Proposal: Engineering Overhaul

[Khantron]

Starmade does a good job at allowing players to build what they want, but in some ways adding blocks to a space ship can seem a lot like just adding points to a characters rpg sheet. Except for power generation, weapons and docking the only systems which require a particular arrangement in order to function more effectively, except for systems that have some sort of proximity bonus, like thrusters and power storage, which isn’t the most intense problem to overcome: put an x by y by z block of thrusters or power storage modules somewhere and you’ve done the maximum necessary engineering necessary for max efficiency.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there are a multitude of different blocks and giving each a different construction bonus would become overwhelming very quickly, but core systems should require purposeful arrangement in general. I’ve decided to focus on five core systems, power generation, shield capacity, hull/armor, and weapons, two of which I wouldn’t change, power generation and weapons. In my proposal I will also propose some mechanics changes to facilitate the new construction philosophy.

Shield Capacity:

To start with I will propose a new mechanic, the “shield gate.” (Of everything I will propose just adding a shield gate to current Starmade would make the biggest improvement) Shield gates keep damage from bleeding into health points behind the shield. It can be a perfect shield gate, so that a 1000 damage shot hitting a 1 health shield will take down the shield but the other 999 damage won’t do anything, or they can be partial shield gates, like a 50% gate that means that after that 1 hp shield is taken down 50% of the 999 damage or 499.5 damage will be applied to whatever is behind the shield. I’m proposing a generally perfect 100% shield gate, though balance concerns might dictate lowering that to like 90% for some reason.

How will this relate to construction? I propose separating shields into multiple segments through physically separating groups of blocks of shields from one another. Every shield segment will have it’s own gate. I also suspect it would be best to hard cap a maximum number of shield segments. Each shield segment will have a group of blocks projecting it. The order of each segment will go from front to back with x and y coordinates used to solve ties. Front segments will be on the figurative outside of the shield array and back segments will be the innermost layers.

What is the drawback to using multiple shield segments? Every shield segment has a 10 second cooldown before it will start recharging and the shield segment inside it has to be at full health before the outside segment will start recharging again. This means that the overall shield recharge of segmented shields is much longer. Also shield recharge would be based on the size of the segment. Larger continuous shield segments have a bigger recharge than segmented shields. I can already see a hybrid of small shield segments and larger shield segments behind them becoming the norm.

Note: I suspect shield recharge speed as a proportion of the size of the segment will be global to all segments. Though local rechargers may turn out to be desirable in some way, global recharge would be simpler.

Hull/Armor:

A few new mechanics are needed in my imagined hull armor scheme. The biggest is making hull and armor blocks impart hp to a ship that will basically act as a second layer of non-recharging shield. The second is that shooting hull, standard armor, or advanced armor blocks imparts a flat damage reduction per shot. For example a 200 health armor array with standard armor which could have a value like 5% would take 10 damage away from each shot that hits it, down to a minimum of zero (We don’t want negative damage), while hitting advanced armor with a value of 10% would take 20 damage away from each shot that hits it. While segmented shields encourage rapid firing weaker guns, armor of this sort encourages slower shooting, more damaging weapons.

Thrusters:

Thrusters will also require a new mechanic. In order for a thruster blocks to impart full thrust the only thing behind (from the point of view of the thruster) it has to be thrusters, decorative blocks like lava or ice crystals, or empty space. Thrusters that do not meet this requirement will have significantly less thrust (10% maybe) Thrusters will otherwise function exactly the same way, you can face them in any direction. The only thing that matters is that in effect this means ships will be incentivized to have flashy weak points that smaller more maneuverable ships will be able to exploit. I might also consider a bonus that would mean that thrusters that don’t have any other thrusters or armor behind them are more effective. It would mean a risk reward balance between size of weak spot and a ship’s speediness.

On further reflection it's unnecessary to restrict building in this way. Instead of requiring 0 armor blocks to go behind thrusters it would be better just to have thrusters affect the blocks behind then, making them have 0. There should also be a visual option to make those parts that have 0 armor flash (like weak spots in star fox or something) or that option can be turned off to take screenshots of your ship. In this way external aesthetics are separated from internal functionality.

