Mechanical Blocks - Rotors and Rails

[ltmauve]

So hopefully one of the features that will be added soon is mechanical blocks - blocks that allow shipbuilders to make vents that open, missile hatches, doors, and any and all cool moving bits of a ship.

So 3 types of blocks (actually would be 5)

First would be purely cosmetic: exposing glowy bits, weapons, maybe some types of s-foils, vents, you get the idea. For this you wouldn't care if the physics engine proceeded to ignore the pieces moving around, but you get the idea. The blocks that appear to be moving around would, according to the engine, simply stay in place.
Comes in both rotational (Rotor) and translational (Rail) flavors.

Second would be if you want to make moving hanger doors, physical elevators, or a working mech. This would require power, and involve the physics engine as well. You would also be able to move docking ports or weapon outputs using this. (Making proper, not-tilting-into-the-ship turrets).
The sections that move would retain their adjacency to blocks they touch in the zero position. In other words, if you have a door section with a power line running through it your power will not be affected by the door size. However, bounding box and docking size would probably have to be expanded based on the range of motion of the rail/rotor.

The final way: So you know the puddle jumper from Stargate: Atlantis? The shuttlecraft that retracts engines when going through a stargate or parking? Basically this would allow you to "draw in" components to allow you to fit in a smaller docking area, or just go through a small hole. The idea is to "remove" blocks while remembering their position so they can be "placed back" when needed. The mass of the ship would remain unchanged, but adjacency would get removed by this. This would allow to dock in smaller areas.

 

[Draeke_Forther]

I also want to see some sort of dynamic content added to ships, and I love the rails idea, but I think it should be a lot simpler than what you have proposed. Probably a motor like block that links up like normal systems, and does one thing, such as moving the group back and forth or rotating for either a duration or angle. As for the power usage, frankly, I don't really see the consumption from the rails being significant compared to that of the weapons, shields, thrust, etc.

 

[NeonSturm]

I like the "keep connected" feature for rotors. At least for blocks close to the rotation point.

I don't mind cosmetic parts which are _not_ collide-able between bigger ships or big-ship<–>planet, as long as:

• they have a low size compared to the ship
• smaller (not laggy) ships which come into proximity of these parts see them as separate collide-able ship.

Pop-up turrets might be abuseable, but so are turrets in sunken hull parts only showing a small line for a different output-position too.

 

[ltmauve]

Draeke_Forther Well if you were trying to deploy 70 missile turrets all at once for a huge missile swarm, that would be something that should take a huge amount of power. Opening a hanger door? hardly a concern for being OP.

@Neonstrum Well the entire point of the cosmetic parts is that there is no physics for the engine to do, so a very, very low performance cost. Really as long as the parts stay inside the ship's bounding box we shouldn't have a problem with people using large panels to blind opponents.

As for the abuse of pop-up turrets, first let me note that turrets are probably going to get nerfs to aiming/turning through the hull of the ship. Second, if a turret pops out, it will be facing in a certain direction and have to pan towards a target first.

 

[NeonSturm]

ltmauve: "As for the abuse of pop-up turrets, first let me note that turrets are probably going to get nerfs to aiming/turning through the hull of the ship. Second, if a turret pops out, it will be facing in a certain direction and have to pan towards a target first."

I thought of docked ships which are also usable to shield the core, reactors for all your thrust and have a fixed position and between 45° and 90° fire angle.
If you attack an oponnent, you want in a certain direction. If you get attacked, you need other turrets anyway and a much larger ship to take the initial damage.

turret| ship \docked turret-ship/ ship
turret| ship /docked turret-ship\ ship
with turrets that cover 180° backward

 

[Byamarro]

Can't wait

 

[Clockwork Alpha]

I don't know why we would need rails to be honest. Many games including Minecraft have rails because it's fast transportation, but in starmade you can use ships which would probably go a lot faster than rails.

 

[Megacrafter127]

I don't know why we would need rails to be honest. Many games including Minecraft have rails because it's fast transportation, but in starmade you can use ships which would probably go a lot faster than rails.

Rails in starmade aren't about transportation of people or goods. They are about movement of docked entities.
Imagine a ship only having 2 turrets, but those 2 can still cover every spot because they can move along rails across the entire surface of the ship.
Or imagine a ship, that has an armor plate, which can cover any spot of the ship, because it can move across the ship's surface. (ablative armor)
Not to forget conveyor belts, real sliding doors, etc.

 

[Draeke_Forther]

I want blocks that can move, I feel that the ships are too much like sculptures right now. They're just static.

 

[jayman38]

I don't know why we would need rails to be honest. Many games including Minecraft have rails because it's fast transportation, but in starmade you can use ships which would probably go a lot faster than rails.

My primary use for rails will be for in-ship elevators (turbolifts in trek-speak).

Creating massive walkways is fun to explore and even to wander around, but ultimately, I found that if I could use elevators, I could devote more internal volume to ship systems if I could only have elevators instead of stairwells....