Design computer for both starbases and ships

[nightwalker_007]

Shipyards add a new design mode, but there is room for improvement, such as expanding this creative design mode to space stations as well. This idea is to add an open-ended design computer which allows for creating both ships and space station designs. I am happy to see that the server.cfg file allows for disabling the ability to spawn ships and stations directly from a BP with BLUEPRINT_SPAWNABLE_SHIPS and BLUEPRINT_SPAWNABLE_STATIONS. I would like to see another option to limit the number of blocks spawned per tick when constructing ships from a shipyard (or a station, from a construction ship mentioned below).

Currently the only way to enter design mode on a ship is to spawn a new design, then enter the core that's attached to the shipyard anchor. It would make far more sense to enter design mode straight from the design or shipyard computer.

A design computer would work a little differently than a shipyard, in that the design is done in a virtual empty sector and this design computer can be placed anywhere: on a ship, station, or asteroid. It also would allow the creation of a station design.

Okay, so, now that we have the ability to design space stations in creative mode, how to we spawn stations on a server that doesn't allow spawning from a BP?

Specialized construction ships. It's any ship, just with a specialized starbase command computer. When on a ship, it's used to construct a station based on a loaded design, when on a station, it acts as a central command for starbase functions, as well as jumping between camera modules attached to a starbase, or activating starbase modules (like an antenna array, or warp jammer. It also would allow for repairing a station based on the loaded design. While there can only be one station command module, there could be secondary stations command terminals throughout the station.

To simplify the game code somewhat, the relative location of the storage chests attached to the starbase command computer on the ship must also match the relative location of the attached storage in the station design. When the player activates the station command module and issues the command to construct the base, the server performs a check:

1. Is the ship stopped?
   
2. Is there enough room in the storage attached to the shipyard computer for all of the items that comprise the ship (minus the station command module, and it's respective attached storage modules)
3. Is there enough total items, ship+stored items to construct the station
4. is there any entities blocking the station, minus the ship?

Once all checks have passed, construction of the station may proceed. The ship is then locked in space, and all doors open, and also take on the hologram texture. After 1 minute, the station will hologram will spawn, but with a non-clipping attribute plus a warp texture. and anything within the hologram area will be pushed out. 3-minutes later, anything still trapped within the station's spawn area will be cut/destroyed, and the regular solid hologram will appear in place of non-constructed blocks until construction has completed. The station will take on the same faction properties as the construction ship, even if the station doesn't have a faction module (if the station doesn't have a faction module, destroying the station command computer would have the same effect as destroying the faction module).

 

[alterintel]

I like the first part of your idea allot. The part about the design computer.
The idea of being able to plop down a Design computer, and be instantly transported to a test sector to build in creative mode is genius.

The construction ship idea needs a bit more fleshing out. I had an idea here for that.

Yes, just yes

A Few Points:

1. The ship's blue print should be some how stored in the core, so that if blocks are missing, shipyards would know what block is supposed to be there.
2. Update the Astro-Tech beam as follows:

• It needs Punch-Through
• should be attachable to a storage unit for spare parts.

Astro-Tech Balance:

1. Since an astro-tech beam is just a beam, and can only fix blocks it's firing at... A ship yard would be easier, cause it can do the whole ship at one time.
2. While a ship is docked to a shipyard, it's pretty much protected by the shipyard. Not so with with a astro-tech beam repair.
3. I'm guessing a shipyard will eventually be link-able to some kind of passive resource generator? Well an astro-tech beam would have to have the part already on hand.
4. You can't design a ship with an astro-tech beam.
5. I guess you could make it like really slow, for example repair 1 hit point per second.

*** Edit ***
6. If the astro-tech beam has to replace a destroyed block, it should take the same amount of time that it would take to repair the block from zero hit points.
7. Maybe even require every block that is damaged to be outright replaced (field-repair)?

Thoughts?