Miscellaneous:

To complement this system I propose a few weapon effects changes. Ion would change the effect shield gates have on your weapons from perfect, 100%, shield gates into a minimum, let’s say 50% shield gates. They would do decreased damage to armor and blocks down to a minimum of 0. Pierce would up to halve the armor per shot damage reduction and would do down to a minimum of 0 to shields. Punch through would do what it does now to blocks and do normal damage to shields and armor. Possibly stop would become super effective if it’s used to shoot at the aforementioned flashing weak points. Probably not, that would probably be too difficult to implement.

Concerns:

The armor system would make adding decorative blocks to the outside of ships disadvantageous. Not more disadvantageous than now, but still it’s a concern. Possible solutions, make decorative blocks have the armor of strongest adjacent block. The end result would probably be striped ships taking advantage of the decoration block’s lowered cost, which while humorous, probably isn’t for the best. Another possible solution is advanced, standard, and normally armored decorations. That would be adding a lot of blocks. The easiest is probably just making decorations have advanced armor and making them just as pricey as normal advanced armor blocks. I have to admit that none of these are perfect solutions.

The other big concern is that doing this will completely wreck all ships made before the overhaul. All I can say is that this update should be well telegraphed to allow builders time to retrofit before the update hits. It really is unfortunate and I would just try to emphasize that this system will make the experience of not only building, but also engineering ships more enjoyable. Though that’s easy for me to say since I have no particular attachment to my builds.

 

[keylan118]

Starmade does a good job at allowing players to build what they want, but in some ways adding blocks to a space ship can seem a lot like just adding points to a characters rpg sheet. Except for power generation, weapons and docking the only systems which require a particular arrangement in order to function more effectively, except for systems that have some sort of proximity bonus, like thrusters and power storage, which isn’t the most intense problem to overcome: put an x by y by z block of thrusters or power storage modules somewhere and you’ve done the maximum necessary engineering necessary for max efficiency.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there are a multitude of different blocks and giving each a different construction bonus would become overwhelming very quickly, but core systems should require purposeful arrangement in general. I’ve decided to focus on five core systems, power generation, shield capacity, hull/armor, and weapons, two of which I wouldn’t change, power generation and weapons. In my proposal I will also propose some mechanics changes to facilitate the new construction philosophy.

Shield Capacity:

To start with I will propose a new mechanic, the “shield gate.” (Of everything I will propose just adding a shield gate to current Starmade would make the biggest improvement) Shield gates keep damage from bleeding into health points behind the shield. It can be a perfect shield gate, so that a 1000 damage shot hitting a 1 health shield will take down the shield but the other 999 damage won’t do anything, or they can be partial shield gates, like a 50% gate that means that after that 1 hp shield is taken down 50% of the 999 damage or 499.5 damage will be applied to whatever is behind the shield. I’m proposing a generally perfect 100% shield gate, though balance concerns might dictate lowering that to like 90% for some reason.

How will this relate to construction? I propose separating shields into multiple segments through physically separating groups of blocks of shields from one another. Every shield segment will have it’s own gate. I also suspect it would be best to hard cap a maximum number of shield segments. Each shield segment will have a group of blocks projecting it. The order of each segment will go from front to back with x and y coordinates used to solve ties. Front segments will be on the figurative outside of the shield array and back segments will be the innermost layers.

What is the drawback to using multiple shield segments? Every shield segment has a 10 second cooldown before it will start recharging and the shield segment inside it has to be at full health before the outside segment will start recharging again. This means that the overall shield recharge of segmented shields is much longer. Also shield recharge would be based on the size of the segment. Larger continuous shield segments have a bigger recharge than segmented shields. I can already see a hybrid of small shield segments and larger shield segments behind them becoming the norm.

Note: I suspect shield recharge speed as a proportion of the size of the segment will be global to all segments. Though local rechargers may turn out to be desirable in some way, global recharge would be simpler.

