For enable_break_off have there be a minimum number of blocks the broken off part can be.

[TheSavage0ne]

I know this setting is still in the works, but it is one of my favorite new settings that I found. With this there can be debris fields where battles have been fought, that can be easily mined for hull and other valuable things found in ships!

I think the minimum number of blocks should be somewhere between 5-10 blocks, and if there are less blocks than the minimum that are broken off, then the broken peice is simply destroyed, or (would be much harder to code) the small peices could attach themselves to other broken peices that are also small (like 10-15 blocks) so that there are still debris fields, but not a giant floating ball of debris which would be quite silly.

 

[NeonSturm]

Less lag, yay

I would also like all destruction in a 8^3 cube to be adjacent, as it feels stupid to have missing blocks inside your ship with a full-healthy looking hull.

 

[TheSavage0ne]

Like so that if you have lets say, colums, inside your ship and both ends of it get shot it dosen\'t break off?

I love the setting, but it causes lots of lag very sadly when mining planets/stations it would probably kill a server, and I think that after a few tweaks it could work

 

[Calbiri]

I haven\'t had a chance to go over this with Schema yet (I think this system is kind of a side project / \"for fun\" thing schema does on his own time, so I don\'t bug him about it.) So these are just ideas that come to mind, but there are a few concepts that would help alleviate the lag induced by breakoff.

• Minimum Physical Threshold

1. When a section of ship is broken off, the game should first determine its block count.
2. If this block count is under a server defined threshold (25 blocks for example) it is tagged as \"Debris\".
3. Anything over the threshold (26+ blocks in this example) it is tagged as \"Wreckage\".

• ?Boxdim Ejection

1. ?When Debris and Wreckage are first generated as new entities upon breakoff, they are set too non-physical (meaning all collision calculations are turned off and they can freely clip though your ship.)
2. Anytime one of these entity types is present inside a ships Boxdim, it is pushed towards the nearest outside coordinate (its shoved out of your ship.)

• Entity Physics Activation??

1. ?Once these two entity types are no longer inside your ships Boxdim, they enter the next stage of this process.
2. Debris - These small block count entity\'s are left as non-physical, but are given a de-spawn timer (similar to the core overheat timer.)
   • 
     This allows the majority of the debris fields players desire, while not significantly (I think) impacting performance.
   • It also cleans up this clutter after a certain time has passed, preventing servers from being oversaturated with millions of drifting blocks in hotspot sectors.
   • As the number of these entity\'s exceed a server limit (even non-physical entities impact performance) the game may simply start removing the oldest generated Debris.
3. Wreckage - These larger chunks of blocks are set to physically collide with other objects once leaving the spawning ships Boxdim.
   • 
     This allows the far less common large breakoffs to continue to drift in space as permanent or semi-permanent entities (its possible to despawn them with the sector when inactive for a period of time.)
   • You may then; collide with, move, salvage, shoot, or even build on these entity\'s.

All this being said, there are still other issues that need to be solved with the breakoff system, so please don\'t conclude that this alone would make them function in the game. Hope you at least enjoy the idea though.

 

[TheSavage0ne]

I wasn\'t sure how to keep them from causing lag from collisions when first breaking off of the ship, I didn\'t want the debri to simply go through ships, but hadn\'t thought about it being able to temporarily do so. I hope that it is able to be figured out and put into the game sometime relatively soon

Thanks for your time, your probably quite busy with other things as is.

 

[ltmauve]

Heh. Calbiri isn\'t the idea guy for nothing. But while we\'re on the topic, could we also get some sort of graphical effect during breakoff as well? (Sparks, mabye some floating cable-looking effects around the area.

 

[Calbiri]

Omni and Schema are working on graphic effects

 

[TheSavage0ne]

Make it so that the server can choose what types of entites can be broken up. That way when someone mines a planet there arn\'t fifteen thoustand entities being created, same goes for space stations. Basically you could config it to only have ships break up.

I like your Idea Itmauve, First I\'d like to see it as a working feature though XD But I think that would be pretty sweet.

 

[Winterhome]

Cal, a suggestion on the small debris.

No collision box for ships, collisions with players, and the ability to salvage them.

Some of those tiny floating components could be valuable toa scavenger.

 

[Mosshadow]

this sounds pretty cool. Will break offs be caused by strain from acceleration? For example if you start spinning around uncontrollably will parts with thin connections snap off?

 

[Viridis00]

I really want this to be a working default feature for this game. Easily my most anticipated feature next to planets being revamped.

