Make large ships large (size diversity)

[tyroney]

Practically speaking, the change would affect shields, weapons, and power systems. (at least)

For each, there would be a size threshold that would move them into an upper tier. Large weapons or large shields would require large power reactors. Small weapons pass through large shields with little or no reduction in power, going straight to armor/hp damage. Large weapons would damage small shields modestly, and be unable to hit armor/hp protected by them.

This would help various sizes of ship be useful, and could be extended to multiple tiers, or applied unevenly to the various systems if desired.

A tiered size system would be even more interesting combined with a limit on the number of action slots a person can command simultaneously. In order to shoot while charging your jump drive while flying around while jamming and cloaking and scanning for enemies, multiple people or one person swapping between multiple consoles would be necessary. Such a "limitation" would further encourage ship specialization and/or cooperation/collaboration.

Ideally, if the systems at a single console were linked to their power source and each other, all sharing damage while that console is active,

• engineers could build backup, redundant, compartmentalized, or otherwise more interesting ships
• re-routing power from life support to fire the main cannon would be possible or at times necessary
• attackers would have a chance of damaging multiple systems without having to hunt down specific blocks (depending on ship design)

 

[Mariux]

Ignoring shields in any way gives too much potential for griefing.

 

[tyroney]

Who said ignore? I left room to have damage reduced in the case of small attacking large. If you really need to be alone and bullet proof, you could install both sizes of shield on a big enough ship. (Offhand, I'd think you'd have to power one down while the other runs, but that's just my first assumption)

At the worst, someone wouldn't be able to do everything in a single size of vessel.

 

[Criss]

The game devs do not want to force specific sizes on players for their ships. It limits their creativity, which is a big deal for the game. People come up with their own ship classes and they vary in size. Generally the peak for most players is a kilometer so up until that point players make whatever sip classes they see fit. The devs do want there to be a balance between ship sizes and if necessary they can nudge us in the right direction by changing power demands and etc.

 

[Keptick]

A player could use plenty of drones or small turrets (or both) and completely break the system. Honestly, that's way too big a flaw for it to work.

Besides, varying ship sizes already make up tiers. You don't need an artificial tiering system when there's already more self-created and intuitive tiering going on already (varying ship sizes). Limitations in a sandbox game are generally bad idea, especially when they're not essential.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I like how this game makes no distinction between ship sizes like Space Engineers does. It's entirely up to you!

 

[NeonSturm]

I like how this game makes no distinction between ship sizes like Space Engineers does. It's entirely up to you!

I like that only partially.​

The possibility of a 4x4x4 block cluster which only takes up 3 byte of memory or build tools which align to a bigger grid than 1x1x1 would be a big help in some cases.

I would say Star-Made and Space-Engineers both have their strengths - first in abstraction of concepts, second in realism and detail.​

Back on Topic:
If it is possible to code not Tiers,

but efficiency differences based size ratios (< 1/8 or > 8/1) between guns and shields,
with diminishing returns,​

it could be a thing to consider - because it promotes modularity.
(could even promote optimisations in that area)​

Unequally sized ships would do less damage to each other,

meaning fighter--turret interaction would be higher and
titan--anti-fighter-turret interaction lower.​

But it has to be a smooth transition.

 

[tyroney]

My first week I was getting one-shot with no warning in a tiny, agile, lightly shielded ship. At the moment I just spend my time in god_mode admin warping around. The only reason I now build small is because I can't afford more. (even that time I followed outdated advice and salvaged half a station and only got to a couple hundred thousand credits)

To be fair, I was making tiny lifeboats with no cabin space. (Here's hoping for more starting blocks and oxygen mechanics, but that's something else entirely)