Hull/Armor:

A few new mechanics are needed in my imagined hull armor scheme. The biggest is making hull and armor blocks impart hp to a ship that will basically act as a second layer of non-recharging shield. The second is that shooting hull, standard armor, or advanced armor blocks imparts a flat damage reduction per shot. For example a 200 health armor array with standard armor which could have a value like 5% would take 10 damage away from each shot that hits it, down to a minimum of zero (We don’t want negative damage), while hitting advanced armor with a value of 10% would take 20 damage away from each shot that hits it. While segmented shields encourage rapid firing weaker guns, armor of this sort encourages slower shooting, more damaging weapons.

Thrusters:

Thrusters will also require a new mechanic. In order for a thruster blocks to impart full thrust the only thing behind (from the point of view of the thruster) it has to be thrusters, decorative blocks like lava or ice crystals, or empty space. Thrusters that do not meet this requirement will have significantly less thrust (10% maybe) Thrusters will otherwise function exactly the same way, you can face them in any direction. The only thing that matters is that in effect this means ships will be incentivized to have flashy weak points that smaller more maneuverable ships will be able to exploit. I might also consider a bonus that would mean that thrusters that don’t have any other thrusters or armor behind them are more effective. It would mean a risk reward balance between size of weak spot and a ship’s speediness.

Miscellaneous:

To complement this system I propose a few weapon effects changes. Ion would change the effect shield gates have on your weapons from perfect, 100%, shield gates into a minimum, let’s say 50% shield gates. They would do decreased damage to armor and blocks down to a minimum of 0. Pierce would up to halve the armor per shot damage reduction and would do down to a minimum of 0 to shields. Punch through would do what it does now to blocks and do normal damage to shields and armor. Possibly stop would become super effective if it’s used to shoot at the aforementioned flashing weak points. Probably not, that would probably be too difficult to implement.

Concerns:

The armor system would make adding decorative blocks to the outside of ships disadvantageous. Not more disadvantageous than now, but still it’s a concern. Possible solutions, make decorative blocks have the armor of strongest adjacent block. The end result would probably be striped ships taking advantage of the decoration block’s lowered cost, which while humorous, probably isn’t for the best. Another possible solution is advanced, standard, and normally armored decorations. That would be adding a lot of blocks. The easiest is probably just making decorations have advanced armor and making them just as pricey as normal advanced armor blocks. I have to admit that none of these are perfect solutions.

The other big concern is that doing this will completely wreck all ships made before the overhaul. All I can say is that this update should be well telegraphed to allow builders time to retrofit before the update hits. It really is unfortunate and I would just try to emphasize that this system will make the experience of not only building, but also engineering ships more enjoyable. Though that’s easy for me to say since I have no particular attachment to my builds.

I disagree with most of your post. Most of these ideas severely limits creativity.

 

[Snk]

Starmade does a good job at allowing players to build what they want, but in some ways adding blocks to a space ship can seem a lot like just adding points to a characters rpg sheet. Except for power generation, weapons and docking the only systems which require a particular arrangement in order to function more effectively, except for systems that have some sort of proximity bonus, like thrusters and power storage, which isn’t the most intense problem to overcome: put an x by y by z block of thrusters or power storage modules somewhere and you’ve done the maximum necessary engineering necessary for max efficiency.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there are a multitude of different blocks and giving each a different construction bonus would become overwhelming very quickly, but core systems should require purposeful arrangement in general. I’ve decided to focus on five core systems, power generation, shield capacity, hull/armor, and weapons, two of which I wouldn’t change, power generation and weapons. In my proposal I will also propose some mechanics changes to facilitate the new construction philosophy.

Shield Capacity:

To start with I will propose a new mechanic, the “shield gate.” (Of everything I will propose just adding a shield gate to current Starmade would make the biggest improvement) Shield gates keep damage from bleeding into health points behind the shield. It can be a perfect shield gate, so that a 1000 damage shot hitting a 1 health shield will take down the shield but the other 999 damage won’t do anything, or they can be partial shield gates, like a 50% gate that means that after that 1 hp shield is taken down 50% of the 999 damage or 499.5 damage will be applied to whatever is behind the shield. I’m proposing a generally perfect 100% shield gate, though balance concerns might dictate lowering that to like 90% for some reason.

