New docking system: Combine

[General_Revil]

So I have been thinking about this new combine system long ago. I don't know if there are any posts about similar concept but I can't find any so I'm gonna post it anyways.

This is how it works.
It is very simillar to both ship docking and turret docking, but the idea is, the docked ship will connect and become part of your main ship. You can control the system on the docked ship from your main ship, and the docked ship can't move around like a turret, also no ai module is needed. So what you can do is, combine ships together to make one super ship, and make replaceable parts for the ship.

You can dock different epuipments to the mainship depense on your needs.
If you are going to fight a faction war, and you need to equip a powerful main cannon, you might want to dock some power unit that can generate and store extra power for the cannon.
If you wanna do some mining, you might wanna dock a mining laser unit to it,
If you need speed you can add a jet pack on your ship.
You can always undock combined parts if you need to lose some weight to run from pirates or other players.

This system needs a combine module, combine enchancers (I personally hate the enchancer system and the green box thing. I hope some day Schema will come up with a docking system that doesn't involve this two things), and a combine computer.
First assign the combine computer to the hot bar, then shoot the combine module on the other ship just like docking,
The ship will be docked to the main ship and now it is part of it, except there is no gap between two ships, unlike other docking system.

When combined, energy regen, energy capacity, thrust and shields on both ships will be added up and re-calculate as one single ship. The combine computer will be used to manage how other system, basically weapon system on both ships are connected.


For example if you combine three ships with AMC cannons to the main ship, you can use the combine computer on the main ship to decide whether the three weapon computers on those gun ships stay seperated (so they take three slots on hot bar), connect all extra computer into one (takes one slot on hot bar), or connect to a existing weapon computer on the main ship (takes no extra slot on hot bar).
When combined if any weapon blocks, e.g. amc blocks, on both ships are physically connected, will be considered as one cannon. The control and output will use the main ship's setting.

Sorry if anything is not clear, English is my second language.

TL;DR, Combine ships together. Make replaceable parts

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Hinges would be good, using turret docks as doors etc. Spaced armor has already been done. There are modular ships out there.



But the whole idea of the docking system is that the systems on both the mothership and docked vessel are separate. MAYBE you could use some power of the docked vessel on them othership but with a great penalty.

If you wanted those systems on your mothership, you would have built them into the mothership. That\'s the bottom line.



It would be good if things like shields and energy generation could flow freely between all docks and motherships, but weapons power is kind of out of the question. To be honest, if you dock ships together and activate the AI to attack any enemies nearby, they will shoot even though they cannot turn or move on their own. Try it.

 

[General_Revil]

Thanks for reply!

First of all I\'m not quite sure what my suggestion is doing with hinges.

And this is definitely not spaced armor. The idea of modular ship is the shield units and the ship itself are seperate, so all the shields won\'t die at once. If you try to make spaced armor with this system you will get regular armor, since it is not seperated from the mothership like modular ship do.

About the system connection. If I wanted those systems on my mothership, I would have built them in. That\'s true. But what if I don\'t want them all at once? This combine thing allows me to change my mothership into different modes depends on my current needs. I can put parts on and take parts off, without rebuilding my ship. And it is fun to combine things together.

And I honestly don\'t know docked ship with ai on will shoot enemies! Gonna try that out.

Thanks again.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

But that would require some planning ahead while building and a lot of changes in the code of the game. Yeah I can see how you could put on modules of the ship like thrusters and generators etc. essentially making a more complex modular ship. Question is, would Schema be willing to rework his code to allow us to do things like this? Is it even possible?

 

[General_Revil]

I know nothing about game coding.

 

[Krahazik]

In some ways what he is talking about is simmilar to the Saucer Sep system the Enterprise on Star Treh The Next Generation used. Ins eperated flight the Battle Drive Section and the Suacer Section operate as 2 completely independant space craft. When joined, both share reasources evenly and operate as a single vessel. Star Trek Federation Runnabouts would be an example of a modular ship. You never really see them change modules in the show, but the runnabout was designed so that the middle section below the warp core and between the nacells could be replaced with a module to fit mission specific needs. More cargo, medical or science, another power plant, whatever.

There are a number of ships in Anime which also do the same thing.

One example where this might work is you have say 4 main drive hulls and a command hull. The command hull is a small ship with some basic power and shields and ok engines, but no real weapons or tools or anything. Before it goes out on a mission the player backs his little command hull onto the main hull which has the equipment and resources he needs for whatever job he is going to do. Heavy combat, exploration, or mining.

Another usefull thought besides swapping out equipment, emergency esacep. Say you go into battle and your main part of your ship has taken too much damage and has become mostly dead weight and your looking at getting waisted becasue your engines have been destroyed and most of your main shield generation. So you jetteson the bulk of your ship feeing up your lighter command hull and run like crazy in a much lighter more menuverable ship.

 

[busterbleede]

than there has soem thignt o be done with speed limit since allships gen fly max speed so a light small fighter cant ascappe a big ship that easy since its also an easy pray to shoot down with a strogn amc so than small ship will be abel to travel 1,5 times faster or so jsut while they are lot smaller this can also make fleet fightign lot more intresting another idea is a bar where u can say how much power the trusers have to giv elike u want to fly at 50% speed it will save power for ships there are nto ballanced for baatle and flying and its will get easyer to stay close to bigger and slower ships and meaby some kind of afterburner or short time overclocker for the trusters to let u fly at high speed for soem tiem and than forcign u to slow down a lot like to 30% of u max speed