Generalized block shaping on placement.

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

With the additions to hull shapes recently, I've found that I run out of inventory space a lot more often while building. Having 5 different blocks per color per hull type is a bit insane and can make building very tedious. Even the hotbar can get overwhelmed just with two colors of hull and glass with a few systems and lights I intend to put down.
Additionally, it would be nice to have more things in wedge/corner/tetra/penta shapes for asthetic reasons, but this would worsen the inventory issues severely.

To solve the inventory problem, I think it would be good to have a system where cube blocks are only stored as cubes in inventories, but can be placed as different shapes via some GUI element in build mode.
They would of course become cubes again when being removed.

Inspiration came after seeing building in Space Engineers, in which you only need to change what shape you want to build, and the same inventory items are used for the shapes (Space Engineers has blocks built out of component items rather than just placing blocks).

 

[CyberTao]

I think something like this is planned already :p But rather this dismiss it, how would you like to see the GUI added in as? An addition option on the ABM? (Advanced Build mode)

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Advanced build mode is great for settings that you only want to set in between large chunks of building, but terrible for settings you want to change with nearly every block placed. In particular, wedges and other non-cube hulls when used together currently create some severe building issues due to rotation settings not remembering which block the settings were set for (often it seems the rotation settings just reset completely when I switch blocks).
I think it would be good to have another menu in advanced build mode that appears near the current corner menu. It would be a simple list showing a number of previews of blocks in a row that upon clicking one allows you to edit the rotation and shape settings for that particular block type (color too if we ever get painting rather than different blocks for color). The number of block settings would hopefully be customizable on the client so you could fill the screen with it if you want a really fancy ship or completely remove it if you don't plan on using wedges and stuff.
When you place a block, it would be placed according to the currently-selected setting for that block type in the list.

 

[NeonSturm]

Yes, please separate blocks by:

• Shape
• Content
• Colour/Textures
• Textures/Multi-block overlays/...