Even if Titans gain the initial advantage of seemingly impenetrable amour and shield defenses as well as heavy super weapons capable of one shot planet cores, The pilots of the titans will dread of the possibility of an astronaut armed with 10 cutting torches slipping past the titan's turret defenses and inflicting crippling damage to the power systems. Have you ever seen a video of an astronaut disabling a titan with ease? Even if the Titan has boarding defenses, an easy workaround is to ram giant warheads against the Titan's hull until said boarding defenses get destroyed.

By the way, can you show me examples of other star made players proposing the idea of block scaling?
[doublepost=1486095742,1486095274][/doublepost]

What would you even make the stats. Now you would need to balance volume with amount of blocls taking damaged. Not looking forward to any more balancing issues. We have enough to worry about.

How about buffing the cutting torch to inflict increased damage based on the volume of the re-sized block? Based on video footage of Star Made gameplay, even the largest ships will always remain vulnerable to the humble cutting torch tool and the warhead block.

 

[Lecic]

All discussion of potential balance is pointless because, as we have covered, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH HOW THE GAME ENGINE WORKS.

 

[rotrules1234]

Blocks that aren't visible have almost no strain on the system... It's mainly visible surfaces that cause lag on large entities. This would have almost zero tangible benefits, if any.

Based on the very strong argument that there is no way to implement re-sizable blocks, there has to be some way to reduce the polygon count of the surface area of all objects while still retaining a massive block count.

A large group of blocks could take up less Ram by unloading excess polygons and replace them with a few larger polygons in a similar manner of unloading distant 3-d models such as pipes and replacing them with 2-d textures.

 

[MeRobo]

The difference is, that in the case of LOD objects it switches from a model to a sprite for each single block, in this case, several blocks would have to be merged into a new unit which is then represented by the larger polygons and I doubt that can be achieved with the engine, however, maybe somebody with better knowledge of the engine can make a more definitive statement regarding the possibility of this idea

 

[jayman38]

I have read where Schema has optimized the engine to render walls of blocks as if they are a giant single block, so there's no advantage to be had by bigger blocks, in regards to drawing fewer polygons.

I don't understand the point of this suggestion as an improvement over mass-placement of blocks via Advanced Build Mode. I've seen the point of smaller voxel grids (smaller blocks relative to the astronaut), but bigger blocks does not make sense to me. All the existing optimizations are focused on the voxels as they are now. Oversized blocks (which are surely possible with the modeling system in the game that enables such neat things as pipes and consoles) would require their own optimizations, interaction models, and other rules which would add further processing to the game, bogging down laggy events even further, and actually requiring an increase in RAM usage.

In fact, you are dealing with special counters for counts like HP that won't fit in the standard 3-byte Starmade Voxel, making "large blocks" an exception to the general rules built into the game. Plus, there's the issue of having to implement alternate rules for block-interactions such as buffing torches against large blocks, effectively doubling the work for the Schine team, and counteracting any possible technical advantages of larger blocks. We are already chomping at the bit to play their latest software, so it's not like we as a gaming community want anything new to delay their work even more.

The whole suggestion sounds like you are not yet comfortable with the Advanced Build mode, and if you are, maybe you aren't comfortable with altering the configuration to increase the maximum advanced build size beyond the vanilla 10x10x10 limit. Or if you are simply trying to be helpful: thank you. Your concerns have already been addressed at the existing block-size level.

 

[rotrules1234]

I have read where Schema has optimized the engine to render walls of blocks as if they are a giant single block, so there's no advantage to be had by bigger blocks, in regards to drawing fewer polygons.

I don't understand the point of this suggestion as an improvement over mass-placement of blocks via Advanced Build Mode. I've seen the point of smaller voxel grids (smaller blocks relative to the astronaut), but bigger blocks does not make sense to me. All the existing optimizations are focused on the voxels as they are now. Oversized blocks (which are surely possible with the modeling system in the game that enables such neat things as pipes and consoles) would require their own optimizations, interaction models, and other rules which would add further processing to the game, bogging down laggy events even further, and actually requiring an increase in RAM usage.

In fact, you are dealing with special counters for counts like HP that won't fit in the standard 3-byte Starmade Voxel, making "large blocks" an exception to the general rules built into the game. Plus, there's the issue of having to implement alternate rules for block-interactions such as buffing torches against large blocks, effectively doubling the work for the Schine team, and counteracting any possible technical advantages of larger blocks. We are already chomping at the bit to play their latest software, so it's not like we as a gaming community want anything new to delay their work even more.

