"what's so bad about space engineers? I can name a few features that starmade would benefit from, and i know of one implemented in a different manner... who cares if the idea came from somewhere else? what matters is if it's applicable, and useful.
I don't want air because MINECRAFT has it (seriously, there's a rocket mod with atmosphere), or because space engineers has it.
or (name a game)
I want it because i don't think it's normal to have "infinite" air in space... without SOME sort of system in effect to create it.
as for the "escaping atmosphere" from battle damage, i think your right in using the shield as the calculation... even when down, the shield get's "pinged" on impact, hence it's a constant. by latching onto that code, when a block is ALTERED (YES, i'm going there) a pre-set value will let air THROUGH it (e.g, i'm expecting some sort of "realistic" damage system at some point, where some blocks "decay" with holes or chips)
by having a VALUE, (which by default is 0%, as in non-existant)
another reason for this, is for blocks that are OBVIOUSLY meant to let air through... E.G GRATES
basically, if no value is set in the config, the game won't treat it as an "opening" an airvent would be set at "100%"meaning it'll
ALWAYS be an opening.
I suggest a two pass method of "scanning" a ship for atmosphere... the first simply determines "rooms" as in it looks for large open areas which it labels as "rooms"...
next it scans the "boundries" of those rooms for doors and grates... creating a working crude map.
it THEN scans grates for doors/forcefields on either side...
armed with this information, it LINKS itself to all the doors and such (one way, so IT can CLOSE a door/activate a forcefield)
if a player links lights to the system, it'll toggle them (e.g, a block on a atmosphere side would toggle if a room with no atmosphere was on the other side of the door)
this allows rooms to be "pressurised" If a room breaches, the room is "sealed", any lights paired with it toggle to indicate status...
and display blocks (paired manually like lights) could be changed with the tags "[AtmoOxy]" (oxygen level) and "[AtmoPre]" (pressure)
this system sounds AMAZINGLY complex, until you realise it's only toggled by "changes"... like the oxygen level and pressure would simply "stamp" into memory once you were two or three rooms away... only loading for "battle damage" if a breach is about to occur.
by "reloading" the room, it compares the time stamp with current, estimates usage, then modifies supply accordingly.
(I think we need MULTIPLE oxy options, like no cost BIOspheres- like trees and such, or low cost AIR tanks, and HIGH power air creation...)
like you buy "air tanks"... or you fill them at biospheres or air creators... creating a new resource.
do you save energy and build very costly (space wise anyway) bio-spheres (spheres is inaccurate... it's merely a CONTAINED room)
or do you generate it with power? rely on a finite supply?
this is one of my goals in having air...
ANOTHER reason i defined "airtanks" is because of a trick i know i'd use... gas...
this allows us to pump different gasses into a room... E.g... SMOKE impairs VISION, and suffocates...
POISON - dead invaders.
Knockout/stun - allows you to take them prisoner... mwahaha
there is a reason for that, I hope it'd be possible to affect a astronauts "suit" to break their air-supply... MAKING them suffocate or take off the helmet...
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I wrote this thread some time ago and without a dev response I have no idea whether the ideas in the OP are worth consideration. Obviously something needs to be done because you can't exactly release a space game where you can take off your helmet in space with no adverse effects!
If it were done that way, I imagine a hallway could get blown away and leave a tunnel of breathable air in the middle of space! Even with sic-fi tech, something like that in the middle of a destroyed ship would be immersion breaking to an intolerable degree. That can't be solved simply by making the air destructible or you could have something equally immersion breaking like a cannon round entering an airlock and leaving a tunnel of space through the air in the hallway. You might be onto something by suggesting blocks but it's awfully hard to make a block-based atmosphere scalable unless it's totally static.
(i chose to reply as it's mostly unrelated to my previous post)
hmm... your comment about the cannon round "cutting" air, I agree turning air into vacumn would be silly... but what about actual attacks
along similar lines? e.g a high power shot with vapor mixed in, has a low chance to breach shields... with PIERCE affect, it's damage is negated, but allows it a high chance of breaching hull (like 80% chance)...
the shot could be used as a nasty anti-personal weapon... you'd need good air-filters to fix it...
that vapor could be knockout gas, poison... or maybe a good dose of ACID (not the face melting kind)