Does anyone know how to 'fix' the cube ship advantage?

[Khantron]

Easily designed, low effort cubes are superior to basically any other ship profile.


Problem: The way the build mechanics of the game currently work means that ships that are cubeish are superior to any other, the first advantage they get is that they turn slightly faster than ships of larger box dimensions. This advantage is slight, and completely negligible for ships larger than a certain size. Schema has also shown interest in overhauling turning mechanics so that this probably will be alleviated in the future. Some ideas are adding maneuvering thrusters and making max turn speed the same for all ships, but making turning acceleration different (my personal favorite) or some combination.

The other problem is more fundamental and much more difficult to counter: cubes minimize surface area compared to volume, so that they can be protected by more layers of armor for the same amount of weight. It would be an understatement to say that this is a difficult problem to solve. There have been attempts, but they’re never really popular with the community, and they always have the possibility of unforseen negative consequences since they’re generally extensive mechanical overhauls.

The third problem is similar to the second. Beyond outside shape interiors with empty space are an extreme detriment. Empty internal space increases the surface area to useful volume ratio. This issue is similarly intractable to the second. There’s no apparent solution beyond large mechanical overhauls.


Why is it important that these issues are addressed? Because creativity is stifled by optimal functional ship designs being limited to so called “doomcubes.” Do I have any suggestions for improvement? Not really no. Maybe some sort of block overheating mechanic that’ll make surface area an advantage for optimal function, but that will add extra complexity to already very complex ship design.


Tl;dr Cubes are op and there may not be a way to fix that, because geometry. (damn you Pythagoras, this is all your fault).

 

[Jaaskinal]

Cube ships have thinner armor because of the flat angle of their front than almost any other shape of ship. This means the armor they put on to be the same effective thickness as a wedge/properly designed ship put on weight.

 

[jayman38]

Solution: Excessive violence initiated at the sight of any cube (That'll teach 'em!)

 

[Khantron]

Cube ships have thinner armor because of the flat angle of their front than almost any other shape of ship. This means the armor they put on to be the same effective thickness as a wedge/properly designed ship put on weight.

I'm sorry, I don't know what this means, what is properly designed and why do cube ships not live up to that? I wasn't aware that angles had any effect.

 

[Jaaskinal]

When you make a ship, the front is usually skinnier than the back. (some ships are exceptions to this, in fact a lot are, but for other purposes I won't discuss those as much) Where in a doom cube it's a perfect cube. Effective armor thickness is how thick your armor actually is if it's the same number of blocks thick as someone elses. A doom cubes flat front, if one block thick, only provides one block of armor. A slope of 1/2 provides two blocks of armor while still only being one block thick. In addition to that you can plan ahead how you're going to fight people and make it so you're always turning, allowing you to make 1/2 sloped armor that's significantly thicker than a doomcubes.

 

[max stripe]

Solution: Excessive violence initiated at the sight of any cube (That'll teach 'em!)

i am Jango Fett and i approve this message

 

[DivineEvil]

Creativity is NOT stifled by these pathetic "issues". People that care for petty differences in required resources are uncreative, plainly lazy or just casual players, who doesn't spend much time in the game. Creative people will still do the best ships their imagination allows, as proven by the best ranking ships in the Community Content's catalogue. They are unconcerned by few penalties, if it satisfies their creative urge and demonstrates their designing skills.

The best shipwrights are the ones, who combine the best parts of the two aspects - they build ships blocky inside in a predefined order and structure with consideration for interiors, then fit them with gracious armor design on the outside, combining the ease of repairs, functional efficiency and aestetical value.

 

[Winterhome]

What Jaaskinal is saying is accurate. A flat angle of armor is a death sentence unless you make it extremely thick, whereas curved hulls are stronger against missiles and wedge (read: Star Destroyer) hulls are extremely difficult to kill with cannons.

The reason is simple: take a one block thick, twenty block wide wall... And shoot it from the side. Suddenly that one block thick wall is twenty blocks thick at your angle of attack.

The shape is not conducive to armor design. When a cube ship's shields are down, the entire thing is more or less screwed.

Really, the biggest nerfs to cubes have been the HP update and boarding. Thrust/turning overhaul will be the final nail in their coffins.

 

[Kaamio]

In a sense, yes, it's a problem but I don't think it's anywhere near as severe as it has been before. Generally box shaped designs and close derivates are efficient even if it's not a cube, while lessening the giant facing issue. A good bit of texturing and shaping can be done while keeping the ship at the core rather rectangular (what's the proper word for an elongated cube?).

Unhulled module cubes got made in with the shield/hp updates, shields are so easy to bring down in pvp situation that unprotected modules pretty much melt away anyway (I think - I'm not really a pvp person). Problems arise from one shot builds, swarmer jumpers and permacloak griefships, but those are not really shape dependent issues.

Only even remotely useful seeming solutions that I've seen have involved module interference that requires module groups to be far enough from each other, or some sort of "heat dissipation" efficiency bonus/penalty revolving around surface area.

The cubism issue is really not that bad as many servers tend to frown upon using such designs in pvp and also not easily countered without some creative mechanisms that steer away from block volume making up the effect and instead banking on group shape. Reactors are prime example, they don't care about being in a cube... it's just that it's capped relatively low, after which being a cube or something similar yields best volume to surface ratio.

Ship design in general could use some sort of intuitivity pass, if you've ever tried to explain how to build an efficient ship to someone who just started playing, it's pretty interesting task and they tend to forget about it every 5 minutes because it's apparently not very logical. Still, many people including me enjoy it so it can't be all that bad. Just difficult to learn from in game.

 

[Lecic]

At this point, pretty much the only advantage cube ships have over "normal" ships is their faster turn speed and ease of building. They're very weak once shields are down. I've seen cubers trying to get around this with ridiculous regen levels to avoid shields going down at all, but if you can crack their shields with alpha, they are DEAD.

 

[StormWing0]

lol doomcube issue? Seen one fly into my sector only to die from auto swarmers with EMP and ION effects going. Grated the satellite had a bit more than that on it to kill the player in question but like others have said the only real advantage they have is how easy they are to build and their turning speed.

 

[aceface]

I don't think there'll ever be a real solution to this problem, but I rarely see cube ships being a huge problem. its all about the systems, and if someone has a big cube, i ususall just make simliar sized okay looking ships with the same systems.