How Massive Can Ships/Stations Be?

[Viridis00]

I've been considering working on a project for some time now, but before I even attempt it I need to know if it's even possible. Is there any hard limit on how massive a ship or station can be in this game? I mean more if the game would actually stop me from building more than if the game would lag badly. Generally speaking my PC handles large objects quite well unless they collide. With this new update Schema is working on, I'm hopeful for more massive objects to be less lag inducing.



This project I speak of is an O'Neil Cylinder, a type of space colony. A 1:1 replica with an 8000 block diameter and 32000 block length. Basically a giant hollow cylinder with a habitat inside and some sattelites on the outisde. And maybe a little artistic deviation or two on some areas.

Excuse me if this kind of topic would belong in the help section. I figured that is mostly reserved for technical help than a question like this. (Though I'm new to these forums so I could be wrong)

 

[ThiagoTGM]

As far as I\'m aware there is no actual hard cap, but I\'ve heard that bigger ships/stations can have problems with chunk boundaries and massive amounts of lag (even on strong computers). Especially chunk boundaries.

 

[Viridis00]

That was something I was worried about. What kind of problems would I face with boundaries? I intend for this thing to be, for the most part stationary after completion.

 

[ThiagoTGM]

I can\'t say for sure because I\'ve never seen it myself, but people who did told me (if my memory serves right) that if a ship occupy several chunks at once, problems with position handling or loading or something like that mould make the game lag like hell/crash/something like that. Or it would simply not let you build. It has been some time since the guy told me that, so I can\'t remember too precisely. But I\'m pretty sure multi-chunk ships have/had some sort of issue.

I would point you to someone that gone through said problem, but I\'m not even sure if he still comes to this site.

 

[MrFURB]

As Thiago said, the bigger an entity gets, the more resources are required to handle it, especially when the entity is interacting with others (Like colliding, taking missile damage, etc.).

In the game\'s current state, problems begin to arise in things being over a kilometer long in any axis. Some people can handle things twice that big, others manage to crash their game early, it depends partially on the machine handling it and partially on the game\'s code.

Expect larger and larger ships to slowly get more stable and realistically viable as updates to the game and it\'s engine come around.

 

[ThiagoTGM]

The upcoming update, for example, seems that may help a lot on that part.

And Furb, wasn\'t there an extra problem with ships that gone beyond a chunk\'s boundaries? I vaguely remember Nerds having some problem like this on his station (that I forgot the name) a while back.

 

[Viridis00]

I see. Thanks to both of you for your answers.



I guess I\'ll just have to try it for myself. I\'m just glad there\'s no hard-cap, strictly speaking.

 

[AtraUnam]

The problem with long ships is that the game only loads the sector your core is in and all the sectors around it. If your ship protrudes into a third sector then asteroids, planets and empty ships will not load. However once your core catches up a bit they will load in... possibly inside your ship.

 

[Winterhome]

Personally I\'d recommend making multiple station parts to do something like that, rather than making it a single station. That way you could line up gravity blocks along the edges of plates and switch segments smoothly, and avoid the issue of a single object being too large.

There are no upper boundaries, but I\'ve run into issues when making a single object larger than 500ish meters.

Make it with more objects :D

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

in any direction.

As much as you can fly a ship that\'s upwards of 800 blocks in length, you really don\'t want more than 200 ish in width and height. It gets pretty difficult to fly beyond that as it gets progressively harder to judge the distance you need to clear asteroids. Bear in mind that objects in Star Made are VERY tightly packed - in a real universe, you\'d be flying for months before reaching any meaningful target at all. In star made, you can be crashing into space clutter in seconds... you don\'t want a ship that\'s overly big.



Besides, the \'\'limit\'\' is actually there - it\'s a soft limit but it\'s based around the maximum amount of credits a person can hold. You can make a basic ship to be at the top of that limit without turrets and then buy the turrets later but if it\'s too big and therefore too expensive, you will only be able to build it manually or spawn it with admin commands. That makes it useless in multiplayer, which is where it\'s most fun to have one ^^



So I would advise you to keep within 4 million blocks and 1000/400/400 and you will be fine. sorry you can\'t build a 32km replica of that colony though...





Oh btw, I almost forgot. AtraUnam raised a pretty valid point there - sectors are only around 1-2km in size. A ship larger than this will always sit in 2 sectors at any time which is bad enough if it\'s jsut a lump of solid systems. But it\'s utterly horrible if you have any crew inside since it will be impossible for them to operate due to constant system rotation. I\'ve had this problem with far smaller ships, 600 meters is enough if you aren\'t careful to put you beyond the sector border and have your ship float away from you.



TL:DR don\'t build beyond 1000 blocks in any direction, especially sideways.

 

[Belnick]

one of my bases are 800x600x600

and all sides got 10 blocks heavy armor protection, roof, floor, sides etc...

long time to build, even with the 10x10x10 tool

on top of the base single turrent with 6 000 000 cannons on it :D

 

[ultimatemonster5]

Pics or it didnt happen ;]

 

[Belnick]

yes because it is so hard to use admin commands for blocks and money? lol