Permadocking / Modularity

[Travesty]

I've seen several people who like to create a consistent theme by reusing portions of their designs across entire fleets, whether it's a set of weapons, or a particular engine design, etc.

I've also entertained the idea of building on this concept and making ships that are entirely make of modular parts, just to see if it would work. Design a core, design a weapon, design a bridge, and then jam them all together into some sort of configuration.

I'd like to see some sort of docking system that physically connects two ships on a block-to-block level, rather than just the current system of one floating against the other as a seperate entity. This would likely involve a new type of module that must be placed on both ships involved, then you fly one over to the other, "dock", and they attach into one ship. One of the ship cores would probably have to be destroyed in the process, and the ship takes on the name of the core that remains. With this, you could make ships from modular pieces, or replace entire damaged sections of ships by removing the damage and attaching a spare instead of rebuilding that section from scratch.

This would give people something to think about when designing large ships, where they must decide between integrating everything into one piece, or building in sections that can be efficiently replaced on the fly. Ships could even carry around spares by docking the spare parts as ships onto normal docking ports.

 

[therimmer96]

I agree, dont know how many times i want to copy the same engine part but im forced to build it block by block

 

[LazerusKI]

+1 here too, same pattern over and over again

 

[Digi]

A simple copy and pasting of block chunks would do, saving them into a separate design catalog where you can add core-less stuff that can only be added in build mode of another ship/station/whatever.

That way you can create modules for anything and just fit them on your ship as you like, but this has nothing to do with actual docking and stuff since you\'re not physically putting stuff together... you just have like a paste tool :}

 

[Malkadir]

A nice solution would be having recipes for your ships, using a factory to have your ship slowly build by itself and of course you could use a mix of recipes to build specific ships.

 

[Travesty]

This would work as well, but requires a lot more changes. Being able to place entire sections would mean having selection tools, a new saving system for non-ships, etc. It might work better in the long run, but I was trying to figure out a solution that would work with the current tools.

 

[Hierarch]

Magnets would make this work, look for my thread.

Always,

-H