How will this relate to construction? I propose separating shields into multiple segments through physically separating groups of blocks of shields from one another. Every shield segment will have it’s own gate. I also suspect it would be best to hard cap a maximum number of shield segments. Each shield segment will have a group of blocks projecting it. The order of each segment will go from front to back with x and y coordinates used to solve ties. Front segments will be on the figurative outside of the shield array and back segments will be the innermost layers.

What is the drawback to using multiple shield segments? Every shield segment has a 10 second cooldown before it will start recharging and the shield segment inside it has to be at full health before the outside segment will start recharging again. This means that the overall shield recharge of segmented shields is much longer. Also shield recharge would be based on the size of the segment. Larger continuous shield segments have a bigger recharge than segmented shields. I can already see a hybrid of small shield segments and larger shield segments behind them becoming the norm.

Note: I suspect shield recharge speed as a proportion of the size of the segment will be global to all segments. Though local rechargers may turn out to be desirable in some way, global recharge would be simpler.

Hull/Armor:

A few new mechanics are needed in my imagined hull armor scheme. The biggest is making hull and armor blocks impart hp to a ship that will basically act as a second layer of non-recharging shield. The second is that shooting hull, standard armor, or advanced armor blocks imparts a flat damage reduction per shot. For example a 200 health armor array with standard armor which could have a value like 5% would take 10 damage away from each shot that hits it, down to a minimum of zero (We don’t want negative damage), while hitting advanced armor with a value of 10% would take 20 damage away from each shot that hits it. While segmented shields encourage rapid firing weaker guns, armor of this sort encourages slower shooting, more damaging weapons.

Thrusters:

Thrusters will also require a new mechanic. In order for a thruster blocks to impart full thrust the only thing behind (from the point of view of the thruster) it has to be thrusters, decorative blocks like lava or ice crystals, or empty space. Thrusters that do not meet this requirement will have significantly less thrust (10% maybe) Thrusters will otherwise function exactly the same way, you can face them in any direction. The only thing that matters is that in effect this means ships will be incentivized to have flashy weak points that smaller more maneuverable ships will be able to exploit. I might also consider a bonus that would mean that thrusters that don’t have any other thrusters or armor behind them are more effective. It would mean a risk reward balance between size of weak spot and a ship’s speediness.

Miscellaneous:

To complement this system I propose a few weapon effects changes. Ion would change the effect shield gates have on your weapons from perfect, 100%, shield gates into a minimum, let’s say 50% shield gates. They would do decreased damage to armor and blocks down to a minimum of 0. Pierce would up to halve the armor per shot damage reduction and would do down to a minimum of 0 to shields. Punch through would do what it does now to blocks and do normal damage to shields and armor. Possibly stop would become super effective if it’s used to shoot at the aforementioned flashing weak points. Probably not, that would probably be too difficult to implement.

Concerns:

The armor system would make adding decorative blocks to the outside of ships disadvantageous. Not more disadvantageous than now, but still it’s a concern. Possible solutions, make decorative blocks have the armor of strongest adjacent block. The end result would probably be striped ships taking advantage of the decoration block’s lowered cost, which while humorous, probably isn’t for the best. Another possible solution is advanced, standard, and normally armored decorations. That would be adding a lot of blocks. The easiest is probably just making decorations have advanced armor and making them just as pricey as normal advanced armor blocks. I have to admit that none of these are perfect solutions.

The other big concern is that doing this will completely wreck all ships made before the overhaul. All I can say is that this update should be well telegraphed to allow builders time to retrofit before the update hits. It really is unfortunate and I would just try to emphasize that this system will make the experience of not only building, but also engineering ships more enjoyable. Though that’s easy for me to say since I have no particular attachment to my builds.

Good idea. +1. Limiting creativity is a stupid comeback to this idea. Everything will be config edditable anyways.

 

[aceface]

Good idea. +1. Limiting creativity is a stupid comeback to this idea. Everything will be config edditable anyways.

personally in my opinion i dont mind if creativity is limited. i want to build proper spaceships, not comletely random structures that can shoot and fly.

 

[Khantron]

It limits flexibility, but the constraints do not limit creativity. Creativity is a lot of things, and one kind of creativity is working within constraints to make something function the way you want it to.

