Fluid armour - a compromise between hull and shield (+ heat sinks + fluid tanks)

    NeonSturm

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    (NeonSturm) http://star-made.org/comment/88128#comment-88128

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    Hps or heat-sink ability could depend on hulls in an array. Some systems - like hull plates - could work without master. Select one and and assign an equal block to make them a group without master and do some magic on the result depending on x/y/z size, number blocks, etc.
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    (MrNature72) http://star-made.org/comment/88129#comment-88129

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    The idea for heat sink is interesting. What if armor took damage as a whole, and only broke when it went above a certain limit? So instead of taking constant, slowly-breaking damage, it would act like a limit break, where it would take damage with no visual effect until it finally shattered? There's a lot of ways to go with this. I'm not going to go deep into it but I suggest building on that and posting it elsewhere. It's a great idea (that's yours and you should be proud of it).
    ...




    Thinking more about my idea I've found a big problem (and a solution) on it : Imagine capitals with 1'000'000 blocks and you have to group hull parts.





    The solution is obvious: Allow hardened - or a new advanced - hull to group together, much like power generators, power tanks or AMCs.

    Anti-Matter produce sub-atomar particles when they come in contact with matter - like photons - on impact. These sub-atomar particles have very high energy and these will heat up matter. Get a cooling system :)



    (Side note - I couldn't see the difference between "Liquid" and "Fluid" in the english language while writing this post (google-translate doesn't help me), please correct me where I am wrong. I guess liquids is from thermal state of matter and Fluid means something we can use or see - at the macroscopic scale where we don't look at molecules)



    My advanced hull has fluid molecules which flow out of the damaged area and become solid below certain pressure, thus are able to fill the leak.



    On a 800m long ship, a single hull block is more of a disadvantage (weight) than an advantage (helps defending against big guns)

    This system aims to cover a greater part of the hull (synergy) and -at the same time- not make it an all-or-nothing like current shields (either you win or do no damage at all with small ships).

    This system also aims for defending against big guns, not repeated small damage - use shield dispersers for this task.

    • Armor controls how much "Fluid-shield" you lose and thus how many Fluids sacrifice to replace it.
    • The HP of Fluids (100 is standard) control how much is replaced - how many weight your fluid regenerator blocks have compared to how much they replace.
    • The weight/number/size of fluid tanks can be used for balance.

    • It does not have to charge up after you build a block - like current shield -, or you would lose fluids whenever you edit your ship. So each Solid block (also acts as capacitor) has to add it's capacity to current+total before any fluid sacrifies itself and substract it's capacity from current+total if it gets removed with a build tool.





    Maybe the part "fluid-shield" is confusing, but I chose to call it "fluid-shield" because Fluids protect you from losing Solids anywhere.

    • But it is not recharging with power from your generators and not very effective in small numbers (low capacity).
    • If smaller bombers or fighters break through the disperser shields and hit the Solids, they always do permanent damage by reducing the number available Fluid-blocks.



    Fluid-Advaned-Hull blocks sacrify themselves to regenerate the "fluid-shield".

    When you not have more Fluid-Advanced-Hull in your grid, the (less) efficient Solid-Advanced-Hull sacrifies itself to recharge this Fluid-"shield" by a smaller ammount, but that's not what they are for - they should distribute the fluid power! :)

    • Sacrified Solids transform to less valueable Broken or Ghosted solids which need to be recycled with a recipie (1 Broken + 2 Fluid = one Solid) instead of just dying (like killed ones), and are almost useless until you replace them (repair beam may replace broken/ghosted with new ones).
    • If there is enough difference( capacity - current ) > regain, a Fluid-Tank (A group of Fluids connected to the Solids) closest to the most recently attacked block is choosen to sacrify one Fluid Block to regenerate the fluid-"shield".
    • The Fluid-"shield" has to be always above 0+receivedDamage, or some damage will pass through and may kill a block too (instead of 15 seconds downtime).



    Fluid-tanks save you from having to replace all the wedges/corners/etc all the time if you get attacked by a tiny assault.

    The easy code just sacrifies the Fluid furtest away from a Solid (or with greatest Y position in a tank) or replace Fluids with Worthless-Fluid-Atmosphere (100 HP = 1 bar; still provide grid link).

