Modular Shipyards

[Edymnion]

So we finally have shipyards, hurray!

Thing is, with the way its set up, the 50m limit between arms (unless you change it in the defaults) means lots of repetitive ribs. Now don't get me wrong, I actually like this. Means you have to build a half way interesting looking structure instead of just two sticks half a sector apart.

Thing is, for large shipyards, thats a LOT of ribs that are likely all going to look exactly alike. And I'd wager for pretty much any server, you're going to be making a shipyard (eventually) thats bigger than the server settings for the max build space available for copy/paste (we cranked those to 100 x 100 x 100 on my server, and thats nowhere near enough for one full arm of the shipyard I will need to build).

So, is there any way we could make shipyards work through docked entities?

As in, make one arm using a ship core, blueprint it, then simply spawn however many copies we need to make a full length shipyard? Then if we need longer later on, just dock a few more on the ends to increase the size?

Because I'm building a fleet capital ship right now that there is no way in hell I'll be able to repair manually, nor would despawning and respawning it from a blueprint be practical. So, a shipyard as it's normal docking bay would be ideal. Thing is, I'm probably looking at a shipyard thats 500 x 500 x 1000 meters or more to be able to dock the thing, and thats going to be pretty daunting build in it's own right. Would be a lot easier if I could make one rib and then just dock 19 more duplicates to it.

 

[Zaphord]

IF you could connect the shipyard computer to the modules on a docked entity (which wouldn't work since it's a station only block) then you could make an expandable shipyard. I had a similar idea using rails to make an adjustable shipyard, which could expand using rails to make it longer and wider if needed, until I remembered that you can't put station blocks on docked entities.

As it stands, we'll just have to build monster shipyards to produce monster ships.

 

[Incendiario]

Hi. Actualy i kinda like your idea... The server i use to play in ( ORION ) also as build limitations, so it will be hard to build shipyards capable of rapairing some vessels...
If you don't mind i would like to propose another "way" to simplify shipyards size...
One possibility woud be to use the shipyard feature as a "space station option", by ading it to a rail system. The advantage to this is that a rail system will need less blocks amount resulting in a lower station mass, preventing lag issues and server crash... In order to make it work i think this "arm" would be an entity in its own, wireless commanded, that would need to be energy independant by having its own power capacitators and a fully working shipyard system.

EDIT: Sorry to post "same idea" you do, Zaphord... When i started to wrote my message, you haden't posted your message yet...

 

[Edymnion]

What if the computer has to be on a station, and it could be wirelessly linked to the shipyard modules?

Let the shipyard modules be placed on ships, just not the computer that runs them.

Hmmm... probably wouldn't work, current wireless blocks have no range limit, which would mean you could still end up with a mobile shipyard that simply has it's computer on the other side of the galaxy.

 

[Keptick]

Uh... just up your build mode sizes in single player and use copy paste, then make a blueprint of the shipyard.

Spoiler: For example

This shipyard is 1.3km long, around 500m wide and I don't remember the height. Didn't have any problem making this... It only took me a few hours.

Having to dock arms would increase entity count, therefore lag. And it's completely unnecessary. Using copy paste is a lot faster then painfully docking the ribs one by one.

Edit: Actually you don't even need to increase your max build setting. Just copy paste the ribs in segments.