Currently in starmade creativity is needed to make something look the way you want it. I'm just adding a few requirements that makes creativity more necessary to make a ship function the way you want it to.

As always, there's a relevant xkcd.

http://xkcd.com/1045/

 

[Criss]

It limits flexibility, but the constraints do not limit creativity. Creativity is a lot of things, and one kind of creativity is working within constraints to make something function the way you want it to.

Currently in starmade creativity is needed to make something look the way you want it. I'm just adding a few requirements that makes creativity more necessary to make a ship function the way you want it to.

As always, there's a relevant xkcd.

http://xkcd.com/1045/

There are ways to do this without forcing us to build in specific shapes. Having pros / cons for installing different systems that effect each other would better tackle the one-ship-fleet mindset that currently goes with ship building. Suddenly ship-roles because players would loose massive amounts of potential unless they focused ships on specific systems.

If structural design is going to be a thing, it will be most applicable with the health update and armor.

 

[keylan118]

Good idea. +1. Limiting creativity is a stupid comeback to this idea. Everything will be config edditable anyways.

Calling someone's opinion stupid is severely limiting. True, most things can be modified through config, but how does making multiple shields instead of one giant shield do anything but decrease efficiency? As the OP says, there is a 10 second cooldown before the latest shield destroyed is recharged, then the next shield takes 10 seconds, and etc. I would rather have one powerful shield and just really puny, tiny shields for the shield gates, this feature could be abused so easily, and I would still rather have one big, strong shield, than it with the addition of tiny shields because that adds time to my shield recharge. Flat damage reduction values for armor would make small craft near useless, incentivising the titan-class even more. Making thrusters have to be at the back for maximum efficiency is a horrible idea, as most ships already have it there (for efficiency with all the systems) anyway, but thrusters should still be able to be placed anyway, as it doesn't really change gameplay if you have the thrusters in front or facing any direction, or nearest to the ship core. In fact, it would make the ship weaker, because then their more important systems are farther away. Would you rather take engines, or power? The idea of small, maneuverable craft able to take down bigger ships, or at least, knock out their movement would do two things:
1. Incentivize shields even more, so people would, once again, build shields to powerful for small craft (also your flat damage reduction for armor kind of rebukes the idea of a small ship actually doing anything)
2. Anger a lot of people. It makes sense that bigger ships can murder smaller ones, or else we would only have small ships. Small ships are mean't to take down big ships as a group, not solo.
Oh, and telling people to change their ships before you update to meet your demands is the same as telling people to change their ships to meet your demands. Giving us extra time does nothing.
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personally in my opinion i dont mind if creativity is limited. i want to build proper spaceships, not comletely random structures that can shoot and fly.

You can do that anyway, forcing everyone else to do it doesn't make sense.

 

[CyberTao]

The idea is... different.
The thruster idea, while it may seem nice to some, isn't all that balanced. Long "stick" ships with great lengths and minimal width and height would get the most gain from it, since they could stack more engines behind engines. It favours the long ship over the vertical or wide ship, and that 'dictates' the average ship, which would be build with PvP in mind to some extend. It's more restrictive, not indepth or complex.

Flat hull damage reduction, I'd have to agree with keylan on, it discourages small weapons to an extent. While this may be 'balanced' by the weak points in the back, it makes combat in a small ship very basic, and would leave to various defenses on the rear of ships to stop them.

The shield system would require great changes, simply saying "you can change the configs" won't work here, since the way shields would work would have to be redesigned in the engine. You could modify how it works with configs, but you'd still be stuck with it in this case. It honestly feels like a basic shield system from a game I know I've played, where you have Shield layers designed to take X amount of hits before depleting and moving on the the next.

It also mentions Bleed damage basically. Bleed damage is somewhat of a concern due to offline greifing in the current game, but would be a nice option someday (possibly in the form of an effect), when the game is less of a gankfest centered around undocked 'kills'.
The rest of it could be done by setting shield thresholds I think. Breaking the shield bar up into 5(an example) bars, each bar representing 20% of the total shields, with a delay activated when the shields try to recharge past that point. Doing it like so would make it a config thing people can opt out of easily if they wish, and should mimic what you are trying to suggest pretty well (considering you mentioned a maximum).

