Modular Shipbuilding

[Edymnion]

Since the update includes the gem of "docked entities do not undock when their rail/docker is destroyed", that opens up a LOT of very nice possibilities for modular ship design that I'd like to explore suggestions for.

1) Command Node
New docking rail type. Anything docked to this node can access the systems of the structure it is docked to as if it were in the mother entity's core, likely by simply adding everything on the base ship's hotbar to a secondary bar on the docked ship. Let us dock bridge units to ships so that we can make a range of prefab bridges or even small control ships that dock onto more special purpose secondary hulls/project modules.

This could also mean having a good general use primary ship that can dock to a command node for say a mining array or a large weapons array, letting you modify a core ship for whatever purpose you need it for.

Movie example: Gypsy Danger launch sequence from Pacific Rim:

Movie example: Jedi starfighter hypdrive docking ring
Hyperdrive docking ring

2) Only the largest reactor is active, not just the base
The biggest reason for the "only the base reactor works" was to kill unstable docked reactors, but docked reactors coming loose is no longer an issue. Instead, how about we say that only the largest reactor in a chain is active, meaning we can put our reactors onto rails to load/unload them. That way we can have multiple modular reactor designs that we can install into ships as needed. Or if a reactor is damaged, it can be extracted and repaired/replaced without worrying about messing with the rest of the ship.

This would mean having to calculate stabilizer distances across docked entities, however, but I think the trade-off would be worth it.

Would also mean we could build a warp core ejector for when a non-stabilized core starts self destructing, like in Star Trek:

3) Better inter-object rail transfers
To better support modular building, I would love to be able to make a station that houses my spare modules that I could press a button and have it swap out modules with a specific docked ship. So say I have a docked hull in my loading bay, I could have a control panel with options like "Warship", "Miner", "Scout", and pressing the button would activate logic to move rails to select the modules I need, "take them off the shelf", move them over to the ship, and "attach" them.

Would also make carriers easier if the storage bay for the fighter/drone could be moved around to better storage positions inside the ship, and then the desired ship's bay could be moved up to the outer hull to launch it. Or even just have a platform that the ship gets transferred to from storage, lifted up, and then moved onto a launch rail.

Not to mention replacing turrets!

Example from an anime, Zoids:

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Basically, now that things don't undock in combat when you don't want them to, and we've got the basis for controlling other entities in a dock chain (manual fire turrets), I want to be able to make modular ship designs where all kinds of things are pre-built and then docked, instead of having to make the entire ship in one go.

 

[Skwidz]

+1 agree

Shields don't protect the entity they're docked to don't they? Maybe they could work like the reactor docking mechanics you mentioned earlier (and the way they do now) by having the largest shield in the chain protect what's in the radius. However docked reactors were removed with one of the reasons being they caused lag when broken off inside a ship. A docked reactor would be a cool primary power supply. By the way, what did you say your solution was for the "loose reactor" issue? You just went on talking about reactors being docked and unloadable/loadable. Maybe a logic system could detect the reactor is about to fail and ejects it or maybe a rail does that? But break-off would be an issue and a separated docked interior part doesn't always take the door.

 

[Edymnion]

By the way, what did you say your solution was for the "loose reactor" issue?

It was in one of the last patch notes. Docked entities no longer detach when the rail they are docked to or their rail docker is destroyed, they just stop working.

So if you had a docked reactor and a missile blows the entire front end of it off (including the rail and docker), it won't jar loose and free float, it just powers down and stops working until repaired.

And since that was the main reason why docked reactors were bad, I see no reason why we can't go back to having them, as long as we can get them to play nice with stabilizers now.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Command nodes as described are super exploitable... I have come up with no less than 10 exploit ideas over the past few years that I had to trash because they were not viable without such a feature.

That said, a bridge design can be copy-pasted as is. If they just added command consoles that would function like getting into the core, or let you move the core, then you could do the same thing without increasing entity counts.

 

[NTIMESc]

1) Command Node
New docking rail type. Anything docked to this node can access the systems of the structure it is docked to as if it were in the mother entity's core, likely by simply adding everything on the base ship's hotbar to a secondary bar on the docked ship. Let us dock bridge units to ships so that we can make a range of prefab bridges or even small control ships that dock onto more special purpose secondary hulls/project modules.

Rather than a special rail block, what about a system similar to personal cargo, but for selecting the docked entity to serve as the bridge. Only one could be active at a time, and there could be a cool-down before switching to a new one. This would allow having a secondary bridge (battle bridge, rerouting helm to engineering, etc.). I had started building a modular SDF-1 (from Robotech/Macross) but it's been on hold since docked power transfer was disabled.

