"Deactivating" System/Functional Blocks (Therefore excluding from integrity)

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    Integrity is great for preventing spaghetti systems from hurtling through space. What it isn't very helpful with is any attempt at using system blocks for decorative purposes, hence my proposal for the ability to "deactivate" system blocks, which would do the following:
    • remove the block from the corresponding system's integrity calculation
    • eliminate any effects the block would normally have (ex. deactivated thrusters no longer contribute to thrust) for the sake of preventing any exploits that could come with removing blocks from integrity calculations
    • include the block in the calculation of hull integrity (as it is now no longer considered a system block)
    The sole purpose of this suggestion is to allow the use of system blocks as decoration without triggering explosions as a result of lost integrity.
     
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    I would prefer if integrity was just made less punishing, or maybe took more into account than just it's own systems.
     
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    I would prefer if integrity was just made less punishing, or maybe took more into account than just it's own systems.
    Loosening of the integrity restrictions is needed regardless of whether you can deactivate system blocks or not. I totally agree that should happen.
     

    Benevolent27

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    I think that a more elaborate solution is necessary than simply disabling it. I responded in full to a related thread here. But basically I think that what is considered "spaghetti" should should scale with the size of the reactor. After all, a small ship SHOULD have smaller parts, right? But also larger ships SHOULD also have more groups due to granularity. I proposed 2 different systems. One that would, I think, more effectively separate out "spaghetti ships" from normal ships, and another which would help eliminate the integrity lag that users are suffering during combat right now (which is really unbearable), but would still make spaghetti ship designs far less extreme. With the "no lag" solution, there could also be other sorts of ways the small amount of "spaghettiness" allowed could be punished, such as a weapons system that might spread damage throughout a system by the same block count, regardless of the shape, so a line would be affected the same as a chunk. And to handle blocks that are separated into tiny 1 block groupings, perhaps another weapon effect might ignore all spacing altogether, affecting the entire system regardless of where it hits, adding a dot effect. So then spacing things out greatly would only increase the chances that the system gets affected by this weapon type and would probably be undesireable. There would need to be a balance here as well, so building cubes would also suffer drawbacks, such as a missile explosion still destroying more of the blocks than a more spread out design.
     
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