Gravity System Overhaul (also Oxygen)

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    Hello Community!

    At the moment the Gravity block is a cool feature but completly usless for daily gameplay. If you choose to have a Gravity system on your ship or space station this should be global, meaning there should be no need for a red button with a Sign "Activate Gravity (but just for you) ".
    As soon as you enter the Inside of ship or a station you should automaticly enter its Gravity system.



    I think the best way to manage this is to Change the Gravity Unit block so it only works in a complet closed area. and affects the whole inside of that area. This would not only define a strict diffrence betwen interio and outer space but also motivate the players to build decent ships without any holes.

    When your ship get damaged in battle and looses a big chunk that leaves a giant hole the Gravity system will shut down Immediatly.

    The most frequently situation where the immersion of in- and outside gets killed is when you fly inside a hangar with your vehicle, dock at a docking station on the ground. leave your ship and instead of taking a secure step on the ground your screen gets flipped to a random angle and after you oriented yourself you need to hover to the next gravity unit.

    When you enter the inside of a ship or station you should be affect by its gravity automaticly just like entering the athmosphere of a planet and the solution to this problem has been done many times in fantasy and Sci-Fi history:





    This concept could be perfectly transfered to Starmade with the help of a new kind of "Forcefield Block" that need to be placed around the inside of a hangar to form a frame around the entrance. A possible Ingame hangar could look like this:



    So when you fly through the barrier of the Hangar you aumtomaticly enter the Gravitysystem of the Hangar. The Forcefield also uses the shield system of the ship or Station and prevents enemys shooting in to the hangar and killing pilots or ships. also you can use the hangar to escape and repair your damaged ship in a large scaele space battle (omg this is going to be so cool). You can of cours fly into an enemy hangar and trie make some damage but smart people have installed turrets inside of the hangar at any corner. This clear barrier between gravity and no-gravity would also fix the issue of the wierd falling down in space when you jump off a ship.


    Normal entrance with Plexdoors will only work if it has a airlock setup with two doors (just like real life). if you open both doors at the sam time the gravity system will shut down.



    The whole In- and outside concept i described here could be the foundation for more stuff like Oxygen or Radiation, making the outerspace more deadly for the player. Because at the moment we arent really in Space. its more like a giant dark room where you can hover around with your special suit and endless oxygen,foot,water.



    Sorry for my bad english and greetings from Swizerland!
     
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    Your ideas are sound and i support them all. The force field one makes sense and seems very much possible. I hope as the game is updated more features like this get added because this game has so much potential but needs more to it. In my opinion things like civilizations an more complexity to planets, warp drives, handheld weapons and so much more. I know warp drives may be added from as its on the planned features section, and im looking forward to that.
     
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    I was curious to when someone was going to suggest this system.. i support all your ideas on this :D, it would add more complexity but still keeping it simple.. i may be hard for the developers to code though..
     
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    Though i agree with this suggestion its already been suggested next time search the forums.
     

    Sio

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    As i postet in a other thread i like the idea with the hanga force fields and u support it.
    But you describe it in a better way than the others.
     
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    There should be a limit on how big (How many blocks of air (or lack thereof)) the gravity area can be (extended with Gravity Extension/Enhancer), and a way to select each area that qualifies as a room
     
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    I support this fully. However I think the \'catch\' or drawback to this should simply be using up power whenever an object or person enters. The ammount of power would depend on the number of blocks entering.
     
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    and again i support it and yes many before me suggested simmilar solutions > http://star-made.org/content/forcefield-doors-and-slide-doors
     
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    @wingman yes, or the size of the door itself

    @HydroPlume yes that makes sence for realy big ships it would be a bit wierd if you have only one gravity block for a intire spacestation
     

    Criss

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    As for the gravity thing, I think its entirely possible that it could work and theres ways to do it thatd be pretty easy. I think it was mentioned that a gravity unit could work in a set amount of space like a docking platform does. You could expand it by adding to the gravity platform. It shouldnt be as rediculous as the docking system though. Adding additional units could get semi exponential and it would only take a few to cover a station or something. We probably wouldnt need any sort of forcefield unit to make this work, so long as you enter the gravity\'s area. Forcefields should be used to keep oxygen in when that is implimented. I dont think it would be hard to have oxygen fill up closed containers from some sort of life support block. You could make larger life support systems and the regen rate would be quicker. Radiation is also pretty dope. Neither oxygen units or garvity generators should take up THAT much power however, it should be moderatly low, and you can simply increase its yeild by adding more blocks to it.
     

    JonasWalker

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    I like a lot of these suggestions and in some ways are similiar to ones I was thinking myself. Here are my personal thoughts on it.

    Life Support:

    While I would like to see the ship core produce a tiny amount of O2 automaticially I\'d say split the actual life support blocks into two different sub-blocks in much the same relationship as exists currently for Power Blocks and Storage Tanks

    • Life Support Block

      Produces Oxygen while provided power which first raises the oxygen levels in any empty/storage blocks near it before gradually spreading out to any valid blocks that can path back to the block until all are filled/charged.

    [*]Oxygen Storage Block

    • When exposed to Oxygen levels above 0% it absorbs the O2 from surrounding blocks including other storage blocks, and while depleting them stores it internally.
    • If activated, perhaps manually or via some other method this process is reversed and they start dumping their stored O2 into surrounding blocks until all other valid blocks are at 100% O2 or all grouped storage blocks are fully depleted.



    Some additional blocks/suggestions:

    • Vent Blocks

      These allow the passage of O2 from one face of the block to any other face without storing anything themself and would work over distances if chained togeather.
    • Would have some basic logic to not output O2 into empty blocks that can path directly to space.

    [*]Vaccume

    • Have \'space\' automatically deplete any \'empty\' air blocks of their O2 charge that become directly exposed to it at a set rate. This would allow even a small breech to eventually deplete an entire section of O2 first starting at the point of exposure and working its way backwards to the O2 \'source\' for the location in question. It would also make the rate of depletion dependent on the exact size of the breech.

    [*]Fire

    • What the name says on the tin this would be a special block that could potentially be spawned by damaging certian internal systems IF said block is also exposed to O2 levels above 0%. This could slowly spread to other blocks nearby damaging them (or even the player!) over time with each fire \'block\' depleting O2 levels much like direct exposure to a vaccume.
    • If all O2 in any empty blocks that have valid paths to the fire are depleted the fire automatically goes out. It could also be extinguished manually via PC interaction with the fire block.