Read by Council How to make hull less dull. Thoughts?

[NeonSturm]

Intro

If you just like block-slicing in shipyards, comment here https://starmadedock.net/threads/block-slices.22658/#post-257859

This thread is reserved for comments on the whole concept or unique parts of it.​

NOTE: existing ships should have a tool to search+replace hull blocks by ID→ID or type→type.

So don't worry about it being a nightmare to adapt existing ships.
​

Notes

I assume slices to weight less.

Basic blocks need very few paint (basic, recycle old paint 100%), if any (heavy) to encourage their use (flexibility).

Recycle paint? Future could have semi-magnetic sticky but recoverable paint.
​

Shipyards can slice and paint the 2 more basic versions only (can also be available for mobile resource processors inside a construction ship, slicing on demand and merging at bay).

Numbers are just examples not exact suggestions.
​

Armour-types

Basic armour :

Conception: "generic grey hollow block". Made of scrap.
- Paper-block with low HP, cost and average weight to give your ship a cool look.

A shipyard can slice and paint it both (unlike the other types)
- only a very low amount of paint needed.

Basic-Slabs are a lightweight and flexible decoration.
- It is preferred for it's easiness of use.

​

Heavy armour :

Conception: "inside-out painted full block". Made of scrap and rock.
- It is very heavy (stations don't care), but also effective and looks natural.

A shipyard may be allowed to slice it, but not paint it.
- The look is dependent on what was used to build it (yellow, blue asteroids, etc).

It could use the texture of their main build-material, only slightly altered with graphic/light manipulation.
- Maybe with light colours, but perhaps there needs to be a shader or effect-enhanced textures (easy to make).
- The texture could also be a mix between ingredient+hull.​

About 4x HP and 8x weight (compared to basic).

Heavy-Blocks are, what you use for stations and natural-looking recreational areas.
- Preferred by those which look for efficiency and natural-look or which don't care about mobility (deployable mining drones for example).

​

Advanced/Shield-Cap armour :

Conception: "hollow, but inside-out painted full block".
- Very lightweight with a little shield capacity (not as much as dedicated blocks), but low HP.

Shipyards neither slice nor paint it. Slicing and painting is done early in it's production.
- Because of the added difficulty, it is commonly seen that ships are shaped with basic armour, but then a shipyard replaces basic with advanced armour before constructing it.

Despite the low HP, it resists quite some damage (armour-value).
About 70% HP + 70% ShieldCap and 2/3 weight (compared to basic and shield-caps). Proportionally less for slices.

Advanced-Slabs perfectly hide your exposed systems on turrets.
- Preferred for agility, hit&run ships, High-G operations (shuttles + black holes) and by freelancers.

​

Military/Combat armour :

Conception: "opaque counterpart to crystal armour".​

Crystal armour :

Conception "inside-out painted and transparent block".
- The military version is the ultimate goal, but often only sold to high-ranked faction-members with enough credits because of production costs or "high demand / low supply".

Shipyards neither slice nor paint it. Slicing and painting is done early in it's production.
- Because of the added difficulty, it is commonly seen that ships are shaped with basic armour, but then a shipyard replaces basic with advanced armour before constructing it.

It has 4.5x HP and 5.5x weight. Possibly disable slabs for this.

Crystal armour has the most dense HP-distribution at a lower weight as with heavy blocks.
- Preferred by ships which are too large to evade incoming projectiles.​

 

[jayman38]

Theory:
Make a single set of hull blocks. Set them up with an inventory like storage blocks, but without auto-pulls, cycles, or connections to cargo blocks.
Fill them with mass/armor/system meta items to create the exact level, strength, effect, mass, and color desired.

Create meta-links so that you can create mass volumes of this meta-armor that all point to the same "storage" until they require a new, unique storage to reflect changes from the primary "storage".

This would give you a single armor block that has variations for hull, crystal, armor, advanced armor, lights, and any combinations, including variable color, light emission, variable transparency, variable armor values, variable mass, possibly variable effects, and possibly variable particle effects or other special effects.

