Motors

[xeno-striker]

SO! MOTORS!!
had this idea for a while, and now with the logic system in place it felt like a good time to share. I'm sure others have had this idea, but I don't care! so here we go!


when hooked up to a logic system, the motor can be activated to complete tasks such as open doors or rotate station segments.

When paired they can be used to do complex tasks such as the one displayed at the top.

I was thinking some settings will be editable while in build mode such as torque speed and rotation limits. They would rotate one way when activated, when activated again they would reverse direction.

its a simple idea and still needs some work. If you fine folks have ideas or suggestions, let me know c:

 

[SmilingDemon]

Yeah .. that would look nice!
(i would love to build a ship with rotating segment for gravitxy)

But if i remember correctly from the Q/A it is most likly not going to happen!
(Because of collision stuff and performance handycaps associated with a system like that?)

 

[xeno-striker]

is that so? that does make sense. collisions would be a nightmare to figure out for this sort of thing. If any solutions come to mind i will post them.

 

[JoeTheAntiPro]

if they ever add motors, they will probably only ever rotate and stop 90 degrees each turn, and probably have no collision while moving, and only gain collision again when its at a fixed 90 degree change.

 

[Draeke_Forther]

Schema addressed a similar topic in the Q & A, to which his response was:

might not be easy as basically the grid system is there to ensure performance. however it could possibly be done with an extension to docking​

 

[xeno-striker]

well dang D: .... guess we will have to just wait and see what the future holds. Schema is some next level programming wizard, I'm sure he can do it.

 

[ltmauve]

Now, the problem with using the turret docking system is that a) shields aren't shared b) the logic system won't work c) making a ring around part of your ship rotate wouldn't work.

 

[NeonSturm]

Schema addressed a similar topic in the Q & A, to which his response was:

might not be easy as basically the grid system is there to ensure performance. however it could possibly be done with an extension to docking​

Good answer

Do you wanna have a detail-rich ship _OR_ the game supporting big ships?

Personally I think it would be cool to have one unified framework for many "sub-games" to attract as many players as possible and gather as many content as possible, thus creating a better experience for everybody.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Space Engineers has motors, and they can be quite amazing for torpedo tube caps and spinning radar dishes. I don't expect them anytime soon, since they don't actually do much besides those nice asthetic touches, but it would be nice to eventually see them.

 

[ltmauve]

If you don't mind if your moving parts not having any physics interactions (like that radar dish or the torpedo tubes) what could be done is simply a method of marking some blocks to not be transmitted to the client as part of that ship, instead as a docked ship. Transformations could be then done be telling the client that the docked ship has been moved.

Doing transformations involving physics/weapon outputs/docking/logic could possibly be done by creating another "entity" using blocks from the main ship, while not affecting the groups (which I believe are stored separately from the actual block data. This presents its own technical challenges but would allow connections between the two systems.

Of course, this presents the challenge of making sure that recalculations of the ship properties actually works (if you cut through a power line or something with this). I'm sure it could be done, I'm just not sure it wouldn't be like taking a sledgehammer to the engine. #itwouldhelpifsomeonebesidesschemaknewhowtheengineworks.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I would love to have some kind of motor and there could be many ways to do it. I don't like the idea of having behave exactly like a dock. It would be fine if it took some of the qualities but I do not like the idea of having to mount a core and then add shields. If it was simply a dock like block that we could add blocks to in build mode on the main ship that would be great. It would be treated as a separate entity like turrets and like turrets it would not have a collision box against the mother ship but would for other objects. Additionally it would get the shields from the mothership so you don't need separate systems.

This would be accomplished by placing down the rotator, and build on it, select the motor (C) and connect blocks to it (V) this would then make those blocks rotate free from collisions with the ship. It could even be flat against the ship as it has no clipping and only rotates on one plane, but even a small gap would be acceptable. A system like this should be able to be expanded for all sorts of things, place the motor in the center of the ship, select an entire disconnected ring around your ship, and bam, you have a gravity ring.

 

[NeonSturm]

Between ship-ship combats there is no need for destroying single blocks rather than block-groups - which would reduce the need to load some of the invisible blocks into memory.
If you are sitting in a titan, you will never actually care about a single destroyed hull block during the fight.

I am a bit sad about how SM aims to be exact physics rather than cheating here and there where you don't care that much to greatly improve performance, because I like more customizability.