Do you enjoy using enhancers?

[Magrim]

Really just curious what the sentiment is in the community about using enhancers to increase the size of the bounding box. Do you enjoy the mechanic?

My 2 cents: I feel it can be somewhat limiting in certain situations such as decent looking recessed ship bays or having asymetrical turrets near anything at all. I could be nit picking but there it is.

What if enhancers where used to increase the "stength" of the docking module? The higher the mass of the ship/turret docking, the more enhancers are required. The architecture of the mothership will be what limits the dimension of ship/turret docking.

When docking an outline or shell of your ship is draw behind the scenes in the area where you are docking, if anything intersects, no dock allowed. Might be resource intensive.

looking back maybe i should have put this in suggestions

 

[Shophaune]

You do know that you can put the enhancers anywhere on the ship, not just near the dock.

 

[BDLS]

Yeah, using boxdims for enhancers sucks. It\'s ugly. I hope it is a mechanic that will change.

 

[Magrim]

yeah that wasnt what i was talking about.

Im asking if you enjoy the mechanic of using the enhancer to increase the area that a turret or ship can be docked. I think there is a problem with it being a box.

Say you want to build an asymetrical turret, the core is near the left edge and everything else is hanging off to the right. Your turret is only 10 blocks wide but you have to use the enhancers to widen the bounding box to 18 or 19 blocks, which means there is a wasted gap on the left side of turret.

 

[NeonSturm]

I dislike current docking for a few reaons. Some are:

• turrets glitching into ship.
• doesn\'t fit well for trangular hangars and it is hard to guess how many enhancers you need.
• You have to get close to a dock to dock - which causes lag with big ships.
• It is too large for 2x2x2 or 2x2x3 mobile Plex-Store ships.

We don\'t even need 2 types of enhancers - one array can only enhance a single dock at the same time

The only downside in changes would be, that it breaks existing ships. But some should be adjusted to new balance and recent changes anyway.

 

[jzimmerman4]

I would like the system if it functioned like this. http://star-made.org/content/docking-mechanic-idea-fit-docks-smaller-areas

 

[CES]

I agree. I would prefer that ships could just dock with the box regardless of size.

 

[jericoz]

In the config files you can turn of the size limitation. That would produce the effect your after. Obviously this will only work on private games or severs set up that way.

 

[NeonSturm]

And enable ants carring a titan.

 

[Magrim]

All i want is to get rid of the boxdim and instead of doing away with enhancers give them a different function. I suggested tie them to mass of what is being docked, but it doesnt have to be.

Noclipping turrets should be fixed as well. If the area around your docked turret is too confining then your turret wont have full range of motion.

Mass of docked turrets/ships should be added to mass of mothership. might fix cores carrying 100k mass turrets.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

Turrets \"spin\" 360 degrees. This means it doesn\'t matter if the turret is asymettrical or not.

It also means that it\'s silly to have a 3 dimensions of enhancers because one dimension should always be the same as another. 2 dimensions of enhancers (e.g. in an \'L\' or \'+\' shape) is enough to describe \"turret diameter\" and \"turret height\".

 

[NeonSturm]

It also means that it\'s silly to have a 3 dimensions of enhancers because one dimension should always be the same as another.

Not for my 127x7x7 reactor. You mean for turrets?



I +1 a Pitch/Yaw docking separation for gun and power/shields/etc.

Would not only reduce required height for some turrets, but also look better.

 

[Magrim]

I understand what u mean by turrets spinning 360 degrees but that turret is out in the open and should spin 360 degrees. What about the turret next to a wall that isnt required to have full range of motion? What about asymmetrical ships being docked?

After some thought ive come to the conclusion that a box maybe fine and what i really want is the ability to build closer to docked \"things\". The idea outlined in the thread jzimmerman4 provided a link to, is a very good one, and if it was implemented i dont think i would have much to complain about

 

[LaForge]

Whenever I use them I get this feeling of wishing they didn\'t have to connect to eachother the way they do. Having to lay out a strip in one direction and then branch out in other directions to alter the size. It\'s an effective mechanic that works well, but it does bother me a little. Expecially if I have to come back and re-edit a lot of the ship if I decide I need a larger turret, and even more so if the enhancers are embedded in a lot of the hull geometry, it can get quite tricky and messy with complex, elaborate ship designs.



What I\'d prefer is a new mechanic where you can sort of \'inject\' components into existing blocks, which show up with maybe a green overlay in the editor, or heck even the purple pulsating boxes would work. You\'d still have to pay for the components, but they\'d be integral to the hull instead of stuck on top of it. Removing the blocks would give you both the block and the enhancer component. Maybe even a way to remove the enhancer without removing the block also.

 

[Ithirahad]

Instead of having docking instantly become unusable just because of the bounding box intersecting some blocks, how about just making the docked ship\'s bounding box (\"blue box\") determine whether it can dock or not: If its bounding box would intersect with blocks, do not allowit to dock, but if it would not, then as long as it stays within the maximum docking mass (The new use for enhancers - they increase maximum docking mass; no more inelegant, unwieldy boxdims.) the ship can dock. That way, if my docked ship is, say, a little PlexStorage drone thing, 1 tall, 1 wide and 4 long, it can dock even in a tiny 1x1x4 tube (Of course, that would cause noclip issues when it undocks; however a 3x3 tube would work perfectly fine.)