The whole suggestion sounds like you are not yet comfortable with the Advanced Build mode, and if you are, maybe you aren't comfortable with altering the configuration to increase the maximum advanced build size beyond the vanilla 10x10x10 limit. Or if you are simply trying to be helpful: thank you. Your concerns have already been addressed at the existing block-size level.

Conveniently, I've already reconfigured the build limit to 100 x 100 x 100 for longer than I could remember. But what I've noticed is that Starmade's average frame rate from a freshly created universe rarely exceeds 40 frames per second, at least on my current laptop. Ever since I've purchased my own copy of Starmade when dodecahedron planets and player factions first appeared the frame rate used to exceed 60 frames per second as long the ships I build don't reach a block count or surface area is too great. And that's during the time when I use an older laptop.

Nowadays, the frame rate seems to remain at an average of 25-40 frames per second big ship or not but could drop down as low as 10-12 frames per second while I'm standing on a planet. I'm not sure why the frame rates is significantly lower even though my settings allow a 60 FPS frame rate. It couldn't be caused by the recently added NPC factions and I'm not very willing to greatly reduce the graphics setting to run Starmade smoothly within the presence of Titans and planets.

 

[rotrules1234]

I have read where Schema has optimized the engine to render walls of blocks as if they are a giant single block, so there's no advantage to be had by bigger blocks, in regards to drawing fewer polygons.

I don't understand the point of this suggestion as an improvement over mass-placement of blocks via Advanced Build Mode. I've seen the point of smaller voxel grids (smaller blocks relative to the astronaut), but bigger blocks does not make sense to me. All the existing optimizations are focused on the voxels as they are now. Oversized blocks (which are surely possible with the modeling system in the game that enables such neat things as pipes and consoles) would require their own optimizations, interaction models, and other rules which would add further processing to the game, bogging down laggy events even further, and actually requiring an increase in RAM usage.

In fact, you are dealing with special counters for counts like HP that won't fit in the standard 3-byte Starmade Voxel, making "large blocks" an exception to the general rules built into the game. Plus, there's the issue of having to implement alternate rules for block-interactions such as buffing torches against large blocks, effectively doubling the work for the Schine team, and counteracting any possible technical advantages of larger blocks. We are already chomping at the bit to play their latest software, so it's not like we as a gaming community want anything new to delay their work even more.

The whole suggestion sounds like you are not yet comfortable with the Advanced Build mode, and if you are, maybe you aren't comfortable with altering the configuration to increase the maximum advanced build size beyond the vanilla 10x10x10 limit. Or if you are simply trying to be helpful: thank you. Your concerns have already been addressed at the existing block-size level.

Conveniently, I've already increased the build limit to 100x100x100, and the biggest blocks I've placed is 25x25x25 on a regular basis. One problem I'm facing is that the frame rate on Starmade isn't as high as it used to be, at least on my latest laptop. And my latest laptop has better performance than my older computer.

When I've first purchased Starmade, when there are dodecahedron planets, factions, and an infinite universe, the frame rate used exceed 60 frames per second while standing on a planet, and that's on my older laptop. Nowadays, a freshly created universe has a significantly lower frame rate that is at best 40 frames per second but dips as low as 15 frames per second while standing on an average sized planet, and that's on my latest laptop. I want to improved frame rate without resorting into lowering the quality of the background but I'm willing to decrease the level of detail on the blocks.

I believe that lowering the level of detail on all distant blocks instead of just 3-D model blocks such as pipes and computers doesn't require too much work on the behalf of Schine. How about changing the level of detail on large clusters of blocks into blurs where the astronauts are observing said blocks from a distance?

Before Star Made receives another optimization update, I need to know what could help increase my frame rate. One of my considerations is allowing Star Made to use an extra 4 gigabytes of RAM but I can't increase the memory usage any further. Is it possible to configure Starmade to use 12 gigabytes instead of just 8?

 

[_Scooter98_]

Opinionated reply.

I personally despise the difference sized blocks for a capital and small ship/base, station that spengies and empyrion have implemented. I enjoy how simple starmade's way of building is, just a standard unit.

I enjoy the way the game is now (ship building block size wise), and I feel that implementing, or even planning to implement a new type of system for building would cause mayhem for both the players, and the developers. Not to mention the crafting aspects, balancing, optimisation, and any other features that would revolve around the new blocks.