    • The benefit of replacing is, that a shipyard/shop may replace them back to fluids and you don't have to do it manually.
    • Manual refill with Tank-level = highest Y-pos of a fluid. If a tank has 2 levels higher than a tank which contains Worthless-Fluid-Atmosphere, it may refill at the cost of the other.



    For more realistic fluid-flow behaviour, if a fluid tank is requested to sacrify a fluid-block to regenerate the fluid-shield, it delays the availability of the fluid based on the distance to damaged block.

    • There is a "real" charge used for blocking shots, a "queued" charge used to choose wether a block needs to be sacrified ( (capacity -real -queued) > regain-through-sacrifice?), and a Linked-List, sorted by timecodes for the delayed addition of queued to real charge)

    For more realistic fluid behavior, the Fluid blocks behave like this:

    • If you have tall tanks with only 1 Solid at bottom, you may lose the connection to a single tank for a few seconds too - you shold make them flat - maximize it in X/Z direction.

    1. Everytime a Fluid Block get added/removed/moved it flows downwards as often as possible until it is either on the lowest Y position of this object (and would increase the size of boundary box if it flows down furter) or hits a solid or fluid with >= own weight.
    2. A Fluid can not move more than 2 blocks (1 Y, 1 X/Z) per step - a step takes - for example - 1/3 second.
    3. If a Fluid block stops it's movement, It checks the neighbours of the block below and if itself is heavier, switches the position (wait a second if the other block already moved).

    • This is relatively fast to calculate. It doesn't add more variables to a block-object (only weight to a single0 static object once per block-type) and can be re-used for other things like Lava or Water if desired.



    As it is all fluid, heat sinks (add armour) would make it customizeable further:

    • Heat sinks = Add armour to the group: (1- (1- armourWithJust1)^number)*limit or (1- 1/(number*bonus +(base >0) ) )*limit
    • Solid = mainly distribution/capcaity
    • Fluid = regeneration and avoid that the carefully placed, expensive Solids die.
    • Tank-position(s) = Delay, you might get your armor piece get blown up before fluid molecular reinforcement arrives! Make more small tanks then
    • Tank-dimensions and position of Solids in your tank-wall = If fluids behave like fluids, tanks might be disabled until the Fluids flow to bottom and restores the contact with solids.



    EDIT: A questions that may arise:

    Q: What if players make lines/layers of Solid/Fluid/Solid/Fluid and Fluid/Solid/Fluid/Solid?

    A: You may do, but Fluids have no armor (only the solid form) and are more expensive than basic hulls - missiles will do more damage to Fluids.
     
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    I think that this is brilliant. However, it seems to me to be a bit complex compared to the current system, so I do not expect this in the near future, and there is a good chance this would not be added at all. Still, I would like to see this in the game, or at least in a mod, and I would add this to my own ships pretty quickly if it is added.

    By the way, \"liquid\" is a state of matter that can flow to fit its container and is not compressible (ex, Water). A fluid is anything that will flow to fit its container, but it could be compressible or incompressible, and includes liquids, gasses and probably plasmas. In short, all liquids are fluids, but not all fluids are liquids.
     

    NeonSturm

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    What do others think - no time to post just a tiny \"+1/-1 because\"-Post?
     
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    You\'re right. From the quote, I would have thought that this post would have received more interest. In my opinion, it would fit well with some of the more exotic systems, such as cloaking and the pulsator.
     
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    some examples for what it would be used for and how it would fix the current problems. It seems interesting though.
     
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    One thing need to be said for sure. Big ships have problem with hulls. Hulls are too weak for them. Shooting into big ship with big AMC cannon will pass through whole ship if there are no any shields.



    Maybe good solution are hulls that are very hard but are very expensive? To make them usefull to protect only strategic parts of ship, but these hulls would be too expensive to protect whole ship.
     

    NeonSturm

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    Bas 51k HP hulls (510+99% armour).

    They cost 12 to 30 million per block and you need 700+ blocks for 5 layers around your core and an entrance.

    A million of shields is cheaper - you need synergy. All weapons can focus on one spot. You can not win with lonely hull parts independent on how strong they are without making small ships OP or take forever to kill each other.