Hand-held Astrotech beam

[Lukwan]

A solution to those pesky holes in your ship. After you have rebooted battle damage and paid the shop mechanic to get your armour HP topped up you still have those darn gaps where systems used to be. Let's upgrade 'Healing beam' to actually fill in those blanks.

-Healing beam still repairs blocks and astronauts.
-Now hand-held Astrotech (healing beam Mk 2) gun will also replace the missing blocks from battle damage.
-The gun will only work if the user owns the BP for the ship being repaired.
-Replacement blocks are drawn from inventory or filled BP (not free).
-Just 'spray' it back together using the beam like a 'block-hose'.

Should not be OP since it would be very dangerous to do during combat.

This would be the first tool for a Ship's Engineer class, a role for a NPC crew-member.

 

[nightrune]

There is one massive feature required before this is possible. You need to be able to tie a blueprint to a ship since tracking individual lost blocks is extremely expensive, especially on large ships. With that feature a whole host of things become possible such as handle astrotech, AI repairs, Astrotech replacing blocks on ships, and even having the AI build your structures for you.

 

[NeonSturm]

Why? Why do we still use 3 bytes per block?

11 bit ID
8 or 9 bit HP - for all blocks, even if only full blocks need hp.
1 bit logic - this is the first thing sacrificed if more orientation bits than 3 are needed.
3-5 bit orientation - for 6/8, 12/16 (wedges, 6 sides, 2 rotations) and corners which need 1/8 corner and 1/3 secondary corner = 24/32.​

Source: Blueprint File Formats - StarMade Wiki

• the worst case scenario: Force field corners
  
  • 11 bit ID
  • 9 bit HP
  • 1 bit visible
  • 5 bit orientation, 4 bit for wedges
  • how did Schema even solve that as 11+9+1=21 and 3/24 bits be left for orientation!!
    • perhaps scrapping the least important hp bit?

I would remove block hp from the 3 byte hp altogether and only leave 2 or 3 bit for displaying how damaged a block is.

No healthy ship would have more than 3 bytes per block, even if you free up 6-7 bits!

Only chunks which received damage would have damage-data of 8 bits additionally to the 2-3 visual bits (the visual grade of destruction multiplies the number of store-able hp-bits).

These chunks would quickly become obsolete once you repair a ship in a shipyard!​

If a block is alive/dead can be told by evaluating the displayed 2-3 hp bits which store 8 values:

0= killed
1= full hp
2= hacked (if logic only works with full hp)
3= holographic (does not need hp)
4,5,6,7= damage overlays
or
0,1,2,3 = highest 2 hp-bits the block uses and at the same time responsible for damage-display.​

 

[Lukwan]

I envisioned that the BP for the ship being worked on would be slotted into the hand-held repair-beam gun. I figured that the beam would trigger on 'missing' blocks and look them up on the BP.

 

[nightrune]

I envisioned that the BP for the ship being worked on would be slotted into the hand-held repair-beam gun. I figured that the beam would trigger on 'missing' blocks and look them up on the BP.

Tying the blueprint to a structure makes the most sense for immersion reasons since basically anyone can repair then, and this includes stations and Planets.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

a long time ago i believe either schema or calbiri said that if implemented the game would keep a semi blueprint of sorts of your ship in memory every time you left build mode. that way it would know what blocks go where. although I'm pretty sure they also said that this could be very hard on the games performance hence why we haven't seen it implemented yet.

 

[Lukwan]

Old habits die hard. I used to be a repair technician for consumer video equipment and some Pro gear. The hardest part of my job was often prying service-manuals from the manufacturers or navigating their security minded websites for info. Like many ship-builders in SM the makers of high-end electronics were careful not to let their 'secret' designs out into the general public.

My preference would be to limit access to my BPs by linking to the repair gun not the ship. When my ride dies in combat I don't want my enemy to get their hands on my BP but they are welcome to the wreck. The other reason is that I want keep proprietary tech to myself to generate business for my struggling repair-shop.

 

[Madman198237]

This BP at the core of the ship should be untouchable. And if the ship carries a BP (In effect), then it should track its builder/owner of the BP, and not let anyone else save it.

EDIT: BPs in cores, obviously. This allows for functionality to be added to shipyards as well.