Modular Auto-Assembly Ships?

[J_MASTER]

Was thinking about how a nearly completely modular ship could be made.

Visual example:
Many cube modules of varying specializations such as armor, shields, or weapons, could be programmed to move into a certain configuration chosen by a user that draws a schematic of what goes where.

These modules would also allow for armor breach detection and literal rearrangement of the ship to mitigate damage from the specialized system modules and move more armor modules in their place.

I don't expect this to be combat efficient, but it would be very interesting to see done. What are your thoughts on the applications of this, possible problems with module-module communications, etc?

 

[rocketstrong]

i would love to see this made it would be hard because rails can go from on entity to another

 

[Byamarro]

Was thinking about how a nearly completely modular ship could be made.

Visual example:
Many cube modules of varying specializations such as armor, shields, or weapons, could be programmed to move into a certain configuration chosen by a user that draws a schematic of what goes where.

These modules would also allow for armor breach detection and literal rearrangement of the ship to mitigate damage from the specialized system modules and move more armor modules in their place.

I don't expect this to be combat efficient, but it would be very interesting to see done. What are your thoughts on the applications of this, possible problems with module-module communications, etc?

Computing power requirments for this task may be too high for currently existing CPUs made in SM.

 

[alterintel]

well, with magnetic docking it's theoretically possible. However it probably wouldn't be very reliable.

 

[J_MASTER]

Computing power requirments for this task may be too high for currently existing CPUs made in SM.

This has been my biggest concern, though it shouldn't be too bad small scale.


Also, still haven't had the time to test logic bypassing the 5-second undocking/redocking timer. I could swear it was a thing happening with one of my builds, so I'll try to mess around with that first.

The trickiest part starting out I see coming will be moving everything flush, and dynamically moving docking points.

 

[Byamarro]

This has been my biggest concern, though it shouldn't be too bad small scale.


Also, still haven't had the time to test logic bypassing the 5-second undocking/redocking timer. I could swear it was a thing happening with one of my builds, so I'll try to mess around with that first.

The trickiest part starting out I see coming will be moving everything flush, and dynamically moving docking points.

I think that logics will be hardest part. You'll propably need to make small CPU that will read programmed code as this task might be too complicated for hardware based program.

 

[HolyCookie]

All I can advice is wait for the update that makes rails able to move an entity between 2 entities. inter-movement or something.

 

[icky]

what about getting it the entity close to where you want it, undock it so its just floating, then push beam so it contacts where you want it to dock.

 

[icky]

proof of concept
you could even take it a step further and activate the process by docking your ship in the first place. then the station equips it with whatever, then you take off.

 

[icky]

found a better way to do it. instead of moving the part towards the ship, move the SHIP!

 

[J_MASTER]

Well the issue now is the 5-second delay between docking and undocking. This means you cannot transfer an entity while in combat/flying around (collisions would go wacky).

I'm sure this delay exists to keep your docked ship from re-docking to the same port, but I could see an update to this eliminating the delay in the future.