It would really go a long way in ship combat if you want to \"declaw\" a ship, so to say. Target their engines or weapon batteries to leave them a sitting duck while the wreckage drifts off into space. It all just sounds so much like a sci-fi action movie. Plus, who doesn\'t instantly want to target those huge bottlenecks on a ship, like the conecting piece to the warp nacelles or saucer section on star trek ships?

 

[TheSavage0ne]

right now it is simply if you shoot blocks of a ship and destroy them so it is no longer attached to the main ship then it turns into a \"Rock\" (that is what the entity is called, Rock########) and drifts around like asteroids do. You can salvage them, Makes it pretty awesome for a salvager. But they also last forever, This would cause lag on server, since there would be hundreds of them floating around, and when people mine planets and stations it would cause hundreds of thousands to be created then sucked up very quickly, causing massive server side lag.

What you said does sound cool But that would be pretty dang hard to program, and cause a lot of physic calculations that would be hard on the server.

I\'m with you Viridis00, this is an amazing feature and I can\'t wait for it to be in game, I messed with it some... well a ton, in single player and even just spawned ships in to break them apart XD some of my blueprints have engines in a specific part of the ship, with sort of an hourglass shape so I broke the engines off. Its pretty fun even to just play with, but there are a few bugs. Some of which include things breaking off, but there are no blocks in it. It is a floating empty entity of \"Rock#####\"

A player in the server was disappointed that Star-Made didn\'t have parts of ships break off (he was new) and said that Space Engineers had this feature, I have never played it but have heard some things about it. It almost sounds like a copy of this game, and to me sounds like it infringes copyright but they probably found a way around that. But making this feature usable, and default enabled would definitely help with the competition!

 

[NeonSturm]

___________________

While below is long to read, it is fast to handle for many parts in a small area and adds a greater feeling for mass-does-not disappear into void.

You only need a few gramm antimatter to get an explosion equivalent to an atomic bomb. Only a small part is annihilated and turned into energy.

___________________



I would like parts to be able to break apart in 3 different ways.

1. Single blocks (or a small group)
2. Big parts
3. Destroyed blocks

For

1. Solid objects, but no colision checks with the ship-group they broke off.
2. Solid objects, require about 5 seconds to be pushed for 20% free space between it and the ships colision box and then turns collideable with everything.
3. Destroyed (through weapons) blocks may turn into Lvl1 ore and join a debris field.

Colision with 1. objects is handled not per-block but as a bouncing kinetic projectile.



3. The debris cloud is a group of \"nodes\" with each having a radius and mass value + resulting density.

A node appears every (serverSpeed)m in the flight path of a ship under fire.

Destroyed blocks (3.) add ore to the closest node, but the visual effect is not a block, but a small non-physical nebula.

(( Objects from (1.) may slowly join a debris field for easier collision handling and salvaging, but appear as physical objects. ))

To salvage this cloud, you need an area-gravitation-(vacuum cleaner / hoover), maybe made of pulsar and salvage blocks.

To make 2 debris clouds join, a volume containing these two nodes must have a volume/mass >1.

Mass info indicates how much you get from salvaging.

Density, how long it takes to salvage, or how much your speed is dampened while your ship\'s box touches the debris cloud or limited (flying faster than this limit causes damage).

 

[TheSavage0ne]

(numbers correlate to yours)

1. I think that these should fall into the 3. category, they are tiny chunks of ships, and could \"disintegrate\" into particles or something after falling off, and after a cool down time, then join in with the scrap field.

2. I like it, looks good. But since things from 1 and 3 would be getting sent to a designated debris field, maybe these should also slowly drift into them? that way its all together, but simply having them drift could cause problems. How fast would they go? would it be effected by server speed limit? if you leave and the sector unloads, then reloads, will it of teleported to the field, and if so what if someone has a base set up in the debris field? a big chunk teleporting into it would cause some problems... yes I just said my own idea was very flawed, but whatever. I\'m sure somebody will have some pretty brilliant ideas around that :P

3. I think this sounds pretty cool. Mas could also change the size of the cloud.

Loot from mining these: What you get from salvaging it should be randomized , some ores of levels 1-3, maybe some basic hull, rarely shields and power/weapons, even more rarely weapon computers, and considering its a scrap field, SCRAP! Just something that sells for 1 credit each, or recipes could be bought to turn 10 junk into 1 hull, or 20 into shield, things like that so it is still useful.

Considering you thought yours was long to read should I try to shorten mine? >.<

(some funny bug i found, its been reported, but go into sp, have break off enabled, use /destroy_entity on all asteroids in nav distance, spawn a ship, shoot it till tons of little blocks break off and are floating away, leave, and rejoin works with some medium/large sized pieces also, but not as often. You just got to see it for yourself... warning though, don\'t break a large ship in half or anything, will freeze the server till the sector has been reloaded or server restarted)