 

[Khantron]

There are ways to do this without forcing us to build in specific shapes. Having pros / cons for installing different systems that effect each other would better tackle the one-ship-fleet mindset that currently goes with ship building. Suddenly ship-roles because players would loose massive amounts of potential unless they focused ships on specific systems.

If structural design is going to be a thing, it will be most applicable with the health update and armor.

This voxel based construction game is only playing to its strengths if it forces us to build in general shapes. Nothing about my proposal forces building in specific shapes even if you want your ship to function in a specific way. Even then, there are multiple options that all function similarly or in the same way. Look, when you build a ship that is aesthetically pleasing, it matters where you put your blocks, not just the number and type. That is engaging gameplay in the game's central mechanic, which is ship building. I just want engineering a ship to have that same engaging gameplay.

Now, this may make engineering and designing a ship that functions the way you want it to, and with the exactly the aesthetics you want more difficult, but I don't think that is a valid reason to keep one half of the games central mechanic of ship construction, engineering, comparatively boring.

 

[Criss]

This voxel based construction game is only playing to its strengths if it forces us to build in general shapes. Nothing about my proposal forces building in specific shapes even if you want your ship to function in a specific way. Even then, there are multiple options that all function similarly or in the same way. Look, when you build a ship that is aesthetically pleasing, it matters where you put your blocks, not just the number and type. That is engaging gameplay in the game's central mechanic, which is ship building. I just want engineering a ship to have that same engaging gameplay.

Now, this may make engineering and designing a ship that functions the way you want it to, and with the exactly the aesthetics you want more difficult, but I don't think that is a valid reason to keep one half of the games central mechanic of ship construction, engineering, comparatively boring.

You stated multiple times in the OP that certain things (specifically thrusters) would benefit if built a certain way. That there would be a more effective system by building a certain way. So how does that not force me to build a certain way in order to keep up with players that use this system? Players that do not know proper power layouts usually cannot compare their ships to players that have efficient designs. It's not that we can't make things interesting, it's that there are other ways to go about this.

 

[Khantron]

As the OP says, there is a 10 second cooldown before the latest shield destroyed is recharged, then the next shield takes 10 seconds, and etc. I would rather have one powerful shield and just really puny, tiny shields for the shield gates, this feature could be abused so easily, and I would still rather have one big, strong shield, than it with the addition of tiny shields because that adds time to my shield recharge.

I cannot say what will be more effective in a real game situation, but I will say that the balance numbers I propose are not set in stone and can always be changed. My suspicion is that for a smaller ship designed to face larger ships, the shield gates will be more useful, and for a larger ship designed to face smaller ships, shield gates would be useless, but I can't really say more than that or give any specifics, as I haven't played the game I'm proposing either.

Flat damage reduction values for armor would make small craft near useless, incentivising the titan-class even more. Making thrusters have to be at the back for maximum efficiency is a horrible idea, as most ships already have it there (for efficiency with all the systems) anyway, but thrusters should still be able to be placed anyway, as it doesn't really change gameplay if you have the thrusters in front or facing any direction, or nearest to the ship core.

I'm sorry if I was unclear, but what I meant is that thrusters can be placed facing any direction and it's only where the back of the thruster is facing that matters. I suspect that fighter destroyers will want to build with the back of their thrusters facing forward so that any ship that tries to attack them is within their firing arc, though this will put them at a disadvantage in a fight with a similarly sized ship.

In fact, it would make the ship weaker, because then their more important systems are farther away. Would you rather take engines, or power? The idea of small, maneuverable craft able to take down bigger ships, or at least, knock out their movement would do two things:
1. Incentivize shields even more, so people would, once again, build shields to powerful for small craft (also your flat damage reduction for armor kind of rebukes the idea of a small ship actually doing anything)
2. Anger a lot of people. It makes sense that bigger ships can murder smaller ones, or else we would only have small ships. Small ships are mean't to take down big ships as a group, not solo.