Example meta items: (names are made up to protect the innocent and can be changed)
Blue Light crystal (mass 0.001, Blue Light +1, armor 0.0001, system 0.01)
Alignment crystal (mass 0.01, armor 0.01, system 0.0001)
Red Light crystal (mass 0.001, Red Light +1, armor 0.0001, system 0.01)
Green Light crystal (mass 0.001, Green Light +1, armor 0.0001, system 0.01)
Heavy crystal (mass 0.1, armor 0.001, system 0.001)
Atomic Energy Field crystal (mass 0.001, Transparency +1%, system 0.0001)
Bluthen crystal (mass 0.001, Blue Color +1, system 0.0001)
Rethen crystal (mass 0.001, Red Color +1, system 0.0001)
Grethen crystal (mass 0.001, Green Color +1, system 0.0001)
Whithen crystal (mass 0.003, Red, Green, Blue +1, system 0.0003)
Static Energy crystal (mass 0.0001, +1 random sparking particle effect per second)
Vapor crystal (mass 0.0001, +1 random cloud particle effect per second)

Suddenly, you would have all the variability that people have suggested, as far as more colors and more different types of armor. I haven't seen it suggested yet, but this would give you variable-transparency glass/crystal armor as well. If you could access the "master storage" for a whole array of blocks, for example, accessing the inventory while in advanced-build mode, you could fulfill people's wish to change colors across the entire ship, for things like new paint jobs.

 

[NeonSturm]

jayman38

Although I like your idea, there 2 major issues:

• Block data needs to fit into the 24 or 32 bits channelled to the GPU.
• Armour should show as armour to the player inspecting it (note: I said inspecting not just looking at).

Damage calculus however would not be affected (done by CPU, or are missiles calculated by the GPU?).

I guess Block-damage values are in blocks only because of damage effects and easier access, but I am not sure about this.

• This would be another issue.

If you can solve this. I am all for it.​

 

[Lecic]

Hull isn't redundant.

That is all.

 

[jayman38]

jayman38

Although I like your idea, there 2 major issues:

• Block data needs to fit into the 24 or 32 bits channelled to the GPU.
• Armour should show as armour to the player inspecting it (note: I said inspecting not just looking at).

Damage calculus however would not be affected (done by CPU, or are missiles calculated by the GPU?).

I guess Block-damage values are in blocks only because of damage effects and easier access, but I am not sure about this.

• This would be another issue.

If you can solve this. I am all for it.​

I imagine the meta-item contents would not be lost until the block is destroyed, so the meta items will set the initial "maximum" block data values, which will be a part of the 24-bit block data, which can then be modified as it is now. (Example: meta items lead to 152 HP and 33% armor rating for a given block. That block takes damage as normal from the maximum of 152 Hit points down to 0, until it is destroyed. None of the meta items are lost until the block is completely destroyed.)

Things like color calculation and maximum HP (for damage repair) would have to reference the metadata, but this would theoretically be handled and stored during non-stress moments. (I.e. away from active combat and before massive logic systems are activated.)

On a side note, I would guess the damage is calculated by the CPU, unless the StarMade engine makes use of some sort of OpenCL extension. (OpenCL can pass logic to the GPU multiprocessor to assist the CPU with calculations.)

 

[NeonSturm]

Hull isn't redundant.
That is all.

Then perhaps I used the wrong word. I meant that there should be incentive to use all types. And that it should be more of a choice, not just get the best or the cheapest.

I don't know. I like mine and jayman's suggestion. But hull now is dull.

 

[Lecic]

Then perhaps I used the wrong word. I meant that there should be incentive to use all types. And that it should be more of a choice, not just get the best or the cheapest.

I don't know. I like mine and jayman's suggestion. But hull now is dull.

There is an incentive to use other types- weight. An agile ship is unlikely to be using heavier armors when that means sacrificing on other systems to make up for lost thrust.

 

[Deserea]

There is an incentive to use other types- weight. An agile ship is unlikely to be using heavier armors when that means sacrificing on other systems to make up for lost thrust.

And another thing that hull is good for is dummy armor, much like the sandbags put on tanks, you can make plates of *hull* because its so light, to absorb some missiles before it gets to the real armor. You can of course do that with other armors, but its more expensive, sow hy would you.

 

[Master_Artificer]

If wedges and tetra's were to weigh less, then they would have to offer less protection and provide less HP to the armor bar to account for the lost weight, so their is a trade off.

Right now, hull weighs half of normal system blocks, and offers 50 HP to the armor bar. You apply it to where your ship will not be taking damage 90% of the time, and under advanced and standard armor.


It does not murder your thrust to mass ratio like advanced armor does. What you do is you have at least a 5 to 1 ratio of hull to advanced, to provide that valuable Armor Bar health that your Advanced blocks consume so much of when they take fire. If you run out of armor bar and still have 50% or more of your armor intact, your doing it wrong. :P

5 hull and 1 advanced weigh in at the same amount, but the 5 hull adds 250 armor HP while 1 advanced adds 100, and consumes over a thousand before it breaks with the right passives setup.

really it seems like standard is the one that is left out usually.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Some of why standard gets left out is because it looks boring.
[I allso find plain hull to be boring in most of the colors, just a little too close to pastel for me.]

Yes, Standard has that "un-tiled/continuous" look to it, but the other types are obviously tiled.
I'd rather have all 3 be obviously tiled, or NOT tiled.