Command nodes as described are super exploitable... I have come up with no less than 10 exploit ideas over the past few years that I had to trash because they were not viable without such a feature.

Just because they are exploitable with the existing game mechanics, etc, doesn't mean they would remain that way. I would rather see them implemented, exploited, then fixed while the game is being developed, than just preemptively abandoned.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Just because they are exploitable with the existing game mechanics, etc, doesn't mean they would remain that way. I would rather see them implemented, exploited, then fixed while the game is being developed, than just preemptively abandoned.

My point is that a lot of development time and removal of useful things would have to happen to make that doable for a feature that is not really useful for anything other than exploiting. If you want to dock a core to a ship and use it as an access point to command a ship, you can already do that via core hoping (pagedown or middle-mouse clicking) into the main ship's core, but commanding a ship from the central core is vital for preventing a number of exploits.

 

[Edymnion]

commanding a ship from the central core is vital for preventing a number of exploits.

But they've already said that command chairs to allow remote access to the core are coming...

So what exploits do you know of off the top of you head, or what would have to go away to do this?

 

[Nosajimiki]

Commander's chair as a block on the master entity is different. I'm talking about things like rapid displacement rail systems, scan & targeting exploits, etc. There are also a TON of easy things to mess up in a system like that like making sure a person can't take control of your ship from a force docker, or reduced permissions docked entity.

 

[Edymnion]

Well, we already have mechanics in place to control who can and cannot transfer cargo. Seems like that should be re-usable in a "who is and is not allowed to dock to the command node" system.

 

[Nosajimiki]

^disagree: read PM

 

[Edymnion]

^disagree: read PM

Not sure why we needed a PM to basically say "You can exploit cargo rules", but okay.

So, we have a system in place that is supposed to stop unauthorized people from using it, but isn't perfect right now. It can be fixed, it needs to be fixed, and obviously at some point it will be fixed. If the exploit moves from "losing a few cargo blocks of stuff" to "stealing entire ships", pretty sure the issue would skyrocket up the priority fix list.

I just honestly don't see "Its exploitable by bugs right now" as meaning "It will always be exploitable by bugs, hence it should never happen."

Clearly little to none of this is doable as things stand right now. As a future goal to aim for once the system and universe upgrades are done? I don't see anything that specifically makes it completely impossible to do. Not that it even needs to use the cargo mechanics, that was more of a "Well something similar is being done over here" example.

We obviously wouldn't just have it shoved in there without some extra thought and precautions put into it.

And hey, if it turns out to not be viable, its not the end of the world. I'm just putting it out there as a "This is something I would like". If its not something that can be reasonably done, I'm not gonna cry about it.

 

[Dire Venom]

Thanks for the post OP! Some really cool ideas.

To those in question:
What exploits do you see and how would you fix them?

It is well known that docking permissions are a bit wonkey atm, and with the fleet tab exploitable to add enemy ships so you can tell where they are at all times.
I don't think a cool idea should be abandoned because a correct implentation hasn't been developed yet. In fact that should really be the purpose of these disscusions imo.

 

[YamiHikari]

It was in one of the last patch notes. Docked entities no longer detach when the rail they are docked to or their rail docker is destroyed, they just stop working.

So if you had a docked reactor and a missile blows the entire front end of it off (including the rail and docker), it won't jar loose and free float, it just powers down and stops working until repaired.

And since that was the main reason why docked reactors were bad, I see no reason why we can't go back to having them, as long as we can get them to play nice with stabilizers now.

I personally don't like the idea of going back to docked power, regardless of whether they detach when disconnected. The reason being that you can then take 10 ships of the same size and give them vastly different amounts of power, which is true in both power 1.0 and 2.0.

1.0 was obvious: soft cap. By adding docked power you could bypass the soft cap in a pretty broken/exploitable manner.
2.0 is a little less easy to see but still pretty obvious: reactor-stabilizer interactions. There are two ways in which this plays out:
-With the maximum reactor blocks needed before stabilizers are needed being 10, the player could then take a bunch of cookie-cutter docks with 10 reactor blocks and dock them to a single ship, giving the player limitless power with no need for stabilizers
-This is a little strange, but it works in theory. By taking entities, giving them a big reactor group and putting a big group of stabilizers across from it with a bunch of empty space in between, the player can then link them together in succession occupying the empty space between reactor and stabilizer group with the next entity in line, creating a gummy worm-style ship (with alternating segments of reactors and stabilizers), which pretty much bypasses and exploits the required distance between stabilizers and reactors.