Again, I think I was being unclear but, the weak points wouldn't mean that the blocks there would get destroyed, it would just mean that the "armor" meter would go down without the flat damage reduction on shots. Small ships would still be able to do damage against ships with weak points, and building without weak points would put that ship at a disadvantage against similarly sized ships with weak points. Ideally it would kind of be like a sort of rock paper scissors, where scissors is a group of fighters, paper is a large ship with weak points, and rock is a large ship without weak points.

Oh, and telling people to change their ships before you update to meet your demands is the same as telling people to change their ships to meet your demands. Giving us extra time does nothing.

Giving some extra time to prepare isn't nothing. It won't magically make ships work exactly as they did before the update, yes, but it will allow you to build or retrofit ships that will work as you would like them to after the update.
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You stated multiple times in the OP that certain things (specifically thrusters) would benefit if built a certain way. That there would be a more effective system by building a certain way. So how does that not force me to build a certain way in order to keep up with players that use this system? Players that do not know proper power layouts usually cannot compare their ships to players that have efficient designs. It's not that we can't make things interesting, it's that there are other ways to go about this.

You keep on saying "way" when there are a range of different ways to build an effective ship. There is one principle, but you can follow that principle into many different designs. Even building power arrays, which are more constricted system than what I'm proposing for thrusters is more engaging then putting thrusters on a ship now, an almost completely unconstricted system.

A ship's aesthetics benefit if they are built in certain ways. I'm forced into those constraints in order to build an attractive ship. But there are a range of ways in which I could build my ship to be aesthetically pleasing. It is in this way that building a pretty ship is engaging.

My ideal engineering system would be an analogous situation. I'm forced into building systems in certain ways in order to build a functional ship. But there are still a range of different ways that I could build a ship that's functional within these constraints. That's what would make engineering a ship engaging.

 

[Criss]

I am sure if the devs intended to impose constraints on systems they cold have done this already. I am positive that thrusters at one point performed better when lined up. That was a year ago. I am still against this. Keeping it simple such as forcing systems into large groups or the constraints applied to the power systems works. Power systems can be built into small structures. This works because I can get efficient setups in numerous shapes. The reactors are based on box dimensions + totally number of blocks while capacitors simply need to be connected. Very easy to achieve.

In order for a thruster blocks to impart full thrust the only thing behind (from the point of view of the thruster) it has to be thrusters, decorative blocks like lava or ice crystals, or empty space.

I might also consider a bonus that would mean that thrusters that don’t have any other thrusters or armor behind them are more effective. It would mean a risk reward balance between size of weak spot and a ship’s speediness.

I will never be for these systems. Consider this. In real engines, the individual parts of the engine can extend pretty far into the vehicle. My car does not gain all it's forward momentum based on the exhaust pipe size (of course cars do not operate the same way as thrusters). That being said, there's more to the process of moving the vehicle than just the engine. The engine nozzles of the space shuttle does not account for the entire system. This is why I am against forcing a player to build thrusters behind designated blocks. It doesn't matter if the blocks you choose are aesthetically pleasing, I still shouldn't be forced to build this way to get effective systems. You also seemed to contradict yourself by saying there are other ways to build the system. But not if we want the most efficient setup. The most efficient setup requires me to build behind specific blocks and possibly in straight lines. The most efficient setup is what most players want, which mean they have to conform to your building constraints.

Now if you have an alternate solution for players that do not want to build this way that gives them just a just as effective system, please state it. In your last reply you kinda just said there were indeed other ways to go about it without giving an example.

 

[Khantron]

Power systems can be built into small structures. This works because I can get efficient setups in numerous shapes.

Thrusters would be the same way. You can face them in any direction so you can put them behind a turret on the top of your ship, or put them on the front so that whoever is shooting you is within firing arc. You can intersect them.

In real engines, the individual parts of the engine can extend pretty far into the vehicle.

Heh, I just imagined four pistons hanging out in a line and then a fifth on the other side of the hood and a sixth in the backseat. Not really relevant, but it was a funny image (well, I thought it was).

 

[Khantron]

I've reflected on my idea, and decided that my proposed thruster idea went too far because dictating external design. That's been amended.