Heck, I'd even take variants that are.

 

[jayman38]

I recommend using the slave-master concept in defining the appearance of hull and armor. Technical warning: This will force the game to draw its own texture sheets in memory as custom textures and may be a little slow, but might be worth it.

Requirements: Hull needs to be slaved to something, like a computer. (Just use a decoration computer or something).

Now slave other things to that same computer to change the look of the hull.
Slaved:
grill: adds the grill pattern to the surface of the hull/armor
mesh: adds diamond-pattern overlay (or some other small, regular pattern)
lights: alter the color if the light is active (Change hull colors at the touch of a button! A little unexpected, but very sci-fi.)
ingots: add an offset-tile-pattern overlay
hazard stripes: add a diagonal tile-pattern overlay
scaffolding: add a scaffold pattern overlay
circuits: add a circuit overlay
armor/hull slab: add a regular-tile-pattern overlay

 

[NeonSturm]

I recommend using the slave-master concept in defining the appearance of hull and armor. Technical warning: This will force the game to draw its own texture sheets in memory as custom textures and may be a little slow, but might be worth it.

It doesn't matter how you do it, every detail takes up Block-IDs or other bits on the block.
How else do you want to tell the graphic card how to draw the block?

Your post asks for 1cm thick slabs (barely enough to hide the hull) to add decoration - or some way to detach hull stats from the block and appearance.

 

[jayman38]

It doesn't matter how you do it, every detail takes up Block-IDs or other bits on the block.
How else do you want to tell the graphic card how to draw the block?

Your post asks for 1cm thick slabs (barely enough to hide the hull) to add decoration - or some way to detach hull stats from the block and appearance.

I think you misunderstand my idea. My idea involves creating new, custom textures in near-real time, using partially-transparent textures layered on top of each other, not adding additional blocks on top of the original block. However, you are right, it would take up additional Block IDs to use the custom texture. I hadn't considered that.

 

[kiraen]

I'm not sure an overlay would take up another ID. It could be treated like a ship specific meta-item. Besides, Schema said IDs aren't that important any more. (not that we want to go wild, but the restriction isn't as severe)

 

[jayman38]

I'm not sure an overlay would take up another ID. It could be treated like a ship specific meta-item. Besides, Schema said IDs aren't that important any more. (not that we want to go wild, but the restriction isn't as severe)

Well, it wouldn't necessarily be wild. The extra Block ID would be used by the new armor block after the new texture is created. Basically, the new Block ID would be a copy of the placed block that is being repainted, but using the new custom texture instead of the original texture. The custom texture is why it would use up a new Block ID, but would otherwise be identical to the original block.

Think:
an average of 4 or 5 custom textures on the outside for the paint jobs (a lot of people can use default textures. There will be a few wild players who want 50 different custom textures on their ship, but external shells should average out to about 5 custom textures per player on a server.) And maybe an average of 1 or 2 custom textures on the inside (many players don't care about internal space, so there won't be as many players making custom internal textures; besides, a lot of the decoration blocks are good enough for the internal spaces.)

 

[kiraen]

What I am saying is that it doesn't need to be a block at all.
It would just need to know the xyz to start at, which face to start on, possibly orientation, and filename.
A simple 2D overlay, a sticker if you will. It has no mass, no armor, no collision detection, it basically does not even exist except visually.
A 'skin' for ships.

 

[NeonSturm]

Space Engineers and Seed Of Andromeda have textures which span over multiple blocks. It is possible.

But then you can not control what a block has except by putting it into another location.

 

[Lecic]

Space Engineers and Seed Of Andromeda have textures which span over multiple blocks. It is possible.

But then you can not control what a block has except by putting it into another location.

I'm not saying Starmade can't, but this isn't a very good line of thinking. One game being able to do it does NOT mean another can.

 

[NeonSturm]

It is absolutely possible to make a game that supports it and doesn't have <10FPS. It wouldn't even be the biggest performance drain if done right.
It's a choice from schema whether he wants to put effort into it and whether he wants to make the necessary sacrifices, if any (noticeable) ones are needed.

I put it here to inform non-programmers about things that are possible in general. I am NOT saying that it requires 1 letter of code in SM engine.

 

[Shaker]

I think what you guys need is a upgraded texture pack!

I feel the same way with standard armor, no real point of using it once you have enough advanced to go around. But when directional thrust gets added and weight plays a greater part on speed, we may then see players opting for some standard armor if they have some spare mass to use.

Also another way to make standard stick out abit more is add a little weight to advanced, making it .4mass per block instead of .3

Then hull/standard (.1/.2) have abit more of a look in to a .4 block