In either scenario, docked power gets pretty ugly. I think the intent of the docked entities patch is not for the purpose of reintroducing docked power, but for preventing server lag that would come when a turret is blown to bits and half the ship, which was composed of 20 different docked entities, floats away as a result.

 

[NTIMESc]

2.0 is a little less easy to see but still pretty obvious: reactor-stabilizer interactions. There are two ways in which this plays out:
-With the maximum reactor blocks needed before stabilizers are needed being 10, the player could then take a bunch of cookie-cutter docks with 10 reactor blocks and dock them to a single ship, giving the player limitless power with no need for stabilizers

What if there was a loss of efficiency to inherited power such that it was always worse than increasing the size of the reactor on the main ship?

-This is a little strange, but it works in theory. By taking entities, giving them a big reactor group and putting a big group of stabilizers across from it with a bunch of empty space in between, the player can then link them together in succession occupying the empty space between reactor and stabilizer group with the next entity in line, creating a gummy worm-style ship (with alternating segments of reactors and stabilizers), which pretty much bypasses and exploits the required distance between stabilizers and reactors.

I think a loss of efficiency rule would work for this scenario as well. Just regard the reactor ships as "black boxes" that output certain amount of power. When docked, they then output a lesser amount such that it wouldn't be better than a just having a larger reactor on the main ship.

Looking through the blockBehaviorConfig.xml, there are a few values labeled softcap for power 2.0. But even if there is a limit to the reactor size that continues to produce more appreciable power, an efficiency drop for docked power could take that into account as well.

 

[YamiHikari]

What if there was a loss of efficiency to inherited power such that it was always worse than increasing the size of the reactor on the main ship?


I think a loss of efficiency rule would work for this scenario as well. Just regard the reactor ships as "black boxes" that output certain amount of power. When docked, they then output a lesser amount such that it wouldn't be better than a just having a larger reactor on the main ship.

Looking through the blockBehaviorConfig.xml, there are a few values labeled softcap for power 2.0. But even if there is a limit to the reactor size that continues to produce more appreciable power, an efficiency drop for docked power could take that into account as well.

Yeah, but you still have the problem of being able to fit more power in less space with fewer stabilizers. It's all kinds of bad.

 

[NTIMESc]

Yeah, but you still have the problem of being able to fit more power in less space with fewer stabilizers.

Why would it be more power? I would expect any Efficiency Loss Algorithm™ worth it's salt to take into account such gummy worm shenanigans.

 

[YamiHikari]

Why would it be more power? I would expect any Efficiency Loss Algorithm™ worth it's salt to take into account such gummy worm shenanigans.

Think about it. In scenario 1, if you don't need stabilizers because you have docked 10-block reactors, you can fill all of the space that would have been needed for stabilizers and the gap needed in between them instead with more docked reactors, essentially doubling, or even tripling, power output. In scenario 2, you are using overlap between entities to eliminate the need to separate reactors and stabilizers, essentially cramming twice as much power into the same amount of space, at least.

 

[Edymnion]

-With the maximum reactor blocks needed before stabilizers are needed being 10, the player could then take a bunch of cookie-cutter docks with 10 reactor blocks and dock them to a single ship, giving the player limitless power with no need for stabilizers

Well, I did kind of account for that by saying only the largest reactor in the chain would be active (which I thought would imply if all reactors were the same size it would still only activate one of them at a time).

The idea being that if you wanted to dock a reactor, you could. Or if you wanted say an outpost station to be really cheap and easy to build, you could build it without a reactor at all and it would only function when you docked a ship with enough excess power to it to act as an external generator.

That you'd still only have one reactor running, whichever was largest, and the hard part would be calculating the stabilizer distance across the dock chain (so that you could potentially even dock stabilizers).

So that, eventually, the ships would stop worrying about the dock chain and just consider everything in the dock chain a single entity.

 

[Skwidz]

What if you docked a super-titan to a station that was 10x smaller than the ship? Would the largest active reactor idea apply to this too? That would help a lot.

 

[Edymnion]

What if you docked a super-titan to a station that was 10x smaller than the ship? Would the largest active reactor idea apply to this too? That would help a lot.

Yeah, which actually has real world examples.

US aircraft carriers are capable of producing PRODIGIOUS amounts of electrical power. Many times after a disaster in a coastal area, a carrier is sent in to act as a floating generator to provide emergency power.

But yes, whichever reactor in the chain is putting out the most power would become the one active reactor in the chain, including stations.