fuel, vector thrusters and subsequent ideaz

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    vector tursters:

    i think the reason why they didnt have this feature as soon as the game came out, is because of the "minecraft physics" it uses, it is fun and easy to work with. that said, we can assume that with the implementaion of vector thrust, things like momentum and material stress caused by the torque the vector thruster generates will be the next in line for development. because without these subsequent considerations, there wont be any drawback to immensely big and powerful ships, renders smaller ships cosmetic. (its kinda like that currently with the only draw back for big and powerful ship is the turnsrate with enough thrusters any bigships can accelrate back and forth as fast which is not the case as with too big a thrust on a really large mass you need the mass to have a really high stress tolerance, same with turning very fast, the ship needs to be designed in a way to support the huge acceleration differences with in the ship or else you will pretty much rip your own ship apart due to the torque or moment at a certain point on your ship). im sure it can be done, but with my limited knowledge of the game engin the game uses, its hard for me to say how difficult it'd be.

    by limiting the turnrate of the bigger ships directly, the game takes a shortcut in addressing these issues.

    however i do have a few ideas of how to get around all the troublesome physics with a few similar shortcuts.

    one of the important block is the powerblock, but currently its way too good for the games good, it harvest antimatter and matter in space, and then put them together to obtain the high energy photon, neutrino and then project these energy mediumlessly to the shields, amcs and thrusters all in a 1 by 1 by 1 meter cube. dont take me wrong im all for creating energy out of nothing but having to use fuel to power your generaters not only adds a drawback to big ships it also adds some additional interesting elements to the game such as essential resources and the dependency on factions and bases. coz you know you dont wanna be out of fuel in the middle of no where. lol get it? no where? space? lol

    power direction: thrusters and guns needs to be connected to the powers inorder to work, and the more element straped to a powerplant demands higher power generation from the plant which demands more fuel, much like how the cloaking works currently, inorder to have your shields guns and thursts ready for use, they constantly draws power out of your powergenerator. shooting a gun doesnt cost any power, however you need enough power generation rate to power the gunz, and power generation rate is porportional to the fuel consumption rate. so basicly you want a bigger gun you need to have a bigger plant and a huge fuel tank to support it. or have build a dedicated powerplant just for your gunz. this promotes smaller ships for their effciency. you put fuel into your plant and your plant powers the gunz. im a little sketchy here, im not sure if its better to have your ship consume fuel on activation of components or consume fuel on acutal use such as shooting a gun or taking a hit. or both.

    storage: yes you need a place to put your fuel, most people put fuel in fuel tanks so im going with that. im not sure about other stuff, i think the storage the game current have for generic items is pretty good. but something like a limit of the same item per storage slot would be a good thing to have if it doenst have it already. and errr also it would be good for there to be a common access block for the storages that are connected.

    shieldingz! yes the shieldings sounds awesome but do they have aids?!

    i think it would be a good idea to make shieldings area effect? so that people will actually use armor to protect the shielding arrays they put up on the outside? and it also makes fighting big ships more fun because its just so huge that it needs a fuck load of shield generators scattered everywhere for you to blow up and concentrate fire. and with this the bigger ships can no longer be piloted by a single person, because manging the shields is now a study in itself lol. (ALL POWER TO FORWARD SHIELDZ!!! ) i think shield grouping would still be a good idea, increases the area and all. again, the adventage of having a smaller ship is apparent.

    life supprt, i heard in a time long long ago but in the future players are limited to a certain amount of time out side of a ship? i guess that would bring out a noew life support block? like how gravity block works?

    so yeah, having to eat food is too much, but i think its a good idea to have a few area effect life support blocks lying around to eat up more fuel. again small ship probably just need 1 block and itd be good. immagine taking out some guys life support first. thatd give you a good salvage.

    shipyards, yeah its a must have, you cant have people building up a new turret on the go. maybe a few armor here and there and a few fixes of existing blocks, but no you shouldnt be able to build another ship in the middle of a genocide unless you have a shipyard, or a ship with a shipyard. and the size of the shipyard should dictate the size of the produced ship.

    ok so all this good things about small ships, why would i bother with big capital ships? because you dont wanna be in the middle of no where, smaller ships cant have a lot of fuel without getting bigger, which means they cant really go that far with out getting stranded. a big capital ship is mostly for support, production and storage. maybe once in awhile it will see some battle but its generally not a good thing for capital ships to exprience.

    and yes for a ship of a certain size with all the power limitations and item placement limitations, it would be hard for them to turn around, so turrets would be their main means of shooting at other ship. either dat or other friendly ships around it, since its so slow and big and weak but absolutly critical to the survial of an entire fleet.

    turrets are very over powered currently me think, their auto core lock made them very formidable in large quantities and size. but me think its good that they are like that, but me also think it would be a good idea to have turret docking port to require power as well ....... so that you cant have a tiny ship with a fuck load of turrets 3 times its size. and also train speed would be good thing to have as inversly proportional to the mass of the turret. or you can just give it more power to make it turn faster or something im not really sure....

    annnnnyyyywahhhyyyzzzz

    i think ive gone a little too far, and the devs are probably either pissed or laughing their ass off. welll i had fun thinking about them and thats 2 hours killed. :D



    what do you thinkkkkk tellll meeehhhhzzzz
     

    NeonSturm

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    I like some of your ideas and think you could edit & sumarize your post a bit, explain what you mean with vector thrust (different thrusters for strafe, accelleration/decelleration?) and use formatting.

    Do you like others to read through all of it? :)



    About oxygen and life support - maybe

    • Is it difficult in the future to have a full life support (oxygen regeneration and thermal) for about a day in your space-suit?
    • I more like the need to sleep and eat. You could get that easily in your home-world/station - or from a big ship and maybe carry some of it with you.

      At least it would make the interior more interesting.



    Fuel

    • Should your core produce some?

      Should small ammounts be available over trading stations (what do you give as a new player?) and collectable from suns?
    • Or would it just be a second storage with limited refill/drain per second?

    [*]I like the idea that active or used thrusters drain power - that makes stations or defenders more powerfull compared to destroyers.

    • Homeworlds are invincible anyway, and it is not fun if nobody build stations while fear destroyers of the top10 players.

    [*]Somebody else suggested that active shields drain power, you that shields make no sense if they are equally strong for differently sized hull areas.

    • I prefer the first. Bigger ships are already easier to hit - that makes shields weaker. And I guess most dislike Borg-Cube spam.
    • If you could disable different shield collectives, you could - for example - save energy for cloak (or warp), but have less shield after decloaking

    [*]For stealth, it would make sense if active systems temporarily add to the mass.

    • Active shield blocks, active weapons and power blocks, etc.
    • With some activation time to not make them on/off-able on demand.



    Power Storage

    • Actually, your core is a power storage. Small ships have an advantage, because the core is so versatile.
    • I feel it is not very intuitive to have them completely useless at low numbers.
    • Use it for your \"fuel\"?

    Structural integrity and Shipyards

    • How do you messure structural integrity?
    • What makes your shipyards unique? It is already suggested a lot of times in other threds.